AUSPC2011: Geopolitical Dynamics – Palestine

Arab-US Policymakers Conference 2011

October 27-28, 2011 – Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, Washington, DC

This year marks the 20th Arab-US Policymakers Conference, or AUSPC, organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, under the direction of Dr. John Duke Anthony. The Policymakers Conference series has endured by filling a void on the Washington calendar for a regular, well organized symposium where leaders in diplomacy, business, academia, the military and elsewhere can assemble to network and discuss the challenges and issues affecting the Arab world and the United States’ policy and position in it. SUSRIS has had the privilege of attending all of the AUSPC conferences since it was launched nine years ago and has admired the hard work and dedication that has produced a very professional, highly regarded event. We applaud the National Council on US-Arab Relations for advancing its mission through the conference and look forward to many more years of Policymakers Conferences.

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Arab-US Policymakers Conference
Washington, DC
October 27, 2011

Geopolitical Dynamics (IV): Palestine

Chair:
Mr. Yousef Munayyer – Executive Director, Palestine Center and the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development

Speakers:
Ms. Michelle Steinberg – Counterintelligence Editor, Executive Intelligence Report (EIR)
Dr. Ghada Karmi – Co-Director, Centre of Palestine Studies, University of Exeter
Dr. Norton Mezvinsky – Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Connecticut State University; President, International Council for Middle East Studies

Remarks as delivered

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[Dr. John Duke Anthony] As we remarked in passing earlier today, this is the longest standing of all of the challenges in improving America’s relations with the peoples of the Arab countries, the Middle East, and the Islamic world. It’s the biggest one. It’s the most pervasive one. It’s been the most problematic and troublesome one, and it’s one with greater implications for the panoply of American interests in foreign policy objectives in the region. With Yousef Munayyer, the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center, which has an extraordinary role in publicizing these issues and holding seminars. Mr. Al Munayyer.

[Yousef Al Munayyer] Thank you, Dr. Anthony. I want to thank the National Council for U.S. Arab Relations for inviting us here to participate in this panel on, as you mentioned, the most central of issues in the Arab world, and particularly a very important issue at this time, when we find ourselves three years into an Obama Administration that has attempted to engage a peace process that is, I think, beyond stalled at this point, an Israeli government that has embraced wholeheartedly the expansionist ideology of the settler movement, and a Palestinian National movement which is divided, but attempting to move forward towards liberation, nonetheless. So at this critical juncture, it is wonderful to have this panel and our three participants today who I will introduce now in the order in which they will present to cover this topic.

Mrs. Michele Steinberg, immediately to my left, is counterintelligence editor and Middle East correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review, and has covered the Middle East politics for more than twenty years. She’s also been, as I’ve just found out, participating in and covering the National Conference on U.S.-Arab Relations event for the past ten years as well.

Speaking after her will be Dr. Norten Mezvinsky. He’s a distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Connecticut State University, and President of the International Council for Middle East Studies, a new academic think-tank here in Washington, D.C.

And last but not least, Professor Ghada Karmi, who is a leading Palestinian academic and writer, born in Jerusalem and educated in the U.K. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.

I’m going to turn it over at this point to our participants, and then we will move quickly to a question and answer session afterwards, for what I’m sure will be a lively discussion. Thank you.

[Michele Steinberg] Thank you Dr. Anthony and the Council for sponsoring this panel, and the name of my talk is the Road Not Taken. America should return and heed the warnings of General George Marshall. And it’s very heartwarming to have heard the remarks of Prince Turki just a few moments ago, in which he touched on themes that I’m going to also touch on. If you all haven’t read the speech of President Mahmoud Abbas to the United Nations, I really encourage that everybody do that. Not right now, but in the near future, because it is important to see what that argument is and locate the U.S. response to that.

Several weeks ago, when Washington D.C. dedicated the memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, for many people, especially younger Americans, it was the first time they had ever heard the full text or the full words of King’s 1963 “I Had a Dream” speech, the full words of Dr. King crying out with dignity and sympathy for all the world’s oppressed people. For a justice that had never come for all Americans, it was the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation when he gave that speech, but still as he spoke, black men and black women were being beaten and lynched, killed without accusation and without trial, and five short years later Dr. King was, himself, felled by an assassins bullet.

Today, we still live in an era of extrajudicial killings, where the President of the United States is presiding over a secret committee that has drawn up a hit list of people who can be killed without accusation and without trial, especially if they are Muslims. The despised policy that has been associated with the worst state terrorism of the state of Israel has now become our policy in the United States. That must be reversed, and we Americans are the ones that must reverse it.

In September of this year, in the run up to the U.N. speech by President Abbas, President Barack Obama went to New York, and in collusion with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, delivered threats of retribution against any country on the Security Council that will vote for the Resolution that admits Palestine to the U.N. as a state. This action by Obama was a disgrace, and a crime against what America stands for. Then, when the President went to the U.N. General Assembly, he actually denounced the U.N. itself as an inappropriate forum for oppressed people to seek justice, and said instead they should have a peace process. Again, this was a disgrace. If President Obama does veto, he will not be vetoing only Palestine, he will be vetoing the majority of the world, because as we well know at the General Assembly, the majority of nations support and will vote for a state for the Palestinians. It is Obama who stands now isolated and foolish shoulder to shoulder with Bibi Netanyahu, a follower of an overtly fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky.

What Obama did at the U.N. is not in our American tradition, as Prince Turki so eloquently referenced. Let me give you a few responses to his actions. Yuri Avnery an Israeli, wrote the following: “Barack Obama’s miserable performance was a nail in the coffin of America’s status as a superpower. In a way it was a crime against the United States. The state of Palestine will come into being, Obama will be forgotten, as will Netanyahu, Lieberman, and the whole bunch.” Another Jewish elder statesman, Henry Steigman, an ordained rabbi, Korean War veteran, and a chaplain, a U.S. chaplain in the Korean War, wrote quote, “The American insistence on aborting the Palestinian initiative and returning them to a process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel is shameful. It stains America’s honor. It will not succeed for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence. That genie cannot be returned to the bottle.” I agree. The genie is out of the bottle. Obama’s policy has failed. The road map has failed. This is over. And it is time to recalibrate the American policy, and return to the anti-colonial intentions of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the almost buried view of that great World War II hero and later Secretary of State General George Marshall.

Finally, what is even less know is the memos and views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1945 through 1948 where they sternly warned against the partition of Palestine, and warned that the creation of a Jewish state would lead to a future of unending conflict. They were right, and now is the time to correct this.

