Dania Abul Haj is a Palestinian lawyer from occupied Jerusalem. She is a Legal Officer for the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians. Tayab Ali is the Director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians. He is also Head of International Law at Bindmans LLP. Support our work proudly amplifying Palestinian voies: https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/support Subscribe to our daily newsletter: https://palestinedeepdive.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2931c4b53e89e695a30817efb&id=ea848d5a28

Hosted by investigative journalist and co-founder of @DeclassifiedUK, Matt Kennard. Matt is the author of three books: Irregular Army, The Racket & Silent Coup. Mohammed El-Kurd is an internationally touring and award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and organiser from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. Hala Hanina is a Palestinian women's rights activist and PhD student from Gaza. Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers.

Prominent UK Human Rights Lawyer Daniel Machover says: - Genocide Convention MUST BE INVOKED at International Court of Justice - ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has “FAILED IN ONE OF HIS MAIN DUTIES” to create a deterrent for Israel’s crimes against Palestinians - Netanyahu CAN be arrested Daniel Machover is a leading British human rights lawyer who has represented clients in some of the most high profile civil cases in the UK including the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Daniel is a partner at London law firm Hickman and Rose and a co-founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. He has previously managed to obtain arrest warrants in the UK for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni and former Israeli general Doron Almog, who are both accused of war crimes against Palestinians under occupation. Mark Seddon is a former UN Correspondent for Al Jazeera Television who also served as a speechwriter to the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Sir Vincent Fean is a former British diplomat and ambassador with 39 years of experience. He served as Consul-General in Jerusalem (2010-14), Ambassador to Libya (2006-10), and High Commissioner to Malta.   An Arabist, he has engaged in senior policy-making, government affairs and negotiation in Whitehall, the Middle East and Western Europe. He is now Vice-Chair of the Balfour Project (www.balfourproject.org), a UK charity raising awareness of Britain’s historic responsibilities in Palestine and Israel, advocating for lasting peace with justice, security and equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Palestine Deep Dive and Double Down News host an emergency event, Gaza Frontline, hearing from four Palestinians from Gaza on Nov 8th at the Frontline Club, London. The discussion is chaired by investigative journalist Matt Kennard, co-founder of Declassified UK. For a month now, Israel, a nuclear-armed military superpower, has conducted its biggest and harshest bombardments against the captive population of the Gaza Strip, leaving nowhere safe. Now under “complete siege”, Palestinians are not only killed from direct bombardment, crushed under the rubble, but suffer an imposed starvation, dehydration and a collapsed medical system. A considerable number of respected human rights organisations and experts have expressed concern that Palestinians are at grave risk of genocide by Israel. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardments, including over 4,000 children. Since October 7th, Israel has also reportedly ramped up its oppression of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem, killing Palestinians daily and committing other human rights violations such as arresting and detaining Palestinians without trial and committing torture. Despite Israel continuing to commit atrocities in front of our eyes, Western governments refuse to call for an immediate ceasefire and a lifting of the siege to restore electricity, fuel, water, food and to provide urgent humanitarian relief. Right now, as their families remain under blockade and bombardment, it has never been more urgent to hear Palestinians in their own words present both the facts on the ground and what must be done to end this ongoing crisis once and for all. Panel: Matt Kennard (chair) is co-founder and chief investigator at Declassified UK, a news outlet investigating British foreign policy. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) in London, UK. He has worked as a staff writer for the Financial Times in Washington, DC, New York, and London. He is the author of two acclaimed books: Irregular Army (2012) and The Racket (2015). His new book Silent Coup is out now. Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza and the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, a collective which trains the next generation of Palestinian writers to publish their stories in English. Ahmed obtained a Chevening Scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in international journalism from Leeds University before serving as advocacy and outreach officer for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. His writings have been published in many publications including The Washington Post, The New Arab and Arab News. He has appeared live in interviews across the Western media, speaking on channels such as Sky News, the BBC and MSNBC. Dr. Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian academic born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp, northern Gaza, currently based in London, UK. She recently got a Ph.D. from Sheffield Hallam University which explores the historical representations of Gaza and its refugees in documentary films, and is to be published by Bloomsbury next year, under the title, "Between Reality and Documentary". Dr. Abusalama is also an artist, activist, and the author of Palestine from My Eyes blog which was published as a book in ltaly in 2013. She is also a co-founder of Hawiyya Dance Company which showcases Palestine’s folkloric Dabke and music to UK audiences and beyond to amplify anti-colonial and anti-racist causes. Dr. Mohammed Seyam is a medical doctor from Gaza, currently in London pursuing his MSc in Global Healthcare Management at UCL. He is a global diabetes advocate and educator, a Young Leader at the International Diabetes Federation, and the MENA chapter lead at T1International. Mohammed’s work focuses on access to health and health delivery, especially in Non-Communicable diseases. Saleem Lubbad is a full-time physicist working on the development of Nuclear Fusion Energy He was Oxford University’s first Gaza scholar. Saleem is also an Arabic language poet, writer, voice-over artist and TV presenter. His interests span Arabic literature, modern science and technology, the history of science and Islamic architecture. Saleem has worked on various museum curation and media production projects, produced and presented a science show for Al-Araby TV, and often pens columns for several newspapers in the Middle East.

