Critical Perspectives on the War: Is There a Common Ground?

This event occurred on:  Ghaith Al-Omari and Fred Hof sat across from each other in 2000 and 2001 as the negotiators trying to agree on a common account of the how the second intifada began. Now, as war rages in Israel and Gaza, Al-Omari and Hof will speak together at Bard College to ask if there is any way to come to common understanding of the origins and impact of the current war. 

Ghaith al-Omari, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute's Irwin Levy Family Program on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship, is the former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. He served as advisor to the negotiating team during the 1999–2001 permanent-status talks in addition to holding various other positions within the Palestinian Authority.

Frederic C. Hof, Bard College’s diplomat in residence, was chief-of-staff of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, which sought to end Palestinian-Israeli violence and return the two sides to negotiations. He was the principal drafter of the Committee’s report. From 2009–11 he attempted to mediate Syria-Israel peace as a State Department diplomat. He served as ambassador and special adviser for transition in Syria under President Obama and as special coordinator for regional affairs in the US Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he conducted a back-channel peace mediation between Israel and Syria.

Elmira Bayrasli is the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally. She is also the CEO and co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and a professor at Bard College’s Global and International Affairs program and teaches at the City College of New York’s Newmark School of Journalsim. She has lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she was the chief spokesperson for the OSCE Mission. From 1994–2000 she was presidential appointee at the US State Department, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, respectively. Elmira is a regular contributor on global entrepreneurship for Techcrunch. She also provides analysis on foreign policy, particularly on Turkey. Her work has appeared in Reuters, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Quartz, the New Republic, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Elmira sits on several boards, including Invest2Innovate, Our Secure Future, Turkish Philanthropy Funds, and Turkish Women’s International Network.