Palestine Deep Dive

#78 A One-State Reality? Reassessing the International Approach to Palestine & Israel with Kenneth Roth

We speak exclusively to the “godfather of human rights” Kenneth Roth on how the international community should be responding to the realities on the ground in Palestine and Israel today.
Kenneth Roth is an American attorney, human rights activist and writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022.
Writing for Deutsche Welle earlier this year, Roth asserts that after 56 years the pretence of Israel’s occupation being a temporary fixture can no longer be upheld, and what we actually witness today is a “one-state reality”, whereby Israel controls all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River while subjecting Palestinians to an apartheid system of domination and control.
“After more than five decades of occupation and 30 years of the ‘peace process,’ it is no longer tenable to regard the repression of Israel’s occupation as a mere temporary phenomenon to be cured by a ‘peace process’ without end. The ‘peace process’ is moribund. While governments speak of a two-state solution, what we have today is a ‘one-state reality.’ Indeed, the main people still invoking the two-state solution seem to be Western officials desperately trying to avoid coming to terms with the unceasing nature of Israeli oppression.”

#77 UNRWA’s Financial Crisis: A Lifeline for Palestine’s Refugees On the Brink | Andrew Whitley

Andrew Whitley is founder & executive director of Geo-Political Advisory Services (GPAS) & Chair of the Balfour Project. Andrew has had an expansive career first as a journalist for the BBC & Financial Times, before serving as the New York Director of UNRWA & then as Policy Director & interim Chief Executive of The Elders.
UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Work Agency) was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to help and protect Palestinian refugees expelled during the Nakba in 1947-8 and today it is in dire financial crisis.
“The financial crisis facing UNRWA is deep and complex. It has been suffering from these issues for many years, but this year is the most dangerous. UNRWA will have no funds to serve Palestinian refugees after August,” Adnan Abu Hasna, the UNRWA representative in Gaza, told Mondoweiss earlier this month.
Today, over six million Palestinian refugees are registered with the agency, relying on it for essential services including education, food, healthcare and jobs.
Abu Hasna warned that all UNRWA services will be stopped by the beginning of September if they do not get the necessary funds. This will apply to all UNRWA programs, not only in Gaza, but in all the areas the agency works, including Gaza and the West Bank inside Palestine, as well as refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. 
“Nearly half a million students in our schools are dependent on our services. We provide food to nearly 1.2 million Palestine refugees,” he told Al Jazeera.
“In a place like Gaza, any shaking of our programmes or our activities or services will threaten the stability and even the social fabric, as refugees are dependent on our cash assistance programme on education and health.” UNRWA runs 22 medical centres and 278 schools in Gaza, alongside several programs in human rights education, university scholarships, vocational training, and teacher training. 

#76 The oPt: Israel’s Open-Air Prison | Francesca Albanese, Sahar Francis, Nery Ramati

Israel’s military occupation has morphed the entire occupied Palestinian territory into an open-air prison, where Palestinians are constantly confined, surveilled and disciplined, UN Special Rapporteur for the oPt Francesca Albanese demonstrates in a new report to the Human Rights Council.
While the report finds that since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, have been arrested and detained under Israeli military rules, Albanese notes that Israel’s “carceral regime” haunts Palestinian life even outside of prisons.
With blockades, walls, segregated infrastructure, checkpoints, settlements encircling Palestinian towns and villages, hundreds of bureaucratic permits and a web of digital surveillance, Palestinians are confined to a carceral continuum across strictly controlled enclaves.
Join us as we learn more about the nature of Israel’s carceral regime and its relationship to international law with three leading human rights experts:
Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.
Sahar Francis, Palestinian human rights defender, lawyer and the General Director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.
Nery Ramati, Israeli human rights attorney defending Palestinian children. He was a partner in Gaby Lasky and Partners Law Office, a leading human rights office in Israel, specialising in freedom of expression and protest. 

