The Dispatch Podcast - What The People of Gaza Actually Think | Interview: Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Palestinian-American activist and resident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib joins Adaam James Levin-Areddy to discuss growing up in the Gaza Strip, the challenge of polling public opinion in Gaza, the future of Palestinian self-governance, whether there is a meaningful contingent in support seeking peace with Israel. The Agenda: —The story of Gaza —Hamas vs. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) —October 7 —Breaking down support for Hamas in Gaza —Palestinian sovereignty and UNRWA —Do Palestinians want peace? —The radicalism of the moderate voice Show Notes: —Ahmed’s piece for The Dispatch —Adaam talks with Dr. Einat Wilf about UNRWA and the refugee industrial complex —Adaam and Jonah talk on Oct. 7, 2023 The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Adam, editorial director at the dispatch, and I'm joined by Ahmed Fuad El Khatib, who is resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Ahmed, you wrote a fantastic piece for the disb dispatch titled Hamas is monstrous. Most Gazans agree. And I think some of the most prominent work that you've been doing in the context of the Israeli-Palestin conflict has been to vigorously and committedly fight for the line of humanitarian concern for the Palestinians, while also

trying to seek a real solution to the conflict in a way that is, sounds almost impossible now to communicate, and that's why I felt it was really important to talk to you after October 7th, especially given the fact that I as an Israeli have done some coverage for the dispatch. I try to describe the story as well as I can, but it's impossible to completely overcome your own biases and your own upbringing, and I thought it was essential to bring you to share your perspective and to have a more expansive dialogue, even though we're especially in the wake of the tragedy that befalls both of our peoples. So thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me. I much appreciated and I appreciate the opportunity to write for the dispatch and to communicate with diverse audiences on social media. I talk to the left. I talk to the right. I talk to the center. I talk to students. I talk to think tankers.

I will talk to any and everybody, especially to convey the diversity of the Palestinian people and that we are not a monolithic people. We're not all for Hamas. And yes, there are grievances that are legitimate that people have towards the state of Israel, the injustices that they feel have experienced, but people are still able to hold multiple truths at once. And certainly people in Gaza right now,

their true sentiments are not really captured by a lot of the discourse that we see happening in the Western world. Let's start, if it's okay with you, with a little bit of your background. Can you tell me a bit about your upbringing your family? Certainly. So I came to the United States. I grew up in the Gaza Strip.

I came here as a 15-year-old exchange student. I was with a State Department program as a Post-Lan 11 initiative to build cultural bridges and improve the cultural relations between the Arab and Muslim worlds. And so I attended a high school here for a year, lived with a host family, and the idea was for me to go back to the Gaza Strip upon completion of the program. I attempted to do so in June of 2006. I was in Egypt trying to cross back into Gaza. Unfortunately, Hamas abducted Gilad Shali, a young Israeli soldier in Gaza.

And this was followed by the 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006. So I was unable to go back into Gaza, the borders had shipped down. there was a mini war going on. And thanks to the support of human rights and peace activists in the United States, I was able to come back to the San Francisco Bay Area in California and finish high school while also applying for political asylum status. There have been generalized in specific threats against the program and myself, which was a novelty in a Palestinian context.

And there was a lot of incitement from which direction? From Islamist and extremists. elements within Hamas and within Gaza society. The program was viewed with a lot of suspicion because it was a novelty to have Palestinian young people and teenagers go to a foreign nation like the United States and participate in cultural exchange. And so I actually, ironically, the very day of my asylum interview was June 14th, 2007, which is the very day that Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip and ejected the Palestinian. authority. So I got asylum and 10 years ago in 2014, I became a United States citizen,

worked in international development, worked with nonprofits, worked in actually trying to build an internationally run Israeli-approved airport in Gaza in 2015. I launched an organization here in the U.S. to advocate for them. And throughout my time here in the United States, I built alliances across diverse spectrums within the Jewish and Israeli communities. And that really carried me to where I am today in terms of having the ability to communicate with allies and partners and friends, even though we don't agree on a lot of things, but we have the common ground of wanting to see our people done with this conflict and wanting to see a just resolution. My family remained largely in Gaza, immediate and extended.

I'm the youngest in a large medical family. My dad worked for UNRWA. He passed away four years ago, but he ran the Jabalya refugee clinic in the north. My middle brother ran the beach camp clinic for many years. My oldest brother is currently in Gaza right now working for a large medical NGO, a British NGO. And so unfortunately 107 and the horrors that followed that massacre have had a direct impact on my family immediate and extended. I'm interested in hearing from your perspective how Gaza has changed over times. Basically, for you, growing up, Gaza was still under direct Israeli occupation. Certainly.

Yes, up until 2005. I left one month before the withdrawal of Israeli settlements. So can you describe to me what Gaza was like then? I don't know if you had any encounter with the Israeli settlements there in Gush Gatif. What was also the internal politics? in terms of the Palestinian authority and the other factions that were before Hamas rose to providence

after the evacuation of settlements. Well, exactly that. It was complicated in a sense that you have three main players. You had the Israeli military with its direct control. They controlled Erez. They controlled Mitzarim,

which was a small isolated settlement in the north, and that's kind of the central part of Gaza. And then there was Gushka, which is the really big complex down south and we had to go through there were two primary checkpoints that we had to traverse traveling across the Gaza Strip there was the one in Netsarim in the central part of Gaza then there was the Goskativ one between Derebalah and Khan units then there was the Palestinian Authority which had a fragile

grip on power that was challenged by Israeli incursions it was challenged by other internal dynamics within the Gaza Strip. And then there was the gradual rise of Hamas and other militants, but really mainly Hamas. And so these three players were present when I was there. Gaza was not that developed it, lacked a lot of infrastructure. At the same time,

it was a complex place where I experienced beautiful moments sometimes with my family, with my friends, going to school, learning English, playing video games, being a masterful kite builder. I was one of the last generations before smartphones and social media. And so we actually had to hang out together and visit with humans. Yes, exactly. And so there were beautiful moments like that. And then there were exceptionally difficult times. We moved, our family moved back and forth between Gaza and Saudi Arabia throughout the 90s but we moved my dad was working in Saudi Arabia as a doctor but we moved permanently to Gaza four months before the second Intifada began and so we spent we had spent

a couple of years from 95 to 97 in Gaza we lived there so we experienced both the also process but the tail end of the process where it was kind of hitting a stalemate and then I live through the Second Intifada. This is one of the things that I assume that many of our listeners don't really have any insight to. They are familiar enough with the broad strokes of the conflict, but largely through the Israeli perspective. So they know about the Oslo process and they know about the Second Intifada and they know about the disengagement process. But I don't think that they necessarily have a real understanding of what it means to live in Gaza during those stages. Gaza is a beautiful place that meant so much to its people. And yes,

in the joke in the 90s, even though there was direct military occupation, but it was a time of immense optimism due to the Oslo peace process. The joke was that Gazans occupied Israel because of how many Gazans were actively working throughout Israeli society, not just as day laborers in terms of construction work, but working in factories, working in office buildings, working in agriculture, in diverse sectors of Israeli society. And so half of Gaza was built by the work of day labors. And you're saying that this is happening, riding on the energy of the Oslo Accord.

