for background on each case. the landmark cases companion book, a link to the national constitution center's interactive constitution and the landmark cases podcast at c-span.org/landmarkcases. >> brian barber, fell at the institute for palestine studies spoke about protest in gaza. his recent trip to the territory and the prospects for peace between israelis and palestinians. the talk was cohosted by the institute for palestine studies and the palestine center in washington. this runs in our 15 minutes. -- this runs one hour and 15 minutes. >> thank you all for coming and i like to also thank the jerusalem fund palestine center for hosting him come for joy dg this with us actually and hosting the beautiful facility here.

i've been told by my stuff, i'm julia pitner, the executive director of the institute for palestine studies, and i've been told by my colleagues i need to promote the books in the back. we brought some very interesting books about gaza and about palestine in general. but today it's about gaza -- [inaudible] >> okay. gaza hasn't back in headlines lately, as you know. there are a lot of demonstrations going on right now along the border with israel, in gaza, and today also in the west bank -- [inaudible] >> should we be surprised? no. i think all of us know very well the answer is no. although the palestinians have been negotiating, shall we say

come with israel for the last 26 years, the refugees have been waiting 70 for some type of justice. young people in palestine and gaza specifically are frustrated with the slowness of the pace. the young people that are demonstrating and the demonstrations that are going on now -- that are participating in the demonstrations that are going on now have already lived through four major conflicts. the young children who are like ten years old have lived through three of those. the restrictions on the movement of people and goods did not start with the takeover of gaza, the de facto government in gaza. actually started in 1993. the restrictions imposed on

gaza, the tightening of the goods and people, moving in and out started right as, as israel finished the border fence and the checkpoint system. it has only gotten worse over the years with a brief relief for three months in 2005. gaza has been almost under total closure since 2007. the unemployment rate today is at 45%. the electricity available to the ordinary people is only four hours a day. it affects the sewage system, the water treatment system, the agriculture and businesses. effects the education system, too. but all of these are just numbers and statistics but they do reflect the reality of life in gaza. these people are represented in

these statistics. today i have the pleasure of welcoming doctor brian barber who has himself just returned from gaza. dr. barber is a senior fellow at the institute for palestine studies and the fellow -- professor professor emeritus what he is founder and director of the center for study of youth and political conflict. he's also the editor of a 2009 oxford university press volume entitled adolescence and -- "adolescents and war" and is regularly published also studies on global youth, including the palestinians and leading academic outlets and publications. he has a forthcoming book which unfortunately is not out yet but

coming soon, i know. and we are looking very much for to reading it, that he is here today to tell us about his experience over the past 23 years visiting with people in gaza. so, brian, i welcome you to the podium to take us through this journey with you. [applause] >> thank you kindly, julie, for the introduction. thank you all here and for those wishing for taking the time to meet with me today. thank you also to the jerusalem fund and the palestine center for hosting this talk, and to the houston palestine studies r new america for supporting me. i could talk about gaza for days, and would given the

chance, but in the 40 minutes or so i have today, i will do my best to communicate some of the essences of gaza and its people as i've come to know them over the past decades. as a note of clarification, gazans use of the term gaza in at least two ways. first, to refer to the gaza strip as a whole. second, it's not in gaza itself come not in gaza city itself, gazans will refer to the population center as gaza. for our purposes today gaza means the entire strip. much of what i have to say today in terms of attitudes, orientations, emotions, et cetera, applies equally well to palestinians in the west bank and east jerusalem where i also have had considerable experienc experience. but my focus today is on gaza,

especially as i sense been on this recent trip. i will not take the time now to explain how or why this upper-middle-class white wasp ended up in gaza in the first place in 1995, a place that i'd literally no interest in. as interesting as that story is. but as very brief background literacy i'm a social psychologist by trading him interested primarily in youth around the world, and how their context from family to nation facility or impede their development into competent adults and citizens. as to gaza my interest encompasses several questions. firstly, why, how and to what degree palestinian youth engage in the first intifada from 1987-1993 in which youth participated in proportion step

