fbpx
Join us Donate
Palestine: From Balfour to Apartheid - PSC Event at Palexpo

When

08/07/2017    
10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Where

Queen Elizabeth II Centre
Westminster, London
Loading Map....

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is proud to host the opening event at Palestine Expo

Palestine: From Balfour to Apartheid

Saturday 8 July

10am

Queen Elizabeth II Centre, Westminster, London

 

In the year of the centenary of the Balfour declaration we examine the legacy of Balfour. The UK government has announced that it will mark the anniversary with pride whilst acknowledging some regrets that the declaration did not acknowledge the political rights of Palestinians. But the reality is that Balfour set the frame for Palestinian dispossession and exemplified 100 years of policy that has disregarded Palestinian voices and rights.

 

The panel will consider what Balfour means to different generations of Palestinians, how Israel has established a system of rule over Palestinians that meets the definition of apartheid and what, in 2017, are the current responsibilities of the UK government.

 

Speakers include:

 

Prof Virginia Tilley, Co-author of the recent UN report on Israel Apartheid

 

Dr Ghada Karmi, Palestinian author and academic

 

Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and commentator

 

Ben Jamal, Director PSC

 

Chaired by Hugh Lanning, PSC Chair

 

****************** 

 

To attend this event you will need to purchase a ticket from  https://www.palestineexpo.com/  which will allow you to access the full two days of Palestine activities on the 8th and 9th July in London.

 

=================

 

Speakers Biographies

 

Virginia Tilley is a Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a long-standing scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is author of The One-State Solution (2005)  and editor of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (2012). With Richard Falk, she co authored the March 2017 report for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia finding that Israel is imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people as a whole. She specializes in racial and ethnic studies and has spent years researching conflicts in North America, Central America, South Africa, and Oceania.

 

Ghada Karmi was born in Jerusalem and was forced to leave her home with her family as a result of Israel’s creation in 1948. The family moved to England in 1949, where she grew up and was educated, and practised as a Doctor. She held a number of research appointments on Middle Eastern politics and culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and in the Universities of Durham and Leeds.

From 1999 to 2001 she was an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where she led a major project on Israel-Palestinian reconciliation. In 2009, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is the author of the acclaimed autobiography In search of Fatima.

Currently Ghada Karmi is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. She is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity campaign

 

Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian-American writer and commentator, based in Ramallah. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Al-Jazeera English, Huffington Post, Middle East Monitor, and more.  Maryam has faced a number of challenges living under occupation and has documented these injustices that she and all Palestinians face daily.

 

Ben Jamal was appointed as Director of PSC in October 2016 becoming the first Palestinian to hold that role.  Prior to becoming Director Ben had served as a member of PSC’s executive committee for a number of years and also chaired a PSC branch for  13 years. He is a member of the British Palestinian Policy Council. Prior to his appointment at PSC Ben was the CEO of a Charity working in the field of Domestic Violence.

 

Hugh Lanning is Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and has worked for the civil service trade union movement for over 30 years, and now retired from his latest position as Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union. He has visited Palestine on several occasions, until March 2017 when he was denied entry by the Israeli authorities for his Palestine activities. He has been active in the anti-racist movement and campaigns for many years and is also Vice-Chair of Unite Against Fascism.

 

=========================================