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Lafayette College professor Ilan Peleg, author and editor of numerous books and articles on the Middle East, will give a talk on “Is Peace Possible in the Mid-East?: Reflections on the Eve of the Millennium” at noon, Friday, October 15, in the Interfaith Chapel of Lafayette’s Hogg Hall.
Free and open to the public, the talk will be followed by a question and answer session. Lunch may be purchased for $3.
“The talk will explain why the peace process was launched in 1992 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin despite the many obstacles,” says Peleg, Lafayette’s Charles A. Dana Professor of Government and Law. “It will assess the chances for the current peace process, under the leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, to continue, and will focus on some of the difficulties in reaching a ‘Final Status’ agreement. The lecture will review, albeit briefly, the most difficult issues on the current agenda and evaluate the possibilities for resolving them on the way to a stable Mid-East solution.”
A foremost expert on the Middle East peace process, Peleg approaches the conflict between the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs from a human rights perspective, presenting a balanced view that includes both Israeli and Palestinian sources and positions, as well as international perspectives.
Peleg is the author of Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics, a comprehensive book dealing with human rights in the occupied territories. It was named an Outstanding Scholarly Book by CHOICE, the publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, in 1996. He has authored other books on this subject and his other areas of interest, which include Israeli politics and culture, the nuclear arms race, U.S. foreign policy, censorship and freedom of expression, U.S.-Soviet relations, international conflict and international terrorism.
Peleg edited the books Human Rights and Culture (Columbia University Press) and The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (SUNY Press). He serves as president of the Association for Israel Studies and has been a visiting scholar in the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. He also has been a Fellow in the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and a fellow-in-residence in the Middle East Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Peleg’s expertise has been called upon in appearances on CNN, National Public Radio and Voice of America. His honors include Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Laura Forrest Jones Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship in 1993, and a College’s Mary Louise Van Artsdalen award for scholarship in 1995.