During the past year I have been involved in a very interesting and innovative initiative, the CSCME (Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East)civil society initiative, together with my colleague, Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ) co-editor Ziad AbuZayyad.
Originally conceived by Prof. Mohssen Massarrat, a professor in Germany who was born in Iran, and has spent his adult years in Europe. Modeled on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which contributed to the end of the Cold War, we had a preliminary two-day workshop on the initiative with people from the region in Germany in January, 2011.
Two weeks ago the CSCME initiative held a two day workshop in London, in conjunction with the 6th annual London Conference on Middle East Security and a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone co-organized by the SOAS Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy and the British Pugwash Group. I used the public conference to speak primarily about the implications of the Israeli social protest movement, but the workshop was aptly titled Towards the 2012 Conference on a Nuclear and WMD Free Zone in the Middle East.
I wrote the following article based upon the spirit and the content of the discussions that we had at the workshop, and it was published in the weekend edition of Haaretz.
Here’s the link to the article:
The print edition contains the title listed on the link, “The Other Iranian Option”, a title I prefer to the one that appears when you open the article, “Israel’s nuclear ambiguity may be nearing an end”, which does not reflect my views. Editors tend to use different titles for the same article in the print and electronic editions of a paper.
I welcome any feedback you may have about the article.
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