'Acknowledging rights and needs of Israelis and Palestinians: Shared path towards a secure future'

'Acknowledging rights and needs of Israelis and Palestinians: Shared path towards a secure future' To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Issued on: François Picard is pleased to welcome Avi Meyerstein, co-founder and president of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). At a moment when international attention is increasingly consumed by conflict across the Middle East, Meyer argues that the crises currently unfolding are not isolated events but manifestations of unresolved political conflicts that have been left to fester for decades. "While those things remain unresolved," he observes, any semblance of stability "is just an illusion." And rather than focusing solely on state actors, Meyer places unusual emphasis on the role of civil society, describing Israeli and Palestinian grassroots leaders as "the people on the ground who are actually working for solutions." Meyerstein points to polling showing substantial Israeli support for a regional agreement that includes Palestinian statehood, arguing that citizens require "alternatives to this bloody status quo." He insists that the extreme violence has exposed the unsustainability of the current trajectory. For him, the challenge is creating political conditions in which Israelis and Palestinians can move beyond what he calls a "frozen status quo" toward a shared and secure future. His central message is both sobering and hopeful: diplomacy without society is insufficient, but civil society without political engagement is ineffective. Sustainable peace, he argues, will require both. His central message is both sobering and hopeful: diplomacy without society is insufficient, but civil society without political engagement is ineffective. Sustainable peace, he argues, will require both.