American Task Force On Palestine - Staff

Staff

Ziad Asali, M.D., President—Asali is a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC’s President from 2001 to 2003. He served as the President of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993 to 1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995 to 2003. He was born in Jerusalem, where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He received an M.D. from the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School in 1967. He completed his residency in Salt Lake City, Utah, and then practiced medicine in Jerusalem before returning to the US in 1973. Asali was the Medical Director and Chairman of the Board at the Christian County Medical Clinic in Taylorville, Illinois and he served as Chairman of the Board of Physicians Health Association of Illinois before he retired in 2000. He is a Diplomat of the Board of Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Hussein Ibish, Senior Fellow—Ibish also currently serves as Executive Director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership. He has made thousands of radio and television appearances and has written for many newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, and was Washington Correspondent for the Daily Star (Beirut). He is editor and principal author of 3 major studies of Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans 1998-2000 (ADC, 2001), Sept. 11, 2001-Oct. 11, 2002 (ADC, 2003), and numerous other book chapters and essays. His latest book is What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda: Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal (ATFP, 2009). He also maintains an independent blog, the Ibishblog. From 1998 to 2004, Ibish served as Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest Arab-American membership organization in the United States. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Ghaith Al-Omari, Advocacy Director—Al-Omari served in various positions within the Palestinian Authority, including Director of the International Relations Department in the Office of the Palestinian President, and advisor to former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. In these capacities, he provided advice on foreign policy—especially vis-à-vis the United States and Israel—and security. He has extensive experience in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, having been an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team throughout the permanent status negotiations (1999–2001). In that capacity, he participated in various negotiating rounds, most notably the Camp David summit and the Taba talks. After the breakdown of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, he was the lead Palestinian drafter of the Geneva Initiative, an unofficial model peace agreement negotiated between leading Palestinian and Israeli public figures. Mr. al-Omari is a lawyer by training and a graduate of Georgetown and Oxford universities. Prior to his involvement in the Middle East peace process, he taught international law in Jordan and was active in human rights advocacy.

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