IQ2 debate — Paths to Peace: proposals to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In at the deep end. That’s how Intelligence Squared likes to kick off, and the first debate of the new season plunged straight into the perilous waters of the Israel–Palestine conflict. David Lindley, the chair, asked each speaker to present ideas for a workable peace.

Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, opened on a note of gloomy optimism. There were dark signs on the horizon, yet he was encouraged because ‘never have so many parties been so desperate for a settlement’. Tehran is the key problem. And if we doubted his word, ‘just listen to Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust while planning the next one’. He deplored the ‘eerie silence’ of the moderate Muslim world and regretted that oil-rich sheikhs had the cash to buy Manchester City football club but not to invest in Palestine. The solution lay with those Muslim states who had expressed their enthusiasm for peace at last year’s Annapolis Conference.