 Okay, welcome everyone. I hope you can hear me on. Welcome to this kind of joint event, but it's actually one event connected, where we have a talk in relation to the launch of the Palestine Land Studies Centre at AUB in Beirut. And a lecture by Professor Salman Abusute about the 11 year wars against Palestinians. I'm Dinah Matar. I'm the Chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies. I will introduce the speakers shortly. The way that this works is we are letting people in still, and we have at the bottom of your screen, you'll find a question and answer icon, which you could put your questions in, and then I will pose them to the speakers tonight. Also, welcome to those people attending via Facebook. We're also, if you could post your questions in the chat box so we can collect them. And just before we start, sometimes we might have a lot of questions, so we might not be able to go through every question, so I do apologize before I start. And this series of lectures, book closures, and talks are sponsored by the Sowas Middle East Society, of which the Centre for Palestine Studies is one of the key centres. And we hold them every Tuesday during term time. And we thank the SMEI for hosting this and for Aki El-Bursi for being the master of the ceremonies. Without further ado, I would like to welcome Dr. Hawaida Al-Harithi, who is going to talk to us about the Land Studies Centre, the first one in relation to Palestine at AUB. It's a very great, you know, achievement. And the achievement could not have happened without Dr. Salman Abusitte, a relentless scholar, academic, actor, activist, and supporter of Palestinian human rights and Palestinian rights. He has been a role model, if I can use that, for many people including myself in his achievements and in his persistence to try and engage the world, if not the scholarly community with what happens to Palestine and Palestinians. He is the founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, and he has written so many interesting books, including the author of the Comparative Atlas of Palestine, which I think he told me today it has been translated into Italian, correct? The memoirs. Nothing but a 10. Yeah, and he has done an atlas of the return journey, but one of his most kind of really fascinating books, apart from all his documentation and data-supported material that he has shared with the world and with us, he has written this fantastic memoir, which is mapping my return, which has been translated into more recent, the Italian and other languages. Without further ado, I welcome both of you. Dr. Al-Harathy is going to talking to us from Lebanon, and Professor Abusitte is talking to us from Kuwait. So it's a really transnational kind of event, reflecting the Palestinian diaspora, exile, whatever we could talk about. So without further ado, I give you the platform to start, and then Professor Abusitte. Sure. Thank you so much, Dina, for the introduction. Thank you for hosting us. It's really a serious pleasure for me to be here, especially to be here on behalf of AUB, and briefly introducing the newly established Palestine Land Studies Center at AUB as its founding director. This is a very, very joyous occasion for me. I'll be very brief, and I'll tell you a little bit about the vision and the mission of the center. The Palestine Land Studies Center, which we call PLSC at the American University of Beirut, was established back in September of 2019 as part of the institution's ongoing commitment to the preservation, and dissemination of Palestinian history. So it was a really historic landmark for AUB to engage in one of the most central issues of the issue. The PLSC will create a permanent home for an extensive archives donated by Dr. Salman Abusitte and the Palestine Land Society in London. It will activate the archives through research and academic practices and will make them available for both the public, interacting with them from within and outside of AUB and particularly scholars. So the center's primary aims really include the documentation, preservation of Palestinian history, memory, and social publications, and the organization of innovative teaching. This is also all besides the creation of a far-reaching network, hopefully of scholars, academics, and professionals dedicated for the Palestinian cause. So we wanted to work across disciplines and geographies. The PLSC aims to really attract researchers from around the globe who are interested in scholarships around the territory, people, and social histories of Palestine. It will in turn provide access for maps, documents, data sets, and objects that are unique and unpublished in some instances on a regional scale. It will create a hub of sorts for pioneering, forward-looking, result-oriented research methodology and pedagogy, and will certainly try and thrive to serve to expand the scope of its impact across the globe by networking with institutions of similar interest and caliber, such as yourself. So we're here partly today to build that network as well. To give you a quick and brief idea of the collection itself that was donated by Dr. Abusitta, and where we are in the process of transferring incrementally, both digitally and tangibly, the archives are really composed of around 7000 books, over 300 maps, around 450,000 registration deeds. Archives contain extremely that form material, important maps, special items such as bridge mandate survey maps, valuable contribution for AUB's archive. Importantly, it's research agenda. We take serious pride in being a liberal arts college whose research is leading in the region and globally, and this is certain to give us a further edge that marks our research that is meaningful to our region and impact-oriented. So I hope we succeed in doing that with all your help. I hope you stay connected. You keep. Thank you so much. I turn the floor over to Dr. Abusitta. Dr. Selman, if you want to start. Yes. Thank you very much, Dr. Dinamata, for your kind words and for inviting me here. And thanks also to our friend Dr. Gilbert Ashkar who has joined us now. I'm glad to say I'm not a stranger to Suez. I have many friends, past and present, and I attended and participated in many functions, and Suez is a friendly, warm, civilized and thought-provoking home. So it's good to come here again even though it is virtually. I think back on our case in Palestine and it often comes to my mind how I am ashamed of future generations who will read our history in the 20th and 21st century and wonder how we in this age could live with so much injustice, so many war crimes carried out for so long without remorse or remedy, with so much deception, so many falsehoods, so many lies. Such lies could have been verified by bringing up easily found facts, easily found facts if and only if these facts were allowed to be known. My country, Palestine, has been stricken by two devastating attacks in the last 1,000 years, appropriately described as barbarian for what they have done. Both came from Central, Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Both caused unbelievable death and destruction. Both got help