Jerome Segal
Jerome Segal has been a leader of the American Jewish peace movement, starting in 1982 with Washington Area Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (WAJIPP), a group that opposed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In 1987, he traveled to Tunis to meet Yasser Arafat and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization. No American Jewish delegation had ever met with the PLO, which the U.S. government officially considered a terrorist organization at the time.
In August 1988, Israel raided the offices of Faisal al-Husseini, a Palestinian militant, and discovered a plan, based in part on earlier writings by Segal, for a ''declaration of Palestinian independence." That plan, along with other writings by Segal in Palestinian papers such as Al-Quds, were a catalyst for the Palestinian Declaration of Independence later that year and the Palestinian peace initiative in which Israel's right to exist was recognized. In May 1989, Segal founded the Jewish Peace Lobby, which he envisioned as acting as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
THE OLIVE BRANCH FROM PALESTINE provides a new narrative of the Palestinian effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offers a bold plan for ending this conflict today. It focuses on Palestinian agency and the power of the Palestinians to bring about the two-state solution, even in the absence of a fully committed Israeli partner. It is a must-read for all who are interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and in geopolitical Issues.