Benjamin Netanyahu (prime minister of Israel)—“I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.”
Born in Tel-Aviv on October 21, 1949, Benjamin Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem. He spent his high school years in the United States, where his father, Professor Benzion Netanyahu, taught history. Returning to Israel in 1967, Mr. Netanyahu enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces. After he was discharged in 1972, he received a B.S. in Architecture and an M.S. in Management Studies from M.I.T. He also studied political science at M.I.T. and Harvard University. In 1979 he initiated and organized an international conference against terrorism. World leaders, including former U.S. President George Bush and former Secretary of State George Shultz, participated in this conference and another one in 1984. Netanyahu has been credited by Shultz for his central role in effecting a change in American policies on international terrorism. In October 1991, he was a senior member of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference, which initiated the first direct negotiations between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. On March 25, 1993, he was elected Likud Party Chairman and the party's candidate for Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, he concluded the Hebron agreement and the Wye River plantation accords with the Palestinians. However, the opposing party defeated him in 1999. It was not until February of 2009 that he won another election as part of the right-wing party.
We chose Benjamin Netanyahu as an expert we would like to interview because as the prime minister of Israel and well-educated man he could give us unique insight on our topic. He has been the leader of Israel in two different time periods and has participated in Israeli politics for many years. Netanyahu is also Jewish, so he could explain how religion creates conflicts in his personal life in Israel and also for the people in his state.
Mahmoud Abbas was born in 1935 in Safad, Palestine (now Israel). He succeeded Yasser Arafat as the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and in 2005 was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority. Abbas was a former prime minister and the interior minister from April to September of 2003 for the Palestinian National Authority, the temporary government whose goal is the creation of a permanent Palestinian state. He was a founding member of Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). He became known as the fundraiser and scholar because he has a PhD in history from the Oriental College in Moscow. Abbas led the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department and served as the secretary general of the party. He is said to have been instrumental in the negotiations that led to the Oslo Peace Accords in the 1990s, and many hoped his role as prime minister could bring a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Increased violence in the area and a power struggle with Arafat forced Abbas to resign a mere five months after being named prime minister. However, after Arafat's death, Abbas won the presidency of the Palestinan Authority in elections held on January 10th, 2005. Fatah's rival political group, Hamas, gained ground under Abbas's presidency and in 2007 a Hamas-Fatah coalition government was formed. Violence in Hamas-controlled Gaza in June of 2007 led Abbas to split with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and declare a state of emergency. Abbas dissolved the government and named Salam Fayyad as the new prime minister, but Haniya vowed to carry on, setting the stage for two Palestinian governments.
We chose Mahmoud Abbas (even though he isn’t the current prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority) because he has had a significant influence on Palestinians in his political history. We would want to interview a political leader from both Israel and Palestine in order to gain an understanding of the differing political perspectives on the topic of religious sites in Jerusalem. We think Abbas would contribute a lot to our knowledge of the history of the struggle of ownership of religious land in Jerusalem.
The Nusseibeh family is the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem. They hold the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Sari Nusseibeh is the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs for the Palestinian Authority. He was born in 1949 in Jerusalem. His father, Anwar, was a senior officer in the Jordan army who eventually became the Minister of Defense in the Jordanian Cabinet. In 1978, Nusseibeh received a doctorate in Islamic philosophy from and then became a professor of philosophy at Bir Zeit University on the West Bank. He is the founder and head of the Palestinian Consultancy Group which undertakes research projects on the management of the Palestinian infrastructure. He was the first prominent Palestinian to hold talks with a senior Likud politician, Moshe Amirav. He was criticized by Palestinian activists for these talks. He has written dozens of articles on Jerusalem and the prospects for agreement with Israel. Nusseibeh became a member of the Palestinian committee in the Madrid talks of 1991. Nusseibeh has served as president of Al-Quds University since 1995 in East Jerusalem. Nusseibeh is a leading voice of Palestinian moderation who actively participates in countless with Israeli peace activists. He has called for an end to the attacks on Israeli civilians and for the renouncement of the Palestinian “right of return” in order to achieve a peace deal with Israel. We chose Sari Nusseibeh because he and his family are very prominent in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Not only is the family deeply rooted into the history of the land, Sari holds a very influential place in the government. We would like to interview his further about his plans for making a peace agreement with Israel and his role in the Palestinian moderation movement. Sari Nusseibeh would be an important and enlightening person to interview on our subject of religious sites and sacred places.
