What are the settlers doing in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan? How do their actions and the policy of the Netanyahu government impact the Palestinians living there? What is the impact of the Trump administration’s collusion with the settlers and with Netanyahu’s government regarding East Jerusalem impact prospect for peace? More broadly, what are current trends in East Jerusalem, and how do they effect a possible two-state solution? On July 11th 2019, APN hosted Hagit Ofran and Daniel Seidemann for a briefing call to explore these questions.
Hagit Ofran is the co-director of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project. Widely-recognized as Israel’s foremost expert on a full range of issues related to West Bank settlements and settlement-related developments in East Jerusalem, Hagit’s work includes traveling daily throughout the West Bank, examining aerial photos and browsing official Israeli documents. The “Settlement Watch” project serves as a resource for Israeli politicians, diplomats, international media organizations, and first and foremost – for the Israeli public. Ofran has been chosen by Haaretz newspaper as one of “66 Israeli women you should know,” women “breaking barriers, defying stereotypes and wielding influence.”
Daniel Seidemann has been a practicing attorney specializing in legal and public issues in East Jerusalem for over three decades. He has also worked on issues and cases related to government and municipal policies and practices in Jerusalem, representing Israeli and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem before the statutory Planning Boards regarding development issues. Danny is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem an Israeli NGO that works to identify and track the full spectrum of developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises.
Eran Nissan is the Project Coordinator at Israel's Peace Now movement, the Israeli sister-organization of Americans for Peace Now. This summer, he is one of eight fellows participating in the annual summer program of Washington's New Story Leadership (NSL), and interning at APN.
In this conversation, Eran tells the story of his becoming a political activist, following his service as a combat soldier at the Israel Defense Force.
Eran and his fellow NSL scholars will be featured in a subsequent episode of PeaceCast next month, when we live-record this year's edition of The Dove, our annual storytelling event. Stay tuned.
This special episode features a visit to the newly launched Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC.
I was joined by my daughter Noa Nir, who participated in interviewing Nizar Farsakh, the chair of the Board of the museum.
A link to the museum’s web site: https://mpp-dc.org/
With any questions, comments or ideas, please write to me at onir@peacenow.org
Donate to APN: https://peacenow.org/donate
Ameer Fakhouri, a Palestinian citizen of Israel is active in efforts to generate a closer Jewish-Arab political partnership in Israel going into the September elections and beyond.
A lawyer by trade and a scholar specializing in conflict resolution, he is the director of the Research Center at Neve Shalom, Wahat al-Salam, the cooperative Jewish-Arab community halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which recently published a new book titled “Attainable Alliances,” edited by Fakhouri.
This episode features the most significant trend among the progressive camp in Israel today: Examining the potential for political cooperation between Jewish and Arab citizens of the state to generate change.
This special episode of PeaceCast is produced in partnership with T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
It features six stories told by rabbinical students at a recent story telling evening in Israel, at the end of their one-year T’ruah program there.
With any feedback, comments or ideas, please email Ori Nir at onir@peacenow.org
Non-Israelis often find it surprising or counter-intuitive that Israel’s top brass, its senior security officials are consistently more dovish than its political leadership. For years, Israeli security officials – retired officials publicly and serving ones privately -- have been the most solid proponents of the two-state solution. Anecdotally, this was a well-known fact.
Now there is a scientific study that shows just how true this truism is. This episode features Dr. Guy Ziv of the School of International Service at American University, and Benjamin L. Shaver, a master’s student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations. Their new study shows that some 85% of Israel’s leading retired generals, spymasters and other senior security officials support a peace agreement based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.
A link to the study (behind a paywall): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2019.1614790
A link to a Q&A with Dr. Ziv about the study: https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20190524-a-near-consensus-israels-security-establishment-and-the-two-state-solution.cfm
Write to me at onir@peacenow.org
A speech I gave at the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony in Washington on May 7th.
Dov Waxman is a Professor of Political Science, International Affairs, and Israel Studies and the Director of the Middle East Studies program at Northeastern University.
On the day of its official release, we spoke with Dov about his new book The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know.
