Yair Hirschfeld

Yair Hirschfeld was born in 1944

Hirschfeld was born in 1944 in Wellington, New Zealand, and grew up in Vienna, Austria. There he was active in the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and headed its Vienna branch from 1964 to 1967. He moved to Israel in 1967.

He studied Middle Eastern history at the Hebrew University from 1967 to 1970. He earned a doctorate at Tel Aviv University in 1976 with a thesis on German and Iranian relations from 1921 to 1941, published as a book in 1980. He later headed the Iran desk at what is now the Dayan Center.

In 1982 he became a senior lecturer in Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, where he taught until 2012. He also held research posts at the Baker Institute at Rice University and at the Wilson Center in Washington.

His work on Israeli and Palestinian dialogue began in 1979 at the request of Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky. In 1990 he founded the Economic Cooperation Foundation. In 1992 and 1993 he and Ron Pundak held unofficial talks with PLO representatives in Norway that produced the draft of the Declaration of Principles, signed on 13 September 1993.

From 1994 to 1995 he took part in negotiating the Beilin and Abu Mazen Understanding. He wrote books on track-two diplomacy published in 2014 and 2024.