Middle East Peace Negotiators Offer Perspectives on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A pair of veteran Middle East peace negotiators offered their University of Virginia audience a first-person overview of decades of diplomacy efforts and their perspectives on the obstacles to securing a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.

Former ambassador Dennis Ross, who led U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Ghaith al-Omari, a former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine who also held various roles in the Palestinian Authority, joined Arts & Science Dean Christa Acampora for a public talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

For both Ross and al-Omari, colleagues now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, any chance for a peaceful resolution must begin with Israelis and Palestinians recognizing each other’s right to peacefully co-exist in that region. Unfortunately, they added, the current narrative does not recognize that both sides have a very strong attachment to the lands they call home.

“This has been seen by Arabs and Israelis as a zero-sum conflict,” al-Omari said. “But the lesson is that the Israelis are going nowhere, and the Palestinians are going nowhere, and somehow, we have to find a solution to this problem…. Both sides have a strong attachment to the same piece of land.... When an Israeli says the land is really important to them, they mean it. It’s a genuine belief. And when I say that the land really means something to us, it also is genuine.”

Following up al-Omari’s comments, Ross recalled how President Barack Obama asked him early in his presidential administration why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so hard to resolve.

“I said it’s because it’s not a right-and-wrong [debate]. You’re trying to reconcile two rights — two national movements competing for the same space, both deeply rooted, and a zero-sum approach has been going on for a long time”

The sold-out Dec. 3 event, co-sponsored by UVA’s Jewish Studies Program and the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages & Cultures, was the second event in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ “Enabling Difficult Conversations” series. Debuting last May with Acampora moderating a similar conversation with Dartmouth professors Susannah Heschel and Tareq el-Ariss about their long history of teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bringing students together for conversations, the A&S series aims to bring together partners with expertise in enabling difficult conversations.

““I think it’s especially fitting that we’re having this event here at UVA,” Acampora told the assembled audience in Nau Hall. “As a place committed to understanding complex histories and fostering informed dialogue, UVA offers an ideal setting for reflecting on these global issues with depth and respect.”

Setting anger aside

In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and with Israel’s war in Gaza ongoing, Ross said it’s important to recognize that both sides are experiencing “parallel traumas.”

“You have two societies suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome,” Ross said, noting the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas and the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. “There is an inability on both sides to grasp anything but their own pain, and until you get beyond Gaza, and until you get to reestablish a sense of possibility that’s been completely lost, it will be very difficult to get back to the kind of peacemaking deals that were done before.”

At the end of the day, al-Omari continued, both sides have to be willing to engage in good-faith negotiations. 

“You have to work together. Not because you want to do a favor for the other side,” al-Omari said. “You do it because that’s the nature of the reality.”

He expressed skepticism, however, that the current leadership on either side of the conflict is capable of moving toward a reconciliation. In response, Ross said, “I wish I could disagree with that.”

“You need an Israeli leader to stand up and say we suffered a terrible set of tragedies, atrocities that are unthinkable. But we also understand that in rooting out Hamas we inflicted a terrible price on Palestinians, Palestinians who were not responsible. And for that we understand we also bear responsibility,” Ross said. “And Palestinian leaders have to stand up and say, ‘What Hamas did was unthinkable. It did not represent what Palestinians believe in. It is not who we are…. The fact that that hasn’t happened is still quite remarkable.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Ross and al-Omari also spent time with UVA students discussing the conflict and their careers in diplomacy. Asked at the close of their public conversation with Acampora what advice they had for students aspiring to careers in diplomacy and foreign policy, they encouraged students to set anger aside and commit to negotiating breakthroughs in policy making.

“The longer this conflict goes on, the more people will lose life,” al-Omari said. “You have to ask yourself: at the end of the day: do you want to be part of perpetuating this conflict, …or do you want to be part of a solution?” 

“Anger is an emotion, not a policy,” Ross added. “If you’re serious about injustice, then focus on policy that creates some possibility. The idea that one side or the other is going to disappear, that’s not [a possibility] on this planet. These two peoples are not going away. If your focus is on having one disappear, then you’re contributing to the conflict. You’re contributing to injustice.”