So were people talking about the Oslo Accord in Gaza? Did it give people in the street the sense that we are moving towards a different future? How are you thinking of yourselves at the time? Are you thinking of yourself as this is a solution for my Palestinian self-determination? or is it more about Gaza independently as this is who we are. We are cousins. I mean, there was hoping that, like, people saw it. People had passports.

People had ID cards. Gaza had a short-lived airport that my family and I flew into in 99 and in 2000 from Saudi Arabia. There was a sense that, and yes, Gaza is very isolated physically from the West Bank, but we could traverse. There was a belief that were headed towards statehood, that there is optimism, there's a chance. And then unfortunately, that gradually gave way to Hamas's suicide bombings in the 90s

and Hamas's activities that undermine the Palestinian Authority. That was the Sheikh Yassin days, right? Racine and Abdulaziz al-Rantisi and Yahya Ayash and the engineer and Ahmad Agil and all those characters. How are they perceived by your surrounding? Are they seen as disruptors to what could be? an optimistic process, or are they a necessary tool to get there? Well, there was at a time when Hamas's propaganda was more successful in positioning itself as an alternative to the Palestinian authority that became increasingly corrupt.

At the same time, there wasn't the type of information that we now have. A lot of people, unfortunately, fell for the propaganda of Hamas that said, through our resistance, we can actually liberate this through our religious piety and religious, you know, fundamentalism, we can both be effective in governance and be effective in combating the Israelis. The pious message, was that appealing,

from your experience, if you were thinking about the people that you knew and you were surrounded, that have an effect because it appealed to some latent religious chauvinism? Or did that have an effect because of the turpitude of the Palestinian authority that the idea of a more clerical, holy alternative

sounded appealing, that they are going to play it straight. They are actually going to take care of the people and lead us to independence. I think it was very much so the latter in the sense that there was just like what happened with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, where there was this belief that somehow these religious guys, who are more focused on getting it done

and they don't care about, you know, building, accumulating wealth and the Palestinian Authority had developed a reputation as the continuity of the PLO on the 70s and 80s and what they've done with billions of dollars of the Palestinian people being squandered in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Kuwait, elsewhere, there is this belief that this is a viable alternative.

and unfortunately again this was before the internet age this was at a time when it was very easy to manipulate the masses in mosques in community centers in schools in summer camps and so but even along all of that there were many people who were vehemently opposed to hamas there were people who saw the consequences of hamas's resistance as being exceptionally harmful to the Palestinian people there were folks who said that this is the best we're ever going to get and that we are simply sabotaging our national project and shooting ourselves in the foot by not going for peace, the two-state solution, peace with Israel, and Hamas vilified the two-state solution. They vilified the Palestinian Authority in Yasser Arafat for acknowledging Israel for

accepting Palestine reduced to the West Bank and Gaza. So basically, if we're thinking about the end of the 90s, into the early 2000s, after the first Netanyahu government, you get Ejou. Burak, who publicly proposed one of the most coherent ideas from the Israeli side of what a two-state solution could be, which also included compromises on East Jerusalem, which I think in the Israeli public was seen until that point mostly taboo, indicating at least a shift on the Israeli side, whether because of fatigue from the conflict or because of a true desire to reach some kind of coexistence to entertain the possibility of radical concessions. And that gets rejected by

Palestinian authority. But without even litigating that, I'm wondering how this is perceived locally. I mean, there was a lot of ignorance, unfortunately, of what is like on the table? What is the deal? There's little information that the Palestinian people had, little transparency about what was proposed in Camp David, what was proposed by Barat. There was the belief that, unfortunately, what the Israelis had put forth is not enough and it's, we can get better. And Biaser, Airfat, in a sense, pushed for the second intifada after Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in September of 2000, thinking that that could bolster the position, the negotiating position of the Palestinian Authority, thinking that he could play a double game,

thinking that he can use the masses to try and get a better. deal from the Israelis. And unfortunately, that backfired horribly. Right. So if you're thinking about the second intifada, as you said, this was a moment where you get joint efforts from both Hamas and the PLO led by Yasser Arafat at the time. How do you draw that line between the two of them? The PLO were never religiously motivated. They simply thought that they could extract a better negotiating position, if you will. You know, it was a very much so this idea that we can use the population to show to the Israelis and to the whole world that what you put on the table is in enough and that we can't get this and this is unacceptable

using riotous leverage precisely and Hamas was much more nihilistic Hamas had no plan they just wanted perpetual violence perpetual operations against the Israelis to harass them and they literally thought that they stood a chance in actually wiping off Israel and eliminating the Jewish state, they believe that just like Algeria, just like in other, the South Africa model, that they stood a chance in fully dismantling Israel as a Jewish state. However, as time went on, Hamas very much so, and I mean, this is one of the many things I've said repeatedly in one of the things that the people of Gaza and others in the Palestinian territories have seen Hamas shift over the past 10 years is a much more.

primatic understanding that there is no elimination of Israel and that really Palestine is the two-state solution, the very two-state solution that they sabotaged the West Bank and Gaza with parts of East Jerusalem and that there will not be the return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to mainland Israel. What makes you say, so you acknowledge that Hamas from its inception was very literal in its platform describing the total extermination of the Jewish state under a religious pretext, which not even a pretext, under religious auspices. But you think that it has changed over time, which to me sounds like what many Israelis believe, including many Israeli government, including the what is called in Israel,

the Netanyahu Concepcia, the conception, the conception, the idea that Hamas has been shifting over time and becoming more accepting of Israel and needs to work with it if it really hopes to provide independence for the Palestinians. And therefore, Netanyahu's notion was that there needs to be some kind of economic relationship with Hamas, with Gaza, in order to create some sort of stability that is the groundwork for, if not peace, at least some kind of more tolerable status quo. I think that is now seen almost as naive. And yet you seem to think that Hamas really did have a shift to the pragmatic over time. Absolutely. I mean, they did. And Hamas is not monolithic in the sense that what happened on

October 7th, in a sense was a military coup by Sinwar and Leif against the more relatively moderate elements within Hamas. There are many in the group right now who are furious by the decision to not only launch 10-7, but to keep this war going on as long. long as it has because they know Hamas is not going back to power like it once did. There were people in Hamas who got really rich and benefited tremendously from the so-called resistance narrative and from holding power. But there were also people, I mean, remember 2017 when Hamas and Amin Sanwar himself has gone through his own journey, if you will, from being a relative no one to trying to to, to

to trying to navigate the shifting realities. And that's why in 2017, he oversaw Hamas' reformulation of their charter, if you remember. It was still Hamas, but it was basically them trying to flirt with the idea of accepting a two-state solution and accepting that Israel exists and is not going anywhere. The sincerity of this change is not entirely self-evident, And especially given that part of the success of October 7th was the success of Hamas to lead Israeli security into complacency, the idea that Hamas is being mollified, is placated a little bit and is willing to be more rational or prioritize self-survival and not resistance at all cost.

That coup used the illusion of change in Hamas to its own benefit. And then that puts to question the whole change in the first place. Where do you draw your certainty that people in Hamas actually did want a two-state solution? Because they said so. There are different factions within the group. Ghazi Hamad, for example, the guy that Gershon Baskin keeps talking with on one hand versus Mahmoudi Zahar and a whole host of others. The path toward 10-7 really mainly began after the 2021-Mate war.

the short, the short 10-day war, in terms of the strategic decision to actually pursue 10-7 as a nihilistic, destructive element, really made, I mean, available evidence, including some documents that the IDF retrieve show that the planning for 10-7 began in 2022, a year and a half before the massacre took place. It was in part, Sinwar, through his own, I mean, I've been tracking different elements. leading up to 10-7. But it was Sunwar and Hamas feeling that they've hit a dead end politically, that they're a failed government, they can't govern Gaza, they're reliant on Qatar,

there's no reconciliation of the Palestinian authority, the Arabs are moving on with the normalization, there was the possibility of the Saudi normalization pact, which Hamas viewed as an existential threat to the Palestinian cause.

And then there was like the dwindling popularity of Hamas, It couldn't have its cake and eat it too. It couldn't be a resistance movement while also continuously justifying misery on hardships in Gaza when it wasn't doing anything with this resistance. It had built up this arsenal,

but it wasn't going anywhere. I mean, they failed miserably in leveraging the 2017 charter reformulation as an opportunity to really put forth a realistic gesture for transformation, for change. And remember, the PLS, used to be the terrorists of the past, the FARC rebels in Colombia, revolutionaries in Northern Ireland. There are examples where people shift, people evolve, people get rehabilitated.

And I, for once, thought that there were enough elements within Hamas who woke up to the fraud that is the elimination of Israel and the inevitability of the two-state solution and realized this is the only path forward. And I was also scooped up in this strategic deception, if you will, that they carried out. But I would argue personally that that deception of that Hamas was in fact playing along with the Netanyahu and the IDF perception of we're going to just govern. We can't disrupt Gaza too much. And that changed, I think two and a half years before 10-7 when Sinwar realized that he's hit a dead end and that Hamas must fundamentally. irrevocably changed the status quo, particularly because they saw what was happening also on the West Bank and what happened the failures of the Palestinian Authority. It's an interesting theory.

So your view of this, and I should say, part of my skepticism comes from when you build an organization that is founded, and this is unlike the PLO, as you pointed out yourself, the PLO has been very secular, and its focus has always been national independence, national resistance. And to that extent, you can see how the pragmatic can overcome. And to some extent, the reason that it hadn't overcome was because of Arafat's unique character. Whatever sclerotic alternative now exists at the head of the PLO, it certainly has benefited for better or worse from collaboration with Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, has always been apocalyptic. Again, this is very reductive. And as you pointed out, there are factions within Hamas and some of them

more religious, some of the more clerical, some of them more political, some of them more affiliated with Iran, some of them are not. But when you step back and look at the history of the organization and its relationship to the conflict and the Middle East more broadly, it's hard to take out the Sunni eschatology from its vision. To me, the only anomalous blip in this story is that supposed momentary headways with the Israeli government, which, in retrospect, are much more easily explainable as deception. But I don't think like we're disagreeing here. I'm saying, I mean, they've deceived the people of Gaza.

They've deceived like the people of Gaza were always under the impression that Hamas is not at this point going to risk another destructive war like 2014, which at the time up until 107 was the most destructive in Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. They felt that Hamas was never, again going to launch something so deadly and destructive so as to invite a retaliatory war of destruction upon them. So they've deceived the people of Gaza, just as they've deceived

the Israeli military or security establishment and Netanyahu himself. I'm simply saying that I look back in the trajectory of Hamas and I maintain that there may have been opportunities. And I don't know what that looks like. And I don't know. I think there may have been opportunities that were missed not just by Israel, but by the Palestinian Authority, by the Arab community, to try and co-op Hamas and to really use the 2017 moment, which I felt to me is the closest the group ever got to formally and unequivocally accepting the two-state solution, even in phases, which means a recognition of Israel,

Israel's existence, Israel's inevitability of the inevitable continued existence. I try to look back at the trajectory of Hamas, and as much as I despise them, ideologically, politically, tactically, I wonder if there were missed opportunities to truly co-op them, not just with suitcases full of cash, as Benjamin Netanyahu did with the Qataris, which for the context of people who might not know, he strategically was involved in transferring funds from the Qatari government or Qatari supporters of Hamas to the Hamas government as part of this perception that Hamas can be tamed through some kind of economic collaboration. Precisely, precisely. And so I very much so wish that there might have been a political horizon that in a sense could have been imposed upon Hamas.

