Convention with a discussion on palestine, one state versus two state. What is maybe in the best interest of the palestinians now and later, the Trump Administration in light of this administration. With that i want to turn it over to our moderator. Great, thank you so much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming out. Im the director of opinion analysis. And ill be moderating todays panel. One state or two state solution, whats best for the palestinians. Thank you for everybody from the adc who helicopter for with the timely progress and well have an introduction and each panelist will speak, on a one state or two state solution. And then well open up the audience. A dominant paradigm for making peace in the middle east, increasingly challenged by activists who believe its inge practical given whats on the ground and undesirable. They are looking at arabs and jews, and including the palestinians of israel and refugees. Look the at apartheid of south africa, in the struggle for african apartheid, they advocate the use of boycott to put economic and political pressure on israel to respect palestinian rights. With the new Trump Administration looking at any withdrawals, it seems a twostate solution. And shortly after taking office, the president said he didnt mind if it was a one state or a two state solution. A spokesperson said if the Trump Administration declared support, it would quote, unquote, say its bias on his part. And the best solution to realize rights is the superintendent and independent state and thats the only way because. Concensus against it. And poll last week for the policy and survey research showed that 52 of palestinians support twostate solution and others a one state solution. And many who support the twostate solution, many they believe that the twostate is not viable anymore. And moreover, depending when and how the question was asked. Showed that 44 of palestinians supported the twostate solution. Interestingly, the same poll showed they supported a onestate. And creating facts on the ground to cement over all of historic palestine. There are settlers moving illegally over Palestinian Land and 100 outposts over the west bank and jerusalem. They represent the greatest obstacle of a palestinian site and a twostate solution. And a century after there was a declaration nearly 70 years after the american plan, 50 years after the west bank in gaza and a quarter of the century, theyre framing what would be our national interest. Well continue this conversation today. Now i will introduce our speakers. First, we have an arab american comedian, speaker writer and academic. Add adjunct professor at Detroit Mercy School of law and politics, society the arab world and islam. As a comedian and speaker hes addressed packed halls at Carnegie Hall and the performing arts. And he possesses a masters and middle east studies at university of michigan, ann arbor and maker of the film were not white, and recognized on the census. He will be talking about a onestate solution. And also the general director of the pilo in washington d. C. And he was advising palestinian leaders including the president , Prime Minister and various ministries. Hes involved in initiatives in palestine and the u. S. He will be speaking of the twostate solution. And a human rights facility and studied at george nmason university. And she is taught at Temple Law School and Georgetown School of Foreign Service and cofound edit editor. Shes worked as a Legal Counsel for the conventional committee and for refugee and residency rights. Her multimedia production include solid day and a 20 minute documentary. Shes completing a book project tentatively titled justice for some, law, politics and the palestinian stretreatment. I was not involved in organizing todays panel, but ill try to make sure the conversation is a balanced one. If you be so kind, would you start us off . Sure, all right. Good morning, everybody. Im very happy to be here, especially to kick off the conventi convention and on stage with two great palestinian american intellectuals and activists and im just a comedian so ill try. This whole discussion has gotten a little harder this year because if you remember, back in, i think, february one of the first visits to the white house was Benjamin Netanyahu and they had a, you know the press conference in the white house and trump started talking about and he said something about, sure, two state, one state, whatever. Something very trumpish and the discussion sort of started again. There are a few principles, i think, we have to start with when we talk about whether or not there should be a onestate or twostates in palestinian. First of all, israel has shown us, not just in the past 50 years, but the past 70 years, that it has no intention of going anywhere and especially when it comes to the west bank. So, in the west bank, we have now, as chris said, somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000 illegal settlers. Some of the largest israel cities, i guess they can now be called, theyre settlements, exist in the west bank, you have these huge settlements around jerusalem, and you have aerial, one of the biggest outside of nablus and they built a university somewhere. Generally when you build a university somewhere youre not leaving. The notion that israel would leave any part of the west bank, the populated areas, is a dream. Theyve shown clearly theyre not interested in doing that. And also, we have to rest on the principle that all of palestine is occupied. There is no you dont just say the west bank is occupied and the gaza strip is occupied. All of palestine or the recognized borders of israel, sort of recognized borders of israel, all of it is occupied, all is a colonial enterprise, its a progression, the west bank and gaza strip are progression of what happened in 1948. If we talk about them separately, it would be a problem to begin with. And also we currently actually in many ways have one state, right . If one state means that there is one entity sort of ruling over everything, thats currently whats going on. Elon has talked about this many times, right now we have one state, it just functions legally in different ways for different people, based on sort of where they live and more importantly, who they are. But, everything is administered, occupied, governed, by israel. When we talk about one state versus two states, the problem is, we get into a question of palestinian to me to me, a question of palestinian identity, right . When you recognize the twostate frame work and you work within it, what youre doing by default is acquiescing to this idea of classifying palestinians into many different categories. Right now, theres five classes of palestinians throughout the world, right . There is the west Bank Palestinians have one legal status. The others have a different legal status. Jeruselem palestinians, they live inside israel, benefitting for the states, and ap then you have others are palestinian and arab schools get 1 for every student or excuse me, arab students get 1 for every 3 that the jewish students get in the school system. And then the palestinians who are a part of the palestinian global identity, but have no place, it seems, in any of the oslo frame works or as far as israel is concerned. One thing that oslo has done more than anything else, its dismembered the cohesive palestinian identity. We dont see ourselves as something different, or see ourselves from haifa or the discussion of two state, borders and the whole thing has dismembered us in a certain way and those of us who participate in that discourse are furthering that idea. So i am in favor, if its not clear yet. In favor of one state solution and i have six sort of reasons that i think it would work, all right . And i think that we should move forward. Number one is what i call the solomon effect. All right . This is the solomon story from the bible, dont split the baby in half. Right now, if you ask any of us on stage, except maybe chris, any of the palestinians on stage to draw their country we draw the same thing, we draw that triangle that looks like mandatory palestinian. Its all the same to us if we get that tattooed on our bodies or appended on a necklace, thats what we get. If you ask an israeli to draw their country they draw the exact same thing, they dont true it without the west bank and we dont draw it without. And existentially were talking about the same piece of land, talking about the same area. If you split it in the half, as you saw in the bible, it doesnt work out. Not only is no one happy, no one recognizes all of their disparate parts in that. Number one, lets not split the baby in half in we dont have to and theres no reason that we have to at this time. Number two, as this is more of a logistical thing. The Financial System and infrastructure actually would not have to change at all. Currently inside the west bank and gaza strip are completely, everything is from an infrastructure or a financial point of view is israeli. Everything is done by the occupying power, that shouldnt come as a surprise, even in gaza, this holds the discourse that we hear all the time, they didnt create their own currency or Financial System. Everything is still run under the israeli Financial System and infrastructure. For instance, Cell Phone Companies that exist in the west bank, water, utility, all they do is buy from israel and resell to palestinians. In fact, a stateless palestinian in the west bank pays more for her cell phone bill than an israeli who leaves in tel aviv. Theyre buying secondhand, theyre reselling. The infrastructure is all there, you wouldnt have to change anything. If jesus using this, you dont have to change anything. Number three is the settlement issue, in fact, in a weird way, one state solution would solve the settlement issue. Settlements arent settlements anymore theyre one state. If people stay, of course, theres issues of confiscation and of reimbursing people for their losses and that kind of thing, which are rights that lie within individuals that people should always impose. But settlements would not be settlements anymore. Number four, this is a big one, is jerusalem. To put on a nerdy law professor, very parttime law professor hat for a second, jerusalem is and always has been since 1948 this living under this latin term called corpus speratum which means it has its own status. In the participation of the u. N. In 1947 or 48, jerusalem was going to be an International Zone sort of like the vatican and that is never changed under international law. So jerusalem, the entirety of jerusalem, west and east belongs to nobody and is under no ones sovereignty. This is why, because israel pro claims their capital as jerusalem, that nobody recognizes it, because the u. N. Has never recognized that anyone has sovereignty over that city, thats why no countries locate their embassies there. Thats why its such a big deal in america whether or not we move our embassy to jerusalem. Thats why we had that Supreme Court court case a couple of years ago, you remember a Jewish American family whose child was born in jerusalem and they wanted his passport to say israel and the state Department Said no, and there was a legal constitutional cries ises between the legislative and executive. And the Supreme Court ended up saying the executive gets to decide this and if the state Department Says its not part of jerusalem, its not. And many like to say the determined undivided capital. Whatever this is called. It could be immediately opened to the world and open to everyone who lives there and about many the capital of this new state. Number five, and i dont know how to say this one nicely, we palestinia palestinians, we reproduce a lot. We are, we love each other very much and we have for the last 70 years and more. And when netanyahu calls us a demographic threat, hes exactly right. We are, we are a major demographic problem for any sort of racist apartheid state thats going to exist in our land and israel has never really decided how to deal with this. In fact, everything that israel has done for the past 70 years has been to get rid of us. Theyre bad at it. Theyre not good at it at all and in fact the opposite effect. Back in 1948 when they kicked out palestinians from what we now call israel or the green line, whose i think many people in this room might be refugees or descendents of refugees of 1948, i know i am, they called out 60,000 palestinians and 150,000 palestinians still remain. If they had grown at the normal population growth rate of the world. They would be after 70 years, 450,000. They are not, theyre 1. 7 million people. So, this is something thats been going on for a long time and if israel thinks theyre going to get rid of us, whether its inside the west bank and gaza or inside the 1948 borders of israel, its not happening anytime soon. And so this is a problem that only exists, you only see this as a problem if you believe in sort of an ethnic supremacist racist idea of a state. If you get rid of those ideas, then its not a problem anymore. Finally, number six is what i call holy disney, which is hour economy in palestine would be the most amazing economy in the world. I mean, right now, palestine is cut off to maybe a billion or more people throughout the world who dont go either because their countries dont have diplomatic relations with israel or theyre afraid of the political situation. Im from nazareth like jesus, thats what i tell white people, im from nazareth and i was in nazareth a few years ago and i couldnt get a hotel room because there were pilgrimages mostly from africa they were coming and they were there. Now, that was under the current situation. If we were to open up the country and make one state and make one relation with the whole world, theyd have to build 50 hotels in nazareth and bethlehem and jerusalem. And there are other resources used to build their economies, oil obviously being the primary one. The Natural Resource in palestine is god. God is our Natural Resource and its like renewable. Its completely renewable. It never diminishes. So you have to economy that would rival any economy in the world, especially given how small the land is, how small the state is. It would be an amazing economy. Everybody would get rich. But under the current circumstances, could have,that cant happen. If its opened up, it could. So, obviously, we have to both sides have to make a few sort of existential concessions, right . There would no longer be anything called the jewish state. There wouldnt be anything called the palestinian state necessarily. Just a state, as weird it might sound to some people it shouldnt sound weird, but just a state, regardless of ethnicity, right, secular democracy, its worked in other places in the world. Doesnt seem like a crazy idea. So thats what but both peoples would have to give up some kind of idea of a palestinianonly or jewishonly state. And obviously, practically some other things would have to change. You have to change the flag, the flag right now is a little onesided you know, maybe you have to change the flag and maybe be like a brown, green brown, to represent a flalafel patty or Something Like that, change the name of the state to other things, holy land, call the whole thing jerusalem. Call the whole thing palestine, and it doesnt matter. So, but you would have to obviously make some real world changes, but these are things that people would have to get over. But at the end of the day, the only way, right, that we to me the most important element of this is making sure that palestinian identity is united and it really gets totally uniteed with all palestinians under the same umbrella if we start changing the discourse. Thats what it is at the end of the day. We can talk about it academically. Its getting us collectively to change the discourse to only talk about a onestate solution. There is a statue of Nelson Mandela in ramallah. Its been there for a few years now. We are not acting like Nelson Mandela. Nelson mandela didnt ask for separate states inside south africa. He asked for the rights of all of his people under all of the land from the entity that was governing them. Its about time we palestinians start to do the same thing. Thank you amer. Good morning, everyone, thank you for having me on this panel. Im fine with being a minority, probably 30 is probably the proportion of palestinians that still believe in the twostate solution. I would want to start from where amer ended. Theres a lot of points i agree with, but its mostly, my point is really on palestinian identity and whether people are going to have to catch up to the program and just live with the fact that their identity is going to change and be a palestinian and jewish identity. I think thats where the onestaters are mistaken. I dont think either population are happy or satisfied with a state that defines or in which they are nationally defined amal gum. Right . We know the reasons why zionists feel that the the importance of a jewish state to be jewish and to be a ma jo are the jewish, it has to do with their experience and their narrative of never being really fully able to exercise the right of selfdetermination wherever they are, even here, and its only in the last 20, 30 years you see people wearing things publicly and all of that experience, whatever weng of from their perspective, theres a sense, or the way that israeli courts work, where the actual system is one where, based on the fact that no jew gets a fair trial if a judge is not jewish. Thats the narrative that they have. On the other side, the palestinian experience, and im going to share some personal stories because i feel that thats how thats what shapes our identity is those narratives. Theres likewise a very strong ethos of palestinianhood thats strongly based on the struggle against occupation, based on the narrative of the original sin, on balfour, that makes for a state that we are going to have to share it with opressors, a very difficult sell and im going to share some examples. I was born and raised in dubai, a father that was active in the plo. I was raised on sto