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Understanding Israel Palestine
This show is inspired by Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, a local group that has advocated for 20 years for a fair and even-handed U.S. foreign policy that recognizes the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. Our program offers interviews with journalists, scholars, policy experts and activists to offer multiple perspectives, and to clarify the underlying issues that are often obscured by headline news.
Liel Maghan and Tareq Nassar of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), also known as the Israel Palestine Center for Regional Initiatives, a joint Israeli-Palestinian NGO started in 19888 to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, discuss heightened tensions in Jerusalem, especially in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, over the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes. Nassar, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, and Maghan, an Israeli, discuss the heavy-handed tactics of the Israeli police, the neglect of Palestinians communities within Israel and the inter-communal violence inside Israel seen in May when mobs of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis attacked each other. Maghan notes the role of outside agitators in the violence, with right-wing extremists busing in supporters to inflame hostility between Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Many of these extremists are funded by by U.S. groups, he says. The two discuss IPCR’s projects to get Israelis and Palestinians working on the ground together and Maghan observes the premise of the two-state solution — the idea that Palestinians and Israelis can separate and divorce from one another — is increasingly unrealistic.
