In this episode, the second in a series about the collective emotional state of the Gaza Strip’s population, APN’s Debra Shushan and Ori Nir speak with Dr. Brian Barber, a psychologist, who in the past quarter of a century has been studying the psyche of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Barber is a professor of child and family studies and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict at the University of Tennessee, from which he recently retired. He is now a scholar at the New America Foundation and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, DC.

Omar Shaban is the founder and director of PalThink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza City-based think tank, or as Shaban likes to call it, a “think and do tank.”

Debra Shushan, Stephanie Breitsman and Ori Nir sat with Shaban at APN’s office in Washington on Friday June 8th, for a long, fascinating conversation on the economy, society, and politics of the Gaza Strip.

This episode of PeaceCast features Yizhar Be’er, an Israeli podcaster who formerly reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Haaretz, served as director of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. and was the founder and director of Keshev, an Israeli nonprofit that focuses on improving public discourse in Isreali society relating to the conflict.

Yizhar’s Hebrew podcast Sacred Cows (Parot Kdoshot) takes apart Israeli myths. One of his chief topics is the Gaza Strip. In an eight-episode series, Yizhar addresses the Israeli truism that nothing can be done about Gaza.

The series features interviews with past Israeli governors of the Gaza Strip. One of the striking things these interviews is the foreshadowing, the writing that Israeli governors saw on the walls of Gaza’s neighborhoods and refugee camps in four decades of direct occupation, predicting the crisis that we see today in Gaza.

A conversation with Gadi Baltiansky and Nidal Foqaha, the Israeli and Palestinian directors of the Geneva Initiative talk about their Two-State Index, a new tool to measure the feasibility of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based on the division of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two states, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security alongside each other.

Why does the Palestinian Authority continue its security collaboration with Israel even today, when Israeli-Palestinian political relations are at an all-time low? What is the nature of this cooperation? Who are the Palestinian security forces? How sustainable is their law-enforcement and counter-terrorism assignment? How long can they continue collaborating with Israel at the absence of any progress toward a political accord between Israel and the Palestinians?

Our current episode addresses these questions with the help of two experts, Ghaith al-Omari and Neri Zilber, who just published a report on this topic.

This episode features Swiss-American photo journalist Saskia Keeley, who through the lenses of cameras that she gives to women -- West Bank Israeli settlers and Palestinian women who live in adjacent towns and villages -- helps these women explore the humanity of the other, open to the other, and discover the many commonalities of Palestinian and Israeli women. 

Also featured is Father Josh Thomas, the executive director of Kids for Peace, a youth movement based in Jerusalem, which brings together Israeli and Palestinian teens, West Jerusalemites and East Jerusalemites and their families.

APN's Ori Nir met Father Josh and Saskia Keeley at a conference at Yale University, organized by Yale’s chapter of One Voice, an organization that works to bring together Israelis and Palestinians under a joint agenda of a two-state solution.

Debra DeLee, Debra Shushan, MK Merav Michaeli, Nidal Fuqaha, and Lara Friedman discuss the formalization of annexation.  Americans for Peace Now's panel discussion at J Street's National Conference April 15, 2018.

APN hosted a briefing call Tuesday, April 10^th, at 1:00 pm EST with veteran Israeli political columnist Akiva Eldar.

Eldar discussed the current Israel-Gaza crisis, Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing and legal challenges, Israel-US relations, and other political topics.

Another in a series of episodes drawing on Ori Nir'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 Shikaki, who has previously been featured on PeaceCast. 

We met at his Ramallah 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 Breitsman, who manages APN's programming. 

PeaceCast is back after a long hiatus. Ori Nir 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.