ICAHD UK Edinburgh Conference

Israel’s war on Gaza captured the world’s attention. It revealed how complicit Western nations are in allowing Israel’s genocide to continue without regard for international law. It also brought millions of people of all ages and backgrounds out onto the streets, and university students out of classes and into campus encampments. At last Palestine has become a global issue connecting many other struggles.

However, Palestinians and Palestine remain under threat. Even as we are focused on Gaza, we cannot lose sight of the bigger political picture: collusion among Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia to “normalize” Israel’s apartheid regime over all of historic Palestine in their larger geopolitical interests of ensuring Western hegemony over the Middle East in face of Iranian threats and Chinese inroads.

The ICAHD UK conferences will evaluate the tragic and dramatic developments in Palestine/Israel over the past year. With the focus on the Big Picture, we ask what is our push-back? How are the Palestinians and their allies ratcheting up their struggle for Palestinian rights and, most important, what political programs for the future are Palestinians formulating?

The conferences will include some speakers who are not well-known to the wider public but whom are playing key leadership roles and who must be heard.

Speakers will include:

Dr Jeff Halper is an Israeli anthropologist, the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a founding member of the Palestinian-led One Democratic State Campaign.

He is the author of several books, among them: An Israeli in Palestine, on his work against the Occupation; War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award; and most recently, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism and the Case for One Democratic State.

In 2008, Jeff participated in the first (and successful) attempt of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege by sailing into Gaza. He has served on the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and was a member of the international support committee of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine. In 2006 Jeff was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni.

Dr Livnat Konopny Decleve is a political anthropologist. She is currently affiliated with the University of Edinburgh as a British Academy International Fellow. Her PhD dissertations, accorded by Tel Aviv University, looked into perceptions of political action and sovereignty amongst Israeli Jewish left-wing activists who left Israel for political reasons and either moved abroad or to Palestinian localities in the West Bank. Her current research delves into alternative political imaginations of Jewish left-wing activists working in Israel/Palestine and abroad.

Daoud Ghoul is from Silwan, Jerusalem. He is a Human Geography PhD student at Newcastle University. He worked in different positions including the previous director of Shafaq - the Jerusalem Arts Network and as an alternative tour guide.

Daoud will open the Edinburgh conference.

Marian Pallister is a journalist, author and chair of Pax Christi Scotland. Her work in newspapers took her to a number of areas of conflict and natural disasters around the world, which she suggests led in time to her commitment to voluntary work with Justice and Peace Scotland and then to be involved in setting up a Scottish membership of the peace organisation Pax Christ International.

Further speakers to be announced.

Public £25, Members £20, Unwaged £15
Includes welcome refreshments & information pack

Bring your own packed lunch

Host or Publisher ICAHD UK