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Recorded January 12, 2022
In this episode of “Occupied Thoughts,” FMEP’s Lara Friedman speaks with Nuriya Oswald (International Legal and Advocacy Director at Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Palestinian human rights NGO founded in 1999 and based in the Gaza Strip) and Yael Stein (Director of Research for B’Tselem, Israel’s preeminent human rights organization) about how manifestations of Israel’s apartheid regime with respect to the Gaza Strip, both in general and specifically in the context of the Great March of Return. NOTE: In December 2021, Al Mezan issued a new report, “The Gaza Bantustan: Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip,” and BTselem, together with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, issued a new report, “Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests.”
Bios
Nuriya Oswald is the International Legal and Advocacy Director at Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.Nuriya is a human rights advocate with ten years of experience in advocacy and coordinating legal initiatives. At Al Mezan, Nuriya manages various activities with the objective of bringing justice to victims of international law violations and informing international stakeholders of the human rights situation on the ground. She has lived in Gaza and Ramallah and has been working in Palestine for over a decade. She holds an LLM in international humanitarian law, an MA in human rights and a BA in political science and French studies. She previously worked for Medical Aid for Palestinians and ChildFund International. Nuriya has appeared in the New York Times, Al Jazeera and other media outlets. You can follow Al Mezan on Twitter @AlMezanCenter.
Yael Stein is the Research Director of B’Tselem. She holds an LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MA in human rights from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. Yael has authored several of B’Tselem reports, including The Occupation’s Fig Leaf (2016), Getting Off Scot-Free (2017) and Fake Justice (2019). You can follow B’Tselem on Twitter @btselem.
Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP). She 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 tweets @LaraFriedmanDC.
Additional Resources:
- B’Tselem’s January 2021 report: A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid
- OHCHR February 2019: Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 protests in the OPT
- B’Tselem January 2020: Shoot and abandon: 155 amputees and 27 paralyzed in two years: How Israel punishes those who dare protest the siege of the Gaza Strip
- Gisha report January 2022: Red Lines, Gray Lists –Israel’s dual-use policy and the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism
- New York Times 30 Oct 2019: Israeli Soldier Gets One-Month Sentence Over Killing of Gaza Teenager
- Adalah 25 May 2018: Israeli Supreme Court gives green light to continued use of live fire, snipers against Gaza protesters