before seen or matched since? upwards of 80% of young men and 80% of young women. how that experience has shaped their lives, and have it made life work for themselves over the decades through the ever worsening economic, health and political conditions. my colleagues and i published results of our several studies and top academic journals and help medicine, psychology, and believe we've made a mark on a variety of key issues including resilience, well-being, mental suffering, social suffering and political activism. yet as rigorous as the research has been done and described, those writings can give you a real feel for this unique place and its people. most of you will never go to gaza. my soul goal today accordingly is to take you there. i'll attempt that via several

mechanisms including photos, videos, narratives and verse. i'll attempt, my hope is will come away feeling that you know gaza and its people better than before. one overall lesson we learned about studying palestinians is a crucially context matters to human thinking, feeling and behaving. for a place like gaza where context and all of its territorial economic and political dimensions literally influenced the activities and mood of most every day, it's story can't be told without attention to these environments. first some history. you may not know a crucial gaza has been over the millennia. here is a short list of the

luminaries that if that presence in gaza. gaza was the chief center of the frankincense trade as early as 500 bc, as well as the commercial center for many of the products. it was famed for its failures,, theaters and school of rhetoric which was at the time the basis of all higher education. so important was gaza in roman times that it had its own calendar. yet its strategic location between asia and africa has also made it that coveted linchpin for incessant military conquest across the millennia. throughout it to record makes clear that unlike many of the cities in the region, gazans

have been and usually defined. alexander the great lost 10,000 men taking gaza. napoleon was injured in his assault on the city. it took three full days to take it. for a sense of gazans boundaries and the limitations here are some indications by ochoa, united nations office for the coronation of humanitarian affairs. you will note that these date back to 2011 and barely have been updated since, the largest chains will be significant widening on the eastern border after the 2014 war.

we've added here the fencing, the crossings, only two of which are pedestrian. this would be the zones as of 2011. and then the see restrictions. here is another rendition. with that brief background i'd like now to take you inside gaza, via video clips i made during the recent trip. i shut the videos from the front

seat from my taxis so that you feel literally what it would be like if you went today, complete with the rough rides, cracked window shields, maneuvering traffic and ambient sound, except the sound is networking so you have to imagine them. at the end of the presentation i'll give you the link to my blog where i'm posting the full videos. the two videos i will show now are compilations sliced together from dozens of longer videos i made of the strip. i wish to acknowledge my video editor in gaza who literally worked through this past night to complete them. the first clip chronicles the entry into the strip at the northern crossing from israel. one enters a gaza only with advanced permission from the israeli military.

no filming is allowed in the israeli entry, but the experience has a lot of document checks, long narrow walkways and eventually passes through a heavy iron gate opened remotely. the media picks up at that point taking you to the rest of the distance before reaching gaza proper. this is approaching the terminal from the north. any old days when it went earlier there was no such terminal. we were just across, show our passport at rudimentary checkpoints. we have been through the terminal and we are kind of look back at that iron gate, and then

back at -- now i'm on a motorized vehicle which is pulling a baggage cart, the sound would be blaring noise of a very loud engine. this is what's known as no man's land. it used to not be paved and have a roof but it is long as you can see. these are splices, remember. the journey takes longer. now we're coming to the end where we will be at the palestinian authority checkpoints. now i'm standing back to the

israeli terminal. then you take a cab from the checkpoint to the former hamas checkpoint which until october last year was operative. now it is just manned another group of p.a. military. this next video is longer and gives you a whirlwind tour of the strip and begins with the trip from the last checkpoint into gaza itself and then it moves north. to cover the northern territory, and the refugee camp.

then we will move south from gaza city on the road heading to the camp in the middle section of the strip to eastern fields beyond. we continue south along the main road from the middle area of gaza to the southern area first viewing some of the camp in town and then down to the southernmost camp in the town of rafah. i make up the video short for reasons of time but it is much that i feel comfortable with.

so we just let the crossing area and are traveling on one of two routes into gaza city. the sound would be typical traffic city, some commentary by the taxi driver now and then, little by me. now we're ending that journey to the city, approaching the beach. that journey takes about 20 minutes by car. now, so we're at the beach and turning south on the beach road. now i've taken up north. this is one of the villages in the northernmost part of

strip. it's actually not a village. it's a town. imagine the clomping of the horses, the laughter of the children, the motorcycles. this was taken at school let out on that particular day. now we're at the northern most part approaching the point which we can't go, so looking north east is israel, and we will stop

when the taxi driver felt it was no longer safe to proceed. we've moved over west to beit lahia and this is one of the views to the wastewater treatment plant. finishing up looking again north, now to the strawberry fields where we were treated with a handful of just picked strawberries.

now we've moved to jabalia camp moving to the west. jabalia is the largest of the refugee camps now totaling over 100,000 people. this is entry into jabalia from another direction. as a reminder we are up at the very northern part of the strip now, north of gaza city itself.

these are a series of splices to remind you, just capturing snippets that i thought relevant. now we've moved south again.

this is the beach road from gaza city south towards eventual destination today. that day was the refugee camp. the beach road that unit is quite nicely paved. that's relatively new and not quite yet complete. due to the funding of qatar. now we're further doubt on the beach road at some of the shelters on the beach itself. we are moving progressively toward the middle part of the strip. the strip is defined into three sections, the north, middle, and self. -- south.

so this is now entry into the refugee camp. again, there are eight, four are clustered in the center of the strip and this is one of them. now proceeding towards the power plant, the only power plant in

the strip which is regularly bombed and never operating at full capacity, but nevertheless, critical to the strip. this would be outlook at a camp just to the right, so you get a feel for the narrow alleyways of the camp. we obviously could not bring a car into those alleyways it

wouldn't fit and it would otherwise be inappropriate for either myself or the driver to go filming within the camp proper. these are the cultural fields between the camp and the main road. the main road virtually bisects the strip from north and south. you will see some of it before i cut this off shortly. now we are east of the main road. this is also east of the refugee camp, one of the four middle

camps. this is the distance between the camp and the eastern zone. we eventually stop when the cab driver felt no longer comfortable. now we're looking back from the east. and now approaching from the east. now we are in the central part of the camp. >> what was the temperature? >> then it was about 70.

again, you'll see the side views of the non-transit areas of the camp.

here we are driving through the camp facing the main road where we turn south. i'll end it here. this road also provided by -- it's almost complete from the crossing in the south. it is complete up to gaza city, what's left is the journey from gaza city. so that's about -- so that's about half the video. i'm going to cut it year, but hopefully that was enough to give you a flavor for the diversity of the strip and some

of its activities. so now that you have that you, i want to move to highlighting some themes, which i have repeatedly noticed in my years in gaza, insights as a were into the personal and psychological of gazans. from the very first visit in 1995, a three-day trip to recruit school to space in a survey collects an ident in the west bank and jerusalem, i've written the following as a narrative for the book describing that trip. the three days were intense. gaza was surely a very busy place, but but i sensed none oe negative emotion i had anticipated. people were friendly. they seemed normal, and

particularly humble. i began to be disappointed with myself. why at a let myself my into the hostile characterization constantly offered why pundits and press of anger and hatred and violence? i ainu people all over the world to be good, and the the pooresf them the most humble and gentle. why would gaza be any different? i should have known better. as for the youth, they seem to be intensely interested in telling their story. but instead of discharging anger or bitterness for their suffering, they seem more interested in simply being acknowledged. this became clear in a series of interactions. first was the universal astonishment at this vip, , a professor from america no less, had actually decide to visit the little gossip, an expression that was inevitably paired with partly veiled entreaties to return. there was the two young boys who

approached me on the very first night as i sat alone on a rock outcropping photograph of a giant son. this was my first encounter of this angry stone throwers that ended a year before. i was a touch with it. they shuffled towards me in their oversized heart soled black shoes. welcome to gaza, they said. we took photos and we talked with their primitive language skills. upon leaving basic and don't forget to send us the photos, and thank you, sir, for coming to gaza. it was a girl in gaza city who during my talk to a classroom and a note to me english that welcomed me to gaza, thanked me for visiting her school, hoped i would enjoy my visit and finally wished that i would consider coming again. there was a classroom of male youth in the southern camp of

rafah since i was about to conclude my brief discussion with them, exploded into a delighted ovation, please come back. not to the school, i understood, but to gaza. then a a lanky young man at the back of the classroom stood and directly but respectfully pleaded, please go home and tell your people that we are not all terrorists. it was my human guide who in the school principal we're visiting drifted off in discussion with her staff spontaneously turned to me and softly said, we are so happy you came to visit us. you are always welcome here. we hope you will come back. it was a discussion with the class of junior college students in the center of the strip during which a question was repeated six times verbatim. do you like gaza? will you ever come back?

it felt as if the hungry my positive answers to both questions couldn't be stated. there has been nothing in the ensuing years that has remedied this sense of existential insecurity. rather, their experiences of only sharp and did as the world continues to look away, or only flirts with interest when the blood and body count merit media craze. just two weeks ago a young man who spoke with in gaza described his triage at the very suffering. we can handle the food, water and sanitation problems. rather, the seat kills us by making us feel subhuman. as you will know from reports that are easily accessible, the absence of adequate electricity, medical care, water and sanitation is calamitous to the strip. theoretically they willing to deal with those conditions but his prioritization of feeling he

may -- to be made subhuman by the occupation and see was telling of cost mentality. the sense of being dealt with as subhuman was pervasive in my early interviews of use as they refer to the experiences during the just ended worse intifada including frequent verbal abuse, his gestalt, injury and torture. nothing has changed over the decades that has alleviated this sense of being disrespect and sustained. this weeks assaults, injuries and killings only confirmed to gaza and in mind that the livee unworthy and the blood is cheap. another fundamental aspect of palestinian and particularly gazans to colleges continue broadening sense of betrayal. this sense of long historic roots, began after world war i when britain and france reneged on their promise to the arabs, france taking serious and

lebanon taking palestine. palestinians have often betrayed by the arab brothers. indeed one of the triggers of the first intifada was the failure to even put palestine on the agenda of the european summit. gazans have always been over willing to trust. for example, despite the failing peace process that was too begun as an end of the first intifada in 1994 for which the u.s. was blamed as an architect and patron of israel, clinton's arrival in 1990 was met with ecstasy. the first u.s. president to come to gaza. finally, we had a friend. i saw portraits of clinton and american flags occasionally burned previously adorning their streets and homes. two days after his departure from gaza, clinton authorized bombing of iraq, gazans were dumbfounded, incredulous, unable

to grasp how this new friend of theirs stabbed them in the back and so quickly. crucially, gazans have felt betrayed but all of the peace agreements they have supported or consented to come whether with israel or among their own leaders. all of their own politicians including political groups have been crept within the painful as a continuing hostilities between hamas. this has culminated in recent months by the admitted strategy to collectively punish gazans by reducing salaries and electricity contributions of the tool to coerce gazans to pressure hamas to give up control. gazans cannot be understood without awareness of these deep senses of marginalization, dehumanization and the trail. however, , gazans psychology is infused with bigelow equally

potent values of intense determination, pride, and value on education and family, let me try to illustrate those themes via synopsis of the life histories of the three men i'm writing about. excerpt from the book proposal that wouldn't would certainly o chronicle the 23 years of all three of them with their first-person narratives, so i will rely on mine. the three were ordinary youth. they don't even know each other, so large and consuming his life in such a tiny place. collectively, the individual narratives reveal an array of life driving values that will be familiar to all. sacred as a family, this nclb of

education, expectations of justice and a role of religion and providing meaning, all of these all the more enhanced by the oppositions faith-based. further, while the struggle for freedom, dignity and self-determination, the three illustrate how and why individuals still make different decisions about how to enact the national devotions and political activism. this is the oldest of nine children, born soft-spoken, cerebral, usually determined and unflappable. his commanding drive has been a hunger for intellectual development and academic achievement. his early years include independent study of gazans meager libraries at age 13 to answer for himself the question of whether this land was his or israel's. his positive conclusion, he then

joined the pflp, the popular front for liberation of palestine, the political communist party that the best articulated principles and plans when the intifada broke out. he led his group to his camp, his thrill was ever present in his lead his team of protesters, and also the agony plaguing nightmares. he resumed his education. the book traces him undoubted towards educational goals and narrates his pride and gratification for succeeding through numerous challenges. despite the government passing over him for internships after he completed his ba in english because he wasn't a member of the revelation of widespread corruption of his own party, the

one to which he had given his heart and soul for which it suffered so severely, guiding him of his prime source of meaning. his journal soon to the united states to get his ma in education leadership, and your full upsets what turned out to be a false positive on his tuberculosis test come up one of this massive world he discovered on his first trip ever out of gaza come his devouring curriculum and of all places, his embrace of islam as replacement of his lost meaning. but this time it was a godly one, unwavering principles he could fully trust. once back in gaza he led the professional -- instructor at a small college, department chair and eventually vice being. a marriage arranged by his parents.

the book follows his steps through education progressively. the first the words between hamas and israel were hard to take him but those bombardments are targeted to specific areas but not so the 2014 war that polarized more than 10,000 houses and buildings in every sector of the strip leading no space to flee. the book narrates the incapacity care that his family endured begin with the ominous call from the israeli commander, your home is targeted for disruption to get ten minutes to leak. then the nightmarish scramble to find safer places to stay, driving the screaming kids, trying to evade the bombs from the sky and missiles from the sea and the tank shells on the east. what else can we do move forward, has been the saving

refrain forever in gaza. displaying his first physical anxiety, , he would pick up and move on. more work and soon enough another search for postdoc training only to be rebuffed. your permit has been revoked. his story ended in 2017, unhappy to update you on as you look to the cell phone azimuth from the bank verifying the deposit of the seller. it'd been cut to 5%. of all this trauma this would be the one he would describe as humiliating, having come not from outside but from his own president. physically shaken he would say, it seems there is no floor to worse in gaza. the oldest son of seven from a

refugee camp is an easy-going, optimistic but also boisterous, rambunctious and outspoken person. his family is rather more loosely connected to the traditions of culture. he naturally enjoys life, people and animals. as a child he took great delight in his chickens, rabbits, goats, sheep and the small courtyard of his small. he would take pleasure in touring visitors to the new cookie factor just outside the camp. he would not comment on the camps later or stench or on the pristine golden sand dunes that was the first barrier that separated the camp from the fancy jewish settlement be on. ..

>> to over turn the most painful part and went on to call this, and he let his rambunctious self take over and more important to his buddies, his friends. they passed the final exam in the final year and he didn't. this crushed him. the story follows him minute by minute as he copes with this catastrophe onto his sudden realization he had to pick himself up and guide his life with more responsibility. passing next year would be his sweetest moment. and the first call, through rushing tears, papa, i did it, i overcame my waywardness. and the soft reply, yes, my son, you are a real man now.

a man married, he remembered from accompanying his mother when she was born and they had difficulty having children for five years. finally he had a surgery which fixed the problem and the first pregnancy was troubled. the doctor came in and said there's a problem, it's possible i can't save both of them, and which do you choose. and he chose her and gratefully the baby was born as well. life was difficult. nevertheless he got his master degree and started a ph.d. program and received an ominous phone call in 2014 that his family decided not to leave, but bunkered themselves into a small room in the apartment packing themselves on top of each other for 24 hours.

his story ends with that, with the similar sms, his salary has been cut 45% after a life of trials it's only now that the first signs of anxiety surfaced. this was a huge slam. his jovial personality was now sober, and he worries about being able to support his family in gaza. and the youngest of four children born, and his towering height and voice of any opperatic voice, and he felt a simple and naive kid. and relative to other kids in

the camp, he was poor and weaned on social justice by way of his illiterate mother's tales of extreme poverty and lessons to the kids how they could help the poorer have a better life. he was-- he's not a fighter. he shied away from the demonstrations in the camp. was never thus arrested and spends a torturous week in the pension. he did not activate in the sense of joining the physical fighting, but became a leader and was disappointed at the end when his political leaders proved corrupt. his story also includes his life as a human rights activist in gaza, the leader of of one of his main organizations. he was undaunted in criticizing

any injustice which included his own government. arrested three times by the authority when arafat was there and then hamas took him down rather brutally a couple of years ago, he fled to refuge in jordan for six months, a time that was only made bearable to him by daily snapchats with his wife and children. i hope that that deep look into three individuals tells you yet more about gaza. i want to end with a different medium for gaza. i realize more clearly that every -- that more than ever before during this last trip

there was a soberness and a pain and burden that is understandable given the repeated trials, but was nevertheless heavy and it made me worry about how to express it. as i worried about that, a verse came to my mind which i'll recite the voice in them buries from individual so individual, old, young, male and female and recalled incidences that i discussed with them or that they relayed and it's been updated since the events of the moment in gaza. as far as i know, as of today, the death toll is above 20 and the injury toll was above

2,000. dusty shoes, callused souls, countenances tilt, shoulders shrug, trudging. i love gaza, my heart, my home, but it gives no life now. i want it back. i want to go to jerusalem to pray, to cite, see and know, says israel, to the west bank to see relatives, no, israel, to cairo for a break, onward to study, no, said egypt. to ahman to accept a scholarship i won in the states, no, says jordan the.

i want to go just anywhere, no. what have i done to deserve this. dusty shoes callus souls trudging. darkness hides the horizon past the expanse of the sea, heights the menace, vessels poised to shoot. it's late, i'm alone. the breeze, salty, fresh, intoxicating, delicious calms my nerves, cools the fire in my mind, quiet at last, don't stop. this is peace. let it last. at least for the second. dusty shoes, callused soles trudging. war, let it come. i know it will anyway. nothing could be worse than life is now. kill us fast or kill us slow. where is the hope?

inside. how long, how long how long would this go on. dusty shoes, callused soles. and a good joke, my body convulses of laughter, see, there's something inside, free, unconstrained for this moment. dusty shoes, callused shoes, trudging. such a shame, i'm a professional, a respected leader. courage took days to mount, friend, were you able to save any this month? could you lend me a bit? i'm so, he so, so sorry to ask. such a shame. dusty shoes, callused soles, trudging. can i approach the cage that jails me to shake my fist, to scream, to vent? dare i throw a stone or light a tire to protest, to do

something? pop goes the bullet through my back, sudden comes the bullet to splits my skull. subhuman. dusty shoes, callused soles, trudging. my children, my children, my god, my inner ch, they make me laugh, they make my care, make me keep on, i love them so. theirs forever. if you let me live you won't kill my soul, honor, pride, determination, dignity. i can take it. i will go on. it is my right. will you care? dusty shoes, callused soles, trudging. thanks for listening. [applaus

[applause] >> so now, we'll take questions for brian. if you'll allow me to ask the first question, which is something that i noticed. and when you came back from gaza this time you seemed to be more affected by what was happening inside gaza than before? what's changed between the last few years and now? >> the change has been progressive. it is the recent events and challenges that have accumulated, so, the 2014 war was massively disastrous psychologically as well as physically. the salary cuts, sohu--

so humiliating, feeling trapped, not able to go anywhere, it just has grown more profound and more serious and i've always been very proud of my ability to talk about the strengths of the palestinians and i will always do that, especially gaza because they will make it, but it's harder now. the burden is so, so severe that one can't go away without feeling something of what i tried to describe here. >> i just want to say it was very moving and appreciate very much the-- [inaudible] >> this is not working, i'm sorry. i'll stand up and ask the question.

i appreciate the effort you've made to express the intensity of the-- of the suffering and-- the intensity of the suffering. i guess my question really is from your perspective what would you say people here in the audience and beyond should be thinking about to do to change? i mean, is it pds? is that the best help? is there anything else besides that? that's the only question i have. and it's a difficult one to answer. sometimes it seems rather simple. in my experience through a life of travelling the world, i've learned that the only thing that really moves and changes a person is to see and feel that

circumstance or that people. so, whatever we can do to inform those about the realities on the ground will make a difference in our various ways that we can do that. but short of-- short of having some adequate awareness of those circumstanc circumstances, those who have power in this world here in the city and elsewhere are apparently not going to move to make any difference in the region for the positive. so, the challenges awareness. >> thank you for your talk today. i'm a retired journalist and i

worked for many american newspapers, including "the washington post." i noticed this week because of the gaza events there have been more seemingly-- coverage. i hope, i hope for you that you write, the features for the papers the post or new york times, or op-ed piece on your experience and what it's like to be in gaza these days. thank you very much. >> thank you for the suggestion. i'll do that. . >> thank you. >> thank you, brian. this is a difficult question, i guess. but how well do you know hamas? i mean, hamas is a bunch of

people and not just one thing. do you have an impression you can share with us about what is driving hamas, what it might end up meaning for the day when things begin to change for the better? >> well, i do know many members of hamas. talked with them at length. had a long lunch with a family who's loyal to hamas. you know, it's hard to answer the question. hamas is about resistance and they have an idea of how best to accomplish that, but in the end, people are really people. ga gazans as a whole have never supported hamas any more than 30-some percent. according to polls, the locals--

