Middle Eastern expert and think-tank analyst Jonathan Spyer spoke about what the future holds for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict Wednesday night in the Walsh Building.

Spyer, a research fellow at the Center for Global Research and International Affairs, outlined the history of the peace talks between Israel and Palestine throughout the 1990s, emphasizing the misunderstandings that resulted from these talks.

“Unfortunately, there is a long period of conflict to come, as we are in the midst of misunderstanding and misconceptions between the two sides,” Spyer said. “The Palestinians have returned from a national commitment from a two-state system to a one-state system, believing that the destruction of the Jewish state will bring an end to religious and ethnic dispute.”

Spyer offered possible measures that he said the Israelis need to enact to solve the enduring problems that continue to provoke tensions between the two states.

“We need a process of autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza. There are all sorts of ideas swimming around, but it’s hard for people to imagine that such ideas will work,” he said.

Tracing the problems back to the beginnings of peace talks in 1994, Spyer blamed the failure of the talks on early disillusionment with the negotiations process.

“The Palestinians entered the process on a different basis with a different thinking. Had we paid attention to what society was saying, we would have been better off,” Spyer said.

He traced the development of peace talks back to the early 1990s, when the end of the Cold War brought about the possibility of liberal capitalist relationships between Israeli and Arab nations.

“The Cold War served as the oxygen for certain issues and conflicts between these groups, but the frustration of the ambition of Saddam Hussein’s attempt at a balance of power brought on the possibility of a peace process,” Spyer said.

Touching on the revolutionary peace talks that soon occurred between Israelis and Palestinians, Spyer alluded to a “lock-and-key process” that was essential to opening the door to peace talks.

“The lock is provided by objective historical conditions, while the key is the subjective desire of individuals to make something happen,” he said. “Both are needed to open the door.”

Spyer cited conflicts such as the Gulf War as an important motivator behind Palestine’s desire to open peace talks, especially when the Palestine Liberation Organization reached its low point in the early 1990s and could no longer allocate money to help fund Hussein.

“At that point in 1991, the PLO was facing strategic and historical defeat, and would clutch at any straw to keep itself afloat,” Spyer said.

Meanwhile, Spyer described Israel as a nation developing a growing and internationally based economy with many opportunities for its citizens.

With Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promising to bring about a peace deal for the Israeli people, both nations signed the Oslo Agreement in 1994, whose nature would become the seeds of its eventual failure and collapse, according to Spyer.

“The Oslo Agreement was not an agreement at all,” Spyer said. “Instead, it was an agreement to enter the process of making an agreement” in which after five years of talks and negotiations, both groups would sit down and discuss the matters of the Jewish and Palestinian state.

According to Spyer, the agreement brought on a rapid failure to meet timetables and a lack of cooperation between the two states. He said the U.S. government attempted to settle the dispute at Camp David in 2000 with a proposal that included offering a portion of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians.

“The proposal was rapidly rejected by the Palestinians, who had no counter-offer in mind,” Spyer said. “The peace process came to an end, as the PLO planned for launching a campaign of violence, forcing the Israelis to make concessions.”

Spyer summed up what he called an unfortunate end for Israel and Palestine, saying that great illusions occurred and concessions were made to enemies thinking along quite different lines.

“The emotional, logical and historical acceptance is still not quite there,” he said.

Spyer delivered his speech as part of a three-week college campus tour sponsored by Caravan for Democracy, an organization that brings Israeli speakers to college campuses to discuss the challenges it says Israel faces as the only democracy in the Middle East.

Georgetown Israeli Alliance, a pro-Israel advocacy group, co-sponsored the event.