 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the eighth annual lecture of the Center of Palestine Studies at SOAS. The center was founded in 2012. I am currently the chair. My name is Dina Matar, but the professor was the founder and also the first chair of the center. The question of Palestine has been a fundamental issue in the Middle East, and it has far reaching a global significance regional significance as well as significance for politics development and other issues. All countries across the region are deeply involved with the various dimensions of the question of Palestine. At SOAS we have been very much involved in the study of Palestine and Palestinians, and this has been a very, the study of Palestine and Palestinians has been a prominent feature of our research and teaching, involving a considerable number of staff and students. Center for Palestine Studies offers an institutional home for the school across various disciplines and also reaches out to other institutions and other scholars and people involved in the study and the support of Palestine and Palestinians. In the CPS we have lectures, we have seminars, we have research seminars for doctoral students, we also have a module that is taught in the Languages and Cultures department within the Near and Middle East Studies program on Palestine, history, politics and society. We also run a research seminar for PhD students from mostly in the UK but across the world who come and give their research ideas and perspectives on issues that they are researching. At the same time we have been recently, well I think it's 2016, correct me if I'm wrong, but we started the first book series, scholarly book series on Palestine called the SOAS Palestine book series, which is published, used to be published by Ivy Tourist and is published by Bloomsbury Academic. We are into our seventh publication and for those interested you can look at our website, Center for Palestine Studies at SOAS.ac.uk. So the talk today is a very important topic, the apartheid paradigm by Professor Ra'af-Israic, who's a Palestinian scholar with expertise in law and he has been working and he has practiced law about 10 years then. He learned an LLM from Columbia Law School in 2001, he started his studies in Palestine Israel and earned his degree in 2007. He has been involved since 2010 as the academic coordinator of the Minerva Center for Humanities, and he also teaches on jurisprudence, property law, law and culture. Publications include the ethics and the intellectuals re-reading Edward Said in philosophy and social criticism, historical justice on first and second order arguments for justice in theoretical inquiries in law that was published in 2020. He has also published articles in the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and he has worked on Kant, Time and Revolution for the Graduate Faculty Journal of Philosophy. He also serves on the editorial board of few journals, including Theory and Criticism and the Lexical Review of Political Thought, the Journal of Palestine Studies and the Journal of Leventine Studies. So without further ado, we welcome Professor Ra'af-Israic to give us this talk, the way that this is going to be in terms of order. The lecture will be delivered, I think, about 30 to 40 minutes, and then we can take questions in the question and answer kind of icon at the bottom of your Zoom page. Also, we can get some questions on the Facebook in the chat for those people who are joining us on Facebook. So hello Sahala, looking forward to your talk and the floor is yours now. Thank you. I'll go on mute. Thank you Dina. It's really a pleasure to be invited to give this talk. So thanks to the center. Thanks to Gilbert as well, who was part of this invitation. At this time we hear about the existence of a Palestinian center, wherever it is in London or New York or in Beirut or DC. It's a good opportunity. It's good news, because I think that not only the question of Palestine is under attack, I think the name Palestine is under attack. We managed to do something in the 20th century as a Palestinian national movement was to save the name Palestine from oblivion. We didn't have a Palestinian state, but we have a Palestinian dream, and we keep the name of Palestine awakened so I think it's even the dream and the name is under attack so I have an idea that one day we'll wake up and instead of writing our status in Facebook everybody would write the name Palestine 10 times so just to fill the Facebook one day with Palestine, Palestine, Palestine. My talk today is about the apartheid paradigm. I will not be able to touch upon the manifest of the paradigm, the many ways it been used. I would limit myself to kind of conceptual political analysis of the concept, conceptual analytical of the concept, and what I will not be able to address. I'm not very well equipped to address, or I'm not prepared well to address is the legal question about apartheid though I'm trained as a lawyer but this is something that I didn't deal with enough about the legal aspects in terms of international law. My talk would be more political historical and more and more about political imagination about how we become used to use certain metaphors or certain paradigms in thinking about Palestine. Why at certain points in time we use certain categories certain analytical tools and at other times they subside and some other categories would come to the surface. What is clear is that we are hearing the word apartheid more and more in the last probably 20 years. 20 years before that I think the terminology of apartheid we didn't hear very much. And one of the things that I want to reflect is to try to explain this rise in the use of the paradigm of apartheid. Why for some time we didn't use the paradigm of apartheid. And what can we think about the prospects of the apartheid paradigm in thinking about the future of Palestine. I think that we will continue more to use the paradigm and what kind of solutions probably implied when we think about the paradigm of apartheid. As I said probably after the Carter book The American Presidents on apartheid it infiltrated much of the American discourse. But recently I think most of you are aware in the recent years starting from one of the UN reports that uses the terminology of apartheid to describe the situation in Palestine. In the recent report by Bitzelim then Israeli human rights organization. Before that was another group called yesh dean. Each of these reports stresses some aspects of apartheid whether the situation of apartheid is the way to describe the situation in the West Bank. It's to describe the situation inside Israel or whether to describe the situation overall of all the geography between the river to the sea that is in all of Palestine, historic Palestine. So there is a certain increase in the deployment of the political imagination that use the term apartheid. And this is something that would be the core of my talk and I'll give first the short answer, the immediate answer, and then I will try to explicated more and more and to develop the same idea more and more and to give it more flesh in my talk. I think the short answer is the following. The short answer is that with the slow decay and collapse of the two state paradigm. The idea of two states for two nations. The idea of separation into two political entities that day by day, it's being proven to be almost impossible. I say almost because in politics everything is possible if there is a political will that can enforce it. But it looks like it's almost impossible. And because of that. There are more and more approaching a reality where the situation from the sea to the river from the river to the sea is being viewed as one geographical unit. Now when we are stuck within one geographical unit. It means that there is a unity against which the two groups are separated. And it would be the core of my talk today in thinking about how to think about apartheid. What is the role of this idea of unity of a shared community. But what is clear, and this is something I'll expand in the last third of my lecture that there's something going on about the relation of Israel to the West Bank. It seems that Israel in the West Bank to stay that the settlement are less ideological. It's not that only right wing extreme religious groups that go there know it's being perceived as less security issue. At one point they claim that it's matter of security where to choose the location it's more and more clear that it's not the case. And more and more it's becoming clear that it's not important that it's there to stay mean the coalition of these three factors when they come together. They actually bring the West Bank into the political unity called Israel and create this what I call sort of background unity within which there's a separation. And I think I want to focus on this idea of unity or shared background or a frame that allows us to see apartheid. Because apartheid I think and this is probably measure argument that I want to develop it's not only a reality. It's a structure of experience. It's lenses through which we conceive reality. And in this sense. It very much depends on what kind of frame we approach reality. If we approach reality with a certain frame, then we can see the apartheid more visible. If we approach it from different frame. It wouldn't look as apartheid probably it would look like occupation, but it would look less than apartheid. And I think the idea of unity that I'm talking about that allows apartheid to appear to be visible to be something signaled out. And I think the idea here is that apartheid means certain kind of putting aside secluding excluding exceptionalizing. To say that something is excluded can make sense only against the background of imagining it as being included as an exception to a certain rule. Without the idea of the rule you don't imagine something as exceptional without the idea of inclusion potential inclusion you don't visualize the exclusion. For example, if I tell you that the French don't vote in American election. You say so what you don't experience an exclusion because at the first place. We don't imagine as the French as someone who is a candidate or supposed as a rule to vote in the American election. But when we say that African American in America or women in Switzerland are not allowed to vote. We deploy a certain political imaginary where we have the boundaries of the political community, and we're taking out certain group from this imagined community. We need the frame in order to see what is left out of the frame. We need the rule to see the exception, and we need this frame in order to say that something is standing out as not being included. The condition of seeing exclusion is a presumption of a certain inclusion. This is what I mean this idea of, of, of, of commonality. If I tell you, you should drink orange lemons grapefruits. And I leave one of this group out you immediately would notice but you wouldn't notice that I left banana out. So this is the idea of family or a frame against which you see the, the uniqueness, the conspicuous standing out. And probably what we for years lacked in Palestine, not separation, not segregation. No, there's always has been segregation and separation in Palestine from day one, what we lacked is the unity through which through those lenses that we can see this separation. So in my argument, in order to conceive what is apartheid you need three elements, unity, separation within this unity against the background of a shared background. Three subjugation or discrimination structural discrimination. If you if you lose one of these factors, then we can speak about apartheid. I think there's something in Palestine that this shared unity came very late. Now, if one takes the historical paradigm from which the imagination of paradigm of the paradigm emerged South Africa. There's something very telling about the history of South Africa. In South Africa, the apartheid was institutionalized as a full scale regime as an organizing principle of the whole society, only 1948. Though the settler colonial project started already in the 18th century, the end of 17th century, then why it needed probably so much time that to establish it as an organizing principle in all of South Africa. The reason is that that until one point until certain point separation was, let's say, I'm using these words very carefully was almost a natural phenomena. The need to institutionalize the apartheid regime as an organizing principle came against the background of the mixing of the of the South African society. When black labor really became part of the working labor in the hearts of the South African cities. The labor relation created the situation and the economic relation create a reality of mixing against this mixing. There was the need to separate because separation was not any more natural, it need a new legal tools to enforce it through legal mechanism and through deployment of the force of the state. So apartheid as a structured regime is an expression of a certain movement toward mixing and the system cannot bear the mixing and in order to resist the mixing. It creates this movement as a preventive movement from mixing. It's very telling it's really very telling that where was the first place in South Africa that really institutionalize the laws of apartheid. The church. Why the church, because the church was the first place that at least in rhetoric spoke about equal standing of all South African. One of the questions in political theology Christian political theology in South Africa was whether blacks have soul. And the issue that actually blacks have souls now we are wondering about these debates taking place in the 19th century, yes, of course it took debate in the 19th century. The history is not a history of the unraveling of liberal ideas. And because of that, as first stage, they used to pray together in the same church. And they were created this commonness created the need to separate, because sort of atom as a matter of coherence in ideology, they should pray together. As a matter of social fact and as a matter of feeling people didn't want to play with to pray with blacks. So the first place that separated legally and make by rules for separation was the state. Why, because the state invited the blacks in and after it invited them then it needed to separate them. The inside is a mechanism of regulating a reality of a centripetal gravitational force toward commonality and the desire to create separateness. I want to end the South African model by saying two, three things about what also added to this feeling of shared community. One is religion in the sense that there were many blacks who were Christians and Christianity view itself as a missionary. They shared many common vocabulary. The second was the English language I don't want to expand on that and third, the political imagination of their geography. All blacks in South Africa, all colored in South Africa because South Africa is not only blacks and whites and the whites are not only one whites and the blacks are not only one whites, but all of them. So a lot of South Africa, first of all, as a clear unit with the clear borders, and they all thought of themselves as South Africa, those who for apartheid and those were against apartheid, all of them thought this is created a frame within which when you see that there's a segregation. It simply stands out. But it stands out. Now this is the political imagination that allowed South Africa to be thought as an apartheid. Now, as you can tell, and this is an important caveat. This is a relative conceptual frame. I'm not saying what is the politics that allows a movement against apartheid to take off in the US and doesn't allow against Israel to take off for clear reason about power relation money, etc. You name it, the support of the US. I'm speaking about things that can explain not only why the international community is not embracing the apartheid metaphor or the apartheid way of analyzing it. There's something to explain why we ourselves are not embracing it and why the Israelis don't feel the gravitational force of the apartheid paradigm, except recently that it starts to emerge and I want to buy in this lecture by saying something about the prospect of this conceptual frame if it can really do the work we are expecting of it to do. So let's go back to Palestine to the issue of Palestine Israel and and try to think how this paradigm works in Israel. Since Israel managed to evade to escape the clear cut case of apartheid, why the apartheid didn't grip the imagination of the Palestinians and why many Israelis didn't view themselves as an apartheid state. And again, let's put power politics aside because power politics is always there I'm just bracketing it for the moment. And here, let's take several crucial moment in the history of this ongoing colonization of Palestine. I think the first moment is the 1948 the year of the Nakba. I mean all paradigms of apartheid things of superiority of one group over the other and they want to get rid of them so one way to get rid of other groups is to expel them other way is just to dominate them. So what Israel managed to do in 1948. Is that instead of discriminating clearly and making a clear, blatant regime of apartheid where Palestinians don't have the right to vote which is really this is the most blatant way of understanding it. Though there are many, many, many other characteristics but this is probably the one that stands out. Simply by expel expulsion. When you expel the Palestinians you don't need to deny them the right to vote. Now they are a minority, you can allow them to vote. So what allows the Palestinians to vote is the dark side of their expulsion. When they are expelled physically you don't have to expel them legally in the text, you expel them from reality you don't have to expel them from the legal text. In this sense the idea of Jewish and democratic state lies behind the idea of expulsion, or let's let's say something like this. The idea of Jewish and democratic is unthinkable without the idea of expulsion. Why is that, because imagine that being Gorion was a real Democrat, and he said, Okay, let's keep the Palestinian give them full equal rights. I'm speaking about political rights. Then you will have a democratic democratic state but you wouldn't have a Jewish state. Now let's imagine that being Gorion wants to keep them, but without granting them any political rights to vote, then you will have a Jewish state, but you wouldn't have a democratic state. The condition of the possibility of coherently of the idea of a Jewish democratic state is expulsion. So by expulsion, actually, you save yourself the need to establish an apartheid, blatant regime. So that's one way how Israel get away with it, in the sense that it's not blatant. It's not clear. It's not on the surface of the textbooks, you read the textbook and you didn't see really discriminatory at least at one point laws on the surface of the text. Because you expel them in reality. So that's one thing about the Palestinian in Israel at least I don't want to say the full trajectory from the 50s until now I'd be happy to answer questions in this regard, later on. Initially, the situation was one of separation under the military regime inside Israel in 1966, but nobody use the category of apartheid, because we we conceived almost that this separation is almost natural separation. It's just we stayed where we are they expelled the rest of us and they lived where they are and there was no presupposed mixing. Anyway, and we our imagination was not speaking in terms of apartheid though as a reality of segregation of total separation and domination clear domination. Now let's move to the West Bank and say something about the West Bank. As I can say just a few words which is the name of a book. It's a prison and it's the biggest prison in the world probably it's a big prison. Okay, but it's still a prison. What decides if someplace is a prison or not it's not if it's big or small but who holds the keys. And in this sense the Palestinians don't hold the keys and in this sense they are in prison clear prison. Now let's think a little bit about the West Bank. Let's so say that what I'm going to say about the West Bank is not applicable as well to Gaza but I wanted to say first of all that Gaza is a prison. Let's say something about the West Bank. Why the West Bank still the terminology of apartheid is not taking off it's really still not taking off even within Palestinians. Clearly within Israelis it's not taking off. Why it's delayed in somehow to capture the imagination. Though there's a clear separation and everything. I think one of the reason is that we Palestinians. We insist on idea of self determination and separation in our own state. We insist on separation. Separation is our demand. That's what we want. We want separation in the model of a separate nation state. So the imagination is centrifugal is going outward, not inward, that they are two different frames to political entities. If you have the PA that want to insist or to think of itself or to portray itself or to sell itself with ministers flag and them in buses. It's an image of a state, but it's only an image of a state. Now when you have an image of a state you don't speak about apartheid. In this in this sense, because you're simply situated in a different unit. You're simply in France. The French can't claim that they are suffering from apartheid because they are not participating in the elections, or the Egyptians cannot say that we are being under Israeli apartheid regime. The imagination of the two states of the two political entities hinders the imagination that there's one entity and we're separated within the same entity. So this, I think this power, what I call centrifugal power of national discourse. I just want to insist that we are separate. I mean, take this issue of the, the, the vaccine now. Instead of that the PA would say, look, we are your subjects you are controlling the whole area from here to here, and you owe us duties. They don't want to say that because this would undermine their status their image, their prestige, you name it. The reason is that we are proto state, if you want to insist on proto state, then why the Israel should take responsibility over, over your, your citizen, so called citizen. And in this sense, Israel managed to create a monopole about how to perceive the green line. Probably one would call that creates an acoustic wall. Acoustic wall is that you speak in two voices and at the same time, each in the audience simply hears one of the voices or one of the melodies. For Israel at the same time the green line exist and doesn't exist the borders exist and doesn't exist. The green line exists as something that puts limit to the imagination of the average Israeli citizen. It is every Israeli citizen. There's a border beyond the border. There's an enemy and there's another state and you're not responsible. You can go home and sleep beautifully peacefully with a clean conscience, because they are beyond the limits of our responsibility. And since the green lines plays as a kind of mechanism of purification, because put certain groups beyond the borders and beyond responsibility. Now, and the green line also plays a material border against Palestinians movement from the West Bank toward Israel. Here the green line really stands. It is clearly clear border. But Israel the same Israel can eliminate the green line immediately. Because goods merchandise, whatever they sell to the West Bank. Settlers go to the West Bank. Settlers come from the West Bank Israel use the resources of the West Bank. There is border. The other minute there is no border and Israel is playing on this ambivalence of having a border without having a border having the West Bank without having the responsibility of the West Bank. Now, why the paradigm is a little bit. Let's say, emerging in recent years, because this reality. Other believers in the two state solution. Start to sounds as really unconvincing. There's something clearly becoming unconvincing. The continuation, the normalization of the settlers in the West Bank is reaching such a peak that to think of Israel without thinking the settlements in the West Bank is almost unthinkable. So the settlers and the settlements is not just a sickness or a sort of unhealthy aggression on the neat clean body of Israel. And if you cut it sort of, and you have the clean healthy body back. There is no separation between this aggression and the body. There is no separation between the healthy and the sick. It's, it's becoming less conceivable of the everyday person to visualize what does it mean Israel without those things. It's becoming normalized list idealized. It's list a militarized, and it's becoming to be thought as a permanent situation. The more you think about it as a permanent situation. The more you think of the whole area from the river to the sea as one entity. So the settlers are becoming taken for granted more and more, but still huge parts of Palestinians want to think and want to insist that the paradigm shouldn't be one of a part actually one of occupation. And the issue and the solution and the struggle should be ending the occupation. We have you and resolution against the occupation. We have the High Court, the International Court of Justice ruling in favor of us we have 242 we have 338 we have endless amounts of decisions that support our claims to to statehood in the West Bank. I'm not saying this as something that I completely disagree with. Here there's a clear or let's say clear dilemma that it's not very easy to decide which side to take because the more you think of, oh, we have one unit, it's apartheid let's end apartheid question. Oh, and the settlers. What is the status of the settlers. It's creates a new new questions. Now, but added to this picture I want to add something about the Palestinians in Israel. So there's something going on in the West Bank where the settlements are viewed more and more as part of Israel. The same place within Israel regarding the status of the Palestinians is the following. I mean the Palestinians were always something that Israel didn't know exactly what to do with. They didn't want Palestinian as a fantasy. So how do you deal with this fantasy. Not only one way. One way is to expel them. Another way is to put them under military regime for 20 years. Third way would be to integrate them until they forget that they are Palestinian. There are different ways how to deal with the fact that you have Palestinians inside Israel. I think in the recent years. Recent not few recent at least 1015 years. There is a clear attack on the citizenship of Palestinians in Israel. And there's a rise in the racial ethnic religious discourse against Palestinians in Israel. It's clear. It's escalating all the time is escalating. Probably the peak of it was the recent law in 2018. The nationality a basic law, which the worst thing is some people focused on settlement, which is quite important to focus on the issue of settlement some on the Arabic language. But I think the worst thing in this law is the fact that we don't exist in this law. It's not that we are second class citizen, we don't exist. We were not mentioned there if we are second class citizens. We probably can struggle to be first class citizen, but our status is not mentioned there in that law at all. Now what does that mean. And does that mean that is, is there a new threshold here. And the way to view I think this basic law is, is complex. On the one hand, there's a continuation of an old tradition of how zionism and later on Israel treated the Palestinian citizen. I mean, the idea of the status of the Arabic language settlements, the symbols of the state, kibbutz aliyot negation of exile, etc. In many ways, they were the ideals, the ideals that actually regulated the Israeli state that the basic principles that this state was established. And I still want to argue, there is something about the law that that should be alarming, though the ideas were all there's something in this law, first of all, it's constitutionalized as a supreme law of the land. And there's a difference between stating these principles in 1948 and static them 70 years after, after you have a Palestinian citizen. So at the beginning clearly citizenship meant nothing for the Palestinian, but through 70 years probably it gained some flesh, somehow. Then, after you created a certain commonality, which is you didn't create with the West Bank. You're pushing them again. So there's violence, clear violence of pushing them out. Where does all of that takes us. I think this is takes us to the following trajectory. I don't know where this will lead the the fluidity in Israel Palestine and the fluidity in the Middle East is so huge these days. But there are some contours or some characteristic that one can tell. One is that if after Oslo, despite all our criticism and I was one of those who entered politics on the critique of also mean I made most of my political career as a critic of us. But let's see compared to 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. 25 years ago, at least for a short while, it seems that the Palestinians in Israel that citizenship was taken for granted and there was small question mark on the status of the settlers. I think the settlers are taken for granted and the question mark is upon the status of the Palestinians in Israel. Now this means something this means that the territories are in many ways incorporated into Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank are under segregated regime the Palestinians in Israel are also being more and more segregated. I think that we have as a state, or as a right wing in Israel, or Zionism, you choose it is establishing a model of separation that is a little bit different from the Oslo separation, a little bit, not completely. There was something in Oslo separation which is based on geography. We are here. They are there. We are developing a separation that is based on ethno nationalism or ethno religious affiliation now that is basically saying between the river and the sea, there are two groups, and one is more superior to the other. Now this is the trajectory of a total apartheid between the river and the sea. Do I, as someone living in Nazareth have the same status as someone living in Genine or Nablus? No. I have more rights. And there's no reason by many Palestinians to insist no no no we're in the same situation. We're not in the same situation. And the fact that we are not in the same situation doesn't mean that we're not marching into apartheid. I mean apartheid can live with a certain stratification. And the reality is so bad that we don't have to invent or to deny that we have political rights. Okay, we have certain political rights and we have certain social and economic rights. That's fine. So as what one should say to some liberal Zionists that the fact we tell them the fact that we have certain rights shouldn't overlook the fact that you expelled Palestinians in 1948. And we as Palestinians, the fact that we were expelled and we had the Nakba in 1948 doesn't mean that we didn't have or after that we weren't granted certain political rights. But in the overall that trajectory is one of having one big regime or a situation where we have two regimes, one for the Palestinians, one for the Israelis. Does that mean that we are heading to an anti apartheid movement? I wouldn't say we're not there yet. There are many things need to happen in order that to develop. Do I'm sure that this is the thing that should happen. I'm not sure. Does the apartheid paradigm exclude other paradigms. No, it does not. What's its relation to the one state solution. It's a long story. What's the relation of the apartheid paradigm to settler colonialism. It's a long story. All these questions I didn't deal with. I would stop here. I took some 40 minutes exactly as I promised. And we can open it to discussion. Thank you, Dina. That's a brilliant discussion, which is a lot of thinking and very thought provoking. I'm going to take some questions. There's someone raising their hands, but is that from the panel? No, but if you could put your questions in the chat, then I can ask them. So we deal with the first question that came by email which says the Palestinian problem has not been resolved for many decades, despite the fact that both direct and indirect participants in the conflict have proposed their own plans and projects. The mechanisms proposed by the international community, including the roadmap and the quartet of cosponsors activities are also ineffective. What can be done in this situation? What mechanism can provide a real and just peace process? Okay, that's excellent. And this brings me to something probably I didn't mention in this talk, but I mentioned in every talk that I gave. I came to academia after being in politics. And I have an obsession in politics in the noble sense of politics. And I think in this regard, what the Palestinian need is first of all is power. Ideas how to struggle, how to change the balance of power, where to make intervention, what tools to use. So I'm not usually obsessed with solutions. Palestinians sometimes by by delving into too much solution one state two states confederation. Sometimes we forget to ask but why anybody would listen to us. Why would anybody would take us seriously. Don't pose a problem for anybody. We don't pose a problem for anybody now. The Middle East is living perfectly well with the status quo. And probably the first aim of a political leader is not to offer solution is to create problems that forces the other party to listen to you and then you can negotiate. So, at the short run, I don't know. This is my answer. I don't know what is clear is that negotiation failed. But what is even more clear or clear that arms struggled also failed. This is a beginning. This is a beginning where to go from here it's a long story where to go from here but these are two facts that probably one should take into account probably then what should think of a new form of politics. I have lots of ideas and the operative level but we're not in a party meeting that I want to sort of start saying what what do I think in this in this regard. But one of them is the idea can we do anything as long the PA is in its current status or or there's something that must must change. Yeah. Thank you. There's another question here that Israel is geographically located with a sacred place of Muslims, Christian and Jews exist. The territory is important for all of them. So under the circumstances the question is can it ensure. So the fact that Israel as a Jewish state in view of national policy left to upper tide country question is a little bit unclear, but basically can under the circumstances. Can we can we think about a possibility for amicable amicable reconciliation and peace in the region. So I guess it's also a question about, you know, the prospects for peace. I will move to the second one, which is the contemporary Israeli historian Shlomo sand in various books the invention of the Jewish people, etc. seems to agree that the Palestinian Arabs are suffering under a system which is indeed tantamount to appetite are his views gaining any ground within Israeli society. So perhaps that relates to your discussion around the appetite paradigm and whether it's gaining grounds. The short, the short answer is no, but still I think. I mean the fact that it's more debated in the newspaper. The fact that bit Salem is using this terminology. It means something that there are more awareness to the fact that the two state solution is over and we are stuck to groups within the same geographical unit. And there's one group subjugating the other group. But is that something widespread or common. I can't say. I mean, I can say that it's not it's still margin and groups who think this way. This idea of temporality of the occupation that occupation. Oh, it's temporal tomorrow we're negotiating. So the negotiation becomes an alibi for the ongoing situation. That is the the two state discourse conversation. It becomes an apology. Thank you. And there's another question who was the first among the Palestinians to adopt the appetite paradigm and doesn't resonate today. I think you answered this question in your talk but another question do you consider the Israeli regime racial or racial colonial rather than ethno national racial racial colonial rather than it's no racial racial. Look, colonial clearly. It can't be disputed that it is. I mean who can dispute even, you know, sometimes Zionist now they want to dispute the fact of colonialism. And I tell them look, I don't have to say anything go read your founding fathers they use the technology of colonialism. What do you call when someone moves from one place to other place to create a colony and to settle there. I mean, it's it's almost. Now, racial is a category becoming a residual category that transcends the way it was used historically in South Africa or whites against blacks or, and it has been culturalized in many, in many places. Now, I'm not in the competition in this competition. So to say something about something that it's racial discrimination as Oh, we're inviting Israel because it's practicing racial discrimination. Instead of let's say national discrimination or ethno religious discrimination. I mean, it's enough that it's bad enough. And I'm not sure that the category of rationalizing, though many of my friends are using it. It can do a better work of understanding the structural. I hate to use the word discrimination, the structural subjugation of Palestinians. So I'm not sure that the idea of the racial adds really some depth to the analysis. The idea of settler colonialism definitely adds something to the analysis because settler colonialism. And one of the things is always a process. It's always on the becoming. It's always doing something. And in this sense, it's a useful category to understand reality, but it's, again, it's one category. We all grow up. Not we all, but me and Gilbert. And we represent all of your humanity as you know, we grow up thinking that Marxism and probably class analysis can explain everything. There's nothing that can explain probably everything settler colonialism can explain many things so is class analysis can explain many things. But nothing can explain everything. Gilbert, I think you raised your hand, maybe I got it wrong. No, sorry, that was just by mistake and I'm just listening. Thank you. Please members on the panel please come in if you have any questions. There's a question, which relates to your, your, your comment on settler colonialism and its production, you know, productivity in a sense, and during continuing to do things. So there's a question by Maura, who says that thank you for the great and time lecture. I would like to ask to comment on the connection between the appetite and the settler colonialism paradigm. They may not exclude each other, but they certainly have different repercussions. anti colonial and decolonization struggles and efforts for equal rights need Palestinians to different directions. Say that again. The questions that the statement is that anti colonial and decolonization struggles for equal rights might leave Palestinians to different connections. So she's asking, you know, the Maura is asking Maura is asking whether, you know, kind of anti colonial and decolonization struggles can leave Palestinians to think in different directions. This is an excellent question. It gives me also the room to say something about settler colonialism and apartheid. Because I think settler colonialism is an overarching category. It's both descriptive in many ways. It's also normative that can allow us to understand something about modern history of certain movements by group of people. Let's say from Europe toward East and West, and to settle there, not as an immigrant but as settler. That means bringing their nomos with them, their laws, and their institutions that they want to build to grab the land and to subjugate the local This kind of movement in space with subjugation and conquering the land brings with it modes certain modes of action. Expansion and annihilation. And these things happening happened took place different places. In many ways they have similar. They use similar tools, for example. Now apartheid works on a different car, a different level of generality and different level of abstraction. apartheid is not necessarily connected conceptually to settler colonialism. apartheid is thinkable without settler colonialism. I think the situation of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, or in Syria in many ways is an apartheid is a situation where you put certain group geographically in a certain place you deny them access to other places they can build only in this place. They live under certain regime. It's not exactly. It's a relation between American whites and American African American, it's not a relation between whites and American Indians so it's not engaged in issues of colonization. Many African American claim that this is a colonization but I think it is still there's a difference between the African American and the Indians and Jim Crow is a system of apartheid, but still it's not an issue of settler colonialism. One should keep analytically these two things at separate level now apartheid can emerge as an outcome as a regime of legal control as an outcome of settler colonialism because one of the things settler colonialism want to do is to get rid of the local population. Ethnic cleansing is one way to deal with the local population consuming them in the current polity by eliminating their own characteristics is another way of annihilation. At one point, there's probably no possibility neither to annihilate nor to expel nor to partition with the local. Then you invent the idea of apartheid. Though analytically is separate from settler colonialism. Historically and politically, it can become the certain manifestation of a settler colonial project and the legal institutionalized way that settlers deals with local. So I think the separation should be so it's not that you're settler colonialist and this one is for apartheid paradigm it doesn't work that way. No, it doesn't work that way. Now, I'm a politician. I think politically, I think one of the main manifestation of the settler project in Israel now is apartheid. So fighting apartheid is one way to fight settler colonialism as one way to fight zionism is you don't fight zionism in ideology you write books on that that's fine you do your work as an academic. You fight zionism by fighting the material legal and institutionalized way that is that zionism produces in reality for example separation and housing allocation of water allocation of land supremacy. So the iceberg of the ideological that appears at the political legal level that for me is always the target of the first action that one should do so fighting apartheid. It is mandated as one way to fight the settler colonial project, but there are other ways to do that, but since the crystallization one of the crystallization of the settler is the apartheid regime, it's manifestation, it's materiality. Some effort must go there. Thank you. And I think that answers the question by Netanyahu who wanted to ask whether, you know, the solidarity campaign and the struggle for Palestine and support for Palestinians should adopt the anti apartheid frame, or, you know, kind of should adopt that. And there's another related question, which is, to what extent does the international crime of apartheid as defined by the wrong statute fit into your analysis. And do you think there are, there are possibilities of its investigation by the international criminal role. As to the second question, the answer is short for me. I don't know. I mean, this is really something that I'm not expert on that, but as a political animal, I'm always for accusing Israel of the crime. I mean, it's probably not legally really will found it, but let them defend themselves. We shouldn't do the work of defending them. I mean, let's create a situation where they're defending themselves. I mean, as a political action, that's, that's, that's, that's good political action. Now, as to the first question, and this is really something that first the Palestinian, not the solidarity movement that should decide with the Palestinian probably should decide. And this is one of really the complexities of Palestine that the multifaceted ways of oppression doesn't allow us to commit to one way to characterize it. As long as you don't characterize it in one way, it hinders your ability sort of to really to pin it down to a one kind of struggle with really very sharp edge to it. One of the beauties, if beauty is something we can describe struggles in South Africa, that Mandela said, look guys, one person one vote. When you clear about it, give me a call. No Palestinian leader can say such a statement about anything. And Palestinian can accept many solution if they are put on the table, but they cannot beforehand put a solution in the table and ask Israel to call them. No Palestinian if I think Israel would say total independent Palestinian set in the West Bank, we recognize the right of return but we would allow let's say 300,000 to return inside Israel. Full return to the West Bank compensation equality for Palestinians in Israel. I think the majority of Palestinians accept that this is a guess I'm not sure. But no Palestinian leader would put that beforehand on the table. Because that would your cut in the in the flesh of your case you're saying sort of you're giving up the right to return what you say, why should I do that. The complexity we're burdened with our justice, our justice burdens us in a way that make the room for maneuver very narrow and allowed been going on to have wider room for maneuver in 1947. So we are suffering from overloaded justice and the complexity. In South Africa they didn't have that. So if I have an advice for the solidarity. It's probably to move to another level of solidarity with the Palestinian because they suffer injustice humiliation disposition etc either in the form of apartheid either in the form of occupation. Those exclude each other. I mean life. Unlike the departments in the university where you have the Department of History, the Department of Biology, and the Department of Sociology, and the Department of Philosophy. The departmentalization of the academia doesn't work in life. Life pour itself like rain on you without umbrella. It comes with the oneness of the phenomena. The discreteness is something that our human mind invented in the system of divide and rule that politically analytically in order to control bodies of knowledge we divide and rule them. But in life life comes as a phenomena as one phenomenon. We're suffering sometimes it's apartheid, slur colonialism disposition discrimination subjugation. All of them together, all of them in human. Thank you. And there are two questions that I think go together. Thank you Dan, asking your thoughts about the P elections coming up later this year, and from our friend time. Was asking that the rationale that emerges from seeing Israel as apartheid state points towards a solution of equality for all, meaning a democratic second state in the whole of Palestine. You on both points, and this frightened Zionism seriously isn't the PA acting to delay and deny such line of action. That is the question in relation to this so these are comments about you know the elections. Later this year, the role of the PA kind of. Okay. Thanks for both questions. Thank you for this question. There's something about about the second question. It's more a comment than a question. This is something interesting philosophically. The relation between apartheid and the one state solution. We are trained our mind is trained to think that we look at problems then we find solutions. That's the way mind works. And we move from the present to the future. The present is the problem. The future is the solution. I want to suggest the opposite. If you imagine the solution as one equal state of all of its citizen across from the river to the sea. You understand the reality as an apartheid. You need the solution to understand the problem. You need the future to understand that present. The ideal picture will show you the sickness, the healthiness of the image of one state where people are equal allows you to see the friction. What is not working now. What is the fantasy or let's say the ideal, the ideal picture allows you to see what is not working in the present and this is what I was alluding in the first part speaking about the frame, the image. So in this sense, probably one of the advantages of the one state solution. Is it sobriety. It allows you to see things that you didn't see. It allows you to see through the border of the green line. It creates transparency where before that there's something that was occluded. And in this sense, of course, one state solution frighten Zionism, but let me tell you something. One state solution frightened also many Palestinians, frightened also many Palestinians. Probably the Zionists are nationalists, they are. We also have a hunger for flag and anthem, and we don't want to be oppressed by Jewish soldiers and policemen we would like to be oppressed by our own policemen. That's the nature of autonomy is that's one of the craziness of nationalism is that you're fucked up are always better than other nations fucked up people. So, it's a threat. It's a threat for both and that's why when speaking about the prospects of the anti apartheid movement, I'm not sure that I'm optimistic about that. Because you have your own Bible and we have our own Quran and you have Hebrew and we have Arabic. And we still very hungry for our nationalism and you're still hungry for your missionic religious settlement. So, it doesn't look that this fantasy it's, it can bring to anti apartheid movement mean I think all the time why there's no anti apartheid movement in Palestine is right. Where people from Tel Aviv, there are not many, but at least the few that they are, why they're not doing something with people from Nablus, but why there's no common resistance. The answer is complicated. Now, as to the first questions. Oh my God, the PA election. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm prevalent about this election. I mean, elections are source of legitimacy, but when the president he is the one deciding when the elections who to run and under what conditions. The threat is that the election will end up only reproducing the status quo that changing the status quo. But on the other hand, I learned something from old Hegel. Nimor Sultani with us on the on the panel limit recently sent me a very interesting picture pictures of headache. So, if the headache in the back of your head is blood pressure. If it's here, it's a sinuses. If it's in the upper part of your skull is is stress. If it's all over your head, it's hegemon. One of the things that I learned is the canning of reasons sometimes no matter how you plan things might end up otherwise. So probably the election were meant to reproduce legitimacy for this current PA authority, but it might end up that someone would take the opportunity sees on it and runs with a different agenda and create some change. So I'm very ambivalent about about this election. But the interesting thing is the fact that the proximity of the election inside Israel, where Palestinian cast their ballots and election in the West Bank. This is something worth contemplating about. I don't want to say any more about this because this is a very long tricky issue of here's there's an election. There there's an election. Can we think about these two elections in a way or another can they converse what they would say to each other when they converse. But I'm still thinking about this. Very good idea. And so in relation going back to the appetite paradigm to questions one, who are the notable Palestinian thinkers or groups who are the adoption of this paradigm. But I think you know, basically, what you are proposing it. And another one, which relates more specifically to the Palestinian experience, would accepting the appetite paradigm lead to denying Palestinian right of return. What would thinking about the paradigm, you know what does it mean for that. I don't see me as the first questions I don't have an answer. I mean, many people use the term paradigm as tomorrow they use occupation to the other day use many things at the same times all of us use all of them, most of the time. Now, the question of adopting paradigm, paradigm is a way if apartheid is a way to understand the structures of power and legal institutional arrangement and to see that from the river to the sea there's one legal structure of subordination to use the term by also binomial I think that still doesn't say exactly what is the solution. Now here I want to say something that probably would be completely counterintuitive. And against most of Palestinian theoretician who writes about this. Actually, the one state solution might be problematic to the idea of implementing the right of return. Because probably Jews would say you know what let's split Palestine you take half of it we take half of it and full right of return to the Palestinian state. But we don't want to lose the majority inside this track. So, I'm not a fan of really connecting things as this leads to this I think there are endless combination you can have two state solution which is more amenable to the right of return. And you can have one state solution that amenable to the right of return there is no determinacy between these kinds of solutions. So there's not necessarily logical connection between adopting the paradigm. First of all the paradigm doesn't mean what is the solution but the paradigm invites a sort of imagination that to end the paradigm of apartheid means we're living in one state and probably living in one state. And there's nothing about the idea of negating the paradigm and getting the apartheid that would say something by definition about the, the issue of, of written, there's no necessarily connection between them, as I see them. There's a question from a South African citizen, which is, it is difficult to not see how the current situation in Palestine is comparable with the South African situation. However, I know that those who organized the Israeli apartheid week, at least in South African universities are charged with antisemitism. So how we can reconcile this claim of antisemitism with applying activism in relation to the apartheid paradigm to be questioned again. I mean now antisemitism is being everybody is being charged with with antisemitism. I mean we a group of writers journalists intellectuals professors we issued the statement on this on this issue. But I think we should detect antisemitism to its historical roots. Antisemitism is prejudice way to perceive to treat Jews to harm them to discriminate against them as Jews. I think we should stick to that and I think most of us who struggle for Palestinian rights, most of us, if not all of us are we are definitely condemn any antisemitic policies now. But what this has to do with the fact that Israel is occupying Palestine I mean there's occupation. It can't be the case that everybody who's against occupation should be labeled as antisemitic or against Zionism. Why should anti Zionism be labeled antisemitic I mean, I'm aware that the IHRA is is this is what it's doing but I think we should challenge these easy ways in which the IHRA collapses. The IHRA is actually antisemitism with anti Zionism it's the issues. It's not even anti Zionism the IHRA is actually there are many Zionists who are against the IHRA the IHRA is adopting sort of a right wing way or one strand of Zionism and the impressing it. There's a long lecture on that on YouTube, if you're interested or if we can by exchange emails on this exact question what does it mean to fight antisemitism, or how to fight the IHRA and to deconstruct it and to show that there's nothing between the IHRA definition and real and real fight against antisemitism. I think when the fight in the antisemitism is formulated in the right formula and taking into account the right factors as a fight against racism and human rights they will find Palestinians fighter for justice and equality in the forefront in this in this struggle I believe. Okay, thank you. There's a question which is kind of maybe, maybe this is the last question we've been asked, but maybe the other members on the panel can come in and see whether I've missed anything. But do you see ways to fight the appetite appetite within the Israeli legal system. Is it possible to to kind of challenge. Yanni, let me say something like this. On marginals issues, like entering the same swimming pool differentiating between Jews and Palestinians. If it's so overt. So blatant. You don't want to allow Palestinian to go on the same bus that Jews are riding. I think you definitely can use the legal system I would say even more. I think the Israeli political system would stand against such a blatant discrimination in the public sphere. But is that a consolation, of course not because the basic structure is based on an idea of separation, subjugation. And this lives in the structure of the main organization that actually run the state like the still the Jewish agency or the Karen Kayamed, which control most of issues of land and scare resources and zoning and planning, which really aim to confine Palestinian to a certain zones. Now this is being institutionalized. So, if it's institutionalized as a rule. The legal system can do nothing because the legal system is after all. The legal system is not something that judges the state it's judges the government but it's not stand above the state it's part of the state it's part of the system. So there's a limit to one can expect from the legal system itself, but there are few cases that you can win the cases and actually I'm sure that from time to time they would do that and will publish article about that how they fight discrimination in sort of, etc. But that's, that's not a consolation that wouldn't make me feel sort of hopeful or relaxed or anything. One last question because of, you know, we're almost coming to one and a half hours, which is, if Israel is not willing to share the country between the river and the sea with the Palestinians. The Palestinians will not simply disappear. What does this mean for Palestinians will they have to live forever without their rights, which is negative kind of pessimistic question. Okay, this is probably brings us to historical trajectories. Okay, this is a hopeful question. There's a reason for some hope. I think after all has been said and done. After all of Israeli policies between the river and the sea, there are two groups and numbers matter in this sense. I think we will start to have a movement against apartheid when other options collapse, other fantasies collapse, other dreams collapse by the way, I think this is also what happens in South Africa. You need to lose on certain front to adopt certain policies on other fronts. I think when we come to realize that we are entrapped between the river and the sea as two groups. And there's no way that one can get rid of the other group or to continue to control the other group of course we're not controlling anybody. But we still have a fantasy of separation by our own national state. When we reach that conclusion and when the Israeli right wing reached the conclusion that the fantasy of expulsion the Palestinian is really impractical. Probably in the long run, we face reality that we're trying to hide from ourselves at this moment. And here like love you can't hurry love. Sometimes certain historical projects is difficult to hurry them. That took place in many settler colonial projects that at one point, the settler must recognize that the native is here to stay. But that's unfortunately comes with lots of blood, unfortunately. Okay, thank you very much. I'm asking many comments saying thank you for the brilliant lecture. Really enjoyed. Enjoy that. And whether I was going to ask the panelists. Is that number already? Would you like to come in? Do you have any questions because she doesn't have any. But I want to thank you myself that's been really fascinating and, you know, kind of really important to think about how we can imagine the idea of the imagination and the imagined unity and thinking about the apartheid paradigm within this imagined unity or prospect. I mean, in some ways it is quite kind of sobering, but in other ways it is a very positive way of thinking looking forward. So anyone else from the panelists want to come in to ask some questions. Is that coming? Thank you very much for a very interesting and opening lecture. It's not exactly a question is just as as doctors rake and many probably in the audience are aware, there is a major fight in British universities now on dihra adoption. And if dihra is adopted at British universities, then much of the things that doctors rake talked about today will be considered anti-semitic. The fact that there are things in the nature of Israel that are racist will make will make the talk anti-semitic and I mean I think I just posted a link to doctors rake's lecture on anti-semitism in which he touches on dihra definition, people will ask about it and that's what I want to say. But thank you very much for a very nice talk. Thank you. Thank you Azat. Thank you. Yeah, I'm aware I'm very much involved in this issue of the dihra. I hope the coming few weeks will witness some real movement against this adoption. I hope you will hear about it soon. Okay, we don't have questions from Nimad and I think no it's from Raqib. But for Bettina Marx, I can't possibly ask you to come in unless you can come in, you've got a question. But if you want to post it in the chat, then please do. And thanks Azat for mentioning the current problems we are having on campus with regards to IHRA and anti-semitism. It's making life quite difficult, but it's important to keep on kind of the fight and continuing well the protest which is put in that way rather than the fight. But thanks again if I have no more questions. Thank you. And there are a couple of people who have put their hands up but I can't really get you in because you are from the audience. So Azat, do you want to come in again? No, no, no, no. No, sorry mistake. I was going to put the clap but I couldn't know. I didn't know how to do it. Okay, all right. So I'm just going to check the last kind of comments from people. Oh, the chat is disabled. No, but I think yeah. The recording is available. Someone was asking whether this is all recorded and you will see it come up on our website within the next few days. But again, thank you Ra'ev. That was fantastic. And thanks for all the panelists and for looking forward to having you join us on other events with the Center for Palestine Studies. Thanks for all your help in the background. Thank you all. Thank you for this invitation. It was my pleasure to join you at this event and I wish you all the success in the Center and good luck for in the future events. So good night. Good evening from Missouri. Good night from Missouri. This is my home, my home, my home. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Bye bye.