This episode’s guest is Khaled Elgindy, a scholar at the Brookings institution who specializes in Palestinian affairs. He is the author of a new book Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump, which was published on April 4th, 2019.
Links:
This episode features three speeches delivered at a March 31 commemorative event at Washington’s Temple Sinai, to honor Israeli novelist Amos Oz, an icon of Israel’s peace movement. Oz died last December at the age of 79. The event was organized by J Street. APN was among the co-sponsors.
The first speech is the keynote speech by Fania Oz Salzberger, Amos Oz’s daughter. The second is by J Street’s president Jeremy Ben Ami. The third is by Natalie Portman, who brought to the screen Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness.
For a full video recording of the event click here.
Write to me at: onir@peacenow.org
This episode was recorded at a live event that Americans for Peace Now co-sponsored with the New Israel Fund at our joint office in Washington on April 3rd, just six days before the Israeli elections.
Our guest was Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, one of Israel’s leading public opinion analysts.
The discussion was moderated by Naomi Paiss, the former Vice President of Public Affairs at the New Israel Fund for over a decade, and a longtime public affairs and communications professional.
Please send feedback, ideas, and questions to onir@peacenow.org.
Also, please go to www.PeaceNow.org and make a small donation.
Thank you for your support.
On the fortieth anniversary of the White House signing ceremony of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, Israel’s peace movement Peace Now (Shalom Achshav) launched a campaign to remind Israelis of this historic peace treaty and its strategic value for Israel, and to underscore the fact that peace with the Palestinians and the entire Arab world is within reach.
Peace Now’s executive director, Shaqued Morag, talks about the new campaign and about the centerpiece of the campaign, an evocative short film.
To watch the film click here.
For APN’s crowd sourcing campaign to fund the film click here.
Tania Hary is the Executive Director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially residents of the Gaza Strip.
APN's Debra Shushan and Ori Nir spoke with her on March 21st.
This is a special episode of PeaceCast.
For the first time, we recorded PeaceCast before a live audience in Washington DC. We partnered with one of Israel’s most popular English language podcasts, the Tel Aviv Review.
We recorded it on March 7th 2019 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The event was organized in partnership with J Street.
We hosted two journalists, Israeli journalist Amir Tibon of Haaretz and Palestinian journalist Said Arikat of al-Quds. Haaretz is published in Tel Aviv and al-Quds is published in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Amir and Said are the Washington correspondents of their newspapers.
The idea of this conversation was to explore how Said and Amir both cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Washington.
This episode is released simultaneously on PeaceCast and on the Tel Aviv Review. Check out the Tel Aviv Review here: https://tlv1.fm/podcasts/tel-aviv-review-show/
Gilead (Gili) Sher is an Israeli lawyer, scholar, expert on, and practitioner of, Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians. He was Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s chief negotiator between 1999 and 2001. Now he directs the Center for Applied Negotiations at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.
APN’s acting CEO Aviva Meyer joined Ori Nir for a conversation with Sher on February 15th, 2019 at Georgetown University's government Department, where Sher is now the Goldman Visiting Professor.
We addressed the impact of the diplomatic impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, and what can be done to pave the road to a two-state solution in the absence of formal negotiations over a comprehensive peace accord.
With comments or feedback email Ori at onir@peacenow.org
Links:
Sher’s bio: https://www.inss.org.il/person/shergilead/
The INSS plan: http://www.inss.org.il/inss-plan-political-security-framework-israeli-palestinian-arena/
The Blue and White Future’s plan: http://www.bluewhitefuture.org/?page_id=560
A West Bank map showing possible land swaps: http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/12/opinion/mapping-mideast-peace.html?_r=1#nytg-optionsBox
This show features two experts on Washington Middle East policy and legislative affairs: Debra Shushan, APN’s Policy and Government Relations Director, and Lara Friedman, who preceded her in this position, and is now the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Together, they drill down on the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act, better known by its acronym ATCA, a piece of legislation that tells a fascinating story of how policy on Israeli-Palestinian affairs is being made in Washington.
