Ambassador and diplomat Dennis Ross knows what a high-pressure job is like. As the director of policy planning in the State Department dur-ing the first Bush administration and as a special envoy to the Middle East under President Clinton, he spent more than 12 years playing a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process. He dealt directly with various parties and heads of state, and had a hand in negotiating peace in one of the most volatile regions in the world. Most notably, he was instrumental in helping to broker the 1997 Hebron Accord and facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jorden peace treaty. He also assisted in bringing Israel and Syria together. On Aug. 26, Ross will be the keynote speaker at the eighth annual Yom Limmud, a community day of learning sponsored by the Jewish Federation of San Diego County and held at the Jewish Community Center. Ross spoke with the La Jolla Village News on some of his career highs — and lows — and what he sees for the future of negotiating peace in the Middle East. La Jolla Village News: You’ve worked in peace making in the Middle East for a long time. Can you talk about what it has been like to be part of the peace-making apparatus in one of the most volatile places in the world? Dennis Ross: I was a negotiator in the Middle East during the Clinton administration, so that was a nonstop effort, with constant shuttles between here and the Middle East, and within the Middle East itself. And it did not involve just peace making, but also trying to preserve the process, especially when you have acts of terror and bombing and the like. There were moments of high exhilaration, and there were moments of despair, particularly when [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin was assassinated. We had a sense of real possibility at that time. Israel and the states that border it have had what you might describe as territorial disputes, but with Israel and Palestine, it was a sort of existential question. You had two national movements basically competing for the same space, and neither recognized each other prior to [the Oslo Accords]. After Oslo, you had a kind of mutual recognition, so we had the chance to transform the conflict, and that’s what we thought was possible in the 1990s. We worked very hard to try to get there, and ultimately in the end, we were incapable of solving the conflict. LJVN: You wrote three books over five years (“The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace,” “Statecraft, And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World” and “Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East”). Did your tone and approach to discussing peace in the region change over the course of those five years, given your experiences dealing with peace issues there? DR: I wouldn’t say the tone changed. I think the essence of what I have tried to focus on is what’s possible and when it’s possible. The middle book I wrote is called “Statecraft,” and the essence of statecraft is being able to marry your objectives and your means, which sounds on one level like it’s obvious. And yet, very often in policy making, objectives are grand objectives. They’re at 50,000 feet, they’re at the level of motherhood and apple pie, which is not so easy to operationalize. So frequently you have a gap between your objectives and your means, because your objectives are lofty, and you don’t have the means to fulfill them. I have always tried to focus on what could be achieved in terms of peace making. For instance, today, I don’t think the two sides — because of the level of disbelief on both sides — are capable of resolving all the many differences between them. So the question is, if you can’t resolve all the differences, your choice is either to do nothing, or to see if you can change the context in which the two sides are operating so that what’s not possible today becomes possible tomorrow. Some have said I’m an incrementalist, and that’s not really the case. I try to focus on what I think we can achieve. If I think we can solve the whole thing, then I say go for the whole thing. But if I think we can’t, we have to look at what we have to do so we can change the circumstances, so we can solve the whole thing. It’s the context that determines what’s possible. LJVN: Has that context changed over the years? DR: Oh, yes. It’s changed dramatically, for the worse. LJVN: What do you hope to impart to future generations regarding peace in the Middle East? DR: There really isn’t an alternative to trying to achieve peace. You can throw up your hands and say it’s not possible, but then you’ll make failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. But you also shouldn’t be naive. You shouldn’t think you can produce it when it’s impossible. The question is how can you try to affect that context? In the Jewish tradition, to be a rodef shalom is to be a seeker of peace. There are few things that are higher. I think that should continue to be something that is of fundamental value that is highly treasured and appreciated. Even if the circumstances are such that what you may want to achieve, you’re not able to achieve, it doesn’t mean you should give up. LJVN: What was one of the crowning moments of your career concerning your work with peace in the Middle East? DR: I think when we brokered the Hebron Accord, which took two 23-day shuttles working around the clock. That was a high moment. I think reaching the [Israeli-Palestinian] Interim Agreement, which came before the Hebron Accord, those were high moments. LJVN: Was there ever a moment when you thought the challenge was too great, or that all of your hard work was useless? DR: I had that moment when Rabin was assassinated. I was devastated. I had worked unbelievably closely with him, and I had just seen him three days before. His last words to me were haunting. He said, “Expect anything.” I expected a lot, but I didn’t expect that. LJVN: This is a job where you have to have some degree of optimism. Did that event change your approach? DR: You have to have the belief that things can be done. You cannot be a cynic, and you can’t be an inherent pessimist. You have to believe that things can be done and are worth trying to do. I wanted to fulfill his legacy. I didn’t want his assassination to be something where [the assassins] were not just trying to kill him, but were trying to kill peace itself. And I still want that. It was a reminder of the risks you run. I think one thing that affected Clinton so much was the assassination because he said to Rabin, “You take risk for peace and we’ll minimize that risk.” Then Rabin paid with his life. LJVN: What issues do you plan on addressing during Yom Limmud at the Jewish Community Center on Aug. 26? DR: I want to talk about what is going on in the region now. I want to talk about Iran, as well as the developments in Egypt, which are significant, not to mention what’s happening in Syria. The broader point right now is that the kind of tumult we’ve seen recently in the Middle East we’ve never seen before. You’ve had upheaval, but never so fundamental, never so widespread. We have what amounts to an Arab awakening. You can see reactions to it — you see it in Syria where the regime is prepared to kill as many citizens as it has to in order to remain in power. The question is how much damage will it wreak. There’s rarely been time when we could look at the region and see so many different challenges that are so monumental in scope. LJVN: Why, in your opinion, has all this fundamental change imploded at one time in the region? DR: You have a region that’s been characterized by people who were treated as subjects, not as citizens. They had no rights — no right to have expectations or to make demands. Where social media and the Internet have come in is that people suddenly became much more aware of their own circumstances and they could compare those circumstances to others. We’ve reached the point where the level of indignity and injustice, have all combined, and once it was demonstrated that people-power could remove those leaders who seemed so invulnerable, then it produced what we’ve seen. This is the beginning of the process, not the end. Nobody at this point could say how it will unfold. Be careful about predictions and retain your humility. No one knows what will happen. The only thing I would say with some degree of confidence is this is a very long process. It’s a generational process of change. It will take 10 to 20 years to play out. Ross will provide the keynote speech at 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 26 at the Jewish Community Center, located at 4126 Executive Drive. Admission is $32.00 for members, $38.00 for nonmembers. Teens will be admitted for $14 (members) or $18 (nonmembers). VIP tickets can be purchased for $100, which includes reserved parking, access to the VIP lounge, priority seating in the first two rows of all sessions held in the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre and donor recognition. For tickets or more information, call (858) 362-1348 or visit www.sdcjc.org.