maria luisa fantappie, head of the middle east and africa program for the italian think tank, istituto affari internazionali. richard boyd barrett, member of the irish parliament with the people before profit party. a warm welcome. israel is backed by the united states. >> no surprise really in this policy. this has been part of u.s. policy for some time. i would like to focus on some of the differences. i think what we are seeing over the course of the past decade has been a complete abandonment of becoming a so-called honest broker. the u.s. never effectively manage to offer the palestinians , being denied their own liberation, their own state. there was a thought in the 1990's that the united states could sponsor the so-called oslo accord, but from the very beginning it was very clear that israel had no intention of actually living on the two-state solution and instead use that opportunity to double and triple the number of settlements that sought expansion against all of the palestinian territories. later on, we see this blockade of gaza beginning and the encirclement of what is no