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History

The Center was founded in 1993 by Dr. Thomas O. Hecht, a Canadian Jewish community leader, as a non-partisan and independent institute affiliated with the political science department at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. It was named in memory of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat (BEgin-SAdat), whose groundbreaking Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty laid the cornerstone for conflict resolution in the Middle East.

Over the past 24 years, the Center has produced over 2000 original research and policy papers as well as 25 books. It has conducted more than 800 symposia and international conferences — for defense, military industry, and intelligence and foreign policy specialists, as well as diplomats, businesspeople, academics and politicians.

On June 14, 2009, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu chose the BESA Center podium as the venue for announcing his historic acceptance of the two-state solution.

 

Advances

 

Center researchers were the first to generate a debate about the problematic aspects of Palestinian statehood in important international scholarly publications such as Survival and The Journal of Strategic Studies.

Center researchers published detailed studies warning of the danger of Arab chemical and biological weapons and missile stocks – long before anyone else took note of the threat from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

Israel’s relations with key countries such as Turkey and India were incorporated into the Center’s core research agenda in the 1990s.

The dangers of radical Islam; the myths of Palestinian demography; the abuse of international institutions in the attempt to delegitimize Israel – all were put on the public agenda by Center researchers.

Today, the Center leads an attempt to introduce creative thinking about alternatives to the entrenched two-state paradigm in Israeli-Palestinian peace diplomacy as well as an initiative to nourish U.S.-Israeli relations.

 

Global Reach

 

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies has partnered in conference and research activity with leading strategic studies centers in the world – such the RAND Corporation, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and the IDF’s own National Defense College.

BESA Center experts have been interviewed thousands of times in more than 150 newspapers and quality defense publications around the world, from The New York Times and The Washington Post, to The Times of LondonJane’s Defense Weekly and The Jerusalem Post.

BESA Center associates have spoken at conferences and symposia in more than 30 countries. Center research associates have been guest lecturers at many institutions around the world.

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