What is happening in Gaza: the Middle East at the crossroads

Fran Sevilla (Madrid, 1959). He has been editor at Radio Nacional de España since 1988, a station for which he covered, from 1989 to 1996, among other events and as a special envoy, the first Persian Gulf War and that of the former Yugoslavia. From 1996 to 2000 he was RNE's correspondent in the Middle East; and from 2000 to 2007, a flying correspondent for RNE's Information Services, with coverage as a special envoy to the wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Colombia. Since March 2022 he has been covering the war in Ukraine as a special envoy. 

He has been awarded numerous international awards, including: the 11th Manu Leguineche Chair International Journalism Award 2023, Defense Correspondents Award 2023, Antena de Oro Award 2023, Ondas Award 2022, Salvador de Madariaga Journalism Award 2010, International Award King of Spain of Journalism in 2008, 2002 APM award for Best Journalist of the year, Luis del Olmo Freedom award in 2002, 2002 Human Rights award, 2001 Cirilo Rodríguez award for best correspondent. 

Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño (1969). Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. Doctor in Arabic Philology from the UAM and Master in International Relations from the Ortega and Gasset Foundation. Between 1999-2019 he was professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Alicante, where he directed the Interuniversity Institute for Social Development and Peace. In December 2019 he joined the Complutense University of Madrid where he directs the magazine Anaquel de Estudios Arabes and the Complutense Research Group on the Maghreb and the Middle East. Since July 2014, he has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Committee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). 

He also teaches at the Diplomatic School, the Gutiérrez Mellado University Institute and the UCM (Master of Contemporary Studies on the Arab World and Muslim Communities). In the past he has been a professor of the Master of Contemporary Arab Studies taught by the UAM for 15 years and the Master of Arab and Hebrew Cultures: Al-Andalus and Contemporary Arab World of the UGR for eight years. In this period, he has supervised fifty final degree and master's degree projects, as well as five doctoral theses. 

His main lines of work are: 1) History and contemporary politics of the countries of the Middle East; 2) Social, political and economic dynamics in the Gulf countries; 3) Development of Arab civil society; and 4) Movements and discourse of the political Islam. During his training phase as a researcher he carried out stays in various international centres such as the Institut Français d`Études Arabes in Damascus and the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem. As a teacher, it is worth highlighting his stay as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Department of History at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) during the first semester of the 2008-09 academic year, where he conducted research on US foreign policy in the Middle East. 

He has been Principal Researcher of three R&D projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: “Civil society and political contestation in the Middle East: internal dynamics and external strategies”, “The Arab revolts: emerging political actors and reconfiguration of the public sphere in North Africa and the Middle East” and “Resilience of authoritarianism, clash of Islamism and intensification of sectarianism in the Middle East and the Maghreb”.