Tangle - Yousef Munayyer on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and what's next

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

In today's podcast, we sit down with Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer to discuss the current conflict in Gaza and what the future holds for Palestine and Israel. Munayyer is a columnist whose work has been published in major newspapers across the globe and has advocated for a one-state solution. You can find his most recent column in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/opinion/israel-palestine.htmlYou can follow Munayyer's work on Twitter hereIf you're not yet subscribed to Tangle, you can do that here: https://www.readtangle.com/--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. We begin with a new wave of Israeli attacks after the deadliest day so far in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. Overnight, dozens of Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip, as fighter jets continue to smash neighborhoods, although Israel insists there are surgical strikes on Hamas targets. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants Hamas to pay a heavy price for firing thousands of rockets into Israel,

and he says he grieves for all civilians who've died. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, reasonable debate, and independent thinking without the hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and in today's episode, we are sitting down with Yousef Muneir. Yousef is a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst who focuses on Palestinian issues. He was the executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and he has

had op-eds and columns and stories published all over the U.S., most recently with a New York Times op-ed titled This Moment is Different. It had an awesome emphasis on how the Palestinian struggle is gaining some global attention and sort of what's going on right now in this moment in the conflict. Yusuf, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's nice to be with you. So first, I guess for listeners who haven't read it yet, maybe you could just give us a quick summary of your latest column and, you know, I guess what the crux of it was, the kind of message you were trying to get out there. Sure. You know, I think for anyone who's seeing some of the horrific things that are happening

right now, you know, you may feel that, you know, we've seen this before. And there's certainly been plenty of Israeli bombardments of Gaza. We remember some of the major ones, of course, 2014, 2012, 2008, 2009, 2006, and so on. It seems almost like a, you know, a recurring horror film. But there is something genuinely different about this moment, which is what I tried to really capture in the piece. And that's that this moment was sparked in part by, you know, events in Jerusalem, where Palestinians were protesting the impending forced expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied Jerusalem, as well as Israeli attacks on worshippers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and on one of the holiest nights of the year for Muslims. Something that, you know, I think sent shockwaves throughout the Palestinian population and, of course, for Arabs and Muslims and around the world.

And what you saw in the aftermath of this was a massive mobilization of Palestinians throughout the entirety of the land, from the river to the sea, which, of course, includes the area that is today Israel, the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza. And you also saw mobilizations by Palestinians in refugee camps outside of the areas. And this really represented, I think, for the first time in a very long time, perhaps since 1936, a Palestinian mobilization against the Israeli system of discrimination that impacts them all, albeit in different ways, but impacts them all and suggests a form of unified resistance that can really change the way that we talk about and think about what is possible for the future. It's important to keep in mind that in this space, there are 14 million people, half of them are Israeli Jews and half of them are Palestinian Arabs.

And so when Palestinians rise up together in this way, in many ways rejecting sort of the old framework of partition, They have a tremendous degree of more power as a united people to push back against the Israeli state and its policies of discrimination and apartheid. And so I think that really in this hot button topic of debate now, which is this idea of Israel being an apartheid state. Obviously, the Human Rights Watch had an extensive report released where they sort of discussed like how they feel Israel has crossed this line. And even, you know, there's some debate about whether they were explicitly defining them as an apartheid state or not. But there's obvious implications that there are apartheid structures in Israel. I think the biggest pushback that I've seen to that has mostly been, you know, Arabs in Israel can vote and they serve in the government and they make up this huge chunk of the population, they have equal rights, and it's absurd to call Israel an

apartheid state, you know, under that definition with that pushback. I'm curious, like, what the case is in your perspective, what you see on the ground and how you define it in that way. I mean, in your piece too, you wrote about this moment is, you know, Palestine breaking free from the shackles of Israel's system of oppression, which I think fits neatly into this topic. So I'd love to hear sort of your framework for that. Yeah, and I appreciate the question. I mean, the one thing that I would say is that for Palestinian citizens of Israel, they certainly don't have equality before the law, which is a very important distinction. There's, in fact,

