Former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer, speaking to students. (Jimmy Hu | Student Life)

Daniel C. Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel, spoke at a conversation titled “The Handshake That Shook the World: A 30 Year Reflection on the Oslo Accords” sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, Sept. 28.

The title references the famous reconciliatory gesture between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat, at the signing ceremony of the Oslo Accords, Sept. 13, 1993. 

The Oslo Accords are a pair of agreements aimed at resolving the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reconciliation was facilitated by President Clinton, under whom Kurtzer served as a diplomat and gained critical understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As guests filled up the venue, they exchanged phrases of good wishes in Arabic such as “peace be upon you” or “grace be to Allah.” The crowd included witnesses of the original signing ceremony, who gave brief testimonies on the signing ceremony.

Professor Barry Rosenberg of Washington University’s Brown School began the conversation by providing an overview of the provisions of the Oslo Accords and pointing out the underlying problems in the agreements. 

Rosenberg said the Accords created a national authority for limited Palestinian self-governance, which allowed Palestinians to hold elections and see the PLO as a partner with a permanent status in negotiations.

However, Rosenberg said that the Accords did not firmly establish the ideas of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem’s borders, settlements, or refugees.

Kurtzer said the prolonged process to bring Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the table was marked by a lack of engagement from the U.S. as an intermediary; he believes that the United States should have intervened more forcefully as an intermediate state following the signing ceremony.

“So many of the problematic issues that were to follow in the years ahead started out on the wrong track without a third-party helpmate, which we should have been during that period,” Kurtzer said.

Kurtzer also discussed the potential for establishing a Palestinian state after the Accords took place and said that he had foreseen difficulties.

“We organized a multinational conference that promised several billion dollars of assistance to the nascent Palestinian authority, on the premise that the Palestinians were going to begin the hard process of self-government,” Kurtzer said. 

According to Kurtzer, Palestinian leader Arafat did not believe in a fully empowered government in a Palestinian state.

He recalled his experience of sitting down with Arafat to discuss the future of Palestine. Kurtzer said he encouraged Arafat to become the “Nelson Mandela” of the Middle East  and set up a democratic state in the Arab world.

Kurtzer added that there existed “intellectual dissonance” between what Palestinians said in conference rooms and the actions they committed at large.

“The signals that [the Palestinians] were sending on the ground were that they’re doing good stuff,” Kurtzer said. “While this is all happening positively in the room, all the signals that the dissident side is sending are terrible. They are setting up checkpoints and roadblocks. [Their] textbooks are inciting people to hate Israel or [engage] in terrorism.”

Kurtzer shared an anecdote on the subject matter involving a young Palestinian woman working on the negotiation.

“[She would] go home at night, and [she] would tell [her] mother that [they] made some progress today, and her mother would pull back the curtains and say, ‘they made progress, too,’ pointing at the settlement buildings and blocks built up by dissidents” Kurtzer said.

“If you want a bottom line for what destroyed this [negotiation] process, it was that actions [speak] much louder than words,” Kurtzer said.

Shifting the discussion to the United States’ involvement in the conflict, Kurtzer believes the U.S. should have acted more forcefully as an intermediate in the negotiations. 

Responding to a question from the audience about the purpose of diplomatic engagement, Kurtzer said he believes in the inherent power of engaging in negotiations, no matter the outcome.

“[Even] if we did not gain anything, we are understanding those positions better and seeing those positions better,” Kurtzer said. “Sitting outside of the room and not talking to somebody, […] you are never going to have the ability to gain your position.”

Mawadda E, a sophomore studying Political Science who was born and grew up in Egypt, said that Kurtzer properly handled the controversial topic without leaning too much into one side of the conflict. E requested to have his last name shortened for safety reasons.

“He was addressing everything factually and was also making sure to include the emotional perspective of both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side,” E said. “We are not used to hearing people talking from a Palestinian perspective, and saying words like ‘apartheid’ — that’s a very strong stance to take.”

Shirine Awad, a sophomore studying International Affairs who has Lebanese-Palestinian heritage, said that she appreciated the University inviting him to speak about his experiences. 

“I feel like being part of the minority, we [were] heard and seen [in this discussion],” Awad said. “[Kurtzer] talked about the Palestinian community and that representation means a lot.”

This article was re-updated on Wednesday at 9:30p.m. to reflect copy and style changes.