In my view, for the last thirty years, America has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to move peace forward. Time and again, the U.S. has refused to build on major concessions, whether by Yasser Arafat or by Hamas, and use those breakthroughs as an opportunity to go forward, and to treat the Palestinian people and their leadership with dignity and honor, the longstanding agreements through U.N. Resolutions and so forth, such as the ending of settlements, and the ending the occupation of the West Bank.

Time and again, the United States has failed to stand up for justice and force an end to Israel’s destruction, whether it was the massacres of Sabra Shatila in 1982, or the shameful treatment of President Arafat at Christmas 2002, the bombings of the PA offices in Ramallah under the Bush regime, the refusal to talk to Hamas after the 2006 elections, Palestinian National election, the dreadful, criminal operation Cast Lead war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza after Obama was already elected President, and of course the killing of a young American humanitarian worker by the Israeli Defense Forces on the Gaza flotilla, after Obama had been President for an entire year. Never in any of these cases did the U.S. stand up for justice, in the way that I saw it, in the way that really justice demanded.

But our nation has not always been that way. Our nation has diplomatic and economic power to use to have Israel follow international law, and we should do it. Abu Mazen at his speech at the U.N. spoke exactly of the inalienable rights, and he was correct to do so. Those inalienable rights that every human being is naturally endowed with are enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.

So why isn’t the United States standing up for this? The explanation that we often hear, that American Presidents are hostage to a pro-Israel lobby, especially around election time, AIPAC’s name is often used, that Congress has the same problem. This is true, but it is too simple. Let me put a couple of facts on the table. If you’ve read the recent polls, CNN, CBS News, Real Clear Politics, you would know that Congress is the most hated political institution in the United States. Only nine to twelve percent of the American population approve of Congress as this time, since August of this year. Eighty to eighty-four percent disapprove. And furthermore, under the Constitution, Congress doesn’t make foreign policy. So it is up to we Americans to change this unbalanced relationship with Israel. Now, let me say a couple of words about AIPAC, the gigantic, indefeatable lobbying institution. Well, according to their own policy director for thirty years, Steve Rosen, who actually was in a lawsuit against his mother institution. What was going on in the offices of the AIPAC executives and so forth? He himself was searching for liaisons with other married male homosexuals to have sex with. Howard Core, the executive director and his secretary were regularly watching pornography and calling the staff in. I kid you not, this is in a two hundred and sixty page deposition that any of you can read. This is what was going on in AIPAC. It’s all true, it’s all on the record. So I say can we not defeat such a force against the policy of justice? I think we can.

No, the problem is not just money, it’s not just bribery and corruption. It goes much deeper, it goes back to 1945 through 1948, and the untimely, tragic death of Franklin Roosevelt. F.D.R. was moving to secure a post-war world free from the tyranny of European colonial empires and dedicated to the development of sovereign states. Even before the U.S. entered the war, he had many altercations with Winston Churchill. In 1946, these were recorded by F.D.R.’s son Elliot Roosevelt in a book called “As He Saw It”, a wartime account of his father, F.D.R.’s vision for a post-war world. He wrote that book as his experience of the President’s military aide. He was at private discussions, formal meetings, and so forth. Let me read you one little section from the August 10, 1941 four day meeting between F.D.R. and Churchill in Newfoundland, Canada. It gives you a flavor of what was going on and what F.D.R. had in mind. As Elliot recounted it, F.D.R. told Churchill, “I’m firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. It can’t be done obviously by Eighteenth Century methods,” now, at which point Churchill interrupted, “who’s talking Eighteenth Century methods?” F.D.R. resumed, “Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth Century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth Century methods include increasing the wealth of the people by increasing their standard of living, educating them, bringing them sanitation, by making sure they get a return for their raw wealth.”

This is just a small sample of the really hot arguments that went on between these two men. Churchill was apoplectic. Now, let me just move ahead. When F.D.R. died, Truman became a pawn of the British imperial policy, and substituted this policy of ending colonialism with a Cold War. And the recognition of Israel was part of that.

I want to end by just telling you that again, Secretary of State at that time General George Marshall, the author of the Marshall Plan for Europe and the Marshall Plan that Shimon Perez used to talk about from time to time, said that the partition of Palestine would create a disaster. He said it at the United Nations; he said it in other places. And at the same time there were no less than sixteen papers issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were brought to light by historian Mark Perry in the April 1st issue of Foreign Policy, 2010. One of these memos, perhaps the most clear, from March thirty-first, 1948 was entitled Force Requirements for Palestine. It forecasts that quote, “The Zionist strategy will seek to involve the United States in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” Another memo in late forty-seven said a decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States would prejudice United States strategic interests in the near and Middle East to a point that the United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which would be maintained by military force. By not heeding their advice, we have had sixty-two years of instability, war, and support for oppression. Because of that partition, made worse because of our unbalanced policy with Israel.

So where do we go from here? I say we go back to F.D.R., back to George Marshall, back to the Joint Chiefs memos. The developments in Egypt and the youthful protests of the Arab Spring show that change is possible, and the dreams, which I worked on through EIR for the last thirty years, of an oasis plan of water projects involving Egypt and Gaza and Palestine, the canals that can be built, the railroads that need to be built. These dreams are possible, and I think that with the Egyptian revolution, they are on the table now, and this is what American policy should be. Thank you.

[Dr. Norton Mezvinsky] Thank you. I want to thank John Duke Anthony and the Council for asking me to participate. My organization, the International Council for Middle East Studies is a relatively new academic think-tank in Washington, a city that may appear certainly not to need another Middle East think-tank. We in our organization nevertheless believe and feel that we have something worthwhile to contribute, please check us out.

My contention is that the Zionist character of the state of Israel is the central problem of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So long as Zionism remains a major element of the state of Israel’s character, the conflict will continue and probably worsen. This will be the case whether Israel remains one state as it has been and presently is, or whether a political entity called by some people a state is established in the West Bank in Gaza. Palestinians will almost certainly continue to be oppressed. They will be unable to achieve the full rights and privileges they deserve. Their expression of nationalism will be severely limited, Palestinian resistance will likely increase. Palestinian and Israeli Jews will likely live in heightened jeopardy. A realistic consideration of the relevant facts supports my contention.

The historical facts are clear. The Zionism of Israel’s character was concretized in the early 1890s by Theodore Hertzel. It’s essence has not changed since then, even with some internal disagreements on the periphery. Some opposing theories of Zionism have appeared, but Hertzelian political Zionism has prevailed. It is on balanced a secular, Jewish nationalism. The majority of Orthodox religious Jews opposed this Zionism before the Holocaust. A minority of Orthodox Jews however joined the Zionist movement early, and added their own religious element. From the time the state of Israel came into existence until today, the great majority of religious Jews have supported that state.