no constitutional guarantee. First of all, there's no constitution in Israel, right? There is a series of laws that have constitutional weight, but there's no principle of equality before the law for citizens in Israel. There is a law about dignity and humanity, but importantly, equality is not there. And that's important for a lot of reasons. But the primary reason is that, you know, Israel was set up for a very specific purpose, right, for the Jewish people. I mean, that is the, you know, that is the central claim of the state, right? And so to be a non-Jew in a state that is there for the Jewish people is to be second class at best. And that plays out in a lot of different ways, including in the law.

And, you know, we can talk about that as well. But in regards to apartheid, look, a lot of people say, well, you know, Israel certainly doesn't look exactly like South Africa, well, you know, Israel certainly doesn't look exactly like South Africa, even though there are plenty of South Africans, including Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela's son and many others who have said that, you know, in some ways it's similar, in other ways it's worse than what South Africans experience. For example, you know, the South Africans never bombed their Bantu stands in the way that Israel is doing Gaza now. But, you know, it's wrong, I think, to say that, well, because one doesn't look like the other, then they can't both fit within the same category, right? We know that apples and oranges look and taste different, but hey,

we still call them fruit, right? And with apartheid, this is a crime that is defined in international law. And I always suggest that people think about genocide, for example. Genocide, similarly, is a crime that is defined in international law. Now, it played out one way in the Holocaust, and it played out a completely different way in Rwanda. And yes, they don't look exactly the same. The methods were different. The scale was different.

The context was different. Nonetheless, it fits the definition of apartheid, of genocide. And so I think in this situation, we're talking about something very similar. It doesn't look exactly like South Africa. In some places, it's different. In some places, it's worse. But nonetheless, the definition is pretty clear. so that one group can dominate the other and it's held up by systemic human rights abuses, that's apartheid. And I think that when you look at the situation across the land, there's really no doubt that that is going on. I would certainly suggest that people check out the Human Rights Watch report, which was voluminously documented. And I've written about this years ago. I think some of the best evidence of apartheid is in the statements of Israeli leaders. When Israeli leaders are asked, well, why don't you just give the Palestinians a right to vote? The response is, well, that would challenge the Jewish character of the state, right?

What does it mean when people are denied suffrage and the reason that they're not afforded suffrage is because one group would lose the power to dominate them in the country? To me, it seems pretty clear. And I think for a long time, there was this idea, this vision that this situation was temporary. And we had this conversation about a two-state solution that allowed people to think, well, yes, this situation is wrong. It can't keep going on like this. It's unfair. It's unjust. Yes, there are millions of Palestinians that are being ruled by Israel that have no right to vote in the country that rules them. But a solution is down the line, around the corner, on the horizon at some point. In recent years, I think more and more people have woken up to

the realization that that was a mirage, a fantasy. And it's been exposed, I think, by the Israeli government's actions in the West Bank, particularly in its settlement expansion there, but also in some of its statements over recent years and the laws that it's passed in recent years, including the nation-state law, which is a law that has constitutional weight and declares that there is only one people that can exercise sovereignty in the entire territory,

in Eretz Israel, which is that land between the river and the sea. And so, you know, I think for those reasons, in recent years, it's become increasingly clear that, you know, this idea that there is a partition alternative has kind of fallen by the wayside, and people are waking up to an ugly one-state reality of apartheid on the ground. You know, I think one of the areas from reading a lot of your work where I think you and I have some common ground is sort of wanting to put some of this focus on the Palestinian people and the people who are living in Gaza, the people who are living in the West Bank.

