Speaker: Omar Shehabi, former legal advisor with the PLO and Director of Palestine Works

Since the latest round of US-brokered peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO collapsed in early 2014, the PLO has proposed various measures to break the current impasse and ‘internationalize’ responsibility for ending the conflict. These measures vary from a UN Security Council resolution that would set parameters for resumed final-status negotiations and a deadline for reaching an agreement, to termination of the Oslo Accords and dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. These developments raise important questions of international law as it applies to the question of Palestine. Omar Shehabi, a former legal advisor with the PLO and Director of Palestine Works, will shed light on these legal questions and their human rights and political implications.

Omar Yousef Shehabi is the founder and director of Palestine Works, a US-based nonprofit promoting Palestinian human development. Its Law Fellowship utilizes law students and recent law graduates to support the work of human rights organizations in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. Omar has served as a legal officer with the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Jerusalem, as a legal advisor with the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, and as an adjunct lecturer in international law and human rights at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Previously, Omar worked as a union-side labor lawyer at firms in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Kosher pizza will be served.

Photo credit: michael loadenthal/Creative Commons

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