Arab Lecture Series Palestinian Minister of Education Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi inaugurated Rice University's Arab Lecture Series, cosponsored by the Humanities Division and the Baker Institute, October 18, 1996. An increasingly influential figure in the Palestinian political dialogue, Ashrawi first gained international recognition at the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, where she skillfully articulated the cause of the Palestinian people.
Conventional wisdom suggests that threats of war lead to cataclysmic changes.
For the Palestinians, however, peace and the prospect of peace have produced cataclysmic changes and have challenged the status quo. Ashrawi said that serious qualitative changes in perceptions and dialogue need to supersede political rhetoric and military action. Stimulated by the birth of the peace process in 1991, many tenets have been challenged and forces of change unleashed. She cited a new attitude in the Israeli government that attempts to use the peace process as a means to consolidate power. For her, the peace process loses meaning as it becomes an object of peace rather than a mechanism for peace.