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0:36

From New York Times Opinion, this is

0:38

the Ezra Klein Show. I'm

0:56

just going to try to say what we're doing this week as

0:58

clearly as I can. Before there

1:00

can be any kind of stable coexistence

1:02

of peoples in Israel and Palestine, there's

1:05

going to have to be a stable coexistence of

1:07

narratives.

1:08

There's a line I love from Yossi Klein and Levi's

1:10

book, Letters to My Palestinian

1:12

Neighbor,

1:13

where he writes, quote, we must recognize

1:15

not only each other's right to self-determination,

1:18

but also each side's right to self-definition.

1:21

So you could think of the episodes this week as

1:23

a matched pair. You could think of it as one episode

1:25

in two parts. But one is going to be on this

1:28

moment and the background to it through Palestinian

1:30

eyes, and the other on this moment and

1:33

the background to it through Israeli eyes.

1:36

Obviously, nobody can speak for a whole people. These

1:38

are just what they claim to be, historically and

1:40

journalistically informed perspectives. There

1:42

are many more. I didn't

1:45

find everything in these conversations easy to hear. I

1:47

doubt you will either. I didn't agree

1:49

with everything I heard, and I doubt you will

1:52

either.

1:53

But that's not the spirit in which

1:55

I'm trying to do these. The point,

1:57

at least for me, is to simply try and

1:59

hold these.

1:59

perspectives at the same time, because somehow

2:02

this land, this cursed, sacred,

2:04

bloody scar of land is going to have

2:06

to hold them and more. My

2:09

guest today is Amjad Araki. He's a senior

2:11

editor at 972 Magazine and a policy

2:13

analyst at the think tank Al Shabaka. He's

2:16

written for the London Review of Books and The Guardian

2:18

and formerly worked at Adala, the legal

2:20

center for Arab minority rights in Israel. I

2:23

appreciated him having this conversation with me. This

2:25

is not easy stuff to talk about. I got

2:27

a lot from it and I hope that you do too. As

2:30

always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.

2:34

Amjad

2:38

Araki, welcome to the show.

2:40

Thanks so much for having me. So I wanted to

2:42

begin with what

2:45

Gaza looked like before the

2:47

attack on 10-7. And I want to,

2:49

I guess, begin with a more simple question,

2:52

which is, what was Gaza?

2:55

I

2:55

mean, Gaza, as we know it today, is almost

2:57

like an imaginary construct. Historically,

3:00

there was Gaza City. It wasn't a strip. It

3:02

was a part of what was regarded

3:05

as historical Palestine that, you know, through

3:07

different empires and rulers

3:09

of the years, you know, was this kind of coastal area,

3:11

which was also one of the sort of port cities

3:14

and had these other kind of rural areas around it,

3:17

and was very much one of the major points of

3:19

Palestinian Arab history in that land. This

3:22

all naturally changed in 1948 with

3:25

regard to the Arab-Israeli war or what Palestinians

3:27

refer to as the Nakba or the catastrophe. And

3:30

whereby after that war, you had Palestine

3:34

split apart by an armistice lines

3:36

that were created between the newfound Israeli

3:38

state and the Arab states around it. And

3:40

at the time, Gaza was then put onto the Egyptian

3:43

side. And that formulated that sort of slot

3:46

of land that we know of today and

3:48

its shape. Most of the population

3:50

since 1948 have been refugees

3:53

or descendants of Palestinian refugees

3:55

who were either fled or were expelled during

3:57

that 1948 war. of

4:00

these people can literally see the lands from which their families

4:02

came from just a few kilometers

4:04

or miles away. And even to this day, those

4:07

descendants are still living in what are regarded as refugee

4:09

camps, which now look like permanent

4:11

settlements in a way, like permanent communities

4:14

or towns and villages. They still

4:16

strongly identify themselves as refugees. I think something

4:18

like two-thirds of the Gaza Strip's

4:20

population are technically not from that

4:23

area. And Gaza has

4:25

always been very much at the center of, or

4:28

one of the kind of pillars of Palestinian identity, a

4:30

Palestinian memory of the region, and

4:33

certainly in terms of politics and identity

4:35

and resistance, Gaza has always been

4:37

very much at the front in many ways of

4:40

initiating that, of producing Palestinians who

4:43

created different kinds of politics and so

4:45

on. I'm emphasizing this

4:47

especially because it's become this tendency to think of

4:49

the Gaza Strip as something separate from Palestine

4:52

and something separate from the Palestinian people in history,

4:54

but it's really vital to understand how central

4:56

it is to it. Now all this has very

4:58

much been, let's say, deformed

5:01

after the 1967 occupation, and even more

5:04

so since the blockade

5:06

of the Gaza Strip in 2007, whereby

5:08

the Gaza that we see today is one that is

5:11

completely encaged by

5:13

a blockade that was initiated after

5:15

the Islamist movement Hamas took over the Strip,

5:18

which itself came after Hamas

5:20

won democratic elections to the Palestinian

5:22

government, which was then met by international sanctions

5:25

led by the Bush administration and then a Western-backed

5:28

coup by the rival party Fatah, which

5:30

is led by Mahmoud Abbas and governs the West Bank. And

5:33

that blockade has basically, indeed,

5:35

developed since 2007. So

5:37

the infrastructure and the towns and communities'

5:40

access to basic services have been

5:42

crippling along the way because of the blockade

5:44

and its restrictions on movement,

5:46

on people, on goods, and really

5:49

formulating this cage and in a very deliberate

5:51

policy to try to separate

5:53

Gaza and Hamas, but especially

5:56

Gaza as a unit, away from the

5:58

Palestinian people. So

6:00

I want to zoom in on two periods here.

6:02

And the first is when Gaza moves from

6:05

Egyptian control to Israeli control.

6:07

I think it's also important for people to realize that Gaza

6:10

is somewhat,

6:11

it's almost co-managed between Egypt

6:13

and Israel even now. So what

6:15

happens in that moment? How does Gaza go from

6:17

being something that Egypt has

6:19

authority over to something that Israel is

6:21

now controlling?

6:23

So in June 1967, you

6:25

had the Six-Day War between Israel

6:27

and surrounding Arab states. And within

6:29

the space of a week, Israel had basically conquered

6:32

the West Bank from Jordan, the

6:34

Golan Heights from Syria, and then the Gaza

6:36

Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

6:39

And this was kind of quite a shocking victory on Israel's

6:41

end. Later on, the Sinai

6:44

was eventually ceded back in negotiations

6:46

with Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt in

6:49

the 70s. This is a Camp David accord. And

6:52

for Egypt and Israel, and there's been some

6:54

fantastic research about this, but just explaining

6:56

how the armistice line was then redrawn to

6:58

the Gaza Strip. And so this is how

7:01

you kind of formulated that agreement

7:03

between Israel and Egypt, that Gaza's future lay

7:06

with the Palestinian people, not with Egypt.

7:09

You mentioned this research about how

7:11

Gaza becomes seen as something that's not

7:13

going to, in some kind of deal, go back to Egypt,

7:15

but becomes part of Palestine. And

7:18

so it becomes this sort of – I don't want to call it unwanted,

7:20

but Egypt also does not end up wanting to control

7:22

Gaza. What is that research? What is

7:24

the narrative of that?

7:26

I mean the huge part of the Palestinian question, especially

7:29

on the Israeli side, is to try to make the Palestinian

7:32

issue an Arab problem. So it's

7:35

always about trying to sort of cast

7:37

it off to the Arab states, even hoping like in the West Bank

7:39

that Jordan would just take all the Palestinians and

7:41

that would be done with it. But

7:43

the Palestinians themselves, from the very get-go, have

7:45

always resisted this kind of geopolitical

7:48

games from playing with them. Even Arab

7:50

states, which have always had their own agendas and

7:52

kind of larger visions of the regional architecture,

7:55

still understood, especially both by the Palestinians

7:57

who are resisting on the ground, but also a lot of the

7:59

Arab publics. which today are still

8:01

heavily sympathetic to the Palestinian

8:03

cause, that the Palestinians needed to be able

8:06

to assert themselves in their own homeland,

8:08

that their struggle lay with the

8:10

future in their land and not just to be kind of dispersed

8:12

and diluted into this Arab region.

8:15

So after the trauma of the Nakba, that became,

8:17

basically from the 60s, that Palestinians

8:20

were really kind of taking a much more concerted, organized

8:22

agency in order to make the

8:24

world sort of not forget them. Like

8:27

after 1948, that wasn't just a done deal

8:29

and that Palestinians weren't going to be silenced in that respect

8:32

or just kind of melt away into the region, that they still

8:34

had aspirations for their own homeland.

8:37

So Palestinians themselves made it impossible for these

8:39

other Arab capitals and for the Israeli states to completely

8:41

ignore them. But for

8:43

a whole host of reasons, it did not go the way that at

8:46

least Palestinians have been hoping to.

8:48

So go back to 2006 here. There

8:50

are elections held in Gaza. To

8:53

some degree, one of the big movers here is the Bush

8:55

administration over the objections of some

8:57

who they really want elections. Hamas

9:00

wins the election. What

9:02

is Hamas and what is Hamas at

9:05

that point and why do they win?

9:08

So Hamas is like

9:10

a Palestinian Islamist movement and those

9:12

two need to be combined because there's a tendency to sort

9:14

of just kind of dismiss it as kind of like another

9:17

one of these Islamist groups that has these grand

9:19

Islamic caliphate sort of visions for the region.

9:23

But Hamas has always been very concerted about

9:26

defining itself as a particularly

9:28

national movement for the Palestinians. And yes,

9:30

it has connections to other Islamists. It

9:33

has a history with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example,

9:35

and obviously tied in with a lot of Arab capitals

9:38

and even Iran, for example. But its

9:40

goal is very much focused on Palestine. And

9:42

so it originated basically almost like a social movement,

9:45

I think back in the 70s or even 80s.

9:48

The early incarnations of it was recognized in NGO

9:50

even by the Israeli occupation authorities.

9:53

And then through a couple of processes, you end up having Hamas

9:56

emerging out, especially out of the first Intifada

9:58

in the late 80s. seeing

10:00

itself as kind of like a religious political model, you

10:02

know, a political Islamist model, and one

10:04

especially that was grounded in historic

10:06

Palestine itself, in the occupied territories, which

10:09

was different from the PLO, which was very much born in

10:11

exile and by the refugees abroad. And

10:14

in addition to that kind of political Islam, they

10:16

were also trying to create this challenge

10:18

to the PLO, which today we're seeing as shifting

10:21

its politics, as we would eventually see with

10:23

Yasser Arafat moving towards recognition

10:25

of the two-state solution, the signing of the Oslo

10:28

Accords, the renouncing of armed struggle. And

10:30

Hamas has always been very insistent that in addition to its

10:32

political agenda, that armed

10:34

struggle needs to be an integral part of Palestine

10:37

resistance. So this is what really set it apart

10:40

or tried to define itself as being set apart from the Fatah

10:42

party, which governed the PLO. And

10:44

it's evolved over the years. It's a very complex organization.

10:47

And the talk by Karonya wrote a really fantastic

10:49

book about this called Hamas Contained, where

10:51

he really provides like a very great complex

10:54

analysis of how it was born and fantastic details.

10:56

And it's important to think of it as a monolith, whether

10:58

you approve of the movement or not. It

11:01

has a political bureau. It has armed wing. It

11:03

has debates and these mechanisms that are involved

11:05

around it. Hamas really defined

11:07

itself in the 90s with its military

11:10

struggle, especially of the suicide bombings, which became

11:12

notorious, including during the Second Intifada. But

11:15

then in the 2005-2006 elections, it came like this

11:17

test to see like, okay,

11:20

what if we try to use these democratic

11:22

models? What if we focus on the political rather than the armed

11:24

struggle and try to really center ourselves

11:27

at the center of the Palestinian national movement, not

11:29

just to have Fatah or the PLO dominate,

11:32

but to be able to really reflect these

11:34

other political ideas. So it sees

11:36

itself as trying to become the smartest

11:39

people.

11:40

But the response has just been complete

11:42

blockage by Fatah, which still sees

11:45

itself as kind of like the sole leader, the

11:48

sole monopolizer of Palestinian politics.

11:51

At the time by international actors, which especially under

11:53

the rubric of the war on terror, was almost like refusing

11:56

to have any conversations with political Islamist

11:58

movements, let alone ones that maintain their power. an armed

12:00

struggle. And for

12:02

Hamas's experience, you know, the fact that they

12:05

participated in elections, won the parliament, and

12:07

then were sanctioned and then basically ousted from government,

12:10

is for them an indication that they cannot let go of armed

12:12

struggle. And this is why they pretty much

12:14

unlike Fatah and the PLO, they're still holding on to it.

12:16

And that's one of the things that has also helped

12:19

it to maintain a certain status in

12:21

Palestinian society, where even those who disagree with Hamas

12:24

ideologically or in political moves, feel

12:27

that Hamas is still one of the only movements that are still

12:29

incurring a cost on Israel's occupation

12:32

in a way that Fatah no longer is, that the PLO

12:34

no longer is.

12:35

So two things in there that I want to go into

12:38

in more detail. So one, after Hamas

12:40

wins, there's a blockade imposed

12:42

by Israel. The blockade is also enforced by

12:44

Egypt by international actors. And

12:46

there's this war that happens with Fatah.

12:48

Can you talk a bit about both what the blockade

12:51

is and also why Egypt participates in it?

12:54

And then also the war with Fatah, what happens

12:56

there?

12:58

So you had the 2005 election, which

13:00

gets Mahmoud Abbas as president, and then

13:02

the 2006 one where Hamas wins the legislature.

13:05

And it was very clear from the outset that neither Fatah

13:08

nor its Western sponsors were going to be accepting

13:10

of this scenario that even though Hamas

13:12

was playing the political game as demanded, the

13:15

very fact that they could have such popular

13:17

support and win even by the rules of the game

13:19

was just unacceptable. And so

13:21

in the months that ensued afterwards, you basically

13:23

had the constant tensions, the sanctions

13:26

that were imposed by the European Union, by

13:29

the Bush administration, just made it impossible

13:31

for Hamas to even function in government. Like it became

13:34

almost designed to fail. And all this

13:36

in the pattern whereby both Fatah and Hamas

13:38

with their different sort of security forces or armed

13:40

groups, ended up almost fighting out into the

13:43

streets, especially in Gaza, and Hamas won

13:45

that battle. And then this kind of gave

13:47

the pretext for Israel to completely

13:49

enforce this full-on

13:51

siege. We're talking about severe

13:54

restrictions at the border crossings, both

13:56

in terms of making almost impossible for people

13:58

to get in and out. And in addition to

14:00

just general goods and just basic trade like

14:02

Gaza used to be, you know, parcel

14:05

of the economy of the West Bank and also inside

14:08

Israel during the Oslo period, people used to be able

14:10

to go in and out of Gaza. And in the moment that that blockade

14:12

and even just before the months and years before, like

14:14

when the closure started being in place,

14:16

it became this highly isolated kind

14:19

of territorial island in a way. And

14:22

then for Palestinians in Gaza who've been experiencing

14:24

the siege, we're talking about an entire

14:26

generation who've never been out of that

14:28

strip and who've never seen another

14:31

Palestinian from the West Bank who

14:33

only know Israelis through the tanks and the fighter

14:35

jets and the Israeli snipers at the border. This

14:39

is kind of the harrowing reality and with each passing year and especially

14:41

as the military assaults kept bombarding

14:43

Gaza, it wasn't able to even

14:46

reconstruct or even again like for

14:49

young Palestinians especially to even envision a future

14:52

outside of this cage in which they're

14:54

born in. So this is a very harrowing

14:56

reality that Israel especially has

14:58

designed and in terms of and for Egypt, Egypt's

15:01

presidency, whether it was Mubarak or Sisi

15:04

today and with the capital Muslim Brotherhood in the

15:06

middle, they despise political Islamists. You

15:08

know, they themselves are trying to fight them back in the Egyptian

15:11

territory, including in the Sinai. So there are

15:13

no friends of Hamas and for all the lip service that

15:15

Egypt also provides for the Palestinian cause, they

15:18

also have geopolitical interests and they're more interested

15:20

in the alliance with Israel in many respects. And

15:23

it's backing and especially the backing of the United States

15:26

compared to really assisting the Palestinian people. And

15:28

it fluctuates and sometimes the presidents have

15:31

like Sisi now is like concerned about how the Egyptian public

15:33

will respond to this, to what's happening

15:35

right now. But these

15:38

are complex games where Palestinians are kind of – especially

15:40

those in Gaza are really just kept hostage by the

15:42

geopolitical guns.

15:44

So one thing I want to be attentive to in this conversation

15:46

is the way that the narratives and

15:48

the experiences behind those narratives conflict. And

15:50

so I think the dominant Israeli narrative,

15:53

it's fair to say is something like in 2005,

15:57

Israel withdraws from Gaza,

15:59

Gazans choose.

15:59

Hamas. Palestinians

16:02

more broadly know sex, choose Hamas for Parliament,

16:04

but it ends up being in Gaza where that is

16:06

sustained. Hamas is

16:09

an organization that is an existential

16:12

security threat to Israel. The organization,

16:14

as you say, known for the suicide bombings, which

16:16

are generational trauma for

16:18

Israelis. And so Gaza needs to be

16:21

treated as a kind of hostile

16:24

space, right? An existential threat.

