TED Talks Daily - The missing ingredient in every peace deal | Hiba Qasas

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

What if the path to peace starts with self-interest? After four decades inside some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, mediator Hiba Qasas has learned that most peacebuilding efforts get it wrong from the start. She makes a provocative case that conciliation shouldn't begin with empathy — and reveals how leading with shared incentives brought hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian leaders into active collaboration, even in the midst of war. (Following her talk, Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily, interviews Qasas on our collective responsibility to advocate for peacemaking.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. The traditional peace-building playbook says, start with empathy, build dialogue, find common ground. But after four decades spent living and working inside conflict zones, mediator and political strategist, Hibba Kassas, thinks we're getting it wrong. So why does peace break down when we do everything we think we're supposed to do? The answer I kept coming back to was not ideology. It was power, politics, and incentives.

And for the broader public, it was legitimacy and trust. Without these, a peace agreement becomes a lid on a boiling pot. It looks calm until the pressure finds the weakest point, then it erupts. In this talk, Hibah, who is the founder of the Principles for Peace Foundation, makes the case that the traditional playbook mistakes process for progress, building elaborate systems that look good on paper but lack the legitimacy to actually hold. She introduces a framework for peacemaking that starts where most people wouldn't expect. Self-interest.

It's an approach that has brought hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian leaders into an active coalition, working together even in the midst of war. And stick around after her talk. I sat down with Hibba to go beyond the ideas she shared on stage, including what finally pulled her back to her own conflict. Why she believes war has become a reflex rather than a last resort and what the rest of us can actually do about it. And I think we've seen a trend where war and violence is becoming more and more the choice. We're living in one of the least peaceful moments in modern history.

We have the largest number of conflicts since World War II. Her talk and our conversation are coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk and Conversation of the Day. I have spent the last four decades in the reality of conflict, as a child, as a mother, and as a professional. And I'm not the exception. One in four people today are living the reality of conflict. We are living in an era where war and violence are becoming the reflex, the choice,

not the last resort. What we've been witnessing with Iran is just the most visible example, because it's been sending shockwaves well beyond its borders, in energy prices, in trade routes, disruption, and in political polarization. And sadly, even when wars end and when agreements are signed, violence often returns within five years. Over the course of my international career with the United Nations, I noticed something that should not be controversial, but still is. We have overly bureaucratized peace.

We've built an entire industry around it, with a familiar Western liberal model and a familiar toolbox. Bring in the peace builders and mediators, launch dialogues, push for elections, train the police, launch stabilization programs, add grassroots women, maybe sprinkle some youth so you can take an inclusion bar. write reports and repeat. And don't get me wrong, this work is important, but too often we mistake process for progress, and too often we do not build enough political legitimacy, enough aligned self-interest, enough public backing to make peacehold.

We have seen the limitations of this. In the Middle East, tens of millions of people are living the unfinished business of wars, of failed political settlements, settlements of occupation, or take Afghanistan 20 years of vast intervention and investment, and the story ended exactly where it began. Taliban to Taliban. So why does peace break down when we do everything we think we're supposed to do? The answer I kept coming back to was not ideology. It was power, politics, and incentives. And for the broader public,

was legitimacy and trust. And legitimacy is a felt experience in good governance, whether you trust your police force, whether your children can walk to school safely, whether your dignity is preserved. Without these, a peace agreement becomes a lid on a boiling pot. It looks calm until the pressure finds the weakest point, then it erupts. I kept seeing this again and again and again, so I got fed up with a bureaucracy, with a system, with its toolbox. And I founded Principles for Peace Foundation. To help those in the hot seat, to help peacemakers build more legitimate and durable peace, we drew on lessons from dozens of countries to understand what lies beneath the success

and failure of peace processes and develop principles and tools and methodologies and data and simulations and AI support and political dialogue infrastructures to help those who are trying to make peacehold. Because this is the challenge of our time. How do you build peace? How do you cultivate legitimacy in a world where might is right again, where power politics is back and transactionalism is in fashion? My answer is not by countering power with idealism, but with principled pragmatism, because principled pragmatism is self-interest with a spine. I recently became a proud Swiss, but I was born and raised a proud Palestinian.

So people often expect me to start with victimhood, to start with moral argument, to start with pain, my pain, their pain, everybody's pain. But I learned something early that I wish was not true. When identities are shaped by loss, by violence, by victimhood, othering becomes normal, dehumanizing the other side becomes reflex, group think becomes shelter,

and violence becomes currency. Empathy for the other side is rarely the entry point. When I was 19, I was invited to the kind of dialogue program, the world loves to celebrate. It's the perfect grassroots project. You bring in a few young Israeli and Palestinians. You put them somewhere nice, maybe in a retreat location in Europe.

You encourage us to pour our hearts out. You encourage sharing. You encourage empathy. You encourage hugs. And you bring out that hummus. And I hated it. Not because I do not believe in empathy. And by the way, I love hummus.

But because when I went home, the reality stayed hard, complicated, unsafe, and I couldn't do anything about it. And a few months later, the second Intifada started, and those we were sharing with, were back in uniforms, fighting in our own towns. I lost friends. My house was destroyed, and I lost hope. And for nearly two decades, I dedicated my career to working with people affected by conflict, but I avoided working on my own.

It was just too painful. Then October 7th happened, and the war in Gaza expanded, and I realized if I truly believe what I'm in my work, I have to bring in Israelis and Palestinians to the hardest room in my life. So that's what I did. Come into that room with me. It's weeks after October 7th.

The war is raging. Loss and trauma are overwhelming. The door closes and 76 people sit down, carrying decades of grievances and recent loss. No one trusts anyone, not the room, not the process, not each other, not me. They're Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but they're not the usual suspects. They're security leaders, business leaders,

investors, political figures, journalists, serious operators. And outside that room, the public narrative is collapsing so fast, it's so hard, it's so polarized. In a room like that, if you start with the word peace, you get laughed out of the building. So I named attention plainly because anything softer would be dishonest. We are here out of urgency and responsibility for our own people. because the status quo neither delivered security to the Israelis nor dignity or an end to the occupation to the Palestinians. And we are at an infliction point.

We either break this cycle or condemn both our people to a perpetual state of loss, of trauma, of insecurity of occupation. We agreed not to dwell on our national and historical narrative. There is no common ground to be found in the past. Instead, we focus on what you cannot afford to lose, security, dignity, the future you want for your children, because you see common ground does not begin with moral agreement,

it begins with self-interest. Everything else comes later. So let me tell you what we've done differently, because this is where the old peacemaking toolbox often inspires. We did not organize this around the grassroots, but the grass stops, not the convinced, but the persuadable, people with influence on power, on politics, on the economy. People who know that the status quo is not sustainable,

but they can do something about it. And I introduced a sequence that almost looks too simple until you watch at work. Self-interest, transaction, recognition, and then humanity. I called it stir. And I called it stir on purpose. Because if you do not stir the room, you get positions, sitting next to each other forever.

You can certainly put the chickpeas next to the tahini next to the lemon juice and not get that hummus. Self-interest, the status quo is not sustainable because it neither delivers security to the Israelis or an end to the occupation to the Palestinians. Then you seek that common ground, that transaction, a political solution within a regional framework. For Palestinians, that means an end to the occupation

and a non-militarized Palestinian state side by side with Israel. For Israelis, that means security and a pathway to regional integration rather than isolation. Once you find that common ground, you can build something that is principled and pragmatic. You can build a platform for dialogue and for action.

That became uniting for shared future coalition. That's our coalition. And it grew and it held and it expanded. And today it brings more than 550 Israeli and Palestinian leaders Realist and possibleist, what's very special about this coalition is that we work together, even in the midst of the war, to push for a political solution.

In the months that followed, we started to advocate together from heads of states of briefing the UN Security Council with a joint message. And I saw Israelis and Palestinians who did not see eye-to-eye begin to speak about the future in the same grammar. and trust began to grow in our coalition, in our process and in each other. I watched Palestinians and Israelis recognize each other's losses. They no longer dehumanize the other.

They're no longer relativized pain. That's what's term made possible. But let me be clear, the reality continues to be brutal. Both people are trapped in deep insecurity. And Israelis and Palestinians feel existentially threatened. And my people, Palestinians, continue to live the reality of occupation, settler violence, devastation in Gaza,

and the threat of annexation in the West Bank. And the whole region, the Middle East, is at a crossroad. It either stays locked in a perpetual state of confrontation and different wars, same wars, I dare say, with different names, or it moves into a new logic of new, political security and cooperation framework, and stops exporting this whole instability to the rest, to all of us, to the rest of us and all of us. But I would argue that that can only happen

if we resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it's the key fault line that continues to fuel radicalization. So my lesson is this. In a transactional world, the antidote to might is right is not idealism. It is not moralizing. It is principled pragmatism. It is launching coalitions of the willing around the enlightened self-interest that can advance peace and security. If you want humanity,

you have to earn it. But start with self-interest. Self-interest, transaction, recognition, and then the return of humanity. Wherever conflict rules, stare that room until humanity rises. Thank you. That was Hibokasus.