And as much as I push back on the notion that the people of Gaza could have, you know, overthrown Hamas or revolted against them, their unarmed Hamas is a vile terror, violent organization. But I feel that there may have been a missed opportunity to try to create political horizon for the Palestinian people as a whole such that it would have been far too unpopular and costly nearing on impossible for Hamas to undo that through a massacre like what happened on 10-7. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take

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some critiques of Israel's supporters that say, well, basically the people of Gaza are responsible for what Hamas did, because this is a quote-unquote democratically elected government, even though it was elected, you know, 20 years ago in the only election that the semi-independent region of Gaza

was able to have. But either way, it is on the people to rid themselves of an illegitimate government if that's how they perceive it. So I said in the piece that it was very much so of vote. Hamas has always had ideological supporters in Gaza, okay? That exists. Think of it as an an enemy.

You have a core of people that just ideologically believe in Hamas's idea and Hamas's a propagation of what a Palestinian liberation project looks like. It's a more exterminationist view. as it relates to Israel. And not acknowledging that Israel exists or should exist and has a right to exist. So that's a real non-trivial base that does exist in the guzzan public. Well, I mean, and how trivial. I quantifying it is where things get a little tricky because of the second tier of support for Hamas.

And I would argue that Hamas has never had any core base of support. beyond 30%, 25 to 30% of the overall population. And there was a poll, even though I question polls in Palestinian society and an undemocratic society run by Hamas, right before October 7th by a lady who went on the Ezra Klein show of the New York Times podcast and described how her, she captured something like 33% of the Gaza population overall approved of Hamas. before 10-7.

So you have the ideological core support and then you have a large web of beneficiaries and patrons that Hamas has set around itself. Remember that they have the political arm, the social arm, the militant arm. A lot of these, I mean, a lot of its core members, they get monthly salaries or they got monthly salaries.

They got access to benefits, food coupons, referral to us. It's the best business in town, isn't it? Precisely that. precisely that those Qasan Brigade dudes that went in on October 7, they all had monthly salaries. All of the tunnel diggers, Hamas used, and I wrote about this in 2021,

Hamas used independent teams of diggers throughout Gaza. They leveraged the unemployment crisis to hire people for their own government, for their own digging, for their own dangerous work, to hire people as part of their summer camps, as part of their network of social welfare to distribute food and cook food for the poor and open up this little clinic that provided some primary care for some people. So that is how Hamas was able to buy out the patronage and the support of a lot of people. And then you have beyond that, those who broadly speaking supported the concept of resistance,

even though they're not Islamists themselves, they're not religious. They swallowed the propaganda that Hamas is a legitimate resistance organization and that I hate, their ideology. I hate their maximalism. I hate how they go about it. But they're a resistance group. And then there were people that may have supported Hamas. And that's what I argue are the vote, the vast majority of those who voted for Hamas who were not Hamas members in 2006. When half of Gaza wasn't even born, it was a vote against the Palestinian Authority rather than an ideological vote for Hamas. And so there's tears. These are different tiers. of people who support Hamas,

that you really must understand to be able to realize that this support is not constant, it's not unchangeable, it's not permanent. This support was achieved through various levels of manipulation and persuasion and propaganda and brainwashing and economic and business empires and interest and social welfare state of a small scale that Hamas was able to use.

Just as it's important to understand the different tiers of opposition to Hamas, you actually have ideological opposition to Hamas. You have a set of Palestinians with Fethe, with the PLO, with the Palestinian authority, who are naturally secular. They don't believe in the Islamization of the Palestinian society,

which is what Hamas started to do early on in the 80s before, as they were prepping up for, their formal launch in 1987, they were attacking women with, you know, acid water for their faith. Like, if you look at pictures, my family, for example, all my mom and sisters and everybody in my family, they wear the hijab. They're very conservative Muslims. I'm not, but if you look at, like, pictures of even my own mom and, like, family members in the early 80s or in the 70, they all had skirts and hair and t-shirts. Like that's what Gaza looked like.

That's what the majority of Palestinian society looked like. Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically and deliberately started with an Islamization agenda of society. So there's going back to the opposition to Hamas. There's ideological opposition to Hamas through just the lens of ideology. They're not Islamists. They're nationalists, and they believe in what the Palestinian Authority and PLO and Feta have done. They're like, we've been through armed resistance.

It hasn't served us. Negotiations and peaceful coexistence with Israel is the only way to preserve the Palestinian people. So there's ideological support, opposition. Then there is administrative and governmental opposition of Hamas' rule has meant that entire generations of dozens, only no eight hours of electricity. Entire generations are told when the water is coming on, not when it's going out. Entire generations have had to basically become accustomed to 30% unemployment overall, 50 to 70% youth unemployment, which is one of the highest in the world,

70% of the population being aid dependent on UNR or the whole host of other international NGOs. but let's actually focus on this little point because it's significant in the bigger dispute about how to parse out the conflict. All of these travails that the average Gazan undergoes under the Hamas regime for an average westerner, that sounds like the product of being under an open-air prison under the Israeli blockade. And Israelis will say that the blockade is for security reasons primarily, but also that it's Hamas's own focus on building, you know, military tunnels to infiltrate Israel as opposed to invest in infrastructure. Some Hamas leaders have pointed out, you know, it's not our responsibility to take care

of the civilian population. That's UNRWA. How is that viewed in Gaza? Because if for the average Gaza and all these discomforts and lack of resources are seen as the product of Israeli abuse, then I don't see how that necessarily transatlantic. translates to resistance to Hamas. So multiple things are true at once. It is absolutely the case that the Israeli blockade,

which, by the way, has not been this constant, never-ending set of rules and regimes and restricted. It has gone through different evolutions where the first, for example, a couple of years of the blockade being imposed, there were severe restrictions on pasta and crayons and color books. And then at the very tail end, actually, there were products coming in from Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and different

consumer goods and items that made Gaza look like it was just like any other, I mean, that made Gaza look better off than parts of Syria and Yemen, for example. The tail end you're saying ahead of October 7th, the book Located was at its slightest, which again brings credence to the idea that Israeli was under the view that they were making headway with Hamas and can actually relinquish some of the restrictions. Precisely that. Nevertheless, it's like Israel restricted, for example, certain medical grade items that could have treated cancer patients in Gaza, requiring that they travel to Israel or to Egypt.

At the same time, what I try to tell people is the product, the blockade is the direct result of Hamas's stated priorities and intention to smuggle, to build an arsenal, to attack Israel and that while I do look back at elements of the blockade as being particularly punitive and unjust, I can't for me and many people in Gaza can't separate it from Hamas and their priorities and their allocation of resources. On the other hand, and this is very difficult for me to share because like I said, my dad ran Unruhe's clinic in Jabalia. My brother works in the has been for over 15 years in the humanitarian community, many of them in Gaza are wonderful people that are personal friends that I are working selflessly and I support them.

Unfortunately, Hamas was able to abdicate a lot of its governing responsibility by not being able to not having to provide to the people of Gaza and abdicating that to international NGOs and the United Nations and medical organizations. Sorry, I'm going to pause again just until the ambulance, this one was really. That's the nuanced police. They're here to stop you from getting too complex in your views. Yes, exactly.

Hamas, unfortunately, was able to export responsibility for the people of Gaza onto the shoulders of all these medical NGOs. Unfortunately, well-intentioned people and their work, ended up indirectly prolonging Hamas's governance of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority allocated a third of its budget to the Gaza Strip. So Hamas had its own little budget, especially its police force that it used to control Gaza to prevent Fete from ever coming in, to prevent dissidents from ever protesting or saying anything about its wool.

And then, you know, with Qatari help, with Iranian help, they basically, basically made it work for 17 years and very regrettably, the people of Gaza paid the ultimate price. And so my point is, Gazans are not stupid. They are not dumb. They know that. They've seen it. They've lived it. They experienced the consequences of it. And they know that Hamas could have made different choices and priorities that would have opened Gaza up to the rest of the world instead of making us into a mini North Korea that would have allowed for more resources, more cancer. patient hospitals, more development, more employment. Those hardships were the result of Hamas's choices, and Gazans know that. This is the trap of foreign aid, right? That foreign aid to impoverished dictatorships end up allowing the dictatorship to

abdivigate any kind of responsibility to its people and, in effect, also own the channels of support. It's only made worse when you have an organization like UNRWA, which is not disinterested party. And I'm not even referring to UNRWA members who have participated in October 7th, but UNRWA's being embedded in Gaza also means that it is institutionally tied into Hamas in the management of the strip. I feel, and I wrote a piece about this in Newsweek, and I have had my fair share of

criticism to UNRWA. I feel like some of those criticisms are valid. Some of them are exaggerated. There's this thing to be said, and I just said it myself, that indirectly by UNRWA taking an oversized role in administering a lot of the affairs of the just humanitarian basic affairs in Gaza that indirectly allowed Hamas to basically look to the organization, conduct roles that should be carried out by the government of Gaza. That's number one. Is Hamas infiltrating? Has Hamas infiltrated UNRWA without a doubt? Is UNRWA willingly and deliberately acting as the civilian arm of Hamas

or as part of the resistance, as some folks have ventured to say? I think that's exaggerated and I think that mischaracterizes in an unhelpful way. This is bigger than UNRWA. This UNRWA is simply an entity that was indirectly and nefariously used. used by Hamas to perpetuate this patchwork, this, well, this patchwork of a Hamas government, a set of international NGOs, a small network of Palestinian authority administrative and financial systems that allowed Hamas to build its arsenal for attacking Israelis and for holding dozens hostage to the resistance netted. The Israeli military, there's a reason why they

supported UNRWA doing the work that it was doing because without them, Gaza would have been significantly set back. Without them, Israel may have had to fully be much more engaged in working with Gaza. Without them, there could have been a humanitarian crisis for which Israel would have been blamed as a result of its blockade. So is there a discussion to be had about UNRWA's mandate and what that looks like. I think that's a fair conversation. Absolutely. I think there could also be a scenario in which UNRWA gets broken up into an entity

that is strictly there to carry out specific humanitarian and healthcare and educational services under the broader UN umbrella without it having to be a standalone agency. And I say that in hopes that it would, A, create more. space for accountability and B, that the Palestinian people would be part of the broader refugee. I mean, I don't mind UNRWA and being repackaged to be a part of the broader UN refugee agency. And I have said and caught a lot of flack and I could care less. My parents, my grandparents were pushed out in 1948. I went to UNRWA schools. I understand this issue. at the same time, I have said, and many Palestinians know this, there will not be a return

of millions of Palestinian refugees or their descendants to mainland Israel. That is not going to happen. I do, however, believe in the right of return to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and in Gaza. And the West Bank is big enough to accommodate the return of millions of people who could be brought back from Syria and Lebanon, where they're living in secondhand. though right way but of course at that point that's not a matter for negotiations because any right of return to a sovereign state is dependent on what the sovereign state is going to permit the only area where this is a question of political contention is whether or not Israel should allow a right of return to areas that under whatever settlement will remain as part of sovereign Israel certainly certainly and so I have very much so been a proponent of The sooner, and this is whether it was Yasser Arafat, whether it was many of the other Palestinian negotiators, many of them can't touch this issue. They're terrified because for decades, we have been sold a pack of lies and told that these refugees will somehow be part of the resolution. And the Arab countries in the past, more so in the past than now, have kept these Palestinian people in these horrible refugee camps in Jordan, in Syria, and Lebanon.

and treated them like trash. And in Lebanon, for example, they're not allowed to get a bunch of jobs. They're not allowed to exercise any self-determination within the state of Lebanon. And they're told, we're treating you like crap for your own good so that you can have the right of return.

And 76... They're being kept in terrible conditions in order to be a chip in the geopolitical games of those other Arab nations who also have some vested interest in keeping the conflict alive and also not absorbing the Palestinian population into their own countries.

Precisely. And in effect, Unrui is perpetuating. Like, I look back at why want Palestinian refugees from 48 repatriated to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when they were just in the few hundred thousand, the West Bank was huge and could have absorbed them. And instead, unfortunately, Jordan and Egypt at the time prevented the emergence of a Palestinian state.

There were Palestinian nationalists. after 1948, who wanted a provisional Palestinian state in the West Bank and in Gaza, but the Arab nations at the time prevented it. Jordan wanted to have a presence on both sides of the river, and they annexed the West Bank and Egypt had control of Gaza, and they would arrest Palestinian nationalist. So there's a component of this where, unfortunately, we are also, as Palestinian people, are paying the price of Pan-Arabism of Abdin Nasr

and that really the control and political nefarious planning and intents of the Arab nations in the post-1948 era. And yes, UNRWA is a part of this system. However, what is indisputable just to close on UNRAP, there's two tracks to this. There is the tactical like service provision element of this. And that's why we had a lot of problems with the distribution of aid and food is that there was nothing to replace UNRWA once the I-Cogat and the I. IDF started basically squeezing UNRWA during this war.

There was nothing to take its place. The World Food Program tried, World Central Kitchen tried. There's that dimension of UNRWA. And then there's the broader kind of like accounting for those historical occurrences and happenings and mistakes. And I think that's worthy of having a broader discussion. And that's where for me the settlements have been exceptionally damaging. One of the many aspects of them is that they swallow. up territory that could allow for the resolution of the right of return so that Palestinians

and those who want to express this identity and affiliation with Palestine can do so in a future Palestinian state, not in what is now mainland Israel. But I want to ask you that one of the difficult questions, you're saying that a key hindrance from the Israeli side is what is legally can be described as the occupation of the West Bank, the military presence. That was Umar's plan after the disengagement from Gaza, right? Umert had the idea of retracting all the military forces and applying the same unilateral solution to the West Bank as Israel did in Gaza.

That vision had public support. Israelis voted for Ulmer knowing that that was the plan that Ulmer is going to carry out the full vision that Ariel Sharon started before his stroke. Israel recedes into its civilian territories, saying that this is going to be our starting point. We're going to do the same in the West Bank as we did in Gaza. And now negotiation is going to happen with whatever emerges in those territories. The reason this didn't happen was because after the disengagement from Gaza, which was a very traumatic experience for Israelis,

they're having to remove all the settlers, having Israeli soldiers, remove Israeli civilians from their settlements. That was a very difficult experience. And the result of it, the upshot, was getting Hamas, a rogue state that is bent on eliminating Israel, lobbying rockets regularly on civilian populations, sending out the occasional axe murderers to Israeli towns. That was all before October 7th, obviously. That shatters the idea that we can just act unilaterally.

But my point is not to re-litigate that moment and bring this up to say that we know that when we're talking about trying to understand the different views of Israelis and Palestinians, we know that a majority of Israelis, or at least a plurality of Israelis, we're ready to make more sacrifices, more territorial sacrifices, in order to get a new status quo, which is stable and does not involve a military occupation. My question to you is I don't need to be convinced that there's a lot of resentment of Hamas, But that is not the same as saying that there is a real power in Palestinian society broadly and specifically in Gaza that is really open to making the same kind of political and territorial concessions necessary for a two-state solution, that there is a real willingness to achieve coexistence with the Israeli society. We've seen how Israelis voted, so we know that there's a right-wing faction and you know that there's a militant religious faction in Israel as well.

But we also know that there is a very dominant voice for coexistence and stability. Those people march out to the streets, even during a war, to protest the right-wing government and say that maybe this is not the solution. Those voices are heard constantly. Israelis argue between themselves daily, not so in the Palestinian population. I can probably count on two hands the prominent Palestinian voices who speak the way that we are now. You don't see that kind of swell on. on the Palestinian street.

Yes, absolutely. But before going there, I mean, there's a difference between, there's a difference between saying we can't leave because our experiencing Gaza was traumatic and we got Hamas versus we can't leave and now we're just going to settle the whole place and prevent the real decision of a Palestinian sea. I have heard this, I mean, I hear this narrative constantly. And I also speak as a Palestinian on why what Hamas did was

so exceptionally destructive and damaging, is that it gave fuel to this narrative with October 7th as the crowning a jewel of Hamas' terrorism and the failures to leverage the 2005 withdrawal. And I speak about this ad nauseum in seeing, as imperfect as it was in 2005, it was a unique opportunity to demonstrate that Palestinians are capable of effective self-governance, to turn Gaza into a role model for what an occupation-free West Bank would look like. I've repeatedly spoken about that and the need that now it's an even more of an up-ill battle to demonstrate that the end of the military control and occupation of the West Bank will not turn the West Bank into a base for further terrorism.

This is the absurdity, the irrationality and impracticality of some of those more eschatological zealous approaches to resistance, they only turn the Israeli population more rightward and more militant, unless this is the goal, which some may argue is the case, the point is to turn Israeli into a more savage country. But certainly the second intifada achieved that goal, the takeover of Hamas after the disengagement, achieved that goal. And October 7th certainly has radicalized some of the voices in Israeli society. And this is not good for anybody who actually believes in the idea that the only way to maintain peaceful Middle East is to attain mutual concessions and understanding that nobody is leaving. And I've said that immediately on October

7th, that one of my biggest concerns is for the Israeli soul after October 7th. And as far as I see, the radical factions of Hamas has already won on that day by darkening parts of Israeli society. I don't have any disagreement with you on that. But I do want to hear your response to my other question. Yes. So, I mean, that is a problem. I mean, there are unfortunately Palestinian society is not, not just in terms of the governance system, but it is not a democratic society by nature. It is one that is run by tribal like dynamics. It's just not democratic by governance, but not democratic by its culture, social values. And part of that is because the Palestinian people have not had a chance to develop their unique identity

in terms of they haven't had the space, they haven't had the time, and some of that is self-inflicted. Some of that is due to the perpetual displacement and the occupation and the mistakes. So the totality of the circumstances are such that there are not democratic values. That's why I'm attacked all the time. I'm told that I am a spy or that I'm a Zionist or I'm a traitor and I'm a sellout because the need has to always be on Israel. And one of the things that I've realized and I've tried in the past and I've seen other Palestinians try to speak internally

and having the internal discussion, there's never the right time because it is always keep the focus on Israel, keep the focus on the occupation, don't dare our dirty laundry to the world. This is unhelpful. This is not the right time. And what's worse is that these are worsened and these these tendencies, these positions are bolstered by a lot of Western allies and the white liberals and the leftists who are like, yes, that's focused now. They tell me, white folks, and I'm not saying white to be trendy or hipser, you know, but I'm just saying like, you know, white allies of the Palestinian people in academia, in media, on social media, tell me now is not the right time, you know,

focus everything on Israel and the genocide and attacks in Gaza and everything. And I think that actually hurts us as Palestinian people. We change and transformation starts from within. I understand the power imbalance of one side being a nuclear, first world economic powerhouse and another side being a dependent dispossessed people in small fragments of length. I get that. But even within the imbalance of power,

We have agency. We have responsibility towards ourselves, towards our people, towards our children, towards our elderly, towards our communities and societies to preserve Gaza and not get it destroyed through a suicidal adventurism at the behest of the Islamic Republic. To nurture this culture, this vibrant culture of new ideas, fresh exchanges, debate, and respectful disagreements

so that we can produce the best ideas, the best leadership, the best proposals, and have the best of our minds come together to help us save what can be saved of our people. So I've long believed in the need to do that. Unfortunately, and this is not me removing agency or not holding the Palestinians accountable because there is this form of subtle racism of white leftists or liberals saying that, well, you can't expect that of the Palestinians because they've just been perpetual act around. I believe there's truth to that. This is part of Tanishi Coates' argument,

a lack of agency on the Palestinian side. And I am very, very, very anti this idea that we as Palestinians are completely blameless and are victimly and are perpetual victims. I think we are

victims, but we're also victims of our own failures. We're also victims of nefarious leadership of the Arab failures of the pan-Arabism in the 50s and 60s and and those who prevented us from having a state on 1948 between Gaza and in the West Bank. And we're also victims of Israeli injustice and a dirty, disgusting game by Netanyahu to use Hamas against the Palestinian Authority. And we, just like the Israeli people in the Gaza envelope, are paying the price for that right now.

Unfortunately, this is the uphill battle that Palestinian moderates, like myself, and I even hate this word moderates, but let's just stick with it. Palestinian moderates and those who believe in the two states who actually exist everywhere they just can't speak out they're afraid for their safety they're afraid that if they say something it's just going to be tokenized by the pro-Israel community or it's going to be used to weaken the Palestinian people

or they're going to be weaponized and by the way that's not just the Israeli people I talk to the most senior of heads of Jewish organizations here in the United States who privately tell me a Zionist mainstream organization who tell me

I can't stand Nathaniel we can't have perpetual occupation of the Palestinian people I am a Zionist and I love Israel and I'm with Israel

to the end and this is bad for Israel what it's doing in the West Spain but they're like I can't say this publicly but let's be real about the difference I don't think that Israel

has a big problem of speaking out against the occupation those voices have shrunk after October 7th for sure, but they are very, very loud and dominant and widespread. But ultimately, it's so difficult to tell Israelis, because, you know, this is something that I talked about with John Aziz. In the end, the West is going to not matter.

It has to be a solution that happens between Israelis and Palestinians and rely on public support for that solution. Even if you, you know, happen to have kind of a revolutionary regime in Gaza that tries to bring liberalization and modernization and it's going to be imposed top down the way that MBS attempts in Saudi Arabia, that might work, but

if the public doesn't support it, it's going to collapse and it's going to lead to more war. I think the majority of Israel just wants to be left the fuck alone. You live your lives, we live ours, focused on a two-state solution. Not necessarily because they are these noble souls,

but just because they want to stop having to go to the military when they're 18. They don't want their children to be involved in this war. They're just tired of this but until you hear those voices on the Palestinian side, how can Israelis even trust that they really do have as the cliche goes a partner? I don't have a silver bullet or a magical bullet to get those voices out there like that. Then also convince me that they're there. Could convince me that they're there. They're absolutely there, but we need to empower the moderates with wins. We need to show that pragmatism and being a moderate is effective. We have a situation right.

now where you have had for all of their corruption, for all of their mistakes, the Palestinian authority in the West Bank, unfortunately, were they stopped hundreds of terror attacks. They coordinated with the Shinbet and Kogat and the IDF. They coordinated and they were viewed as subcontractors of the occupation. They bent over backwards to try and keep the Palestinian authority in power, to keep the Palestinian societies and cities under order. And what were they rewarded with? What were they given and exchanged? And I'm not saying this is the responsibility of the left-leaning Israelis or the peace-loving Israelis or the liberal Zionists.

I understand that this is a policy that was specifically ushered in by Netanyahu and a certain element within Israeli policy. You were talking about preserving both the West Bank under the Fatah and the Gaza under Hamas, is both weakened and as enemies scared of each other. But well, exactly, like Hamas was allowed to get suitcases full of money. We knew from the beginning that they were using the Philadelphia corridor to smuggle through Egypt. And after the Arab, after the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and in Libya, smuggling was out of control. I went to the Gaza borders in 2012 right after, right before the election of the Muslim Brotherhood president. And it was out in the open.

Trucks were headed to Gaza loaded up with anything. I saw a bride. I saw cattle, I saw rebar, I saw cement, and I saw shady looking trucks that I'm sure and was told were bringing in guns and ammunition from the fallen Gaddafi regime in Libya. And that's actually, for example, a lot of the shoulder-lawned missiles,

ground-and-air missiles came from Libya. We've known that for years, but Hamas was allowed to grow and fester in Gaza and be managed the Palestinian Authority. They were weakened, settlements everywhere, Smoltrich and Netanyahu cutting off their tax returns year after year after year. So the Palestinian, you cannot isolate that

from other Palestinian moderates who are like, well, you want me to be a moderate and be called a traitor and a sellout and a Zionist for what so that settlers can go? And like, they point to that like juxtaposition of Hamas and Gaza and their failures and they're terrorists and they're evil and they're horrible. But what's the alternative?

It's the West Bank. And Netanyahu, just as Hamas, and I vehemently believe this, Netanyahu wanted to weaken the moderates and push them away more towards the armed resistance narrative in the same way that Hamas wanted to darken the soul of Israel with October 7th, Hamas specifically talks about in their literature in Arabic that I weed all the time about how they have succeeded and making Israel more right wing, making Israel,

they were, they tried to take credit during Netanyahu's judicial reform controversy and saying we are a part of this long word march towards Israel being much more right waying, fascistic, crazy, this and that. So both Hamas wouldn't be, Smotrich and Mangvir wouldn't be where they are today without Hamas and Hamas. And Hamas wouldn't be where it is today without Netanyahu and company. So that's what I'm saying. A subtle point that you made which made me think is that the, cost of participation and being a moderate and being an outspoken moderate in the Palestinian society so much higher and more dangerous than it is in the Israeli society that there is a lot more work you're saying to empower and protect those voices. Exactly. But at minimum empower them

