I want to thank everybody for coming today to New America. I want to thank Lisa Goldman for organizing this and putting this panel together and New America for hosting us and asking me to moderate. What we've been asked to do here today is something that's been eluding politicians which is to find a diplomatic solution to the current crisis and what I hope we can do in a moment that's quite emotionally troubling that has tensions incredibly high with a ceasefire that has been offered but didn't have any kind of legs of any kind. What can we do going forward? What I'd like to do is take a little bit of a high altitude picture first, give us a sense of what brought us to where we are. Obviously the events that we're looking at right now seem to have begun with the kidnapping and murder first of three Jewish-Israeli teens and then the revenge murder and killing of a Palestinian teen. But I'd like us to actually step a little bit further back and see what the relationship between Israel and Gaza has been since 2005. If not before that, what does it mean to have disengaged from Gaza and what the current relationship between Israel and Gaza is and what the diplomatic community can do or has done up until now. And we have a distinguished panel with us. I will introduce them and then I will actually just jump in with questions rather than offering opening statements because I think we have so much to cover here, let alone to solve, that I don't think we even have time for opening statements. So let me start with, to my right I have Matthew Dust. He is the incoming president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a current senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress where his work focuses on United States national security policy in the Middle East with a concentration on Iran and the Israeli Palestinian conflict. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and the Nation, among others, and he is a columnist for the American Prospect. To his right, he has Nora Erika, who is a human rights attorney and writer. She will begin as assistant professor at George Mason University in the fall of 2014 and has taught international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown since 2009. She served as legal counsel for a domestic policy subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Her scholarly publications include Litigating the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Polititization of U.S. Federal Courts in the Berkeley Law Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, United States v. ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law and Universal Jurisdiction and the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, and New Imminence in the Time of Obama, the impact of targeted killings on the law of self-defense forthcoming in the Arizona Law Review. She is co-editor of Jadalaya. Lisa Goldman is the director of the Israel-Palestine Initiative at New America and the organizer of this panel. Prior to relocating to New York City in 2012, she lived and worked for over a decade in the Middle East covering Israel-Palestine and the immediate region, including the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict and the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. Her analysis of the Israeli media's coverage of the 2009 Invasion of Gaza received an International Journalism Award for Conflict Reporting, and her byline has been published in a wide variety of European and North American media outlets. She is a co-founder and contributing editor to 972, a progressive digital magazine based in Tel Aviv, Jaffa. Next to her is Samar Badevi, who writes for 972 magazine. His writing and analysis have been featured by CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. He is the former executive director of the United Palestinian Appeal and has served as an international development consultant to numerous NGOs and development agencies working in the Arab world. And finally, last but not least, we have Naomi Pace, VP of Public Affairs for the new Israel Fund and has run the organization's international communications since 2005. Naomi has 28 years of experience in public affairs and issues management. Previously she served as the founding communications director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as communications director for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence during the period of Columbine and other mass shootings as vice president of communications for the National Wildlife Federation as well as practice director at one of Washington's largest independent public affairs firms. Naomi is a graduate of the Kibo Hebrew Academy in Marion, Pennsylvania and of Sarah Lawrence College, an experienced media spokesperson and commentator. Her op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major news outlets. And she has frequently appeared as a guest on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and network news and public affairs programs. So clearly we've got a lot of expertise on the panel. I want to start actually with Lisa, and I hope that because you were in the region during the period of the last several problems with Gaza, problems being not a great word for it, but let's start with the 2005 disengagement. And I wonder if we could even unpack a little bit the idea of disengagement from Gaza when Israel clearly has not actually left. And maybe you can start with us there. Sure. I actually was in Gaza covering the entire disengagement prior to going up to the day of the final evacuation of the last settlement. So just after when the Israelis announced, Ari El-Shravan, the then Prime Minister of Israel, announced in 2005 that Israel would withdraw its settlements and its soldiers from Gaza, from their land, and that they would turn it over to Palestinian to the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign territory. What happened was that Israel did withdraw its settlements and did withdraw its soldiers, but they then sort of sealed Gaza. There's been a blockade of Gaza. Israel controls every aspect of movement in or out of Gaza. It's borders and it's land and it's waters. What does that mean? And Samarra obviously can jump in because he knows Gaza very well. This means that Kogat, the Israeli army branch that deals with the settlement, that administers the settlements, decides what foods and supplies can go into Gaza via Karmie checkpoint. So there's very little sort of control that the people of Gaza have over their own land. The fishermen are allowed only to go, I think, four miles into three kilometers from the shore and then they're turned back by Israeli naval boats. People in Gaza cannot get permits to visit their families in Jerusalem or in the West Bank. It's very difficult to get permission to leave Gaza in general. And so there's been, you know, the Hamas took over Gaza in 2006. They kicked Fatah out of Gaza and since then it's been sort of a one-party state. So there has been rocket fire. There is periodic rocket fire that has been coming out of Gaza, launched at Israeli civilian population centers for many years, and Israel also frequently bombs Gaza, either from the air or from with tank mortars. Sometimes there have been incidents where naval boats shot at Gaza. This is between the major military operations that we know about, this operation cast lead of 2008-9. And then what was the last one called pillar of cloud or pillar of defense? Yeah, pillar of defense in 2012, two years ago. And now we have the current one that's called protective edge. I can never remember the names, protective edge. So a lot of people have the impression, looking at the situation that everything's quiet between Israel and Gaza. And if you just read the news superficially, you think, well, then all of a sudden, every couple of years for no discernible reason, the Palestinians in Gaza start launching rockets at Israel. And that's actually not the case. This is an ongoing sort of low intensity conflict. I think in the last couple of years, you probably know the numbers, I think that about almost 700 people in Gaza have been killed by various Israeli military operations against Gaza, individual, like one targeted assassination, one tank shell and so forth. And of course, drones also hover over Gaza always. So the Israelis very much control what's going on in Gaza. And also the economy doesn't function, of course, because they can't import and export. So I think something like 85% of Gazans are unemployed. And of course, youth employment is extremely high. So there is this constant tension between, you know, Israel has, the Israeli narrative is such that, you know, we have this constant rocket fire from Gaza, therefore we're going to maintain this blockade because it's a security issue. And I think that most Israelis are pretty convinced of that narrative that if the blockade were lifted, then that would present a serious physical risk to Israel's security. So I don't think that the Israeli government feels that it can lift that blockade. I think that they feel the popular resistance in Israel would be very intense. And in the government, of course, as well. So the blockade seems to be in place indefinitely. Hamas says that the reason they shoot the rockets is because they want the blockade to be lifted, amongst other things. Let me jump in for a second then, because I think we're going into a couple of directions. And one, perhaps we can move into this idea of what right now, obviously, there's been a lot of media coverage, both of the Israeli bombing campaign, which has, as of this morning, I think something like over 200 have been killed, including numerous children. And obviously hundreds of rockets are being fired into Israel. And there was not bad this morning, and it's from a friend of ours, Alison Summer, who said Israel's PR problem is that more people aren't dying. And it is, to some degree, true. But I think maybe what could unpack is a little bit, maybe we could go to Nora and talk a little bit about what someone is sort of claiming international law as being abrogated. And then we can go to Summer and talk a bit about what life on the ground has been like during this kind of slow-burn war that has not been even a cold peace. What does it mean to live in Gaza right now? I think we could draw that a little bit, because I think that we need to understand that better to understand how we've gotten to this point. And then we'll go to Naomi and discuss a bit about what both the relationship to Gaza and this blockade of Israeli political elite intersecting. And I think this is one of the things we really have to understand here is that what we're seeing now, especially with the murder of these teens that sort of seems to have begun this spiral, that we are seeing the intersection of several competing or parallel moments politically. One is not least of which is the rise of Jewish extremism and the entrenchment of a certain very far-right perspective in the Israeli Knesset, which has codified a way of relating to the idea of a two-state solution or finding peace in some way or another. But I really do want to go to this idea first of international law, and I want to make sure that we keep an idea of both sides feel that they are under siege, and maybe we can look at that a little bit. What does that mean? So let's start with international law. The Israeli government and a handful of PA officials have said international law is being broken by Hamas filering into Israeli civilian centers. And of course we are hearing international