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Organized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and the UC Berkeley Helen Diller Institute for Israel Studies. Co-sponsored by America at a Crossroads, the UCLA Department of Public Policy, and the UCLA Center for Middle East Development.

About the Program

The Israelis and Palestinians signed the landmark Oslo II peace agreement thirty years ago, on September 28, 1995. The agreement was witnessed by the United States, Russia, and other countries, and was submitted to the United Nations as an official treaty between the parties. Many believed peace had finally come, but those hopes were dashed when the parties failed to move the process forward to resolve the so-called "permanent status" issues. The intervening years have seen more conflict, bloodshed, and failure of the peace process. Please join us for an important discussion with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Palestinian National Authority Foreign Minister Nasser Al-Kidwa. They will analyze why Oslo failed and discuss what can be done today to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The conversation will be moderated by Professor Kenneth A. Bamberger (UC Berkeley) and Professor Steven E. Zipperstein (UCLA).

 About the Speakers

Ehud Olmert served as Prime Minister of the State of Israel from 2006–2009, making the establishment of a peace agreement with the Palestinians his priority. He served in the Israeli Knesset from 1973–2009 and was twice elected to be the Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993–1998. In November 2007, he attended the Annapolis Peace Conference led by President George W. Bush, and in 2008, he proposed a peace agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the basis of a two-state solution. He was born in 1945 in Israel and is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Psychology, Philosophy, and Law. Olmert and Nasser Al-Kidwa are now jointly proposing a framework for a cessation of the war in Gaza and the framework for a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine historical conflict.

Nasser Al-Kidwa is a prominent member of the Palestinian political party Fatah, a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), and the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian National Authority. He served as the PLO / Palestine Observer to the United Nations in New York from 1991–2004. Al-Kidwa played a key role in bringing Palestine's case against Israel's wall to the International Court of Justice in 2003–2004. In 2012, he was appointed as Deputy Special Envoy of the UN-LAS Joint Special Mission for Syria under the leadership of Kofi Annan. He also served in 2014–2015 as the League of Arab States Special Envoy to Libya. In 2021, Al-Kidwa founded the National Democratic Assembly and headed the "Freedom" list for the Palestinian elections that were arbitrarily canceled. Both the creation of the NDA and the "Freedom" list led to an illegal expulsion from the Fatah Central Committee and a removal as Head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation. In 2024, he developed a joint proposal with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine historical conflict. Born in Gaza in 1953, Al-Kidwa graduated as a dentist from Cairo University, Faculty of Medicine. He is presently a member of the Board of the International Crisis Group.

DISCLAIMER: The views or opinions of our guest speakers and the content of their presentations do not necessarily reflect the views of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Hosting speakers does not constitute an endorsement of the speaker's views or opinions.

Sponsor(s): Center for Middle East Development, Department of Public Policy, UC Berkeley Helen Diller Institute for Israel Studies, America at a Crossroads