This was recorded on May 23, 2024
Are any proposals for permanent peace more realistic today than in the last 50 years? What leverage do outsiders have and what steps can the two parties take to achieve peace and stability?
Speakers:
Itamar Rabinovich, Professor Emeritus, Middle Eastern History, Tel Aviv University; former Israeli Ambassador to United States
Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland
Moderator:
Steve Paikin, Canadian journalist and host of TV Ontario’s flagship current affairs show, The Agenda with Steve Paikin
Episode 6 transcript
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Speakers
Itamar Rabinovich is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University. He is Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and former Chief Negotiator with Syria in the mid- 1990s, and former President of Tel Aviv University (1999-2007). He is President of the Dan David Foundation (sponsor of the world’s largest history prize), President Emeritus and Counselor of the Israel Institute (Washington and Tel Aviv), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Brooking Institution’s Foreign Policy Program. He is the Vice Chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies, an external institute of Tel Aviv University and Israel’s leading think tank. He is also a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern studies, and is co-editor of the Center’s review journal, Bustan.
Professor Rabinovich is the author of more than ten volumes on the Modern History and Politics of the Middle East, as well as numerous essays and papers.
Recent books include Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman (published by Yale University Press in 2017, and available also in German); Syrian Requiem: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (published by Princeton University Press in 2021), and Middle Eastern Maze: Israel, the Arabs, and the Region, 1948 – 2022 (published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2023).
Professor Rabinovich has held visiting appointments and fellowships in academic institutions around the globe. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the Honorary Grand Golden Cross of the Austrian Republic and made a Commandeur l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the Government of the French Republic. In 2009 he was awarded the Korn-Gerstenman Prize for contribution to peace in the Middle East.
Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, the Director of the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, and a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science. He has authored and edited numerous books, including one forthcoming book: Peace Derailed: Obama, Trump, Biden, and the Decline of Diplomacy on Israel/Palestine, 2011-2022 (co-authored). His most recent book is a co-edited with contributions volume, The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine? which was published in March 2023 with Cornell University Press.
He has advised every U.S. administration from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama. Telhami was selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York along with the New York Times as one of the "Great Immigrants" for 2013 and the Washingtonian Magazine listed him as one of the “Most Influential People on Foreign Affairs” in both 2022 and 2023 He is also the recipient of many awards including the University of Maryland’s Distinguished Service Award and the University of Maryland’s Honors College Outstanding Faculty Award.
Moderator
Steve Paikin is the host of TVO's flagship current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin He co-hosts the weekly provincial affairs #onpoli podcast and contributes weekly columns to tvo.org. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario