Gershon Baskin- The Israeli Palestinian Peace process: lessons learned from 22 years of failed agreements
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The Israeli Palestinian Peace process: lessons learned from 22 years of failed agreements - with Gershon Baskin
Wednesday, April 29th
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Conference Room 5183
Please join S-CAR in welcoming Gerson Baskin for a lecture. This event is initiated and facilitated by PhD student Carol Daniel Kasbari and sponsored by the S-CAR Student Association. Professor Sara Cobb will be the host faculty of the event.
Israeli Palestinian – is it still possible? Twenty two years of failed peace process have left the public on both sides of the conflict with a deep sense that there is no partner for peace and that peace is not possible. Israel and the PLO signed six agreements over the years and all of them were breached. Many lessons can be drawn from the long years of experience in negotiations and in implementation (and non-implementation) of agreements. This lecture will focus on the lessons that should be learned from the failures of Israeli Palestinian peace processes and conclusions will be offered regarding future prospects. The lessons learned have clear prescriptive dimensions for other conflicts and peace processes as well.
Gershon Baskin, Ph.D., was the initiator and the person responsible for the secret back channel between Israel and the Hamas that successfully negotiated the release of Israeli abducted soldier Gilead Schalit. His book on the secret negotiations was published in Hebrew in June 2013 (לשחרר את גלעד) and in English in Ocotver 2013 (The Negotiator – Freeing Gilad Schalit from Hamas – Toby Press)
During the Premiership of the late Yitzhak Rabin, he served as an advisor on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to a secret team of intelligence officers established by Mr. Rabin. Dr. Baskin was a member of the Jerusalem Experts Committee established by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office during the Final Status Negotiations in 2000-2001.
From 1988 – 2011, Dr. Baskin was the Israeli Co-Director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) (newly branded as Israel Palestine Creative Regional Initiatives) - a joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think and “do”-tank located in Jerusalem. Since January 2012 he is the Co-Chairman of IPCRI’s Board of Directors.
Dr. Baskin holds a Ph.D. in International Affairs from University of Greenwich. His dissertation was on Sovereignty and Territory in the Future of Jerusalem, parts of which were published as a book Jerusalem of Peace. To read more: http://www.gershonbaskin.com
Carol Daniel Kasbari, conflict transformation specialist and veteran facilitator for groups in conflict in the Middle East since 1995. She managed several USAID programs through local and international NGO’s such as Search for Common Ground, Catholic Relief Services and other in various fields such as in media, dialogue, education and advocacy. She worked with numerous groups such as wounded crossing borders, senior media professionals, high school educators, women activists and many others in Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Greece and Bosnia. She was the co-founder and director of the Israeli Palestinian Media Forum (IPMF) and a consultant for UNESCO’s division of Freedom of Expression for 8 years. In 2011, she held a powerful TEDx talk on “Going beyond the Dialogue of Words” to illustrate through her personal experience the numerous ways to act and reach out to the other, to cross the emotional and physical borders to create a dialogue of actions: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxJaffa-Carol-Daniel-Kasbari
The Student Association (SA) is a student led and officially registered organization created in an effort to build better relationships among students, staff, and faculty at S-CAR. The SA advocates on behalf of student concerns to the faculty on issues relevant to S-CAR and assists students in navigating the challenges of life at Mason and in the Washington, DC area.