Stick around. When we come back, she and I get into the personal moment that finally pushed her to face her own conflict, why she believes the tools of modern warfare are making leaders more trigger happy. And what she thinks the rest of us can actually do about all of this right now. Coming up right after the break. Hibba, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. How are you feeling after getting off the stage? It was a great feeling. It's my first time at TED and just the energy in the room, the connection you feel with. everyone who's there because people are coming to hear the message, they want to engage with it. And just all the interactions right after the talk, it was really phenomenal. In this conversation, we get to engage with your ideas further. So take us back to the moment you decided to return to working on what you call your own conflict. What did it feel like to make that shift? It was a hard one because, you know, I've dedicated my career to working on on conflict and I've been in the field of peace building and conflict prevention and development

for almost 22 years, working with the UN in many conflict countries and my last assignment was in Iraq and it was a time of the ISIS operations and the stabilization effort and it was a very tough time and I saw the limitations of the whole peacemaking toolbox and how we do the same thing again and again and expect different results which is the definition of insanity. It was really partly why I wanted to establish principles for peace, and I wanted to rethink and reshape peacemaking and support peacemakers to adopt a much more nuanced approach to peace and more focus on legitimacy and inclusion and effectiveness and principle pragmatism. But I really did not want to touch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because I think we all in that part of the world, and I always say Israelis and Palestinians, we have so much intergenerational trauma. it's almost imprinted in our DNA, that we react to it in different ways. And for me, I just didn't want to touch my conflict.

But I wanted... Yeah, it was that. And it was just too painful. Yeah. And, you know, I think there was a personal moment that got me into a reflection. And it relates to my son, actually, who's 22. And he, it was after October 7th, and he asked me, Mama, are we going to ever see peace in Israel, Palestine.

We were watching the news, and it was just horrific scenes from both October 7th and the war in Gaza. And I caught myself saying words my late father told me, told him, not in my lifetime,

maybe in yours. And it really hit me to the core because I almost heard myself speak them after I uttered these words and saying, how could I? You know, I've set up an organization

that is supporting peacemakers around the world, and I'm avoiding my own conflict. I felt for a moment as if I'm a fraud. And that was really a moment where I felt, no, I have to face this head-on. I have to put what I've learned into this conflict. I have to fight cynicism.

It's our collective responsibility. And we're at an infliction point and we have to go for it. So stir, self-interest, transaction, recognition, humanity. This is the acronym in your talk. How do you reverse engineer from the change you want to see, the objective, back to the self-interest of each side? I think for me it's the starting point because when you know when you have a situation where you have two populations that are deeply polarized and you have so much victimhood on both sides

and dehumanization of the other and you know the Israeli-Palestine conflict is one of the most polarizing conflict everyone has an opinion even internationally around it right right and often it's not very nuanced but you know the public opinion in both sides is very very hard to start with humanity, it's not something that appeals to the masses because the public opinion is so hard. But starting with survival, with what you cannot afford to lose, the future for your children, you know, security, safety, dignity, the things that are so important for you as a human being. So if you're first doing it for your own people, and then that opens a bit more your willingness to hear the other. You start to recognize the other. You start to recognize how much in common. When it comes to finding common ground, I find that the most entry points are around self-interest. But we have to be also careful that it's enlightened self-interest. It's not the path and the destination. What happens when someone, one party's self-interest threatens the very existence or humanity of the other side?

I mean, this is a very difficult question. You always have maximalists on both sides in every conflict. I've dealt with. You always have people who have maximalist positions. But what we know, and I'll keep it very concrete in this case, you know, the status quo was not seen as sustainable. It all shattered on October 7th. And it was very clear that the idea that you could achieve security through force and military strategy failed on its face. So what we were appealing with the idea of starting with self-interest is actually to start from that common denominator. that the status quo is not sustainable because it's not delivering security

to the Israelis or an end to the occupation to the Palestinian. So there needs to be another path. Then you build from that. Of course, if you're confronted with people who deny the existence of the other, then you need to do a lot of work for people to understand that that's actually what failed. So I think, you know,

one of the things in this effort that I've leveraged as an insider mediator because I think I play it a little bit differently since I'm involved in this conflict and been affected by it, is really to try and appeal to the head and the heart at the same time, but making that entry point self-interest, but really trying to, in a balanced way, to look at the head and the heart,

because it doesn't work if you're being too moralizing from the beginning. It becomes a question of competing over victimhood, which really we need to break, because that's the dead end. Does logic and reason work in a lot of these conflicts? You're saying that essentially it's a combination of head and heart, and the heart arguments tend to ring hollow. In the immediate emotionality of the conflict, usually the head is not very clear.

