Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

With:

• Ludo Abicht
• Mustapha Barghouthi
• Ilan Pappé

Music by:

• Sadeg Shiakh Eldin Gibril

This summer it will have been forty years since the Six-Day War in 1967, which led to the occupation of the Palestinian territories. In November it will be sixty years since the United Nations divided the British Mandate for Palestine in a Jewish and a Palestinian part.
All these years, news from the region has dominated the press. New peace accords are regularly announced, but there seems to be a stalemate. How did it get to this? Did we make historic mistakes? Or is it Israel’s occupation and annexation policy? Maybe it’s because of the unreasonable demands of the Palestinians and their leaders? Or is it the international and local superpowers that constantly add oil to the fire?

A panel of expert witnesses will shed light on the matter, not avoiding bold statements.
Music will be provided by Sudanese oud player Sadeg Shiakh Eldin Gibril.

• Welcoming by Leen Laenens (president of Actieplatform Palestina, and president of the Oxfam-Wereldshops)

• Mustapha Barghouthi was Mahmoud Abbas biggest opponent for the presidential elections in 2005. In the spring he briefly was the minister for information in the Hamas and Fatah government. Together with literary theorist Edward Said he founded the Palestinian National Initiative as an alternative to Fatah and Hamas.

• Ilan Pappé is one of the so-called New Historians, who re-examined the history of Israel, resulting in controversy. Until recently he taught at Haifa University, now he teaches at Exeter University (UK). His newest book is called the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

• Ludo Abicht is a philosopher and a professor at the department of political science at Antwerp University. He has written several books and articles on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. He will be leading this debate.