The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and B’Tselem USA invite you to attend

Annexation and the Aftermath of the U.S. Election: Analysis & Expectations 

Wednesday, November 18th 

featuring 

Salem Barahmeh (PIPD)

Diana Buttu (IMEU)

and

Hagai El-Ad  (B’Tselem)

with 

Lara Friedman (FMEP)

On Tuesday, November 3rd, while the world was busy watching Americans go to the polls, Israel quietly razed an entire Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley, carrying out the “largest West Bank demolition operation in a decade.” This erasure of a Palestinian community was just the latest sign that the Israeli government has accelerated the process of de facto annexation in the West Bank, despite putting formal annexation on hold to pursue normalized relations with various Arab states. 

De facto annexation is likely to accelerate in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, especially in Area C, as Israel works to take over more land in a rush to achieve “faits accompli” prior to President Trump leaving office. The current trends suggest a further increase in actions against Palestinians, including home demolitions, state-backed settler violence, and the continuing expansion of settlements.

To discuss these and related issues, we invite you to join us for a webinar, jointly presented by FMEP and B’Tselem USA, featuring IMEU analyst Diana Buttu, Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy Executive Director Salem Barahmeh, and B’Tselem Executive Director Hagai El-Ad in conversation with FMEP President Lara Friedman. 

Participants

Salem Barahmeh is the Executive Director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD). He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the US Middle East Project and previously worked as an international affairs advisor to Dr. Hanan Ashrawi at the PLO and the Palestine Investment Fund. He has also worked at Portland Communications in London, as a Policy and Public Affairs Advisor to Gulf governments, and for the Palestinian Embassy to the United States. Salem received a BA in Government from Lawrence University and an MA in Law and Politics from King’s College London.

Diana Buttu is a Canadian-Palestinian human rights attorney. In 2000, Ms Buttu moved to the occupied West Bank where she served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team and later to the Palestinian president. She resigned from her post in 2005 but remains a frequent commentator on Middle East politics and human rights, with opeds and appearances in major international media outlets. Ms. Buttu is the recipient of the Stelle Solidariete Italian prize for her human rights work. She was the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow at Harvard Law School holding an appointment with the Kennedy School and Law School at the same time. She holds law degrees from the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, Stanford University and an MBA from Kellogg Northwestern School of Business. She also holds a BA in Middle East and Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto.  

Hagai El-Ad is the executive director of B’Tselem בצלם بتسيلم, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Previously he was director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI, 2008–2014) and the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH, 2000–2006). In 2014, El-Ad was among Foreign Policy’s “100 Leading Global Thinkers”. In 2016 and again in 2018, he spoke before the United Nations Security Council calling for international action in order to end the occupation. He lives in Jerusalem and tweets at @HagaiElAd.

Moderator

Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and 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. In addition to her work at FMEP, Lara is a Contributing Writer at Jewish Currents and a non-resident fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP).