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Top Middle East Experts to Discuss Israeli-Palestinian Security in Post-Disengagement Period

Yossi Alpher & Ahmad Samih Khalidi to Make Presentations on Capitol Hill September 14, Noon-1:00 p.m.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 8, 2005
CONTACT: Lewis Roth - (202) 728-1893

Yossi Alpher & Ahmad Samih Khalidi to Make Presentations

Washington, D.C.: Americans for Peace Now (APN) will host a Capitol Hill discussion between leading Middle East experts regarding Israeli-Palestinian security issues in the post-disengagement period. Israeli security expert Yossi Alpher and Palestinian security expert Ahmad Samih Khalidi will present their views during a public forum from Noon-1:00 p.m. on September 14, 2005, in Room 2203 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Reporters are invited to attend. For more information, please contact Lewis Roth at (202) 728-1893.

About Yossi Alpher:
Yossi Alpher is a former senior official in the Israeli Mossad (Israel's equivalent of the CIA) and the former Director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. In July 2000, he served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, working on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Currently, Mr. Alpher is the co-editor and co-creator of bitterlemons.org and bitterlemons-international.org-internet forums for elite Israeli, Palestinian, and global perspectives-which he launched in collaboration with Ghassan Khatib, now the Minister of Planning in the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Alpher is also an active member of Israel's prestigious Council for Peace and Security, an organization of retired senior officials from the Israeli military and their counterparts in the Israeli intelligence community. Mr. Alpher lectures and writes extensively on Israeli-Palestinian efforts to achieve peace, as well as on security issues, and is widely considered one of Israel's foremost authorities on these subjects.

About Ahmad Samih Khalidi:
Ahmad Samih Khalidi is a Palestinian from an old Jerusalemite family who edits a specialized Arabic quarterly and is currently a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony's College at the University of Oxford. He served as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid-Washington peace talks in 1991-1993 and as senior advisor on security affairs to the Cairo-Taba PLO-Israel peace talks in 1993. In 1992-1995, he was the co-chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Science project on Israeli-Palestinian security and was Associate Fellow of the Middle East program at the Royal Institute for International Affairs (London). He has written widely on Middle Eastern political and security affairs in English and Arabic, and has been active in Middle East peace making and Track-2 efforts for over two decades. He is co-author of Syria and Iran: Rivalry and Cooperation and of Track-2 Diplomacy: The Middle East and Beyond.