when hamas took over in 2007, and after the election in 2006, you know, people were of two minds. i was there then, and people would tell me, look, we really appreciate what hamas has done for us and they meant by that that the violence, the awful violence of that civil war, those clashes, had ended. so, order had been brought. so, that they could simply go out and walk on the street without feeling like they might be injured. the same time, they said, look, we -- you know, we don't buy into extreme views of any kind and we're aware and feel now that the rigid control that hamas wants to exercise over us is burden sosome, illustrating e

dual minds of gazans, relative to hamas. i don't know their-- what their political struck of thinking. i'm uncertain that the younger hamas leaders are shifting, making modifications in their ideas and their approaches. and we'll see. in the end what they're fighting for and all palestinians are fighting for is a release of the chokehold and an opportunity to feed their families and get educated. educated. >> thank you very much for your preparation. i'm from gaza born and raised and looking at what's going on back home, just this last week, and at perhaps more cynicism

that has spread around gaza over the past few years. one question that's really on my mind right now, what we're seeing this week with tens of thousands protesting for their rights and their humanity at large, beyond the political nuts and bolts of the actual cause, you know, a few weeks ago in an interview i asked if commitment to the national problem has dwindled because of that cynicism. what can we make of today's process? are you seeing that commitment still in place or have gazans have gotten to a point that alarmed you enough that they might crack and give up altogether? >> i can't imagine that gaz gazans would crack only from my decades there watching them survive progressively more cruel circumstances.

you know, there are two million of them, and there's not one gazan approach towards hamas or anything else. it is true that the olden generation showed the generation of the three men that i continued to know that there is fatigue and there is conclusi conclusion maturation that politics aren't going to save them and they have decided to contribute to the cause in different ways, hasam through education. ahman through service work he does in the community. and through human rights and that's their contribution through the struggle. what's happened in the last week is actually rather impressive in terms of the fact that there is at least a smaller collective moment for the first time in a long time to mount some visible protest

to the basic conditions that you've outlined. so, in that notice, that is the younger generation, mostly, and we see that here in the parkland group from florida and you know, i don't know how long and durable that can be. i know they want to continue through may, but you can't escape the conditions overall. and those kids want their education, they want to support, contribute to their families. we'll see how much they calculate is going to be worth the effort. >> thank you very much for your remarks. they, i think, communicated very well sort of a sense of dispair and frustration in gaza. i've been to the west bank many

times though i've never been to gaza. you've been to both places. i wonder if you could comment on sort of the differences and sort of the emotional state between those folks in the west bank, ramallah, for example, and gaza. i assume they both are frustrated at the continuing and long israeli occupation, but i just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about their emotional attitudes in terms of the common elements and the differences, if any. >> there are many common elements as you've noted. they're single-minded in terms of what justice means for them as individuals, and as people. but the territories, gaza, west bank, and they do have different experiences. gaza is as i've tried to describe. constrained, trapped, almost hopeless economically and extreme betrayal by any

political leaders. and that's true in other regions as well, but to be fair, it's not just gaz gazans who suffer. they suffer in the ways we've talked about today, but there's research and documents that west bankers and east jerusalemites for their various regions and different reasons, those two groups suffer, mentally struggle as much or more so than gazans for the west bank, it's the hundreds and hundreds of check points that make life impossible to get to work and so forth. for jerusalem, it's all about the crazy i.d. system and the building of-- the razing of homes and loss of

land and so forth. so, i don't -- i wouldn't say that-- i wouldn't prioritize the suffering in any kind of hierarchy. it's common and different. per region. region. >> thanks so much for your remarks. i had the opportunity to go to gaza in fact in 2010, about a year after -- and the whole city was in rubble just because there was no concrete to rebuild and the concrete factories were-- is it essentially the same? 'cause from the video it looked like there was some rebuilding going on. there was paved roads and stuff like that. and then how has the

