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ECF is an Israeli Policy Think-Tank - Working Towards Peace, Security and Prosperity

Yair Hirschfeld

Dr. Yair Hirschfeld

Co-Founder

yair_hirschfeld@yahoo.com


Yair Hirschfeld is a co-Founder of ECF and former Director General of the organization.

He was ECF's Director General since its founding and until September 2019. His activities on various peace fronts preceded his role in ECF. He was among the pioneers who facilitated intimate dialogue with senior Palestinians when this was hardly the norm. At ECF, he has shaped both the organization’s vision and execution of its vision. He is the author of many ECF studies and policy recommendations, specializing primarily in medium-to-longer term planning. He has gained vast experience and developed an array of techniques for Track-II Diplomacy. 

Among his many accomplishments is his role as a key architect of the Oslo process that led to the historic September 1993 ceremony at the White House hosted by then US President Bill Clinton, where the Rabin-Arafat signature of the Declaration of Principles took place. He was also a member of the Israeli team that prepared and negotiated with Palestinian counterparts the first Israeli-Palestinian blueprint for a Permanent Status Agreement known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen Understanding (1995).

In addition to his work at ECF, he is the Academic Director of the Daniel S. Abraham Strategic Dialogue center at the Netanya Academic College and a Brochstein Fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University (BIPP), Houston, Texas.
 

He has published several books, monographs and papers, including:
·      Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978–2014 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
·      When You Have Not Decided Where to Go, No Wind Can Take You There: A Strategy to Achieve a Comprehensive Israeli-Arab Peace, January 2007.
·      A Bridge of Paper: Right and Left and In Between - Dialogues (Hebrew, co-written with former MK Otniel Schneller), Sifriyat Maariv, 2005.