This talk will look back at the first decade of the implementation of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. The process will be examined from a new perspective by positing a plausible counterfactual of “what might have been." The presentation will be based Dr. Steinberg’s academic and on-the-ground experience during this period. Attention will be given to three principal crossroads of this process: 1) the antecedents to the Oslo Accords; 2) the repercussions of Goldstein massacre in the mosque in al-Khalil/Hebron in 1994; 3) the Camp David discussions of July 2000. The talk will then address significant developments during 2000s, such as the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and the negotiations between Prime Minister Olmert and President Mahmud Abbas in 2008. Leaning on these developments, the talk will posit some lessons for the near future.

Dr. Matti Steinberg earned his doctorate in Middle East and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a post-doctoral fellow in Princeton University during 1989-1990.  He has lectured at the Hebrew University, the University of Haifa and at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. He has also lectured at Princeton University on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and on Islamism in 2003, 2005, and 2011 and at Heidelberg University in 2014. He is author of five books and dozens of research articles on various Middle Eastern and Islamic topics. Dr. Steinberg has received prizes for academic excellence from the Hebrew University, such as the Jacob Talmon Prize, the Jacob Hertzog Prize, the Dudiq Carmon Prize and the Simcha Prath Prize. His book in Hebrew on the development of Palestinian nationalist thinking, which was published in 2008, earned the Tshetshik Prize for Security Studies of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University in 2010.  This book was published in English translation in 2016 and titled In Search of Modern Palestinian Nationhood, (Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University). It received the Reuvan Chaikin prize for Geostrategy from the University of Haifa and was described by New York Review of Books (June 22-July 12, 2017) as "...a magisterial study by the leading Israeli scholar of Palestine." Dr. Steinberg has served in various senior government posts in Israel from 1974-2018, and among these was as senior advisor to the heads of the intelligence during the years 1996-2006.