difference-- differences between hamas and the pa affected the electricity situation now? 'cause, i mean, up until now, there's-- talking about making payments recently and like really an institutional power, i don't know. >> well, the largest part of the construction of gaza in 2014 was on the eastern border where a large percentage of the homes were destroyed. there was bombing everywhere, as we all know, but less so in the cities proper. and so, in gaza city, certainly, you do see remnants of buildings that were targeted. in the east, i wasn't able to film just because of time reasons, this time, the eastern border. i was there last year, however,

and you know, there are some-- some progress at rebuilding, but it does still very much look like what you may have been remembering. hamas and their skirmishes, it varies week by week. since you were there, i think probably electricity was up to six hours a day, something like that. you know, it's dipped as low as two last year, some of this year, now, i think it's generally back to about four and i don't see any indication that that's going to change dramatically. largely because of this hostility between ramallah and gaza. >> so there aren't any perishable foods?

>> well, they're very creative in how to store power and lots of photos of the various devices and systems they bring. so, those who have-- are fortunate enough to have a home and appliances like refrigerators and freezers are able to pretty much make things work by careful planning, so when that power comes on, you race, whatever hour of the day or night, to make sure that all of your charging devices and all of our storage systems are plugged in and in those two hours are now four hours, and you can store some and keep the freezer going or the refrigerator going. >> as i've said the people of gaza, after 2014, people were-- and during the war even they were charging their cell phones

on car batteries. it works very well. thank you very much, brian, for your presentation and to all of you for coming today. the one thing i want to ask in relation to gaza is to keep it at the front of the conversation because part of the reason that the palestinians, i think, although i cannot speak 100% to the palestinians, is because they are feeling like they're being erased and ignored and are disappearing. we need to remind them that they are not, and they are very much front and center in our minds, even as our administration is cutting the funding for the pa, which processes the salary cuts, cutting enrah, challenging the repairs in gaza and also challenging jobs in the palestinian territories. we need to push back on that a little bit. they're also cutting funding for the pa and we need to push

back because it's still an occupied territory. it's still an occupied territory and we cannot forget that. i thank you all for coming and thank you very much, brian, for sharing with us your experiences. [applaus [applause] >> we have articles here from brian, from the brian wrote for the journal of palestine studies and please, these are free and it's an excellent article. [inaudible conversations] >> this week, facebook ceo mark zuckerberg will testify before senate and house committees on facebook's handling of user information and data privacy. today at 2:15 p.m. eastern on

c-span 3, he'll answer answers during a joint commission and commerce hearing and wednesday he'll appear before the house energy committee. watch live coverage on c-span 3 and on-line at c-span.org and listen live with the free c-span radio app. >> among the issues that are really sort of near and dear to me is this idea of having conversation across party lines and political ideologies and a lot of people feel common sense, common sense requires common experience and i really like the idea of having a sharing point of information that we can all rely on as opposed to all be suspicious of. so that's something that we're working on as educators and i think just as participant citizens. >> it's affordable housing, making sure we have a diverse and inclusive city. we want to address homelessness which many, many cities are struggling with nationwide, and

21st century police, and making sure our police bureau reflects the city that we live in. >> one of the most important issues for me is the economy in oregon. here we have a growing economy with tech firms growing, but we still have education funding issues in our area and you know, i'm concerned that librarians are being let go across the nation because of funding issues and this day and age with the media literacy issues, we need librarians and teachers working with kids and we need to figure out the west way that we can have stable funding while also encouraging our growing economy. >> two big issues, number one, ending gun violence, especially in schools, there's no reason why students or teachers should have to go to work and be concerned about the safety of themselves, their students. number two, i think we need to

get money out of politics, citizens united, too many congress people, senators, congressmen and women are bee-- beholden to special interests and they need to be for us, the people. >> the issue to me is education, and our schools need to be funded properly and teachers need to be treated right. if the teachers are well-educated and we have well-educated adults in the work force and we have a better result for all of us. >> voices from the state. part of c-span's 50 capitals tour. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington

d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. speaking at princeton university the president of the cleveland federal reserve bank loretta mester discussed interest rates and monetary policy and the policy of raising interest rates. this is an hour. [applaus [applause] >> well, thank you very much for that kind introduction, i really appreciate it and i'm really glad to be able to speak today at julius rabinowitz center. it was nice to take the train up from philadelphia and very impressed walking on campus, there's been a lot of changes and new buildings on campus although i was kind of an n i-- an