THE QUESTION

Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that Hamas is doing all it can to torpedo the Mideast peace process -- but Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad, thinks it's time to include the Islamist group in peace talks. Who's right?

Posted by David Ignatius on April 1, 2008 5:57 AM

FROM THE PANEL

Dr. Ali Ettefagh serves as a director of Highmore Global Corporation, an investment company in emerging markets of Eastern Europe, CIS, and the Middle East. He is the co-author of several books on trade conflict, resolution of international trade disputes, conflicts in letters of credit, trade-related banking transactions, sovereign debt, arbitration and dispute resolutions and publications specific to the oil and gas, communication, aviation and finance sectors. Dr. Ettefagh is a member of the executive committee and the board of directors of The Development Foundation, an advisor to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and an advisor to a number of European companies. Dr. Ettefagh speaks Persian (Farsi), English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Turkish.

Waterboarding Real Peace

The Bush administration may wish to "waterboard" a Mideast peace process that excludes Hamas, but the result won't be a stable and lasting peace.

Ali Ettefagh Tehran, Iran | 69 COMMENTS
Apr 4, 2008 at 10:12 AM
Saul Singer is Editorial Page Editor and author of the weekly column “Interesting Times” for the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. Before moving to Israel from the Washington area in 1994, Mr. Singer served for ten years as an advisor on the personal and committee staffs of the United States Congress, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Connie Mack.

Nothing to Talk About With Hamas

Saul Singer Jerusalem, Israel | 9 COMMENTS
Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.

Give Politics a Chance to Counter Violence

Rami G. Khouri Beirut, Lebanon | 5 COMMENTS
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com

Engage Islamists

Daoud Kuttab Princeton, NJ | 1 COMMENTS
Michael Young   |  Sami Moubayed   |  Anwer Sher
ALL PANELIST RESPONSES

READER RESPONSE

» Anju Chandel, New Delhi, India | Hatred breeds hatred. And so does mistrust. Let us give peace a chance. Let us invite Hamas to the table and talk, talk, talk, ... Someday, in near...
» starr sanders | You cannot talk to someone or an organization whose only interest is the destruction of another group of people....
» Barryw | Hamas is in the business of fighting Israel. So long as they fight, they collect international funding. The Hamas leadership survives and prospers by ...
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