16:27

So that I think is the way Israelis

16:29

see it, or at least Jewish Israelis

16:31

see it. What is the dominant

16:33

Palestinian narrative here? I recognize that might

16:36

overlap with some things you've said, but I just want to try

16:38

to put it in one place. I mean,

16:40

it's a convenient narrative for Israelis to kind

16:42

of center it around Hamas and the center around

16:45

terrorism. Like the Gaza Strip

16:47

existed before Hamas was established in the 1980s.

16:50

Right now in the Israeli mindset, there's that conflation

16:53

or that excuse of using kind of like an

16:55

armed political group to be able to decimate the entire

16:57

society, I think really needs to be broken down. And

16:59

a lot of people abroad, sadly, are sort of buying

17:02

into it. And just to put this into context

17:04

as well, it's, you

17:06

have, let's say, kind of three streams

17:09

or models of which politics can be waged that we're

17:11

seeing right now. So you have Hamas, which is stuck with armed

17:13

struggle, armed violence, or quote unquote terrorism

17:16

as defined abroad by Israel.

17:18

You have Fatah, which especially since the Oslo Accords

17:21

and under Mahmoud Abbas's reign has focused

17:23

on kind of leading the political struggle through

17:25

like diplomacy. So going to the UN, going to

17:27

the ICC, focusing on these international forums,

17:30

all while still keeping to the provisions

17:32

of the Oslo Accords, like security coordination with

17:34

Israeli military, keeping its end of the bargain

17:38

by playing that game. But what they're

17:40

finding is that even that is not being defined as diplomatic

17:42

terrorism, that even the PA's model

17:45

is actually basically groundly dismissed,

17:47

is roundly demonized, and you still have the same

17:49

occupation, not even the same, it's even an entrenching

17:51

occupation, and that the PA

17:53

has now become this convenient subcontractor

17:56

to this regime in the West Bank. And

17:58

then you have let's say a third model of the EU. of policy and politics,

18:01

of like the boycott, divestment, and sanctions,

18:03

using literally non-violent methods that

18:05

all of us were kind of taught are the best way to go,

18:08

are very moral and righteous, and

18:10

that is coercion without

18:12

the same kind of coercion of

18:14

armed struggle. And what Palestinians are finding

18:17

is that when you practice that, you're

18:19

demonized also as terrorists

18:21

and demonizing versus anti-Semites, because

18:23

you're using a nonviolent method to

18:25

try to achieve your rights and to try to

18:28

weaken the structures that allow the Israeli occupation

18:30

to take place. Now,

18:34

if all of these are defined as unacceptable,

18:36

not just by Israel, but by, especially in a lot of Western

18:39

countries, which are criminalizing boycotts,

18:41

and they're not giving Fatah and the PA the

18:43

diplomatic victories or providing them anything beyond

18:46

just money to supply to the Palestinians,

18:48

and at the same time, they're violently going against Hamas,

18:51

Palestinians are saying, so what options do we have left? And

18:54

the only thing that has actually ever really incurred that cost

18:57

is Hamas's armed struggle. This is one of the

18:59

perspectives that's very much in the public's

19:01

mind. And even though the cost of that is

19:03

born on Palestinians, it's like, are

19:06

we going to wait for a slow annihilation or a

19:08

quick one? Are we going to put up a fight or are we not going to put up a fight?

19:11

So these are the kind of debates that are happening right now. And

19:13

Hamas is very conscious of this. As I said, they

19:15

tried to play the political game

19:17

back in 2005 and 2006, and what

19:20

they experienced was a complete rebuttal.

19:22

They even tried, for example, the great march of return

19:24

and facilitating this march that happened

19:27

back in 2018, the war

19:29

until 2019, to try to push against the Gaza

19:31

fence and this massive civil disobedience

19:33

and this massive march of really hundreds of thousands

19:35

of people. And the Israeli snipers

19:38

either killed or maimed hundreds

19:41

and then injured thousands of Palestinians, and the world

19:43

just sat by and, again, defined it

19:45

as terrorists. So Hamas is also

19:48

navigating all this and examining

19:50

it, and it's making its judgments based on

19:52

that, that nothing is actually working. And

19:54

for Palestinians now as well, it's like in the

19:56

wider public. Like I said, even those that disagree

19:58

with the movement its decisions, but

20:01

they're asking themselves like, well, what do we have left?

20:04

And what Palestinians are realizing is that it's not about

20:06

the method, it's our very existence that is deemed

20:08

unacceptable by the Israelis and

20:11

by a lot of Western powers and people

20:13

who support them, who see

20:15

us as disposable and Jewish Israelis as

20:17

the ones who need to be protected and whose

20:19

rights need to be met first.

20:21

There's also a more complicated reality

20:24

that emerges than I think in the Israeli

20:26

narrative between Israel itself

20:28

and Hamas. You've talked

20:31

about your colleague, Torque Bacconi's idea

20:33

of the violent equilibrium that emerges.

20:36

What is the violent equilibrium?

20:38

The equilibrium, as Torque describes it, is

20:41

this kind of like almost de facto arrangement that was

20:43

established whereby Hamas and Israel understood

20:45

that they were going to get into regular confrontations,

20:48

like armed military confrontations, and

20:51

that this was almost like a form of communication

20:54

when, for example, the blockade became a bit too untenable,

20:56

when there were Israeli domestic political

20:59

issues, that armed violence

21:02

would be the way that they renegotiate some

21:04

of the conditions of the blockade. But

21:07

that on the whole, the idea was that every

21:09

now and then they'll negotiate in this tactic, but

21:11

that the quote unquote calm is

21:14

what would become sort of status quo. But

21:17

this itself was kind of a myth, you

21:19

know, that this idea of calm, because for the

21:21

Israelis, they experienced for the most part calm.

21:24

And from the north to the south, most Israelis were able

21:26

to go about their lives. But in Gaza,

21:28

the siege is the constant. The structural

21:30

violence of the siege is the constant.

21:33

In the Israeli mindset, this equilibrium was fantastic

21:36

because they just almost pretended that Gaza was

21:38

just static. And they began

21:40

to believe that actually this kind of de facto

21:42

arrangement could last forever, that

21:44

they didn't need to come up with some alternative solution, that this

21:47

itself was a solution. And this is where

21:49

it's also very much connected to the way that the

21:51

occupation is managed in the West Bank, where you have

21:53

this kind of subcontractor in the PA, that

21:55

they just govern a few things in the population

21:57

centers, but it's the Israeli state that controls So

22:00

it became like an integral part of this maintenance

22:02

of an apartheid regime in the

22:05

same way that we would understand the Bantistans and the apartheid

22:07

in South Africa or elsewhere. That

22:09

equilibrium was always very shaky.

22:12

That equilibrium always came at the cost of

22:14

Palestinians in Gaza Strip in

22:16

their daily life and certainly during those bouts of military violence.

22:20

And October 7th I think has very much

22:22

erased that equilibrium. It's very much erased

22:24

that arrangement. The Hamas for whatever

22:26

reasons could no longer hold

22:29

it up and it has also shocked the Israeli

22:31

system to understand that something

22:33

else has to replace it. But unfortunately what we're

22:35

seeing now is something even worse in that

22:37

regard.

22:40

What I find useful about the idea of the equilibrium

22:42

is it gets at I think a more

22:44

complicated reality here which is that the

22:47

two sides are in relationship and what they do

22:49

affects the other. And there's

22:52

sort of two quotes that stick in my mind here. So

22:54

Netanyahu is widely reported to

22:56

have said at a Likud meeting when

22:58

he is asked about allowing

23:00

Qatari money to go to Hamas. He

23:03

says quote anyone who wants to thwart the establishment

23:05

of a Palestinian state must support bolstering

23:07

Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. He

23:10

goes on to say it's part of our strategy. And

23:12

then Bezalel Smocic who is now the

23:14

finance minister in Netanyahu's government

23:16

and has a lot of control over the West Bank. In 2015 he says the Palestinian

23:19

Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset. One

23:27

reason I think that's important

23:30

is that the relationship

23:32

between the Israeli government and Hamas becomes

23:34

more complicated than simple enmity. Is

23:37

there a way that both sides are benefiting

23:39

from each other prior to the major

23:41

attacks?

