Israel-Palestine: What Next?

Salman Shaikh is the Founder and CEO of The Shaikh Group (TSG), a specialised peace-building organisation dedicated to mitigating and resolving violent conflict, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Shaikh has extensive experience leading mediation and Track II diplomacy initiatives with local actors, governments, and key international actors – with a focus on Syria, the broader Levant, the Gulf region and Iran. Before establishing TSG, Shaikh was the director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, where his research focused on conflict resolution, domestic policy, and geopolitics of the Middle East. Shaikh previously worked the United Nations in a number of offices. Shaikh also served as director for policy and research in the private office of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bin Nasser al-Missned, the Consort of the former Emir of the State of Qatar.

Daniel Levy is the President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), focusing on de-escalation and conflict resolution in the Middle East with an emphasis on Palestine-Israel. From 2012 to 2016, Levy was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that he was a senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s Middle East Taskforce in Washington DC and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation in New York. Levy has also worked as a senior government advisor and attended the Israel/Palestine peace talks at Taba and Oslo B. Levy is a Council Member of ECFR, co-founder of J Street, founder of the newly formed Diaspora Alliance (combatting antisemitism and its conflation) and serves on the board of the European Middle East Project. He is a former Trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York.

Gabrielle Rifkind is the Director of Oxford Process, an independent preventive diplomacy initiative. She is a group analyst, specialist in conflict resolution and an accredited mediator. Gabrielle combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and dialogue. Her focus of work over the past two decades has been the Iran nuclear issue, the proxy wars in Syria, the Palestine-Israel conflict, and the Ukraine-Russia war. She has both facilitated meetings with and spent time talking to the leadership in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and ‘Western’ states. More recently, Oxford Process has turned its attention to conflict resolution beyond the Middle East, including a UK focus. Gabrielle is also an author and frequent contributor to the media, with over 50 publications nearly always from a conflict resolution perspective. She is the author of three books: The Psychology of Political Extremism, The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution, and Making Terrorism History. She has also written for The Guardian, The Times, Prospect, The Independent, Open Democracy, and the New England Journal of Public Policy. She has been the conflict mediator on BBC Radio 4’s Across the Red Line, twice debated at the Oxford Union and regularly gives public lectures.

Daniel Hilton is Middle East Eye’s head of news. In April 2021, his reporting from the Libyan town of Tarhuna on civil war atrocities was recognised with an Amnesty International Media Award. He has also been shortlisted for the Prix Bayeux awards for war correspondents and journalist of the year at the Drum awards. Previously Hilton was based in Beirut, where he was region editor of Lebanon’s The Daily Star newspaper.