 It's really a pleasure to be here today with John Linden, Executive Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, or ORMAP. ORMAP is a coalition of over 170 Israeli-Palestinian peace-building organizations. We're thrilled to have you here today and we've been thrilled over the years to be able to partner with you here at USIP and engage with you on any number of shared activities and interests. But what I'd like to talk about today is a project that we partnered on starting in 2020 which was a youth poll of Israelis and Palestinians. And I wonder if you could say a little bit about the origins of that project, what your motivations were at ORMAP for engaging in it and how that came about. Thank you, Lucy. I remember talking to you about the project probably three or four years ago at this point and the reason is that many of our members work most acutely with the youngest Israelis and Palestinians. So it felt like we were getting early signs from them about something novel and a little worrying that was happening amongst the youngest Israelis and Palestinians and a sense that the group of people who are coming into the room together, who themselves already are unusual Israelis and Palestinians, were sometimes betraying attitudes that were a little bit more hostile or extreme than we'd seen in previous cohorts. We sensed that separation, dehumanization, growing, and with diplomacy totally collapsed. We wanted to see what the attitudes were amongst these young people. And because we have quite young societies, the attitudes of the youngest people are important electorally and politically as well. I mean, if we ever have elections again in the West Bank and Gaza, it will become more important. But in Israel, we have a lot of elections, so the attitudes of younger people tends to matter. And what we found in the election in spring of 2021 and in the election of November 2022 actually quite a market change more than in any interval between this kind of wave of elections we've had in Israel. So it's interesting in that period of around a year and a half, we've had just under 210,000 new Israeli voters enter the electorate. And that's worth a little over five Knesset seats out of 120 within the parliament. So that really matters, particularly the margins so thin. And I don't want to make this a left versus right thing. I think it actually goes far beyond that. But it is worthwhile noting that the Israeli electorate is the most right-wing youth electorate anywhere we collect that data with upwards of 70% of young Israeli voters self-identifying as right-wing. But actually what's more interesting or more noteworthy is what's happening on the very furthest fringes of the right. Like a right-wing security analysis is completely legitimate and everybody can agree or disagree on different positions of where a border should be, if there should be one, everything else. What's happening on the furthest fringes of the far right in Israeli society is the growth of ideas that should have previously been taboo. I mean, very famously, the Knesset movement when they were in the Knesset were boycotted by the traditional right in Israel. And it's important to know that this is something we're seeing in parallel on the Palestinian side as well. We've seen a huge growth in youth militias developing over the last year. It's the most violent year in the West Bank since 2004 now, so since the Second Intifada. And groups like the Lions Den, which are these youth militias growing up in the north of the West Bank are attracting very young men using automatic weapons, not listening to Hamas, Fatah, the Palestinian Islamic jihad, really harnessing the sort of frustration of young people. And we see on both sides, and I don't want to completely equivocate between them, but young people looking for disruption and extreme answers, very simplistic answers to complex problems that traditional political actors perhaps aren't providing. And that provides a context where unfortunately some of the worst ideas, movements and political tools are going to find much more receptivity. I remember when we saw the results talking about the sobering findings that argued for the kind of urgency of the picture you're painting now, but there were some sense of opportunity to cling to, I think, and to work with there. And of course despair, as we know, is not an option and not a strategy when there's this kind of prospect of violence or actuality of violence. So what for you were the glimmers of opportunity to hold on to? So I'm actually going to give some of the bad news first because I get the political analysis, which is important, but that's the lagging indicator. Okay, you see the consequence of some of the attitudes you measured, but it's important to look at some of the disturbing facts and to acknowledge them, I think, and not shy away. So number one, the finding that most worried and disturbed me, and I think many of us at all met, was an outright denial of the legitimacy of the other to be on the land, their historical connection to the land. That's something we know when interacting with conflict can be devastating and it's also something that allows very bad political figures and actors to be able to find, again, receptive populations with some of those messages. So we have majorities on both sides that rejected the other's historical connection to the land. The second sort of low light, I suppose for one to a better word, was around support for violence and that we saw majorities again of both young Israelis and young Palestinians that favored violence as being the best or the only tool to further their