from Western powers who stifled to us. One was defeated soundly, the other not yet. The first was the Mongol attack led by Hulak Khan. In 1258, they reduced Baghdad to rubble. They destroyed its houses, palaces and mosques. They killed 200,000, possibly more. They destroyed valuable manuscripts in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and threw them in the Tigris River. Its water became black with ink. They plundered and looted everything in sight. They forged alliance against us with Frankish European crusaders. And they were finally defeated at Ain Jalout in Palestine on the 3rd of September, 1860. The second is the Haganah attack led by Ben-Gurion in March 1948. They came roughly from the same area, Al-Khazaar, north of Black Sea and Eastern Europe. They destroyed over 500,000 villages including 150,000 houses. They plundered and looted houses, businesses, banks and public properties. They committed 156 massacres and atrocities, killed tens of thousands and made millions homeless refugees until today. They did not destroy documents, but looted them and used them to seize land, properties, banks, schools, hospitals, railways, airports and seaports. They forged a solid alliance with Western powers, particularly UK and USA. They are not defeated yet, but I'm sure there will be some time in Palestine. It's still with us. It is waging many kinds of wars against us. Not many attacks. These attacks are daily by land, sea and air. I'm talking about different kinds of wars. The first kind of war against us is military. To conquer and seize the land. It is a war we all know about in name, but not about its extent and purpose. It is a war in which the Haganah forces composed of 120,000 soldiers, mostly trained in Second World War, organized in nine brigades, entered a land they have not seen before, carried out 31 military operations in this space of eight months. And in this period, 560 Palestinian cities and villages were attacked and emptied of its people, making refugees of two-thirds of the Palestinian people. Today there are 7 million refugees, but half of them were expelled before there was something called Israel, before the British left Palestine and before any Arab regular soldier entered Palestine. This is the enduring Nakba. This war, which followed, is silencing the voice of the victims, denying they ever existed. In 1948, about five dozen major massacres took place. None was reported by the five western news agencies at the time, except perhaps the Ryassin, and then only lightly. Of course, about the most horrendous massacre of al-Dawayma in October 1948, in which up to 500 people were savagely killed, was called, I quote, a figment of Oriental imagination, by whom, by the Israeli or representative Walter Eitan. We have another Israeli settler, C.P. Hotavly, recently installed as Israel's ambassador in the United Kingdom. She called the Nakba an Arab lie. Mention of a Nakba is outlawed in Israel, but it took four decades for some courageous historians like Ilan Papi to expose the truth. This truth is still denied in many U.S. universities at the pain of cutting off its funds. Now we come to the third war. Third kind of war, it's geographical. Our Atlas of Palestine, 1917 to 1966 lists 55,000 names carved by the people about their life and places. The Israeli maps eliminated all of them, and they placed them with 6,800 names, almost one-tenth of the original. These were created by a committee. So if you look at Israeli maps today, Palestine does not exist. The fourth kind of war is historical. The historical record of Palestine in the last 2000 years is obliterated and made blank in the Israeli textbooks, in the Zionist controlled media, and removed from controlled websites elsewhere. It is replaced by a history of settler Jews who arrived in Palestine after the First World War. In the last 10 years of Palestine's history, for which historical edifices are still abound, are totally deleted from record. But not only our history is erased, but our living traditions of dress, food, and songs are expropriated and claimed to be that of the invader. The fifth kind of war is archaeological. The destruction of about 500 Palestinian villages in 1948 and 49 was carried out by bulldozers of the Jewish National Fund and Public Works. But there is another anomaly. A strange team accompanied the destruction team. What is this team? An Israeli archaeological team which supervised the demolition and ordered the destruction of any building or structures until it was found useful for claims of Jewish history. Their work destroyed Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Islamic monuments and structures in these villages. Now those kinds of wars, as you can see, are converting evil into a virtue. I'm borrowing this idea from a forthcoming book by Sari Magnesi. How to convert evil into a virtue. Let us imagine this for a moment. How did the Palestinian landscape look like after the destruction of hundreds of villages? Maybe you can see a pile of stones where a house once stood. Maybe you can see a lone standing wall of a mosque. Maybe you can see a cracked bell tower of a church or a marble piece of a grave. This evil scene must be hidden. And it was covered with trees, woods, forests planted by non-indigenous trees. The cover-up was hailed as a campaign of making the desert bloom. Hardly any leader in the Western world or a city thereof in which Jewish communities had influence was not immortalized by a park name or a tree. And who's doing that? It was, and it is, the Jewish National Fund, JNF, which directed the Haganah operations in 1948 to attack villages. JNF sees the land of 372 villages. And there are people now live in refugee camps. And JNF is registered in 41 countries as a tax-free charity. What for? For the improvement of the environment. I imagine George Orwell would fail to beat that. The sixth kind of war is political. Next to the military war, this is the most effective. The U.S. and many Western countries vote against U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli crimes and violation of international law. They thwart any legal action against Israel. The actions of the departing Trump is a supreme example of trampling upon international law. Well, very likely there will be more little trumps in the West. But we have a pleasant surprise. On Friday, February 5th, the ICC, the National Court of Criminal Court, admitted the obvious. Israel is liable to be tried for its war crimes. Well, let us hope it will not be aborted. The seventh kind of war waged against us is religious. God is recruited to win this war. Zionists claim that they have the right to return after a 2,000-year absence. Where to? To the God-given land to recover their property and expel the natives. The evangelists, Trump's main supporters, and they are the former restorations of the 19th century, are recruited to support Zionism with great effect in the United States. The eighth war against us is defamation. Palestinian fighters and supporters are called terrorists. Edward Said is called a professor of terror. Anyone who explains the facts about Palestine, even among respected scholars or even UN officials, is called an anti-Semite. As you will know, the Zionist-inspired IHRAA document is pushed for adoption by UK universities with limited success. It's an open season for defamation of Palestinians. The ninth war against us, kind of war against us, is lawfare. Domestic law in some Western countries criminalizes support for the grassroots campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, BDS. And hence, any attempt to criticize Israel war crimes and apartheid will be criminalized. As you may have heard, there is a witch hunt in Germany against any mention of Israeli crimes against Palestinians. And there is a twist to that. The people who are criticized witch hunt, subject to witch hunt, are sometimes Jews like Nareed Somerville, who simply dare to speak about Palestinian situation. The tenth war is economic. Jewish financial power in the United States supporting ABAC activity is a potent force. Trump, as you know, cut unruh funds. Israel strangles the economic conditions in the West Bank and converts people into economic hostages. The Israeli-imposed blockade of Gaza for 15 years is now making life unlivable, according to the United Nations. The aim, of course, is for people to demand bread to live instead of the right to live free. The eleventh war against us is the most sinister of all. It may be called attritional genocide. As you know, convention of genocide includes a clause which says it includes a coordinated plan aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups. In 2018 and 19, during the Great Return March in Gaza, Israel injured 35,600 protesters. Of those, 6,650 were hit deliberately by Israeli snipers, shattering their knees. Today, you can hardly find a street in Gaza without the sight of a youth with an amputated leg. The attacks by poisonous guys in Gaza and the West Bank led to deformity in the newborn with increased incidence of down syndrome. Now, as you read in the news, Israel is denying a vaccine to reach Palestinians in the occupied territories. Well, that's not even to speak of demolished homes and uprooting trees. These sinister acts lead to the disability of a whole generation imposing a huge burden on their families and on the economy. The outcome is a shattered society incapable of living normally, let alone fight for the rights. This is a genocide of the living. Now, with this review of 11 kinds of wars, I could say the following. Nothing like this array of wars exists in colonial history. Of course, there are colonial cases of more savagery, more people killed or driven away, more territory seized. But never before there was such a wide-ranging scale of different wars preplanned and executed by well-organized troops and groups conducted not from one metropole, but from many western countries, where centers of power there aided and abetted these wars. All this was not in the age of bow and arrow, but the age of planes, telephones and TV, not in the age of pirate ships and free-scaled savagery, but in the age of the United Nations and Reuters agency, not in a remote and known uncharted continent, but in a venerated ancient country, the cradle of Christianity, to which many of these western countries belong. Will this venture succeed? It did, in part. Will it continue? Let us observe some facts. The people in Palestine, at the time of the influence bar for declaration, were only 700,000. At the year of Nakba in 1948, they were 1.7 million. Now they are 13 million. In the year 2030, they will be 18 million. Half of them are still on Palestinian soil, but they are living under occupation and apartheid rule. 85% of the other half are in the borders of Palestine, within walking distance of their homes. And the remainder is scattered in no less than 100 cities around the world. So we can conclude the Palestinian people are here to stay and they will not go away. But can they return home? Could this unique tragedy end? Well, we know the international law is solidly behind them. Resolution 194, calling for the return of refugees, has been affirmed 135 times. More and longer than any resolution in your history. We realize that international law is no more than an expression of good conscience. But it can be, and it is actually, a tool of the powerful to strike the weak. Nevertheless, it is the conscience of the masses. When they speak, they have a powerful voice. So here we have it. Against international law, Zionism built a solid wall of several layers. First, occupation. There is not a single kilometer in Israel acquired at any time by legal means. Not one. All obtained by collusion, but mostly by brute force. Second layer of this war is apartheid. Now, there is no need for Israelis to pretend otherwise. Israel proclaimed the nation state law in July 2018. Its Salem report of December 2020 confirmed apartheid in all of Palestine, whether occupied in 1948 or 1967. But before both of them, the United Nations Esquire report in March 2017 published its report about apartheid Israel. It got buried in the United Nations. Third layer of the wall is racism. There are at least 55 laws applied against Israeli Palestinian citizens today. The fourth layer is war crimes. Many treaty based conventions have condemned Israel war crimes. Now, it is all before ICC. I hope it works. Now, this solid wall, the edifice of occupation, apartheid, racism and war crimes, can this wall be breached? It must be. There can be no peace without it. But here are some hopeful signs. The past 100 years, within a memory of many people today, witnessed two major world wars, many regional wars, and the demise of abolition of racism, apartheid, fascism, nazism, formal communism, the end of colonists in Asian Africa. They have all vanished, except in Israel. And we Palestinians moved from a vague appellation as Arab refugees by Europe. We were called Arab refugees, not related to a country, to our recognition by securing a seat of the United Nations, recognized by 130 member states. To add to this hopeful sign, our young people did not forget, even today, and will never forget. Many of them are in imposed exile in dozens of cities in Europe and USA, in, strangely enough, a modern diaspora of Palestinians. They are professors, lawyers, scientists, even at NASA, media experts, yes, including a CNN, economists, bankers, some are very extremely successful. They all have the components of a successful Palestine, old country, reborn. Except they are still refugees, denied their right to return home. But now we have a weapon, a weapon of truth, a weapon of truth, which should be liberating the occupied minds in the West, from a long history of misinformation, falsehoods, and deception. This effective weapon does not need tanks, does not need airplanes, does not need millions of lobby dollars. The soldiers in this new world war is the intellectual, that is, the person who knows the truth. It's you and me and millions of other people. It's you and this institution, and so as, it's us and PLSC. This is a war to liberate the minds of the uninformed, the cheated, the deceived, and the silenced. The person of knowledge, the intellectual, should he take up his duty or shrink from it? I leave the answer to Edward Said. He answered this point, and I quote, Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mine in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political. You are afraid of saving controversial. You want to keep a reputation for being balanced, end of quote. I guess, and I hope, there are many who will not shrink from their duty. They know that the power of knowledge is supreme, lasting, liberating. So, let me call upon those who know to speak up. Let the innocent and the pure cry out, the emperor has no clothes. Let a map of occupation, silence, a lying politician. Let facts about brutality save a child from being shot in his way to school. Let an image of brutal soldiers save a woman on her way to hospital from dying at checkpoints. I realize that the task is great, but I believe it's doable. That's where you, we, all of us in institutions of learning come in. I have faith, unshakable faith, that the march of justice will reach its destination. In spite of all this overwhelming power against defenseless Palestinian people, it has not succeeded over seven decades to break their will or to demolish their spirit. Their dispersion in the world carried with each one a candle, shining truth in the darkness about their fate. Yes, I agree, candlelight is small and the power of darkness is much greater. But let there be many candles everywhere held by every person of conscience. We will win. No power can suppress the struggle of the human spirit for freedom. So let us all work together so that Palestinian people be free. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Abuserte. That was very emotive and detailed and you provided a good understanding of the 11 wars. I was intrigued by the title myself and kind of talking about it in different ways. Before we have a few questions that is coming from the audience and then maybe I can, I can ask some questions in relation to the, in relation to the new study center. So one question is asking whether you could have, whether you have published this anywhere because people are interested in reading about it in a form or the other. So particularly your historical analysis of these different wars and the semantics that you used. Is that, have you published that or is it? Yes. We have established Palestine Land Society in London 20 years ago in the year 2000. And since then we have published about 400 papers. We published five atlases. We also published poster maps printed about two million copies of this. All this is recorded or reproduced in the website Palestine Land Society website. www.plans.org in Arabic and English. And now let me say this and maybe Dr. Hawaida will add. The value or at least I think it is the value of our research is that it's scientifically based. We actually document Palestine land and people. The land is represented in so many maps digitized by GIS system. We know the area of each village. We know all the infrastructure of the country, what it was, what it is. We can isolate any plot of land. We know how it was and what happened to it. We know also we have recorded millions of refugees where they come from, where they are refugees now in which camp. We also have studies related to that in economics and law and various other aspects of that. So not only we were able to some degree, at least not done before, of recording Palestine of 1948, but we know what is Palestine today. And more importantly, we devised the return plans. How Palestinians can return to where and the system they should follow, the economic structure. We actually have an annual competition among young Palestinian architects. We hold the results of this competition in London every September. This year we have 60 students in the last year of architecture from 12 universities. They are competing in the reconstruction of destroyed villages. We give them a sample of 10 or 20 villages, they select one, and then they actually make a concrete architectural plan for the reconstruction of the village. Of course, with the new population which is 10 times more and with the new amenities of the life today. So I think instead of rather than having library books and shelves, we try to create results-oriented research as Dr. Hoeda said. And I take this advantage, this opportunity to call on all scholars to come and join us. Already Dr. Hoeda has received letters of interest from scholars interested in Palestine from many countries in Europe and America and Arab countries. We even have interest from Japan. So we hope that this will continue. Maybe Dr. Hoeda would like to add something. Yes, thank you very much. It's very hard to add to what you just said, Dr. Abu-Sikta. I think you covered it very much, but I do just want to emphasize that the idea to promote evidence-based research that analyzes and uses these records to put forth arguments and alternative discourses. So I'm hoping really that we would be able to do that and invite all of you to look us up in the future. Thank you. Thanks, Hoeda. There's a question here whether you can give the name of the forthcoming book by Dr. Usama Makodesi and whether your talk is going to be published which you have answered. But again, whether you can provide a visual map of the occupation, because you talked about the visual maps of occupation and someone was asking whether they can find it, but presumably you have that in the new center that you have started. But did you give the name of the book by Usama Makodesi or perhaps we can look for that later on? Yes, I will provide the name. I heard him speak recently and I like the idea that he spoke about how Evelyn turned into virtue, how the destruction of Palestinian villages was turned into a society which is tax-free. Its declared aim is the improvement of the environment while in fact it was a case of looting the property of others and destroying the villages of people who are refugees. And as I said, 372 villages, land of those villages, were taken by JNF after 1948, so that when you see Kibbutz today run by JNF, you know that this is definitely on a stolen land and in our website we outline what these villages are and where they are and we have maps of that. Okay, fantastic. So there are a few other questions. If I may make a correction, it says Dr. Sari Makodesi, not Usama Makodesi, although they're both very well known scholars so that it was Sari Makodesi's book. Well, thank you very much. Basically it answered the questions someone was asking about how can you turn Evelyn into virtue. But I've got one question in relation to whether you can address the settler colonial context in talking about the 11 wars on Palestine and how do you think another question that came up is what is your view on kind of proposals for one state solution which is anything different. But if you can think about answering the one about the settler colonial context. Well, if I may split the answer into two parts. The first part is colonial settler colonialism. Luckily for advancement of knowledge, this subject is becoming now very important. And actually