And you see it, again, that's why public opinion becomes very hard. And you start to see things like rallying around the flag. So you start to see support to the war and the resistance. So usually, no, people don't understand. not clear-headed in the context. But I think this is where it becomes the responsibility of pragmatic leaders and moderates from both sides. And this is where efforts like ours really matter, is to try and bring nuance and clarity and try an open political imagination. It does take leadership. And that leadership needs to come from different levels. And the absence of that leadership

at the state level, it needs to come from the people. And I argue that with the people here, I'm not only talking about the grassroots, but I'm also talking about. the grass tops, the people with influence on power, on politics, on the economy, who need to come out and are part of the security establishment to say, look, the old security doctrine of defense, deterrence, quick, decisive action is not enough. We need a political and diplomatic pillar. Yeah, because there is this belief that war is the last resort after diplomacy has failed, but you actually say that war and violence are a reflex and a choice rather than actually the last resort. How would leaders then change that reflex if it's such a common playbook?

It's becoming a lot more common now. And I think we've seen a trend where war and violence is becoming more and more the choice. We're living in one of the least peaceful moments in modern history. We have the largest number of conflicts since World War II. So in a way, it's also an indication that we have not been successful at preventing conflict. But now also what we're seeing, for example, with the choice around the war in Iran, with the prolonged war in Gaza, when you're looking also at the breakdown of the ceasefire in Lebanon

and the huge impact of that confrontation now between Hezbollah and Israel, which is displaced over a million Lebanese. It's wild. You know, the leadership in many countries are becoming very trigger-happy. And this is a significant, concern. And I think we have a collective responsibility to try and and bring some sense back that,

look, in this era of might and right and, you know, return of brute force and decline of international humanitarian law and, you know, where international law is constantly being violated, we need more voices and more responsible leadership to curb this, this reflex, because it is very dangerous. We're seeing significant implications of that. on all of us, then I do think that what we've been witnessing with all the energy prices and the trade route disruptions and the closure of the Strait of Hormos and how that's sending significant shockwaves around the world makes it also painful in the West, so people feel a little bit more than they are.

So I think we're in this very dangerous moment where we're seeing war becoming more the reflex and the choice, not really the last resort. Yeah, and I have to ask you whether you think the tools of war, obviously this is Ted. We talk about technological advancement all the time. Do you think that the tools of war are making leaders more trigger happy? That is increasing drone warfare, for example, or just kind of creating more distance between, you know, the people who have to pull the trigger and then the victims. I think what we're seeing with the conduct of warfare, with the increasing use of AI and drones, is actually very dangerous. I mean, we've seen this in Gaza. the war on the front line of Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia as well, you know, with all the losses, the human losses that are being incurred, it is a dangerous trend. And I do wonder to a degree it is creating a distance with the element, the human element. I mean, it does make you wonder targeting a school in Iran, how did this happen?

Was it intentional, not intentional? Was it a miscalculation of AI? I mean, in Gaza, we're looking at, you know, 70,000 plus people have been killed. killed 19,000 children. And you do think to yourself, you know, if there is less use of AI and drone, would the same calculus be there in this targeting or would it be something very, very different? But the issue is that we are in this new territory, new technologies, new conduct and warfare, less respect for international law, a lot less respect for the Geneva conventions and the rules of war and a rhetoric that is being discussed where sometimes there's

reference to eradicating civilizations, which is a very, very dangerous rhetoric. So we're in uncharted territory. And at the same time, the other side of the danger is that we also have an international system that is not working. You know, the whole UN system is struggling. Right. Yeah. So it's going to be a difficult moment, I think, for all of us to calibrate. So I have to ask you, what should the role of a body like the UN even be, given it does seem rendered rather powerless? I mean, look, the UN, it was created. You know, that Hammershold said it's actually to prevent us from going to hell rather than to create, you know, heaven on Earth. So it's the least, you know, worst system of international institutions.

one can have. Like Churchill said about democracy. Yeah. But I have, you know, served within the UN and I do see the limitations of it. And I do see the frustration and I do see the bureaucracy. And I do see that this is a system that has not evolved in the past 50 years. You know, the whole peace and security architecture have not evolved. So, you know, the Security Council is the Security Council or the five member states.

