Maia Carter Hallward, professor of Middle East politics in the School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development at Kennesaw State University, and author of two books and numerous articles examining the prospects for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is available to discuss why the Trump administration’s move to locate the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem creates obstacles for building peace in the region.

“The proposal breaks with decades of U.S. policy asserting that final status issues should be addressed through negotiations between the parties, and also with the consensus of the international community, which holds that East Jerusalem is occupied territory,” says Hallward.

Although moving the embassy does not change the fact that Israel already acts as de facto and de jure ruler over East Jerusalem, Hallward notes, the embassy move inflames tensions locally and regionally, and makes the prospect of a two-state solution with Jerusalem as a capital for both states even more unlikely.

Hallward has published four books, including “Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and “Struggling for a Just Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Activism in the Second Intifada” (University of Florida Press 2011), and more than a dozen journal articles related to the Middle East. She also is an executive editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her most recent blog for the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict is at https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/blog_post/understand-political-power-look-no-civil-resistance/.

Read more about Hallward at http://conflict.hss.kennesaw.edu/faculty-staff/maia-hallward/.

She is available at 470-578-2155 (o) or 301-518-3246 (c) or at [email protected].