In addition, Christian Zionists – evangelical and mainline – have for different theological and other reasons supported the state of Israel and Zionism. Hertzelian political Zionism is based upon an absolute theory of anti-Semitism, which posits that Jews have been in the past, and/or are being in the present, and/or will be in the future oppressed and persecuted by non-Jews in every place wherein Jews are in a minority. The concluding part of this theory is that Jews need to have a state of their own, wherein they begin as the majority, hopefully of the residents, but certainly of the citizens who control the state. And they must retain that majority in order to avert anti-Semitism.

From the Zionist purview therefore, a Jewish state is a demographic Jewish state. After some early debate in the 1890s, Palestine was the designated local. Given the emotions involved in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the feelings of western guilt about the killing of six million Jews, and the political salesmanship by Zionists, it is understandable that the reservations concerning and the antagonism in the Arab world, especially among Palestinians, to the establishment of this Jewish state were overridden, and the Zionist dream was realized.

The effect upon Palestinians as I’m sure you in this audience know has been disastrous. Zionism was the motivating force for the planned and forced displacement of over seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians between March and September 1948, when in the midst of a war, Jewish militants and the Jewish Army expanded and rounded out the borders of their state. Zionism has been increasingly legislated into the character of the state of Israel since the state was established. The law of return provides that Jews from anywhere in the world may immigrate to Israel and become citizens automatically. By law, on the other hand, non-Jews must apply for citizenship; their applications are then accepted or rejected without explanation. This allows the government to regulate the number of non-Jews who may become citizens, and in keeping with Zionism, protect the majority of Jews.

According to the last census, Israel had five point seven million Jewish citizens and one point five million Palestinian citizens. The Palestinians displaced since 1948 have not been allowed to return. Every Israeli government, every Israeli government, and the majority of Israeli Jews to date have objected to any return of Palestinians to land confiscated in 1948. Israeli law, moreover, restricts the purchase, rental, or leasing of 92.5 percent of the arable farmland in the land of Israel of pre-June, 1967 borders to Jews only. Laws protect restrictive practices that limit upward social and economic mobility for non-Jewish citizens of the state.

These are but a few examples of Zionism being legislated into the character of the state, and thus making Palestinians of the state who are citizens, Palestinian citizens of the state, second-class citizens. The situation for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who number three and a half million at least, as again I’m sure you know is far worse. These Palestinians have not been allowed to become citizens, even though they are the indigenous population, and have been occupied since 1967. These Palestinians, moreover, have been and still are continuously oppressed by actions of the Israeli government, including targeted assassinations, destruction of houses, limitation at times of electricity, water, and other essentials, travel restrictions, confiscation, and thus loss of land, upon which over five hundred and fourteen thousand Jewish settlers reside.

Further expansion of existing Jewish settlements is ongoing consistently. All of this oppression and more is based upon the concept that Israel must be the exclusive Jewish state with only a minority of non-Jews. That of course means Palestinians who are tightly controlled. This is the Jewish state that Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently asking Palestinians and other Arabs to call legitimate and to accept. This is the Jewish state that not only a majority of Jews, but also a large number of non-Jews, including forty to fifty million Christian Zionists in the United States support.

Not being a Palestinian, I am reticent about suggesting to Palestinians what they should and or should not consider doing about this situation that I’ve briefly discussed. Nevertheless, being a Jew who has rebelled against his Zionist upbringing, and who like some other Jews is appalled and antagonized by the Zionist state that incorrectly calls itself a Jewish state, I shall overcome my hesitancy and suggest the following to the Palestinians and to those including of course you in this audience who support Palestinians.

One. I realize that the Zionist character of the state of Israel, and I’m suggesting Palestinians and all of you realize, is the major problem. If you do not already possess or acquire an understanding of that Zionist character and its supporting cast of Christian Zionists who constitute a political force in this country that is at least as powerful and influential a political force as the Zionist lobby, if there’s not an understanding of this then progress forward is at best questionable.

Two. Recognize that as an oppressed and presently weak underdog in this conflict, your best chance to achieve success in bettering your position and in combating your enemy is to define and specify clearly Israel’s severe violations of human rights. It is not enough simply to label Israel and its actions racist; in fact, using that term, as correct as it may be, is probably a negative tactic as can be easily illustrated by how Zionists will then turn that into arguments that they call anti-Semitic and Nazism. Instead, emphasize and campaign on grounds of human rights violations, specific human rights violations. Such campaigning has the potential to attract attention, and could eventually win more converts to the cause in many places, including Israel and the United States.

And finally, I suggest that Palestinians rethink and even retreat from a two-state proposal for Palestine-Israel. It is impractical and potentially dangerous. It will not be passed in the Security Council, and I’m certainly not condoning an American veto. A vote in the General Assembly will not establish a Palestinian state. So long as that state retains its Zionist character, Israel will not agree to any right of Palestinian return. Israel will not uproot or cease to expand West Bank settlements, which most religious Jews anyway believe exists on land given to them by God, and also settlements that help control Palestinians in that area. In retaining its Zionist character, Israel will keep Jerusalem unified under its control, and will not cease to quash developments that it decides constitutes threats to Israeli security.

Israel might agree to the establishment of a so-called state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, wherein Palestinians would have autonomous or local rule, but Israel would retain sovereignty. Israel would, as previously mentioned, be able to come in and destroy whatever it considered to be a threat. No right of Palestinian return to Israel of pre-1967 borders would be allowed. If this type of Palestinian entity were established, the Israeli government could ward off objections of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens to their second-class status by insisting that the complaining Palestinians should leave and go to the many Palestinian states. Netanyahu or another Israeli Prime Minister even more strongly could argue that since a Palestinian state existed and was recognized by Israel, then Palestinians should emphasize and recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.

If Israel in time would rid itself of its Zionist character, it could then become a democratic state with legally guaranteed rights. Such a state could equitably solve the Palestinian refugee problem, and at the same time provide protection for Jews and others. The resources of the state could be shared equally by all its people. That is a cause worthy of advocating. Thank you very much.

[Ghada Karmi] Well, first of all hello everyone, and thank you for coming. And my thanks are due to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, and to Dr. John Duke Anthony for inviting me here. I wish I could say to you that I’ve come from a free Palestine to talk to you. As it is, I only came from London.

Now, the Palestinian Ambassador was due to speak at this session, and some people may be aware that the line he would’ve taken might be different to the one that I will take, but I want to assure you that this does not represent a split in the Palestinian position or a conflict. We are all, I think, striving towards freeing our homeland, but we think of it in different ways.

Now, in a way the previous speaker has said many of the things that I was going to say. I will still say them, which I think gives you an interesting illustration of how people coming from – he is Jewish, I am Palestinian – and yet we both agree on many fundamental issues.

Now, let me, because we are in the current position where there is a statehood application to the United Nations, let me say a few things about that first. First of all, it is of course entirely logical and inevitable that this step should’ve been taken by the Palestinian leadership, because if one remembers, this leadership has been engaged in a process since 1993, which was predicated on the idea of a negotiated peace agreement, a negotiated peace agreement, and that that peace agreement would be a two-state solution. So when the negotiations stalled, as you know that they did, the Palestinians engaged in this process had to think of what would be the next step. And indeed it was the logical next step to take their case to the United Nations. And what that actually means is, look, we haven’t been able to succeed with Israel face to face, here, you, the international community, you must be involved.

Secondly, of course, the idea behind the statehood application would, it’s not the idea so much but the process, but what would happen is it would expose so clearly United States partisanship towards Israel. If anybody was in any doubt about that they would of course, it would make it absolutely clear. And the threat of the use of the U.S. veto on a statehood application, which enjoys so much support, international support, is a vivid illustration of this partisanship. And of course such a move would also isolate Israel further. Israel is already isolated to a large extent, and that would increase its isolation.

And at the same time, the statehood application would mobilize world sympathy for the Palestinians. Now, I don’t know about you, but I live in Britain, and I assure you there has been an absolute sea change in public opinion towards the Palestinian cause. It’s extremely striking, and it’s echoed in many parts of Europe. Unlike their government, the peoples of those countries are very supportive of the Palestinian cause. So this again, the whole statehood campaign has shown up and mobilized and channeled that world sympathy towards the Palestinians. And of course in a sense you could say the Palestinians, by doing this and maybe not succeeding, can say to the world look, we’ve done everything, we’ve done everything and we still cannot succeed against this powerful Israel backed by the United States. So in all those senses, it’s a very interesting movement, a very interesting maneuver.

Now, the outcome I think many people here know the application was for the Security Council full membership of the U.N., and that is not going to happen because apart from anything else, the U.S. won’t allow it to happen, but the General Assembly is in a different position. We know that a majority of states in the General Assembly support the Palestinian application, so again, an outcome could be that an application for non-state membership of the U.N. General Assembly would be successful, which would allow a sort of in-house membership for the Palestinians, allowing them access to things like the International Criminal Court and so on.

However, whether it succeeds or not, whether this statehood application succeeds or not, I think frankly is not the point. It will not end the conflict. Israel is still in control of the Palestinian areas, and the United States still supports Israel. There will be no change on the ground. We must be quite clear about that – there will be no change on the ground.

So the question becomes what next? What happens next, even if the application is successful? Well, I want to say that for us to think about this issue of what next, we need to think in a different way. Now, the Arab Spring, one of the most striking and interesting things about the Arab Spring has been the fact that it overturned accepted norms in all those countries where this revolutionary movement has happened. It overturned accepted norms and accepted relationships. The same must hold true for the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian statehood application is not the end or the acme of Palestinian ambitions, nor will it end the conflict. The peace process to date has been predicated on several assumptions, which I think we’re going to have to let go if we’re going to have any progress on this.

First, when the conflict started is about 1967, and therefore the disposal of the 1967 territories is the real issue, and since that is the issue, then hence the talk about settlements, about land swaps which I know everybody hears about, about Jerusalem, that is the discourse. And of course the aim of that is the two-state solution.

Second – and here is the strong overlap with the previous speaker – Israel must remain as it is today. That is an assumption on which the peace process is based. It must remain as it is today, the only modification being in its borders, not its nature. So, Israel can remain, should remain an exclusivist state with an exclusivist ideology, a supremacist ideology which privileges Jews against non-Jews. A state that is very strong, that is very heavily armed, including nuclear weapons.

Third that the Palestinian refugees and exiles cannot return to Israel, they must find another solution or no solution. What they cannot do is return to Israel. Now that of course involves more than fifty percent, sixty percent at least of the whole Palestinian people. Such people are living outside the homeland – and four point five million of them are registered, U.N. registered refugees, the others are exiles and non-registered refugees – all these people cannot return to the state of Israel.

All these assumptions on which the peace process has been based all along, all of them are wrong. And that is why there is no solution to date. First, the conflict of course is not about 1967, although that has been a complication of the original conflict. The conflict is about what happened in 1948. It’s about the disposition of the majority of Palestine’s inhabitants, who are the very people I was talking about who have ended up as refugees and exiles, and it’s about their disposition.

And it’s about the nature of the Israeli state, the Zionist nature of the Israeli state. This is a state, which cannot be accommodated, as it exists today. The issue of Zionism and the issue of the Zionist nature of the state has to be addressed.

Now, a two-state solution ignores all these fundamentals that I have just mentioned. A two-state solution ignores all these fundamentals, but the fact that it ignores these fundamentals is not really because the Palestinians who support it are traitors to the original cause, they don’t understand the historical reasons for the conflict. It’s really mainly because – it has to be understood in this context – it’s because of a Palestinian awareness that the power balance, imbalance, between them and Israel is very, very large. From 195*64, 1974 onwards, the Palestinian movement began to be aware that it could not fight Israel, and that it would have to move its aims towards getting what was possible, not just but attainable as they thought. That, believe me, is the only reason that Palestinians support the two-state solution.

In time, a growing international consensus agreed with the Palestinian position without understanding what it arose from or how it had come into being, and having of course forgotten what the fundamentals of this conflict are really about, this international consensus now supports, and is enthusiastic about the idea of two states. But, as I said earlier, that won’t do, that won’t do. We have to actually look at the basic issues properly. Today, the reality on the ground is that Israel is unwilling to accept any version of a Palestinian state, which is meaningful, or viable, or provides the Palestinians with some form of reasonable life. And no one will force Israel to cede that state. We all know this. I think we all have to say it.

Secondly, we need to be honest enough, not just to recognize that, but to face up to what it will mean. What it means is this. Israel-Palestine today is one state; again as we’ve just heard, it is one state. But the kind of state it is, it is an Israeli-Jewish state, which controls – a Zionist state – which controls non-Jews, which controls the Palestinians, which oppresses them, discriminates against them, uses force to control them, steals their land and their resources, deprives them of their basic rights, and does not observe any kind of international law. That is the situation.