Shlomo Goren (1917-1994) was the first chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later became the third chief rabbi of the state of Israel. Goren composed the first code of Jewish military law since Maimonides by issuing several innovative halakhic rulings that dealt with military life. He is responsible for bringing the Jewish conception of war into the modern era. To compose his code of Jewish military law, Goren utilized ancient historical and apocryphal sources like the works of Josephus Flavius and the Book of Maccabees and thus surmounted the difficulty of the lack of rabbinic legal material. A new religious-national template for an era had emerged in which political sovereignty and a vision of the ideal Jew as spirited and spiritual were regained. He hoped to use these insights influence the national consensus of the Jewish state after becoming Israel's chief rabbi in 1973. In the field of talmudic scholarship, he made use of the historically neglected Jerusalem Talmud as an important primary source. For these efforts he was awarded the Israel Prize, the highest honor of the state. Goren's devotion to Torah and intense piety contributed to his ultimate marginalization. After the Six-Day war in 1967, he climbed Mount Sinai and re-enacted the giving of the Torah. This was a foolish act that is his own mind, may have represented the divine power involved in Israel’s victory. At the same time, trustworthy sources charged that, following Israel's conquest of the Temple Mount, Goren had wanted the Mosque of Omar blown up. He denied the claim the allegation ultimately created the image of him as a messianic zealot. While he is still respected in religious-Zionist circles, today, very few would engage with his writings and teachings. We chose to interview Shlomo Goren because of his controversial position concerning the Temple Mount and Jewish sovereignty. We would have liked to engage him further on his political and spiritual views regarding the conflict as it is today, 15 years after his death.
Shimon Peres was born in Poland, in 1923, and moved to Palestine as a child where he lived on a kibbutz. At the age of 24, he was responsible for arms purchases and recruitment during Israel’s War of Independence. In 1948, he became the head of the naval services. From 1953 – 1959, he served as Director General for the Ministry of Defense. Shimon Peres has been a member of Knesset, the Israeli legislative branch, since 1959, and in doing so he has had extensive duties within the Israeli government. Peres and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were members of the Mapai Labour Party, but left to become Secretary-General of Rafi. He was dedicated to bring Rafi back to Mapai to form the Israel Labour Party in the 1960s. Shimon Peres later became the Minister of Immigrant Absorption in 1969, and the Minister of Transport of Communications from 1970-1974. Among his many credentials, he was elected as the chairman of the Labour Alignment (1977), served as the first Prime Minister of the National Unity Government (1984-1986), and soon after was the Minister of Finance (1988-1990). Shimon Peres has had the opportunity to serve as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which he participated in negotiations with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat. In 1994, Rabin, Arafat, and Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their talks about a peace accord. Our group chose Shimon Peres due to his involvement with the Israeli government and the movement for peace in Israel. We believe he would provide insight of the conflict and how to achieve peace between the groups.
Edward Said--“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all the other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.”
Edward Said was a well-renowned Palestinian-American scholar, who was a professor at Columbia University. He is known to be an Arab activist for the fight to reclaim Palestine. Said was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1935. He was relocated to Cairo, Egypt, during the take-over of Palestine by the Israelis. He was a raised a Protestant, and influenced by the Muslim culture. He attended Princeton University in 1957 and later studied at Harvard University for graduate school where he earned a M.A. degree in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1964. Said then became a professor at Columbia University in New York, where he taught comparative literature. Said has written multiple influential books about “Orientalism” and the Western ideas. Some of Said’s books include: Orientalism; The Question of Palestine; Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World; and, Culture and Resistance. Said provides a history of Palestinian support, in which he was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization through the 1970s and 1980s. He had made clear that he did not support an Israeli state and opposed all attempts the U.S. made with Palestinians. Edward Said was a member of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. He was a friend of Barack Obama, in which Obama attended one of his speeches in 1998 that called for the non-violent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.” Edward Said passed away of leukemia on September 25, 2003.
Pope Benedict XVI--“Like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to believers and non-believers alike.”
Pope Benedict XVI is a symbol of the Catholic Church worldwide. Born in Germany in 1927, he aspired to be a cardinal since age 5. He worked as a university theologian across Germany after attending college. He was elected to the papacy in 2005 as a successor to Pope John Paul II. In his teachings, he emphasizes “Friendship with Christ”, saying that everything relies on that relationship. He is fluent in German, Italian and English. Pope Benedict XVI seemed like a good person to interview on this issue because he is widely well respected and knowledgeable on many religions. He also holds one of the most prestigious religious positions in the world. While he has the greatest influence on Italy and Roman Catholics, his teachings echo throughout churches worldwide. Pope Benedict XVI also spent time as a professor, sharing knowledge on religion to his students, much as he would on us if we were able to interview him. “Like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to believers and non-believers alike.” This quote is perfect in correlation to the message the Pope might send if asked to address the world regarding the violence that has erupted throughout the world, much of it over religious conflict. Pope Benedict XVI also preaches peace, and his encouragement of ending conflict over religion would be respected and honored. 
The 14th Dalai Lama-- “Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion."
The Dalai Lama is the highest position of authority in the Buddhist tradition. At the age of two, in his small rural farming village in Northern Tibet, he was recognized as the re-incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. He is the spiritual leader and Head of State of Tibet. He generally preaches a non-traditional Buddhist perspective. He was called on to take full political power of Tibet after China’s invasion in 1949. The Dalai Lama is known for encouraging peace and non-violent non-cooperation. He engaged in peace talks with Mao Zedong in China during the 1950’s working towards a peaceful solution with China. Since then, however, he has been forced to live in exile in Northern India. He has proposed many peace initiatives on behalf of Tibet and appealed to the United Nations. He would be a good person to interview because he has lived a life of religious and political hostility. He would be interesting to ask about the religious sites in Jerusalem because they are places of both spirituality and conflict.
