On 22 March Fathom editor Alan Johnson sat down with Dahlia Scheindlin for the first of Fathom’s one-to-one interviews, a new series of in-depth conversations with leading Israeli experts and politicians about the major challenges facing Israel, the peace process and the wider region. Scheindlin addresses the current desperate condition of the peace process, the state of the two parties, the impact of Trump, the conditions that must now be created for progress as well as making the case for the ‘confederal’ solution to the conflict. Dahlia Scheindlin is a Policy Fellow at Mitvim Institute: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, researching comparative conflict dynamics. She is also a public opinion expert who has advised five national campaigns in Israel, an adjunct lecturer at Tel Aviv University, and a founding writer on +972 Magazine.

Below is a breakdown of the questions asked and their timings:

Question 1) Is Israel headed for early elections? (01:33)

Question 2) Why is the Labor Party struggling? (07:53)

Question 3) Why is the peace process frozen? (14:00)

Question 4) Haven’t the Palestinians made it unsafe for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank? (24:33)

Question 5) What is the state of the Palestinian National Movement today? (29:10)

Question 6) Is it time to give up on the classic two state solution? What is the ‘Confederal’ alternative?  (36.11)

Question 7) Doesn’t a ‘two-state confederation’ ignore the history of conflict?  (46:10)

Question 8) What have you learnt by studying other conflicts? (50.19)

Question 9) What kind of activism is good for peace? (57.29)