As hostilities entered the thirteenth day, Israel's relentless bombardments on Gaza continued, resulting in an additional 307 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours (as of 17:00), according to the United Nations. This brings the cumulative fatality toll in the Gaza Strip to 3,785, including at least 1,524 children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Hundreds of additional fatalities are believed to be trapped under the rubble. Former UN correspondent for Al Jazeera and speechwriter for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mark Seddon, is joined by: Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and an Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, where he is also an Endowed Professor in the study of Modern Genocide. Chris Doyle, Director of the Council for Arabic-British Understanding Karim Ali, a Palestinian advocate and co-founder of the Gaza Sunbirds, Palestine's first para-cycling team. His family originate from Haifa and Sabareen

On UN World Mental Health Day, Palestine Deep Dive presents: Palestine’s Mental Health Crisis: Personal and Collective Trauma Under Israeli Occupation Dr Samah Jabr is the Director of the Mental Health Unit of Palestine’s Ministry of Health in the West Bank and is a trained psychiatrist. Her practice goes beyond clinical consultation and training, but also addresses the wider Palestinian community's suffering from the ills of Israel's oppressive occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism. According to Dr Jabr: “The Israeli occupation is not only a political issue, but indeed a mental health problem. The injustice, daily humiliations, and trauma each and every Palestinian experiences have caused a repetitive injury, both to the individual and collective minds of my people. In Palestine, abuse and trauma are ongoing, enduring, and they affect every aspect of Palestinian life. Individual personalities are impacted, as is the value system of the community as a whole.” Palestine has an overwhelmingly young population. In previous shows we’ve focused on Gaza’s child mental health crisis; 80% of Gaza’s children now report living with depression, grief and fear according to Save the Children. Join us this time as we Deep Dive into Palestine’s Mental Health Crisis as a whole at this tumultuous moment.

Picking up from where we left off in our June show “Defending the Right to Boycott: Confronting the UK’s Anti-BDS Bill”, (covered here in Al Jazeera) we’ll be learning whether the UK government has indeed been paying attention to British-Palestinians who have been voicing their deep concerns about the moral and legal legitimacy of this Bill, or whether they have attempted to erase them from the discussion altogether, as some reporters have recently claimed. We’ll also be taking a closer look at the trade union conferences just kicking off in the UK, as well as the upcoming party conferences to assess what the trajectory for advocacy around Palestinian rights in the UK at a time when it has never been more urgent to make space for Palestinians to be heard and lead from the front in discussions which affect them most.

This summer marks 17 years of Israel’s hermetic siege and blockade of Gaza, the longest siege of the 21st century. Israel has been placing Palestinians under a suffocating blockade, which constitutes an unprecedented form of collective punishment in a stark violation of international humanitarian law, say Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The 2.2 million Palestinians living in Gaza today have endured rounds of Israel’s lethal aerial assaults delivered with world-leading industrialised military technology on an imprisoned population, leaving 80% of Gaza’s one million children living with depression, grief and fear according to Save the Children. In 2012, the United Nations projected Gaza would be unliveable by 2020. Today in 2023, Palestinians continue to endure a crisis manufactured by Israel’s blockade, with spiralling unemployment, where 98% of water is undrinkable, where electricity blackouts continue daily and where a majority of the population are forced to rely on international organisations and aid for humanitarian relief. By any rational judgement, Gaza today is indeed unliveable and yet Palestinians must endure it. We hear from young Palestinians living in Gaza today who demand for their humanity to be recognised by the international community. For this show, we collaborate with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in the Gaza Strip. It tells the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news and advocates for their human rights.  Hamza M. Salha Fatima Elzahraa Shaat Roaa Aladdin Missmeh

We speak exclusively to the “godfather of human rights” Kenneth Roth on how the international community should be responding to the realities on the ground in Palestine and Israel today. Kenneth Roth is an American attorney, human rights activist and writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022. Writing for Deutsche Welle earlier this year, Roth asserts that after 56 years the pretence of Israel’s occupation being a temporary fixture can no longer be upheld, and what we actually witness today is a “one-state reality”, whereby Israel controls all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River while subjecting Palestinians to an apartheid system of domination and control. “After more than five decades of occupation and 30 years of the ‘peace process,’ it is no longer tenable to regard the repression of Israel’s occupation as a mere temporary phenomenon to be cured by a ‘peace process’ without end. The ‘peace process’ is moribund. While governments speak of a two-state solution, what we have today is a ‘one-state reality.’ Indeed, the main people still invoking the two-state solution seem to be Western officials desperately trying to avoid coming to terms with the unceasing nature of Israeli oppression.”

Andrew Whitley is founder & executive director of Geo-Political Advisory Services (GPAS) & Chair of the Balfour Project. Andrew has had an expansive career first as a journalist for the BBC & Financial Times, before serving as the New York Director of UNRWA & then as Policy Director & interim Chief Executive of The Elders. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Work Agency) was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to help and protect Palestinian refugees expelled during the Nakba in 1947-8 and today it is in dire financial crisis. “The financial crisis facing UNRWA is deep and complex. It has been suffering from these issues for many years, but this year is the most dangerous. UNRWA will have no funds to serve Palestinian refugees after August,” Adnan Abu Hasna, the UNRWA representative in Gaza, told Mondoweiss earlier this month. Today, over six million Palestinian refugees are registered with the agency, relying on it for essential services including education, food, healthcare and jobs. Abu Hasna warned that all UNRWA services will be stopped by the beginning of September if they do not get the necessary funds. This will apply to all UNRWA programs, not only in Gaza, but in all the areas the agency works, including Gaza and the West Bank inside Palestine, as well as refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.  “Nearly half a million students in our schools are dependent on our services. We provide food to nearly 1.2 million Palestine refugees,” he told Al Jazeera. “In a place like Gaza, any shaking of our programmes or our activities or services will threaten the stability and even the social fabric, as refugees are dependent on our cash assistance programme on education and health.” UNRWA runs 22 medical centres and 278 schools in Gaza, alongside several programs in human rights education, university scholarships, vocational training, and teacher training. 

Israel’s military occupation has morphed the entire occupied Palestinian territory into an open-air prison, where Palestinians are constantly confined, surveilled and disciplined, UN Special Rapporteur for the oPt Francesca Albanese demonstrates in a new report to the Human Rights Council. While the report finds that since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, have been arrested and detained under Israeli military rules, Albanese notes that Israel’s “carceral regime” haunts Palestinian life even outside of prisons. With blockades, walls, segregated infrastructure, checkpoints, settlements encircling Palestinian towns and villages, hundreds of bureaucratic permits and a web of digital surveillance, Palestinians are confined to a carceral continuum across strictly controlled enclaves. Join us as we learn more about the nature of Israel’s carceral regime and its relationship to international law with three leading human rights experts: Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. Sahar Francis, Palestinian human rights defender, lawyer and the General Director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Nery Ramati, Israeli human rights attorney defending Palestinian children. He was a partner in Gaby Lasky and Partners Law Office, a leading human rights office in Israel, specialising in freedom of expression and protest. 

With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visiting China earlier this month to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first Arab President to visit China since the China-Arab States Summit of Riyadh in December 2022, commentators have suggested China may well be placing more importance on Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine as a foreign policy issue. On May 24th, Chinese Ambassador Geng Shuang addressed the UN and strongly condemned Israel’s "illegal expansion of [Israeli Jewish] settlements”, its “unilateral action” and its “provocations” in Jerusalem, as well as raising the issue of “the plight of the Palestinian refugees”. This comes off the back of China’s successful brokering of a landmark deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran on 6th April, soon after which China's new Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, reportedly consulted with Palestinian and Israeli officials on "steps to resume peace talks". Given the United States’ long-standing and overt support for Israel, something which has angered Palestinians who feel that this proves the US can never be an honest broker in any efforts to bring about a just and lasting resolution to the region, is China looking to take advantage of this situation and what could increased Chinese influence mean for the Palestinians? We’ll be unpacking: how China’s Belt and Road Initiative incorporates Israel and Palestine; whether accusations of human rights abuses against the Chinese government, particularly its treatment of the Uyghur minority, will affect its relationship with Palestine; the nature of China’s vision for peace in Palestine and Israel; and what a broader shift in the global balance of power could mean for the region and for Palestinians in particular? Ian Williams is President of the Foreign Press Association, New York & Columnist for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Mark Seddon was speechwriter for former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon & Al Jazeera Television’s first UN correspondent in New York.