political agenda. And then finally for many of us that favor a two-state solution, which has obviously been the consensus position on how this conflict should be resolved amongst the international community and also locally for most of the last few decades. We've seen a real drop in support for two states amongst the youngest Israelis and Palestinians and a growth in support for undemocratic solutions that would deprive one party or the other, depending on who you're asking, of rights and of self-determination. Now on the positive part, it's worthwhile noting that these attitudes as troubling as they are, they're not fate. They can be disrupted and one of the tools we know is incredibly effective at disrupting them is the work of peace-building programs, so the work of our over 170 members. And one question we really wanted to hear an answer to, because no other pollster will ask it, is how interested are young Israelis and Palestinians in actually participating in these programs. And that's where there was an encouraging finding. So we found that there was around 30%, there was no statistical, meaningful statistical difference between both cohorts. We thought the work was illegitimate and would not participate. And then you're looking at around between 60 and 70% of both populations who under the right conditions may be able to participate and not be unsure, could be persuaded. That gives us a huge potential cohort and on top demand of people that could participate in programs that we know are very effective at disrupting those very same attitudes. You raise a couple of points. Number one, the dynamism of public opinion, something that we know that this is not, as you said, fate. It's not static. We've seen over many years that public opinion shifts in relation to what is happening on the political and diplomatic environment. Sometimes, for example, right at times when there is an active, what was long called the peace process, even when people despaired of the prospect of that peace process, ending in a negotiated solution, the fact that there was some glimmer of possibility that there was some movement happening would often shift the numbers of support for two states or a negotiated solution. And so looking at that idea of dynamism, and as you said, this notion that there's almost a not yet captured but potentially willing audience, what is the potential for scaling up this work and capturing these people right now? Where do you see those avenues? For over 10 years, we've been working with Congress, with political actors around the world, in fact, to create momentum towards this. And two years ago, almost to the day actually, from now, we managed to see passage of legislation thanks to the leadership of then-chairwoman, Nita Lowey, in Congress, in one of her final acts in Congress, to pass bipartisan legislation called Nita M. Lowey, Middle East Partners for Peace Act, or MEPA for short, which will see $250 million invested in this work in civil society and economic tools that can help to shape conflict resolution. And what's wonderful about that is, number one, it's bipartisan, so we're hoping that this is something that can be really sustained. Number two, it has an audience around the world of governments who would like to participate in help as well. And I think, sadly, in Northern Ireland, the population was a lot smaller than it is in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. So we want to get to the same scale, which is about $44 per person per year in Northern Ireland. It's less than $2 in the Middle East. We need other governments to come in and share the burden with the United States as well. But number three, it's long-term. And I think one of the critiques I would have of advocacy and policymaking in this space is we've been seduced by short-term theories of change too often over the long term. Over 30 years, we've kind of squandered at that time in thinking one more peace process, one more round of elections will come out differently. And actually, we've gone backwards, particularly, I would say, in the last decade and a half. So taking this long-term incremental approach, what's wonderful about it is that, thanks to MEPA and the scale it unlocks to make these programs not a rare privilege, but kind of a right or a right of passage for people, it can get us over time. And it's multi-decades, in my view, to a place where really groundbreaking conflict resolution is possible and politicians are incentivized to move towards it. That's where we're aiming. But it's some way off. Every milestone on the way is so much better than what we have today. Rather than things getting worse, and I think rapidly quite worse right now, we will be able to see gradual incremental improvement years like the one we've just seen become less likely, where violence is a daily occurrence, many more opportunities for engagement between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as Arab and Jewish citizens of the state of Israel, breaking down of barriers, creation of new institutions and ideas based on a quality and Israeli-Palestinian interdependence and partnership. Having that increase year on year for a sustained period, we've never tried that before, and I think it has a greater chance to reconfigure the politics and the diplomacy of almost any strategy I've heard. Well, I think that's probably a good point on which to end right now. So much more to discuss, of course, and we look forward to continuing the work with you and this conversation, and really thank you for joining us today. No, thank you, Lucy, and thank you for USIP's partnership. Thank you.