Israel and Palestine 101: A Primer
Description: Following current events in Palestine and Israel, many on campus find themselves with questions about essential history. Why did this conflict begin more than one hundred years ago and how did it reach this point? This talk aims to help explain some of this context and empower participants with the fundamental historical knowledge they need to navigate the news. It will cover key issues and events from the rise of Zionism through British colonialism in Palestine, the 1948 war, the Oslo peace process, transformations in the map across the twentieth century, and the political status quo existing on the eve of October 7.
Guest Facilitator: Dr. Wendy Pearlman is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Crown Professor of Middle East Studies and directs the Middle East and North Africa Studies Program. She is the author of five books on Middle East politics, including three on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict: Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003); Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge, 2011); and Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (with Boaz Atzili, Columbia, 2018). She has lived in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip and studied at both Birzeit University near Ramallah and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has taught courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Northwestern since 2009.
Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement by 
