‘From the River to the Sea: Taking the pulse of Palestine-Israel 20 years after Oslo’, Kenyon Institute research project presentation of findings, 2 September 2015, LSE Middle East Centre, London
This event was the culmination of two years of research funded by the British Academy and carried out by the Council for British Research in the Levant’s East Jerusalem research centre, the Kenyon Institute. It took place at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics.
The project analysed the impact of 20 years of the Oslo framework on all those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, looking at what the agreements and negotiations, economic protocols, and international donors have achieved as well as what they have not.
In the context of an increasingly hostile debate regarding the feasibility of a two-state solution, and in the absence of a political solution and end to the occupation, this project focused on analysing the contradictory dual processes of separation and unification that have taken place economically, politically and culturally – and how different communities have responded to them. The result is an assessment of the situation as it affects those communities living between the river and the sea, as well as an assessment of the contemporary feasibility of implementing a two-state solution and its possible alternative outcomes.
Speakers:
Diana Buttu is a lawyer specializing in negotiations, international law, and international human rights law. She was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Law School, and the Stanford Center for Conflict Resolution and Negotiation.
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American scholar and author of Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and National Liberation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2016). He completed his PhD at SOAS in 2015.
Cherine Hussein was deputy director and research fellow at the Kenyon Institute, CBRL (2012-2015), and is now a research fellow at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs (Stockholm). She completed her PhD at Sussex University in 2012.
Raja Khalidi is a Palestinian development economist who served with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 1985–2013. He currently lives and works as an independent researcher in Palestine.
Mansour Nsasra was a research fellow at the Kenyon Institute (2013-2015), and is now assistant professor in politics at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel). He completed his PhD at Exeter University in 2011.
Dimi Reider is an Israeli journalist and an associate fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Alaa Tartir is programme director of Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network, and post-doctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva, Switzerland). He completed his PhD at LSE in 2015.
Mandy Turner is a visiting fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and director of the Kenyon Institute, CBRL. She holds a PhD, MSc and BSc all from the LSE.
Panel 1
Chair: Alaa Tartir
‘From the River to the Sea: Taking the pulse of Palestine-Israel 20 years after Oslo’, Introduction to the project, the rationale and how we did it, Mandy Turner
‘The Oslo Agreements -- What Happened?’, Diana Buttu
‘No Plan B because Plan A cannot fail: Western donor assistance to the oPt, 1993 to the present day’, Mandy Turner
‘Left out of Oslo: Palestinians in Israel and East Jerusalem’, Mansour Nasasra
Panel 2
Chair: Alaa Tartir
‘The structural transformation of the Palestinian economy after Oslo’, Raja Khalidi
‘20 Years after Oslo: “Taking the pulse” in Israel’, Dimi Reider
‘From Singapore to the Stone Age: the Gaza Strip 20 years after Oslo’, Toufic Haddad
‘The single state as an alternative to Oslo’, Cherine Hussein
http://www.lse.ac.uk/middleEastCentre...
