Sunday, October 30th from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Club Spartan (3rd Floor, Case Hall)

Palestinian and Israeli veteran peace negotiators, researchers, and Middle East policy analysts, will discuss their recent 100 page document “The Holy Land Confederation as a Facilitator for the Two State Solution.” They have presented this vision to the UN Secretary General and to the Biden Administration, and are trying to involve Israeli and Palestinian officials and publics. The speakers all believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is soluble, and the best solution for Palestinians and Israelis is the establishment of two states with clear and agreed-upon borders. Most of the contributors hold that a confederal framework may enable both Palestinians and Israelis to break through the current deadlock in the peace process. They believe that this can facilitate a two state solution and have a consequential impact on the culture of peace and on closer cooperation in Israel/Palestine for the good of both peoples.

Yossi Beilin is a politician and researcher. For 24 years he has held senior positions in the Knesset and the Israeli Government. His most latest ministerial role was as Minister of Justice. Taught at Tel Aviv University, Department of Political Science, for 13 years. In 2019-2020 he served as a visiting professor at NYU.

In addition to the Oslo process and the Taglit-Birthright project, he initiated the Beilin-Abu Mazen understandings and the Geneva Initiative.

Publications: Secrets I won’t Take With Me, 2021; The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement, 2004; From Hachula to Geneva, 2004; Manual for a Wounded Dove, 2001; His Brother’s Keeper, 2000; From Socialism to Social Liberalism, 1999; The Manual for Leaving Lebanon, 1998; Touching Peace, 1997; Israel: A Concise Political History, 1992; The Roots of Israeli Industry, 1987; The Price of Unity, 1985; Sons in the Shadow of Their Fathers, 1984.

Omar M. Dajani is a professor of Law at the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. In 1999, he was recruited to serve as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel, ultimately participating in the summits at Camp David and Taba. He then joined the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), where he worked on peacebuilding initiatives and played a lead role in marshaling and organizing international efforts to support Palestinian legal and political reforms. Professor Dajani has continued since that time to work as a consultant on a variety of legal infrastructure development and conflict resolution projects in the Middle East and elsewhere – for institutions including the U.S. Department of State, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF), the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, and the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Dajani’s scholarly work focuses on the Middle East region and explores diverse topics, including the roles of law in international negotiation processes, the status and protection of religious and ethnic minorities, and the design of political institutions in deeply divided places. His most recent work, Federalism and Decentralization in the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa (co-edited with Aslı Bâli), will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. He earned his JD from Yale Law School and a BA in American Studies and Middle Eastern and Asian History from Northwestern University.

Hiba Husseini is the managing partner of the Law Firm of Husseini and Husseini. Under her management the Firm serves a large domestic and international client base on a wide range of legal matters. She practiced law in Washington, DC.
Ms. Husseini chairs the Legal Committee to Final Status Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis. She has served as legal advisor to the peace process negotiations since 1994. Ms. Husseini participates in various meetings that seek to interject innovative thinking to the hard and complex issues involved in the peace process, especially Jerusalem. She has written widely on the peace process, the rule of law, economic development and Jerusalem.

She serves on the boards of various educational, professional, cultural, business, and non-profit organizations. She served as a member of the International Advisory Panel of The American Law Institute and contributed in 2015 to the drafting of The Restatement of the Law, the Fourth, Foreign Relations Law of the United States.

Ms. Husseini holds a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University (1992), MA in Political Science from the George Washington University (1986), MSc in Corporate Finance from the University of Sorbonne (2002), BA in Political Science from the University of Tennessee (1982). 

Israela Oron (Brigadier General, ret.) had a lengthy and distinguished military career. She served in various key positions, breaking through many gender barriers.

After her retirement Oron served as deputy national security advisor at Israel’s National Security Council.  She is a board member of Ben Gurion University,

and serves on the board of Commanders for Israel’s Security, a leading Israeli security organization. She is one of the founders of “The Geneva Accord,” a draft Permanent Status Agreement to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and serves on their steering committee.  She is one of the founders of “Forum Devora,”which promotes inclusions of women in national security decision-making processes and peacemaking negotiations.

She often participates in track 2 peace negotiations and variety of projects regarding possible solutions to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. 

She is invited to speak on these issues  all over the world.

Dr. Saliba Sarsar is professor of Political Science at Monmouth University and a visiting scholarly collaborator at Princeton University in 2022-2023. He is also the President/CEO of the Jerusalem Peace Institute. His teaching and research interests focus on the Middle East, Palestinian-Israeli affairs, Jerusalem, and peacebuilding. Among his authored books are Peacebuilding in Israeli-Palestinian Relations (2020) and Jerusalem: The Home in Our Hearts (2018). His edited books include The Holy Land Confederation as a Facilitator for the Two-State Solution (2022) and What Jerusalem Means to Us: Christian Perspectives and Reflections (2018). His most recent co-edited books are Democracy in Crisis Around the World (2020); Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond (2020), and What Jerusalem Means to Us: Muslim Perspectives and Reflections (2021). Dr. Sarsar has three books of poetry: Crosswinds; Seven Gates of Jerusalem; and Portraits: Poems of the Holy Land.