Links:
Debra Shushan’s op-ed in The Hill on ATCA
Scott Anderson’s article on ATCA
Lara Friedman’s Forward article on efforts to use legal action in the US against Palestinians
APN’s (Ambassador David) Friedman File
Currently a professor of law at at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, Amos Guiora is the former Commander of the Israel Defense Forces' School of Military Law. Before retiring from the IDF as a Lieutenant Colonel, he was also the Judge Advocate for the Navy and Home Front Command, as well as the Legal Adviser to the IDF's commander of the Gaza Strip, a military court judge and a military prosecutor.
In this episode -- a longer episode than the usual -- he talks about the interplay between law, ethics, and politics in the context of Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
Brian Reeves, Director of External Relations at Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), APN’s Israeli sister-organization, talks about the new West Bank settlement scandal: a plan to build another settlement near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, which would complete a ring around Bethlehem and severely threaten a two-state solution. Brian also talks about broader trends in settlement activity in 2018 and about what Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project is focusing on going into 2019.
Links:
Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress.
Public attention focused on a profanity that Tlaib used in reference to President Trump shortly after being sworn in to the 116th Congress.
This episode, instead, focuses on the significance of Tlaib’s coming to Washington for the Palestinian-American community, a community that has never enjoyed much political clout in the U.S.
Hanna Hanania, a prominent leader of the community, talks about what it means for Palestinian-American to have a progressive young woman in Congress who proudly asserts her Palestinian identity.
With any feedback, please email me at onir@peacenow.org
A new report by Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) analyzes Israel's relations with American Jews through the prism of Israeli national security.
The report is chiefly directed at Israeli policy makers, and therefore has so far only been published in Hebrew. The English translation will be published soon.
Dr. Michal Hatuel-Radushitzky, one of the report's authors, talks about the chief observations and recommendations of the report.
Known by many as Mr. Jerusalem, one of the world’s leading experts on Jewish-Arab relations in Jerusalem, Danny Seidemann is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli non-governmental organization that works to identify and track the full spectrum of developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises.
We spoke about the recent elections for Jerusalem’s municipal council and what should be expected of the new mayor, Moshe Lion. We spoke about the settlement in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah. We spoke about the leaping West Bank annexation policies of the Israeli government and the role that Jerusalem plays in these policies. We spoke about the Trump administration’s policy on Jerusalem. The conversation with Danny was fun. He was as witty, smart and analytical as always.
Abdallah Hamarsheh is the acting director and co-founder of Zimam , a Palestinian civil society organization working to enable and empower youth to take a leadership role in creating a pluralistic and democratic Palestinian State. Zimam is the outgrowth of the Palestinian chapter of One Voice and is still supported by OneVoice .
Together with Mara Lee, the Global Executive Director of OneVoice, Abdallah Hamarsheh spoke with Ori Nir and Debra Shushan at APN’s office in Washington.
Please include APN in your end-of-year giving. To donate click here and write PeaceCast in the comments field. Thank you!
Eight out of the 22 players on the current Israeli soccer national team are non-Jews, of them 7 are Arabs and one, Bibras Natkho, is an Israeli Circassian Muslim. He is also the national team captain. That is unprecedented. Never before have so many non-Jewish players played for the national team.
The soccer field in Israel serves young Arab men as a tool for upward mobility while it also serves as a platform for anti-Arab bigotry and racism.
Tomer Fadlon, an expert on the politics and diplomacy of soccer at Tel Aviv University explains the apparent contradiction and much more.
Jim Gerstein is a pollster and a founding partner of GBA Strategies, a DC-based firm that provides research-based strategic counsel for candidates running for office, non-profit organizations, and for arts and cultural institutions.
Since 2008, Gerstein has been conducting national polls of American Jews on election nights, commissioned by J Street.
In this episode, J Street's Jessica Rosenblum and APN's Ori Nir talk with Gerstein about his November 6th, 2018 poll.
This episode marks a new partnership between Americans for Peace Now and J Street on PeaceCast.
The data files of Gerstein's poll are here.
This episode is an edited down version of a November 15th 2018 briefing call with strategic affairs expert Yossi Alpher, a former senior Mossad official and the former director of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
Alpher is the Author of Hard Questions Tough Answers, APN's weekly news analysis.
For past PeaceCast episodes on Gaza, see here.
for the full recording of the briefing call, see here.