So, if we put together what I’ve just said, and we ask ourselves what is it we have to do next; what we have to do next I think is very clear. We have to convert the current situation, that is of an oppressive apartheid state, into one which is democratic, which is pluralistic, and which respects the rule of law. Now such a state, if it were to come into being, quite obviously will accommodate the returning Palestinian refugees and exiles as a right.

Now, I’m well aware that in saying this, and I hesitate, I do not wish to use terms like the one-state solution, because these have become labels with which people jump up and down and say this is unrealistic, it’s utopian, this is very silly. We are talking about a process, which I hope I’ve shown you is a perfectly logical, step by step process that shows you there really isn’t another way out of this problem.

Now, in my concluding remarks, I will say this. To arrive at the situation that I think is the only situation and the only way that will end this conflict could take several intermediate steps, and that one understands. For example, the application for statehood is one such step, which shows the world that we’ve tried everything, and of course it will not succeed in loosening Israel’s grip on the Palestinian territories, but it would free the Palestinian leadership. For example, I’m giving you an example, to say right, that’s it, we dissolve ourselves as a Palestinian Authority, and we apply for citizenship within the state of Israel. Since we’re ruled by Israel, why not say so? And you’ll convert immediately a struggle for an end of occupation to a struggle for equal civil and political rights within one’s state.

So that’s one approach towards the end result. It doesn’t really matter that much which approach is used, which steps are taken, what really matters is that everybody is clear that the end result of this process has to be a new state, which is not a Zionist state, in which the peoples who live there and the peoples who are expelled from there and their descendants are able to live in a reasonable, democratic, equitable framework.

If we are agreed that that is the end result of this process, then I think everybody here and everybody out there will recognize that this finally will end the conflict.

[Munayyer] Thank you very much to all of our speakers. Before we get to the questions, I just wanted to pose one question to our panel, and then we can get to some of the cards. The conversation that we heard, the comments that we just heard were very frank, and I think largely on point on all of the issues, and I think that the common idea here is that there needs to be a very significant shift in the framework in which we look at the entire situation. I think that’s something that all of our speakers had in common. My question to you is, and perhaps each of you can answer this, what specific steps do you think different actors, be it activists or people in this room or specific political leaders can take to make the discussion or the conversation that we just had here in this room be part of the discourse in the larger American media, the halls of power here in this city, where the conversation, the discourse is completely different?

[Steinberg] Okay, I certainly don’t mind starting. I thought about this a great deal, and first of all we need different voices to be heard in Washington D.C., inside the Beltway, and for a long time I’ve advocated that certain voices that are Israelis themselves, who are Israelis themselves have long been excluded by American Jews. And Norton Mezvinsky can speak about this from personal experience, the whole system of ostracization and shunning and so forth, but there are extraordinary people who have left Israel, Jewish people who have left Israel, people of conscience, who really could not stand the oppression there. I just reread an article by a former speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg. The man is in exile in France. He’s former speaker of the Knesset he comes from an old pioneer family that proceeded the World Wars and so forth. And what he has said about Israel becoming in the direction of fascism should be heard in America regularly. Ilan Papp a friend of my fellow speakers, who’s written books that are available, the “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and so forth, extraordinary knowledge of the situation. These people can come to the United States at the invitation of NGOs, all kinds of organizations, Universities. Let them be heard. Let us have another voice.

Secondly, on the economic front, many of you are familiar with Executive Intelligence Review, and perhaps something that we called the Oasis Plan, which was developed by the EIR founder, Mr. Rouche, in 1974. And the Oasis Plan simply said let’s go back to these ideas. F.D.R. talked about this when he was in Casablanca, he told his son, “Elliot! Do you know what’s underneath these deserts? There’s water here! We can have a bread basket!” This is why we have to end imperialism. This is why we have to end colonialism and so forth, and those projects from the expansion of the Suez Canal to desalinization and so forth could truly, these great projects that humanity needs, that could be the direction of the next step. And in the financial crisis that we have world wide, truly the planet needs that kind of deployment of sovereign wealth funds such as the Saudis have, and this came immediately to bear in Egypt when Egypt did not want IMF loans and the Saudis stepped in.

Again, our thanks to Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, when the U.S. was threatening to cut off all money to Palestinian Authority, I believe it was the Saudis, it may have been also others, who said don’t worry about it, you don’t need their money. So these are the steps that are in the right direction, economic development on a grand scale, not some silly little company that’s set up here and there at the charity of some Israeli, but grand projects of economic development, and let us start the debate in the United States by having these Israeli, former Israeli citizens in exile come here and tell us what’s really the situation.

[Moynihan] Paraphrasing some of the questions we’ve received from …

[Mezvinsky] I’ll try to be brief, and specific, and to the point. One, I would just repeat again without repeating it fully what I said in my prepared talk, when I talked about emphasizing human rights violations. Human rights has a big appeal, and emphasizing violations also has big appeal, and let me give you an illustration of what can work and what doesn’t work. And I’ll go back quite a ways. I’m sure you all remember the United Nations Resolution of decades ago that started out with this headline: Zionism is racism. I know a good deal about how that came about because two people drew it up: Rabbi Elmer Berger – perhaps the most noted anti-Zionist rabbi that we’ve had in the United States – and [Fayou Sayed] whom, as I’m sure many of you know, was then the major Palestinian spokesperson in the United Nations. They were good friends, and they drew it up. And when they drew it up, they drew up a great list of human rights violations. They specified them, in detail. Elmer Berger with whom I worked, showed it to me, and I looked at the headline, and the headline said Zionism is racism. I said, “If you put that headline there, then the Zionists are going to jump on the headline, and almost no one is going to read all of those violations, because the attack is going to be they’re calling it racism, that’s Nazism, that’s anti-Semitism.” Well, I’m sure you know that is what happened. That’s just one example, but that’s a major example. Emphasize human rights violations.

Then also let me say this. There should be increasing and more emphasis on the campuses, on the campuses. Ghada Karmi said this may take quite a while to work on in the hope of changing the Zionist character of the state of Israel, or even changing opinion in the United States about Zionism and about Israel. Well, I agree with that fully, but I know a bit about campuses, and as many of you may also know, there has been an increase in criticism of Israel largely for human rights violations on the campuses. And I also read, as some of you do, the material put out every week by the Zionist organizations in the United States, and one thing that has been emphasized for at least the last two to three years is that their major problem as they see it, or one of the major problems is the campus, is the campus. So I would say emphasize human rights violations, and emphasize even more than it’s being done now this kind of thing on the campuses. It’s not hard to do; it’s not hard to do. Things can be arranged on campuses; sometimes there’s difficulty in doing it, but it can still be done. So those are the two specifics that I would recommend.

