Not long ago, we released our first-ever two-part episode on Palestinian statehood. And as I’ve been saying, those episodes only scratched the surface. The conversations I had for this series were rich, they were complicated, sometimes even quite emotional. Too much to fit into just two episodes, no way.
So today, I want to share the fourth and final of this series of behind the scenes bonus episodes, a conversation that was one of the most real, raw and authentic I’ve ever had, not only for this series, but for life. To be honest, I’m still processing this one. I talked with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. Ahmed is a writer and activist originally from Gaza, now in DC, and he’s also more than just a colleague or a guest. He’s my friend. Like, a real friend, someone who I learn from, and someone who I spar with.
That kind of closeness made this conversation both exciting and challenging. At times, it got heated. That is healthy. We disagreed. That is healthy too. We pushed each other. Even healthier. But underneath all of it was a core of love, of trust, of a shared desire to see something better for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Ahmed’s perspective is personal. He grew up in Gaza, and his family’s story is deeply tied to the question of Palestinian statehood. But he also zooms out to the bigger picture: the history, the missed opportunities, and the hard choices that lie ahead.
For me, this was a reminder that these aren’t abstract questions about borders or resolutions. They’re human. And sometimes, the hardest, most painful conversations are also the ones that matter most.
So here it is: my conversation with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib.
Noam: All right. Here we go. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. I am so excited to be in conversation with you. Let’s do this.
Ahmed: Fantastic.
Noam: France, the UK, Canada and Australia are moving toward recognizing Palestine. It’s happening right now. From your perspective as someone born in Gaza and who still has family there, what does this moment feel like? Just tell me the quick emotional reaction to it.
Ahmed: Well, it’s mixed and ambivalent in the sense that I very much so support a pathway towards Palestinian statehood. I support a recognition of the existence of the Palestinian people as a polity through the framework of a nation state. I think this is overdue. I think this should have happened in Oslo in the 1990s.
On the other hand, I recognize that A, this doesn’t change anything on the ground. I think B, this was done in a way that did not de-conflict different threads, that antagonized Israeli society rather than win them over as partners in this recognition, as something that could actually be framed as beneficial to the Palestinian people and to Israel. And what I mean by that is, the talk of from the river to the sea, the talk of a one state solution, the talk of the dismantling of the Zionist project. I think all of that ultimately can only, in the long term, be put to rest when the Palestinian people have self-determination.
Noam: So, Ahmed, when you hear Western leaders talk about Palestinian statehood now, does it strike you as overdue, symbolic or disconnected from reality? And to me, it sounds like you’re saying it’s both overdue and it’s symbolic and it’s also disconnected from reality. Is it all three?
Ahmed: My motto is multiple things can be true at once. I would not discount the significance of Western countries, that have been the bulk of donors to the Palestinian Authority, to the Palestinian people’s humanitarian needs, these are the nations that have slowly taken over from the United States, that has really become a dishonest broker, in my opinion, in this process.
And so unfortunately, while it can be symbolic, while it is disconnected, it is absolutely important, in that it forestalls or eliminates this idea, I call it the discourse of erasure. There are those who wanna say that the Palestinian national identity is fake, it’s manufactured, it’s fraudulent, it doesn’t exist, and that by annexing the West Bank, by planning to basically take over the Gaza Strip and give some limited autonomy after Hamas is rightfully eliminated for the benefit of Palestinians, that basically Palestine as an entity can never come together as a state.
I think Western leaders are rightfully saying, absolutely not. The state of Palestine does exist. The Palestinian people do exist, even if this is not going to reverse the settlement activity, or if this is not going to reverse the rightward trajectory in Israel, this is just putting a line in the sand, even if symbolic, even if the line is ultimately crossed that says legally, de jour, Palestine is a reality. And so in that sense, I think it’s important.
I look at, I mean, every time to this day, even though I’m a United States citizen, and I’m a proud American and I will, I am an American first at this point, even though I’m proud of my heritage as a Palestinian from Gaza. I very much so, whenever there’s a country drop down list, every single time, brother, every single time when I’m filling out an application, when I’m booking a ticket, I click on the drop down menu and I see, is there always going, is there Palestine?
Sometimes it’s state of Palestine. Sometimes it’s just Palestine. Sometimes it’s Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Sometimes it’s Palestinian territories. Sometimes it’s occupied Palestinian territories. And there is a part of me from childhood to now as a 35 year old that wants to see Palestine or state of Palestine or just that, as a simple name that is recognized in basic, basic, you know, legal and regulatory frameworks.
I don’t want a Palestinian Authority passport. I want Palestinians to have a Palestinian passport. The national identity, and it’s not just jingoism. It’s that these are people that have only known Palestine and they have been a nation in waiting and a people in waiting. And yes, they’ve had corrupt leadership. Yes, they’ve had horrendous evil leaders in Hamas that I think in my view are a far greater threat to our existence in some regard than the far right in Israel.
And we should not be collectively punished by the actions of our leaders. We should be given a chance at nation building. We should be given a chance at having hope and optimism so that the rest of my people are not subjugated to brainwashing, to violence, to this sense of hopelessness that then fuels further cycles of hate and violence.
And to me, the recognition of a state of Palestine, regardless of the tactical actions that are affiliated with it, is the first of the thousand mile journey towards nation building of a Palestinian state.
Noam: Ahmed, I’m going to push you on this a little bit right now. Everything you’re saying sounds meaningful and I hear it. I hear it in your voice. I hear it in the symbolism of it all. I hear the value of it to you. The imagery of Palestine on a passport. I see the power of that moment.
