Palestinian to discuss Middle East negotiations at Baker Institute lecture

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
E-MAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, the Baker Institute Diana Tamari Sabbagh Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies, will give a lecture on “Negotiating Jerusalem” at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy at 6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 25. A reception precedes the lecture.

He has written a Baker Institute policy paper, “Final Status: Jerusalem And Return,” which will be published concomitantly with his public presentation at the Baker Institute on Thursday.

This noted Palestinian’s recently published memoir, “Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life,” was described by the New York Times as ”one of the best personal accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever written.”
Dr. Nusseibeh is president of Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem and has extensive knowledge of the sensitive issues surrounding the Middle East through his work as a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 2001 to 2002. He is also a co-founder of the People’s Voice initiative, a nonpartisan civil effort to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In 2002 he co-authored with Ami Ayalon, currently the Israeli Minister Without Portfolio, a statement of principles calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The son of wealthy Muslim parents and a native of Shaykh Jarrar, East Jerusalem,
Dr. Nusseibeh has a bachelor’s in politics, philosophy and economics from Christ Church at Oxford University and a doctorate in Islamic philosophy from Harvard University.
 
Dr. Nusseibeh is working under the aegis of the Baker Institute’s Conflict Resolution Program, chaired by Ambassador Edward Djerejian. The program involves the institute’s Israeli-Palestinian Working Group, which is comprised of an Israeli team headed by Yair Hirschfeld, the Isaac and Mildred Brochstein Fellow in Middle East Peace and Security in Honor of Yitzhak Rabin, and a Palestinian team headed by Samih Abid, a former minister in the Palestinian Authority.
 
The event will be held in James A. Baker III Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility on the Rice University campus. For directions, go to http://www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html.

Members of the news media who want to attend should R.S.V.P. to Franz Brotzen at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.