#74 Why Palestinians are Turning Towards China? | Ian Williams

With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visiting China earlier this month to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first Arab President to visit China since the China-Arab States Summit of Riyadh in December 2022, commentators have suggested China may well be placing more importance on Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine as a foreign policy issue.
On May 24th, Chinese Ambassador Geng Shuang addressed the UN and strongly condemned Israel’s "illegal expansion of [Israeli Jewish] settlements”, its “unilateral action” and its “provocations” in Jerusalem, as well as raising the issue of “the plight of the Palestinian refugees”.
This comes off the back of China’s successful brokering of a landmark deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran on 6th April, soon after which China's new Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, reportedly consulted with Palestinian and Israeli officials on "steps to resume peace talks". Given the United States’ long-standing and overt support for Israel, something which has angered Palestinians who feel that this proves the US can never be an honest broker in any efforts to bring about a just and lasting resolution to the region, is China looking to take advantage of this situation and what could increased Chinese influence mean for the Palestinians?
We’ll be unpacking: how China’s Belt and Road Initiative incorporates Israel and Palestine; whether accusations of human rights abuses against the Chinese government, particularly its treatment of the Uyghur minority, will affect its relationship with Palestine; the nature of China’s vision for peace in Palestine and Israel; and what a broader shift in the global balance of power could mean for the region and for Palestinians in particular?
Ian Williams is President of the Foreign Press Association, New York & Columnist for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Mark Seddon was speechwriter for former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon & Al Jazeera Television’s first UN correspondent in New York.

#73 Ben Jamal & Aimee Shalan | Defending the Right to Boycott - Confronting the UK’s Anti-BDS Bil

The UK government has announced that it will press ahead to pass its long-anticipated ‘Anti-BDS Bill’ which has drawn strong condemnation from campaigners across the UK and beyond.
The Economic Activity of Public Bodies bill, if enacted, will prevent public bodies (eg universities and local councils) from divesting from companies and organisations found to be complicit in Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
The bill is due to be debated by the House of Commons in the first week of July. Its stated purpose is "to prevent public bodies from being influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign states when taking certain economic decisions".
But at a time when Israel further entrenches its settler-colonialism and apartheid by the day, killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate, shooting journalists, expanding its illegal settlements, demolishing Palestinian homes and upholding its besiegement of millions of Palestinians in the open-air prison of Gaza, this bill is being widely interpreted as an attempt by the UK government to maintain Israel’s impunity in the face of growing solidarity with Palestine. While the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign claims the government’s main target is campaigns in support of Palestinian rights, it also suggest those pushing for action against deforestation, environmental pollution and the exploitation of children and workers could also be affected by the Bill.
Ben Jamal is the Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the largest organisation in solidarity with Palestinians in the UK. PSC has been leading the efforts to prevent this bill from passing into law. Jamal’s family were among the over 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes in the 1948 Nakba.
Aimee Shalan is the Co-Director of Makan and Chair of the British Palestinian Committee. Shalan was the former CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians and the former Director of Friends of Birzeit University (FOBZU). Aimee holds a doctorate in the Politics of Palestinian Literature. Shalan was born in the UK with her family originally hailing from Haifa, having been forced to leave in the 1948 Nakba.

#72 Ghada Karmi | One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel | Book Launch

Palestine Deep Dive continues its UK event series, opening up space for Palestinians to be heard articulating their own discourse, this time hosting esteemed Palestinian author Dr Ghada Karmi to celebrate the launch of her latest book with Pluto Press, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel.
In April, PDD hosted Mohammed El-Kurd to explore the pressing need for a media landscape which no longer marginalises and excludes Palestinians, but centres their voices, experiences and agency,
This time Mark Seddon speaks with Ghada Karmi at the Frontline Club to learn more about her vision for Palestinian liberation, one of equal rights for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Karmi argues the 'peace process' that has favoured the two-state solution for more than forty years has now been internationally exposed as masking the expansion of Israel's apartheid regime. Seventy-five years ago,  Ghada Karmi and her family in Jerusalem were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were exiled during the Nakba. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of the single democratic state in Palestine-Israel in which all inhabitants of the lands would have equal rights.
Forced from her home in 1948, Karmi came to the United Kingdom as a refugee and later trained as a Doctor of Medicine at Bristol University. She established the first British-Palestinian medical charity in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Her previous books include the best-selling memoir In Search of Fatima (2002) and Return: A Palestinian memoir (2015).
Mark Seddon was the first UN Correspondent for Al Jazeera English and is a former editor of Tribune Magazine.

Gaza Under Attack: Israel’s Ongoing Nakba Against the Palestinians 75 years On

Streamed live at 2pm ET | 7pm UK | 9pm Palestine on Wednesday 10th May:
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist and Founding-Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
Rana Shubair is a Palestinian author, mother and language trainer from Gaza. She specializes in English language training, testing and translation.
At least fifteen Palestinians have been killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning and throughout the day in a series of Israeli military attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip.
More than 40 Israeli warplanes carried out attacks for nearly two hours starting at 2am on Tuesday (23:00 GMT Monday). At least four children and four women have been killed, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Social media users report among those killed in Gaza was Dr Jamal Khaswan, a well-known dentist and Director of the Al Wafa hospital. He was reportedly killed alongside his wife and son.
Palestinian journalist Dr Ramzy Baroud argues Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza are likely being waged by Israel's political leadership, “to ensure that the political crisis in Israel can be averted” and says the ferocity of the attacks imply Israel “intends to kill as many Palestinians as possible” and that we may well be anticipating "continued Israeli attack on Gaza” in the days to come.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist and Founding-Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Rana Shubair is a Palestinian author, mother and language trainer from Gaza. She specializes in English language training, testing and translation.

Behind the Lens: Live with Palestinian Photographers Najib Joe Hakim & Ahmad Al-Bazz

Mark Seddon speaks to multi award-winning Palestinian photographers Najib Joe Hakim & Ahmad Al-Bazz about frontline photojournalism under apartheid & the power of cultural resistance in the diaspora.
 
Najib Joe Hakim is an award winning Palestinian-American documentary photographer and artist based in San Francisco, CA. He is the recipient of the 2020 Rebuilding Alliance Storytellers Award for his projects Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay, Born among Mirrors and video Cooking Lessons: A Palestinian American Story. In 2019 he was an Art Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and his digital collage "Sending Wings instead of Arms" placed 1st in a global competition sponsored by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
 
Ahmad Al-Bazz is a multi-award winning Palestinian video-journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Nablus, occupied West Bank. In 2012, he became a member of the Activestills documentary photography collective. Ahmad regularly reports and publishes pieces at Mondoweiss and +972 Magazine and also works as a freelancer for Defence for Children International - Palestine. In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award. Between 2015-2019, two of his short documentaries received several regional and international awards, including the Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel Award for Best Arab Short Doc (2015) and the Alexandria Short Film Festival Award (2019). Ahmad’s first feature length documentary was recently pitched at Cannes and should be released later this year.

Richard Burden | How can Political Parties in Britain do more to Uphold Human Rights & International Law in Israel & Palestine?

Mark Seddon is live with Richard Burden, a former Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield (1992 to 2019). He also chaired the Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group (2001 and 2019). He is a Trustee of the Balfour Project and Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. He also served for 10 years scrutinising government as a member of the House of Commons International Development Committee.
We DeepDive into the UK government’s current performance when it comes to Israel & Palestine and also look ahead at what Keir Starmer’s Labour Party could do differently in power if it is genuinely committed to upholding human rights and international law in the region.

Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot | End Israel’s Impunity: The West’s Century of Broken Promises towards Palestine.

Ambassador Husam Zomlot, Head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom speaks to Palestine Deep Dive’s Mark Seddon. The ambassador illuminates the U.K.'s century of broken promises and missed opportunities towards Palestine, including the lack of leadership of the British government for continuing to refuse to recognise the State of Palestine.
He places responsibility for Israel’s ongoing impunity on the West for refusing to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.
The ambassador highlights how the U.S. is at risk of losing impact and influence on the region by refusing to reverse Trump’s policy decisions, and predicts the continuation of Israel’s far right trajectory, if the West continues to allow Israel to be unaccountable on the world stage.
The pair also discuss the rise in awareness of the apartheid discourse surrounding Israel and Palestine, Western media bias and the ambassador’s hopes which lie outside of the political elite, but instead at the feet of ordinary people on the streets of the Arab world and across the United Kingdom for bringing about meaningful change from the bottom up.