The UK government has announced that it will press ahead to pass its long-anticipated ‘Anti-BDS Bill’ which has drawn strong condemnation from campaigners across the UK and beyond. The Economic Activity of Public Bodies bill, if enacted, will prevent public bodies (eg universities and local councils) from divesting from companies and organisations found to be complicit in Israeli crimes against Palestinians. The bill is due to be debated by the House of Commons in the first week of July. Its stated purpose is "to prevent public bodies from being influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign states when taking certain economic decisions". But at a time when Israel further entrenches its settler-colonialism and apartheid by the day, killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate, shooting journalists, expanding its illegal settlements, demolishing Palestinian homes and upholding its besiegement of millions of Palestinians in the open-air prison of Gaza, this bill is being widely interpreted as an attempt by the UK government to maintain Israel’s impunity in the face of growing solidarity with Palestine. While the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign claims the government’s main target is campaigns in support of Palestinian rights, it also suggest those pushing for action against deforestation, environmental pollution and the exploitation of children and workers could also be affected by the Bill. Ben Jamal is the Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the largest organisation in solidarity with Palestinians in the UK. PSC has been leading the efforts to prevent this bill from passing into law. Jamal’s family were among the over 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes in the 1948 Nakba. Aimee Shalan is the Co-Director of Makan and Chair of the British Palestinian Committee. Shalan was the former CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians and the former Director of Friends of Birzeit University (FOBZU). Aimee holds a doctorate in the Politics of Palestinian Literature. Shalan was born in the UK with her family originally hailing from Haifa, having been forced to leave in the 1948 Nakba.

Palestine Deep Dive continues its UK event series, opening up space for Palestinians to be heard articulating their own discourse, this time hosting esteemed Palestinian author Dr Ghada Karmi to celebrate the launch of her latest book with Pluto Press, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel. In April, PDD hosted Mohammed El-Kurd to explore the pressing need for a media landscape which no longer marginalises and excludes Palestinians, but centres their voices, experiences and agency, This time Mark Seddon speaks with Ghada Karmi at the Frontline Club to learn more about her vision for Palestinian liberation, one of equal rights for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Karmi argues the 'peace process' that has favoured the two-state solution for more than forty years has now been internationally exposed as masking the expansion of Israel's apartheid regime. Seventy-five years ago,  Ghada Karmi and her family in Jerusalem were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were exiled during the Nakba. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of the single democratic state in Palestine-Israel in which all inhabitants of the lands would have equal rights. Forced from her home in 1948, Karmi came to the United Kingdom as a refugee and later trained as a Doctor of Medicine at Bristol University. She established the first British-Palestinian medical charity in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Her previous books include the best-selling memoir In Search of Fatima (2002) and Return: A Palestinian memoir (2015). Mark Seddon was the first UN Correspondent for Al Jazeera English and is a former editor of Tribune Magazine.

Streamed live at 2pm ET | 7pm UK | 9pm Palestine on Wednesday 10th May: Dr Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist and Founding-Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Rana Shubair is a Palestinian author, mother and language trainer from Gaza. She specializes in English language training, testing and translation. At least fifteen Palestinians have been killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning and throughout the day in a series of Israeli military attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip. More than 40 Israeli warplanes carried out attacks for nearly two hours starting at 2am on Tuesday (23:00 GMT Monday). At least four children and four women have been killed, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Social media users report among those killed in Gaza was Dr Jamal Khaswan, a well-known dentist and Director of the Al Wafa hospital. He was reportedly killed alongside his wife and son. Palestinian journalist Dr Ramzy Baroud argues Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza are likely being waged by Israel's political leadership, “to ensure that the political crisis in Israel can be averted” and says the ferocity of the attacks imply Israel “intends to kill as many Palestinians as possible” and that we may well be anticipating "continued Israeli attack on Gaza” in the days to come. Dr Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist and Founding-Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Rana Shubair is a Palestinian author, mother and language trainer from Gaza. She specializes in English language training, testing and translation.

