The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) invite you to attend

“Raided and Razed”: West Bank Education under Attack

Monday, January 11th 

featuring 

Netta Amar-Shiff (human rights attorney)

Khaled Elgindy (Middle East Institute) 

Priscilla Wathington (NRC) 

with

Sarah Anne Minkin (FMEP)

Palestinians and human rights defenders named 2020 as one of the most violent years for Palestinians in the West Bank in recent record, including de facto annexation, escalating assaults, and evictions and home demolitions. New research from the Norwegian Refugee Council looks at the impact of occupation on Palestinian education in the West Bank, detailing “a deluge of attacks” perpetrated by Israeli forces, settlers, and settlement guards over the last 30 months. Palestinians in Area C are especially vulnerable to these attacks, which include raids on schools-in-session, physical assault of children, and damage of educational facilities. To discuss these new findings, their impact on Palestinian children, families, and educators, and potential routes to secure children’s rights to education, FMEP and NRC invite you to join us for a webinar. This discussion will feature human rights attorney Netta Amar-Shiff, Middle East Institute’s Khaled Elgindy, and NRC’s Priscilla Wathington, in conversation with FMEP’s Sarah Anne Minkin.

Participants

Netta Amar-Shiff is a Yemenite Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer working on Palestinian rights since 1998. Her expertise is international human rights and humanitarian law, especially working on cases of planning, demolition and forcible displacement in the West Bank, as well as constitutional and administrative law. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Geography and Environmental Department at the Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheba and her research focuses on the legal-geography of international law  – forcible displacement of Bedouin in the Negev and the West Bank. Co-founder of the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow and Achoti – Sister women organization. Worked with the Israeli Civil Rights organization and was a board member of B’Tselem and Voice of Woman.

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.

Priscilla Wathington is currently serving as Policy and Communication Specialist to Norwegian Refugee Council’s Palestine office and is the author of NRC’s recently released report, “Raided and Razed: Attacks on West Bank Education.” Previously, Wathington was the Managing Editor at Defense for Children International – Palestine, a local, independent child rights organization. Wathington holds a master’s with distinction in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she was awarded a Foreign Language Area Studies fellowship. She is also a former Chicago Public School teacher with a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Wheaton College. 

Moderator

Sarah Anne Minkin, PhD is FMEP’s Director of Programs & Partnerships. She is an expert on the intersection between Israeli civil society and Palestinian civil rights and human rights advocacy as well as the ways that American Jews approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She leads FMEP’s programming, works to deepen FMEP’s relationships with existing and potential grantees, and builds relationships with new partners in the philanthropic community. She is an affiliated faculty member at University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies.