 Good afternoon everybody. I'm going to go ahead and get started because well, you're all here and and we have just a very little bit of time in my Estimation first of all, thank you for all for coming this afternoon I know it is a very busy time of semester for all of us. And so it's really nice to have an audience Professor Alvi and I are really very pleased to have the opportunity to engage in conversation with you about this topic I want to thank the college leadership the provost provost Mariano our admiral and also Dean of academics Tim Schultz and I say that because this is one of those topics that I'm sure will engage the topic or it will engage the audience But I've had a lot of exposure to this and there are an awful lot of places right now that feel that this is too sensitive to speak about When I got this job 20 years ago, I had a lot of people from the From civilian world that I came from who said don't go to government because you won't be able to speak freely about things and I can say that I was a little worried and In the 20 years I've been here It is never once been the case. So I'm really delighted to have this opportunity The I want to also emphasize that the objective of this lecture is to talk to you and engage you in conversation and not to Take up one position or moral stance on a topic which clearly has many of both if If we're able to convince you of everything anything it should be that the complexity of what has been called an intractable moral problem is politicized at pretty much every level In my personal view the issue of Palestinian and Israeli existence is one that you really can never know too much about and There are always more questions than firm conclusions so with that in mind our plan is to Present you with a few overview remarks probably about 20 minutes apiece and then we're going to open it up for questions and discussion The recording of this session is only going to include your our formal remarks And it'll terminate once it opens up to the audience but as always we ask that you adhere to the Chatham house rules and non-attribution With that I also have to offer the disclaimer that of course nothing that dr. Alvi and I say has Any official status with the US Navy or the Department of Defense because all of our own views Go to the first slide please Okay, now I'm going to stand up here at the podium This is it was even hard actually to title this Presentation because even that can be politicized But we went with Israel Gaza war for lack of a better term and most of what I'm going to talk about is background Information because I think no matter how much you know or you think you know about the topic There are always things that we forget that may have some bearing on the situation that is Is unfolding right now? So I chose a few of those things I've probably missed a bunch, but I'm going to give you what I think is a general overview and probably pretty rapidly So I'm going to talk about some basic demographics a little bit about Palestinian resistant movement resistance movements in general past and present, you know what the what the range looks like I'm going to talk a little bit about the origin of Israeli settlements and the settlement movement and Just maybe refresh your memory a little bit about the basis on which most of Israeli Palestinian Conversations have been up on which is the Oslo Accords and Camp David to and then I'll talk Briefly about the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and its consequences And I brought along a lot of public opinion polls that I may be able to share in the Q&A that I have not embedded in my slides By and large, I've tried to add a source on the slides But if anybody wants any of the sources or wants more sources, please see professor Alvi and I after after the fact Okay, so if you look at Israel's ethnic and religious map and this is something many people know, but they forget and This is from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics mainly This is the breakdown inside of Israel Which is approximately 10 million people and it's broken down in terms of general groups, which is Jews making up 73.9 percent Arabs in this case. They're calling them Arabs 21.1 percent basically as a combination of Palestinian citizens of Israel and others such as Bedouin and Includes also droos in that far left right pie chart They're about 40 percent secular Jews. You see the breakdown here two percent droos for those who are not familiar with with who the droos are they are They are monotheists sometimes they are well, they consider themselves with Muslims They serve in the Israeli state in the military But they are often not considered Muslims in some counts because of the fact that they are a break-off of Shi'ism in the 10th century and so they have different practices that would maybe not be as recognizable to many Sunni or even Shi'a Muslims There's about 2% Christian and then I'm not sure what the 1% no religion is but that was on the census data So I included it and that is your general breakdown inside the boundaries of Israel As far as Palestinian demographics you have approximately 14 and a half million Palestinians living in what is called at least in the census data historic Palestine and I put that in quotes because That is a term that's not completely Accepted by all people, but it is in this case probably referring to 1948 and then everything thereafter 3.25 million in the West Bank We've heard a lot about the population in Gaza this census says 2.23 million and in Palestine and those two the West Bank in Gaza, it's about five and a quarter This particular