23:42

I think they all benefited in many respects. Even

23:45

those benefits came out of massive asymmetry but

23:48

everyone had something to gain from the quote unquote

23:50

status quo. For someone like Smocic,

23:53

the PA is this very

23:55

frustrating partner. The fact that

23:58

even though they're almost on the Israeli payroll, But

24:00

they can still go and sort

24:03

of go to these diplomatic forums etc and say

24:05

all these things about Israel and for Smarchers It's just

24:07

like infuriating, but especially when he's come

24:09

into power He's realizing how useful they

24:11

are because they're actually keeping a hold

24:14

for the most part on the Palestinian people

24:16

such that the Israeli army Doesn't have to do it. It's

24:18

like a partner that you need but one

24:20

of the other have to allow to launch these kind

24:22

of diplomatic defenses against

24:25

the state Hamas is just nice

24:27

pure and simple in the Israeli establishment Like

24:29

it is the embodiment of an evil is a

24:31

clear-cut enemy That you can basically

24:33

inflict all the violence that you want upon it Like you can't

24:36

really do that with the PA they

24:38

know that fatah always needs it and they just

24:40

find the right sort of equilibrium In that respect

24:43

to keep the PA alive and to keep it functioning because

24:45

the pay is so dependent and this is why

24:47

even to this day The fatah

24:49

leadership can't exist outside

24:51

of the structure of the occupation right now and

24:54

for Hamas the Gaza Strip allowed

24:56

it to become almost like a fiefdom of its own that

24:58

it gave it some sense of power and that

25:02

it was able to create this kind of more sturdy

25:04

base for it to establish

25:06

itself to establish its armed wing more

25:09

and to And to try to tackle

25:11

the occupation with more control than the otherwise

25:13

would have So that arrangement

25:15

worked for them in that respect This is kind of the irony

25:17

again of even a group like Hamas which for all its

25:19

talk of resistance Also appreciated

25:22

the status quo in in many respects

25:25

and all this fed into this divide

25:27

and conquer strategy You know, it's your typical story

25:29

of that for the Israelis This was a great

25:31

way to keep the Palestinian leadership divided to have

25:34

them each have those You know separate fiefdoms

25:37

and to try to entrench that the

25:39

idea that the West Bank is separate from Gaza Even in

25:41

the minds of Palestinians and that these

25:43

really could manage all this and you know

25:46

from above So yeah, everyone

25:48

sit the game for it and you know, this is what created

25:50

the quote-unquote calm especially for Israeli Jewish

25:52

society and The violence

25:54

that was inflicted on Palestinians on a regular basis

25:57

including against Gaza with massive wars even

26:00

despite occasional rocket attacks or even militant

26:02

attacks in Israeli cities, that

26:04

was kind of seen as both physically and psychologically

26:07

distant for the Israeli state and for most

26:09

Jewish Israelis. There's very much part

26:11

of a doctrine, especially led by Netanyahu,

26:13

to really erase the occupation from

26:16

the Israeli mindset, like out of sight and out of mind.

26:19

And I think a lot of people just assumed that this could be sustainable.

26:21

But again, what happened on October 7th, I

26:24

think, showed the folly of that. And

26:27

this is never something static, that even

26:29

though Palestinian elites can sometimes

26:31

gain from the system, Indian and Palestinian public, with

26:34

the pressures that they're putting on their leadership, both Hamas

26:37

and Fatah, and just making the occupation

26:39

itself untenable, I think it's proof that apartheid

26:42

can't work forever like this.

26:57

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27:51

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28:42

There has been this overwhelming

28:45

sense that what Israel

28:48

suffered on 10 to seven among other things was

28:50

an intelligence failure. But

28:52

the more I see the reporting on this, the more that doesn't actually

28:54

seem right to me. They had actually

28:56

a lot of intelligence. They saw a lot of the training happening in open

28:58

air. What they

29:00

had was a political analysis

29:03

failure. They believed that

29:06

Hamas was relatively comfortable

29:08

in the position it was in, that it was not going

29:10

to want to risk this kind of war with Israel. They

29:13

did not think Hamas would do something like this, not

29:15

that they didn't see them preparing for it, but they didn't

29:17

believe that they would want to upend

29:20

the equilibrium in the way they did.

29:23

So at this point, what is your sense of what they

29:25

wanted? Why didn't Hamas just want to

29:27

stay in the position they were in, where Israel

29:30

was not trying to destroy it root

29:32

and branch? I

29:34

mean, you hit at something very important here whereby

29:36

even beyond political analysis, there's a deeper psychology

29:39

that has really taken hold of the Israeli political

29:42

and military establishment and Israeli society, which

29:44

like I said, that they thought that this could keep going

29:46

forever. They couldn't imagine that

29:48

Hamas wanted anything differently. And that,

29:50

yes, aside from your occasional confrontations,

29:53

the idea of Gaza being out of sight out of mind is

29:55

actually became the norm. And so,

29:57

yeah, I think for them, as much as it was. a

30:00

military shock, there's a psychological shock,

30:02

a barrier really being broken by the

30:04

fact that Hamas told the Israelis in a very

30:07

violent fashion, we no longer want

30:09

this to be the case. Now as to why

30:11

Hamas decided to pick this moment and even

30:13

these methods, there are multiple layers

30:15

of this. Like in the end, it's not just about Gaza,

30:17

it's about the wider Palestinian question. You're

30:20

been seeing, not just in the past years, but even

30:22

just in the past months, you know, just for a smaller

30:25

scope, under this Israeli

30:27

far-right government, which has been very explicit

30:30

about what it wants to do to the

30:32

occupied territories, especially in the West Bank

30:35

of like full force annexation, a judicial

30:37

coup, which is very much designed

30:40

and seen as a phase towards the full

30:42

absorption of the West Bank, a very unabashed

30:45

envisioning of expelling as many Palestinians

30:47

as possible, especially by people like Smotrit

30:50

and Bangveer. They're seeing even before

30:52

this month, you know, you had West Bank

30:54

communities, rural ones and villages who

30:57

are being chased out by escalating settler violence,

30:59

all backed up by the army. And

31:02

all this is happening at the same time that you have Arab states,

31:04

including, you know, the expectation that Saudi Arabia

31:07

was going to be joining onto the Abraham Accords and

31:10

sort of really taking one of the last pieces of regional

31:12

leverage that the Palestinian cause still had.

31:15

And this is in addition to kind of local pressures of Palestinians

31:18

in Gaza, who especially in the past few months, under

31:21

this total blockade, are still demanding of Hamas

31:23

as the de facto government to provide more

31:26

support for basic services, especially with

31:28

electricity, which, you know, is almost impossible

31:31

to meet in conditions of siege, but that they were

31:33

still turning to the Hamas government to provide for that in

31:35

some form or another. So you have these local

31:38

and national and regional

31:40

factors, which could

31:43

not make the status quo kind

31:45

of last any longer. And even though obviously

31:48

this military operation, these assaults were planned

31:50

like well in advance and took a lot of intelligence

31:53

gathering, etc., it's been wrapped very

31:55

much in the fact that the Palestinian question and

31:58

Palestinians were under... increased

32:00

on the existential threat. We're experiencing

32:02

it in a very expedited form now, but

32:04

this was happening for months and years on

32:06

end. And so I think for a group

32:09

like Hamas, I mean, I can't speak for it, but

32:11

I think they made the calculation that something

32:14

had to give, because Hamas could no longer

32:16

survive under local governments, when

32:18

the Palestinian cause could no longer survive under this

32:21

far-right government, it could no longer survive if

32:23

all the Arab governments were turning away from it.

32:25

What is Hamas's sense of Israel's

32:28

psychology, and in particular, its relationship

32:31

to loss? And I think this is an uncomfortable

32:33

thing to talk about, but I do think

32:36

it needs to be part of trying to figure out

32:38

what happened here. So Nathan Peral, who

32:41

was the lead international crisis group

32:43

analyst on the region, he wrote a book of some number of years

32:45

ago called The Only Language You Understand, arguing

32:48

that both Israelis and Palestinians tend

32:50

to make their concessions under the threat of force.

32:53

You've done interviews and work around

32:55

moments when fighting erupts between

32:58

Hamas in Israel and the sense that Hamas

33:00

actually often does get concessions in those moments.

33:03

Hamas got a lot out of a prisoner exchange

33:05

not too long ago under Netanyahu, and

33:08

many people think that was part of their incentive

33:10

to take many more civilian hostages this

33:12

time, and of course, military hostages

33:15

in the hopes of winning a lot of people back in another

33:17

prisoner exchange. How much do

33:20

you think that Hamas thought this

33:22

would actually get at concessions versus how much

33:24

do you think it understood that it was

33:26

gonna bring down a hellacious war?

33:29

To be honest, it's really hard to say, and I've been talking

33:31

with a lot of people of exactly what Hamas

33:34

thought it was gonna get out of this, and

33:36

there are two elements to this operation as well. One

33:39

side of it is the military

33:42

nature of it, of breaking out of the fence, of attacking

33:44

military targets. This was kind of like

33:46

the first phase of what happened October 7th in the

33:48

morning hours of that, and this is what Palestinians

33:51

are really, I've been mostly kind of looking

33:53

to, as just like the group had the capacity

33:56

to actually break out of this cage, and

33:58

that they could actually, completely humiliate

34:00

the Israeli military, that it wasn't as invincible as

34:03

everyone was making it out to be, and that there was a way to shatter

34:05

out of it. But then that second side

34:07

of that, of course, are these horrific massacres

34:09

that happened in the southern communities. I mean,

34:11

I can't speak to how much they were directed. I

34:14

can't speak to how much, you know, was sort of like,

34:16

not just in the question of like a fog of war, but

34:18

also the rage of war that these militants also

34:20

launched some of the massacres that they did like that. We'll

34:23

only get to know this, you know, in the coming weeks, months,

34:25

and years, Janice did we investigate this more. But

34:29

it's just unclear entirely what it was, or was

34:32

it, were they just trying to play a certain card

34:34

just to say like, just change something, like

34:36

just change anything out of the equilibrium? Did

34:39

they have a more concerted plan in coordination

34:41

with groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, hoping

34:43

that that would serve enough deterrence? Like there's

34:46

no way Hamas did this, thinking that the Israelis

34:48

were not going to respond so viciously.

34:51

And we're not sure how much they thought they could get away within the

34:53

military assault in the first place. So there's

34:55

just so much uncertainty and we're still in that fog

34:57

as we speak. So I really can't speak to it. And

35:00

even now we're hearing different conflicting things

35:02

sometimes from members of the Hamas movement and

35:04

from the political bureau, from the armed wing, from

35:06

the people in Gaza versus people outside.

35:09

So it's been very messy to see all this. But

35:12

in many respects, you know, putting aside

35:14

all these questions, there's no doubt that I think

35:17

Hamas, for the better and the worse,

35:19

has really thrown everyone

35:21

in the region back onto the Palestinian question. At

35:24

a time where it was really being marginalized,

35:26

Hamas has very violently

35:29

forced all the Arab states to

35:32

rethink their alliances with

35:34

Israel and to realize that the Palestinians

35:36

still have political cards to play, even

35:38

when done in such a brutal fashion.

35:42

And it's very complex to kind of navigate

35:44

their full calculations about this. But I think

35:46

even just the very idea to show the Israelis

35:49

that you can no longer go on like this.

35:51

Or Hamas was also like an important message to send.

35:54

Yeah, I have really

35:57

struggled with whether or not they even want to talk about this question.

36:00

But I feel very

36:02

uncomfortable and in some ways as somebody

36:04

who covered more

36:07

in this region 15 years ago, 10 years ago

36:09

than I do now, somewhat personally shamed

36:11

by something

36:13

that you just gestured at, which is

36:16

that there were big

36:18

efforts to draw attention to

36:20

the conditions that Palestinians were living under,

36:22

the march of return, various

36:25

things in the divestment movement. There

36:27

have been other efforts, you know, Basa has given big

36:29

speeches at the UN, and

36:32

the savagery of Hamas' attacks seems

36:34

to have worked in the sense of

36:36

focusing a lot more attention on the

36:38

lived experience of Palestinians. And

36:41

I think that needs to make a lot

36:43

of us who care about this conflict wonder

36:46

about our own behavior over the past 10, 15 years.

36:49

I don't think that it absolves

36:51

or justifies or excuses anything

36:54

Hamas did, which is why this is difficult

36:56

to talk about. But I think that it casts

36:59

a much more negative light on things that we

37:01

weren't doing before.

37:04

And this is really an absolutely vital

37:07

question. And just putting aside even just the

37:09

question of the immoralities that we've been seeing, not

37:11

just by Hamas, but also what is being inflicted now in Gaza

37:14

by the Israeli state and the army. I

37:16

mean, this comes back to what I was saying earlier, whereby Palestinians

37:19

have tried everything,

37:21

really. They've picked up their guns, they've

37:23

picked up their pens, they've picked up their banners.

37:26

Everything you can think of, Palestinians have tried. And

37:29

it's not an exaggeration to say how much Palestinians

37:32

feel that they've been duped by the lessons

37:35

of history, the international community, which

37:38

even governments that claim to support their rights

37:40

and claim to be on their side

37:42

in some form or another. And what they're

37:44

experiencing is that it doesn't matter what they do,

37:47

the very fact that they're Palestinian, the very fact

37:49

that they are the biggest

37:51

thorn in a state that is

37:54

desperately trying to make itself out as a quote

37:56

unquote Jewish and democratic state is in

37:58

reality not. interested in their

38:00

existence, whether it's in physical

38:02

presence, not in their identity, and

38:06

that their very existence of Palestinian Arabs is

38:08

itself a threat. And

38:11

when we look at foreign governments,

38:13

but also the media and the public, and whether

38:15

it also just demonized anything and everything that Palestinians

38:18

do, and it's become very clear that

38:21

Jewish Israelis matter more in

38:23

much of the Western world especially. I think in

38:25

the global south, you know, there's a very different understanding

38:27

of this, but Israel thrives off and

38:30

is very much propped up by political,

38:32

military, economic arrangements by what

38:34

still remains one of the foremost global superpower

38:37

and European states that have such a hold to

38:39

enable Israel to do this with such impunity.

38:43

And so yeah, I think these questions really need to be asked by the

38:45

world, you know, like how much has, especially

38:48

like Western publics and Western governments facilitated

38:50

that? Not just facilitated the apartheid

38:52

on the ground,

38:53

but the apartheid in the mind. So how

38:55

much do we actually put Jewish-Israeli rights

38:57

first before Palestinians? How disposable

38:59

are Palestinians compared to Jewish Israelis? They're

39:02

not saying just to say flip it. It needs to be rectified

39:04

to understand Palestinians as humans.

39:06

The

39:08

cost of this attention

39:11

is that Hamas has incurred an overwhelming

39:13

Israeli reprisal, and predictably so, against

39:16

Gazans. And possibly we'll see what happens

39:19

in the West Bank. It could spread from there. Many,

39:22

many, many people are dying. Many, many, many people are

39:24

losing their homes. What

39:26

trends, what tendencies do you see

39:28

in the way Hamas's attack is now

39:30

seen by Palestinians in the

39:32

Gaza or in the West Bank? How do they understand

39:35

what Hamas did? I

39:36

mean, it's also been hard to gauge, you know, that Palestinians

39:39

in a way don't even have time to reflect on it, especially

39:42

in Gaza. They're focused on survival. There

39:44

was no time to even process what had happened on October 7th

39:47

before the bomb started falling. And

39:49

even in the West Bank, you're seeing a massive escalation

39:51

in the military set for violence. And

39:53

so they're seeing the kind of immediate aftermath

39:55

of that. And even inside Israel, Palestinian

39:57

citizens who make up a fifth of the... Israeli

40:00

citizenry are also just in a total paralyzing

40:02

fear from Jewish Israeli society, from

40:05

the police, from Israeli institutions. And

40:07

the thing is, we've seen these trends before. Even

40:10

those who maybe disagreed with Hamas or

40:12

even found the massacres to be morally

40:15

abhorrent, they still understand why Hamas

40:18

is still keeping to military struggle and that

40:20

even if they disagree with it, they understand the context

40:23

behind it. And this is a big difference between,

40:26

you don't have to defend it, but you need to understand why

40:28

it's the case. You need to understand why

40:30

political violence, even murderous violence,

40:32

is used in such a context. I

40:35

know this is a very delicate subject

40:37

and many people might be immediately

40:39

outraged by it, but it can't be that the

40:41

way we spend trying to understand the logic

40:44

or even just the ideas beyond such political violence

40:46

in others' contexts, somehow all of that

40:48

is raised when it comes to the Palestinians. And

40:51

so in the community, I think if there's ever

40:54

space, there's going to be huge debates. And there are debates,

40:56

whether it's in private living rooms

40:59

or whether it's in forums. Even

41:01

Palestinian citizens of Israel have

41:03

a bit more ability to even debate this about the

41:05

question of, I'm struggling, what's been going on now? But

41:08

everyone is in such survival mode because the

41:10

states and society has really turned on them that it's

41:13

been hard to really gauge what everyone's reflecting on this.

41:16

But what we do know is just the fact that

41:18

everyone could expect such wants and

41:20

violence from the Israeli states, especially in regards to Gaza,

41:23

the fact that everyone could predict that there was Israelis settler

41:25

and state violence in huge parts

41:28

of the occupied West Bank, that

41:30

still needs to be part of the conversation. Okay,

41:32

you were talking about a piece of violence that happened October

41:35

7th. What about the daily violence that happened before?

41:37

What about the daily violence that happened afterwards? And if

41:39

that's still being ignored for Palestinians, it's

41:42

that sense that we're on our own. At

41:45

least someone is exposing to people

41:47

that the violence is there, whether

41:49

or not you're actually attentive to it. The violence is

41:51

there even when Jewish Israelis are not being

41:54

killed or massacred. So this for Palestinians

41:56

is still that dominant thought.

41:58

There's a tendency. When

42:00

you want to talk about how this could be better to

42:03

move to the question of state-based

42:05

frameworks Two states one states

42:07

big picture of settlements You've

42:10

been pretty critical of the tendency

42:12

to talk about this in terms of state-based solutions.

42:15

Tell me why I think I

42:18

Think one of the biggest lessons I take from

42:21

the height of the decolonization the era

42:23

of the past century Is

42:25

how much the state? First

42:28

of all it entraps political struggles

42:30

in many respects or how much

42:32

of a state identity it is in many respects

42:35

that it really limits and disrupts

42:37

our understanding of History

42:39

of how societies live and exist and can

42:41

organize themselves outside of these very

42:44

arbitrary borders, you know And they are in

42:46

the end arbitrary Even

42:48

historical Palestine was once integrated into

42:50

the region and yes, you had the idea of provinces

42:53

and you had Different kinds of regional

42:55

identities. There was a much more fluid

42:57

construct of identity that existed But

43:00

then I think also the part of the era of the anticoonial

43:03

period was that it's for them nationalism

43:05

became the engine for your liberation

43:08

and that itself is still very Exclusionary

43:10

the idea that you need to have these very

43:12

rigid borders is still very exclusionary and

43:15

I think we can be better than that and It's

43:18

a bit of a tragedy that Palestine is still one of

43:20

those kind of it's a struggle that's very much out of

43:22

its place You know, it's like 19th century ideologies

43:25

and a 20th century conflict in the 21st century

43:27

world and even though we're seeing these

43:29

kind of resurgence is of nationalisms and

43:31

you know state borders and all

43:34

these aspects like There are

43:36

ways to imagine something differently And

43:39

I worry that the Palestinian struggle and Palestinian

43:41

this and Palestinian identity has been so unwrapped in Arab

43:43

nationalism You know that I think we can

43:45

look back to our own history and our own literature is

43:47

like to remind ourselves that there's something broader

43:50

what our local identities like in Palestine

43:52

whether you're from Nablus or from Gaza or

43:54

from Haifa The local identities

43:57

were a huge part of our daily existence. So there's something

43:59

about states to the nationalism, which kind of erases

44:01

that a lot of times. And people know this in America. People

44:03

know this all over the world. It misguides

44:05

us by just asserting ourselves in that kind of national

44:08

state identity. And this, for

44:10

me, is also the case in Israel-Pas. I mean,

44:13

Zionism in that respect, political Zionism,

44:15

is also, for me, that kind of archaic idea, whereby

44:18

they can only envision Jewish safety with

44:21

this hyper-militarized,

44:23

powerful state. And that it needs to be

44:25

exclusionary, and that Palestine

44:27

needs to be only for one people, for the Jewish

44:29

people. That itself

44:31

is ethnocentric.

44:32

That itself is what facilitates apartheid.

44:35

And so I don't think the answer to imagining

44:37

something outside of Zionism as it's manifested

44:39

today needs to be another kind of nationalism.

44:42

It could be a state that could be broken down more. What

44:45

is Jewish existence outside of the state of Israel,

44:48

outside in terms of in the land, but

44:50

away from those constructs? And to

44:52

reorganize ourselves and rethink our identities in different

44:54

ways. Like, how do you reflect the people on the ground? Like, Israeli

44:57

society itself, Jewish society will

44:59

tell you first and foremost that they can hardly

45:01

sometimes find the things that really unite them. Jewish

45:04

society is just as diverse as any other. Life

45:06

in Tel Aviv is nothing like life in Jerusalem, nor

45:08

life in the south or in the north. And the same way that

45:11

for Palestinians as well, it's a massive diversity.

45:13

So how do you reflect that diversity by actually reflecting

45:15

the people on the ground, and not some political

45:18

idea, to try to pretend that we're

45:20

on the same page in this one single territory that

45:22

needs to be cut off from everybody else? How

45:25

do we envision a more decentralized

45:27

model of existence? How do we think about regions?

45:29

How do we think about cities as leading our

45:32

political and economic ways of life?

45:35

I'm only sort of vaguely scratching these

45:37

services, and there are people who have done a lot of amazing work

45:39

on this. I just don't want us to be trapped

45:42

by these ideas, which we can see in every part of the

45:44

world. It ended up becoming its

45:46

own oppressive system on its own people. So

45:48

I want us to break out of that. But if

45:51

the answer to that is not only that, you know, we

45:53

get attacked for doing so, we're even called anti-Semites

45:55

because we're actually envisioning something that's not a

45:57

Jewish state. But especially in the Western world

45:59

where... If I say I want a state for

46:01

all its citizens, or I want a land

46:03

for all its inhabitants, and the response

46:05

is that you're asking for the destruction of the Jewish people,

46:08

I don't have the space to even imagine that, and I'm

46:10

being demonized for doing so. So I think

46:12

trying to provide the legitimate spaces for Palestinians

46:16

to think about that and to say why

46:18

Zionism is a problem, and to say that

46:20

we can imagine something outside of nationalism

46:22

and statehood, I think it is much

46:25

more realistic to who we are, much

46:27

more realistic to the future

46:29

that we want, and to explain something much better.

46:45

Intel

46:53

believes that AI will be truly impactful

46:55

when used ethically and responsibly with actions,

46:58

like forming multidisciplinary councils

47:00

to ensure AI grows sustainably, like

47:03

anticipating harmful uses before they happen,

47:06

or like employing the next generation of diverse

47:08

engineers to bake ethically sound practices

47:10

into AI's future. It starts with

47:12

Intel. Learn more at

47:15

Intel.com

47:15

slash stories.

47:29

I want to go back to the question of

47:31

equilibriums, because I found that

47:34

idea holding in my own mind

47:36

recently. And I think the reason it has

47:38

attained this sort of power for me is

47:40

that when I'm seeing in the

47:43

media coverage of what's happening

47:45

in Israel and in Gaza right now, what

47:48

I'm seeing in my own community, in

47:50

my own life, is

47:52

the tendency to think in

47:54

terms of sides when everything is actually

47:57

an equilibrium. I'll give

47:59

an example. example, it's maybe a little bit personal.

48:02

I'm Jewish. My natural identification

48:05

is with Israel. A lot

48:07

of the people around me are that way too. But

48:09

the thing that I see happening is that

48:12

as people experience more anti-Semitism

48:16

on the left or they see it on social media,

48:18

it pushes them to a

48:21

more closed off, scared,

48:24

and in some ways brutal space, right?

48:27

The more scared people get, the more

48:29

they're willing to count events in order to restore security.

48:32

The idea of there's like a static choice. I mean,

48:34

where they were a month ago is not

48:36

where they are now. They have changed. Equilibrium

48:38

has shifted. So you have to think

48:40

in terms of the ways in which what

48:43

one side is doing changes the other. And

48:45

to me, what's true here or

48:47

what seems true is that the thing that

48:49

is the dominant value on the Israeli side is

48:52

security. And the dominant demand

48:54

on the Palestinian side is freedom. Now, it's not

48:56

the only demand of either side. But one

48:59

of the big questions for me in how to

49:01

think about this as an equilibrium, but how to

49:03

think about a better equilibrium is how

49:06

do you get more security

49:08

and more freedom as opposed to

49:10

seeing those two things as your sum, which I

49:12

think are often seen where more

49:15

freedom for Palestinians would mean less security for

49:17

Israelis because Hamas could plan more attacks.

49:19

More security for Israelis would mean less freedom for

49:22

Palestinians because Israel would clamp down

49:24

on control and surveillance and drones. How

49:26

do you find more positive

49:29

sum equilibriums as opposed

49:31

to thinking about this in terms of which

49:33

side do you end up on? Because it's not going to

49:35

be just one side at the end of it all. You

49:37

have to find some kind of dynamic balance.

49:42

That's a tough question. It

49:45

starts by recognizing that the, you know, what

49:48

you described is the equilibrium on the

49:50

larger scale for the better

49:52

part of the past century has

49:54

existed and been legitimated

49:57

on a sort of asymmetric plane. equilibrium

50:00

that we've been known since Zionism

50:03

came about is that Zionism

50:05

got the better part of the equilibrium. Where there was great

50:08

power backing and being able to fulfill

50:10

that vision and even being able to use

50:12

violence and even international support

50:15

to legitimate that vision at the expense of

50:17

Palestinians. And even as we

50:19

were talking about the idea that the two-state solution

50:21

is somehow the equilibrium for

50:23

how to resolve this conflict, it's not. The

50:25

two-state solution as we envisioned it in

50:27

the past 30 years especially is telling

50:30

Palestinians to accept maybe about

50:32

a quarter or a fifth of their homeland

50:34

as their state, not their belonging

50:37

and their connections, their identity to the wider region. And

50:40

for Israelis, like yes, the idea of security

50:42

and freedom must come through a powerful state.

50:44

And not just through a powerful state, it requires ethno-racial

50:48

supremacy. The tragedy of the Palestinian

50:51

struggle is that there are a lot of debates

50:53

and visions to put something different from the ethnocentric

50:56

model of the future. Our struggle itself

50:58

also began to kind of think that the equilibrium point

51:01

is through that and this is why the PLO acquiesced

51:03

to the two-state solution, acquiesced to Oslo. But

51:06

I think this young generation of Palestinians are saying

51:08

they're not interested in having just a state

51:10

with a capital to play the same

51:12

international game like everyone else. The

51:15

conversation for them is, am I getting

51:17

my equal rights? Am I getting the right to return

51:19

to my homeland? Am I able

51:22

to live in my land without another society

51:24

determining how many rights I get to have?

