 I'm pleased to be able to host at New America this panel discussion on the conflict in Gaza and its aftermath. We have two panelists both who were on the ground during the offensive. To my immediate right is Samar Badawi who writes for 972 magazine. He covered the war on Gaza from the ground the summer blogging consistently. His writing and analysis has been featured by CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and other major outlets. He is the former executive director of United Palestinian Appeal and consults with numerous NGOs and development agencies on communications efforts. To his right is Hagai Elad. He is the executive director of Bait Salam and Israeli human rights organization. Hagai recently ended a six-year term as director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel during which the organization spearheaded opposition to a wave of anti-democratic legislation and attacks on civil society in Israel. Prior to that position Hagai served as the first executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. He's an astrophysicist and he writes regularly on issues related to the conflict as well as place identity and language. So we're very happy to have both of them here for the discussion. The 50-day offensive in the Gaza Strip was the Third War in Gaza in seven years and in a briefing to the UN Security Council yesterday, the UN Special Envoy on the Middle East peace process. Robert Sarri described unprecedented destruction and civilian harm. 2,100 plus have been were killed. That includes more than 500 children. 10,000 or more were injured. 18,000 homes have been destroyed. 100,000 people are homeless. The economic sector, what existed of it prior to the hostilities, has been nearly obliterated. Agricultural property has been significantly damaged. Factories, hundreds of factories were destroyed. The PA, which is putting forth a donor plan for reconstruction, has estimated the total of reconstruction at 7.8 billion, which is two times the GDP of Gaza. 2.5 billion damage is to the housing sector alone. 250 million to the energy sector and 30 million to schools. And this on top of a UN prediction from 2010, I believe, that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. So a major humanitarian challenge in Gaza, also political, given the terms of the conflict. Sammer, so you were there. You've now had some coffee. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you witnessed from the human perspective? Sure. First of all, good morning to everyone. And I should say that I was here at the very beginning of this latest Gaza conflict. And we were in a room that was twice the size of this impact to the HALT standing room only. And I think it's, first of all, I want to thank all of you for coming this morning. But it is a sure sign of how little attention Gaza gets when it's not getting bombed, that there are far fewer people here this morning. But having said that, I think the story that comes to mind to me that is perhaps the most emblematic of the human suffering that I witnessed when I was there is a story of a young man named Alaa Balata, who is 17 years old and was 17 on July 23rd when an artillery shell fell into a home that he and his family and his uncle's family were staying in. And the backstory to this is that Alaa and his father and his immediate family were staying in the Jubalia refugee camp quite close to the eastern border with Israel. And when the artillery shelling began, his father decided that it would be safer for them to move closer into the camp and farther away from the border. And in fact, that was something that the Israel Defense Forces claimed that it had warned residents to do. So Alaa and the seven members of his immediate family picked up on the second day of the ground offensive. And they moved about a kilometer into the camp, which is to say toward the farthest end, the western end of the Jubalia. Now Jubalia is the largest refugee camp in Gaza. It has about 110,000 people in it. And all of these people are refugees to begin with. So the first thing to remember about Alaa's story is that he has now, along with his family, been made a refugee twice over. Lived in a refugee camp, had to pick up and leave that refugee camp because his home was being shelled. When they arrived at their uncle's home, they became 11 people and a home that was basically three rooms, a living room and two rooms where the family slept. And on the second day, Alaa was asked to go outside and get some water. And we'll get a little bit later on, I think we'll talk about what the issue of water means in Gaza and how people sustain themselves, given all the destruction that Laila mentioned. As he was outside, he heard the artillery shells begin to fall in his neighborhood. And he had no idea where they were or why they were falling there and what he could do to protect himself. So he heard an explosion down the street. This is something that I've seen and witnessed with myself when I was there. And I also have photos of it on the 972 website if you'd like to see it. But he ran down this dirt alley in the camp to see where the bomb had hit. And just as soon as he did, an artillery shell fell on the house and killed all the members of his immediate family. He's 17 years old. He has absolutely no recourse either under local or international law. He is an orphan. And he is an orphan precisely because Israel chose in this war, unlike any other that has waged on Gaza, to utilize the tactic of tank shelling on civilian areas. And in this case, it wasn't just any civilian area. It was the most densely populated refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. So I think Alaa's story for me, Leila, is quite emblematic, not only of the human suffering, but also the tactical horrors of what Israel did during those 51 days. And I think there are other stories that perhaps we can get to later when we start to talk about the specifics of the humanitarian situation. Sure. I want to ask you about the mood in Gaza and sort of who are people blaming Hamas? Are they blaming the armed struggle? But perhaps before we get to that point, it might be useful, given your story, to hear from Hagai because I know they tell him put out a special report or release on the issue of attacks on homes, which seems to be a particularly major problem in this particular offensive. Do you want to say a few words about that aspect of your work and what you followed? What your workers on the ground followed? Sure. Thank you. So I want to say good morning to everyone. Also to state that the people from Bezalem that were on the ground in Gaza during this recent military offensive are the three dedicated and very courageous field researchers of Bezalem. I work from our office, our headquarters in Jerusalem, so from the region, but I was not in Gaza during this military offensive. And one of the statements that Bezalem has made during the military offensive, before the report, it started looking into this rather pattern of attacks on not a small number of homes in the Gaza Strip during this military offensive, was a statement that went beyond the usual realm of international humanitarian law. Typically, when one stops talking English and starts speaking IHL-ish, then you would have to listen to such a story and examine it based on the principles of the legal principles of international humanitarian law, the principle of caution, distinction, whether it was proportional, and so on. And at some point during this military offensive, we just looked at the stories that kept coming from the Gaza Strip and continued to talk this legal language ceased to make any sense to us. And you can just go from one incident to the next and try and analyze it in such form. And that is something that's very important and is going to happen now after the military offensive has ended. And that will be part of the effort of trying to establish accountability and so on and so forth. But at a time when during weeks, when bombs are falling and the voices that one hears from Gaza consistently were that a bomb can fall anywhere on any time across the Gaza Strip and also that the detail, as if a family moving from one place to the other, evacuating within the Gaza Strip, we should pause and be reminded that this is a very small area to begin with. So how far can people really travel from one unsafe space to safety within the Gaza Strip and so on? And other similarly horrible stories of casualties and families in Gaza during these weeks. So Batsalam at some point simply said that what Israel needs to do is to stop bombing populated areas in the Gaza Strip full stop. And that was the only statement that made sense to us at that point. And obviously this is not what has happened, but I'm emphasizing this because it's a very irregular statement for a human rights organization to come up with, especially since, as I said before, it steps out beyond the limitations of international humanitarian law. But I think it exposes exactly that the limitations of international humanitarian law and its failure in its task to do what it is exactly was meant to do in such situations to keep civilians out of harm's way at the time of the violent conflict. It may just be that IHL wasn't followed well enough and refraining from bombing civilian areas would have been an act of compliance. But, Samar, can you talk a little bit about, as I said, the mood in Gaza and the political blame that may have been associated to Israel or Hamas or the international community, broadly speaking? Sure, yeah. Well, I mean, I think the word that immediately comes to mind is defiance. I think there was an overwhelming sense of defiance in all quarters among all populations that I conversed with while there. And by way of background, I should say that I was actually staying in a neighborhood in Gaza City called Tendulhawa. And I was staying with a Palestinian family on the 11th floor of this building. And so it turned out actually that it was right next door to the Zafir 4 Tower, which was the first of the three towers that were blown up toward the end of the conflict, as you may recall. And so I was very deeply to use a now horrible and cliched term embedded among the the families that were suffering during this conflict. And I spent a lot of time every day going to the areas that had been bombed the day before, and also going to the shelters, the UN schools, the El Shefa Hospital, which was we'll get to in a second, but was also home to hundreds of families during the attacks. And at no time did I hear anyone say that Hamas is to blame for this. It simply didn't happen. And I think that it I think it was very telling to me because I was also there in November of 2012, during the last conflict. And that was as you may recall, nine days of constant bombing granted with none of the ground defense of particulars that we see in this conflict. But it was nonetheless a very brutal attack on Gaza for nine days. And at that time, there was at least a sense of skepticism. I think people were willing to question whether tactically, this was the right thing to do on Hamas's part. In this case, given the fact that quite literally 40% of the Gaza Strip at one point was off limits to to Palestinians given the shelling. And you had a quarter of the population of a population of 1.8 million people, 80% of whom are refugees, a quarter of them were displaced from their from their homes. So on a daily basis, what we looked forward to was basically watching a boy beta, who is some of you may know as a spokesperson for the El Khasam Brigades, who would get on TV pretty much every night and speak about what was happening on the quote unquote battlefield. So that's one thing. The second thing is that the those of us who work here in the States, and talk about this conflict, especially those of us who also have the sort of activist bent and understand the policy and perspective, I think we shy away from using the word war. And I've actually myself in the course of the conversation so far, been very careful not to use it because we like to talk about the massacres, which did happen. We like to talk about the assault, which of course, one can characterize the fourth largest army in the world and the strongest one in the Middle East attacking a civilian population as an assault, I think that would be a fair characterization. But in point of fact, among the Palestinians of Gaza, the word that they used to describe this was war. I think everyone there to a person felt that Hamas was resisting. Now whether or not they actually believe that a rocket being fired at an iron dome was actually going to liberate Palestine is another issue. But their only alternative we have to understand was to go back to the status quo, which was a siege that has now lasted eight years and has allowed no one any room to breathe either economically, geographically, or on any other aspect of what human beings should be able to enjoy. So, so I don't think anyone was blaming Hamas in short. But I don't think that there was really much room for any kind of sophisticated discussion about what that means or what the alternatives could be. But what did they think was being achieved by by the launching of these rockets some 4000 according to the IDF? I think that I think the issue, I just wrote my copy, I think the issue is really trying to call attention to that status quo. I think that's what people really think that the rockets are about. I don't think anyone is under under any illusions that, first of all, the rockets are doing any damage. And I mean, that, of course, I don't take that lightly that statement. I think that it's, it's a horrifying thing to fire rockets at civilian areas either way. But the I think the the issue for the people of Gaza is that on a daily basis, since the latest ceasefire, by the way, and in all the years during the siege, there have been acts of violence on the part of the Israeli army against Palestinians. We can talk about, for example, the buffer zone, which still takes up 40% of the of the agricultural land of the Gaza Strip, and extends up to a kilometer and a half into that strip. You know, it's a strip of land that is at its girth seven miles wide. And you as a Palestinian farmer, entering the buffer zone, you you run the risk of getting shot at. I mean, this is a daily reality for Palestinians. And try as they might to call attention to it. It simply doesn't happen. The only time Gaza gets any attention is when somebody fires a rocket. So I think that I think that, you know, although Palestinians in Gaza understand that when those rockets are fired, hundreds, if not thousands of them stand a chance of dying as a result. They also, I think, would rather have the world pay attention than to continue dying a slow death under the siege. But interestingly enough, of course, is that there's a short term or a there's a ceasefire in place that did not completely resolve the status quo of Gaza. So people may be in favor of maybe in a defiant mood and wanting to show the world that the status quo is untenable. But without achieving the end goal, which is the lifting of the blockade, as at least as a first step towards an end of conflict. Yeah, I had to come into the theme of the sentence, whether the population of Gaza is blaming Hamas, I think resonates very strongly from one side that clearly was blaming Hamas. I mean, the position of the state of the government of the state of Israel was with regard to the material offensive, often included to state to two statements, you always heard them at the same at the same time. One was that Israel is acting in full compliance with international standards and norms international humanitarian law. And the other was that it's all Hamas' fault, all civilian casualties, all casualties in Gaza are Hamas' fault. Now, obviously, one of the principles of IHL is that violations of one side do not justify violations by the other side. So that is true in the context of what Hamas did. And the unacceptable situation of the endless blockade over Gaza and the daily implication that that has with regard to the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza under that blockade do not justify Hamas' violating international law firing from within populated areas, fighting at populated areas in Israel. But at the same time, the fact that Hamas did this doesn't justify any of the violations of IHL that Israel did. So I wanted to add that and also in the sense of a theme that you mentioned before, like when does Gaza get get attention? And obviously, this also runs against the the general passion in Israel that this this imaginary reality, very cruel and also not working for Israel, right? That since the unilateral disengagement from Gaza, there's a border and Israel has left. There's no military presence within Gaza. And there are no settlements. And we can we should and we can't throw away the key and forget about the whole place. The 1.8 million people that live there, not a long not a big distance from, you know, from