Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine hosted Gideon Levy and Suhail Khalileh last Saturday for a discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the world’s response to the issue.

Levy, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writes a weekly feature called “Twilight Zone” on the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Additionally, he is a member of the paper’s editorial board. Khalileh runs the Israeli settlements’ Monitoring Department of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a nonprofit organization.

Khalileh spoke first on the history of the Oslo accords, stating that Palestinians widely believed they would be able to form a state by the end of the negotiations, which would include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

He also said that Palestinians had not anticipated how quickly the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank would grow and that the number of settlements has almost doubled since 1993. “We know that the foremost obstacle that stands in achieving the peace process altogether is the settlement,” he added.

According to Khalileh, the Global Domestic Product per capita for Palestine is under $3,000, while in Israel that number is $37,000. He added that in 2000, when Israel began construction on “the segregation wall, also known as the security barrier,” the wall annexed 13 percent of the West Bank’s total area, according to Khalileh.

He concluded by stating that Palestinians want to establish a state and ultimately seek a one-state solution stating that they are looking to return to the land that was occupied in 1967. “We want to have control over the natural resources, the borders, and Jerusalem as well. For Palestinians, and for many of the others, this would be the sum of the peace process altogether. And without that, me, myself and many would have a hard time seeing any future if there is any left for the peace process altogether.”

Levy then took the stage, stating that in the week he has been traveling, “things in Israel have really deteriorated. … Things are really getting out of control.”

He said, “Many times, you have been told that the conflict in the Middle East is a very complicated conflict, and one cannot describe it in black and white. So I’d like to suggest to you today that it is a very simple conflict, … with very clear justice and injustice, and one might even ask if it is a conflict.” He contrasted the issue with the French occupation of Algeria, stating that this occupation was never referred to as a conflict, and that the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is ultimately about “relative justice, not total justice, because total justice will never be achieved. … Above all, [the issue is] about equality.” Levy argued that Israelis tolerate the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza “with such self-content and confidence that we are not only right, we are the only ones to be right,” because of three core beliefs in Israeli society: the first, Levy argued, is that Israelis “are the chosen people.”

Israelis, Levy argues, use this as an excuse to violate international law. The second is that Israelis and Jews “are first of all the biggest victim in history, but what is more important to say, we are the only victim in history, or at least the only victim in history that should be taken seriously,” he said.

He went on to argue that this was the lesson Israeli students receive upon visiting Auschwitz concentration camps, and stated that “there were more brutal occupations in history, and there were even longer occupations in history than the Israeli one, but I cannot recall even one example in which the occupier presents himself as the victim.”

Finally, Levy argued that “Israelis perceive the Palestinians not exactly as equal human beings like them,” stating that Israelis perceive Palestinians as being “born to kill” or as terrorists, and that because of this, “then questions of human rights are less relevant.”

According to Levy, Israel has “three regimes.” The first is a liberal democracy for Jewish citizens of Israel while the second is “a regime of discrimination” for Palestinian citizens of Israel — who, Levy said, “get a formal democracy with very, very deep discrimination in almost every field.” The last is the regime in the occupied territories, about which Levy said, “There are very, very few more cruel or more brutal totalitarian regimes than the totalitarian regime of Israel in the occupied territories. They are a regime which cannot be defined but as an apartheid regime.”

Levy then said that he does not anticipate any change coming from within Israeli society but that change must begin from the international community, particularly through citizens in civil society rather than governments. He stated that despite supporting the two-state solution for many years, “I think this train has left the station already. … I’d be the happiest person alive to be proven wrong.” He went on to say that Israel cannot be a Jewish democracy as this term is “a built-in contradiction,” due to one group gaining certain privileges over another, which Levy views as undemocratic. He stated that his first priority is for Israel to be democratic, as Israelis have different visions of what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, and that Israel has been “one state for 48 years. The only problem is that it’s not a democratic state. It is a state with three regimes.”

When asked about why the Palestinians have not produced a charismatic leader on the same level as Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi and whether the peace process can succeed without one, Khalileh responded that Yasir Arafat had been this charismatic leader. He criticized the belief that Palestine must produce a charismatic leader while Israel has no similar demands.

When another audience member stated that Israelis view Arafat as responsible for civilian murders, Khalileh stated that Oslo collapsed because “there were terms that the Israelis had to apply. They didn’t do anything when it came to giving up some of the borders, some of the Palestinians’ rights.”

Another audience member asked Levy what forces within the US allow it to continue enabling the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and how Levy could talk about them without using language that would lead to accusations of anti-Semitism. Levy responded that he felt it was unfair to call the United States the key enabler of the conflict, and that America’s pro-Israel lobby may not be as powerful as it is perceived, citing the Iran nuclear deal as an example of it failing to accomplish a key goal.