Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Its audience is the interested public and policymakers.

Bitterlemons-international.org is edited by Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher. Each week, bitterlemons-international editors decide on a topic and invite four writers or interviewees to discuss that subject on our pages. Bitterlemons-international is committed to presenting a range of views on the Middle East from a breadth of national interests and social concerns. No intelligent and articulate views are considered taboo.

Each weekly edition of bitterlemons-international.org is posted on our website. Readers can obtain a free subscription by entering their email address in the space provided on the homepage or by writing to subscribehtml@bitterlemons-international.org for the formatted version of the weekly publication. Subscribers who have trouble reading HTML documents may subscribe to the plain text version by writing to subscribetext@bitterlemons-international.org

Other questions may be referred to bi@bitterlemons-international.org

Bitterlemons-international.org draws financial support from the European Union and additional philanthropic sources based outside the region. The views expressed in its publications are those of bitterlemons-international.org and can therefore in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Commission or any other source of funding.

Ghassan Khatib
Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former Palestinian Authority minister of planning and labor. He holds a PhD in Middle East politics from the University of Durham. He is also the director of the Jerusalem Media and COmmunications Center, which specializes in research, opinion polling and media affairs, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation for the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference in 1991 and the subsequent bilateral negotiations in Washington from 1991-93.

Yossi Alpher
is a writer and consultant on Israel-Arab issues, and Director of the Political Security Domain (PSD), an independent NGO. He has served as Director and Acting Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University; as Director of the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East Office in Jerusalem; and as a senior official in the Mossad. While at the Jaffee Center, he coordinated and coedited the JCSS research project on options for a Palestinian settlement, and produced "The Alpher Plan" for an Israeli-Palestinian final settlement. Since 1992, he has coordinated several Track II dialogues between Israelis and Arabs. In July 2000, he served as Senior Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In late 2001, he published (in Hebrew), And the Wolf Shall Dwell with the Wolf: the Settlers and the Palestinians.