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Israeli-Palestinian think tank tackles thorny issues.
Powerful emotions swirl about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often frustrating the best-intentioned attempts at dialogue.
But even at the height of the Persian Gulf war, as Iraqi Scud missiles fell on Tel Aviv and Palestinians were under strict curfew, the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information continued its work.
"To the best of our knowledge, we were the only place in the world" where this happened, says IPCRI founder and co-director Gershon Baskin.
Baskin and Palestinian colleague Zakaria Mohammed Al-Qaq, who are on a U.S. fund-raising tour, came last week to the Bay Area where they spoke in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto before heading to Washington to meet with American policy-makers.
"The nature of the dialogue is not touchy-feely," Baskin says of IPCRI. "We make great efforts to take the emotion out and desloganize. That's not something you can do on the grass-roots level."
IPCRI is not a grass-roots organization. About 100 top-level Israeli and Palestinian professionals and academics meet each month to tackle such practical...