And something that I wrote about this week, even though I think I was probably taking like a center right position on Israel from the American perspective was that, you know, like, it feels to me like the Palestinian people have this terrible choice where they're, they're stuck between these kind of like rival political parties of their own that currently control Gaza that both have certain flaws and strengths or whatever. And then they also have to choose to swallow this suffering that they've endured for decades if they want to take this really sort of diplomatic, optimistic look at the future where they say, you know what, we're just going to forget about the fact that, you

know, these Israeli airstrikes killed my family members and we're going to work towards, you know, these Israeli airstrikes killed my family members, and we're going to work towards, you know, a two-state solution and try and live in harmony with this, you know, this ruling government. And it's like everywhere they look, it feels like, you know, there's just a lot of negative outcomes. And what you sort of presented, I mean, you didn't flesh it out so much in this most recent op-ed, but you alluded to the idea of this one state solution. And I'm wondering, you know, A, is that what you feel like you're hearing from quote unquote, the people on the streets, as you put it? Is that where this conversation is going? And B, what does that look like? I mean, you know, I think it sounds explicitly to me like an end of the Jewish state and an end of Israel as we know it. But I'm interested, like, how in your mind that proposal is fleshed out and how we get there.

You know, I think you're right to point with people's frustration with leadership and also the situation of fragmentation. I would add, too, that there's two million Palestinians inside Israel who don't feel adequately represented by their government, right? Especially as their government, which is officially the Israeli government, is treating them as second-class citizens. You also have Palestinians who don't live in the West Bank and Gaza or Israel who are refugees and stakeholders in this issue that are not adequately represented by any group, right? So that's definitely an issue. At the same time, it is a product of fragmentation that is the result of deliberate policies of separation over time. And I think what has been so important about this moment is that even though there is physical separation, in some cases we're talking about walls and checkpoints

and all kinds of movement restrictions, people being in different countries, you're seeing a people, the Palestinian people, mobilize against one system that is adversarial to them. And they are raising one flag. And that, I think, is really important, really, really important, because it breaks from the old paradigms. And you look at the public opinion numbers. There is a growing realization among Palestinians that two states is no longer practical. They have no hope that it's going to work. And there's also growing support, although it's not a majority yet, for a one-state vision. So, you know, I think that is what is going to define

the future. Now, what does it look like? Well, in the absence of equal rights, it looks like what we have today, where you have a singular state ruling over the entirety of the territory, discriminating against people in different ways to dominate them. I believe that both Israelis and Palestinians can aspire to something better than this, and that it is possible. And I don't think it would be far-fetched to suggest that something like that can happen. In fact, the vast majority of states around the world are multi-ethnic states. We have something like 4,000 to 5,000 ethnicities on planet Earth,

and we have something like 190 to 200 nation states. The norm is far closer to multi-ethnic nation states that are based in some sort of principles of equality than ethno-nationalist states where one group insists on dominating the other. So I think it's possible. And I think people, they hear equality and they think, well, that's going to mean the destruction of Israel, right? And I think that's fear-mongering. But I do think it would mean the end of a discriminatory system. And I don't think

that's a bad thing. You know, we ended Jim Crow, although many people would argue that its legacies are still here with us and playing out today. But Alabama is still there. You know, we ended apartheid. South Africa is still there. There's a different set of rules there. There's a different set of policies there that ensure fair treatment for everybody that lives there, right? And by the way, the population that used to dominate continues to dominate in a lot of ways in both of those spaces. So, you know, I think that fear mongering is a really a way to prevent a discussion

about a future that could be possible, that could be more free, more equal, more just, and better. So I can hear right now through the ether my conservative readers to the right of me who, you know, I think their immediate response would be, okay, well, you know, the refrain has always been, Israel puts down its weapons or turns off the Iron Dome, and what happens? You know, thousands of Israeli citizens die, and the country is overrun by Hamas or whoever. And I'm wondering, like, in this vision of the future, how do we navigate a group like Hamas, who has, you know, considerable political clout right now and is