51:27

As much as we want to try also to think about this, like how do we lead this in

51:29

a positive way, it also requires

51:32

sort of negative force in a way

51:34

that we need to bring the Israeli

51:37

parameters down and to elevate

51:40

the Palestinian parameters up in

51:42

order to create a different kind of equilibrium. Like

51:44

that's the power asymmetry that needs to be

51:47

dealt with. And I know we're kind of speaking in a bit of

51:49

sort of kind of meta and conceptual,

51:52

but this really manifests in everything. As

51:54

long as that power asymmetry is still in place, you won't

51:56

get a meaningful equilibrium.

52:00

be worse off on it. And so I think

52:02

this is why Palestinians are so strange about it, whereby

52:05

lip service to equality, to human

52:07

rights, international law, to the self-determination

52:10

of people, to even refugees being allowed to return,

52:12

that somehow Palestinians are being asked to waive

52:16

all that because Jews need

52:18

their own state with laws

52:20

and policies that enable Jewish privilege

52:23

above everybody else. That's the

52:25

equilibrium that needs to be shifted, like it needs to be

52:27

redrawn entirely. And I think American

52:30

Jews and Jews in diaspora and people abroad

52:32

have a huge role to play in this and

52:34

to not only tell Israelis like why

52:37

an apartheid regime is not

52:39

the guarantee of your survival and also to enable

52:42

Palestinians to say that a vision

52:44

of real equality and full restoration of everyone's

52:46

rights and belonging to the land is what

52:48

is supported.

52:50

Well, I'm an American Jew and a Jew

52:52

of the diaspora and the thing that I

52:54

see when I have this conversation with Israeli

52:57

friends or sources or people

52:59

in Israel, the thing that I'm asked

53:02

and that I don't honestly have a good answer to

53:05

is that all sounds nice. That

53:08

all would be great. But

53:10

that isn't what Palestinians

53:12

want. They want us gone. And at times

53:15

when our politics have been softer and the

53:18

peace nicks stronger and labor

53:20

stronger and maybe it wasn't perfect

53:23

and, you know, obviously there are claims and counterclaims

53:25

about every single negotiation

53:27

that has happened. But there were suicide

53:30

bombings and cafes and discotheques and there is

53:32

no safety for us inequality. That

53:35

equality can only take place in a context

53:37

of safety. But when Hamas

53:39

is a strong force, when, you know, there

53:41

are polls that say armed resistance is a preferred

53:44

path forward, that there's no way

53:46

to move towards that because we will

53:48

die. And I mean the fear of

53:50

annihilation, the fear of eradication, you know,

53:53

lurks deep in the Jewish soul

53:55

and that's not going away and for real

53:57

reason. And so I'm curious what

54:00

Not that this is on you to answer, but

54:02

I'm curious what you would tell

54:04

me to answer, right? When they say, that

54:07

all sounds nice, but the first thing we need to be able to

54:09

guarantee is that our children are killed. What

54:12

inequality in a movement towards equality

54:14

given stated positions and given

54:16

factions that we really do see,

54:20

allows for that to be also something that

54:22

makes

54:23

Jewish Israelis safer, not

54:25

less safe. As much as myself

54:28

and my people kind of come at the cost of this, I understand

54:31

why Jewish Israelis have, the

54:33

way that Zionism has manifested itself, I understand

54:35

why that's come about, just

54:37

psychologically speaking. But if that's

54:40

the case, then

54:42

it begins with being a little bit

54:44

honest exactly about what the political project

54:46

is in Israel. That

54:50

if the lesson of Jewish

54:52

history of anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism,

54:55

very violent anti-Semitism, all the

54:57

way up to the Holocaust, if the lesson of that, and

55:00

this is what Zionism kind of begins to take hold,

55:02

especially, that the lesson

55:04

is to become powerful

55:06

overlords, then

55:09

we need to be a bit blunt about that. Beginning

55:11

with that Israel actually is not a democratic

55:13

state. Israel is not a light unto the

55:15

nations. Israel is an ethno-nationalist

55:18

colonial project who can only

55:20

see survival by being an ethno-nationalist

55:22

colonial project. And

55:25

if that's their decision, that's their decision.

55:27

But one of the most infuriating things that

55:30

everyone's pretending that Israel is something that it's not. And

55:33

what's been darkly refreshing

55:35

about this far-right government is that they've also been very unapologetic,

55:38

saying we don't need to apologize. We

55:40

do want laws and policies that

55:42

weed out policies. We do want laws and policies

55:45

that kick them out of their land. We do want

55:47

a purely Jewish supremacist

55:49

state, regardless of democracy or voter.

55:51

The democracy does not matter. And this has been the practice.

55:54

This has been the experience of Palestinians. If

55:57

that's the case, then

55:58

I think like for America,

55:59

American Jews, you know, they need to come face to face

56:02

with that reality. And stop kidding themselves

56:04

that Israel is that democratic model

56:07

of Jewish self-determination. It's an apartheid model. And

56:11

American Jews need to ask themselves, are those

56:13

really where their values align? They talk about equality

56:15

in the United States, but ethno-nationalism in

56:17

Israel-Palestine, is that consistent with your values?

56:20

But if American Jews can't square that circle,

56:23

they need to ask exactly, like, well, yes, there

56:25

sometimes there is a side. It's not about being

56:28

with the Palestinians versus Israelis. It's about, am I on the

56:30

side of genuine equality

56:32

for everyone, or am I

56:34

on the side of supremacy?

56:36

But see, in a way, I think that was an easy question. And

56:39

I'll use myself as the example here.

56:42

Over the last 10 years, Israel became something

56:45

that many American Jews could not support. And

56:47

I think you see that in polling of younger American

56:49

Jews. I mean, the number who would say that what

56:51

we were seeing in Israel as an apartheid had gone

56:54

to levels that would have been unimaginable

56:56

in the 90s. And for a lot

56:58

of us, as Israeli society chose

57:00

people like Ben Gevir, as

57:03

the Netanyahu government moved further and further right,

57:06

a lot of us disengaged. I mean, it

57:09

wasn't a society listening to us being Jewish gives

57:11

me no traction on Israeli politics.

57:14

And so to say that I don't support this

57:16

project, I don't support what this has become,

57:18

I mean, that in a way was

57:21

easy. I don't want

57:23

to in any way be trying to draw

57:26

some kind of hopeful picture

57:29

in the sky here because I don't feel hopeful. I

57:33

do think though that there is at least some

57:35

chance that

57:37

the failure of that far

57:40

right project, the failure of Israel

57:43

completely embracing an oppressive

57:45

ethno-nationalism to even provide

57:48

the one thing that it promised, which was security,

57:51

possibly reopens the door to something else.

57:53

Now, that thing could be worse. That thing could

57:55

be no different. Right? Again, I'm not,

57:58

I don't come to politics with a tele-lock. logical

58:00

belief that it bends towards justice.

58:04

Certainly, it will come to this conflict with

58:06

that. But I think the

58:08

question within the question of re-engagement

58:11

that a lot of us are trying to

58:13

struggle in our sand is that you do need to

58:15

be able to speak of security, right? Equality

58:17

needs to come alongside security, not

58:20

as a deal. Again, this

58:22

is why I've become interested in the language of equilibrium

58:25

as something that emerges organically from

58:27

shifting factions, shifting power,

58:30

shifting ways people relate to each other. Different

58:33

leaders, right? I mean it has happened in other

58:35

conflicts in society. I mean things end

58:37

and things change. And so I

58:39

think a lot of what you're saying, you know, certainly prior

58:42

to 10-7 was right. And I think, again, the

58:44

kind of shame that I alluded to earlier

58:47

is that for a lot of us the decision

58:49

was to just kind of stop paying attention to it. Because

58:52

I don't live in Israel and I don't

58:54

support what Israel has been doing and I

58:57

don't support what their government has become and I

59:00

don't have to live under it. If that is

59:02

not sustainable and I think a lot of us have had

59:04

the experience that, you know, there is a deep tie

59:06

here and so tragedy and trauma

59:09

both in Israel and in Gaza

59:11

and in Palestine and watching this become

59:15

everybody's horror forces

59:18

a kind of re-engagement.

59:22

And I don't have an answer on this. I am genuinely struggling

59:24

with it, right? I open the inbox of the

59:26

show all the time and I get flooded by Israeli

59:29

emails saying, yeah, look, this is all nice but we

59:31

need to be safe and you have no answer for

59:33

that. And so that

59:35

I think is a thing that I'm struggling to even

59:38

explore on the show which is forget a

59:41

deal. Just are there factions? Are

59:44

there possibilities that begin to move

59:46

towards positive sum? I mean it

59:48

seems to me that it should be possible that quality should

59:50

bring security. That's been true in many

59:52

other places. It doesn't seem impossible here

59:55

but I don't know how to

59:58

convince any one of that. And of course,

1:00:01

it's all easy to say from a podcast studio in New York.

