Six disparate expert voices at the Kennedy School on the Israel-Hamas war

Their views could hardly be further apart. The six speakers ranged from a former Trump Administration strategist to an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders; from a former Israeli parliament member who no longer trusts Palestinians to negotiate seriously to a Palestinian professor who views the Hamas attack in the context of decades of violence by Israel; from a former Palestinian prime minister who said Israel’s goals range “from the impossible to the highly unattainable” to a U.S. journalist who said a ceasefire without a Hamas surrender would simply invite more Palestinian attacks against Israel in the future.

All of these views were aired in the Middle East Dialogues series created and led by Tarek Masoud, the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance, who is the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative in the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Read this account of the “Middle East Dialogues” series.

Here are excerpts from the six conversations in the Middle East Dialogues (lightly edited for clarity and length, with links to the online videos of each event):

• Jared Kushner, former senior adviser to President Donald Trump
• Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders
• Dalal Saeb Iriqat, columnist and professor, Arab American University, Palestine
• Salam Fayyad, former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority
• Einat Wilf, former Israel member of the Knesset, author, and former intelligence analyst
• Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist, founder of Sapir, a quarterly Jewish journal