survey also counts those who were from 1948 territory, which we can talk about a little bit And then six and a half million now dispersed to other countries other Arab countries and Almost a million outside of that. So, you know in the US and Europe wherever else You know Palestinians are all over the world the Significance of the numbers and the significance of counting the numbers has a lot to do with two instances One is called the NAQPA in Arabic in 1948. It refers to the displacement and dispossession of Palestinian communities within what is now considered Israel and the occupied territories and then a NAQSA, which was the war of 1967 which increased Israeli territory All told almost three times. So these are the basis for a lot of counting. It is the root of many different contentious issues that have to do with the Oslo Accords and beyond and really The fate of individuals who became refugees whether they were Jews or Palestinians or any of the other populations really is at the root of all of this conflict and One that at least in my opinion has failed to have Any kind of reasonable resolution in the international community? So I'm going to talk just a little bit about official politics in Israel and through the Knesset First of all, we're all familiar now with the Israeli cabinet the war cabinet that's been formed I believe since the 11th of October. This is unusual I think there's only really one maybe I think one other time when they formed an emergency government and threw out the elected Parties that were made up the coalition or didn't throw out but sidelined them temporarily For the state of emergency the 37th elected government that was just elected prior to this is I think the sixth government in the last couple years that has been elected in Israel Which is to say that the Israeli political spectrum right now? And has been for a couple years is very very divided and the evidence of that is not only the protests that are all over That we're all over Israel prior to this attack But also the fact that they've had so many governments fail and have to be reconstituted and have other new elections this particular one is made up of a Number of different parties and I won't speak to all of them, but Likud You're probably familiar with and the other ones tend to be more religious parties and Otsumaya Houdid is actually the party of the very controversial Mk. Figure member of Knesset figure Itamar Ben-Gvir who we maybe we'll talk about a little bit later But mainly if you look at the charts on the left you can see that over time and these are sources from the Israeli Democracy Institute, I highly recommend if you want to look at Demographic trends voting trends attitudes public polling Information this is a really good site and they have excellent information that only in the last few years is actually also in English and the The big picture there is that if you look from 1984 onward through 2015 the Composition of groups in the Knesset has changed a great deal There are five Arab parties in Israel or mixed Arab Jewish parties and they have their own platforms and they are often in Usually more left-wing governments. Some of them are even Islamist representing the Islamic movement of Israel which Was a an extra legal organization for a while and then in terms of places of residence and this is maybe something that We can talk about a little further the as you can see in the change over from 1994 to 2015 there are many more members of Knesset that actually come from West Bank settlements And that should give you a little bit of a clue into not only how contentious this is Now for the political parties that make up the 37th Knesset, but also that they they own a larger share of governance of governance and and Take positions that tend to align with their interests in the settlements The Palestinian resistant movements are you know, this is I don't know how many thousands of dissertations and books There are on this but you suffice it to say that they break down roughly along the lines of Basically secular Arab nationalist movements or their origins are secular Arab nationalist movements and then Islamist movements which came to the political spectrum a little bit later by the Roughly the late 80s and into the early 90s consistent with Islam as a political vehicle and Islamist movements in general across the Arab world most of us know about it from The period after 9 11, but in fact all through the 80s and 90s Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood were growing in popularity and not all of them In fact, many of them were not violent at all They simply believe that secular basis for government was no would not work And they had no evidence from the governments. They lived under that it was a viable solution. And so they turned to religion So some of these are fatah. That's the largest one used to be the PLO Of course Yasser Arafat should be well known to all of you And then the popular liberation for the front of popular front for the liberation of Palestine and the Democratic front These were I think at one time somewhat unified They basically have a socialist Marxist platform and did and they are largely out of Vogue if if not dead all together very few people would consider them viable political movements today however, those that took the Lion's share of the popular support are definitely the Islamist movements Hamas being the one that we probably know best today and Hamas was founded in 1988 during the first Intifada and it is a break-off of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and was in fact the break-off was mostly