1:00:04

I mean, I can give a real

1:00:07

example to show that there's a different model that's

1:00:09

being practiced as we speak. And

1:00:11

it's a model that's very imperfect for a host of reasons.

1:00:14

And that is the experience of Palestinian

1:00:16

citizens of Israel or Arab citizens of Israel, who,

1:00:19

like I said, make up 20% of the citizenry. I'm

1:00:21

one of them. So

1:00:24

I mean, for people who maybe are not so familiar, basically

1:00:26

after the neck of the state, you still had

1:00:28

about 150,000 Palestinians

1:00:30

on the Israeli side of the border. Out of the armistice

1:00:33

lines. And the state, for a host

1:00:35

of complex reasons, gave them Israeli citizenship. And

1:00:37

we've had the right to vote since 1948, 1950. And

1:00:42

in theory, we're supposed to be given equal rights. But

1:00:44

in reality, since day one, there's a massive

1:00:46

legal political policy infrastructure that makes

1:00:49

us second-class citizens, to

1:00:51

put it nicely. And that discrimination,

1:00:53

that inequality, is not just something about historical

1:00:56

gaps. It's an active constant, especially in the past

1:00:58

couple of years. I mean, there's lots of impact

1:01:00

on this. But this community identifies

1:01:02

itself as Palestinian Arab, that

1:01:05

was able to stay in their historical homeland,

1:01:08

even as their historical homeland was completely

1:01:10

usurped and transformed. But

1:01:13

this community knows Hebrew. They've

1:01:15

been exposed to Jewish society as

1:01:17

a civilian society, differently

1:01:19

from Palestinians in the occupied territories. Mostly,

1:01:22

you see Israelis as settlers and soldiers, you know, upfront.

1:01:26

We're exposed to their language, their culture, to their religions,

1:01:28

their ideas. And despite

1:01:31

our inequality, and despite the discrimination, and

1:01:33

despite the demonization, and despite being

1:01:36

described as demographic threats and enemies

1:01:38

and what have you, and even

1:01:40

in our second-class status, we can still understand

1:01:42

Jewish society and come to different kinds of arrangements

1:01:45

and terms. Whereby we're even working in the

1:01:47

same socioeconomic centers, Palestinian

1:01:49

citizens vote in the same parliament, they can assess

1:01:53

it. There are models and methods to this. We're a community

1:01:55

that really defies the green line. Like even

1:01:57

before Gaza was on the blockade,

1:01:59

Palestinians... citizens, to this day we still

1:02:01

have family and national connections to people in

1:02:03

Gaza, in the West Bank, even refugee and exile.

1:02:06

The West Bank is part and parcel of daily life

1:02:08

of Palestinian citizens. Like, the border

1:02:10

does not operate on us and

1:02:12

doesn't operate on anyone with an Israeli license plate

1:02:14

or a blue ID card, but we're actually

1:02:17

showing that there's a life that actually can

1:02:19

go between the river and the sea, that

1:02:21

can actually be inside

1:02:24

the homeland and to go about politics

1:02:26

and the way of life, which isn't just

1:02:28

a demonized idea that, oh, the Palestinians

1:02:30

are going to come to kill us. And

1:02:33

that, I think, is a very useful model

1:02:35

in the community that for all its flaws and imperfections

1:02:37

and all these internal issues that are still operating

1:02:40

in a state that still wants to see them gone for

1:02:42

the most part, but that we

1:02:45

still have the space to provide something different.

1:02:48

I should also just add, you know,

1:02:50

Palestinian citizens have a lot of diversity, even

1:02:52

politically, you know, from your secular to your

1:02:54

Islamists, and from your nationalists, your communists,

1:02:57

and what have you. But the underlying

1:03:00

core of all their political ideas is centered

1:03:03

around what they describe as like national

1:03:05

equality or a state for all its citizens. But

1:03:08

that experience, again, it's almost

1:03:10

like a leading model for what the Palestinian struggle could

1:03:12

be and what a real future vision can

1:03:14

be. But it's also evidence that

1:03:17

for most Jewish Israelis, they cannot accept that. They

1:03:20

see the idea of full equality as a threat

1:03:22

to the Jewish state. And it's not just

1:03:24

something about in theory, like in practice, from

1:03:26

the Knesset all the way down, on Palestinian

1:03:28

citizens even try to practice

1:03:30

that, let alone even propose as a political idea,

1:03:33

it's roundly rejected. And even

1:03:35

in spite of everything, Palestinian citizens even

1:03:37

now after October 7, their leaders

1:03:39

and the public are still coming out to

1:03:41

say that there's a different way around this. Right

1:03:44

here again, though, and with its American Jews or even Jewish

1:03:46

Israelis, if they can't even tolerate

1:03:48

the idea that we need to break down

1:03:50

the quote unquote Jewish state in order to create a

1:03:53

state for all its citizens, a place of real

1:03:55

equality, then it's

1:03:57

on others

1:03:58

to meet us

1:03:59

to meet our equilibrium point. But in

1:04:02

search of any kind of optimistic sort

1:04:05

of light, I think that community is an important place

1:04:07

to start.

1:04:09

I think I'll leave it there. Always our final

1:04:11

question. What are three books you would recommend

1:04:13

to the audience?

1:04:15

One that has been very much on my mind

1:04:17

since I read it was actually East West

1:04:19

Street by Philip Senn. It's

1:04:22

an amazing book which I read a couple of years ago and has

1:04:24

really just stuck in my mind day

1:04:26

in day out and even more so over these past

1:04:28

weeks. For those who haven't read it, it beautifully

1:04:30

traces both the personal family history

1:04:33

and also the history of like, you know, of antisemitism

1:04:35

and the Jewish experience in Europe and how people

1:04:37

thought about these things. But basically how it was also enwrapped

1:04:40

with two of the kind of

1:04:43

architects of the idea of

1:04:45

genocide, Raphael Lemkin and

1:04:47

Herschlauterbach. That genocide

1:04:49

is also about the idea of erasing the essence

1:04:52

of a community, you know, of destroying them even

1:04:54

in part and that death is a means for

1:04:56

something almost more nefarious. It's

1:04:59

been ringing in my head a lot because of even

1:05:02

if people think that somehow extreme, what we're seeing

1:05:04

in Gaza just kept

1:05:06

bringing me back to that and

1:05:09

how even a lot of the psychologists have played into characters

1:05:11

of this book, how it still

1:05:13

resonates even for me and how it resonates for

1:05:16

Palestinians and that even if people

1:05:18

who seem like this is kind

1:05:20

of like unacceptable to even begin to compare, I

1:05:22

urge you to read or reread that book. And

1:05:25

for those who haven't read it, I mean,

1:05:27

I would always recommend Orientalism

1:05:30

by Edward Said, which is so

1:05:32

formative for me, but really

1:05:35

helps you to also understand even some of the premises

1:05:37

of why Palestinians in the Arab world,

1:05:41

how they understand the way that the West and has looked

1:05:43

at them and the structures of power and how

1:05:45

ideas can manifest themselves into

1:05:47

the history of colonialism and how that still operates

1:05:51

to this day. And the third book is

1:05:53

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin.

1:05:56

Anything by Baldwin, to be honest, the way that he

1:05:59

just... captures

1:06:01

the experience of racism, just resonates

1:06:03

so much for Palestinians, and

1:06:05

just his command of the language is just so

1:06:08

gripping and the ferocity with which every

1:06:11

line that he writes just carries. I'm

1:06:15

really not kidding when I say Palestinians, I've really

1:06:17

looked at him in many respects and just like being able to

1:06:19

articulate that. And

1:06:21

I would highly recommend reading him at this moment to understand

1:06:24

what it means to be

1:06:26

a community that's so heavily discriminated and marginalized,

1:06:29

even though it's different contexts, Palestinians can

1:06:33

see all that bold and road to kind

1:06:35

of one-fourth

1:06:36

and see all one-eighth, one-fourth, one-fourth. So I have to

1:06:38

be my three. I'm John O'Rocky, thank you very much. This

1:07:01

episode of The Israel Quad Show is produced by Roland

1:07:03

Hulme, fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate

1:07:05

Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our

1:07:08

senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior

1:07:10

editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production

1:07:12

team also includes Emma Fagavu and Kristen

1:07:14

Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones

1:07:17

and Carol Saburo, audience strategy

1:07:19

by Kristina Sameluski and Shannon Busta. The

1:07:21

executive producer of New York Times' opinion audio

1:07:24

is Annie Roestrauser, and

1:07:25

special thanks to Sonia Ferreira.

1:07:57

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