Mark Seddon speaks to multi award-winning Palestinian photographers Najib Joe Hakim & Ahmad Al-Bazz about frontline photojournalism under apartheid & the power of cultural resistance in the diaspora.   Najib Joe Hakim is an award winning Palestinian-American documentary photographer and artist based in San Francisco, CA. He is the recipient of the 2020 Rebuilding Alliance Storytellers Award for his projects Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay, Born among Mirrors and video Cooking Lessons: A Palestinian American Story. In 2019 he was an Art Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and his digital collage "Sending Wings instead of Arms" placed 1st in a global competition sponsored by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.   Ahmad Al-Bazz is a multi-award winning Palestinian video-journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Nablus, occupied West Bank. In 2012, he became a member of the Activestills documentary photography collective. Ahmad regularly reports and publishes pieces at Mondoweiss and +972 Magazine and also works as a freelancer for Defence for Children International - Palestine. In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award. Between 2015-2019, two of his short documentaries received several regional and international awards, including the Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel Award for Best Arab Short Doc (2015) and the Alexandria Short Film Festival Award (2019). Ahmad’s first feature length documentary was recently pitched at Cannes and should be released later this year.

Mark Seddon is live with Richard Burden, a former Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield (1992 to 2019). He also chaired the Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group (2001 and 2019). He is a Trustee of the Balfour Project and Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. He also served for 10 years scrutinising government as a member of the House of Commons International Development Committee. We DeepDive into the UK government’s current performance when it comes to Israel & Palestine and also look ahead at what Keir Starmer’s Labour Party could do differently in power if it is genuinely committed to upholding human rights and international law in the region.

Leaks, Lies & Spies: The Scandal the UK Media REFUSED to Touch. An Exclusive Conversation with the Makers of Al Jazeera's the Labour Files Since the mainstream media won’t do its job, we'll do it for them! Mark Seddon is conversation with makers of Al Jazeera's The Labour Files exclusively for Palestine Deep Dive. Richard Sanders is an award winning film director with over 25 years experience. He was Senior Producer on the Labour Files and made the second film, on antisemitism. Peter Oborne is an award winning journalist and author who features in the series. He is a former political commentator of the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. He now writes about politics for Open Democracy and Middle East Eye. He is the author of The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism.

Receive the most important news & analysis on Israel/Palestine straight to your inbox! Sign up to our newsletter, Deep Dive Daily: https://bit.ly/3LrCUxE Twitter: @pdeepdive Instagram: @pdeepdivegram   15th September 2021: What's the latest on the Palestinian prisoner escapees? Is it true the four who have been recaptured have since faced unimaginable torture? What is the legality behind Israel's reported use of withholding Palestinian bodies and using them as 'bargaining chips'?

Receive the most important news & analysis on Israel/Palestine straight to your inbox! Sign up to our newsletter, Deep Dive Daily: https://bit.ly/3LrCUxE Twitter: @pdeepdive Instagram: @pdeepdivegram   Mark Seddon speaks to former South African minister Ronnie Kasrils on all things apartheid. Ronnie was a member of the National Executive of the African National Congress (ANC), a founding member of uMkhonto we Sizwe and served as South Africa's Minister for Intelligence Services 2004-2008.

Receive the most important news & analysis on Israel/Palestine straight to your inbox! Sign up to our newsletter, Deep Dive Daily: https://bit.ly/3LrCUxE Twitter: @pdeepdive Instagram: @pdeepdivegram   9th October 2020: Learn more about Roger's voyage of discovery on Palestine and hear his thoughts on the most important issues of our time. Roger Waters is one of the most important musicians of our time. A founding member of legendary progressive rock band Pink Floyd, he has also had a prolific solo career since leaving the band in 1985. Roger is a revolutionary musician in every sense, as noted recently by Vijay Prashad, he is “both a person who revolutionised music, but as well, a revolutionary who happens to be a musician.” Having had a lifelong commitment to social and global justice causes, Roger has taken up all the major issues of our time, including the Palestinian cause. Roger is a leading voice in the global solidarity movement for Palestinian human rights, advocating for the civil society Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement.