On September 14th 2017, APN hosted Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, America’s former ambassador to Israel, for a briefing call on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
This episode features two conversations. The fir
st is an interview with Dr. Bashir Karkabi, a Palestinian Israeli physician, who is among the
organizers of an event that will take place on September 14th in the Israeli Arab town of Kalanswa, bringing
together Jewish and Arab activists to forge together a shared agenda for a joint political struggle.
Our second conversation is with Nadia Abuelezam, a Palestinian-American, who is the creator and host of a podcast that tells the stories of Palestinians in the United States. The podcast is called Palestinians' Podcast.
Abby Smardon, the executive director of UNRWA-USA, the American organization that supports the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, returned to Washington after a couple of weeks in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It was her sixth consecutive annual visit to Gaza. She says it was the most distressing. The Gaza Strip, she says, has never experienced such a prolonged crisis. Starved for electricity, relief from the heat and hope for the future, the Gaza Strip's 2 million residents, most of them refugees, are struggling to survive while holding on to their humanity. Stephanie Breitsman and Ori Nir talked with Abby.
The title of this PeaceCast episode is Major Departure – with a question mark.
Episode 22 is a major departure from our typical modus operandi.
Unlike past episodes, this one is a round-table discussion by APN staff.
The topic of our discussion is whether the Trump administration's failure to endorse the two-state solution is a major departure from what has been a tenet of US foreign policy for the past fifteen years: a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Daoud Kuttab a veteran Palestinian journalist, now lives and works in Amman as the director-general of the Community Media Network a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab world. In a conversation with APN's Ori Nir and Debra Shushan, he lays out Jordan's perspective on the recent Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif crisis and the deteriorating relations between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel.
On August 1 2017, APN hosted Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann for a briefing call on the impact of the recent crisis surrounding Jerusalem’s Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif.
Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group is a leading expert on the Holy Esplanade, the site in Jerusalem that Jews refer to as the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Haram al-Sharif. Ofer analyzes the current crisis and discusses ways in which similar crises may be avoided in the future.
Grant Rumley is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, where he focuses on Palestinian politics. Amir Tibon is the newly-appointed bureau chief of Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Together, they authored a new biography of Mahmoud Abbas, (Abu Mazen) the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Chairman of the PLO.
Katya Lipovetzky, an Israeli, recently graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Hashem Sayyed, a Palestinian, recently graduated from al-Quds University, the Palestinian university of Jerusalem.
Hashem and Katya are APN's summer interns, working together to produce our second storytelling event, The Dove.
The two are enrolled in New Story Leadership, a summer program in Washington that gives young Israelis and Palestinians a chance to meet each other, to network, to learn how Washington works and to hone their leadership skills.
In this short episode, Ori Nir and Stephanie Breitsman talk with Katya and Hashem about their lives and the conflict. To meet the two of them and four more of the NSL fellows Come to The Dove on July 20th, at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC at 8:30 PM. If you can't attend, you'll be able to listen to these young people's stories on a special episode of PeaceCast.
Carmi Gilon, the former chief of Israel’s secret service, Shin Bet, for years helped run Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Like many other Israeli former senior security officials, he became an anti-occupation peace advocate when he finish his service. If you watched the documentary The Gatekeepers, which features Carmi Gilon among six past heads of Israel’s Shin-Bet, you understand why.
Episode 16 of PeaceCast features a conversation with Gilon, who today is the executive chair of Cytegic, an Israeli cyber security company.