Pundak, Ron (1955–)

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PUNDAK, RON (1955–)

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1955, Ron Pundak holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern political history from the University of London. Dr. Pundak played a major role in creating the secret track of unofficial Israeli-Arab negotiations in Oslo in 1993, alongside Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and their Palestinian counterparts. He served as a member of the official Israeli negotiating team—guided by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, and later by Yitzhak Rabin-until the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. From 1995 to 2001 he served as executive director of the Economic Cooperation Foundation, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization in Tel Aviv dedicated to building, maintaining, and supporting Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab cooperation in the political, economic, and civil-society arenas. Since July 2001 he has served as the director general of the Peres Center for Peace.