TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than eleven hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike?

In Tomorrow Is Yesterday, veteran negotiators Hussein Agha and Robert Malley offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas) and US presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and their participation in secret talks over decades, Agha and Malley offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides. They stress that the two-state solution became a global goal only when it was no longer viable; that U.S. officials preferred technical schemes to a frank reckoning with the past; that Hamas’s onslaught and Israel’s war of destruction were not historical exceptions but historical reenactments; and that the gaps separating Israelis and Palestinians have less to do with territorial allocation than with history and emotions.

Co-author Robert Malley is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Negar Mortazavi, award-winning journalist, political commentator, and editor and host of The Iran Podcast, to share. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Malley will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person.

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Robert Malley served in senior Middle East positions in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The former CEO of the International Crisis Group, he is the author of The Call from Algeria and a lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Negar Mortazavi is an award-winning journalist, political commentator, and editor and host of The Iran Podcast. She is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and Nonresident Scholar at the Middle East Policy Council. Mortazavi has covered the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy towards the region for various global outlets and her analysis has been featured in CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, Foreign Policy, New York Times, among others.

BOOK DETAILS

Tomorrow is Yesterday

Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine

By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley

September 16, 2025 | Hardcover, 272 pages, $30.00

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