Rami G. Khouri at PostGlobal

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

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. Close.

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

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. more »

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Everybody’s Doing It –- Except Israel

The South African invitation to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is a very sensible and positive move, in keeping with the best traditions of peacemaking whereby one must speak with and politically engage all parties to a conflict if one hopes to resolve it peacefully.

The African National Congress eventually spoke to the white minority South African apartheid government and negotiated a sensible transition to democratic majority rule. The South African government today is a powerful global symbol of a legitimate national liberation struggle, and a movement that made the transition to peaceful coexistence in the wake of a politically negotiated settlement of the conflict. We just saw the same thing culminate this week in a new united government of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, after decades of bloodshed.

The same process must be given a chance to play out in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and speaking to Hamas is a crucial step in such a process. It is not realistic to accept that there is one standard of conflict resolution for the whole world and another separate one for Israel alone -- which is the logic of the Israeli boycott of the democratically elected Hamas government as a partner in Palestine. The South African government has acted with courage, realism and appropriate boldness. Hamas, its Palestinian partners, and Israel should reciprocate in the same spirit.

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