Lord Andrew Phillips was educated at Cambridge. He was a solicitor for over 50 years and started his own Law firm in London in 1970. He was made a life peer in 1998 when he joined the House of Lords. Lord Phillips has founded three national charities and is a free-lance author with commercial and voluntary sector experience. Lord Philips has been an active participant in debates on Palestine and Israel and has raised a large number of questions in the House on the conflict. He has visited Palestine four times in the last decade.

Clare Short represented Birmingham, Ladywood as the Labour MP from 1983 to 2006 and as Independent Labour MP from 2006 to 2010. She stood down at the 2010 general election. Clare Short served as Secretary of State for International Development between 1997 and 2003, resigning from her Cabinet position over the Iraq War. Clare Short has been an avid defender of the rights of the Palestinian people and has ceaselessly called for stronger action against Israel, notably for a boycott of Israel at the United Nations in 2007.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (2001), The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story (2002) and, co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison, Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (2009). She writes for the online newsletter CounterPunch.org and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East Correspondent for 10 years. He was based in Beirut during the civil war, covered the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1978 and 1982, and has been a continual reporter of the Palestinian issue since 1974. He has also been an outspoken critic of the British media's coverage of events in the Middle East, specifically in relation to their inadequate representation of the Palestinian case. Tim has written extensively; his latest book "Spirit of the Phoenix: Beirut and the Story of Lebanon" was published by IB Tauris in May 2009.

Oliver McTernan is the co-founder and director of Forward Thinking. He has an established background in conflict resolution and interfaith relationships. He was a Visiting Fellow of the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs at Harvard University 2000 -2003. He is a Senior Associate Fellow of the UK Defence Academy. He was responsible for initiating the first post-conflict talks between NATO and the former Yugoslav government. His latest book Violence in God's Name explores the role of religion in an age of conflict. He broadcasts regularly on the BBC.

Sir Richard Dalton was Britain's Ambassador to Libya in 1999. Between 2003 and 2006, he was ambassador to Iran.

Sir Richard Dalton is a senior former diplomat who was knighted in 2005. Following his retirement from the FCO in 2006, Sir Richard Dalton became an associate fellow on the Middle East and North African programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. He has written extensively on the Middle East.

Clayton Swisher is the Executive Producer of Al Jazeera's Transparency Unit (the team that produced the Palestine Papers). Based in Doha he has covered the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the on-going war in Afghanistan.

Clayton Swisher is author of "The Truth About Camp David" (New York: Nation Books, 2004) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Seumas Milne is a Guardian Columnist and Associate editor. He is the author of a best-selling book about the 1984-5 British miners' strike, "The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners" which focuses on the role of MI5 and Special Branch in the dispute. He has been an outspoken critic of the war on terror, the war in Iraq the war on Afghanistan. Seumas Milne is a frequent visitor to the Middle East and came back from his most recent trip to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel in November.