law is being broken by civilians being targeted, whether in the Israelis claim that it's not on purpose. But what does that mean? And who arbitrates international law? Sure. Before getting into a microcosm lesson of international law, let me start by saying that we all do with respect. Though both sides may feel that they're under siege, one side Palestinian civilians, 2.8 million Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, 15,000 of whom happen to be Hamas numbers, are indeed under siege, who are blockaded by the sea and by land, who are blockaded as well by Egypt, who cannot leave through the Rafa border, and who the World Health Organization says will not be able to survive in the Gaza Strip by 2020. So while the Israeli population may feel that it's under siege and there's popular support against lifting of that siege by not complicating this narrative and undermining it up front, that there should be no compromise on the question of lifting the siege, we are then endorsing implicitly or explicitly the slow and sure death of 2% of the Palestinian population, which is under siege in the Gaza Strip because they will not be able to survive there. What happens to them? I'm going to get to the question of international law, but we should ask this question that any discussion of a ceasefire should begin with everybody's vehement demand to lift the siege. I think that we should also get into those two and maybe Summer can speak to this is about who is authorized to make decisions. The ceasefire, you know, we're discussing in the green room that the ceasefire perhaps was discussed with Abbas and not with Hamas and what does that mean and who is a legitimate broker. So there are many, many layers here and I don't want to discount what you're saying, but I want to discuss first this idea and I think that Lisa presented this well, that we understand that the blockade is in place and we understand that there is not parity and that sounds very light and I don't mean to sound light, but I want you to get first into this idea of international law because I think in an international context we need to see that. So what I'm trying to do is because you said that both feel that they're under siege and so I was just trying to get us out of that granular to give us a big picture of what it means when the cessation of these rocket attacks and the cessation of these aerial missile strikes stop. What does it mean for the region and the populations involved? I think that's fair, but I also want to make sure that we have a conversation about the fact that so far there is no end game and this is what you're talking about, I think. So, and this is why, now I say this before I address the question of international law because it goes to the heart of does international law even matter in this context because what we're talking about is outright power and as a scholar and a teacher of law I don't hide from my students or in my writings that law is politics, okay? So what the law says theoretically is that an military occupation is legal and military occupation is created by an occupying power in order to slowly and viably revert the situation to the status quo ante before the occupation began. This is meant to be a short-term thing. It's belligerent in the sense that it's to last for five to ten years, okay? Israel has been occupying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank for 47 years. We are well beyond what a legal occupation looks like and this is actually quite illegitimate and it enters into a new legal category of prolonged military occupation whose conditions look much more like apartheid and therefore need to be addressed on those terms. As for international law and the use of force or the law of self-defense, as the occupying power, Israel has already triggered the law of self-defense and therefore occupied the Gaza Strip in the West Bank. It therefore, as the occupying power, has no right to self-defense in the meaning of international law though it has the right to defend itself. But it has the obligation and the duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. Any disorder within the Gaza Strip or the West Bank is Israel's responsibility. The failure to maintain that order is Israel. If it is going to enter into some sort of use of military force which it actually shouldn't, it should be using police force because it usurps the right of police force from the Palestinian population by being an occupying power and also invokes the right to attack militarily leaving the Palestinian population doubly vulnerable. And if it is going to use that police force it is supposed to be regulated by the laws of war which include the pillars of distinction, proportionality, and necessity. Israel is not abided by the principle of distinction. That's why 80% of those killed in the past week and one day have been civilians. Wait, what's the principle of distinction? The principle of distinction mandates that a belligerent power distinguish between civilians and combatants. And Israel claims that it is trying to distinguish because it's actually targeting the combatants who happen to be hiding behind the civilians. This rhetoric of human shields is a dehumanizing discourse that we should challenge and reject. All human rights reports have shown that in fact the only power that has used human shields has been Israel in its operation starting in 2002 in its re-encouraging of Jinnin and then now if we're talking about human shields in the Gaza Strip it is one of the most dense populations on earth. The question we should ask ourselves where are these Palestinians to go? Where do they flee to? Where do 17, now 100,000 Palestinians have been asked to flee? Where do they flee where they're not rhetorically human shields? And so now as far as Hamas violations of international law Hamas by ipso facto use of crude weaponry that does not have the ability to distinguish or target is in violation of the laws of war and can be prosecuted. But does that matter when Hamas has already been prosecuted and has debilitating sanctions imposed against them? So really when we're talking about war crimes the game changer would be to actually charge and prosecute Israel for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. Let's start this summer and talk about what life looks like on the ground and maybe you can also unpack a little bit this idea which is definitely floating around the media quite a bit about the use of Hamas using civilians as cover and also just draw for us a tiny bit and I didn't mean to leave Matt out because I think we need to get into a little bit about who plays a role as a broker in this. What happens now that the Kerry initiative has failed is the American credibility shot and who are we turning to? I mean who is the bright mediating light on the horizon? Is it Europe? Who is it? So this draw for us a little bit life on the ground and Gaza for a moment and then go into this idea of who is an appropriate interlocutor for a ceasefire conversation and also maybe address this question at which we are hearing quite a bit that Hamas whether this is fair or unfair is using civilians or is it too crowded a space to even say that that's a possibility and also there have been rumors that they have told people to stay put. I mean can you address some of these rumors for us and maybe either dismantle them or explain how, put them in better context. Sure. I'd like to begin by asking everyone in the room how many people have been to Gaza. Okay that's a higher proportion than you'd find probably anywhere else in Washington DC today. But having said that I think we live in a city where issues like this become abstractions and they're not about human beings and I would like to second what Nora said a little while ago about the context mattering the most at this point of the discussion. On the question of whether or not Palestinians have anywhere to go and whether they're being used as human shields I'd like to begin with a number. That number is 40. Now prior to the so-called disengagement of Ariel Sharon from Gaza 40% of the land of Gaza was taken up by settlements. The number of settlers who occupied those settlements amounted to 8,000. 8,000 settlers juxtaposed with 1.4 million Palestinians at the time and they owned, they controlled by gunpoint 40% of that land. When we talk about disengagement we're not talking about something that was done as a favor to the Palestinian people. This was something that should have been done by virtue of the fact that it was morally unjust, illegal and was part and parcel of Israel's long-standing policies to where the Palestinians which was basically to deprive them of land and to deprive them of the right to self-determination. Now why does that number 40 matter? It matters because prior to this as Nora called it the week and one day of bombing which by the way has killed over 200 people at least 10% of them children and 80% of them by the UN's own ambition civilians. Which is to say noncombatants, people without rockets if you prefer. Prior to all of this 40% of Gaza's land 40% pardon me, of Gaza's arable land was off limits to Palestinians. It all belongs in something called the buffer zone which Israel has created along its so-called border with Gaza and it's now 1.9 Palestinians to deprive them of access to their agricultural land. Now the question I'd like to pose to you is that in a part of the world that is 25 kilometers long and deprived of 40% of its land and unable to access anything in the outside world by sea, land or air that is now deprived of even being able to grow its own products to feed its people where, where is there anywhere to hide? Where are there areas that are not civilian areas? And if you need further proof that that argument that is put forth by Benjamin Netanyahu and others in the Israeli government is a false one consider the fact that in the middle of Tel Aviv you have Israel's Ministry of Defense which is to say in the middle of a civilian area. The argument does not hold water and everyone in Gaza knows it. So getting to the issue of what Palestinians in Gaza are feeling these days and what their perspectives are. You have to understand that in 2012 as in today Israel has bombed Gaza 24 hours a day for 8 days straight. If you do the math, if you take the IDF's own numbers and you look at the munitions that have been dropped on Gaza in the past 8 days and then you look in 2012 in the 9 days of bombing you will see that on average between a bomb has fallen on Gaza between 4 and 5 minutes, 24 hours a day. Every 4, take a round average of that. Every 4 and a half minutes somebody in Gaza is hearing a bomb drop. And when we talk about bombs we're talking about bombs that are one ton that are dropped by F-16s. On a population that is 80%, not only 80% dependent on food aid 80% of them are refugees from the creation of the state that is dropping the bombs on them today. And I would submit to you that the real policy agenda behind Israel's attacks today is to try to wipe out the memory of that injustice from 1948. It is a sore, festering memory for Israel and it cannot be undone until you reckon with the fact that 80% of the people 1.2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip today don't belong there. Because of Israel's creation you will not have justice and you will not have peace and you will not have a ceasefire. Okay, I think that we're getting a little beyond the purview of the panel insofar as I don't think that we can get into the original sin or original blessing of 1948 right now. There