Tel Aviv, right? But Israelis thinks that, you know, Gaza is further away than New York, except when things are in the news once every two years or so. So also that's a strategy of total disconnect between Gaza and Israel, that too isn't isn't working. It has horrible human rights implications. And that's the business of Jerusalem. But it also in the broader sense simply not working. Do you think that this conflict has broken that sort of unreality that is in the Israeli mind that somehow Gaza, we're done with Gaza? Do you think now the Israeli public thinks Gaza is part of our equation and we must figure out a way to deal with with? I think it's too soon to call. I wish I wish something further. I wish that it would not take such casualties to bring that question again into the forefront. We could ask this question three months ago, right before more than 2000 people died. But that's, that's like the least that we can insist on is not to go back to what happened after Casled. But you know, a short time after all that, everything went back to business as usual, including the blockade. Attention in Israel disappeared, attention internationally disappeared. We waited two years of blockade and a trickle of rockets fired at Israel until the pillar of defense. And now, and now this. So if we were to learn from experience, the absolutely likely scenario is more of that. That's likely. So now that's the lesson of recent years. The challenge is how to break from that part of pattern into something different. Just though to add, there is a recent poll done and the Israeli public is very much aware of the negative PR and the negative perception that is now of Israel, given this this conflict and the major civilian damage that was done. So perhaps that could lead to to a new line of of the discussion on Israel's relationship with Gaza. Yeah, just a quick response that it is so upsetting to to listen to not your statement, but the way it was framed in the in the quote that this is somehow a public relations issue. And that the motivation for departure from previous policies is that Hasbara is failing. So maybe, but then the conclusion is not to change the policy. These polls always drive policy into not let's not touch the policy, but let's make further investments in better public relations in the context of the occupation West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, with all of their different variations. I mean, again, from a human rights perspective, the essential thing is to change the policies better Hasbara isn't going to make any difference for the lives of a Palestinian in Gaza or in the West Bank. But a piece of advice that we give for free for the know the Hasbara geniuses is that, you know, if you might as well have changed the policies, then I'm quite confident that the international image will also take care of itself later. We would have done two good things at the same time, but continuing for years already to address all aspects of the bad international image of the set of Israel because of the occupation is something that the answer to it is better investment in more public relations isn't working for quite a while. And the another piece of that it's never going to work. So let's move on then to the issue of accountability and direct the question to you first, because Israel is commonly does its own internal investigations, its own sort of interpretation of IHL and has launched an investigation under the military advocate general. And Bait Salam has called it a whitewash. Can you explain why? And we've seen it all happen before. We might as well learn from that from that experience. There was no accountability after cast lead. And the mechanism for conducting this investigation domestically was very similar to the one that is being staged now. And in the meantime, we've also have the added the benefit from statements by Israeli officials that explained to us what this is all about. This is not about establishing accountability. This is provide about providing a legal iron dome to the Israeli army from international intervention. And the whole thing is perceived in Israel as simply another act of warfare against against the Israeli army. Now, obviously, if there was no wrongdoing, then a credible investigation would establish exactly that. And there would be indeed no room for international intervention. And indeed, it wouldn't even be appropriate. But if there was wrongdoing, then the whole thing shouldn't be bracketed to begin with as something that is motivated in a different way. And doesn't add to one's confidence in what the system will will produce. And so on. So this is both about motivation. Why is this being done? Are is this about accountability or about impunity? And this is also about the structural flaws of the system that that remain. And one thing is related to the other. And this is no coincidence. So the fact of the army is investigating the army. That is one of those structural flaws. And this is part of the problem that existed before during cast lead. And afterwards, this has been commented about by Israeli rights organizations, but selling in others, this has been criticized by a government commission, the Terkel Commission made recommendations year and a half ago, none of these recommendations was implemented to date. So basically, we're seeing the same theater of the absurd being performed before eyes once again, with great passion in order to create sufficient paperwork to prevent that international intervention. And what is more critical about the feeling of the system is that it also has the structural vector that points it to look at specific incidents. One incident after the other. And part of the the process is to is to celebrate numbers that the army is looking into a great number of incidents. Sounds very impressive. But much of the attention should be focused on looking at policy levels, especially higher senior Israeli officials, the chief MAG himself, others, whether they have or have not, preauthorized legal or illegal usage of military force during the army's offensive in Gaza. And at such a level, you could wonder whether these would be issues that theoretically would have been brought to the attention of the chief MAG before the military offensive. So is the chief MAG now going to review his own decisions from two months ago? Obviously, that's an unstealth with regard to a credible investigation. So we see no reason to participate once again in this performance. However, we would be very interested in supporting what we would judge to be a credible, independent, effective investigation. So if Israel were to actually follow the recommendations of Thirkel and our recommendations and set up an independent mechanism of inquiry outside of the army that would have sufficient authority and professional capacity to examine the serious questions with regard to potential IHL violations during the Gaza offensive, we would very much want to assist such an investigation. So you're calling for a national, independent national commission or international? We want accountability. And whatever process is presented to us, we will judge based on its merit, whether it's independent, credible, transparent, professional. Sam, do you want to talk about accountability? Yeah, I mean, I was obviously, I was thrilled to see the statement that you put out, and we of course covered it in 972. And one of the things you did that we noticed was your usage of the two words, unable and unwilling. So if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a guy to maybe tell us why you use those words, because it seemed, it sounded awfully familiar. The only reason that they were there was because we think they're a precise description of the way we see things. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, others have read into that, those words are in fact used, and I believe it's the Rome statute itself, where you don't need to comment anymore on it. But I do think that it was, I think the illusion, even if unintended, to international, the International Criminal Court was quite an interesting one. And I think that a lot of observers viewed that Salem's move as opening the door for at least beginning to think about an international mechanism for investigating these alleged crimes. The problem, of course, is that you have Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian authority who continues to refuse to make that move. And that's something we can talk about in a little bit. But I do think that the, I think the issue of accountability continues to be one that that will drive, as Hagai has said rightly, whether or not two years from now we'll see Israel again attempting to mow the lawn and Gaza to use their own phrase. But to bring it back to the human level again, I'd like to mention the case of someone we actually wrote about today in 1972. And his name is Ahmad Abu Raida. And this young man, this young man's story was actually featured in the New York Times as well. Because he claims to have been used as a human shield by the Israeli army for five days running during the ground offensive in in Khan Yunus and Khuzal, actually, more specifically, which is where he's from. And his story is quite a remarkable one because there's a very detailed affidavit that he gave to an organization called Defense for Children International, an affidavit which I have seen. And it's quite clear from the details that he gave that this is something very much worth investigating and very likely to have happened, at least in some form, similar to the one that he described. So his case was, again, featured in the New York Times. We at 972 put forward a request to the IDF for comment. We didn't receive one directly, but we did eventually hear that they are now, quote unquote, investigating it. When I checked, I don't know what you've seen most recently, but when I checked the, is it military advocate or attorney general? Military advocate general? Advocate general, the MAG. When I checked the website yesterday, what I saw was that there are now four cases that remain open. And one of them is Ahmad's. There's no detail as to how this investigation is proceeding, what mechanisms there are for trying to uncover the truth. But what I did do is something very simple, which is pick up the phone and call the family. And they have now fully, well, it's been nearly a month since the end of the conflict. It's been nearly two months since Ahmad was taken captive allegedly by the IDF at the age of, I should mention, 15 at the time. And no one, absolutely no one at the MAG's office has made any attempt to contact them. So again, to echo what Chagai said, it does seem a bit like a theater of the absurd performance. Okay, so on the issue of the ICC. Yeah. Just to sort of create a bit of debate here on it. It seems to me that the Israelis are unable to institute a true view that would produce actual accountability that we have to look internationally. The US has the US initiative, Kerry initiative failed. There's no current process of diplomatic process, real process of foot that would produce accountability or pressure on Israel to comply with IHL. So we do turn to the international plane for some sort of accountability. But on the question of the ICC, I recognize this poll, recent poll, I don't know who did it. 84% of the Palestinian public wants the PA to join the ICC. So I recognize it as a real issue that's in play. ICC could play a role. It's refused thus far to intervene. But the ICC will no doubt put Israel on the defensive. If that happens, it becomes even harder to have a peace process, a peace dialogue on issues related to ending the occupation, ending the conflict. And it seems to me that we can't look at Gaza and what happened in Gaza as an isolated event, right? And I'm sure both of you would agree with that. Nor can we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the details of how you go about reconstructing Gaza. When there is a much larger question of the viability of Gaza about ending the occupation, we haven't even spoken about the violations occurring in the West Bank, which have increased tenfold since July. And then there's the Palestinians inside Israel. So we need to be wary of the need to resolve the conflict. And sending to the ICC or going to the ICC could create more complication. It could impact the PAs aid from the U.S. and other international donors respond. Maybe I'll say two things. One, fortunately for a human rights organization, there are some questions in life that are not questions for us to decide on. So whether Palestine will join the ICC or not, that's not a decision. I think it's also important to appreciate that if it does happen, it's also going to put Hamas on the offensive in a very direct fashion. I think there's no question with regard to the violations of the IHL performed by Hamas. There will also be on the table if something of this sort does happen. But in the case above my, above our pay grade, and things will unfold the way that they will. The other comment I wanted to say is with regard to what happens when there is no process. So we've moved from the P of the process to the P of the pause. I think that's how it's called. And who knows for how long that will continue? And when will the process resume? And again, so on and so forth. Again, if I need to look back at the accumulated experience of not a small number of years, then maybe this is not, you know, the level of excitement associated with the difference between the pause and the process, perhaps shouldn't be overstated. And after 20 years of endless process and no peace, then that's, that's, that's where we are. And so while we should or shouldn't hold our breath in that context, we should always be aware that what is consistently happening all the time during these years is Palestinians living under occupation in a situation which is not a status quo because Israel's agenda, long term agenda in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is always being gradually advanced, as we have also seen in recent weeks after Gaza, as we've also seen just the other day with regard to the plan to resettle, quote unquote, Bedouins from areas not far from Jerusalem today to the Jordan Valley and so on. So much of what we are trying to, to push for in the presence or in the absence of a peace process is to relentlessly pursue human rights and to put them front and center all the time. And I think with that, we would achieve, if that were to happen, we could achieve two important things. One, we could make a difference, a positive difference with regard to the life, the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation. That is not a small thing. But at the same time, if human rights are respected, we are robbing something very precious from the very essence of the occupation. So it doesn't contradict in any way from that long term goal that I think no one will object to, of a mutually agreed upon, fair political solution that will respect the human rights of all. Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting about this most recent war, to use the word that I heard in Gaza, is that I think some of the issues that have been talked about in the abstract, i.e. ending the siege and ending the blockade, were actually given a little bit more granularity this time around. So one example is the issue of the port. Granted, no movement has been made politically on this issue and I don't know that it will be within the next week to 10 days when this ceasefire is meant to at least come up for renewal. But the reporting on it and the conversation around it, because it was reported that the indirect negotiations actually included exploring the issue of the sea port in Gaza, was quite detailed. And one of the things that I discovered in my sort of research on it is that there in fact is already a mechanism called the European Union Border Assistance Mission, which has been put out of commission since 2006 and Hamas' election in Gaza, but it does exist and it exists at the Rafah border. And its sole purpose in life is to basically facilitate the movement of goods and people is my understanding, perhaps you can correct me, at the Rafah border crossing. Now the same mechanism can be used to facilitate the movement of goods and people by way of sea. And in fact it was, I can't recall his name now, but there was, I believe the transportation minister, the Israeli transportation minister had broached the idea of building a sort of island off of the Mediterranean coast of Gaza and having that be the sort of way station where goods come in and out and where things are inspected. So in terms of the actual workings of how this mechanism would look and Gaza, I think there was a discussion about it, which can be built upon. And that's important, I think, when you talk about a process from moving forward. The other piece of it is that, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think both Palestinians and Israelis now know that whether or not you