PREMIUM: "A Radical Vision for Palestine" with Palestinian Professor Omar Dajani
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
Josh Szeps
4.5 • 905 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Israel and Hezbollah cautiously observe a ceasefire, the prospect of a Palestinian state feels as remote as ever. But there are people working tirelessly to bring one about, impeded by radicals on both sides who see this as a war between Goodies and Baddies.
Omar Dajani is one of the visionaries. As a Palestinian-American professor, he and Josh disagree about much regarding the culpability and dysfunction of Gaza's misery. Omar was a negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization and attended the Camp David Summit with President Clinton in 2000.
But he now argues for a new type of two-state solution that would enable Israelis and Palestinians to live and work on both sides of the 1967 Green Line. As the co-chair of the non-profit A Land for All, he wants to shift our thinking from a model of separation to one of power sharing.
In this episode, Josh has a frank and heartfelt conversation with a senior Palestinian thinker that offers a glimpse of a better future.
This episode was recorded prior to the recent Lebanon ceasefire.
To hear the full episode and to join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. And the one issue on which I received by far the most hate from punters and peers alike is the Gaza War and Israel and Palestine. It's extremely heated. I try to be measured. The extent to which people seem to be |
| 0:26.9 | siloed in their own echo chambers on that particular issue seems to be more intense than almost any |
| 0:32.8 | other, with the possible exception of the claim that the 2020 election was stolen and how that looms |
| 0:39.0 | in the minds of Donald Trump supporters. |
| 0:41.5 | And I suppose the easiest way for me to get clicks and engagement would be to produce a lot of |
| 0:48.8 | click-baity clips of me owning some foolish Palestinian person or me talking to some extremely right-wing Israeli |
| 0:56.4 | or me talking to some Hamas sympathizer or me talking to someone who just generally |
| 1:03.0 | inflames the discourse. I don't want to do that. I'm not interested in doing that. I think it's |
| 1:09.5 | tiresome. I think it's boring. I think it contributes to the problem. So today we have an articulate, brilliant, intelligent and humane prominent Palestinian. This is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time. Umar Dejani is just a man to have it with. |
| 1:28.6 | He's a Palestinian-American professor. And he was a negotiator for the PLO, the Palestine Liberation |
| 1:36.0 | Organization. In fact, he was at the Camp David Summit, which needless to say, did not succeed |
| 1:41.9 | in creating a two-state solution but got reasonably close and |
| 1:44.9 | they certainly tried that was convened by president bill clinton in the year 2000 now omar currently |
| 1:51.9 | co-chairs a non-profit called a land for all and it's interesting because it advocates a particular |
| 1:59.7 | type of two-state solution not a two-state solution defined a particular type of two-state solution, not a two-state |
| 2:01.7 | solution defined by separation, but a two-state solution defined by power sharing. I'll let him |
| 2:08.5 | articulate exactly what it would look like, but the vision is that instead of Israelis and Palestinians |
| 2:13.1 | having two antagonistic states hunkered down next to each other, that you would actually |
| 2:20.9 | reach a point someday where Israelis and Palestinians could live and work on both sides of the |
| 2:26.8 | 1967 Green Line. And many of the problems that are thrown up by the idea of a two-state solution |
| 2:33.7 | that is defined by non-poorous |
| 2:36.0 | borders go away the moment you start permitting freedom of work, freedom of movement, |
... |
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