Webinar: Toward a Palestinian state and a two-state solution

JSpaceCanada has recently called on the Canadian government to take bold steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including recognition of Palestinian statehood.

This policy brief was mentioned by NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Heather McPherson in her speech in the House of Commons when the NDP brought forward their motion, "Canada's Actions to Promote Peace in the Middle East", in which the NDP called for Canada to recognize a Palestinian state, in accordance with our policy suggestions. 

While the motion in its entirety was amended, a call for a negotiated two-state solution remained.

As it becomes increasingly clear that only a political, not military, solution will solve this conflict and bring peace, safety, and security to Israelis and Palestinians, the question remains - how do we get a two-state solution?

When trust in leadership is low on the Israeli and Palestinian sides, when fear and trauma envelop both communities and belief in a peaceful outcome erodes, what practical and pragmatic steps can be taken to turn the tide?

What would recognition of Palestinian statehood mean, could it advance a comprehensive regional peace initiative, and is it actually a "gift to Hamas"?

We'll dig into all the difficult questions you have with our expert guests.

ABOUT DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN:

Dahlia Scheindlin is a public opinion expert and an international political and strategic consultant, as well as a scholar and a writer, based in Tel Aviv. She is currently a fellow at Century International, a NY-based progressive foreign policy think tank, and a regular columnist at Haaretz (English).

She has advised and conducted research on nine national campaigns in Israel over twenty-five years, and has provided research and advising for elections, referendums, and civil society campaigns in fifteen different countries and regions (Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, the United States, and Zanzibar).

In the past, she has worked as a senior analyst for the Washington-based global firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR), the director of international campaigns at GCS Issue Management, and a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. As an independent consultant, she conducts extensive public opinion and policy research on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the peace process (including working for Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the Camp David negotiations in 2000, through GQRR). She also consults on the issues of democracy, human rights, minority relations, religious identity, Arab–Jewish relations, and foreign affairs. She conducts the ongoing joint Israeli–Palestinian public opinion survey together with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Scheindlin completed her PhD in political science at Tel Aviv University, where she wrote about unrecognized states emerging from ethnonationalist conflicts (focusing on Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Nagorno-Karabakh). She has taught as an adjunct lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, the Jezreel Valley College, and at Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus. She has given individual lectures at Columbia, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, American University, and George Washington University, among others.

Scheindlin is a founding member of +972 Magazine. She was a fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights (2013), and a policy fellow at Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, where she focused on comparative conflict analysis in 2016–19. She co-hosted the podcast The Tel Aviv Review from 2016-202, and co-hosted two seasons of the "Election Overdose" podcast about the 2021 and 2022 Israeli elections with Anshel Pfeffer at the newspaper Haaretz. Dahlia has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, and other publications. She is a frequent commentator for international media, including CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, France 24, CBC, and AFP.

Dahlia's new book, The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled, was published in September, 2023.

ABOUT JON ALLEN:

Born in Winnipeg in 1950, Jon Allen (LL.B., University of Western Ontario, 1976; LL.M., International Law, University of London School of Economics, 1977) joined the then Department of External Affairs in 1981.

In addition to postings abroad in Mexico City and New Delhi, Mr. Allen held the positions of Minister (Political Affairs) at the Canadian Embassy in Washington (2004-2006) and Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas (2010-2012).

From 2006 to 2010, he was Canada’s Ambassador to Israel and from 2012 to 2016 he was Ambassador to Spain and Andorra. From 2012 to 2014, he served concurrently as Charge´ d’affaires at the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See.

He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council, Chair of the JSpaceCanada Policy Centre, and the Chair of Rozana Canada, a not-for-profit whose objective is to build bridges between Palestinians and Israelis via the health sector.