Former Israeli prime minister and Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres will give a public lecture at Cornell on Wednesday, April 30, at 8 p.m. in the Newman Arena of the Cornell University Field House. The lecture is titled "Battling for Peace." Tickets are available as follows:

• For students: $4 with a Cornell I.D. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 9, at 10 a.m. in the Willard Straight Hall ticket office on a first-come, first-served basis. From April 9 to 11, there will be a limit of two tickets per student. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• For the general public: $6. Tickets go on sale Monday, April 14, at Willard Straight Hall ticket office and the ticket center at Clinton House, 116 N. Cayuga St. Tickets can be charged by telephone at (607) 273-3397 or (800) 724-0999 with Master Card or Visa and picked up at Clinton House through Tuesday, April 29. Ticket center hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday.

Any tickets remaining will be available for purchase at the door of Newman Arena one hour before the lecture.

Peres, 73, served as prime minister from 1984 to 1986 and again following Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in November 1995, remaining prime minister until the Labor Party was defeated in the elections of May 1996. He currently leads the opposition Labor Party and serves in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

In 1994, as foreign minister, Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for their work on the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Under the agreement, Israel recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and laid the foundation for gradual transition toward Palestinian control of the occupied West Bank.

Earlier, Peres engineered the legendary raid on Entebbe in the 1970s; and, as prime minister in the 1980s, he saved the Israeli economy from near collapse.

Peres' books include Battling for Peace (1995), which describes his work as key architect of the Oslo peace accords, and New Middle East (1993).

Editors: All members of the media must have current, valid media credentials to attend the Shimon Peres lecture. The News Service, which will credential media representatives for the event, will provide more information, including plans for a possible news conference, as it becomes available. For more information, contact the Cornell News Service, (607) 255-4206.

He has harshly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies toward the PLO for being too confrontational. In late 1996 he told a Washington Post reporter, "If we shall lose the trust we developed in the Arab world, it will be very hard to regain it, and this is what is happening before our eyes."

Joshua Teitelbaum, a research associate at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and visiting professor at Cornell, said he expects Peres will discuss his disagreements with Netanyahu, particularly in terms of recent developments such as the opening of a tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem and preparations for the building of Jewish housing in disputed east Jerusalem.

"Under the previous government, which Peres headed, Labor and Likud took the other side's constituency into account when taking any political action," Teitelbaum said. "Each side tolerated the other's technical violations of the Oslo agreements, because there was a partnership there. But the new government is demanding that the Palestinians stick to the letter of the accord, and this is the cause of the tensions. Peres firmly believes that in taking such a rigid position, Netanyahu is going against the partnership and the spirit of Oslo."

Teitelbaum predicted that, at Cornell, Peres "will try to present a vision of economic and regional cooperation in the Middle East as a counterpoint to what seems to be the tone now, which is one of confrontation. He is a die-hard optimist, and I think he'll present a picture of a possible future that will look a lot brighter than many people think is possible."

Teitelbaum expects Cornellians' reactions to that picture will be mixed, as it is in Israel. "Peres has a vision of a new Middle East that is seen by many Israelis as naive and unrealistic," he said.

Peres' Cornell lecture is sponsored by the Cornell University Program Board (CUPB), a student organization.

"In my opinion, this is by far the most influential speaker CUPB has brought to campus," said Bindiya Patel, the board's finance chairwoman. "There is a level of excitement on the board in the past few weeks that I have not seen in the four years I have been a part of it."

She added, "Hearing Peres speak in our own Field House will give what we learn in our textbooks or from the media a very different perspective."

Peres' visit to Cornell is not part of a larger speaking tour, according to CUPB. After leaving Ithaca, he will take a brief trip to Washington before returning to Israel.

Security for the Cornell lecture will be extremely tight, and attendees should be prepared to have their belongings searched. No cameras or recording devices will be allowed at the lecture.

For more information about Peres' lecture, call the Cornell University Program Board at (607) 255-7132.