have that siege, Hamas is still able to get everything that it needs to build enough rockets to fire them for 51 days straight at Israel. So there's something wrong, not only with the concept of a blockade, but also with its effectiveness. It's simply not working. So I think that Israel, one would presume that Israeli strategists are also taking into account the fact that having a European Union border assistance mission oversee what comes in and out of Gaza might actually be better from a strategic perspective and from a defense perspective and from a security perspective. So not only are the details there, but I think the incentives are. And it remains to be seen what will happen in Cairo when the parties return. But I think that there is hope for that. Yeah, I would just mention that Robert Sarri, the UN's special envoy for the Middle East peace process said yesterday that there was an agreement between Israel, the P.A. and the UN to allow construction materials into Gaza under UN monitoring. So there is there is a whole agreement in place on movement and access that was negotiated in 2005, which is inclusive of this European oversight mechanism that you mentioned, but it seems that we're diverging now into new territory, ignoring previous agreements which which established which established a process for movement of goods and people. So it's very muddled and and I think accountability is probably important for creating leverage in this situation. But I have more questions, but I will open it to the audience before I do so. I want to introduce Brian Barber. He's the founding director of the University of Tennessee Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict. And he has been named Jacob's Foundation Fellow at New America for 2015. He's an author of Adolescents and War, How Youth Deal with Political Conflict. And he has his research, essentially is following the lives of six men in the Gaza Strip to understand how they they deal with with such intense conflict from I think from the first Intifada to present and will be presenting this work here at New America at a future date. And Brian, you have a mic if you just want to reflect on anything that you heard in terms of your own work. Is this working okay? Yes. First thanks, Layla, for convening this and Samar and for taking your time. I won't take too much time. I want to just reinforce some things that I heard and offer one rather grave caution. So a bit of background. I'm a social psychologist. I try to understand how young people confront political conflict, process it and respond to it. And I've been living and going to Gaza for 20 years now. So if I have an authority, neither being an Israeli or a Palestinian is that I've had a long time on the ground in Gaza over a couple of decades and hence my caution that's that's coming after just a brief affirmation. Some things I heard I was on my way into Gaza when the ground offensive started and decided to come home and spent virtually 24 hours a day on social media trying to are connecting actually with the young people that I've been following all of these years and just want to reinforce what Samar said. I actually explicitly asked them and they are of all political persuasions. If they were blaming Hamas for this catastrophe and to a one they said certainly not. Samar said defiance their work for me was resistance and that seems to be the kind of unifying effect that the catastrophe has had on Palestinians. I guess I'd add to that just one point and that is the other sentiment that I heard and we heard it more most eloquently from Raji Sarani in an interview a month or so ago where he said look we're dying anyway so better die sooner than later and that gets to my comment or my caution. If you would read what I've written you would know that I am not a doomsdayer. I'm actually quite an advocate of human competence and capacity and it's rare for me to be very concerned but I am very concerned about Gaza now for the first time in 20 years. In our research we are elaborating a construct that of mental suffering that is called feeling broken and destroyed and those are the terms that Palestinians are using to describe the type of suffering they are experiencing not just now but historically and progressively so. For those familiar with mental health you might know that that's a little bit different than PTSD or depression and we're concerned about this because there are alarming high levels of people reporting all people across the territories of feeling this broken and destroyed and it has everything to do with the violation of basic freedoms and human rights that is the source of this feeling broken and destroyed. So those rates are high and they're much higher now in Gaza than they were before according to the conversations I've had. I'll just leave you one anecdote and to underscore the urgency of this even the strongest Gazans that I know. Yad Siraj was part of the development of this construct two years ago when in fact I interviewed him a year after Kasslet and he was expressing a trauma which I'd never heard from him before. But just a week ago I would say this one of the strongest hardiest men I know in Gaza I won't give his name but he's a leading health official wrote a tragic statement about for the first time he himself feels like he wants to leave Gaza and if you knew this man you would know that that would be the ultimate heresy in his mind to abandon his beloved Gaza and that's a level of severity that is new and very worrisome and I would just use that to underscore the urgency of all that we talk about relative to policy that this is a dire moment and something needs to change. We need someone in here to help us with Mike. OK so questions from the audience. We have one up front here. Thanks very much. I just came back from a study tour with Americans for Peace Now and we spent a lot of time in in the West Bank and in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. One of the more interesting for me is an old army lawyer meetings that we had was with a woman who is a law of war expert for INSS and she was explaining how they view or how they are sharpening their interpretation or changing their interpretation of the law war as I understood and she was talking particularly about proportionality and the balance of the value of the military target against the risk of death or injury to civilians and civilian property. And as to the value of the military target she was arguing that it really ought to be measured by the overall military objective and you know in other words what is it that we're trying to accomplish with this offensive. And later in the talk and I don't know that she connected this up she was talking about how the purpose of this operation was to show the people the cost of continuing to rock at Israel. And I put those things together and I asked her a question I said well all the investigations seem to be at the squad level and you're saying that the analysis ought to be at the major command level essentially and she says well I hope that they take the investigations where ever they go and you know but that what she was saying put together struck me as being essentially a justification for the firebombing of Dresden you know I mean you break the will of the people to resist. And I wonder if you've heard that before and if you can comment on that as I H L as you understand it. And thank you for the question. In the first day in a more limited fashion some of the direct questions that sprung up after Kasslev and now again are exactly with regard to what is Israel definition of a military target. Right. And one of the most important question attempts to establish now is to is to reach transparency in that in that context to understand that we'll be able to to examine it to date most of your one's ability to examine it is based on what was attacked right with the knowledge of what we can assume that the army knew when they were doing this or that right. And that left a lot of questions unanswered after Kasslev and again if I learn from that experience I'm not too optimistic with regard to the ability to have sufficient answers now after this this recent military offensive the definition can be the definition seems to be to have been broadened in a questionable manner. I'm very careful with my selection of words here. Now in the broader sense and we totally agree the command level the policy level that's the level that the question should be asked that that's the question that we should concentrate at and there I think this the open state the public statement that comes closest to what you've suggested is was that what happened a few months before before Kasslev in between Lebanon to and Kasslev when some totally exactly who was the public official that made that that statement that you know suggesting that what Israel should do if there would be another escalation in Gaza is to apply the the Dachia doctrine that's that's the phrase Dachia being a neighborhood in Beirut Israel bombed quite extensively during during Lebanon too. So to implement that kind of strategy once once again in Gaza now whether this happened or didn't happen I don't know and we're unable to prove in either direction exactly because the investigation after Kasslev was so was so ineffective and didn't address these these questions. So maybe this is somewhere in the background. Maybe this isn't. We don't know it is certainly a question that we have to ask and demand an answer. Very quickly and that is that the importance of context and and and recognizing that Israel is an occupying power and and at least I would defer to you obviously the issue of international humanitarian law and its definition of this but to the Palestinians of Gaza the siege itself is an act of war and has been one that has been ongoing well depending on where you want to trace it for a very long time. So I don't think that we're I think it's a false analogy obviously to to be talking about two warring parties and issues of proportionality at the end of the day the places that I saw on Khuzaa Khuzaa and Shujai and Rafah and Jabalia and Beth Hanun literally a quarter of the Gaza Strip was leveled by artillery shelling and these are civilian areas and up until the last moment Hamas was firing rockets. So I'm not sure what the strategic objective was. I know for sure that the people of Gaza have not been you know battered into submission and I find it curious that you know anyone would attempt to make a sort of not yourself of course but the person with whom you were speaking a strategic case for the kind of barbarity frankly that I saw in Eastern Gaza. I should mention that the Daily Beast did a great piece about three weeks ago which I'm blanking on the name and I'm hoping he's here right now but Mark something I can't remember his last name but he did a fantastic piece in which he interviewed infantry officers in the U.S. military about the issue of the shelling and you should you should definitely look that up because at one point in Rafah in particular we were talking about something on the order of 8,000 shells in 24 hours. I mean it's astonishing absolutely astonishing and and it was very interesting to hear American military experts actually commenting on it. OK, we have a question back here, woman in the green. Hi, I'm Helena Cobbin of Just World Books. I'm fascinated, fascinated, a guy with your kind of historical take on this today actually is the 32nd anniversary of one of the days of Sabah and Shatila massacres. So, you know, there is a huge historical arc here. One of the things I noticed is that obviously in response to the Sabah and Shatila massacres there was this wave of outrage inside Israel. Peace now got one fifth of the Israeli population onto the streets to protest that. And of course, you know, the the public attitudes have shifted radically to the point where people go in their lawn chairs outside Sederat and watch as apartment buildings are being shredded and pieces of people are being sprayed into the air. Yeah. So I was reading Gideon Levy's book about guys about Kastled and it was so sweet and naive that he said, you know, well, the Goldstone Commission will make everything change, something like that. And we know what happened to Goldstone, how he got effectively shredded. And his effectiveness got shredded. Do you have hopes that Bilsha Bass's Commission can actually achieve something that Goldstone was not able to achieve? Can you talk a little bit about what that is? Sure. So there's now the quick way of describing what is happening now is the way it's already been framed in Israel, which is Goldstone, too. So there's a new fact finding commission that has been appointed and I'm not sure if they already began their investigation, but if not, they will start doing that quite, quite soon. Often as someone that is working for a human rights organization, I struggle to find a way to frame my answers in an optimistic way or at least to have enough domestic content in an answer. Sometimes it's sometimes it's very difficult. Sometimes it's sometimes it feels impossible. I keep mentioning in some of the answers that I gave before, the lessons that we learned from recent history and how things were not effective and so on and so forth. So it's very difficult for me to have a convincing expectation based on recent experience that the UN investigation will be effective in the drive for accountability in Israel or in Gaza. But it will convince the people that there was some process and investigation and whatever the conclusion is will serve a political purpose domestically. Is that fair to say? I mean, the international investigation is already being rejected in Israel in its totality based on the history and based on the current committee. So an expectation that the Israeli public will somehow listen to whatever findings will come out of that committee, even if it does its work in the utmost professional standards that that will somehow resonate effectively in Israel. I'm happy to be surprised, always. And I think there's nothing in reality that's suggestive in something remotely close to that. And yeah. We have a question here. Hi. I appreciate yourself. I'm sorry. Oh, my name is Allison Glick. I appreciate Haga'i, your brightness and candor about the limitations of international human rights law and their failure, in fact. And this is coming from someone who did human rights work in Gaza quite a long time ago, actually, with Raji Sarani during the first Intifada. And having lived in Gaza and lived in the West Bank and actually having lived in Israel as well as Yarmouk camp, I still struggle after all these years to understand what you said, Samar, about the... I can't remember how you just phrased it, but something like the refusal of the Gazans to lose hope. I mean, that's not what you said, but they have not been bowed. And I'd like to swing a little bit to the new America Foundation guest, whom you just introduced, Layla, and ask, at this point in Gaza's history, what is it that keeps people from not being completely 100% bowed and broken? Because I think, given the failures of all of these international human rights norms, maybe it's that in those people that we need to support, at least people in my community, in activist community, who want to look to something to support if politics, international human rights law continues to fail, which it obviously will. Brian, do you want to make a few comments? Wait, I don't... Is it on? The green button? The green light? So, I'm glad you raised the question because it's broken and destroyed as people report feelings. And into the mic. Sorry, it's broken and destroyed as people are increasingly reporting feeling. Palestinians would also immediately say, but we haven't given up hope. And there's this tension about their remarkable ability to move forward. The way I make understand of it is that oppression comes in different kinds of forms and that humans are broken more easily and less easily, depending on the nature of that. And it seems to me that when the oppression is in the form of the violation of basic dignities and basic human rights, that we as humans have perhaps an endless appetite and ability to resist. And I would offer that as one suggestion for the... But Brian, you also did comparative work. You looked at Bosnia... There's some existential dimension of the gauze and experience that helps them process the experience. Thanks for remembering that. In the early days, in the late 90s, when I first started studying gauze and youth, the first anti-fought of the same ones that I'm writing about now as adults, I went to Sarajevo to do a comparative study quickly because I was so stunned by the fact that I was not finding what my academy's theories said I would find, which would be white-stread trauma. I didn't find that in gauze. I found much the opposite, as you well know. In Sarajevo, I found that desolation, that trauma, that psychological despair. And the explanation that I've offered for that in writing is that the main difference was the fact that the gauze then and still now can make sense out of the conflict itself. It is not mysterious why it's happening. It is completely interpretable. It's historical. It's loaded with morality and so forth, whereas the Bosnian kids had none of that. The war came on them by surprise. They had no way to explain why it was happening, what its goals were, no way to participate in it. So this then would be the added notion that the degree to which the trauma, the conflict, the violence is sensible at some level, that is explicable. Makes a big difference as to how much we're able to deal with its wounds. Mike, right in front of you. Hi, I'm Mike Amite at Open Society Foundations. On the ICC, if the Palestinian public opinion and key leadership in Amas and Fatah believe that the Palestinians should deseed to the ICC, what is preventing a boss from taking this decision? Is it simply the promise of foreign assistance or what's your view on that? Are you directing that to me? Sorry, Mike. Well, I think it's a very good question. I don't know that anyone has an easy answer to it, but I do trace it back. And perhaps Leila, you might disagree with me, but I trace it back to the kind of political pressure that is inherent in the also peace process. The entire framework, the entire sort of institutional structure of the Palestinian Authority could not exist without the support of the United States and other foreign donors. And so it is this sort of, I don't know that it would be necessarily a catch 22, but this idea of going to the UN and being recognized as Palestine has sort of forced Abbas into a corner whereby all of the sort of benefits that accrue from that status of the United Nations are also the pitfalls that he faces as the president of what is essentially a legal fiction, the Palestinian Authority. So I think that it's quite simply, it's about the payroll, right? I mean, you have to pay people. You have to, I don't know what the latest percentages of Palestinian Authority employees vis-à-vis the entire workforce, but when you go to a place like Ramallah, it is increasingly apparent that none of it could exist without foreign money. So that's what I attribute it to. And may I just add one thing to what Brian said very quickly? And that is that I think what you asked is actually a really interesting question that is worthy of further exploration in another session. But one thing that I can say growing up as a Palestinian and also being with the Palestinians of Gaza during this latest war is that I think there's a very real sense that the conflict is a symbolic one for the world. I think that, I mean, I can tell you my own experience when I first got back, I was getting off the metro and I happened to be wearing a shirt that had something in Arabic in it and somebody said to me, where are you from? I said, Palestinian, he came up to me and gave me a hug. You see free Gaza on the streets of, I mean, people have spray painted it on walls in Washington, D.C. So, and when you're actually sitting in the middle of the war and the bombing is happening and you watch the protests on TV, for better or worse, it definitely carries the spirit forward. And I don't know that someone sitting in Sarajevo during the siege had that same feeling. I doubt that that was the case, unfortunately. I just want to add a couple of comments on the ICC and the bosses' calculations. It's true that the PA apparatus is dependent on international support. It's also dependent on Israeli cooperation. A significant portion of the PA's budget comes from the tax revenues that are collected by Israel and then transferred to the PA. Sorry, it's collected at the border and transferred to Palestinians. And there's also the security coordination, which allows the PA to have this security force and then pay out salaries to a security personnel. And I've heard a former head of the World Bank for Jerusalem say that the PA essentially is a welfare system for the Palestinians. And I think to be fair to Abbas, he, if he goes to the ICC, I think that that could potentially unpack all of what was created through Oslo, including the PA. And so the question of do we go to the ICC really is one of do we change focus from the Oslo model and bilateral negotiations to simply taking our struggle back to one of calling for international legitimacy and using international mechanisms. And I think that that's a very hard call for Abbas to make. I think most likely he's conflicted about it because the PA serves an existential purpose for the Palestinians because it is a symbol of self-determination. It serves a functional purpose in terms of salaries and it does benefit an elite, which is part of Abbas's decision-making cohort. So it's a complicated question and there's certainly a lot of pressure to not go to the ICC and Abbas has not shown himself to be a confrontational type, but the question just will be how will Palestinian public opinion manifest itself on this question of the future of the PA going forward? Maybe if I could just use the opportunity of the question about the ICC to say something not about the ICC. And that is just to remind the point that this is not just the insistence of human rights organizations. Israel has a responsibility to investigate itself. And there's a very detailed articulation of this perhaps obvious statement that was made a short time after Cass led by in a joint letter by Israeli human rights organizations to Israel's Attorney General at the time. Israel has a responsibility to investigate its own actions according to Israel's own rules and according to international law. That's the first obligation. That's the first commitment. And to keep reminding that time and again, I mean, perhaps seems futile, but it's very significant. And once again, this is not just because Bezalem is demanding that or some other human rights organization is demanding that. That's the essential legal responsibility that exists and is in effect, even if there is no Bezalem. That's something that needs to be reiterated time and again. Anyway, thank you very much, Diane Perlman School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason. Is there any possibility or does it make any sense to have some alternative variation like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some other process? And I know like over the years, the conventional wisdom is that you can't do that until the conflict is ended, but there are other people that think that you can. So what are your thoughts? So are you asking specifically for the past hostilities and Gaza? Well, some other, I mean as we all know, there are different variations on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and forms and they're evolving. Is there any process, maybe not, that could be designed where there's bearing witness and testimony and dealing with it? Maybe not instead of the ICC, but just as another option. I don't know. I think it's an interesting idea. At a time where so many other options have been tried and exhausted and failed, I think any new idea is of interest just because it's a new idea and something that hasn't been tried. And we have a big appetite for ideas that would express business not as usual in addressing this reality. I will add a grain of salt in this specific context but the closest experience that Bethlehem has with something of that sort is through our speaking out on social media, on Facebook. Well, what we've also tried to do during this military offensive was to provide testimonies by Palestinians in Gaza and by Israelis from the area not far from Gaza about the stories of what happened to them, their families, their suffering and so on during this time. And the sense was that the responses were mixed and also I wanna be careful. People respond in one way when there was a time of intensified conflict and shelling and rockets and so on and so forth. Perhaps now emotions will be in a somewhat different place and there will be more space for this sort of thing, I hope, but during those 50 days, the situation was that, and there's no symmetry, you don't wanna create a false sense of symmetry between the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, it's not the same but there was suffering by civilians both in Israel and in Gaza. And if we would emphasize suffering of Palestinians, then the response by many Israelis would be, why are you supporting the enemy? And if we would highlight suffering by people on both sides, it's how dare you