surprisingly, it's more prominent among professors in Australia. Settler colonialism is a new subject to define all crimes committed in a new name and new format. The leader in this is the late Patrick Wolff. It is absolutely important to read what he works. And it says clearly that the aim of the colonials is to settle in a land and to remove to eliminate the people of the land completely, either by killing them or by throwing them away or by reducing them to non entities. And of course, meanwhile to deny that they ever existed. So they always called it terra nollius. That means there are no people there. What they mean is there are there are people there but they are not worth any value. So they should be removed completely. If you just remind me the second part of the question. Okay, the second part of the question was in relation to the one state solution. Yes, yes, yes, sorry. It's one state solution we hear this many times. I personally don't subscribe to this or another for a simple reason that recognizing or recognition of a state is a political act, which can be revoked can be increased can be changed. I am not as a Palestinian person interested in one state solution to state solution. They are immaterial to me. What is of great importance is that the human rights must be applied. The in human rights, namely the right of return should be applied. When people return to their homes, recover their property and live in freedom and democracy, not under apartheid, not under racism, not under any pressure system. Then these people live on a piece of land. They call it. They call themselves citizens of that land. Now, whatever system they choose, democratically, it's their own choice. I cannot put the carriage before the horse. First, international law must be applied. Human rights must be applied. Right of return must be applied. And then the people of the country decide what kind of future they have provided there is no racism or apartheid or any kind of oppressive regime. Thank you. Maybe a question to both of you because there are a couple of questions about internships, the Palestine land society, but also whether there's going to be internships in London. That's one question. And the other question is whether there is possibility for undergraduate students to carry out some of the research. I would try to take this one. I can answer that. Yes, please do. Please do. Of course, we are going to build gradually towards a complete access to affiliated scholars, inviting fellows. We will establish fellowship so that people can come and spend time at you be using the archives. And also postdoc position. We have a professor in the field. But all of this is still to come. We are planning to have the infrastructure for all of that in place, the funding for all of that in place because we have the generous donation by Dr. I think that we need to raise funds for an endowment that allows the center to function as a research hub with visiting fellows interns postdocs to visit and spend time, whether in Beirut or virtually to access the archives. Hopefully this is all going to further down the line in the future. That's soon. Okay. Thank you very much. Dr opposite to there's a question in relation to, you know, you talked about the role of the intellectual and you quoted Edward sides. There's a question about, okay, side by side with that. What about the need for political leadership. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. It is a tricky subject for for certain societies, because, as you will know, there are several levels. One is to obtain information and record it. Second is to teach people about this information. Like in schools on newspapers or research. The third thing is that this information should be converted into political action and made into decisions by governments. Now, the first and second is available for Palestinians, they can do research, they can make information available. This information becomes becomes available. It needs to be implemented and implementation needs democracy. That's why we now call very strongly for electing a new Palestine National Council so that the information which is available should be converted into a political strategy and then with the government into a practical plan of action. This link is weak. It is found in democratic countries that information from universities or various political groups and so on rises up to the level of discussion at the parliament. And then the ruling party will adopt that program. So here is a link between the intellectual and final result in the field. We don't have that at the moment. What we have nearest to that is the pressure of people, good conscience, like BDS, like university students in many UK universities and many in USA universities. They create a climate of opinion based on truth and knowledge. They are not afraid to lose financial privileges. They are not afraid to be stigmatized and attacked politically. This is the only bright spot for us in the current situation of the young people. So to conclude, the knowledge we have has not yet been converted into political action. Even in our case in Palestinian society, I regret to say that the authorities in Ramallah very rarely use our information. We offered it to them. They were reluctant to take it, even free. We offered information about apartheid war, we could give them maps, we could give them plans for return of refugees, we could give them data. But the link is broken between the knowledge and the political action. And this situation must be remedied. I hope by electing a new Palestine National Council. Thank you. There is a question from someone named Alina O'Neill, which is they have a Swiss recognized NGO, which is called ARCH Jerusalem, which has created a digital reconstruction of the Mughrabi quarter in Jerusalem. How can you disseminate this on your website? We would also appreciate advice about how to proceed to have the Mughrabi quarter placed on UNESCO's list of destroyed cultural heritage sites. And if I can ask my Alina to put the URL in the in the chat in the in the Facebook chat, I don't know whether you can do that. Yes. I am very, very pleased to hear this. And I would like to continue or make contact with this group. The Mughrabi Moroccan quarter of Hartal Magherba in Jerusalem is a supreme example of the destruction of Palestinian heritage. Let me just explain a little bit about that. It was established 800 years ago for the pilgrims from Morocco so that they find a place to live when they are visiting Jerusalem after Mecca. They go to pilgrimage in Jerusalem. This quarter has been inhabited by Moroccan pilgrims until 1967. In the British Survey of Western Palestine, we have maps of that in 1865. They have charted maps of Jerusalem. And so one week after 1967 war, in June 1967, Israelis came immediately and they demolished, bombed out 160 houses. Some of the people of the houses were buried under the rubble. They destroyed that and they made it into a larger area for praying against the Burakh wall or the Western wall. We at Western Palestine Society documented that from aerial surveys, from historical maps, and we documented them in three dimensions in GIS maps. And we have complete lists of what it was, who lived there, the name of the owners, and you can see it actually in three dimensions, what it was and how it was destroyed. We intend to submit it to UNESCO so that to condemn the destruction of 800 years old heritage in Palestine. And anyone I would like to contact the group you mentioned, because we'll tell them what maps and the reports we have. We have also the title deeds of the ownership of this land from Ottoman archives. I would be very pleased to, you know, get in touch with this group. Thank you very much. That is brilliant. And maybe if they can send an email to you so that they can connect and see how they can work with you in the new center. There's a question about what do you think about the normalization of relations between the Arab states and Israel. Recently, you know, we've had the United Arab Emirates and other countries. So if you have any comment on that. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I asked anyone who he reads about that to answer this question. What is normalization? Normalization for the layman is dealing with a country as a normal country. What does that mean? It means that the Nakba committed by Israel against three quarters of Palestinians is a moral act. It's a correct act. It's a legal act. It is something to be praised. And therefore, all the crimes committed by Israel in Palestinians are not crimes, really. They are virtuous. They are good things we should celebrate, we should approve of. Therefore, the crimes committed by Israel not only are forgiven, but are found to be of great human value. And therefore, we deal with Israel that on the basis that their actions against Palestinians over 72 years is moral, legal, perfect and logical. That means that means actually it draws a great legal guilt on those people because according to Statute of Rome, anyone who commits a crime and anyone who orders a crime and anyone who aides and abets a crime and anyone who approves of a crime is a criminal. Therefore, normalization really is a war crime in that sense. And therefore, those knowingly or not knowingly who actually go into the path of normalization, it means they are aiding abetting war crimes. And so they should be taken to ICC as well. That is good. Thank you. So there's a question saying, you know, if we want to make some progress going forward, maybe what about, you know, we've spoken about the Palestinian trauma. What about the Jewish trauma? What is your response to that response to that kind of talking about the Jewish trauma as well as talking about the Palestinian trauma. Yes, the answer to me is very clear. When I was 10 years old, I became a refugee. And at that time, I never saw a Jew in my life. I don't know how they look like. I don't know what language they speak. They came to us in smuggler ships in the middle of the night. They, as I mentioned, they came as an army, 120,000. They attacked my own village, Al-Ma'in, with 24 armored vehicles in the middle of the night. They destroyed our homes. They destroyed the school which my father built. And they destroyed our wells. And they destroyed our crops. And this is what I know about them. Now, if they have a grievance somewhere else, why should I pay for it? If they have grievances about something happened to them in Europe, the answer is they should go to the place where that is committed. Try to find the answer. I do not find any legal or human or any reason that I should bear the burden of what happened to somebody somewhere else. And one time, I had correspondence with Uri Avneri. And we talked a lot about these matters. And, you know, he is accredited to be what's called a prophet of peace. I told him, why did you come? You were an Ergun terrorist organization. Why did you help in depopulating about 100 villages in southern Palestine with your machine gun? He said, well, that was the case some time ago. I told him, if you, your name is Hilmut, you are German. Why are you fighting us? I told him, it's a matter of cowardice that you left the field where they have committed these things against you and came to defenseless people, miles away, hundreds of miles, a thousand miles away, to kill defenseless people whom you have not seen at all. So this is my argument. Very simple. What happened to me is wrong historically, legally. If anyone disagrees with that, that's their problem. I'm not going to carry the burden of disasters or atrocities committed elsewhere. So there is another question around the role of Fatah in kind of some of the issues that are continuing to happen in terms of corruption and so on. Do you think that you could answer this question in a sense, you know, talking about whether Fatah is impeding or has played a role in the continuous problem for Palestinians? If I understand you correctly, what is the role of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank? Yes, it seems that that's one of the questions. I'm just going to try and find it again and do it to you as it comes. But before we do that, maybe there is another question that says should the campaign not, you know, for kind of improving the political situation, not to include the fee in both Palestinian political prisoners and especially the important figures like Marwan Barhouti and Ahmed Sadat. Also, the unity of Fatah and Hamas is vital. So perhaps you could think or respond to these as factors for helping the liberation of the Palestinian people. Well, these are detailed questions. Probably some people are more qualified than me to answer them. But I have a general answer which satisfies me all the time. Since Oslo, 1993, we have been a group of Palestinians have been campaigning against Oslo. And I am proud to mention Hyderabd Shafi, Edward Said, Ibrahim Abulud, all others. For the last 25 years, we have been campaigning to bring back democracy into Palestinian structures, namely, electing a Palestinian National Council. Now the elections which are planned now are 40 in many ways, because the main structure we have is Palestinian National Council established in 1964. And the only legal representative of the Palestinian people is that council elected by 13 million Palestinians. And when that is elected, they have to decide on all these matters. These are secondary matters created because we don't have Palestinian National Council generally accepted and properly elected with leadership which has the trust of the people. This is not the case now. So all what's happening now is interim measures which will not lead to the correct and lasting solution. Okay, thank you. And I found the question about Fadah which says, I would like to know more about the corruption in Fadah and what is the evaluation of the harm it has caused really through the years on the Palestinian cause. Well, I repeat my answer. The only answer which satisfies the Palestinians, all of them, is election of Palestinian National Council, not the legislative council, not the local election to be held in the West Bank, but elections in which 13 million people decide. This is the essence of PLO, this is the essence of Palestinian National Council. This is the time we moved from a group of refugees into a nation which has a country called Palestine. Now, unfortunately, since Oslo, the cars have been played in so many different ways and fragmentation has happened. We should fight this fragmentation. There is now a movement among Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza, everywhere, young people, old people in Europe and in America, they are saying this, unless there is Palestine National Council representing all of us, anything else is faulty and not acceptable. And how do you see this council coming through? What are the prospects for the Palestine National Council to be formed given the current situation amongst the Palestinians and the current political situation with regards to the Palestinians? What are the steps for this council to be, I agree with you, I think we really need the Palestine National Council, but how is this movement, where is it gathering pace, what are they doing, can you tell us about where we can find more information around? Yes, yes. As I say, over the last 25 years, we held many conferences about that. It did not yield any results because those people who are holding the keys in Ramallah will not give it up. And they converted the situation of Palestine as a country depopulated and its people are refugees into a system working under Israeli occupation, accepting Oslo, which is devastating. And they wanted to live in that environment and they have no interest because they have their own private interests, non-national interests to do that. So it's a big battle. And there are, if you watch the news media or at least the Facebooks and so on, there are many groups are forming now among Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza. They are saying we do not accept anything short of election for all Palestinians. Now, the question which the questioner asked is what steps are they undertaking? Since this is a people's movement, it takes time. But there are many, if you look in the Facebooks and various other means, there are meetings to be held at the end of February and early March. People are gathering forces in order to claim their right to be representative. If you see, if the questioner sees any of these, I encourage them to join them. There is a group called Samidoun. There is a group called A'idoun. There is a group called PYM, Palestinian Youth Movement. There are a group called Popular Conference of Palestinians Abroad. All of those have the same aim. When we have enough accumulation of people who will claim that, who will demand that, then perhaps there is a solution. At the moment, I can say with certainty, 90% of Palestinian people do not accept what's going on, do not accept the representation by Ramallah group. Thank you. Gilbert, do you have any questions? Do you want to come in with some questions? And there's someone who said they have their hands off amongst the audience, but I cannot see how we can let you in to ask the question until you can find a way. But Gilbert, do you have any questions? No, thank you, Dina, but just a remark made by one member of the audience who wrote, this is an absolutely brilliant synopsis of what has and is going on and asking, will it be published anywhere? So the question is to Dr. Abu Sitta about the publication of this text. If he intends to publish it somewhere, of course, we would be very happy to publish it ourselves. Well, first let me say hello, Dr. Gilbert. Nice to see you in a picture. We have not met for some time. It's always a pleasure to reconnect with friends. You mean publishing of what? You mean this talk? Your talk, yes, exactly. Yes, yes, we'll post it in our website, Palestine Land Society. Let me put an ad here. It's called www.plands.org. It will be published. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. There's another question that just came in, which is, with this activism happening by the Palestinians outside the homeland, is there any space for some members from the Jewish diaspora to support these actions? We see that kind of support happening. That's a good question. In the last quarter of a century, I had the chance to befriend a number of these groups and they find them genuine. Of course, the top of the line is Elan Pepe, but there are others. When I speak at Harvard and Boston area, where people are more enlightened, almost half my audience at the university are young American Jews. Some of them come to me, actually, and say, we have been deceived. We have been educated in schools when we are young. That Palestine is empty and it's God-given land. And now when we go, we find it very different. One of them actually visited the West Bank and he actually went to refugee camps and he decided to live in a refugee camp. He came back to the United States and became a great advocate of that. Now I have seen many of them, but I must say the degree of their commitment to Palestinian national rights varies. In Elan Pepe case, it's absolute, 100%. Others have various degrees on scale of supporting Palestine. And it's not the place to discuss that. But I welcome any progress towards recognizing what happened to Palestinians by people who have never done them any harm. As I say, there are limits to their support. But whatever it is, it's welcome and should be recognized. But I must tell you one thing. If you give me just one minute. When I publish my memoirs, I wrote to about 10 or 20 Jewish groups who have been with us in demonstrations, signing petitions and meeting conferences. You know, first class, first class. I told them now that you have read my memoirs. I would like you to know the following. In my land, which is 55,000 dunams, Al-Ma'in, there are four kibbutzim. And I gave them the names for them just right to the settlers in the four kibbutzim in my land. Ask them three simple questions. First, do you know how you got there? How did you get there in 1948? Walking, playing, by parachute? How did you come there? Second question is, do you know the people who were living there before you came? Where are they? Do you know they are one kilometer away in Gaza Strip? The third thing is, what do you say if these people have never given up their right to return home? In my case, I could walk one kilometer back to a place where I was born. Now, surprising results of about 10 or 12 Jewish groups, I asked. Not one of them dared to speak to the kibbutzim on my land. Not one. They tell me various things. Do you know their addresses? I don't know the addresses. I said, yes, okay. Here are the addresses of the kibbutzim. Someone said, would I use my name or shall I use another name? I said, it's up to you. I know the answer. Another one said, I know some other Jew there who could do it. I'll tell him to do it. I am amazed. That's why I said there is always a degree of support. Not one of the people who are with us in demonstrations, signing petitions, would dare to address settlers on my land. Just tell them simple questions. What do you say to that? What do you say to that? How do you explain that? There is a question just come in about how can we revive European support for the Palestinian cause? Do you think you can answer that question or is it too big and broad? Well, we have to address it. Even though it's a difficult question, we have to address it. And maybe I'm probably a bit naive, but I believe in the human spirit. Who would guess BDS would gain support in European universities? And they did. Who would guess there is PSC? Who would guess that? And of course, there is a great deal of, I mean, you have to be a fighter to do that because now the defamation, which is one of the 11 wars, is acting very strongly. I mentioned the case of Nereet Somerville. She is a Jewish German person. She's a musician. She holds concerts and so on. And Jews in Germany love her. But she said, I will not tolerate that Palestinians are dispossessed because of Israel. And she's subject of witch hunt. And so, as you will know, luckily many universities turned it down. But there is something now which was not given before. This is called anti-Semitic accusation. I will not go into that. But if anyone is accused of that, you should ask, what did he say? Did he tell you about Palestine? The case in Palestine is very well documented. Now who would deny that? The one who denies that is the criminal. The only person who is afraid of the truth is the criminal. Because if you are not criminal, you have no problem of telling people all the facts because you know you are innocent. You have not done it. So this is really a turn to the worse, instead of having no media. Let me just remind you of one thing. After 1967, people in the Western world heard about the word occupation. Israeli occupation. And it really opened their eyes. Israeli occupation. They were the trodden people. They were the people who were trying to find a safe heaven in the world. And then the first intifada came. So this is one way of jolting the western-duped mindset. That's why I say the only weapon today we have is the truth. Let me just add one thing. In our work, which is scientific, mapping, historical, not one Israeli ever disputed any atlas we made or any map we made. Benny Morris wrote about first atlas, three parts review. He was trying, he had a group of students picking every single page, every number. And he could not find anything. Then his complaint, which he published, and the writer says, and I think in England, he aims to rebuild Palestine. Good for you. Yes, this is what I intended. That is good. So a final question and a final comment from you on whether you are able to chart or tell us about a path forward. To chart a path forward, is there a roadmap that we can follow to try and resolve the questions and to end the wars against Palestine? Well, I claim there is the answer. And we know that the answer is available so much time, but nobody would dare to do it. Right of return, look, if I may summarize the situation in Palestine in one sentence, it is not this, it is not that, it is not conflict, it is simply people have been depopulated from their country and they are determined to return back. That's it. That's it. So the international law is on our side. But with the scientific data we have, we made a plan how to return. The first thing I have done, which is published anyway, is could people return? Who is now living in their homes and their lands? So we had a huge database who lives in each village land with that's Russian, which is Knazi, which is Arab Jew and so on. Who lived there? And this study is published in 1995. I came to the conclusion that Israel is empty. People thought this is crazy. How come? How come Israel is empty? And people say all the time, okay, okay, what happened to Palestinians is very bad, but are you going to create Nakba for Jews? Because they are already filling the place. This is false, absolutely false. The study we have made proved that 87% of the Jews live in 12% of Israel. And the refugee land is almost empty. Out of 500 village lands, half of them have no Jews today. The other half has 1 to 2% Jews who are in the kibbutz. Therefore if they return, even the kibbutz stays, it will not affect anything. The problem resides in three areas only. Only the area of Metropolis of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, one, two, Haifa, third western Jerusalem. These are areas in which they have high concentration and they obliterated 12 villages only out of 560. And who controls the village land other than kibbutz? 85% or no, 75% of the area in Israel is controlled by Israeli army. They have training fields, they have factories, they have this and that. I'm not inventing these numbers. Look at the study made by 250 Israeli experts in 1984 called Israel 2020. And these figures are given there. And we checked them, they are correct. So if people return, they will have very few people in their face to stop it. And the question is not really just sticks. I have even created cantons for the remaining Jews. And we have an area described in our website. How we can create three cantons, West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, where most of them can live the majority up to 87% without effect to other people. We can, you know, have any kind of system there. So it is not law, international laws on our side. It is not difficulty of logistics and so on. Absolutely not. Absolutely. Even rebuilding these destroyed villages, we have the agenda and the budget for that Palestinians can do it. If you see our competition, as I mentioned, the young people are designing reconstruction of these villages, beautifully, beautifully. We even brought these designs to refugee camps. For example, we had a winner last year is Suhmata village. We had people in refugee camps in Lebanon meet those young people who designed it. And they found it very clear. They loved it. It's very doable with no external manpower from outside with even little money from outside. So what is stopping us? What's stopping us United States and Israel by physical force, not by law, not by logistics by not by any other means. Thank you so much for coming to the end of the talk and I think you ended up really by, by, by making positive approaches and practical approaches to some type of progress. I think we have had many comments saying this is an excellent talk. Thank you very much. Thank you, as well, looking forward to collaborate and sending students to you. Thanks, everyone and Junbert for being here. Junbert, do you want to say something before the end? No, no, Dina. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. And of course, thank you. Many thanks to our two guests for this brilliant evening. Thank you. As Api put in the chat, we have the annual lecture center for Palestine studies on the fifth of March coming up soon and hope we can see a lot of you there of the attendees. So thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Dina. Thank you, Dr. Gilbert. Thank you very much. I only hope that we get rid of corona soon. Thank you for visiting you and see you in person as before. We have coffee together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye all.