Since the establishment of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing religious government, at the very latest, Israel and the Palestinian territories have once again been at the center of attention in Germany—the topic has polarized public debate here like few others. Given the increasingly sharp rhetoric, a new wave of violence, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the fragile power relations in the Palestinian territories, a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians seems highly unlikely for the foreseeable future. At the same time, the Netanyahu government’s domestic policies such as the judiciary reform have exacerbated existing rifts within Israeli society. Many see them as a direct attack on democracy—some are even speaking of a coup d’état or the threat of civil war. Seventy-five years after its founding, has the state of Israel reached a crossroads? Are we facing a new level of escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Can there be any hope whatsoever for a peaceful solution, and which role would Germany play in it? And what does it mean to cover these issues for the German public? Prof. Dr. Jacob Eder will discuss these and other questions with journalists Quynh Tran (Tel Aviv and Ramallah) and Christian Meier (Tel Aviv).

Christian Meier is a Tel Aviv correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and has been reporting from Tel Aviv on the Middle East and Northern Africa since 2021. He previously covered the Middle East for the paper’s newsroom. He read Islamic Studies and History in Hamburg, where he was a co-founder of the magazine zenith, which is dedicated to Middle-Eastern topics.

Quynh Tran is a freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. She studied philosophy, cultural history, and economics in Berlin, Paris, and New York. After stints in development aid in Western Africa and in arts management in Germany, she has been writing on a variety of topics at the intersection of culture and politics for German and international media such as Artnet, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Zeit Online since 2013.

In German.
Admission is free; registration is required.