Taking stock of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks

The discussion will explore how far John Kerry’s momentum can carry the process forward, what role Europe can play, what might be the impact of the breakthrough in P5+1 talks with Iran, and how the current negotiations are being viewed among the Israeli and Palestinian publics and polities. 

Guests

Daniel Levy, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director, ECFR

Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and GovernmentRelations, Americans For Peace Now

Alex Kouttab, Founding Member, Bir Zeit Strategic Studies Forum

 

Chaired by

Dimi Reider, Co-founder, +972 Magazine

As we approach the half-way stage of the current nine-month window dedicated by the US administration to re-launched Israeli-Palestinian peace talks we will take a look at the prospects for talks and the scenarios and their implications that are likely to play out over the coming months, whereby negotiations either achieve a breakthrough, collapse or are prolonged. The discussion will explore how far U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s momentum can carry the process forward, what role Europe can play, what might be the impact of the breakthrough  in P5+1 talks with Iran, and how the current negotiations are being viewed among the Israeli and Palestinian publics and polities.

Dimi Reider is an Israeli journalist, blogger and co-founder of +972 Magazine. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Daily Beast and the Jerusalem Post. Dimi Reider is also an Associate Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Alex Kouttab is a founding member of the Birzeit Strategic Studies Forum at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Previously he was an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team on permanent status negotiations with Israel. Alex Kouttab joined ECFR as a Visiting Fellow in September 2013 and co-authored the report ‘In search of legitimacy: the Palestinian national movement 20 years after Oslo’.

Lara Friedman is director of policy and government relations for Americans for Peace Now. She is a leading authority on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israeli settlements policy, and Jerusalem and regularly briefs Members of Congress and US Administration officials. A former Foreign Service Officer, she speaks fluent Arabic and has served in Jerusalem, Tunis and Beirut.

Daniel Levy is the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at ECFR. He is also a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and co-editor of foreignpolicy.com’s Middle East channel. Levy was previously an official negotiator for the Israeli government in peace talks with the Palestinians under Prime Ministers Rabin and Barak, and served as the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.