AMHERST — A renowned expert on the Middle East will visit western Massachusetts on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the situation in Palestine and her new book.

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., will speak at All Souls Church in Greenfield on Monday, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Tuesday, at 7 p.m., in Thompson Hall, Room 106.

She is expected to focus her talk on the Gaza war and the United States’ role in it while also presenting her book, “Understanding Palestine and Israel,” which was published Feb. 25 by Palestinian-owned, Northampton-based Interlink Publishing.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has dominated international headlines since Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant group attacked Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people, but Bennis is quick to point out that the hostilities “didn’t start that day.”

“I start with the question of, ‘When do you start the clock in looking at Palestine?’” she said.

Bennis said examining the situation since October 2023 will paint a particular picture, while putting the region under a microscope since Israel’s blockade in 2007 offers a very different one. But picking the Six-Day War in 1967 as a starting point presents still a different perspective.

“It’s always dependent on when you start the clock,” she noted.

Bennis is coming to Greenfield at the invitation of the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice, Western Mass CODEPINK and other organizations. Admission is free and doors open at 6 p.m.

“[Bennis] is such a deep expert, but she is not an academic only. She really knows how to answer people’s concerns and questions, and she has knowledge that goes back 30 years and more,” said Anna Gyorgy, who serves on Traprock’s board of directors. “She’s an expert on the whole Middle East.”

Bennis said most young Gazans have lived every day of their lives trapped on a 141-square-mile strip of land, in a system many describe as apartheid. She said this does not justify the civilian deaths of Oct. 7, 2023, but “it explains things.”

Many who are critical of Israel or its actions are accused of antisemitism, or hatred of Jews, but Bennis said she is proud of her Jewish faith.

“I’m very much Jewish,” she said. “I’m not a Zionist.”

Bennis is an international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization.