Gershon Baskin

Gershon Baskin (Hebrew: גרשון בסקין‎‎, born in New York City in 1956) is the founder and co-chairman of IPCRI - Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (later renamed Israel Palestine Creative Regional Initiatives), dedicated to the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on the basis of a "two-states for two peoples" solution. He is a social and political activist and a researcher of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and peace process. Baskin is a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. He describes himself as a "left-wing Zionist."

In his youth, Baskin became involved in the civil rights movement and the anti–Vietnam War movement. In 1978, Baskin received his BA from New York University in the politics and history of the Middle East. In September 1978, he made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) under the auspices of the Interns for Peace program. From 1979 to 1981 he was a community worker in Kafr Qara, a Palestinian Arab village in Israel. In 1982, Baskin served in the Israeli Ministry of Education as coordinator of education for co-existence between the Jewish and Arab school systems. In 1983, under the auspices of the Prime Minister's office and the Ministry of Education, Baskin founded and directed the Institute for Education for Jewish Arab Coexistence, which was funded by the Hanns Seidel Foundation. In March 1988, Baskin founded IPCRI - Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information and served as its co-director until January 2012. In mid-1989, Baskin launched three Israeli-Palestinian working groups: Economics and Business, the Future of Jerusalem, and the water experts working group. In October 1992, Baskin initiated a series of secret meetings in London with former Israeli security officers and Palestinian officials from the PLO. These talks laid down the framework for subsequent security undertaking in the Oslo Accords of September 1993. In 1994, Baskin became an outside adviser on the peace process to a secret team of intelligence officers established by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Baskin, together with other Israelis and Arabs, had worked for years to secure peace between Israelis and Arabs and had many Arab contacts.

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