- Beginning statement
- Goal: The goal today is not for anyone to win arguments, but to together explore the history, present, and future of Israel and Palestine… and human civilization broadly.
- Agree & solutions: I would love to find places we agree, and places that give an inkling of hope for a solution in the future.
- Respect: I ask that we show respect and compassion toward each other.
- Basics: I also ask that we try to briefly define/explain terms, events, people when we discuss them, for folks in the audience that are not as familiar with the topic.
- Time: I will do my best to allocate time equally between two sides of the table, but I would also love for this to be a free-flowing conversation.
- Opening question - 1948: First question is about 1948. For Israelis, 1948 is the establishment of the state of Israel and the war of independence. For Palestinians, 1948 is the Nakba, catastrophe, or the expulsion or flight of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes as a consequence of the war. What to you is important to understand about 1948?
- Order of response to first question is: Norm, Benny, Mouin, and Steven
- Topics
- History and wars
- Before WW2 (Zionist congress, Balfour Declaration, League of Nations Mandate, Creation of the Haganah, Hebron Massacre, Arab Revolt, Peel Commission, 1939 White Paper)
- WW2
- Holocaust
- 1947 - UN Resolution 181
- 1948 - War, Nakba
- 1967 - Six-Day War
- 1982 - 1st Lebanon War → Hezbollah
- intifadas
- First intifada - Dec 1987 to Sep 1993
- Second intifada - Sep 2000 to late 2005
- 2006 - 2nd Lebanon War
- 2008-2009 - Operation Cast Lead
- 2012 - Gaza - Operation Pillar of Defense
- 2014 - West Bank - Operation Protective Edge
- 2021-23 - 11-day war in 2021, 3-day war in 2022, Operation Shield & Arrow in 2023
- 2023 - Oct 7 attacks & Israel-Hamas war
- Solutions & attempts at peace - what went right, what went wrong?
- Two-state, one-state
- 1967 borders - green line
- Attempts at peace agreements
- 1967 - UN Resolution 242
- 1978 - Camp David Accords
- 1988 - Arafat acknowledges Israel’s right to exist
- 1991 - Madrid Peace Conference
- 1993 - Oslo Accords I
- 1995 - Oslo Accords II
- 2000 - Camp David - Clinton
- 2002-2003
- 2005 - Israel withdrawal from Gaza
- 2007 - Annapolis Conference - Olmert
- 2009-2014 - Obama
- 2020 - Trump “deal of the century”
- Normalization with other nations
- TODO
- 1994 - Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty
- 2020 - Abraham Accords
- Leadership
- Palestine
- PLO, PA, Hamas
- Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas
- Israel
- David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu
- US
- Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, 2024 president
- Philosophy, legal, politics
- Zionism
- Value of human life
- Proportionality
- Corruption
- Jihadism
- Martyrdom
- Human shields
- Civilian deaths in war
- Genocide
- Geopolitics
- General & Misc
- Al-Aqsa Mosque
- Jerusalem
- Land - Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula
- Religion
- Islam, Judaism
- Sunni & Shia - Shia (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon)
- What would Jesus do?
- What would Muhammad do?
- Books
- I’ll reference content from several books by Norm
- I’ll reference content from several books by Benny