CMI’s Head of Middle East speaks at Harvard Kennedy School

Mouin Rabbani, Head of CMI’s Middle East programme, visited the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard on 3 March to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations being promoted by the United States Secretary of State John Kerry. Specifically, he addressed the question of whether the Kerry Plan is “déjà vu or something new”.

At the event, co-sponsored by the Middle East Forum, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Mouin analysed the current negotiations and suggested Kerry is making a genuine push for a comprehensive agreement rather than mediating talks to prevent a political vacuum in the Middle East. At the same time, he indicated that since these talks are taking place within the framework of the Oslo agreements, they can be expected to reproduce and even deepen the fundamental problems that have plagued this process since the early 1990s.

As a specialist on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mouin has also previously been invited to speak at Harvard events, among others on the topic of “Palestine after the UN: What Next.”