IQ2 debate — Paths to Peace: proposals to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In at the deep end. That’s how Intelligence Squared likes to kick off, and the first debate of the new season plunged straight into the perilous waters of the Israel–Palestine conflict. David Lindley, the chair, asked each speaker to present ideas for a workable peace.

Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, opened on a note of gloomy optimism. There were dark signs on the horizon, yet he was encouraged because ‘never have so many parties been so desperate for a settlement’. Tehran is the key problem. And if we doubted his word, ‘just listen to Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust while planning the next one’. He deplored the ‘eerie silence’ of the moderate Muslim world and regretted that oil-rich sheikhs had the cash to buy Manchester City football club but not to invest in Palestine. The solution lay with those Muslim states who had expressed their enthusiasm for peace at last year’s Annapolis Conference. ‘Let them tell Mahmoud Abbas to go for it and Israel will be a willing partner for peace in a land we are destined one day to share.’ A heartening, idealistic speech but light on detail. By contrast Dr Hanan Ashrawi, of the Palestinian Legislative Council, settled straight into a list of specific demands. A kerb on Israeli settlements, suspension of all checkpoints, demolition of the wall, a halt to further incursions by the IDF. Placing her faith in ‘a triple-tier approach’, (the third layer being the international community), Dr Ashrawi called for a peace conference based on international law. She warned that if the Occupied Territories were not liberated ‘within months’, Palestine would ask for a protectorate to be established.