compare, right? So it's very difficult in so many levels but it doesn't mean that this is not worth in further thinking. Well I think, may I add something to that? And that's that I, it's very important to remember that with the exception of people like Ahmed Abu Reda, anyone who is essentially beneath the age of 25 has had very little interaction with an Israeli throughout their lifetime. Because the siege of Gaza is one thing but the actual limitations on movement and access to Israel began in 1991 with the permit system. And so there's no one to reconcile with is what I'm saying. I think that Israelis have a sense that, as you said at the very beginning, all of these 1.8 million people have been locked out of our lives and every now and then we have to mow the lawn so that they'll stop shooting rockets at us. There's no sense of urgency in terms of reconciling. That's in terms of Gaza, West Bank's another issue but we can, we can talk about that. Question over here. My name, my name is Maya, thank you so much first of all for such an insightful and interesting discussion today. My question is going to be, how can Israel change? Because we've been discussing about Israel complying with human rights regulations and it seems like one of the most useful ways that Israel can comply with those regulations is to end the occupation. So the question is really about the future. What can happen that makes Israel change? Is this internal policy change or is this some kind of action of community, international community? As suggested, and this is just a suggestion for discussion by Noam Chomsky, this is Boykorov Israel and divestment of American universities from Israeli firms. This is one of the ways that have been discussed by pro-Palestinian organizations how Israel can change and I would like to know your thoughts on this subject. Thank you. We have just five minutes, I'm gonna take a couple more questions. One in the back and one here in the front. Hey, my name is Alar Baba and I'm a junior for the Carnegie Endowment. About the strategic reason behind the war, Dan Byman wrote saying that Israel might want to create a deterrent and basically what it did in Lebanon in 2006 is that through all the bombing after like 2006, Hezbollah did not fire a single missile on Israel. So maybe by doing more of the brutality, this would lead to such deterrent. What do you think about that? And then the other thing is... Just, I'm sorry, this one question. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. And in the front. Yeah, I'm Jed Shilling and I'm not an expert on Gaza or Israel but I have a question going back several months ago when the political people of Hamas met with Abbas and wanted to set up an agreement to try to pursue the negotiations and what would be the rationale behind the radical militants in Hamas justifying by their attacks? And I'm not defending Israel but by the attacks on Israel and starting the conflict, the further demonstration that they're not willing to deal peacefully with Egypt but to move ahead in a violent way and whether they have any contacts to spreading this kind of reaction with the Muslim Brotherhood or the ISIS or other groups like that which tend to be focusing much more on promoting violence and getting building strong reactions against Israel and the West by these violent methods. So is there a rationale behind that that you can elaborate on? Let's take that question before we move on to what about Israeli society and how to change the status quo. Maybe I'll respond quickly to both, that's fine. Just like on that question, I mean the only thing that I can say to that is that attacks on civilians are always unjustifiable. Full stop, beyond that from a human rights perspective, I have nothing more to say on that specific question. With regard to human rights and ending the occupation then yes, by all means, and I'm very thankful for the question. And B'tzelem, not a long time before Gaza, I mean it was June, right? It was 47 years to the occupation. And obviously the framework of the temporary village-run occupation focused on the word temporary, stops being convincing at some point, right? We should start doubting the temporariness of the word temporary and what is really happening here. So in that position paper it was published by B'tzelem, perhaps didn't yet have enough of an opportunity to receive I think the proper attention that should have been allocated to that document because of what has happened, the duration of the situation in the weeks immediately after that. It's a document that is talking about the clear long-term objectives that Israel has in the occupied territories and the implications that that must have in our human rights interpretation of the situation. And so this was a plugin for everyone to immediately after this to go on B'tzelem's website. So document is available in Arabic, Hebrew and in English. And I do recommend reading it and perhaps there will be a good basis for continuing a human rights conversation that is focused on ending the occupation. Simmer, can you answer the question about radicalization? Yeah, sure, I may have thoughts on all three that I can say really quickly, but in terms of radicalization, it's absolutely true that Netanyahu and company tried to make a ridiculous comparison between Hamas and ISIS toward the end of the 51 day assault. And it's not only a red herring, it's absolutely absurd. This conflict began because three teenagers were kidnapped. We have to remind ourselves in the West Bank, they were on occupied land that was under the full control of the Israeli military, it was in area C. The Israelis were responsible for the security, the Israelis failed. Netanyahu made a deliberate effort to blame Hamas for it. He launched something called Operation Brothers Keeper, which involved re-arresting all of the prison, not all of them, but a significant proportion of the prisoners that were released in the Gilad Shalit deal. He directly took on Hamas in that way and then began bombing Gaza. I mean, this was before what we now know as protective edge. So what happened was not Hamas provoking violence, what happened was Hamas reacting to a provocation. And that's abundantly clear in this case, when the history of it is written, it will be, there's no doubt that that's what happened. In terms of the Muslim brotherhood egging on Hamas and things of that nature, well, I mean, we all know what's happening to the brotherhood now. And Hamas has been completely cut off from Egypt in every way, shape, or form by the new government there. On the issue of deterrence, I think this gets back to what Brian was saying earlier, which is that you simply cannot expect a people to live imprisoned in the way that they are in Gaza without speaking up in some way, shape, or form. You can't deter a prisoner in that way. I mean, you can imprison him, but you can't deter them because they don't have the free will to be able to make choices of that nature. It's simply either we speak up and we fight back or we live and die this quiet death, as Raji Surani and the Ed Saraj have said. So I think when you're talking about a state actor like Lebanon, it's an entirely different issue and it cannot be applied to Gaza, clearly, because the three wars actually happened in five years, not seven years, and all told, we're talking about more tonnage dropped on this civilian population, 80% of whom were refugees, then America dropped in the entire Iraq War. So I mean, the perspective is very important here. I think in terms of BDS and how Israel can be pressured, look, I saw a poll at the beginning of Brothers Keeper, actually, that I think was done by Bloomberg that said that here in the United States, the perception of Israel among 20 to, I believe 30 year olds, I can't remember if it was 20 to 30, and people above 40 are almost directly opposite. So people who will be the political leaders in the United States in 10, 15, 20, 30 years, I think will have a very different perception of it and will be able to affect that kind of change. And I think the reason that's happening is precisely because you have brave artists, you have people, academics who are speaking up on this issue, whether or not they partake of BDS and become supporters of it, it's for someone else to answer, but I think as a tactic, it's quite clear that it's been effective in raising awareness. So thank you for bringing that up. All right, well, thank you everyone for coming and thank you, Hagai and Samar and Brian for your words.