Israel has been de facto annexing land in the West Bank since the inception of its military occupation of Palestinian territories following the 1967 war. Now, under the new Netanyahu-Gantz government and in close coordination with the Trump Administration, the Israeli government is poised to formalize and massively expand the extent of that annexation. What will this mean for Palestinians and for Israelis? What does it mean for the international community? And what happens next – in Israel, Palestine, the region, and the world?

This three-part webinar series, co-moderated by FMEP’s Lara Friedman and MEI’s Khaled Elgindy, will engage leading voices from Israel and Palestine, in addition to U.S., European, and Arab perspectives.

Part 3: Israeli Perspectives
Monday, May 18 (11:00am-12:00pm ET)

Additional speakers to be added — check back for details

Featuring:

Galia Golan is Darwin Professor emerita of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was chair of the Political Science Department.  More recently, she was Head of the Program in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.  Dr. Golan is the author of 10 books, most recently Israeli Peace-making since 1967: Factors Behind the Breakthroughs and Failures.  She is co-editor two additional books, with Gilead Sher, Spoilers and Spoiling in the Arab-Israeli Conflict and with Walid Salem of Non-State Actors in the Middle East for Democracy and Peace.  A member of the national executive of Meretz since 1992, she is also a member of the editorial board of the Palestine-Israel Journal. She was a founder and leader of Peace Now until recently, when she joined the leadership of Combatants for Peace.  She was a founder-leader of the Jerusalem Link: A Joint Israeli-Palestinian Venture for Peace as well as a leader of the International Women’s Commission for a Just Israeli-Palestinian Peace.  Dr. Golan is the recipient of the 1999 Gleitsman Foundation Activist Award, the 1995 New Israel Fund Award for Women in Leadership, the 2007 Israel Political Science Association Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the 2016 International Studies Association (ISA) Distinguished Scholar Award for Peace Studies.  In March she received the ISA Scholar/Activist Award (previous winners include Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, and Richard Falk).  Dr. Golan was born in the US, received her BA from Brandeis Univ, and, after graduate work in Paris and four years as an East European analyst in Washington, she immigrated to Israel in 1966.

Shaqued Morag is the Executive Director of the Peace Now movement. Morag is a seasoned political and social activist. She served until recently in senior positions in the Meretz party, including as the party’s interim secretary-general after Mossi Raz became a Member of Knesset, and as parliamentary adviser to MK Michal Rozin. Previously, she served as the community coordinator in Jerusalem for Mahapach-Taghir, a grassroots Israeli Jewish-Palestinian organization for social change, where she is now a member of the Executive Committee.

Yehuda Shaul was born and raised in Jerusalem in an ultra-Orthodox family and graduated from a yeshiva high school in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. He served in the IDF as a commander and deputy company sergeant in the 50th battalion of the Nahal Brigade from 2001 to 2004, in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Hebron. Shaul founded Breaking the Silence in 2004 with a group of fellow veterans.

Lara Friedman (co-host), Foundation for Middle East Peace
Lara Friedman is the president of FMEP and a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer. With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, Friedman is a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, with particular expertise on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, and the role of the U.S. Congress. She is published widely in the U.S. and international press and is regularly consulted by members of Congress and their staffs, by Washington-based diplomats, by policy-makers in capitals around the world, and by journalists in the U.S. and abroad.

Khaled Elgindy, (co-host), the Middle East Institute
Khaled Elgindy is senior fellow and director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at MEI. He is the author of the newly released book, Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump (Brookings Institution Press, April 2019). Elgindy previously served as a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution from 2010 through 2018. Prior to arriving at Brookings, he served as an adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2009, and was a key participant in the Annapolis negotiations of 2007-08. Elgindy is also an adjunct instructor in Arab Studies at Georgetown University.