for those of us who are long time activists on palestine and those of us who teach on palestine either as official look at their mix or as part of our activism or any other occupation that leads us to engage with the problem of palestine there is a growing frustration i think between the gap between the gap about the gap between the way the mainstream media in a way also the mainstream academia and definitely the mainstream politics  depicts the conflict in israel and palestine on the one hand and what we feel is the essence of the conflict what we feel is the reason for the conflict and the lack of progress in the attempts to solve it even if you read the new york times in this country even if you hear a c politicians who are not denying the existence of a palestinian people who probably have been even to the west bank if not to the gaza strip hear the most progressive one in the less progressive one the way that they tend to explain the origins of the conflict the essence of the conflict the reasons for any le progress in solving the conflict is very far i think from the way we understand it from the way we sense it in the last twenty or thirty years and for many years i thought maybe the problem is that these people whether progressive enough or not progressive enough maybe the problem is that they're not spending enough time in the west maybe they haven't seen enough of these really atrocities on a daily basis maybe they should have more access to world goes on in the gaza strip maybe what is missing is more information and then i came across these same people in government in a in the media being exposed to more information and yet they remain loyal to the same basic assumptions wrong assumptions about the conflict its origins its essence and the chances to solve it and this is why i think that the problem is not only let go of the knowledge a world goes on currently in palestine the problem is not even the fact that next door to israel and palestine even worse atrocities are being committed which is the new excuse we hear for why palestine is removed from the international attention and why there is lack of international interference in what goes on i don't think that's these  iraq in shadowing what goes on in palestine i take this all into account but even with all these explanation i still find the basic understanding of why there is a conflict in palestine and israel and why this conflict is so crucial for the future of the middle east and beyond is very far from what people like myself and i suspect quite a lot of those who are here tonight feel about the conflict its origin and its future in the only way i think of challenging the wrong perceptions of palestine the misinformed assumptions that lead to the diplomatic effort that leads to no work that  charade about israel is the only democracy in the middle east's or create this narrative that peace is very nearby around the corner and all you need is either an able palestinian leader or a brave israeli leader and that's all maybe a grown up american mediator which is not exactly what we have in this moment in time  and then the issue is resolved the only way of challenging these mis conceptions unfortunately for us activist is to go back to this story why do i say unfortunately because this is the twenty first century people don't have it seems time and energy to listen to long profound analysis people prefer soundbites they want binary explanation who is bed who is good they want it in three to four minutes the span of attention is no longer than five minutes we are defeated by the very technology sometimes that enable us in a way to bring more information of what goes on in israel and palestine today there is no way of understanding what goes on today to my mind in the right context unless you are also a student of history and the reason you are to be a student of history is not because of an intellectual interest in the past this is not the reason it is because the historical chapter that began in palestine with the arrival of the zionist movement is still going on today we have not concluded that chapter we are in the same time zone as the beginning of the line isn't this is not we don't have  closure of that chapter so we're not actually going to study history we're going to study our own contemporary reality even if that particular moment began seventy years ago or maybe even one hundred years ago and there is a very good explanation why we are still in the same time zone when zionism started and why are we still faced with the same problems that zionist put in front of us as palestinians as jews and its people around the world are interested in israel and palestine we are we have to deal with zionism as a structure not as an event it's a structure and a structure in history means that yes there is a moment when this structure is exposed when this structure begins but we are still inside this structure has this famous quote where he says settler colonialism is not an event it is a structure i translated to my particularly case study zionism is not an event it is a structure and it is a settler colonialist structure now in israel at this point even those who wouldn't understand what settler colonialism is would walk out of this hole the fact that you're still here after i said the design settler colonialism made this trip worthwhile and most of those people who would walk out from the hole really wouldn't know what set the colonialism is but they would be offended by the word colonialism two years ago i organized a conference in my university the university of exeter under the title settler colonialism in palestine and called my university and said you have to stop this conference from taking place because it's an anti semitic conference to his credit my vice  politicians who called him do you know what settler colonial is a maze and they said no but it doesn't sound good so well well he said you should come to exeter and attend the conference you may learn something about the colonialism and this is typical this is this is part of the of the obstacle we face if we want to have a serious profound and a little discussion about palestine and we need there's no way of going around it there's no way of having a soundbite exchange about palestine this only moment where that comes the moment where you sa people yes it is complicated yes it's information that takes time to take in but if you really think that palestine in this will are important you will have to make the effort did when i on such stages with some of my compatriots from israel who are supposed to present the opposite side when they use the same sentence that i'm using about the reality is being complicated for exactly the opposite purpose they would say to the audience this is such a complicated story you will never understand it so leave it to us we understand what it is all about no intelligent people educated people don't need much time to understand but it's important to understand or at least to comprehend that there is a total misunderstanding about what goes on from the level of the politicians so the highest levels of politicians through mainstream media mainstream mar the reality in israel and palestine in any different way from the way their parents or their communities were conditioned to see so let me go back to this idea of settler colonialism because i think it's it's a crucial point set of colonialism as you would know from the history of this country is the movement of europeans outside of europe and these people are moving outside europe and different moments in time and mostly these movements are different from the expansion of empires into other parts of the world these are movements of communities of individuals sometimes according to the lines of imperial expansion sometimes preceding imperial expansion or following imperial expansion most of these people are persecuted for various reasons and most of these people have no wish to stay in europe and they're looking for a new home and they want also when it comes to the eighteenth century nineteenth century they want to create also a and in many cases the main obstacle for creating a new safe homeland for people who were victims of persecution is the fact that they choose places where someone else is already living and that's a problem and that's a problem and in many cases the settlers dielman eyes the natives in the indigenous to such an extent that they find it in their heart to genocide them to eliminate them or to impose an apartheid system on them or as in the case of the palestine to strive and get them out of their homeland homeland or as i called it in thousand and seven to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland if we can any given moment in and able if any given moment we can explain to jews from what definitely was eventually a genocide in europe their wish of people to become more than animal to nation even the wish to be reconnected to complicated life for all of us the other impulse that is not talked about is to get rid of the people who were already there in the land of the bible they were already modernized themselves already building a national identity and collective i did who lived there for centuries and were entitled to continue their normal life and to make their own decisions about the future whether there were good decisions or bet decision this is totally irrelevant this was their homeland and someone else came immigrated into their homeland was formed and that historical moment when your grandfathers and grandmothers your more than ancestors decided world quite a lot of europeans decided elsewhere in the world of the palestinian population and there is no escape because it is it exists in every to revel lock that you leaders have written on the way to palestine it appears in every diary that they kept it is to be found in the archives of the zionist movement and the arcus of the israeli state you didn't hide it in eight hundred eighty two because it was quite legitimate to talk about the population in eight hundred eighty two you didn't even feel it was wrong to ask the british government in one thousand thirty to help you to transfer all the palestinians outside of palestine because th was an accepted language in one thousand thirty so we don't blame you for being the same as many other european settlers who came to a different place but you came very late in the day and the palestinians to their credit resisted you in the name of palestinian nationalism in nine hundred thirty six they began a series revolt against you against the idea that you had the right to dispossess them not that you had the right to live next to them this you had the right and they never denied you the right to live next to them they resisted against your plan to dispossess them and had not the british government help the zionist movement between one hundred thirty six to nine hundred thirty nine to destroy the palestinian military elite and political elite probably the resistance would have been even more abstract strategy that a small minority of jews in mandatory palestine could not implement translated into a proper military strategy of expulsion you did it you understood very well as a political movement that three years after the holocaust the world would allow you to expel the palestinians and wouldn't do anything against it you knew that there was no leadership on the palestinian signed you knew that the arab world was busy with its own liberation struggles yes you were very clever as politicians as leaders of a political movement forty eight was the right moment to do it especially because the british decided to leave palestine and you manipulated very well the international community to depict the palestinians as the people who resist peace refused to accept peace you offer them to petition their homeland and to leave them fifty percent of their homeland and you described their rejection of this generous  progressive not more than enough and that's why that's why the people of palestine foolishly did not agree to give half of their homeland to a group of hundreds of thousands of jews mostly most of them arrive arrived in palestine only two years before who wouldn't in the world say i will give half of my country to immigrants who have just arrived two years ago the cynical way in which so many people accepted that this was a foolish palestinian position that it has no moral basis that it had no political wisdom state and remember the jews where one third of the population most of them came in one thousand nine hundred eighty five and they had an ideology of ethnic cleansing that anything any way would have been implemented even if the palestinians would have accepted the plan any yet even among people around the world who support the idea of two state solution you can hear them saying the palestinian made a terrible mistake in nine hundred forty seven when they rejected the petition plan not to mention the israeli propaganda that wants to show it the palestinians were always rejecting town the town of nazareth and this all happened in nine months the world was watching the world knew exactly what was going on and the world was silent about the palestinian tragedy colonialism this belongs to the nineteenth century we are in a different century three years after the holocaust we do not sanction mess of expulsions of people just because of their identity imagine if that would be in the international community say and to the credit of someone who i don't like john foster dulles the secretary of state in nine hundred forty nine to his credit i should say for the record is the only international statesman who said what i'm saying here to this credit in fact he succeeded in convincing president truman for a few months to impose sanctions on israel for not allowing the palestinian refugees to return and then he was silenced in america reorientated its policy as you know to israel and palestine to the lives that we are familiar with today but now no else had even thought of sending a message to israel that this is not the way to compensate the jewish people for the genocide that happened in europe this is not the way to build a secure democratic jewish homeland on palestine at the expense of palestine without succeeding in fully defeating the palestinians military rule those who live today in the west bank know exactly what the military rule means that means that the soldier is a little king in his kingdom and can destroy your shop can prevent you from going to university can arrest you without trial can shoot and kill you without being worried about it the palestinian citizens of israel were under such military rule which we nine hundred forty eight to nine hundred sixty six and it's fascinating to read the reports of the state department about the situation how they accept cynically i think the israeli explanation that this is temporary and therefore nobody in the world should really pay much attention to the fact that one fifth of the israeli population has doesn't enjoy basic human and civil rights so the message came loud and clear when a nine sixty seven israel occupied the west bank and the gaza strip and incorporated another group even a larger group of palestinians under israeli rule we have the documents from the israeli meetings immediately after the occupation and what these documents reveal is how the biggest charade on earth was designed the israeli government the nine hundred sixty seven and yes mary this is another book written on a plane that will come out in june called the biggest prison on earth i tell about these cabinet meetings because i think they're very important in the israeli cabinet o government united sixty seven had to decide or the first group of politicians that had to decide what to do with the west bank and the gaza strip it was a unique group of people the members of the c hundred sixty seven it was the thirteenth government of israel and it was the most consensual government israel ever had and ever is going to have every shade every shade of the of the political parties that we all not hopefully not here but so many of us still play with the first decision was that israel could not exist without the west bank and this is something that it's even hard to explain to palestinians in the west bank that still believe in a two state solution it doesn't matter whether you're on the left whether you're on the right within zionist politics in israel sixty seven was seen as the historical moment not just from a religious perspective namely that you were given all the ancient biblical towns that  that in no circumstances could israel exist without the west bank they had only tactical disagreement of how best to achieve it and it was so fascinating for me as a news story  is how these tactical this agreement was seen in the world as genuine ideological disagreement about zionism these are tactical whether you are on the left and say i don't have to control every part of the west bank i can build a wall which is was liberal zionist decided to do i can build a wall around the west bank so i don't need to control it but i only need to control the river jordan or you are right doing with said no i have to because of ideology have to be in every part of the west it doesn't matter in the end of the day the west bank which is twenty percent of palestine cannot be really out of israel's reach and control and rule yes there is the reality politic of the problematic left that says rule does not have to be official rule doesn't have to be formal and the ideological stance of the right wing in israel it says no we need to show that this belongs to us every square inch belongs in the end of the day in the end of the day it means that those of us who believe in a was ok we keep the territories and we will argue for years how best to keep it but what we will do with the people there was a genuine discussion of whether israel should not repeat in circumstances to expel millions of palestinians so that the west bank could be easily to their eyes they decided that in sixty seven you cannot do what you could do in forty eight a because the war was  over secondly there was television certainly many of the palestinians in the west bank in the gaza strip were refugees from forty eight and there was the fear that they would resist even strongly the second expulsion and then they did resist the first expulsion and there was even worried about the reactions of syria and jordan in egypt the countries who was supposed to receive these masses of refugees so they decided not to expel the people so if you keep the territory and you don't expel the people what would be the status of the people there they discussed it surprisingly the lea well in that case we should grant them citizenship that makes sense and the labor party the was the dominant ideological power in sixty seven said you're crazy we cannot have a jewish state if we don't have a demographic majority of jews a jewish democratic state means you have to make sure all the time that the jews are the majority so if you grant them citizenship you downsize the number of jews in the jewish state to dangerous levels so begging us the minister of defense of the time machine they are and so what do you suggest and he said well you know they would be without any citizenship and even the foreign minister government of israel understood that it would have a problem with the international community if these three decisions would be the only decisions the government had been taken even if they were secret decisions that at the time were not publicized so they took a forced decision and that was to have a peace process on the basis that israel could never give up the west bank on the bases that the citizens of the west bank they never things of the west bank and the gaza strip would never be expelled although they were massively expelled for various reasons but not in the same way as forty eight and on the basis that they would never be granted citizenship by the israelis but the peace process as the israelis understood very well as norm chomsky once commented rightly the important word is not process doesn't have to lead to anywhere it goes on and on and on and you can create the sense that it's temporary that the reality is temporary that you are waiting for something good to happen and you're doing all the bad things that you are doing because there is no peace but there is a process and as long as there is a process you demand international immunity now you can rely and they knew it before and you can rely on the fact that the kind of prison that you created for the people of the west bank and the gaza strip would be resisted you can also rely on the fact that if you as the israeli government not someone on the extreme right begin to send jews settlers to colonize the west bank and the gaza strip you will even make you'll be even more confident that the people there would resist resistance allows you to retaliate and to be even more brutal it's amazing how for fifty years in doesn't matter which government and which political party you were talking about for fifty years whenever palestinian resistance emerged the israeli response was to build more settlements to give the palestinians less rights than they had to install more checkpoints to build the wall to use the air force for the time to carpet bomb the city of jeannine in two thousand and two to destroy the city of gaza with scenes that we've only seen before in the second world war this was all done as a response as retaliation for these palestinian terrorists resist and the israelis will continue to say well if they continue to resist we have to build more settlements we have to extend the wall we have to make it higher than it is and we can have we are entitled to use even more in human lethal weapons in the us there is a direct line between the international legitimacy to zionism a settler colonialism in palestine and the international community in silence to the reast most recent israeli atrocities and you can take your pick because it's very difficult to highlight which of the last israeli policies in two thousand and sixteen is worse than the other and don't forget that these ideas this ideology of set the colonialism is not limited to the west bank is not limited to the gaza strip there are palestinian villages in the south of israel of houses all over the palestinian areas inside israel in order to downsize both the space in which palestinians live and the numbers of palast and there are lead legislation going on in israel a language of the state i'm sure that from the point of view of international law almost ninety five percent of the israeli laws that were passed in the knesset about the palestinians and one hundred percent of the practices on the ground would be regarded as severe violation of the most basic international law and i'm not talking again about only what's happening in the west being in the gaza strip but also inside israel itself where is by law you can declare a whole town a town for jews alone imagine if a city in america would be declared only for christians what an outcry would be would it be there in the law not in practice which is bad enough by law so we have to ask ourselves how does israel get away with this so i come to the beginning of my talking with this i would then it gets away with it because people do not know the history i was giving it and when i and my friends are trying to tell this is story there is a huge effort has be made to undermine our scholarly credentials our knowledge but they're losing they're losing we are recognized by the international community as good scholars as reliable scholars mistrustful scholars the question is can now that the truth is known now that people know they cannot hide behind ignorance would they have the courage to help us save the palestinians from another one hundred years of suffering thank you thank you so much for this very good overview of history here i was one you're also a historian and an activist and i'm wondering when you look towards the future and you look at the issue of global warming and increasing drought and the impact on people searching for water refugees the use of water as a weapon by the israeli government how do you see that playing out for the future thank you alice let me start by saying that  you should know here and i just recently saw it in a winery which are one name in the napa valley which was on the land of native americans and these wineries brought with them carps fish they lived in croatia where they came from in the crops destroyed the whole natur the indigenous that was not enough to kill the indigenous themself they also brought a killer fish and i'm saying this because settler colonialism can also be an ecological disaster it has to be ecological disaster because unless you have settled in paradise you always settle in places where natural resources are limited where you need to build a new cannot rely on the existing infrastructure because your project is a project of elimination and if as in the case of palestine the half of the indigenous people are still there you cannot give them the same access to natural resources as you give to your own people what is horrifying thing in this whole story about the water quarters to the palestinians  and the restriction on the water supply to the palestinians are my colleagues i used to teach in the department of middle eastern studies are my oriental is colleagues who would explain that palestinians don't pipes directed to the settlements and the palestinians now have to buy their own water from the settlers for double the price of triple the price this is beyond control this is viciousness this is evil evil so i think it's important to understand that yes one can talk about global warming as a whole and of course the whole middle east would be and we have all these doomsday scenarios of the lack of water and what is called the river was people were fighting water and so on i think what the case of israel and palestine shows you that the problem may be scarcity of water we don't know people  found some solutions but the main problem is that there is there are around ideological movements who exploit this the secretary of the the dress of natural resources in order to enforce their political projects and i think this is why we should study also if you want the water policy of israel and connect the ecological development in every other part in the middle east people immediately identify the culprits and immediately recognize the crime and immediately know what to do in the case of israel very few people are willing to point at the criminals and describe exactly the nature of that but the question becomes from the audience is about b d s and i suppose it's sort of what we move from history to the present the outcome of colonialism is usually not very good for the aboriginal people or the people who are being displaced history teaches us that that's not true so can we people have a way of  showing our or distain for settler colonialism or however you want to portray the human rights abuses of the israelis and his b d s and appropriate outcome of the question asks thank you  the short answer is yes but there's a longer answer and i'll divide it into two parts one i'll say something about the b d s and its importance and the second part i will venture of what i think can be a response whether it's for fifty governors or thirty governors of thirty senators i think that should be response which you should know even better than i how to do this let me start with the with the believe that basic rights should be defended and safeguard the right of the palestinians in the west being in the gaza strip not to live under military threat and occupation the right of the palestinians in israel to live as equal citizens and the right of the palestinian refugees to return so supporting b d s is first of all in a positive a negative actions you support basic human rights that in any other part of the world would be supported without any hesitation when the call for the b d s came from the divestment sanction campaign came from the palestinian civil society in two thousand and five it's important to understand what this call for b d s symbolized it symbolized first of all a strategy that said we are looking for a nonviolent strategy to stop our suffering we're not calling for suicide bombers we're not calling for violence we are calling for a nonviolent pressure from the outside to the state of israel to tell it that there is a ted prize attached to their policies that's what supporting the their resistance so i think that's a very positive response by the international community there does not buy into the discourse of the politicians who said you cannot pressure israel it should be allowed to continue with its criminal policies as long as there is no peace but the truth is that as long as israel continues with its criminal policies there will be no peace so we first have to stop the criminal someone who tells you you should arrest an immigrant just because it's illegal here and send him back you know yourself that there are churches in this country that violate this new legislation and give sanctuary to people whose only crime is that they were seeking life in this country and are not in the churches themselves are not willing to cooperate with those who are sent to send these illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin you know that there are cities the mayors who declare themselves a sanctuary cities including in this city so we have an example to stay in different in the face of the palestinian suffering and do nothing and secondly it's immoral to stifle freedom of speech through legislation just because you don't like what people are suggesting so in the name of freedom of speech in the name of your moral morality in humanity you should take these governors to supreme court you should tell your the people who you elect that you want to elect them if they intimidate them a little bit all the time they intimidate they're being intimidated most of these governor's own timid it by the israelis don't believe i doubted whether they even bother to understand what b d s is they understand that threats that come from iraq state like israel is something that is unacceptable not in this century i'm going to combine two questions the first question is why does what happens in palestine matter to the whole world and i think this is an overlapping issue it basically asking if israel has any moral right to exist i refused because i don't thing individuals can decide whether the states has the right to exist or not and i really don't think that this is the language the important language is does the question so i'm i'm not dealing with israel's right to exist or not to exist i am trying to say to you as i say to many others and i'm not the only one i wish the problem in israel would be its current policies i wish the problem in israel would be its strategy i wish the problem in israel would be the problem of one political party and all we have to do is wait for another and i think it shows us what is the importance of palestine to the rest of the world it is important because there is so much double talk about palestine and israel has such an exception l status of immunity that you cannot have in the world a genuine discussion about the violation of human rights and civil rights elsewhere in general and in the middle east in particular  people would say to you how can we trust the people who want to discuss with us the violation of human rights in syria or in iraq on saudi arabia when in this conversation we never include this what it means of the west does not really believe in a conversation about human rights because there's a big exception so first of all the importance of palestine it's the exceptionalism of this world this does not really prohibits us from having an international conversation that we all need about human rights and civil rights this is the biggest problem of the world today that so many people do not have basic human rights and civil rights the second reason that israel is so important or the palestine is so important it is almost the last remaining issue which we can still say the justice matters not just the balance of power if it was about realism we should all support the israelis and let them just swallow the palestinians because they are the biggest army in the middle east they are strong the palestinians are weak the palestinians have nothing to offer us they don't of oil they have nothing realistic to offer us that should justify our support even if you are christians the number of christian palestinians has dwindled in such a way so you can say i'm supporting them because they are christians we support them because it's one of the most vicious injustice that we have witness in the last fifty years so we don't want to lose hope i think as human beings that some policies can be based on justice as well every politician would do two things especially in this country but this is true of other countries i'm not singling out america they would talk on justice and then they would tell you you know don't be naive just this is nothing to do with our borders i think palestine as even trump is going to learn does not lend itself for this typical double talk of politicians where they can take  moral ground but in the behind closed doors you know sell arms to saudi arabia that violates basic human rights and have all kinds of crypto diplomacy with the rest of the world i think palestine still symbolize a something that we don't want to lose as human beings when we deal with this abstract notion of justice i think it is translated into reality clear reality on the ground