Palestine at a Crossroad

More than two decades have been lost on bilateral peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The two sides today seem further away than ever from a peace agreement. Does the latest French Initiative presetn an alternative to failed bilaterial talks? Is a P5+1 model the last hope for peace between Israel and Palestine?

Join New America and the Foundation for Middle East Peace for a conversation with Dr. Husam Zomlot, Ambassador-at-Large and Senior Advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, about the way forward for Palestine and Palestinian efforts to internationalize the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Refreshments will be served.

Follow the conversation online using #PalestineXRoad and following @NewAmerica.

Participants:

Dr. Husam Zomlot
Ambassador-at-Large, Palestine

Matt Duss
President, Foundation for Middle East Peace

Zaha Hassan, Esq.
Middle East Fellow, New America

Biographies:

Dr. Husam Zomlot is the Strategic Affairs Advisor to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. Dr. Zomlot's previous official appointments include Ambassador-at-Large for Palestine; the Director of the Fatah Commission for Foreign Relations; and PLO representative to the UK. He has held teaching and research positions at the University of London and Harvard University and received his PhD in Economics from the University of London.

Matt Duss is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Previously, he was a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, where his work focused on the Middle East and U.S. national security, and director of the Center’s Middle East Progress program. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Nation, Foreign Policy, Politico, the American Prospect, and Democracy. He appears regularly as a commentator on radio and television.

Zaha Hassan will complete a novel, Die Standing Like Trees, which deals with a Palestinian-American woman’s search for answers twenty years after her mother’s violent death during the height of the Oslo peace talks. She is a human rights lawyer and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. She received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, an LLM in Transnational & International Law from Willamette University, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington in Seattle with a B.A. in political science and Near East languages and civilizations. She has been cohost for the last two years of the Portland, Oregon radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM and is a contributor to the online magazine, The Civil Arab.