ABSTRACT
The announcement of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at the end of August 1993 took many Israelis by surprise, but none more so than the intellectuals. Israeli intellectuals have always conceived of peace as related to a change of heart and mind; peace will come once people realize the need to live in peace. To writer Shulamit Hareven the accords signified a coalition between the sane elements among Israelis and Palestinians, while author Yizhar Smilanski defined them as a sign of maturity by people capable of abandoning their myths. In what follows, this appraisal examines the nature of that knowledge power nexus and its approach to the peace process, in an attempt to shed light on the cultural presuppositions underlying the Israeli stance in that development. Becoming part of the industrial world the United States, Japan, and Western Europe had been the ultimate goal for incumbents of this knowledge-power alliance.