in Gaza And then was also adopted in the West Bank the Palestinian Islamic jihad traditionally has been a very small movement and their founding is very much in line with their inspiration by the Islamic Revolution and Iran in 1979 So although they're not Shia, they tend they did tend to embrace the idea that the only Successful Islamist revolution was in Iran and so for a great many years They sort of emulated the Iranian model in their thinking. They're also very small and If it is true that the rocket that hit the hospital Last week in Gaza was from the Palestinian Islamic jihad To me that would not be terribly surprising because they are not very unified nor coordinated nor politically adept and then during after 2000 there were instances where at least through What was open-source intelligence? There were Al Qaeda and ISIS? Not groups but individuals who had infiltrated into Gaza or been invited into Gaza maybe been sent out of Egypt perhaps and They were beginning to radicalize some of the population, you know beginning to Recruit in essence and Hamas actually had a very difficult problem with this because ideally Hamas does not see itself in the in the same lens as Al Qaeda or ISIS despite recent behavior Hamas, I think I already mentioned most of this maybe the most important thing to mention here is that the Al Qassam Brigades is their armed military wing and I don't think there's any evidence yet and maybe we can discuss this again in the Q&A But my sense is that there has been probably a fundamental break between the political wing and the armed wing And I can speak to why I think that is the bottom line is is that it has always been the case that the Political wing has sometimes had their people outside of Gaza Or outside of even the West Bank as as we know at least one of the leaders is right now in Qatar And the reason for that is because the Israelis were very successful at eliminating Hamas leaders So most of the time You know, you may remember Ron Teasey who was a one of the leaders they the Israelis were very good at targeting them with very specific Targeting and taking them out during the middle to late 90s and into the 2000s. And so a lot of them Have had to relocate and stay At least a little bit less Vulnerable Most maybe important in this particular slide is to note that Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006 and it should be also Strongly underscored that the Palestinian Authority has actually never had elections since its founding in The 1990s they really have never held elections and this is one of the big criticisms of Palestinians in the West Bank and Was in Gaza. So when Hamas won the elections that effectively pushed Fattah and Palestinian Authority out of Gaza completely. So this is really the genesis of why Hamas is really the sole political Organization that has any clout in Gaza the Oslo Accords are Started actually in the late 80s in the Madrid Agreement and then became the Oslo Accords and most of you are aware that this was just the anniversary of the signing of 30th year of the signing and Really they codified mutual recognition. So they didn't they weren't actually able to implement a lot But the plans for implementation were there and in my personal view They did a lot more than many critics of the of the Accords would like to admit in that they normalized conversations between Palestinians and Israelis They normalized the nomenclature of Palestinian as opposed to Arab and they began to open up Basically media space for the rest of the world to understand what this conflict was all about prior to the Oslo Accords It was very unlike it was very unlikely that you would find many Palestinians speaking out to international audiences or in Mainstream networks because they had not developed their political platform or you could say they're sort of foreign policy Objectives and strategic communications yet that has changed quite a lot since since the 1990s Oslo to perhaps was a little bit more concrete and it established three areas of control a B and C And these were so contentious particularly for the settler movement that it did result in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir Yeah, excuse me Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and For those of you who don't remember this that assassination or the assassin himself was actually part of He was in Israeli religious Israeli Jew and he he was definitely against the peace process and pro-settlement and you know Israel was if anything was a greater shock then perhaps this most recent event That was it in 1995. It was a it was a very cataclysmic event for Israeli society The Camp David 2 in 2000 was the most ambitious part of Oslo And most people feel that this is where the process became stillborn and This is because it tried to resolve the most contentious issues of final status The most contentious are in a nutshell the status of Jerusalem who will control different parts of Jerusalem and what kind of Label it will have will it be the capital of the Jewish state? You know what will be there for Palestinians and how the religious places will be protected and then the right of return for Dispossessed Palestinians. This is these were intractable things. It could not be solved and At the time at least as I recall this is Prime Minister at Hood Barak and Yasser Arafat He died not too long after Oslo to Camp David 2 This was a time when most people thought there was a pretty high likelihood that one or both of them could have been assassinated for making this agreement so support and public legitimacy of these last of this last phase was was very low despite the international effort These this is a little picture of areas A, B and C and again This is really no longer so valid as a practical thing But this was the way it was laid out and it's important to see this because if you look at it you can see that That under Palestinian control, there's there's there's some isolated communities mainly highly populated Arab cities and then Really, there's a joint control in the middle and then area C Really secures Israel and that was really the outcome of the of the negotiations Understandably so for Israel that that their main concern and their citizenry's main concern has always been security and so this was an effort to preserve security But also begin to cede some territory back to self for self-governance and eventually for two-state solution The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and I'm only really going to talk about those for the moment because that's where the I think the genesis of the movement came from This is really well. I I wrote a dissertation on this So I'm you know I was a bit tired of that but this is this is a really interesting area still Because it is at the it's the kernel of Problem for Israel itself. It certainly affects the larger Palestinian Israeli conflict But it really is the center of gravity. You could say political center of gravity for the Israeli population and for subsequent governments It was founded in 1967 roughly they used to be called Gusha Monim or a block of the faithful and They've also been known as Yesha, which is a that's an acronym for Yehuda as a shaman a Yehuda shaman as a which are three Biblical areas that happen to also be Gaza and then parts of the West Bank And so the bottom line here is that people who subscribe to What they consider erits Israel who are settlers And again, not all of them are religious and not all of them have right-wing Views or ideological claims to the land, but those who do Simply do not accept any of the Oslo agreements or any of the basis for Palestinian Israeli Negotiations to the contrary. These are the people that you see actively Going out and trying to set up new settlement areas, and they are also very much an armed Movement Initially, they were allowed to be armed because they lived in areas that were not under Israeli control formally at first and afterwards They they retained that right so I don't know how many of you have traveled in this area but when you ride out in this settlement area it is very Easy to know who they are because they stand out on the roads with with weaponry and they in many cases um Forcibly punish Palestinian residents who cross the line or try to use some of the fields or Basically go about their lives, so they are really in my mind. They are the fundamental problem and Right now there are about four hundred thousand when I did my dissertation 20 years ago They were roughly a hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand members who live out in this in the West Bank Today they have risen to about four hundred thousand, so it's quite it's quite a large amount Finally, I'm going to just make a couple points about the Gaza disengagement plan in 2005 I didn't put the graph in and partly because I could not find Reasonable graphs for this but if you recall that during the Oslo Accords and thereafter the Tactic of or you could call it strategy of using suicide bombers on the Palestinian side Particularly Hamas and some of the Islamist groups was very very problematic for the Israelis these Israel could not defend itself from these attacks and they were Repeated over years and years and they grew very much to a fever pitch around 2002 which was the beginning or around 2000 when the second it defauda began and they continued the only solution Israel found for this partly was building the wall the separation wall because they could then preclude people coming in They could stop work exchange and not allow Palestinians in areas that that were Israeli areas This had you know, of course Has been criticized across the board, but unfortunately it was rather successful for for the Israelis This The disengagement plan itself was is attributed actually to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon based on the concept of mutual of complete disengagement meaning we now know that we cannot live near them or with them and therefore disengagement from Gaza is one way to To manage this and so the settlements that were in Gaza the Israeli settlements were Evacuated sometimes they had to be evacuated by force and Israelis who lived there were brought back in and that territory then became the purview of became the stronghold for Hamas over a number of years Israel still and you know, you've you've probably read this over and over again. They still control air land and sea Basically security and access so they can control the economic tempo within Gaza But it did in fact For at least a time change the level of violence that Israel was exposed to I'm I'm I'm not going to talk about the 2006 war with Hezbollah, but maybe we can discuss it a little bit in the Q&A So short and long-term consequences and I'm a little bit over my time here So I want to pass the baton to dr. Alvi is at least this and these are mostly my perceptions here I I imagine some of them will be accurate and probably some won't but I think that there is very likely to be an increase in the short term in Intersectarian divides between Israelis and Palestinians and I don't mean lots more violence by Israeli settlers on Palestinians That's already there. I think it will increase the amount of discord between Israelis and other Israelis whether violent or not. I hope it is not violent, but there is already a very problematic Relationship between different groups in Israel who feel very differently about the way ahead and about the recent events Despite all of this the idea that Israel is coming together you as a unified whole I Think it's very likely that we're going to see a complete internal restructuring of the IDF and probably the intelligence services because there has to be some sort of Explanation for how there was such a large failure of intelligence and frankly failure of Imagination that it could happen It is pretty clear that Lebanon is likely to be further destabilized because if you think about Israel's borders there are really almost no states that are intact on its borders with the exception of Jordan and Jordan has been a very strong friend or I should say ally of Israel in security matters at least Going even further at their own peril and at this time that I'm sure that relationship has to be reconsidered under the conditions the political pressure is just too great The the role of the US as a mediator I fear is very much on the decline The you know 30 years plus of American mediation looks to me to be at its end I hope that's not the case in the next few weeks because I think many many people have invested a great deal of effort to On the American side to resolve this conflict and we have a great bench But in the world and in public opinion polls even Israelis are not sure and Palestinians are even less sure now People that or countries that could pay possibly fill that void Qatar is already stepping out in a way that no one would have thought Qatar could do 20 years ago certainly not after 9-11 and Recently China and Turkey have made some forays that make them seem like they might be palatable And so those have larger strategic and long-term implications for the United States and then finally and I'm sure that many of you have questions and comments and thoughts about Iran, but the ambiguity of what Iran will do is really I think I personally wouldn't want to call it right now and Certainly they have not been consistent over the years But my perception short-term is that this is a very very difficult problem for Iran And that they are taking a lot of care to think about their next steps So they are not pulled in by what we call in our department entangling alliances I think with that I am going to turn it over to dr. Alvi. Thank you Good afternoon Thank You dr. Lane. I'm going to preface my talk with mentioning that I do genocide studies here at the college and My presentation is from the lens of that particular discipline of genocide studies and That's the way in which I'm analyzing This particular topic. So please bear that in mind as I proceed On October 19th, Raphael Cohen Published in the rand log An article that says or is entitled the inevitable ongoing failure of Israel's Gaza strategy I'll read you just a few lines from this He says the phrase quote-unquote mowing the grass has been the bumper sticker version of Israeli strategy in Gaza for the last decade and a half It plays out in the following way now. This is very important to listen to this description Palestinians frustrated by the state of the enclave referring to Gaza Turn to the likes of Hamas for if nothing else vengeance against Israel Israel imposes restrictions such as the blockade on Gaza citing security concerns Living conditions in Gaza deteriorate further and discontent builds Hamas Palestinian Islamic jihad and others capitalize on the discontent and attack Israel Israel responds by quote-unquote mowing the grass Killing the perpetrators along with some number of civilians Buying at least a few years of relative peace and fueling further long-term radicalization and So the cycle continues ad infinitum Cohen refers to mowing the grass as strategic fatalism Another article was an interview of Daniel Levy Daniel Levy was a former Israeli peace negotiator Very much involved in the Oslo Accords and a few other important peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis He published an Irish Times op-ed with a lawyer a human rights lawyer Zaha Hussein Sorry Zaha Hassan who stressed three points in their op-ed One Hamas's attack on Israeli civilians was unconscionable To Israel's color cook sorry Israel's collective punishment of the people in Gaza Notably the cutting off of water food and electricity was as well and three they make the point that the Importance of addressing the context of Occupation and apartheid in which this is unfolding Without that broader view they wrote it is not possible quote to maintain integrity and Be able to plot a strategy going forward in which both Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and security unquote I Have a couple of lines. I'd like to read from that interview of Daniel Levy He starts by saying and here I'm quoting One war crime is not met by another That's the path to hell which is precisely the path we're on now continuing to quote him Especially at a moment like this where emotions are so raw and understandably so Where the temptation is to lash out in all directions and throw every rulebook and every restriction out the window Doing so is not only going to cause a devastating impact on civilian lives on the Palestinian side after the already devastating impact on Israeli civilian lives, but it can also take you down such a dangerous path unpredictable and escalatory path War is horrific That's why there are rules that govern the conduct of war But even when you play within those rules it is horrific There's an argument that says and again. I'm quoting him Hamas started this Hamas embeds itself amongst the population So anything that happens to the Palestinians of Gaza will be laid at Hamas's door You cannot cut off water food fuel electricity medical supplies humanitarian systems bomb pretty much Indiscriminately force the recal relocation of half the civilians in Gaza and say that's okay. It's patently not the second thing that is that in a month, sorry the second thing is That in a moment that is so raw so escalatory You need responsible adults because the path to the level of dehumanization That is the descent into absolute hell is so much shorter What you want from the outside is a response which wraps its arms around everyone and reminds us Where this cannot go? Few more lines from him and This this kind of picks up where a dr. Lane left left off He says I think the prime minister and he's referring to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is Absolutely terrified of the morning after Right now Netanyahu who doesn't have to deal with commissions of inquiry. I Don't see how he wriggles out of this If he doesn't pull something out of the hat He goes down he goes down in history as the prime minister who was in court facing criminal charges but stayed on in The prime minister's office was asleep on on the watch and presided over the greatest disaster in Israeli history that right now is His political obituary For your benefit, and I promise you I'm not gonna read every line. I am posting the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court Article 7 on crimes against humanity I've highlighted a few things in the Rome statute Regarding crimes against humanity and let me emphasize this goes for both sides the Hamas side as well as the Netanyahu regime side So you can peruse this on your own but bearing in mind that Number 11 in particular again emphasizing on both sides in terms of Who is the culprit? Causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health It continues in the next slide Crimes against humanity. This is a reminder that they do not Necessarily need to be linked to an armed conflict. They can also occur in peace time. That's true of genocide as well Similarly the Rome statute talks about war crimes and Again, I want to emphasize this goes for both sides Hamas and the Netanyahu regime I want to emphasize the the very last line where it says that Protection is afforded to medical and religious personnel humanitarian workers and civil defense staff Now the way I frame this whole Analysis and approach from my personal view Again in the lens of genocide studies is that this is not a war. This is not Stages of wars This is not a strategy. This is simply revenge And in fact where we see That we are learning we are teaching and you are learning about fear honor and interest We're actually seeing in this particular case Pain suffering and revenge rinse and repeat Pain suffering and revenge repeat. It's not a strategy and It's not real deterrence again referring to both sides You see the graphic there for Starting an atrocity or committing one and then what is the cycle that feeds into and fuels the sense of and desire for revenge well, it really ends up with Perpetuating that cycle rather than actually achieving something also Hate and revenge in particular are Very potent components not the only ones but very potent components for genocide this is why this particular iteration of The I call it the Netanyahu Hamas conflict is so dangerous So I teach this in the genocide studies course it's the ten stages of genocide the link for this is on the bottom and We are seeing a lot of these elements appear in Conversations in social media and in some cases even in mainstream media On the Hamas and Israeli side. I should emphasize the pro Netanyahu side. I Say that because I recognize that not all Israelis abide by and even agree with Netanyahu and his policies Dr. Lane mentioned The mass protests by civilians in Israel that were about to reach the 40th week of thousands of Israelis Coming together and demonstrating against Netanyahu's domestic policies in Israel particularly regarding the loss of autonomy of the judiciary October 7th was going to be the 40th week of Those demonstrations, but then this happened with the Hamas attacks So the stat the 10 stages of genocide you can see are mentioned in this graph and What bothers me particularly is that those are appearing in social media postings in The talks by politicians on all sides and I say all sides because I'm hearing it from Western democracies as much as from The the Hamas spokespeople And that's very troubling and the most I think Disconcerting part of this is the language of dehumanization. You see it in the graph there I Actually, I I do report people on what used to be called Twitter for language that I see as Dehumanizing any side or any people I do report them I don't know what mr. Musk does with my reports But I I don't hesitate to report them because I know the danger of what that can lead to so We are Western democracy Western European countries are Western democracies. We adamantly invoke and Support human rights rule of law and a rules-based order however, there are few events and Developments that occurred Right after the Hamas attack that We're very Let's just call it Disconcerting to the global public and Particularly particularly to public opinion in the region of the Middle East and North Africa so the optics in particular of President Biden going to Visit Netanyahu And and then there was a long trail of other Western Democratic leaders doing the same but particularly of the United States president was viewed very much as one-sided and Particularly taking note that he did not President Biden did not call for in that visit for restraint or for a ceasefire on the Israeli side and in fact Global public opinion has noted and again, this is especially Very important for the Middle East and North Africa populations That United States will announced through the President Biden visit that The that we will continue to provide more weapons and military support to Israel to Israel Now you saw a little bit of cushioning that with President Biden's speech on Thursday October 19th, which I think helped a little bit with regard to public opinion in the region and maybe even global opinion, but I Did notice in social media that many Arab and Muslim Americans as well as non Arabs and non Muslims who are Let's just say pro-Palestinian by the way In that war of words on in social media were almost always conflated with pro Hamas and People had to correct that scholars like me and scholars like an Analysts and activists out there had to correct that you cannot conflate just like I didn't conflate the Israeli civilians and public With Netanyahu and his policies people cannot automatically conflate pro-Palestinian with pro Hamas so a lot of Arabs and Muslims and Pro-Palestinian sentiments in the United States in social media have expressed up till now that they will not be voting for President Biden next year So again regional and global global public opinion has Observed a contradiction In fact, they would point out in their social media posts that there are too many contradictions regarding invocations of or support for rule of law and a rules-based order, but particularly with u.s. Israel relations International humanitarian laws and human rights principles are not being observed again. That's the criticism You're seeing coming out of the Middle East region, but also in some cases global public opinion now going back to the Rome statutes and International humanitarian law It's very clear if you follow international law and especially rules of and conduct of war You cannot cut off water food electricity and fuel to a major population Equally Hamas needs to release the hostages. It's holding the Israeli hostages It's holding unconditional release and making sure they're safe and healthy now Hamas initially talked about prisoner exchanges. I don't know where that's the status is for that right now But we do know that Qatar is engaging in a lot of kind of behind-the-curtain diplomacy And they've been they've had some minor successes in terms of numbers But that's a big question mark with regard to what's going to happen and if there's an impending ground Campaign military campaign by the Israelis Again, there's a big question about what will happen to the remaining Israeli hostages Now to be fair United States we are the only country that has called out the Rohingya genocide who are majority Muslims in Myanmar and the Uighur genocide in China Outside of the United States. It's been crickets Silence no one said anything and this has been going on both of these genocides have been going on now for a few years So there is a contradiction within the contradictions With regard to public opinion So to wrap up Cycles of revenge achieve nothing. There's no winner here There is no real deterrence as the opening Excerpts of paragraphs that I read from that first article from Rand blog It mentions about mowing the lawn these this is just another iteration of it, but a more severe one and therefore again, it illustrates it exhibits a cycle of revenge on both sides and And sadly it only perpetuates future cycles of revenge revenge is not a strategy Hamas has Bola and other similar Islamist terrorist organizations cannot be erased or eliminated by military campaigns Because as we've learned from other cases that I list their Ideologies continue to persist right we have examples of al-Qaeda the Taliban who are now back in power in Afghanistan and numerous others Netanyahu has done tremendous damage to Israeli democracy That was true even before the Hamas attacks of October 7 Even Israelis are speaking out against Netanyahu's tactics Against the Gaza population. There are even some Israelis who have loved ones being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas who have spoken out on camera saying that This approach to this crisis is not right Unprecedented that the Palestinian authorities president Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan the Kingdom of Jordan actually snubbed Biden president Biden for a scheduled summit During his visit in the region major disinformation Campaigns are ongoing as we speak in social media And that's happening from both sides There are mass demonstrations You probably have seen them in the news and on the internet and then there's also Some lone wolf attacks against Jews Muslims Arabs, so the prejudices the hate the dehumanization the racism That is starting to And So far it's been at individual level reach the level of violence vandalism and ugly behavior towards each other The younger generation is exhibiting that it's not going to tolerate this cycle of violence There are reports of an internal mutiny of sorts in the State Department one State Department official even resigned in protest of the Biden administration's approach to this crisis and Can we still talk about us to two-state solution? I don't have the answer to that we can discuss in Q&A if you like the bottom line is That we're still Very much a long way off to achieve real peace and justice for all sides in This crisis. Thank you very much