[Karmi] Right. Let me try and be brief. First of all can I say that that is an excellent question. It’s absolutely to the point. This is how I would answer it.

First, the idea has to be disseminated. It is my experience that what I’ve just said, what the other two speakers have been talking about also, are invite, invite you and the world out there to think differently. Now, when one does that, it needs dissemination, it needs discussion. The idea has to be put forward all the time. It has to be written about, it has to be talked about. I’m glad to say that it is, this is happening. It’s been happening more and more over the last ten years.

And the second thing is that the Palestinians need to be more unified on this endpoint, as I put it. There are hopeful signs along that line, too, because, as I mentioned in my talk, there is serious, there is a serious proposal that the Palestinian Authority could be dissolved, and that the Palestinians under occupation then become citizens asking for equal rights within one state, and that’s – if you like – that’s the vanguard of such a movement. That will be very interesting. But most specifically, I would ask you to think in this way – it’s a different way, it’s a new way, I believe it to be the right way – and to disseminate the idea. Once it becomes common currency, as today the two-state idea is – remember there was once upon a time, nobody talked about two-state. How come everybody talks about it? Well, it became disseminated. The same will happen, can happen to this idea, and that I think will be the way forward.

[Moynihan] There is the sense among some who are joined, who listen and appreciate the speakers, that in indeed that among the speakers themselves, that the United States veto of the U.N. Resolution is a certainty. So then the question becomes, what happens then? Certainly in the very near term, one of those who writes expects that there may be violence in the Palestinian territories, whether in the West Bank or Gaza. And they wonder if indeed instead of simply attempting to delay and ultimately veto the Resolution that the U.N. Security Council and the permanent five, and perhaps with the United States’ role, should’nt attempt to reorganize it independently in terms of the proclamation to award sort of two observer seats, if my understanding is correct. One being West Bank, statehood for Palestine, the other being Gaza Strip, to then provide as one of our speakers, Professor Ghada mentioned, that intermediate steps can be viewed as progress. But at any rate, we should talk about the fact that the veto will occur as presently structured, and what does that mean? Does that mean violence and death again as the sum result, or as the near-term result of this gesture for statehood? We invite replies from the panelists.

[Karmi] Well I think I did try to say something about that in my talk. The U.S. veto will be used if necessary. We know that because the U.S. has said so. Now, the Palestinians then have several choices, they have some choices. They can either go – as I think I was mentioning – they can go directly then again to the General Assembly, ignore the idea of a full membership, because the Security Council has to support full membership, go to the General Assembly and ask for enhanced observer, non-member status. And that looks as if that could happen, and therefore in a sense, that improves – if you like – the formal position of the Palestinians. So that’s one way it could go.

Of course another way it could go is what it – I think I was intimating – is already being spoken about by the very same Palestinian leadership. It is saying if we are not going to be, become full state, full members of the U.N., then we will consider dissolving the Palestinian Authority, and becoming a completely different, a new animal. That is being talked about quite seriously. That’s another way.

And of course the third way would be, or the third outcome, would be that the partisanship of the U.S., and the way that the world body has been frustrated by America’s actions, first of all will not do America any good really, in terms of world opinion. Second, it will isolate Israel further. Third, it will empower the Palestinians to feel that right is on their side, and that in itself could start a new and refreshed struggle against Israel.

[Mezvinsky] Improving the Palestinian status as a non-state member, or partial member of the United Nations of course is a good idea. That could be done in the General Assembly with one or another kind of Resolution. There’s also, as I’m again sure many of you know, there’s also at least talk about, if not, the move might be underway for all I know, to have Palestinian representation in UNESCO. That would be a very, very good thing to do. But that’s apart, in a sense, from even an advocacy of a Palestinian state.

What would a veto by the United States do? Well, it would certainly hurt the reputation of the United States, but to them the question is for how long and to what effect? I mean, I think that if we want to be realistic, we should not necessarily assume that if and when – and it will happen if there are nine other votes in the Security Council, almost certainly will happen, it’s been announced – there will be a United States veto. Well, it shouldn’t be assumed that that’s going to affect the United States terribly, adversely for a very long period of time. It’s possible, it’s not necessarily probable.

And anyway, another possibility, to be realistic we have to think about this, is we could have that Resolution put, which it’s already been put, it will be voted upon, and if it’s voted down, then it could go the way that other United Nations Resolutions have gone, even all those that have been passed in the General Assembly in favor of the Palestinians. Those Resolutions have ended up in a practical sense in going almost nowhere. I say almost, because maybe there’s been some influence along the way, here and there, but realistically, United Nations Resolutions have not meant very much. That doesn’t make me happy, but I think that we have to be, again, as realistic as we can be.

So, I am not personally, I am not necessarily as hopeful – I don’t know if that’s the right word – but I’m not so hopeful, as many others, that a United States veto of this Resolution in the Security Council is going to damage the United States near permanently, or damage the United States necessarily in a somewhat longer period of time. It might, especially if it’s combined with some other things. And I’ll go back to my major point.

If it’s combined with emphasizing human rights violations, especially those such as settlement expansion that has largely been paid for by money from the United States, then I think there is a greater chance of yes indeed hurting the reputation of the United States, but doing it for a purpose here, and the purpose would be in a way that may down the line a ways be helpful and positive for Palestinians.

[Moynihan] Unsurprisingly, our guests also have posed some questions about preparation for statehood, preparation to join the communities as working and income-earning populations – the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers, so to speak – as well as law and order, public safety, commercial banking, higher education, trade regulations, rule of law, and all the sorts of things that independent entities – be they referred to as states or something else – need to embrace, need to characterize themselves as they join the community of nations as an independent group. And I think the question is what efforts are underway? Are they successful? How should they be buttressed, and, indeed, are funds available to bring about progress in that sense?

[Karmi] Let me just remind people that after the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the Palestinians were deluged with a large number of non-governmental organizations and official delegations and exchange projects from the European countries and from the United States, all of these quote helping the Palestinians to build the institutions of state. That went on for all the years from 1993. I worked for the Palestinian Authority in 2005, let me assure you, I saw so many NGOs, in fact I tried counting them – it was about eighty-three at the time – all operating in the small area of the West Bank and Gaza, all of them preparing the Palestinians quote for statehood. So, institutions were built, education was sorted out, the health service, you name it. What succeeded that was Prime Minister Salam Fayyed, who two years ago vowed to prepare the West Bank territories for statehood, and he set about very seriously and very successfully in building up all the institutions of a state. In fact, he has completed his work, and he has said to the world, look, you can come and monitor us, and look, inspect us. You will find that we have built a transparent financial system, we have built an educational system, we have built an infrastructure, we have done everything that a state needs, we just need to be given formal statehood and we are ready. So that I think is the answer to that question.

[Munayyer] I just want to jump in to make one point here that I think is missing from the question and from the discussion, because we here this so often, this idea of is Palestine ready in terms of institutions? One reality that most people don’t know is that in terms of per capita GDP, the current situation in the West Bank and Gaza today under occupation is still better than forty independent nations that already have membership status within the United Nations. Literacy rates in Palestine are better than dozens of independent states that already have membership in the United Nations. As far as I understand it, the idea that there is some sort of threshold of institutional development that must cross is a burden that’s being placed on Palestine and only Palestine, and is not placed on any other state within the international system and never has been. The difference between Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza Strip today in terms of where their institutions are, and dozens of others states that are weaker institutionally is that those states are not occupied. The problem, the obstacle to Palestinian self-determination has never been a lack of institutions or a lack of capacity. In fact, Palestinians have built more states throughout the Middle East without having a state than anyone else. The difference has always been that Palestinians are occupied.

[Steinberg] Thank you, Yousef. That’s really, really useful to remember. And what I was going to answer is directly in line with that. Think of the American Revolution. We had a revolution because of economic oppression, and all other kinds of obstacles that were set up. Look at India. Was India ready for independence after the horrible British occupation there? So the question of independence is a living process. One of the speakers on the earlier panel posed the challenge: do you American’s have a method, a formula, a recipe for independence? Well of course not. After many, many years, we actually had to reconvene a constitutional convention because the country was going bankrupt. Like the articles, the original articles under which the revolution was fought had fallen apart. We had to sweat and slave, our founding fathers, for six weeks in Philadelphia to come up with the Constitution, and then even after that it was Alexander Hamilton’s report on manufacturers, report on credit, the creation of a national bank, before you could actually get into a situation where you could build the institution of self-governance.

One thing I can say for sure, and I’m not up on every Ministry in the Palestinian Authority, from all the Palestinians that I know, there is a fire in the belly, there is an intelligence, there is a level of education and commitment that will make this one of the most exciting independence movements in the world. And if that could be combined with what Israel has to offer, in a non-Zionist framework, this is going to be really an era of hope. Does it sound completely impractical? Yes. But here we have some friends who are in Tahrir Sqaure, and that never looked like it was going to go anywhere, and here we are in a totally different situation. So think about that.

[Moynihan] This will have to be the last question for this panel, and it concerns incrementalism as a strategy for Palestine. As has been noted, President Clinton’s memoirs suggest that the efforts that he undertook in the last months of his Administration came to failure because specifically of the attitude of the Palestinian delegation that all was necessary, and intermediate steps to be followed by subsequent negotiations, perhaps years or even decades hence, were unacceptable. To be honest, I’ve heard some of this myself. I’ve heard this opinion expressed by Gulf Arabs, I’ve heard this opinion expressed by others, that the Palestinian strategy of all or nothing, the so-called if it takes one hundred years approach, results in stalemate. We haven’t heard our panel say that today. We have heard them say instead that intermediate steps may well be in the interests of the Palestinian people, and I wonder if in concluding this panel we could get some comments on incrementalism as a strategy for Palestine?

[Karmi] I’m not sure what is meant by all or nothing, because the discourse, as I was at pains to point out, has not been about all; on the contrary, it’s been about a partitioning, the original land of Palestine, into two extremely unequal parts with twenty-two percent if they’re lucky going to the Palestinians. I don’t think, I’m not sure what all means. That is certainly not all, and basically the problem with the two-state discourse, of course, is that it was, became presented as that acquiring twenty-two percent of original Palestine was really the very ceiling, the top and the acme of Palestinian ambitions, and they would be very, very lucky to get it. When it was presented like that, of course, that is a gross distortion of the reality. And if the all is meant there, then it is not all, certainly not. The all would be getting the whole of the homeland back, not part of it. Having said that, I’m not sure therefore, within the context, I’ve made clear whether the Palestinian reactions about all really make any, you know, really make any sense. If the idea was that they would have to accept less than even twenty-two percent, then you can understand the Palestinian reluctance on having to give up even more than they’ve already given up.

So if that was the case, I think that would be my answer. Now, the idea of incrementalism is something I did mention briefly towards the end ofmy presentation, that in order to arrive at the ultimate aim, and what I really wanted to do this afternoon was to stress the ultimate end of this process. That the end is not an unequal division of Palestine, the end is the return of Palestine’s refugees and exiles to their homeland, in a state which is no longer a Zionist state. That is the aim. Now, if we’re very clear that that is the aim, it’s very possible to see strategies, which involve intermediate stages. Now if that is meant by an incremental approach, then that is perfectly acceptable intellectually, in theory, perfectly acceptable, and may indeed by the only way.

[Mezvinsky] We need to be very clear. If we’re going to talk about incrementalism, what that means. If we look at the situation today and before today, in terms of the advocacies of state by the Palestinian two-state advocates and the state of Israel, the state of Israel, governments of the state of Israel, from the early 1990s. Before that, they didn’t use the word state. Then they started using the word state. But if we look at how the government of Israel has looked at state and defined it, and the way Palestinians have defined it, first of all we see a very important thing. They’re not talking about the same thing. They don’t have the same definitions. Palestinians understandably who have argued and do argue in terms of a Palestinian state argue for an independent, sovereign state. If you look at the Israeli definition, whenever it’s been used, even by those Prime Ministers who have said well maybe it will come sometime in the future, they’ve talked about, their definition has been a definition has been a definition that Menachem Begin gave in the late 1970s. Autonomous rule. That’s what they’re really saying. You Palestinians can have local rule in many ways specified, maybe even increase some, but what they’re really saying also is – and we’ve seen this happen in Gaza – anytime the Israeli government says anytime we don’t like what you’re doing, because we define that as being a threat to our security, we’re going to come in and stop it. That’s not sovereignty. I don’t know, I don’t think that any Israeli government to date has even allowed sovereignty, per se, to be put on the table for discussion. So, if they’re not even talking about the same definition, if they, the two-state advocates who are Palestinians and the Israeli government are not even talking about the same thing, if their definitions are different, then I would say we haven’t even come into an area, yet, where we can start talking about incrementalism.

And let me point out one other thing, and emphasize what I said before, because we should also have a concern about this. We have, again, one point five million Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel, and who are also oppressed. Not so oppressed overall as the three and a half million in the West Bank, and even worse as the one and a half million or more in Gaza, but they’re oppressed. They don’t have all the rights and privileges by law that Israeli Jews have. They are opposed to this. They campaign against it. And I’m saying that if we got a Palestinian state, I’ll call it a mini-state anyway, if it would be by any definition on only twenty or twenty-two percent of Palestine, if we got that state, that could well put these one point five million Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel in more jeopardy, and that’s not just some kind of imaginary thought.

If Avigdor Lieberman who is the Foreign Minister, as you know, of the state of Israel, he’s already said this kind of thing to them. If you don’t like it here, well, he says, you can go elsewhere. Think of what that elsewhere would be, and think of how it would be stated, not just by Avigdor Lieberman, but by a good many other people in the Israeli government if there were a mini-Palestinian state right next door. I’m saying we should have that concern as well for those one point five million Palestinians of the state of Israel, and that means we have to ask the question well, if there were a mini-state – which I don’t think is going to happen – but if there were a mini-state, well, would that be good or bad for those Palestinian citizens?

[Steinberg] First of all, in terms of the incrementals, the discussion that we’ve been having to turn the whole narrative away from what it’s been – two-state, one-state, negotiations, Oslo, roadmap, et cetera – forget it. Drop those terms, drop that framework, deal with it from the standpoint of what are U.S. national security and strategic interests? It is clear that more and more it’s being openly discussed that Israel is a strategic liability to us, and this has been written up by some top military experts like Cordesman. So, you take that into account number one, and the other narrative being the human rights issue, the end of apartheid issue, you have a completely different narrative. Within that context, refugees, the Palestinian refugees about which we unfortunately haven’t had time to talk. This is a horrible situation. It is a horrible situation, and it is something that we have to put on the agenda. It’s never been one of the incrementals, and that is just something we have to fight with separately. If we fight on these different fronts, and I’m going to add one more, the United States should talk to Hamas. Even before the 2006 elections, the Jerry Adams case in the solving of the Irish-Northern Ireland situation, and the fact that he was taken off the list of pariahs made a tremendous difference here. Why has the United States refused, and refused, and refused to talk to Hamas, openly, not some behind the scenes, backdoor type of situation? These are – you could call them incrementals – but as I said before the U.S. has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, something that the Israelis love to say about Arafat and the Palestinians. But we have not taken any of the steps as the leading force in any of these negotiations that could move the process forward. So yeah, I think there are many steps that can be taken, are needed to be taken, and those steps move the thing forward more than zillions of talking heads on TV or more peace negotiations will. Thank you.

[Moynihan] With that, would you join me in congratulating this panel for informing us on Palestine. I’d like to announce a ten-minute break now, before we reform to discuss the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Mr. Yousef Munayyer

Mr. Munayyer is the Executive Director of the Palestine Center and the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development is an independent 501©(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, D. C. The Palestine Center hosts educational briefings and publishes analysis of the Palestinian experience and U.S. policy in the region. Previously, Munayyer served as a Policy Analyst for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation’s largest Arab American membership organization.

Mr. Munayyer is completing doctoral in Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. His research is focused on political conflict, interstate and domestic conflict as well as ethnic cleansing and political repression. Mr. Munayyer frequently writes on matters of foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim world and civil rights and civil liberties issues in the United States. His op-eds have appeared regularly in numerous national newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

For more information: www.thejerusalemfund.org

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Ms. Michele Steinberg

Ms. Steinberg is Counterintelligence Editor and Middle East correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), having covered Middle East politics for more than 20 years. She authored one of the first articles exposing the neoconservative apparatus of foreign policy advisors to the Bush-Cheney Administration known as “The Vulcans.” Mrs. Steinberg has been a guest on Pacifica Radio, Al-Jazeera, Press TV, and WNYC. Her articles and interviews have appeared in EIR, the Federal Observer, Middle East Policy Journal, All About Palestine, Turkish Weekly, and Ramallah Online. She has interviewed many prominent figures in Middle East affairs, including Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Maxim Ghilan, General Joseph Hoar, Ghada Kharmi, Francis Boyle, and Dr. Najib Al-Mauimi, former Justice Minister of Qatar and attorney for several Guantanamo Bay detainees. Following her March-April 2010 tour of Syria and Egypt, she wrote about the likely prospects of major social upheaval in Egypt. Ms. Steinberg graduated from Douglas College with a Degree in English Literature and Psychology.

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Dr. Ghada Karmi

Dr. Karmi is a leading Palestinian academic and writer. Born in Jerusalem, Dr. Karmi was raised and educated in the United Kingdom. Currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, she teaches conflict resolution as it relates to the Palestinian-Israeli issue. She is also Co-Director of the European Centre of Palestine Studies at Exeter. Previously she was a Fellow at both the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Dr. Karmi’s major area of work has been on the Palestine-Israel issue on which she has published widely. She is also a well-known figure on British radio and TV. Her books include “Jerusalem Today: What Future for the Peach Process?” (Ithaca Press, 1996) and “The Palestinian Exodus 1948-1998” (with Eugene Cotran, Ithaca Press, 1999). Her most recent and widely acclaimed memoir, In Search of Fatima: a Palestinian Story (Verso Press, 2002), represents a rare example of Palestinian personal narrative writing in English. Dr. Karmi’s latest book, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine, is published by Pluto Press and addresses the one-state solution in Israel-Palestine.

For more information: socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/iais

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Dr. Norton Mezvinsky

Dr. Mezvinsky is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Connecticut State University, and President of the International Council of Middle East Studies, a new academic think tank in Washington, D.C. He has published books, articles and book reviews that deal with various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Zionism. His book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, which he wrote with the late Israeli scholar Israel Shahak, has been translated and published in four languages in addition to English.

Dr. Mezvinsky’s most recent publications include a lengthy biographical essay of David Ben-Gurion in the new, highly praised “Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, published by Lynne Reiner Publishers (2010), and a chapter essay titled, “The Christian Zionist View of Islam” in “Islam in the Eyes of the West”, published by Routledge (2010). Two additional essays on the Jewish religious right and Zionism are scheduled for publication in 2011. Dr. Mezvinsky is currently writing a book on Christian Zionism.

Dr. Mezvinsky has lectured and delivered papers at conferences around the world with recent engagements including a speaking tour in Istanbul, Damascus, and Beirut. He has been one of the most well-known and outspoken specialists on the Palestine Question for five decades. His recent remarks on “The One State Solution” and other topics, presented at the International Law Institute, can be accessed at icmes.net.

For more information: www.icmes.net

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