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Is peace in the Middle East an oxymoron or a real possibility? That was one of questions local residents were given the opportunity to explore Monday evening during the first of a two-day Middle East forum hosted by the Juneau World Affairs Council.

The council assembled various Middle East experts to provide lectures Monday evening that targeted some of the region's key issues and how to achieve peace there.

Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho, also the president of the council, opened the forum by telling the 100-plus people attending that the goal of the council has been to "bring the world to Juneau" to help local citizens understand the world issues.

Forum moderator Michael Thomas, a former Juneau attorney who also holds a doctorate in international relations, said the Middle East has some of the most problematic issues facing the world today.

"There are many interrelated moving parts and matters can develop or they can spin out of control very quickly, so we in Juneau are very lucky," he said. "We are fortunate to have eight experts available to us here, each with a different set of experiences, knowledge sets, convictions to bring to bear and analyze where we are and where we could be or we should be going."

One of the main issues needed to be resolved in order to establish peace in the Middle East is to resolve the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, Thomas said.

"Both Israelis and Palestinians tell pollsters that they favor a two-state position, and they do that repeatedly and by a margin of two to one," he said. "Both also tell pollsters that they don't believe that the other side is being sincere when they say they want a two-state solution."

The problems are myriad, but Israeli settlements on Palestinian land are particularly controversial, numerous speakers said.

Yousef Munayyer, the executive director for the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit that operates the Palestine Center, said Israel has continued to expand its settlements on Palestinian land for decades. The settlers don't want to leave the occupied land and have made that clear through the increased political power in Israel's Likud Party and its pro-settlement stance, he said.

Munayyer told a story of two Palestinians he met who were recently evicted from their home in Arab East Jerusalem by the Israeli government. Within 20 minutes of their eviction, Israeli settlers moved into the home. The woman told Munayyer she is holding on to her house key.

"The reason that that is so symbolic is that for 60 years, Palestinian refugees have been holding on to the keys of their house," he said, adding that the keys are usually of an old, large and clunky style that symbolizes how long the refugee problem has persisted. "But (her) key looks like any key that anyone has here because it just happened. But it's the continuation of the same story."

Akiva Tor, the consul general of Israel for the Pacific Northwest Region of the U.S., said there has only been one new settlement in the past 10 years that he is aware of. Israel is in favor of resuming peace talks about the creation of a Palestinian state as long as there are no preconditions to the talk, he said.

"Our relations of the two states should be two nations of mutual respect, perhaps also healthy and mutual suspicions, but ones that are as good neighborly as possible," Tor said.

One of the preconditions the Palestinian Authority has been pushing for is that Israel cease expansion of its settlements. Tor said Israel feels that is not feasible for the security of its nation.

Of even greater concern to Israel is Iran's push for nuclear technology, which could further disrupt regional security and lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, Tor said.

There are a lot of issues to resolve in the region, he said.

"We should not expect that even after we have peace with an Arab state for several decades that it will necessarily mean blooming economic relations between us," he said. "There was a time when Israelis thought that we would make peace with the entire Arab world and we would be completely integrated in the region. I think we are less naïve about it (now)."

Retired Ambassador Philip Wilcox, current president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said the United States must play a pivotal role in the peace process in the conflict, in which two people are fighting for a piece of land that each has deep historical claims to. Neither side will leave, he said.

"They are going to stay there forever, yet they have failed miserably to figure out how to coexist in this land and we have failed as a nation, which I think more than any other nation has the influence and the means to help these parties out of this tragic conflict," Wilcox said.

Both the Israelis and Palestinians have broken political systems that will not achieve peace without American and international leadership, he said. There is also vast power disparity between the two parties, he added.

"You're not going to have an equitable result that reflects the basic interests of both sides unless there is a more or less level playing field," Wilcox said.

The two sides need each other in order to flourish side by side as recognized nations, Wilcox said.

"They will swim together or they will sink together, and today they are sinking," he said.

The U.S. must not take sides if the peace process is going to succeed, Wilcox said.

"Let's take sides with the proponents of peace in Israel and in Palestine, and they are the majority in both of those societies," he said. "Unfortunately, too often their governments don't reflect that peace-minded majority."

The forum continues today at the University of Alaska Southeast's Egan Library and will feature four panels discussing issues dealing with United States foreign policies in the Middle East.

• Contact reporter Eric Morrison at 523-2269 or eric.morrison@juneauempire.com.