The Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution at Columbia SIPA hosted a book talk on Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine, featuring the co-author Robert Malley in conversation with moderator Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Director of the Kent Program. Drawing on decades of firsthand involvement in Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, Malley offered a candid and sobering assessment of why the peace process collapsed and how the failures of Oslo continue to shape today’s violence.
Mr. Malley began by observing that in a hypothetical universe in which the US did not exist, the situation in Israel/Palestine could not be any worse than it is today. Decades of American involvement in the Middle East may have secured the existence of Israel, but they have failed to bring peace, nor have they redressed the injustice of the lack of self-determination for the Palestinians. As a member of the US negotiating team at Camp David in 2000, he explained why that promising moment failed to culminate in peace. He also drew on his personal acquaintance of the events and personalities involved to draw a damning picture of the deterioration of the situation ever since.
Later the discussion turned to imagining what a just future for the tortured region would look like. The failure of the "two-state solution" to produce a positive outcome has led him an others to contemplate the prospect of a single state with two distinct peoples sharing the land in a new model of collective sovereignty. While the vision may be utopian, it cannot be worse than the current nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank which is the result of strict adherence to the two-state paradigm.
Video of the event may be found here:
