PeaceCast

Omar Shakir is the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, where he investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Shakir has a broad experience in human rights work, both with Human Rights Watch and with other groups, including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees and investigating human rights violations in Egypt. Shakir holds a JD from Stanford Law School, where he co-authored a report on the civilian consequences of US drone strikes in Pakistan as a part of the International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic, an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Affairs, and a BA in International Relations from Stanford.

The conversation with him focuses on the events along the Israel Gaza border fence, and in particular addresses Israel’s practice of sniper fire targeting unarmed civilians.

Another in a series of episodes drawing on Ori's experience in Israel and the West Bank in February, with APN's Study Tour and with the Encounter program. 

This episode is based on a conversation that members of APN's Board of Directors had with with Khalil Shikaky, who had been featured in the past on PeaceCast. 

We met at his Ramalla office, where he analyzed his most recent polling data, and spoke about Palestinian politics. This edited-down version focuses on Shikaki's characterization and analysis of the decline of Palestinian secular nationalism. Shikaki's talk follows a short introduction by Ori and Stephanie Brietsman, who manages APN's programming. 

Please contact Ori with any comments, feedback or requests at [email protected]

Another episode based on a talk recorded during APN's recent Study Tour to Israel and the West Bank, featuring Yossi Alpher, one of Israel’s leading geo-strategic political analysts, and the author of Hard Questions Tough Answers.

PeaceCast is back after a long hiatus. Ori Is back from Israel and the West Bank. Debra Shushan is back from AIPAC's policy conference in DC. 

In this episode, Ori and Debra talk about AIPAC, about APN's Israel Study Tour, and about the Encounter program that Ori attended in February in Israel.

The featured segment of the episode is an edited version of a conversation that APN's Board of Directors had at Haaretz's office in Tel Aviv with Editor in Chief Aluf Benn.

Leading Palestinian pollster and scholar Khalil Shikaki, in a conversation from his Ramallah office, reviewing key challenges facing Palestinians and their leaders, and explaining the dwindling support among West Bank and Gaza Palestinians -- particularly the younger generation -- for the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. 

In Arabic, Fauda means chaos. It's also the name of a popular Israeli TV series that has made it on the international scene. Fauda's co-creator Avi Issacaroff, an Israeli journalist, talks about the show's surprising success, about the message that he and his co-creator Lior Raz are trying to convey to the Israeli audience and to the world through the show, and about the odd reactions to Fauda's second season's publicity campaign.

On December 7th, 2017, APN hosted former US consul General in Jerusalem, Jacob (Jake) Walles. Ambassador Walles spoke about the repercussions of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his decision to start preparations for transferring America’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  

Jacob Walles is a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Israeli-Palestinian issues, Tunisia, and counterterrorism. Throughout his 35-year career in the foreign service, he was U.S. ambassador to Tunisia (2012 to 2015), consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem (2005 to 2009), and served as senior adviser in the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism (2015 to 2017). During his long career at the State Department, Walles was actively involved in Middle East peace negotiations, beginning with the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 and continuing through the Obama administration. 

Read Ambassador Walles' analysis of President Trump's Jerusalem move here: http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/74947?lang=en

As a part of our series on the first intifada, as its 30th anniversary approaches, this episode features a conversation with Mubarak Awad, the Palestinian-American who in the mid-1980s returned to Jerusalem, determined to lead a revolution, to get the Palestinians to shift from armed struggle to nonviolence. Awad got in trouble with both the Israeli authorities, which ended up deporting him, and with the PLO, which at first viewed him as a sellout, a collaborator and a traitor, but ended up embracing and adopting many of the methods he advocated. 

Awad is the founder and director of Nonviolence International 

Please don't forget your tax-deductible end-of-year donation to Americans for Peace Now: https://peacenow.org/donate

The U.S. State Department notified the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) late in November 2017 that it may shut its mission to the United States in Washington DC. The move sparked livid reactions by the Palestinian leadership and raised many eyebrows among Washington's policy community. Why would an administration that says it wants to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace act to alienate one of the parties it wants to bring to the negotiating table? Are the administration's hands truly tied by congressional legislation on this issue? 

To answer these and other questions, PeaceCast hosted Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the former director of policy and government relations of Americans for Peace Now. 

Check out FMEP's web site: https://fmep.org/ and Lara's explainer of the crisis: https://fmep.org/blog/2017/11/understanding-plo-mission-crisis-key-documents/

Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel: 1917-2017 is Ian Black's new book on a hundred years of conflict. 

Ian Black is a veteran British journalist, who over his many years of reporting has focused on the Arab world, Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He recently retired from the Guardian, where for many years he was the Middle East editor, and is now He is now a visiting senior fellow at the Middle East Centre in London.

We spoke about his disciplined writing style, about the dynamics of the conflict, about important moments along the timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and about hope.