On Monday, Nov. 17, the department of peace and conflict studies hosted a panel discussion, “The Future of Palestine,” concluding the two-part Palestine/Israel series. The talk, moderated by Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Bashir Abu-Manneh, featured three leading voices in current academic discussions on Palestinian occupation and statehood. This week’s lecture was without the Public Safety presence or Swarthmore ID entry requirement that accompanied last week’s discussion on Israel’s future.
The first speaker, Jehad Abusalim, executive director at the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, opened the event by drawing attention to the ongoing violence in Gaza and its roots in the long history of occupation in Palestine: “What happened in Gaza did not come out of nowhere. Genocide does not happen in a vacuum. It takes structure, takes policy, it takes years of looking away.”
Abusalim described the history of nonviolent Palestinian resistance, including calls for boycotts and diplomatic action, and the violent responses from Israel that followed. The message conveyed through these reactions, he argued, was one of dehumanization and “the constant reminder that no matter what you do, you do not belong and will never be recognized.”
Abusalim argued that “two years into the genocide and 76 years into the Nakba,” the mass displacement of Palestinians beginning in 1948, the audience should ask why and how this has occurred.
“I have my version of the story, and you are entitled to your own views,” Abusalim said. He encouraged looking closely at sources of weapons funding and their recipients, the overlooking of legal norms, patterns in media coverage, and institutional policies that “have connected us to a violence we claim to oppose.” He emphasized the importance of “resisting the shrinking of moral vocabulary” and describing realities without normalizing inequality or the killing of Palestinians, insisting on the use of terms such as occupation, apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
“Treat Gaza as a mirror,” Abusalim urged at the end of his talk. “It reflects a contest between two visions for life on this planet and this century. One vision treats people as problems to be managed by numbers and statistics, and uses surveillance, minimization, and force to keep them in their place.” Yet, he explained, “There is another vision, and I believe in it, despite everything that has unfolded: losing friends, relatives, educators, mentors, neighbors, two decades’ worth of memories erased. This is a vision that insists on universal rights.”
Dr. Anwar Mhajne, associate professor of political science and international studies at Stonehill College, began by asking the full room of attendees whether they favored a one-state or two-state solution in Palestine, and then discussed public opinion across different groups on the ground.
Drawing attention to recent events, such as the mysterious relocation of Palestinians from Gaza on a plane to South Africa and an upcoming UN vote concerning current ceasefire procedures, Mhajne recognized the importance of acknowledging these many layers of public opinion when thinking about the future.
“10% of Israeli Jews and 6% of Palestinians believe that the other side is trustworthy,” Mhajne explained. Furthermore, she noted that while 40% of Palestinians are in support of a two-state solution, which shows an increase from 2022, Jewish Israelis currently have the lowest support of a two-state solution since 1990, a trend that Dr. Lihi Ben Shitrit also discussed in last week’s lecture. Dr. Mhajne stressed that these differences in public opinion must be acknowledged and factored into policy-making concerning Palestine’s future. “Without thinking about all these levels, which are the international, the national, and the regional, we won’t be able to achieve a future that is going to help us move forward.”
Mhajne concluded with two points she considers essential as the international community looks to the future. First, she emphasized the need for a third party that can “push for the establishment of something that will satisfy, will give the Palestinians dignity, statehood, self-determination, and prevent the continuous violence from happening.” Second, she called for institutional changes in the West Bank and Palestinian territories, including “new leadership, genuine elections, independent courts, and a reform of the security sector,” as well as the development of mechanisms for women and youth to participate meaningfully in their society.
The panel’s third speaker, Dr. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, provided The Phoenix with a statement of her thoughts on the panel’s subject matter but declined to be quoted from the event.
Sabbagh-Khoury began her lecture by echoing a point raised by the earlier speakers: that despite the current ceasefire between Palestine and Israel, Palestinians have continued to be killed, injured, and displaced every day since the first phase of the ceasefire was put in place on Oct. 10. Although the demand to stop the killing is absolutely urgent, she argued that pressure from ongoing movements must also focus on dismantling the systems that enable this violence.
Sabbagh-Khory also highlighted that groups across the world, from Indigenous movements in the United States to those facing decolonial struggles in Africa, have increasingly chosen to stand with Palestine in recent years, with the Palestinian struggle becoming the center of a broader global anti-colonial movement. This shift, she explained, is not merely symbolic; many groups recognize in the occupation in Palestine the same structural systems of oppression they are fighting. She invited the audience, both students and educators, to continue understanding the struggle in Palestine as part of a global effort to dismantle Eurocentric hierarchies of power.
