In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS) will hold a roundtable discussion of the past and future of the country on Thursday, April 9. "Israel after 50 Years -- Where Has It Been and Where Is It Going?" will take place 4-5:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. The event is free, and the public is welcome.
Participants will discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as other economic, social and political issues affecting the country today. Gus Ranis, director of the YCIAS, will moderate the discussion. Participating in the discussion will be:
Yezid Sayigh, assistant director at the Centre for International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Sayigh served as an adviser and negotiator in the Palestinian-Israeli bilateral peace talks 1991-94 and headed the Multilateral Working Group for Arms Control and Regional Security. His recent publications include "Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993" and "The Cold War and the Middle East" (coedited with Avi Shlaim).
Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Population, Development and Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist on the Middle East, Telhami has been active in the foreign policy area. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences study group that was instrumental in the informal negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians that led to the Declaration of Principles Agreement. Also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions, Telhami has been widely published and is a contributor to a forthcoming Foreign Relations Council report on the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Asher Arian, the Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York and professor of political science at the University of Haifa, Israel. Arian has written several books on Israeli elections, national security and public opinion. Among his most recent publications are "The Second Republic: Politics in Israel" and "Security Threatened: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and War" (both works have been published in English and Hebrew). He is also a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.
Ehud Ya'ari, a well-known Israeli broadcaster and journalist. He is the chief Middle East commentator for Israel Television and associate editor of the Middle East for the Jerusalem Report. He has covered a range of issues in the Middle East, interviewing virtually all of the major leaders in the region, as well as Bill Clinton. A frequent commentator on Israeli-Palestinian relations, he has written several books, including "Israel's Lebanon War" and "Intifada" (coauthored with Ze'ev Shiff). He is currently based in Washington at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Arrangements for Ya'ari's visit to campus have been made through the B'nai B'rith Lecture Bureau.
Ehud Sprinzak, a professor of political science at Hebrew University, director of the Raoul Wallenberg Scholarship Program and a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. He is a specialist on terrorism and religious radicalism, focusing on research about Israel's radical right-wing and terrorism. In 1992, he was awarded the Landau Prize for best political science book for "The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right." He is author of numerous articles and of the forthcoming "Jews Who Kill" and "Israeli Democracy Under Stress."
For more information, contact Lauress Ackman at 432-3413 or by e-mail at
lauress.ackman@yale.edu.