The past four years have seen serious efforts geared toward creating a Palestinian state, said Yair Hirschfeld, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel. Hirschfeld spoke at the Jewish Community Center on Thursday about solutions regarding the conflict in Israel and Palestine. He met with Jewish community leaders earlier that day at the Tanner Humanities Center.
"The situation in the West Bank has positively improved, with security and development—very serious economic development, (but) negotiations themselves have been mismanaged," he said.
As a chief architect of the Oslo Accords, a crucial set of agreements between Palestine and Israel in 1993, Hirschfeld was also the founder of the Economic Cooperation Foundation, a Tel Aviv-based organization that supports a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Hirschfeld will return to campus for the fall to become the first Wayne Olsen Chair at the Middle East Center. He is the U's first Wayne Owens Chair in Middle East Studies, a position that honors former a former Utah congressman. He will teach a class at the U in the fall.
He said the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt could be a benefit to Palestine.
"The events in Egypt and Tunisia are about jobs," Hirschfeld said.
The Arab world needs 5 million jobs each year, but only 2.5 million are created. An internal structure for job creation would add much-needed stability in the region, providing another opportunity to move ahead with Palestinian statehood, he said.
The idea sounds like the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II—the United States is not in a position to do something like that again, said Bob Goldberg, history professor and director of the Tanner Center for Humanities.
International organizations could create jobs and economic stimulus, Hirschfeld said.
"The U.S. leadership is built on the concept of an orchestra," he said, referring to groups such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the G20 group. "The president of the U.S. can decide what groups he wants to play the music—he decides what emphasis to put on what kind of coalition he wants to build."
Above all, Hirschfeld believes a peaceful solution must involve "strategic decision-making, and access to decision-makers and a sense of humility."