Dr. Yoav Alon will share his analysis of the current situation unfolding in the Middle East since the terror attacks of October 7th. He will shed light on the historical roots of the crisis, how matters currently stand and what the potential hope is for the future between Israelis and Palestinians with a special focus on the recent re-emergence of the two-state solution.

Yoav Alon (D.Phil. Oxon) is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. He teaches, researches, and publishes on topics such as Jordanian history and politics, the British Empire in the Middle East, the Palestine Mandate and tribal societies in the modern Middle East. His second book, The Shaykh of Shaykhs: Mithqal al-Fayiz and Tribal Leadership in Modern Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2016), is the 2017 IPPY Award Gold Medalist in the World History category. In the spring term of 2024, he served as the Jules and Gwen Knapp Family Visiting Professor through the Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative, teaching in the SDSU Department of History. He is currently writing a book on a fascinating historical episode that has been hardly explored by scholars – the deportation of several hundred Irgun and Lehi (Stern Gang) members to Africa by the British mandate government in Palestine in 1944 and their internment in detention camps until 1948.