so that they're going to stick their neck out for something that benefits. And that's what I'm hoping to do right now. That's why I moved to Washington, D.C. a month ago from California and I'm at the Atlantic Council, because I want to build a movement of a professional level-headed moderate Palestinians in the diaspora who can help really create this new space that doesn't exist because right now the pro-Palestine activism is dominated by a lot of maximalist reductionist voices on college campuses in the streets, on social media, without any space for acknowledging Israel's existence, the need for peace. peace has become so cowardly and treachery not just as a concept as a like oh peace like oh whatever

but because of they're like well how does israel treat palisinian moderates what is Israel done to a you know the jewish state has done nothing but weakened the Palestinian authority and the moderates so the cost you're right i like how you frame me the cost of participation in a moderate discourse is very high if it's not paired with wins even if they're tactical to show that pragmatism pays off. Now, regardless of the aforementioned, what actually gives me hope? What actually makes me feel like I'm not just raising my blood pressure

and putting on weight and being really miserable and this is all a waste of my time? Specifically about Gaza, for the West Bank is its own separate monster that I think is just going to be a lot. I actually think solving Gaza is relatively simple. I strongly believe that this is going to be Gaza's last war. I strongly believe that the people of Gaza who have paid the ultimate and heaviest price

ever in Palestinian period, more than anyone in the West Bank, more than people in 48 Nakba, more than those imbeciles and western campuses that haven't had to deal with the consequences of life under their favorite resistance group, they will never again tolerate somebody like Hamas ever using stealing their resources suppressing their right to free speech and democratic governance robbing them from the possibility of turning Gaza into the crown jewel of a Palestinian state and the future the pride and joy of the Palestinian people in the name of resistance against Israel because they see that resistance is futile in the sense that does elite to liberation, elites to death, some actually believe it or not, even though it

might be hard for some people who believe, are against the taking of women and children as hostages. They think that was evil. That was wrong. That's un-Islamic. That's unlike the culture that we thought we as Palestinians celebrate, which is one of being generous and the Arab culture that protects women in women's spaces. So I genuinely believe that as much as the near term is absolutely bleak brother the short term is difficult there is nothing on the horizon immediate horizon that shows me an exit strategy or an offram for hamas for israel for iran for isbala but specific to gaza i think there's a ship that i've never seen in gaza like even even in the like the opposition the overt you look at arabic social media and it is full you look at telegram

Facebook, Twitter, it is full of opposition and cursing against Hamas and Sinwar. Literally today, I was watching a video of a Palestinian who was talking about the occupation in Israel and Israel bad, but he was like, Hamas needs to dismantle. Like, can you imagine like, I mean, for me, it's just these are unheard of. Hamas needs to dismantle. It's Kassan brigades. It's militant cells in the north, which is being surrounded. around it again and being invaded again, the people of Gaza have awakened to the fact that Islamism

is a nefarious ideology that has held them hostage. And sadly, through this massive unprecedented destruction, I think there's going to be a realignment after the end of the war. I think there's going to be a reckoning with Hamas and the axis of resistance when the war stops. Because right now they're literally trying to survive every second and every day. But when the war stops, I genuinely think solving Gaza, even with remnants of Hamas, who can, some of whom can be recycled and rehabilitated. And I've actually written a piece about that. And there are models for, what do they call it, demilitarization, disarmament, demobilization, reintegration. Yes, those are the three words, the models, the security models that exist. And that's what gives me hope. That's

why I want to now do the work of trying to, and I take a beating and I get attacked, I get threats and I get, and I don't care. I'm a privileged guy in the United States. I can understand people in Gaza and in the West Bank having a hard time speaking their mind. The thing that I don't understand are those who are in the West who have freedom of speech, who have privilege here, and over here, they're afraid to speak out against Hamas. And they tell me, they're the number of Arabs and Muslims and Palestinians that privately chair me on and tell me, thank God someone else is saying what you're saying. Thank God you're saying what we know is true, but we can't say so publicly. And again, some of them I understand why some of them I try to challenge that. I'm like,

you're a privileged dude in the West. You have a responsibility to speak out against Hamas. You have a responsibility to create space for diverse Palestinian perspectives. So I actually, I'm hopeful that Gaza's Soviet is going to be straightforward. I have plans. for doing all sorts of humanitarian and development projects. I think God's overlooking the Mediterranean can have a seaport and an airport and use the territorial waters to get in and out of Gaza through a non-Egyptian and a non-Israeli checkpoint.

I understand that Israel's security will have to be fulfilled and addressed in the short term. Trust is going to take time to rebuild. I completely get that. And I am for that because I don't want a single new bullet to be smuggled into Gaza to be used by Hamas or anybody else. So I'm actually hopeful and I'm actually optimistic that Gaza will not be a threat. The issue is the West Bank.

And as long as we have the violent settlers who are terrorizing the Palestinian people, we have this government that doesn't believe there's an occupation that wants to annex the West Bank, that to me is going to be the real monster to solve. But the people of Gaza have had enough of Hamas. Well, on that note, I would say that I have had a few friends that I was able to make who were Gaza refugees who I spoke to and interviewed in the past. And it was always been my feeling that the people of Gaza are the most tragically positioned people in this conflict.

I have to admit that it was very difficult for me on October 7th to watch the videos of the Nukba returning and being welcomed with cheer and admiration and the sort of bloodlust that was expressed on telegram, on TikTok, all over the place. I had to actively remind myself that, you know, in the same way that we can't understand the polling and make sense of that, the fact that you're seeing a bunch of people celebrating doesn't impugn the entire population.

But I really hope that your view is correct and that the Palestinian population in Gaza will be able to overcome to some extent their grievances and build something new and that at the same time, I hope that the Israeli government will be able to, work after the war with whatever emerges to build something sustainable and that prioritizes prosperity and welfare of the population in addition to ensuring the security of Israel.

And I absolutely hope that you're right and that both Palestinians and Israelis are up to it. Inshallah, inshallah, peace is inevitable. Peace and coexistence have to be reformulated and rebranded as courageous evolutions. And this is what I tell Palestinians. Courageous evolutions that are critical for our survival as a people. And as courageous and critical, not a treacherous and we. It's very easy to pick up a gun and go start shooting.

It's very difficult to exercise self-restrearing, control, and accountability, and to come up with a series of ideas for why it is a bad idea to kill people, why you need to work across our differences. That takes real courage, and that's a lot more courageous. just, in my opinion. I want to thank you for having such candor and willingness to engage in this conversation. And at least we can both agree fully

that Western leftists are misserving everyone in this. Couldn't agree more, my brother. Thank you.