is no original sin. These are sins that are being perpetrated right now as we speak in the Gaza Strip. So I think that we can get into this moment and just have you go into a little bit, having lived in Israel for over a decade and kind of looking at this from both sides of the perspective if you could give us a little bit of a sense of how we've gotten to this point. I mean maybe even go back to the Sharon unilateral disengagement what led up to that a little bit and a little bit more about how the Israeli problem as well is that there isn't a great deal of sense in some ways internal to Israel around what's happening in the Gaza Strip. I mean you asked this room I think if you asked a room of Israelis how many people had been to Gaza it would be almost zero if not zero. Unless you asked 10 years ago oh I served in Gaza. So Israelis don't and they also don't go to the West Bank very much about who their neighbors are and what's happening there and what's the thinking of the Israeli government and I do, I just I think we need to kind of pull back a tiny bit from 48 because I'd like us to get into without losing all of our time what the diplomatic options are right now. If there is no option for ceasefire what are the options? What is the end game? What is Netanyahu's end game? Does he have one? Is there one for the Obama administration? What's happening here in terms of what are people thinking about and what are they saying publicly or privately around the situation because I don't think we're getting to that yet on this panel and I'd like to because we're not going to be able to address this question of the refugee crisis I'd like us to understand a little bit more what is the path to stopping what's happening right now and then what could an end game be and what would work what's the best case scenario at this point for next month, for this year for a year from now so I don't know I don't know if you want to start or go to Matt first do you want to talk about internal Israel issues or do you want to look a little bit at the Obama relationship with the Kerry initiative? Sure I can talk briefly about some diplomatic options here I mean first of all I just want to say how glad I am to be part of a panel that's talking about Gaza because I think it's just Gaza is a problem that I think is just so complicated and thorny that they would just like to kind of push it aside and try to work on other issues but I mean very much in the same way that if we try to focus on other things in the Middle East at various times the Israel-Palestine conflict will assert itself and draw our attention to it, Gaza in very much the same way if we try to deal with the issue itself while ignoring Gaza Gaza will assert itself for a lot of the reasons that you heard my colleagues say up here as far as diplomatic solutions listen when you want a diplomatic solution when you want a ceasefire the bottom line is you need to give both parties something of what they want not everything but something we don't obviously want to reward rocket fire I don't think we want to reward Netanyahu for exploiting the kidnapping of these teenagers as he has clearly done but the fact is Israel needs something Hamas needs something I think I was intrigued by the news that Bas was a party to the conversations we had a unity agreement or a transitional consensus agreement whatever term you want to use it seems to me that undermining that was clearly one of Netanyahu's goals but I think it's also clear that if we want to get to some kind of agreement you have to have some measure of Palestinian unity you have to have a leadership that has legitimacy and in my view the only way you get that is through elections and that's ostensibly that consensus government was heading so I I think one way of going about this would be to bring Abbas into this and if you can get to an agreement where Abbas is the one who is seen is delivering benefits where you have a ceasefire that gets to some of Hamas's demands and which also have been some of Fata and the PA's demands more generally is easing the closure even though you can find comments from Fata and PA officials that aren't that conciliatory but delivering an ease to the blockade such that it benefits Abbas and benefits the idea of unity although I'm not sure how realistic that is now unfortunately it seems that that unity consensus government might be one of the casualties here well it's interesting that one of the demands that Hamas listed for the ceasefire was that Israel stopped interfering with their efforts to reconcile with Fata so clearly reconciliation they desire reconciliation and how long has the split been going between Fata and Hamas is now 9 years old right and I think that is the moment when Hamas did you know eject or take over Gaza was when the closure really was was made very very serious so I think we saw the report of Hamas's own demands which include an airport I like the airport in Gaza so if we can talk them down from the airport perhaps we can get to some agreement you should have an airport if anyway I agree they did have one at one point as you know everyone knows but I'll just stop there and say I think the administration their constant refrain is the status quo is not sustainable it persists what happens to an unsustainable situation right it continues to deteriorate which is what we've seen but I think it's very interesting we saw just last week at the Haaretz Peace Conference Phil Gordon of the National Security Council I was not there I had left actually the day before but as American speeches go a pretty stern rebuke just asking a series of rhetorical questions how they expect to manage this problem of trying to rule over millions of Palestinians in perpetuity so I think there's an understanding that this situation is not something that can just be managed I await as someone who enjoys Obama administration's speeches but is constantly disappointed with the policy follow through what I really want to see is listen we cannot if and when we get to a ceasefire right now we can't just sit back and go back to the status quo because we'll see this again I'm glad I get to ask you this question in public I intended to ask it on the phone I don't really get domestic US politics I don't have a deep understanding in you do so you're my guru why would the Obama why would the White House say officially they made this official very anodyne statement to support Israel's right to self-defense and this happened I think one day after Phil Gordon addressing that conference in Tel Aviv gave a pretty stern lecture it's like you can't be a democracy if you're going to occupy these people indefinitely so figure it out there's a bit of a gap between those two messages what does that mean well I think the sense is publicly once rockets are running down that does sort of change the situation I think people can take issue with that at a very basic level when you have hundreds of rockets being fired you do want to see or the administration's view is that you want to show solidarity but in private my understanding is that there have been messages of restraint and we have to find a way out of this but I think Gordon's comments and they echo what Obama and Secretary Kerry themselves had been saying is that it's a fantasy to imagine that you can continue down this path let me get a name because she has not spoken at all and maybe we can talk a little bit about what's happening internal to Israel both I know that Lisa had been hoping that you'd speak a bit about Palestinian Israelis some people call them and what's happening in terms of tension internal to Israel among citizens rather not just civilians but also a little bit about the current political environment that Netanyahu has situated himself within and what that means and then I want to make sure that we get to this I'd like us to actually look at what the Hamas demands are because outside of the prisoner release demands they're actually they don't seem to my extremely lay perspective to be particularly large demand so I'm curious if we can even discuss those a little bit but let's start with this because Naomi has not spoken and talk a little bit about internal Israeli politics the rise and entrenchment of a very far right part of the Knesset and what and obviously the it seems to me that of course the murder of these Jewish teens was horrific but the response revenge attack seems to me the unfortunate bastard child of the price tagging incidents that have taken place and have targeted organizations like your own so perhaps we can kind of go into a couple of those things well I'd like to start with the fact that Israel is not monolithic anyone who thinks that Israel is monolithic isn't going to get anywhere towards solving the problem seeing the symbol of Israel and the only spokesperson for Israel is Bibi Netanyahu or even worse enough Tali Bennett or Yvette Lieberman that's wrong you have to look at the internal polling in Israel which tells us that up to 50% of Israelis share and I'm going to use a general word progressive values in some areas some of that has to do with peace and the occupation some of it has to do with social and economic equity or religious tolerance and there are overlaps but it's a complicated situation why is it that when we look at Israel we see Bibi and Naftali and nobody else that goes back that narrative goes back to where Lisa started in 2005 with the disengagement because from the Israeli point of view what that looked like is we left our army left we left some flourishing greenhouses and natural resources to be used by the Gazans and what did we get? we got Hamas and we got rockets so this shows that evacuating territory doing something about the occupation is not in Israel's interest but even more interesting what you got were a bunch of settlers who were running around Israel with orange ribbons many of us who were there that summer in 2005 remember orange being the new blue basically saying my country cannot possibly expel settlers Jews don't take Jews out of their home that was the slogan that was the slogan and guess what? Jews did take Jews out of their home Gush Katif was evacuated every last Israeli settler left Gaza and our theory is that this created enormous consternation among the powerful and well-funded settler community because look what happened all of a sudden Jews took Jews out of their homes and guess what? there wasn't a civil war there wasn't divine intervention to stop the disengagement it happened what we've seen since then is the development of a network very well funded usually by Americans institutions on the settler right ranging from sort of quasi fascist guerrilla media groups like Imturt Tsu to very respectable think tank types and a network that has propounded this right wing extremist ultra nationalist narrative without much response from the center of the left organized and not nearly as well funded so you ended up with a dominant narrative that says it's all about us it's all tribal this is the Jewish state everyone else can go hang including our Palestinian civilian fellow citizens you saw anti-democratic legislation to change the rules of the game being introduced in the Knesset you saw initiatives against the human rights community and us the new Israel fund because we're the largest supporter of the human rights community against an independent judiciary against the media against what we think of as democratic institutions so Israel has gone from being the only democracy in the Middle East which was always a pretty shaky definition to a place that is fighting internally for its own soul and there are thousands of Israelis that we work with that desperately want to change the narrative want to change the discourse want to change the facts on the ground and want to change the political situation so to look at this as black and white there's only one kind of Israeli not only is it wrong but it's not going to get us where we want to go which is a peaceful and prosperous and self-determining solution for both people thank you can I I have a few things I absolutely appreciate that and I think it's right to actually nuance the different populations we're talking about not withstanding that intervention there is a black and white dichotomy and that's a black and white dichotomy that discriminates against the Palestinian population regardless of where they reside as you pointed out so we here are focused and Sarah I understand you want us to zoom in on Gaza unfortunately this conversation can't happen without context we're back into this room and have a great lunch in 15 months again so that's why the context is so relevant so this is not a Hamas problem this is not a Gaza problem Israel has a problem with Palestinians whether it's the Palestinians where 20% of its population who have hired personal guards within Israel because they're afraid of settler attacks whether it's the Palestinian population in the West Bank the Palestinian population in Gaza Israel has a problem with all of these Palestinians and the question is how much do we discriminate against them not whether or not to discriminate against them but the degree to which we discriminate against them because to be a Jewish state you must discriminate against these non-Jewish citizens and some of the laws that you mentioned include the law of the Nekbet there is now penalty for any human rights organization that discusses the Nekbet by revocation of state funding Zochrot on May 15 which is an Israeli organization that works on giving tours of Israel and the demolished Palestinian villages was locked in their office by Israeli police officers so this is the internal conversation you speak about now let's take this a level of abstraction we keep starting from 2005 fine 2005 Israel withdrew but maintained the occupation there's no contest on that anybody that knows reality knows that the occupation is maintained 2006 Hamas wins parliamentary elections at that point sanctions are imposed immediately 2007 the US funds Palestinians that are part of Fatah to overthrow Hamas in the Gaza Strip and in a counter coup Hamas removes Fatah so it's not that this violent Hamas runs around and removes Fatah Fatah was funded to overthrow Hamas in 2007 from 2007 to the present we have this debilitating siege and the recurrence of aerial missile strikes before 2005 Israel occupied the Gaza Strip before the creation of Hamas in 1988 Israel occupied the Gaza Strip there are no rockets in the West Bank Israel has demolished the two-state solution there are no rockets from the Naqab within Israel where Israel wants to displace 70,000 of its Palestinian Israeli citizens and concentrate them there are no rockets from Jerusalem where Israel has non-Jewish Palestinian residency card holders and Israel is ethnically cleansing them explicitly as captured by Hamas I'm bringing this back to the day and the present what Hamas is demanding and its ceasefire is clear they've issued this morning to the Egyptians a ten-point plan all of their demands affirm life lift the siege the airport and the seaport reduce the buffer zone so farmers can farm reduce the buffer zone and the sea so fishermen can fish and eventually end the blockade all things that affirm life actually I thought that that was interesting when I looked at those demands that Hamas, it was very interesting there's an Egyptian journalist that I like to follow on Twitter and he live tweeted each of the demands in sequence I like summer I've been obsessively on Twitter in fact I still the crick in my shoulder I spent 14 hours straight on Twitter on Monday it's a bad thing but I did see the demands coming out live and I sort of DM'd a couple of friends of mine who are analysts with think tanks in New York and I said these demands are very reasonable and he said yes and they will never be answered and I think that's kind of what I wanted to answer before when you were asking I think that one of the things that's happened here is like there's a sort of frozen narrative and an unwillingness to acknowledge one another's humanity because of this complete separation that Israel really hardened after the 2005 withdrawal now closure of Gaza began well before 2005 even I visited Gaza many times when it was still when the settlers still lived there when there were still soldiers in Gaza Israeli soldiers in Gaza many years before 2005 Palestinians already needed permits to enter and leave Gaza if they wanted to work in Israel it was impossible to acquire these permits but it wasn't particularly easy but still Israelis who live in Ashkelon who live in Tel Aviv they had normal-ish interactions with ordinary Palestinians and in fact in 2005 when I was in Gaza doing interviews with Palestinians in Gaza City and in the beach camp and in Jabali and other camps around I conducted those interviews in Hebrew and Palestinians spoke fluent Hebrew because they'd worked all their lives in Israel so what's happened since 2005 is that Gazans they're no longer humans I think to most they're just things that live in that piece of land that's behind a wall you know we don't hear in Israel that sand rockets out exactly so there's really no interaction and it's I mean it's conflict 101 is that you demonize the enemy and you can only demonize the enemy if you've never interacted with that person the situation so what I see right now is just people in Israel even normal liberal people who have liberal social values and are perfectly secular they have a deep primordial fear of these people on the other side of the wall that they haven't seen and they've forgotten that a decade ago these were the people who babysat their children and worked with them in restaurants and yes they were occupied and they were disenfranchised and but there was you know they were human beings and I think this dehumanization process is having a terribly detrimental effect on the diplomatic process because it makes it very easy for the government to resell its extremely radical uncompromising line to the people I think that's right first of all let's not forget that when Israelis tell recent history they start with the second end to five and you know I mean that's the problem where if you start going back in the dual narrative of victimization do you go back to 1948 do you go back to the 1890s and we all have different starting places for these narratives I don't think we here can resolve those existential issues we can talk about what we've got now and how we can resolve it going forward clearly there have to be major changes in Israeli society clearly people like the activists that we work with in Israel need the tools, need the support need the megaphones to have at least as loud a voice as the people on the extreme ultra-nationalist right the kind of people who after the murder of the teenagers found at a website that 35,000 people signed on to saying the people demand revenge on the flip side of that there are people who are doing everything they can to bring the Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel together in some kind of some kind of togetherness some kind of dialogue even under the escalation that we've been saying over the last several weeks which indeed has been horrific the only reason I don't want to go backwards is because there is no starting point any liberal Israeli will tell you about in 2002 when I would not allow my son to go get a pizza in downtown Jerusalem on a Saturday night so we can do that forever we can say this is where we are now we've got these very polarized narratives we've got a situation in Gaza that is getting worse what do we have to change on both sides to make it better I think that that's I was I had hesitated to bring up the second because I do think that we've seen the kind of post-traumatic stress disorder thread that has been maintained and yes every Israeli you speak to will mention it and I did the feeling terrified during the Second Intifada there was huge amounts of anxiety and I tried not to go back to that because as you said there's no starting point the question is I would like with this panel and then I think in a moment we're going to have to open up to the room to avoid using using words or phrases like ethnic cleansing I'm going to take issue with that I want us to try to back away from those kind of words and in general I'd like us to try to find our way back to the panel itself which is what is the path to diplomatic solution is there a savior anywhere is there a European that could come in is there what is this because the fact is that there are two people in this tiny slice of land and I'm not going to mean to sound facile but what now so since you took issue I get to respond right actually no I'm not I'm a moderator because what I'm doing is I'm shutting down you opened it and I responded and as my role as moderator I'm sorry I'm not going to let us go down that path I think it's just going to devolve and I don't want to go there I'm sorry I'm in control of this panel I'm not going down that path I'm sorry but I'm not maybe we can talk about it so may I I don't think it's a good idea to go down this path it's not a path may I interject may I interject? so I'll try to I'll try to be the good Arab on the panel then I suppose so I no I look with all due respect there was a poll that I shared with Lisa this morning from was it channel 2 news I updated the 53% of Israelis polled I believe it was yesterday do not support an end to the bombing of Gaza that's probably right okay so you can argue with me about whether Israel is monolithic and I think that is a fair argument I don't think as a humanist I have no intention of demonizing anyone on the basis of their nationality or the fact that they have applied it as a color blue but what I am interested in doing is pointing out that where you claim there is nuance there is simply black and white there is an occupation of Gaza today 1.9 million people today do not have the right to self determination 80% of their refugees and they continue to be bombed they have nowhere to go we must begin from that if you don't want to be here in 15 months talking about the same thing as far as what comes next whether or not you like the tone of our voices today this happens to be the sentiment on the ground in Gaza so I will tell you I was there two weeks after the last bombing campaign in November of 2012 and I sat with young Gazans at the age of 20 to 25 people who are secular people who wear pants and skirts and no hijab people who would be welcome in this panel I sat with them and on my way to go meet with them in Gaza city I passed a phalange a row a row a phalanx sorry whatever the word is English is my second language forgive me and I was there it was the same as the people carrying RPGs on their shoulders and when I got there I asked them I said clearly you are not an Islamist Rana who is educated in the United States Muhammad who is an LSE graduate these are people who are on twitter and are doing a fantastic job under the bombing campaign what do you think about that and they said it is the resistance you have to understand like it or not, Palestinians in Gaza, I'm talking about 20 year old, 20 something year old Palestinians who otherwise don't care to be associated with Hamas or with Islamism or with any kind of fundamentalism and not even religion in some cases. They have no other choice. And so when you ask me what is the diplomatic solution, I don't know how you can forge one without a constituency that believes in whatever that diplomatic effort is. So the first question I'd like to pose is, why is Mahmoud Abbas negotiating on their behalf? Where does he derive his legitimacy? And if he were able to agree with the Egyptians and with the Israelis and with the Americans on the terms of a ceasefire, why should anyone in Gaza accept it? There are people in Gaza today, Palestinians who have not been outside of that 25 mile strip of land much less to the West Bank where Mahmoud Abbas is supposedly the president, right? And how many years? I mean, do the math for me, right? The permit system began in 1991. Also was in 1993. Anyone who was born essentially after 1993 has not seen the West Bank except with very few cases. Or if they win the Air Force. Right. So it would be tantamount, it would, well precisely, right? I don't know if anyone got the illusion there. But he is, thank you very much. So the real issue here is you have to, as Americans sitting in this room or those of you who are from other nationalities, you have to imagine that a war was being waged on your country and someone else's leader was negotiating on your behalf. That's what's happening right now in Gaza. That is not a diplomatic solution. That is a formula for further conflict and further resentment among the Palestinians of Gaza. So I don't have a problem with terminology. I think what you were trying to do was just to I was just trying to move us on and I'm sorry that it went in that direction. It doesn't matter. If the room wants to boom you, that's fine. All I was trying to do was trying to move us in a different direction. It's totally cool. I didn't mean to be stepping on people, but I think that this is a good direction. Totally. And they're very cool. They are very cool. Yeah. I would like to know who is an interlocutor that should have been approached other than Abbas and what the problem right now is that the way that the... There's a vacuum. That's the problem. And the problem right now, and I think on both sides of this and on all pieces, and I would actually include the Obama administration, there's this sort of necrotic leadership and necrotic understanding of the situation. What is necrotic? Yeah, what is necrotic? I think that... Like a corpse. Yeah, I mean, I think that we're seeing the same names again and again and without any solutions. That's the whole problem. That's the whole problem. Now I'm interrupting. Okay, no, no, no, please interrupt. But I think that it's... What I'm trying to do is just say, what can we do, given that this was the purview of the panel, was to look at who are we talking to and who can make decisions and how can decisions be made? And I think that, yes. Well, I just wanted to respond to what Simmer said. I think on the point of Abbas, I mean, I see what you're saying. Someone who, from the point of view of Gazans has done nothing for them and perhaps doesn't even represent them. But I think we saw some halting and yet I think serious steps toward reconciliation. I think a lot of people expected that this new government would fall apart soon, but it had not yet. But I think if the goal, as I think it should be, and if you disagree, please tell me, should be some unity of the Palestinian movement. And I understand, I mean, they haven't had elections, although they are way overdue. Abbas's mandate is highly questionable. But in terms of who speaks for the Palestinian national movement, according to the international community, and I will use that word, it's the head of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas. He's the president of the PA. So I think he is, in some ways, the correct address to try and deliver benefits that would have, you know, for a ceasefire. So you think that he should just be completely cut out of this or just kind of, I'd love to hear you kind of dig into that a little bit. Well, I mean, I think that first of all, an important caveat here, an important sort of clarification is that there is no unity government. Reconciliation. Everyone needs to understand there is no reconciliation government either. There is a government of technocrats, which is to say people who do not belong to either party, who are instituted prior to this latest conflagration in the West Bank and Gaza, which is to say they haven't had a chance to do anything, demonstrate anything. And certainly over the last eight days, they have been completely incapacitated. And the perfect proof of that, by the way, is the fact that the three Israeli teens who were murdered, who were kidnapped and murdered, were murdered and kidnapped in area C, which represents 60% of the West Bank, which is under the full control of the Israeli military. So it was under their watch that all of this happened. That's an important point. Now, when you asked me whether or not Mahmoud Abbas represents the Palestinian people, I think that what I would pose right back to you was let's ask the Palestinian people. And who has done that? Who has given the Palestinian people a chance to vote? My father is a refugee from 1967. He hasn't had the opportunity to vote a single time in his life on who leads him as a Palestinian. I wanna know when we are going to be asked. Now, Mahmoud Abbas, again, point of clarification, his term as president of the Palestinian Authority ended nine years ago, in January of 2005. On what basis does he claim to represent the Palestinian people? Now, I can appreciate that as someone who is trying to forge a diplomatic solution to this, you sort of throw your hands up in the air and say, well, okay, what do we do now? We just sort of wait for seven million Palestinians worldwide to tell us what to do. And that, in point of fact, I don't think it's that complicated. I think that if you look at the Palestinian national movement today, what you see is something that resembles what it looked like in the 1960s, when you had a non-aligned movement worldwide, when you had people talking about apartheid, you had them talking about boycott, divestment, and sanctions, in the case of South Africa. Today, you have the very same movement. And that movement is unified, unified in its ranks and its message worldwide.   You'll see people worldwide speaking with one voice about what needs to happen in Israel and Palestine. Those are the people we should be talking to. And who makes commitments on behalf of that movement that can be honored and enforced? Well, I mean, I think it depends on what kind of commitments you're talking about. Now, if you're talking about an end to the bombing today, well, then what we're gonna have is a temporary solution. And that temporary solution will be based on the 10 points, hopefully, that Hamas put forward today, which I do agree with Noura, our very sort of affirming of humanity. We're not asking for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. We're asking for basically the right to move, move out of Israel to access healthcare, to access education, to be able to fish, to be able to travel for various purposes as any free people should be able to do. Now, that's something that can be done, but we have to understand that it will be temporary. If we leave this room thinking that something called a ceasefire is going to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we're going to get nowhere. I think we're talking about just a ceasefire though, weren't we? I mean, we're not talking about resolving the entire Israeli, we're talking about this micro-problem, right? Because if we're trying to resolve the entire conflict, we're gonna have this. That's not gonna happen. We're gonna need another hour. We're gonna need just a few. But there has been a lot of cynicism amongst Israeli analysts too. Most of this is not being translated into English. There is sort of an anger and sort of a despair over the Netanyahu government. And one analyst in Israel said to me, he seems to look at these every two years. This is the third major military operation against Gaza in five years. It's like there's no plan. There's no short-term plan. There's no medium-term plan. Just every couple of years go in there and one guy called it mowing the lawn. You go in there, you get rid of the, and Yossi Melman, who he's probably one of the best known security issues of correspondence in Israel. Yeah, he tweeted in Hebrew. I think that it's time to stop because my intelligence sources are telling me that we've taken out 50% of the rocket launchers and 40% of the rockets. So, you know, and then so there's a cease-fire. But what the end came up, part of the Israeli military. But even the military people are saying it has to be a political solution. Right, yeah. Elise is absolutely right. That people in the middle, we're not even talking about the idealistic lefties who have been against all of these wars from the beginning or the human rights community that have criticized what the Israeli military has been doing. We're talking about mainstream journalists, mainstream military people, mainstream security people who are saying it's not working. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So Netanyahu has been called weak by people in the center. He is being outflanked on the right. So I thought you were just saying go and reoccupy Gaza. Yeah, reoccupy Gaza and don't stop until you've eradicated Hamas. And God forbid I should ever feel sorry publicly for Bibi Netanyahu, but he has an almost unsolvable political problem. He really does. Given the governing coalition that he has given his own apparent distaste for being outflanked on the right, but it is not like Israel is looking at this bombing and saying, wow, we're finally gonna do it this time. There is an enormous amount of cynicism about what this is actually going to accomplish. Even in terms of basic security. Are we suggesting then that the 200 plus people who were murdered in the last eight days were murdered on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu who's political troubles? Now what we're suggesting? No, because that's not. They are the latest tragic casualties in a conflict that has evolved this way and that way, you're right to see this as part of a long-term conflict. You can't see it. 200 people were killed just to save Bibi this week. We all know better than that. We all know better than that. Can let Nora jump in. We have to do it. We have questions. We only have 20 minutes left. I'd like to jump in. Let Nora jump in for a moment and then we'll open up for questions. Really, really quick. We have 19 minutes for questions. I was really patient and was listening. I think everybody saw that, so this is gonna be really quick. I would just like to say that part of it is what Samet is suggesting. No, this is contextualized, of course, but part of it is in response to the precarious political position that Bibi Netanyahu finds himself in. And we can demonstrate if we want to discuss context how this was a provocation by Bibi Netanyahu in the West Bank as well as in the Gaza Strip. So there is an argument to be made of how much of this is in response to domestic political considerations and therefore how devalued Palestinian life is. As far as how do we then pivot to the next place where there is a cessation of this kinetic violence that we see today, we need to make room for international mechanisms to step in. The US has been more of an impediment than a help in this situation because of the unequivocal diplomatic financial and military support that it provides to Israel and has prevented these international mechanisms from playing their role. So that would be my first suggestion. It would involve actually either asking the US to do something about it, to hold Israel to account to the US's own laws, including the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act to which all recipients of US foreign aid are subject. And if we don't want to hold them account to US laws, ask them to step aside. Stop vetoing the mechanisms of the UN Security Council that can possibly move us into a better stage. In terms of the ceasefire being negotiated by Egypt and Sisi, right now what you saw happen the in these back rooms amounts to Egypt actually colluding with Israel in order to excise Hamas from this process, which is not, there's no way to attain a ceasefire without the inclusion of Hamas. We have to accept that. The third is we have to, the condition of lifting the ceasefire must include lifting the siege and finally on ethnic cleansing. This is not a term I'm using. This is something rooted in international law since we started with that. It's also known as forced population transfer. If that sounds better for people, I will use that terminology. Forced population transfer means the settlement of one's own civilian population into the territory it occupies or the removal of an occupied population from their lands. Israel is doing both. That's forcibly transferring that population. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't think there's, I don't think you said a single thing. I don't think that any member of this panel would dispute anything that Nora just said. Really, I don't. I mean, I think that- I was just clarifying. So- If anybody took issue with the term, I'm just clarifying because I know we all agree because it's obvious. I agree. Okay, so. We now, because of your intervention, by the way, if I ever need a good lawyer, you're it. We have to- Let's open it to the room. We have 60 minutes for questions. Sarah's going to take the, I'm going to choose the people who ask questions. We have people with mics. Please do not start asking a question until the person with the mic has come to you. And please ask a question. Don't make a speech. Thank you. Okay, the man on the tie here on the front. Thank you very much for a very interesting discussion. My question concerns who represents Hamas and how? Obviously, President Abbas has a certain role in representing the Palestinian people at negotiations of various kinds. But the issue I think in this case is how he represents the interested parties. Is he consulting with Hamas since nobody will talk to Hamas and Hamas is very clearly an interested party. I was a little bit confused by the sort of positions on this. Obviously, somebody has to represent Hamas since nobody else will talk to them directly but there is indirect communication and shouldn't have Abbas be consulting with them very carefully saying, look, this is what we came up with. What do you think? Yeah, he wants to take that. I think it very- Yeah, that would be good. Yes, ideally since there is some, although to meet the terms of US law, the government that we discussed earlier, the technocratic government does not have ministers who are actually members of Hamas. They've all signed on to the Quartet principles, et cetera. But yes, ideally as someone who is claiming with some mandate, it's questionable, as I said before, to represent and speak for the Palestinian national movement, there should be some communication between Abbas and Hamas. I'm not sure how much that is, especially if he's one who's trying to negotiate a ceasefire. But again, I can't really answer the question of how, I mean, I know he himself is quite hostile to them, but as someone who is representing the Palestinian people and trying to negotiate a ceasefire on their behalf in Gaza, at least that part of the population that lives in Gaza, it's not a satisfactory answer to your question in any respect, I know. I mean, Abbas has been involved in these conversations and of course Hamas's representatives are in Cairo. So they are both, it's just, there are always these little, not little, but there are always internal rivalries that can interfere with the natural diplomatic process. So as far as I know, and I've spoken to quite a lot of people who are there, both Hamas representatives and Fatah representatives are in Cairo now working on this ceasefire agreement. They just haven't come to an agreement yet. Yeah, it's Hamas. No, no, no, you don't have to have too many people, sorry. You don't have to have many people. Wait, does Summer or Nora wanna, either one of you, wanna jump in? I feel like Summer sort of got into this already a bit, but maybe. No, I mean, I think the only evidence we have of what Abbas has or hasn't done is Hamas's reaction to the ceasefire proposal yesterday. And it was very clear at that point that although Abbas welcomed it, Hamas had never heard of it. So clearly he was having discussions without consulting them. Now, that has changed today as you noted in the sense that they're all in Cairo. But again, you have to sort of acknowledge that the reason Hamas is in Cairo today is because they refuse to accept the terms that Israel is putting forward. So. Right here, yes. Thank you for the discussion. It's important I echo it. Matt does, my name is Blake Selzer. I work for an international humanitarian organization here in Washington. And going back to the title of the discussion, Israel Gaza potential for diplomatic resolution to the violence. I was wondering why do you think no members, no policy makers here in Washington are talking about the durable solutions? All I've heard is negotiating a ceasefire and actually I'm not sure I've heard a policy maker even call for a ceasefire in here in Washington. So I just wanna give you thoughts on why folks aren't talking about durable solutions and I did have the opportunity to go to Gaza with the humanitarian work I work for. And my wife and I are also hosting a student from Gaza this summer in the discussions with Israeli students on a dialogue program. So thanks. There's a great question and it's something I was hoping we would get to which was about what, I mean you've said, Nora said that the Obama administration has obviously fallen down and has described it itself. The question is, are we hearing anything from the political class here? I mean, does anyone wanna grab that? I think Matt is well placed. And so I would just add that the Obama administration, I would ask Matt, just to say that the Obama administration in the beginning of its first term actually showed willingness to find a durable solution but was shut down for domestic political reasons. That the opposition to Obama's overtures did not come internationally but actually came domestically from his own Congress who lined up in order to actually slam Obama for veering beyond, I guess, the accepted, the speak. Part of the problem that we're facing is the taboos that we have here in Washington that are all short-term in nature and point to political expediency but that communities are hovering everywhere else in the world, including within Israel amongst Israelis.  It's part of how our system is broken. It's part of why children can be massacred in Newtown and then we still don't have gun reform. It has to do with that political process, but I'll... No, I think, frankly, that's a great comparison right there is that there is policy inertia changing in the face of very effective domestic constituencies. It's very difficult to change decades and decades of policy, but I think there's also something, and this is one of the reasons I'm so glad to have this panel is that there's just a simple stories cell in politics and the very simple story is that everything was cool and then these rockets started. I mean, something like this where we're introducing a bit more complexity and a bit more context and nuance and history into it, I think it's very important, but at the very, at a basic level, that's a simple story. That's a music political lift. First of all, there are some changes. There's certainly changes happening within the American Jewish community over the last 10 years in terms of what can be debated and in terms of who is invited to sit on a platform and have a voice. Ordinarily, when I am sitting on such a platform, I am sitting at the far left, as it were. However, the point is the new Israel fund, J Street, Americans for Peace now, and even Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a pro-BDS organization, often have voices that are heard within the American Jewish community. And that's not even the whole political enchilada. I saw something yesterday. 40% of American Jews believe that it's, in some sense, God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. 80% of evangelicals believe that God gave Israel to the Jewish people. So even though we are doing what we can within the Jewish community to change the terms of debate, to debate honestly, what is going on in Israel, to use the word occupation and say, sorry, it's occupation. And to try to move the debate here to where it is in Israel, where people use that kind of language all the time, it's gonna have to progress beyond the American Jewish community. Now, as the one person on the platform who used to have to debate the National Rifle Association, because I do hopeless causes, I'll say that there is more nuance, there is more subtlety, and there is actually, I think, more room for hope in moving the discussion about the Israel-Palestine conflict to an honest place than there is on gun control. This one right here in the front with the glasses. Hi, I'm Helena Cobb, and I'm the owner of Just World Books. Happens to be the publisher of. Great book of short stories called Gaza Rights Back, that I urge you all to read if you didn't get the chance to meet some of the authors when they were here earlier this year. My question has to do with, well, first of all, I wish we'd started with a moment of silence. We have seven minutes. Okay, a moment of silence. We can do that. Two people can do that on their own, but please just ask your question very quickly. So, 210 people have been killed. It's hard. So, one of them was Israeli. As Nora said, you wanna ask, or was it Matt, the US government to either, how to put this politely, defecate or get off the pot of dominating the diplomacy. What are the forces in international society that one would call on or mobilize or rally to replace the US, which has actually monopolized the diplomacy for the past 40 years? This is actually, I wanted to get into this question of what are the Europeans saying, and is there some, yeah, and if we could a little bit, Summer, you wanna go or Nora? Just really quickly, I think it's an excellent question, and it really, as much as we protest the US's intransigence and complicity on this issue for over four decades, the truth is that there aren't other parties scrambling to take its place, right? So, that's the honest, honest truth. There are, however, other parties that are willing to participate, and we've seen overtures from Turkey, from South Africa, from Brazil, who have shown a willingness to participate more actively. How they do that, how we engage them is something that we're still at a loss for, oh, and I forgot, did I say South Africa? Okay, so these are countries that are very interested in India, actually, so it's the brick, so in China as well. There is a coalition of countries that's willing to do more. The question is, how do they intervene in a way where they don't have to accept the entire mantle of the US's work and legacy and actually step in more meaningfully? That would mean a shift within US policy, no matter how you cut it. And so, I don't know where to start with that. I mean, do we appeal to these countries diplomatically? Part of the problem is also the Palestinian leadership, which has not appealed to those countries. And my own advocacy within the UN in the aftermath of the 2008, 2009 attack on Gaza, when I went to the Gaza Strip for the second time on a legal fact-finding delegation and then approached the UN missions, their main issue of why they wouldn't do more to implement the Goldstone Report was because the Palestinian leadership didn't ask them to. So there's also a problem of Palestinians. So yes, there are some black and white issues, but there are things that are very nuanced. And we are in a moment where these pieces have not fallen into place. In the back, woman in the back. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I'm Timothy Curry. I'm from the Department of Homeland Security, but I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland. And following up on that, we've seen Sri Lanka, we've seen Northern Ireland, we've seen South Africa, we've seen Chechnya to a degree. So rather than looking for specific state actors, is there a way in which we can look at non-state actors and former combatants who have resolved seemingly intractable conflicts? And what would be a mechanism that you think would be useful for them to fill the void that you're so eloquently pointing out? Thank you. So I think part of the problem is the US has to make room. So it has to make room. The UN Security Council has a number of mechanisms under Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, which gives it enforcement authority that can actually work in order to create some sort of stability to move, to actually fill the void with these other diplomatic overtures. To enact those powers, the US has to refrain from using its veto power. That includes not using its veto power to even do something as simple as having peacekeepers on the ground, which might be a first step. So the main issue, I hate to say it so crudely, but the main issue is to really neutralize the US's blocking of these international mechanisms that do have the ability to function like the International Court of Justice, like the International Criminal Court, like these Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 authority. And I think that when the US lifts also, it's a threat of reprisal on other countries for their diplomatic overtures, for their involvement, we may see more willingness from those countries to participate and even to cough up more funding to do that. May I just add to that very quickly? I think that I used to work at the World Bank and we did a set of, we did a scenario building exercise in which the World Bank and the IMF and other so-called Bretton Woods organizations looked at the 25 years into the future, basically. And the question then became, does the World Bank need China, the BRICS essentially, Brazil, Russia, India, and China more than they need the World Bank? And the answer is clearly yes. If you look at, within the last couple of weeks, new information has come out about these countries forming their own version of the IMF, essentially. So I foresee a future where 10 years down the road, the US will not have the leverage that it has in these international organizations. And perhaps then we can sort of wield the diplomatic power that we need. There's a moment in the back. I think, yes. You? Thanks. My name is Francesca Albanese. I'm an international lawyer. Before being in DC, I was in fact in working for the United Nations in Jerusalem. I have two questions, and they are both for both, for all panelists, but the second is in particular for Naomi Pice. You don't need to be an international law scholar or student to know that diplomacy is not necessarily a mean to resolve conflict, but to prevent it, to prevent them. So why this is never used when they come to the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians? Because if these had been used, it could have probably avoided the violence that it's ongoing in Gaza. The second question regards the ceasefire proposal that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad just put forward. It seems that there is concurrence then that those demands are pretty reasonable and normal. So why there is skepticism about the fact that they will be even remotely considered? And what the Israeli public that is normally not heard, do you think of that? Thank you. I'd like to answer the second question, and then I'll, because actually that particular question bothers me a lot too. Why this massive disparity between what most of the world sees as reasonable and what Israelis see as reasonable. I don't know if any of you have ever lived in, for an extended period in a place where you have an ongoing low intensity conflict.  So as one friend very eloquently put it to me, right now Israelis are very fearful, but there's quite a big difference between fear and danger. People in Gaza are in imminent danger. Israelis fear the rockets coming in, but they're not actually, with the one exception of the man who went out to pass suites out to soldiers near Eris and was killed yesterday. There haven't been any Israeli casualties. Israelis are very afraid, you know. They're afraid of suicide bombers. They're afraid of Arabs in general. And I offer this explanation. I hope it will be taken as such without, not as a value judgment, you know. I'm not saying that I espouse those views or I'm just saying that this is a mentality. You have an entire country that's really in the grips of a PTSD. People, I lived in Tel Aviv all through the time when there was a suicide bombing every day. And I remember how people responded. I remember how friends of mine wouldn't meet me in cafes and wouldn't go to public places.  They'll say, yeah, but my kid can't take the bus to school, you know. I'm really sorry for them, but it's very, very difficult to combat that mentality. You know, it's kind of like, I try. But it's a big factor. These are people who vote. They vote, you know, based on their emotions and not with their heads a lot of time, as most of us do, I think. And you know, when people say, okay, lift the siege on Gaza and the blockade on Gaza and allow people to have freedom of movement, the first thing is ready, the average is ready, we'll say to you on what? And they'll strap on suicide bomb belts and come in and blow themselves up in our cafes and Tel Aviv, no thanks. And at the end of the day, these same people will also say whether they're voting with their heads or their hearts, Hamas is an organization that does not acknowledge our right as a people to be here. Hamas is an organization that denies us as Jews the right of self-determination in our homeland. Let's just say that there is an awful lot of evidence that Hamas is never going to get to or has not yet gotten to where Abbas has gotten to. In terms of recognition of Israel's right to exist, in a way that provides for Jewish self-determination, and notice I'm being very careful about the words that I'm selecting here, I think that for the people who are living there in that enclave who are watching what they think of as their neighborhood deteriorate around them with what is going on in Iraq, what is going on in Syria, what is going on in Egypt, the sense of insecurity that you're alluding to is also grounded in political fact until there is mutual acceptance of the right of these two peoples to live in this land. I'm not going to go two-state, I'm not going to go one-state, we support a two-state solution, we think that's what's going to work if we can get there. Nonetheless, if you don't understand where the Israelis are coming from, even the liberal ones, even the ones who want to change, even the ones who really want to make peace and there are many more of them than you think, then you're not going to get there. I think you have to have the last word because we're... Yes, how are you gonna vote? Do you have time for another question? No, no, let's just... Okay, I lost my train of thought. So you were talking about, remind me again the last point that you made, you were saying about understanding the internal, the political facts, right?  And if you look at the history of Israel's engagement with Mahmoud Abbas or rather with Yasser Arafat and with Fatah, prior to what year was it? It was 1996 that Yasser Arafat sent a letter to Bill Clinton saying we have removed 30 of the 36 clauses in our national covenant that are offensive to Israel. Okay, and if you look at that national covenant, I'm sure that it would insult you more than anything that Hamas has said in the last few years. So the only way that that was possible is that the Israelis sat down with Fatah, with Yasser Arafat, and we were able to negotiate that. Now, I don't see how there's any way out of this crisis if we keep demonizing the people who are in Gaza, even Hamas, to be honest. And the real, I mean, the honest truth is that you cannot bomb them in the submission. And when Israelis have PTSD and feel fearful, they satiate that fear by dropping F-16 bombs on people. The Gazans lobbed a few rockets over Israel and those are both awful things. The only way we're gonna get over it is if we sit down and talk to each other. That's it. That's a great way to end this. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


This trustee August is hotter than ever at Appalachian Wireless as they are slashing all normal contract pricing on all smartphones by 50% when you sign up for service. Better service, bigger saving, serving you for the last 25 years at Appalachian Wireless. A tribute took place today in the T. Berry community of Floyd County where a large crowd gathered as recognition long past due was finally bestowed on Homer Hamilton. Today Tinker Fork or Route 3380 was named in his honor for both his service to his country during World War II and also his service to his community when he returned home from the war. A spirit of service that those in attendance say was just part of who Homer Hamilton was. The thing that that I think is so unique about really a guy like Homer is how much he had given but how much he continued to give you know you've heard of his wonderful service to our country. But what I remember about Homer is when he came back here, Homer would always help people. He was always doing something for somebody. He was always collecting money for a family that couldn't afford whatever it was they couldn't afford. He was always driving kids to the prom. He was always trying to do something no matter what it was big or small to help people in his community. Hamilton's daughter Charlotte Frazier says that the recognition was a long time coming but something of which they are very proud. It means the world to us. We've we've wanted to do something like this but we never didn't think that we could get it done and we just kept on kept on and kept on. He was just a wonderful dad and we had a wonderful mom to go with it. With the new sign in place the national and civic pride shown by Homer Hamilton is not something soon to be forgotten. Reporting from T. Berry in Floyd County for EKB news, I'm Jackson Ladder.


Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not attend President Biden's inauguration ceremony and she had a very, very good reason for that. Before members of the media or even a Republicans attack her for this, she had a great reason. And the reason is that she was setting an example for everyone else. She was standing with striking workers. So as Lucy Diavolo of Teen Vogue reports, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez skipped the January 20th inauguration festivities in Washington, D.C. for a strike. The Congresswoman known as AOC showed up at Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx just outside the border for Congressional District to support a local teamsters union whose workers are a big reason New York City has fresh fruit on a reliable basis. Claudia Irizaria Ponte, a reporter for the New York-based publication The City, who covers the Bronx, captured Ocasio-Cortez arriving in the picket line Wednesday evening with a pack of coffee and hand warmers wearing work boots. Irizaria Ponte also captured part of a speech AOC gave on a bullhorn at the picket. Ocasio-Cortez invited everyone to pull up and show solidarity with the union. Another clip from Gothamist's WNYC News editor David Cruz captured more video of Ocasio-Cortez telling the workers their efforts are a way of asking for transformational change for workers across the United States. Speeches from Assemblymember Amanda Septimo and New York City Public Advocate Jumani Williams were also caught on tape. What we're doing here today is taking the upside down and making it right side up, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd. What's the strike about? According to Irizaria Ponte's reporting for The City, the strike launched after negotiations broke down between the union and management over a $1 an hour raise. Management offered only $0.32 an hour as a raise, prompting the teamsters' local 202 union to launch a strike Sunday night. In a January 16th statement, the union said the strike came after negotiations broke down when management refused to budge from a stingy offer for workers who kept New Yorkers fed through the pandemic. Now here's a clip of part of AOC's speech shared by the reporter who was mentioned. So this is really important because I think currently I'm not alone in saying that the left is kind of lost right now. We don't really have a national leader. Joe Biden is president, but Bernie is not the president. And sure, he does have power in government, but he's not the leader that he was during the primary. He has a job to do. So the left kind of seems somewhat lost. I feel somewhat lost, but it's important that we get reminded what we need to do. And that's why I think that AOC standing in solidarity with striking workers is important because this is what the left has to do for the next four years. We have to make it our goal to build power on the ground. We've gotten so close to the White House that we kind of thought maybe we can actually implement change from the top down, but it never works that way. It always comes from the bottom up. And the way that we actually institute change is by building power at the local level. And the Gravel Institute put out a phenomenal tweet explaining exactly how you do this. They write, Joe Biden is not our friend. We cannot beg him and the Democratic Party for table scraps. The left needs its own infrastructure, its own institutions, its own basis of power. Organize your workplaces, support local trade unions and tenants unions, and join groups like Democratic Socialists of America, support groups like Sunrise Movement, People's Policy Project, and Progressive International that are building political coalitions for left policies and talk with other lefties where you live. So this is really important. You can make the biggest difference at the local level. Join DSA and if there's no chapter near you, start your own chapter. This is what you have to do. Like we can't continue to remain isolated in our own bubbles. I mean, during the pandemic, we don't have much of a choice, right? But once this is over, there's no excuses. We have to organize, you know, find like-minded people in your area who believe in workers' rights, you know, stand up for local workers and unions, organize your workplace. This is how we actually affect change.  And then if we have a lot of organizing on the ground, hopefully the aggregate effect that we see nationally will be that we start to really make a difference because currently the left has a lot of ambitious plans, but we have no power. And the problem is that you can't really implement change if you have no power. And the way that you get power is to come together, organize. And this is how you do it. So AOC, it's important that she does this because she's leading by example. And look, whatever you can do to support organizations, you have to do it. So I joined DSA a couple of years ago. And it's important that these types of organizations that like field local candidates, that they have money and resources, you can also join groups such as the Sunrise Movement, which is a good recommendation because they push at the national level for very specific changes related to climate change. We need to build our infrastructure. That's one thing that's been lacking. It's why we haven't been as effective. And I think that as we kind of grow our collective base of power, we will actually start to see more change, at least somewhat quicker. So this is the way forward. Like we have to all recommit to organize at the local level, organize with folks around us if we actually do want to see the change we're talking about. So it starts by doing things like this, supporting these sorts of efforts.


each and every one of you for everything which you are doing in this inexorable, inevitable move towards 100% renewable energy by the year 2050. So we thank you all because you are the ones who are making this happen at the grassroots in the United States. In every one of your areas, as I'm just looking at, hydropower and marine energy and biodiesel and the passive building standards to wind and solar and all the way down the line, we are winning because on every one of these issues is one thing that separates us from the fossil fuel industry, we are right and they are wrong. And what has happened is that we have been able to knock down these barriers to entry in state after state across the country in order to make it possible for the renewable electricity standards to continue to drive this revolution, to have tax breaks at a federal level that drive this revolution, to have national appliance standards that drive this revolution, to have national fuel economy standards that drive this revolution. And what has happened finally is that we are now giving incentives to the competition which the fossil fuel industry has received for 100 years. And once you begin to level the playing field, what has happened is that we now have 360,000 employees in the wind and solar industry. We will have 500,000 employees by the year 2020. We have 3 million employees in the clean energy sector in total. In 2016, there were 50,000 new employees added to the solar sector alone, 50,000 equaling the total number of coal miners in the United States and that happened in one year with the solar industry. And we have to work to make sure that this only gets better. In 2016, there were 137,000 roofers and electricians, blue-collar workers who were installing solar technology across the United States of America. President Trump gives press conferences talking about the 50,000 coal miners, those blue-collar workers. Well, what about 137,000 electricians and roofers installing solar last year? Do they not deserve to also be given the pat on the back, the thank you from America, the message that we are going to continue to encourage them? The same thing is true in the wind industry, the number of steel workers, the number of other workers who have to do that work and in each and every one of your industries, the same thing is true. This clean energy revolution is the greatest blue-collar job creation engine in generations in the United States of America and we're going to fight here in this building and on Capitol Hill to make sure that this revolution continues to be protected because the planet is warming. There are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in massive preventative health care for this planet. 2016 was the warmest year ever recorded. Topping 2015, which was the warmest year ever recorded. Topping 2014, which was the warmest year ever recorded. 16 of the 17 most dangerously warm years ever recorded have occurred since the year 2000. This is real. Donald Trump is in denial by 2030 at existing projections. Mara Lagoon will turn into Mara Lagoon down in Florida. That's how fast the tides are rising. So it's up to us to continue this incredible revolution. Scott Scar, you have got my friend now, when he mentioned when he came into my office in Congress in my first year, that was 41 years ago and he came in. The industries had their foot on the neck of the renewable energy revolution. We could have had the revolution 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. But now it is unstoppable and we're just going to have to fight them because they're coming at the state level to try to stop it. They'll be coming at the federal level to try to stop it. But with your help, we are going to be successful. Thank you all. It's my great honor to be with you.


Hey weirdos, I wanted to let you know that I'm not going to be posting an episode tonight Friday, February 19th. I just voiced it and so I sound a little hoarse here But it's gonna take me a while to put it together. It actually started growing on me and what originally started is maybe like a 45-minute episode I think is gonna be closer to an hour and a half now And you'll understand why once I put it together. I really hope it's something that you all like I'm gonna be breaking a few rules doing it because I'll be I'll be using some some clips that Are from other people you'll again you'll understand we're gonna be talking about rock music and so I'll be playing Some snippets of songs, so I'm sure the copyright police will probably get me on YouTube or something like that But I don't care copyrights be damned. I'm gonna share it because I think it's interesting and you need to hear it Anyway, I'll be producing that tomorrow Saturday the 20th, so be looking forward then all right. Thanks a lot. Have a great night everybody


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