+972 Magazine, FMEP, and Just Vision are proud to present

A Pivotal Moment for Israel-Palestine

Wednesday, May 26

featuring Amjad Iraqi (+972 Magazine), Ahmed Alnaouq (Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor), Lara Friedman (Foundation for Middle East Peace) with Haggai Matar (+972 Magazine)

While the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has provided some respite from two weeks of death and destruction, there is no calm. We are seeing a new round of police aggression in Jerusalem and cities in Israel, with the authorities carrying out arrests of hundreds of Palestinians who participated in protests this past month. The attempts to displace Palestinian families in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan also continue unabated.

But new opportunities have opened up. The Palestinian popular struggle has re-energized between the river and the sea, in a show of unity that could significantly alter the dynamics on the ground. Meanwhile, in the U.S., cracks in the bipartisan consensus, which had long turned a blind eye to Israel’s sustained dispossession of the Palestinians, are rapidly widening.

Join us for a conversation that looks at where we go from here, sponsored by +972 Magazine, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Just Vision.

Haggai Matar will be moderating a conversation between Amjad Iraqi, +972 editor and writer; Ahmed Alnaouq, advocacy and outreach officer at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor; and Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. We’ll discuss the future of the Palestinian struggle, new developments in U.S. public opinion and policy, how Israel is likely to proceed, and more.

Participant bios:

Amjad Iraqi is an editor and writer at +972 Magazine. He is also a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka, and was previously an advocacy coordinator at the legal center Adalah. In addition to +972, he has written for the London Review of Books, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Palestine Square, among others.

Ahmed Alnaouq is the advocacy and outreach officer at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. He was the inspiration for and the original project manager of We Are Not Numbers, a platform for youth from Gaza to tell their stories. He later won the Chevening scholarship and earned a master’s degree in international journalism from Leeds University. He is co-founder of Beyond the Wall, a Hebrew media outlet that tells Palestinian stories and amplifies the Palestinian narrative. Ahmed’s writings have been published by the Gulf News, New Arab and other websites.

Lara Friedman is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP). With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, Lara 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. 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). Prior to joining FMEP, Lara was the Director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now, and before that she was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, serving in Jerusalem, Washington, Tunis and Beirut. She holds a B.A. from the University of Arizona and a Master’s degree from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service; in addition to English, Lara speaks French, Arabic, Spanish, (weak) Italian, and muddles through in Hebrew.

Haggai Matar (moderator) is an award winning journalist, a political activist and the executive director of +972 Magazine. He was a co-founding editor of Local Call, and is a board member of the Journalists’ Union in Israel. Haggai has also written for outlets like Ha’aretz, Ma’ariv and The Forward. In 2002, Haggai was imprisoned for two years for refusing Israeli military conscription.