sort of the competing party with Fatah? Like, how do we imagine a future where they are part of this and, you know, are also a nonviolent political group that is joined in this one state of Israel, or let's call it Israel, but the Israel 2.0, I guess. And I think it's valid to be concerned about groups that don't want to play along with a vision of equality in a single state. And I think Palestinians have plenty of reason to be concerned, if not more concerned, about what that future could look like. Because the reality is, look, it is the Israelis that have far more guns, far more weapons, far more power, and would be required to play by the rules in a situation like that. So we need to talk about how that can

happen. And obviously, look, when we talk about the future of the Israelis and Palestinians, it's really at the end of the day, Israelis and Palestinians that have to have those conversations, make those decisions and create a set of rules that make sense for the two of them. But I think we have a role to play from the outside, and we can get to that. But more specific to your question, yeah, it is a concern, but this is not an acceptable alternative, right? And I think that there were, in other places where you've had democratization, where you've had reform, there were similar concerns. How will people get along together? How will they integrate? What will violence be like,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we saw that those concerns can be resolved. Look, there are today many Palestinians who feel that without the use of arms, they cannot defend themselves and they cannot achieve liberation. But I do think that that's born out of their grievances with the state of Israel. You mentioned Hamas. Hamas didn't exist before the 1980s. Palestinian grievances towards Israel are much, much deeper than that. Unless one believes that for some reason Palestinians are innately violent, innately barbaric, are innately violent, innately barbaric, fundamentally incapable of participating in a civil society,

which I think, frankly, is racist to believe that about any people. It's unreasonable to think that if they were afforded equal rights, freedom, dignity, equality, that there would be an inability to move on from the past. So, you know, I think that's where the conversation needs to go in terms of shaping the future. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it's interesting. I mean, I guess you touched on it a little bit here, but I'm wondering, you know, you said us a few times,

and I think when you said us, you mean Americans and sort of the U.S. side. And when I put out, I tweeted today that I was going to interview you, and I asked, you know, if anybody had any questions they wanted me to ask. And one of the questions that came in from a follower of mine that I thought was a really interesting question was, what do you feel is the appropriate response from the U.S. in this conflict? You know, knowing how tied the U.S. is to Israel, do you think the United States should have a role in mediating this? I mean, my impression from reading, especially the op-ed you wrote this week, is that you sort of view the U.S., quote unquote, mediating as really just smoke and mirrors to

perpetuate Israel's dominance in the region. So I'm wondering if you think there is a role or what it should be at this moment in time. Yeah. And just so that your listeners get a fully sort of transparent sense of my background and where I'm coming from, I'm an American. I'm also a Palestinian. I also happen to be an Israeli citizen, a Palestinian that was born in what became Israel. So you have a very efficient podcast today. You get a three for one. But that background has also shaped a lot of the way that I think about these issues.

And I do think that it is wrong to suggest that the United States is not involved. The United States is involved, and Americans are involved in this issue. I live here in the United States. I pay taxes. My taxpayer dollars are going to the very bombs that are dropping on my family members in Gaza. That's a reality. $3.8 billion a year are handed over to the Israeli military so that they can buy weapons to use to uphold a system of inequality. We play that role whether negotiations are going on, whether they're not going on, whether a special envoy is appointed, whether the president is making phone calls to leaders. That's constant.

leaders. That's constant. And I think until the United States addresses its complicity and the human rights abuses that are taking place on the ground, it's impossible for us to really play a constructive role. My advice to American leaders when it comes to approaching the situation in Palestine is first, do no harm. And right now, we're doing a lot of harm. So let's address that. It occurs to me too, in this moment, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this, that there is this power struggle politically happening in Palestine. I mean, a lot of people have viewed this latest spate of violence, a lot of Western writers, I should say, have viewed this latest spate of violence as sort of like a power move by Hamas, where they want some of this struggle because the more damage Israel does, the more bombs that drop, the more likely it is that they inherit some more political power in the future. And, you know, I think that's been a common theme of some, especially conservative American or Western writing that I've seen. And I'm wondering what you see in the future for, you know, the

Palestinian government leadership. I mean, we had an election that we thought was going to happen in April. It didn't happen. And I think it's clear there's, you know, maybe not a total 50-50 split of power support or whatever, but there's a bit of a struggle happening right now. Obviously, I think a lot of Americans are more familiar with what's going on in the Israeli government, also having a big political struggle, which I think adds a whole layer of nuance on both sides to where things are. But I'd love your perspective on, you know, the future of Palestinian leadership. Who's going to speak for the Palestinian people in the future, given sort of some of the ambiguity we have right now? Well, you know, as I said, you have these policies that lead to fragmentation. You know, the fact that Palestinians are divided into several different entities, unable to travel freely between them, that directly impact the ability

to have representative, you know, institutions, legitimate representative institutions. You know, there was for the first time in many years, Palestinian Legislative Council elections that were supposed to happen this spring. I think, you know, having those elections would have been a step towards improving Palestinian legislative institutions, although an incomplete step. But even those could not happen because the Israelis would not allow Palestinians to hold the elections among the Palestinian population in occupied Jerusalem, where of course the Israelis are in control. So there are physical obstacles to really changing that. But as I said earlier, what I think is so important about this moment is that the

leadership was really in the streets. It was really among these masses of people that were coming out with no regard to where the green line was, with no regard to whether they were from Gaza or the West Bank or Jerusalem or towns and cities inside what is today Israel. They were mobilizing, carrying a singular flag. That's leadership from below. And yes, there's some real challenges with that, right? There's some challenges with that because if it's not adequately directed, it could be repressed or misguided, right? But I think it represents a break from past paradigms that give us an opportunity to perhaps see something different moving forward. At the same time, we can't let these policies of fragmentation, which produce all kinds of challenges to Palestinian leadership, allow us to turn a blind eye from ongoing human rights abuses and our current complicity in them.

Another interesting layer to this entire story is the Arab world as a whole, the larger Arab world and its role in this. I mean, I asked you earlier about, you know, where you see America's role. I think during the Trump administration, we had the Abraham Accords and much fuss made about, you know, Israel developing stronger, more open relationships with other Arab nations. Where do you see the Arab world right now? Where is it sitting on this issue of Israel and Palestine? And what role does it have to play? I mean, I know, I think Egypt is typically considered like the most directly involved. Israel is claiming that there are strikes now coming from Lebanon. I haven't seen a ton of confirmation on that yet. But I'm just interested, you know, how you view that dynamic and how that's

going to play a part in what comes next in the next few months, next few years. Yeah, look, we know both from tons of public opinion data across the Arab world and also from, you know, historical statements and, you know, the actions of different regimes over time, that there has long been a divide in the Arab world between regimes and their positions towards Israel and the Arab public and their positions towards Israel. And overwhelmingly, Arab publics are opposed to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, stand with the Palestinians,

and do not want their governments to normalize relations with Israel. Of course, their governments are authoritarian regimes and don't even care for the rights of their own people, let alone the rights of other people like Palestinians somewhere else. So they obviously pursue their own regime interests where they see fit, including if that means opportunities to get more weapons, either from the United States or from Israel. I don't think alliances with these regimes is the way towards a more free and equitable future. I do think that what we've seen in

recent days and weeks, once again, is that Arab publics showed very clearly on the streets of countries around the Arab world and in the virtual space that they tremendously stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. And I think that's going to continue to be the case. Yusuf, thank you so much for the time. If people want to keep up with your work and your writing, where's the best place to do it? You can find most of my stuff on Twitter. And my handle is just my first and last name, Yusuf Munair. Thank you, Yusuf. I hope to keep in touch and have you back on the show sometime soon. Thank you very much for having me.

Today's podcast was produced by Tangle Media in partnership with our friends over at Impostor Radio. If you enjoyed the podcast, be sure to give it a five-star rating, share it with your friends, and go check out retangle.com for more. Bye.