Middle East conflict

David Newman is a political columnist for The Jerusalem Post. He is also chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and editor of The International Journal of Geopolitics. He'll discuss the history of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He's written about the settlements in The New York Times. Newman is also author of the book, Population, Settlement and Conflict: Israel and the West Bank.

Producers, writers, directors Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg. Their new documentary film Promises takes a look at the Palestinian-Isreali conflict thru the eyes of seven children living in or near Jerusalem. It was filmed between 1997 and the summer of 2000. SHAPIRO grew up in Berkeley, California and hosts and co-writes the award-winning travel series, Lonely Planet. Goldberg was born in Boston and grew up outside of Jerusalem and has been a television journalist. Promises was broadcast on PBS last December as part of the P.O.V. series.

Journalist Scott Anderson. He traveled with a platoon of elite Isreali commandos into the West Bank and wrote about it in the article "An Impossible Occupation" which was the cover story of last Sundays New York Times Magazine.

Mark Malloch Brown heads the United Nations Development Program. He'll discuss their efforts in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza to help with reconstruction. Brown is also the chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee of the heads of all U.N. development funds, programs and departments.

Journalist Christopher Dickey. He is Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek magazine. He'll talk about the situation in the Middle East.

Journalist James Bennet of the New York Times. Hes been in the Middle East covering how the crisis there is affecting both Israelis and Palestinians.

Yossi Klein Halevi is the Israeli correspondent for the New Republic magazine. He was born and raised in New York City. He's lived in Jerusalem since 1982. His book Memoirs of Jewish Extremist: An American Story is about his years first as a follower and then as an opponent of Rabbi Meir Kahane. His latest book is At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jews Search for God With Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land (William Morrow).

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer whose latest book is Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. (Steer Forth Press) He is a founder of the nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East. Shehadeh lives in Ramallah.

Bernard Lewis is a Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He just written a new book about the war in the Middle East called What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press). The New York Times Book Review has called Lewis "the doyen of Middle Eastern Studies." Lewis says that there may be no escape from the "downward spiral of hate and spite...culminating sooner or later in another alien domination."

Ghassan Khatib is the Director of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center and publisher of Palestine Report Online. He offers the Palestinian perspective on the peace process and post-September 11th events.