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King Hussein of Jordan and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, 1994

In October 1994, brave visionaries from Jordan and Israel signed a historic peace treaty which put a legal end to decades of enmity and mistrust between our nations. At the present time, both Jordan and Israel face challenges on a scale that no one could have predicted a generation ago. It is our belief that now is the time to build a collaborative framework which will advance the cause of peace and of understanding on both a formal and informal basis, and which will plant the seeds for further cooperation, partnership, and friendship in the years and decades to come.

For that reason, this program of cooperation between the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies (MDC) and the Center for Israel Studies in Amman (CIS) is the perfect venue for such cooperation.  Both Centers share the mission of informing civil society and policymakers in their respective countries and internationally, and both are uniquely qualified to serve as cultural and scholarly ambassadors. By working together, they can put into practice the hopes and aspirations put onto paper twenty one years ago. The MDC has served since 1965 as a valuable knowledge hub in Israel for all those who wish to understand the wider region, while the CIS is unique in the Arab world for its desire to study Israel objectively, and to spurn harmful tropes which only serve to advance Israel’s demonization. This program takes a multidisciplinary and multi-faceted approach which will enable students and faculty affiliated with both institutions to exchange information and ideas, to develop language skills which will serve as a cultural bridge, and to gain practical, ‘on-the-ground’ experience in the milieu of the “other.”

Overall responsibility for the planning and execution of the joint project is shared by the Directors of the Moshe Dayan Center (Tel Aviv) and the Center for Israel Studies (Amman).

Prof. Uzi Rabi(MDC Component Head)

Professor Uzi Rabi is the Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, and a senior researcher at the Center for Iranian Studies, both at Tel Aviv University. Formerly, he was the Head of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, and a visiting professor at the University of San Diego over the academic year 2004-2005. He frequently provides expert commentary and analysis on a number of international and Israeli news outlets, including Arabic language television channels. Rabi has edited a number of volumes, including Iran’s Time (2008), and International Intervention in Local Conflicts: Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution Since the Cold War (2010). Additionally, he has written a number of books in both English and Hebrew. In 2015, he published “Yemen: Revolution, Civil War, and Unification” (I.B Taurus), which covers the modern history of Yemen. He published a related book in Hebrew, Yemen: the Anatomy of a Failed State (Kibbutz HaMeuchad) in 2014. In 2007, Prof. Rabi published Saudi Arabia: An Oil Kingdom in the Labyrinth of Religion and Politics (The Open University, in Hebrew).  He has a forthcoming work that aims to provide an ‘alternative map’ of the Middle East in the post-‘Arab Spring’ era.

Dr.Abdullah Sawalha (CIS Component Head)

Dr. Sawalha is the founding director of the Center for Israel Studies in Amman, Jordan. He received his Ph.D in Comparative Politics from Cairo University in 2014. Prior to his founding of the CIS, Dr. Sawalha worked in a number of roles, to include the Greater Amman Municipality, the Government Spokesperson Office of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Nations Joint Logistic Center for the World Food Program. He is a member of the Jordanian Political Science Association (JPSA) and the Jordan Transparency Center (JTC), and has participated in numerous academic and professional conferences, including the World Economic Forum.

This program has been made possible through the generosity of our sponsors, who include: