Director of the Center for Palestine and Research Studies in Israel KHALIL SHIKAKI, left, and YAHIR HIRSCHFELD, an Israeli originator of the Oslo Peace Process, discuss Middle East politics at the Arco Forum Yesterday.

The key to peace in the Middle East lies in examination of past-failed diplomatic negotiations, a panel discussion at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) found last night.

“Conflict is not inevitable, and people change their minds,” Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center for Palestine and Research Studies in the West Bank town of Ramallah, told the audience of 300 that attended the forum.

The panel also included Yair Hirschfeld, one of the two Israeli originators of the Oslo Peace Process, and Ambassador Dennis Ross, who served as special Middle East coordinator under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and is now a lecturer at the KSG.

The discussion focused on the lessons to be learned from the Oslo Peace Accords, negotiated in secret by Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in 1993.

The accords granted a five-year interim period of Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and in exchange the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to renounce violence against Israel.

Despite their promising nature, the accords were followed by eruptions of violence in both areas that culminated in the collapse of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the Intifada shortly thereafter.

The panelists said yesterday that peace accords alone cannot ensure the cultural change necessary to bring about peace in the Middle East.

“Oslo promised the transformation of attitudes but didn’t produce [these] transformations,” Ross said. “Though the [Palestinians] agreed to renounce violence....there was never an effort to delegitimize violence.”

The Israelis were responsible as well, Ross said, arguing that they were never ready to give up control of Palestinian land as they had pledged to do.

“There was no accountability in this process,” says Ross.

Shikaki remarked similarly that the Oslo Accords were “too open-ended” and did not demand enough commitment on both the Israeli and Palestinian fronts.

“I don’t believe for a second that the failure after Camp David exposed a fundamental clash [between the Israelis and Palestinians],” says Shikaki, “as I don’t accept the idea that the Palestinian national movement cannot reach peace agreements with Israel.”

While the three panelists had different viewpoints at times, they shared an optimism for a peaceful future, and wanted to bring political realities closer to intellectual understandings.

“I think it’s possible, but it’s not easy,” Hirschfeld said.

Ross stressed the need for U.S. involvement in the peace process.