Photo Credit: Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy (AGDA).
With the announcement of the Abraham Accords in August 2020, the program for regional cooperation was established at the Dayan center to promote normalization through the corridors of Academia. The program aims to create academic collaborations between Israel and the GCC and to foster academic relations between relevant institutions through joint conferences, shared publications and exchange of academic content. The program also strives to facilitate research collaboration between scholars to create and share solutions to regional development challenges.
The Program for Regional Cooperation hosts the Tel Aviv University Workshop on Israel and the Middle East (TAU Workshop), which is an intensive 12-day academic workshop and travel program focusing on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and on contemporary issues related to Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the broader Middle East. Each July, a select group of Middle East Studies faculty members from universities around the world are invited to join. The Workshop is designed for faculty who teach courses on the history, religion, politics, and other dimensions of the Modern Middle East and who have not yet had the opportunity to spend much time in Israel. More information about this program and application can be found here.
Although it focuses primarily on academic collaboration, the Program for Regional Cooperation seeks to encourage a more open dialogue within the Middle East and with its partners. For that purpose, we established Hiwar as a platform for open discussion and exchange of ideas. Hiwar is a virtual forum that brings together MDC researchers and members of civil society, academia, and government from the region to discuss important contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural issues using a historical perspective. The purpose of these discussions is to build interpersonal relationships and to strengthen knowledge on a given issue by introducing a diversity of perspectives that challenge assumptions. More information about Hiwar can be found here.
The Program for Regional Cooperation also takes an active part in the Gulf-Israel Policy Forum which was established as a joint venture with the UAE-Israel Business Council. The Policy Forum serves as a central hub for networking, consultation, and collaboration between leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from Israel and the Gulf, and includes members of leading think tanks and universities from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The forum is also well connected to a leading media outlet in Israel and the Arab Gulf and it serves as a resource for knowledge about the Gulf countries in Israel and knowledge about Israel in the Gulf countries, both for the policy community and the media. More information about the forum can be found here.
Our newest program is the Morocco-Israel Forum, which serves as a platform for networking and research collaboration between leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from Morocco and Israel. The main goal of this forum is to explore possible avenues for future cooperation between Israel and Morocco on regional issues such as environment, agriculture, food security, and contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural issues. More information about the forum can be found here.
Program Team:
Prof. Uzi Rabi - Director, Program for Regional Cooperation
Joelle Rosenthal - Operations Manager, Program for Regional Cooperation
Louis Tuchman - Coordinator, Gulf-Israel Policy Forum
Dr. Jonathan Ghariani - Coordinator, Morocco-Israel Forum