And so it hasn't really reformed itself. Yeah. And something that does not evolve in this era of fast transformation, which we're in. It's not fit for purpose. Now, does that mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Not necessarily, because we do still need multilateralism. We still need alliances of the willing. We still need international solidarity and international cooperation.

We are interdependent. We are interconnected. And there needs to be positive mechanism to create that. And the UN could be that. But it really needs serious, serious reform, not this pretense at reform, which is constantly every few years, you know, we have a new. initiative of the Secretary General and they keep doing change management here and there. And, you know, as an old philosopher said, the best illusion of progress is changed.

So you just have every time the new broom who's coming and just, you know, creating another change management exercise to create the illusion of progress. And then the system stays exactly the same. And it looks from the outside like a self-licking ice cream. You really don't see anything changing in reality. So I think we have to see a serious reform of the UN. and we need to see that there is actually a very pragmatic approach to cooperation that is based around coalitions of the willing, of countries that are working together around advancing peace and security because it's in their best interest. Speaking of coalitions, I'm curious how your own Israeli-Palestinian coalition is holding given Israel's continuing attacks both in Iran and then also in Lebanon.

I mean, look, the thing is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians who are part of this coalition continue to push for a political solution even in the midst of war. I mean, this is a coalition that started after October 7th, the war in Gaza, and it continues to hold and it continues to push. And we continue to table very concrete ideas and proposals of how do you move forward. So it's not what's happening and the escalation doesn't deter us. It just makes us more determined. I'm seeing more and more people are joining us in our efforts.

And I think something, you know, my organization principles for peace, we don't only work on the Middle East. You know, part of our effort is to help support and transform the global peacemaking space. And we are trying to promote a new approach to peacemaking with new principles and new tools and simulations. And we're using also AI. And we've developed this thing called the Peace Navigator, which I think is very, very interesting. And it brings a lot of data from 56 countries with almost 23 years of data, and we're using AI to make more sense of the data so it can give some simulation for decision makers when they're thinking of the trends. And the trends are clear. The issue is not only

achieving ceasefires in this moment in time. The question is implementation. And I see this in the different countries and also applies to Gaza. Because now the big, problem is implementation, whether we see this happening or not. So our focus within our coalition is to ensure that the momentum stays, that the pressure stays, that we see actually implementation of the ceasefire and the agreements, and that while we do that, we try to deter some of the very dangerous things that are happening in the West Bank with settler violence and with the threats of annexation so we can advance the political horizon. So for our listeners that are part of the global community and who share this wish for peace and for more diplomatic solutions to conflict.

What kind of agency do the rest of us have? What can we do to help support this work and make sure to continue to uplift the voices of the oppressed? I think we have a collective responsibility to move from kind of a performative sense of solidarity to actionable solidarity. I think it's very important that we, we have a collective responsibility. actually lend our social capital, our political capital, our financial capital to create, frankly, a movement around peace. And I do often admire the movement around the question of the climate, but I do think we are at a moment of a peace crisis and a security crisis, which needs to trigger the kind of movement building, the kind of investment, the kind of engagement that the climate

crisis requires. So I do hope that, you know, platforms and conferences like TED and the amazing community that I've seen here start to also lend its energy and its support to how do we, in this era of might as right and this era where we're seeing brute forces is back in fashion, how do we collectively push for de-escalation, rebuilding societies that are more peaceful, that are less polarized. And we work together in coalition. with different sectors, with those in technology and those in investment and those in the economy and those in the public opinion and those in the arts and those in peace business. We need to work together.

Okay. Hibba, thank you so much. Thank you. That was Hibokasus at TED 2026 and in conversation with me, Elise Hu. If you're curious about Ted's curation guidelines, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact-checked by the TED Research Team. This episode was mixed by Xander Adams, and the interview was recorded in Vancouver by Dave Palmer and Rich Amis, a field trip.

Additional support from Daniela Balerazo, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Chang, Martha Estefanos, Brian Green, Maria Lexa Kavanaugh, Maran, Mara, Tonsica, Sungmarneva, and Laini Lott. Learn more at podcasts. ted.com. I am Elise Hugh. I will be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.