Harry & Blanche Posen Memorial Lecture: War Termination in the Middle East
Tuesday, October 21, 1:00 pm
This lecture will present a comparative study of the major military confrontations between Israel and its various enemies in the region, including Arab states such as Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, non-Arab states such as Iran, and non-state actors such as HIZBALLAH AND HAMAS. The study will focus on the ways and means of ending these military confrontations.
The relevant concepts to be examined will include:
- truce
- cease-fire
- armistice
- disengagement
- interim agreements
- peace treaties
- Security Council resolutions
- accords
- normalization
Particular attention will be paid to the role of the different types of mediation employed in the various stages of war termination.
A distinction will be made between the different concepts and models of peace agreements.
The lessons of the comparative analysis will be applied to the present efforts to terminate the war in Gaza and to expand and stabilize post-war political and security arrangements in other parts of the Middle East.
Special thanks to the Posen, Spiegel and Cohen families for making this annual event possible.
Biography of Gabriel Ben Dor
Gabriel Ben-Dor is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, and the founding Director of the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa in Israel. He served in the past as the Rector of the University, and also held the posts of Chairman of the Department of Political Science, Director of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies and Dean of Research. He is also a past President of the Israel Political Science Association. He is a member of a number of high-level public commissions and forums dealing with academic development and policy in Israel and abroad. In the past, he served as senior adviser on strategic affairs to the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
Professor Ben-Dor was until recently the director of the graduate study program at the National Defence College, the highest course of the studies in the Israeli Defence Forces. He is also the founder and director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, which is one of the leading research institutes on matters related to defence, security and strategy in Israel. He has recently completed a six year term as a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies—one of the most prestigious publications in the field.
Gabriel Ben-Dor has published seven books and over one hundred and twenty articles in scholarly journals on Middle East politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, national security affairs, strategic studies, ethnic problems and political theory. His recent publications include books on Transition in Israel, Confidence Building in the Middle East, and Minorities in the Arab World. Hs recent articles deal also with the concept of strategic culture, that concept in action in the Middle East, the civil-military relations in Israel, the evolution of national security doctrines in Israel, the political sociology of national security in Israel, national resilience of democracies facing terrorism, and the tension between democratic values on the one hand, and challenges of national security on the other. At present, he is at work on a major book dealing with the problems of countering terrorism in democratic societies.
Professor Ben-Dor has been a frequent visiting lecturer at a number of universities in Western Europe, Singapore, South Africa, Canada and the United States. He holds a doctorate in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from Princeton University in the United States. In recent years, he has been a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Defense Studies in London, England, one of the leading institutions of national security studies in the world.