I am asking, though, what does it mean to have a state of Palestine that doesn’t have clear borders or boundaries in the slightest, that has a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank leading it, Hamas leading in Gaza, that is, has two constitutions, that has two armies, or whatever that is, military, I view Hamas as a terrorist organization, but two different military leaders. What does it mean for there to be a state and it has Israel by the way controlling the West Bank certainly area C half of area B and in coordination with the Palestinian Authority with regard to security issues every now and then in area A, even though the Palestinian Authority really has full authority primarily in area A, but also Israel there. What does a state mean then?
Ahmed: Certainly, certainly. And I’ve never been one to shy away from those serious and real challenges. To me, you know, in my initiative, Realign for Palestine, which is the project that I launched at the Atlantic Council.
Noam: What is Realign for Palestine?
Ahmed: It’s an effort that is working on a rejuvenated Palestinian narrative and vision, as well as pragmatic, radically pragmatic policy ideas. The idea is to look at Gaza and what can be done in a post-war transitional period, but also just looking at the unhelpful narratives and rhetoric and sloganeering and dispensing that in favor of bridge building, radical pragmatism, peacemaking, a departure from the resistance narrative to the coexistence and nation building narrative.
And the acknowledgement of the two-nation solution. The reason why I chose the idea of a two-nation solution is that I very much so understand that from a conventional statecraft point of view, talking about a Palestinian state right now is difficult. It’s very abstract. Some would say it makes no sense. Some would say it’s out of reach. But the idea to me of a Palestinian nation as a separate entity, a separate people that have a separate space in which they can exercise their unique national identity is, really the closest thing in a modern contemporary fashion that we have for capturing that and realizing and actualizing that is through a state.
The idea of a nation state, which is something that even the Zionist project relied on for the Jewish people. The Jewish people were a nation throughout history. It was not just a religion, it was a nation. It was a people that were in diaspora, but elements of the Zionist movement sought to marry that nationhood with statehood. And I’m oversimplifying here and I’m speaking as a non-Jew. But like, at a rudimentary level, what is most important about this recognition, reaffirms the idea of Palestinian nationhood now.
Now, I understand for many in the Jewish and Israeli communities and societies, to them there are fears, some of which are legitimate, about Palestinian statehood and what that means from a security point of view, from what does that mean about the future of the Jewish people living in the land and the state of Israel and looking at Hamas and like, do we want to reward Hamas for October 7th and all of those points I’m very well acquainted with.
And that’s where I will point to what my dear friend, whom you interviewed, Samer Sinijlawi, often speaks in very frank and clear matter of fact terms, that we as Palestinians need to win over the Israeli people and the Jewish people.
We have all these embassies in Africa, but the most important people that we need to win on our side are right there. They’re our neighbors, they’re our Jewish and Israeli neighbors. And so there are ways in which I believe we as Palestinians can and should address the legitimate fears and issues that our Israeli and Jewish neighbors have.
Just as I think the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, the taking over of large swaths of territories under the name of, well, you just lost the war. Well, you just made a losing bet. Or what has happened in the last decade and a half of a particular set of politicians, namely the current prime minister deciding to use Gaza and the West Bank and the division within Palestinian society against each other to basically further toxify, if that’s even a word, the idea of Palestinian statehood to create a corrupt moribund model of the West Bank-based authority and a violent yet seem at the time at the time contained terrorist, Islamist, fascist organization in the Gaza Strip.
And so while I’m a believer in Palestinian agency and responsibility and accountability that got us to a place where Palestinian statehood has become associated with a lot of fears and trigger words and suicide bombings and rockets and tunnels and corruption and shootings and this and that, I’m a believer in conducting self-assessment to look at what we’ve done wrong over the last seven to eight decades as a Palestinian people since 48 and certainly even prior to that. There is very much so no way to isolate that from the clear terrible policies by repeated Israeli governments that have undermined moderates, that have sought to basically push aside the idea of Palestinian statehood.
And I’ll conclude just this segment by saying I’ve told many in the Palestinian community, that you cannot look at Israelis or the Jewish community or self-identified Zionists as a singular monolithic block. Zionism means different things to different people. Israelis in Tel Aviv are different than Israelis in Beersheba, than Israelis in Jerusalem, than Israelis in the Galilee that like, you know, similarly.
Noam: Where did you learn that, Ahmed?
Ahmed: Through experiences, honestly. Like, I didn’t learn that when I was in Gaza.
Noam: Wait, when did you live in Gaza? You were how old, five to fifteen in Gaza?
Ahmed: Yeah, I left when I was 15 in 2005. And so I was actually born in Saudi Arabia and I, and we moved back and forth in the nineties. So I experienced the Oslo, the tail end of the Oslo process. I flew into Gaza’s airport in 1999 and in 2000 when I had a Palestinian authority passport. I had the ID. I was on the Palestinian airlines. There was the industrial zone and errors. There was like the hope and optimism. There was the Palestinian telecommunications company, the cell company. There was like an up and coming.
Noam: When you grew up in Gaza, you’re like, I actually didn’t know there’s a diverse group of Israelis that aren’t one image. And you, I presume you would also say that for people that don’t know Palestinians, the same is true. That’s my guess. Yeah.
Ahmed: Thank you. That’s exactly where I was going with that. I mean, you know, to me, Israelis were all basically derivatives of soldiers. However, I will say that in the 1990s, there were so many Palestinians working in Israel that even during the second Intifada, which I experienced in the year 2000 as well, until 2005 when I left, I remember story after story after story of how so many Gazans grew very close to Israelis that they worked with. The agricultural workers, property management, construction, drivers, people in all sectors and manufacturing, people in all sectors of Israeli economy. And they were treated more than just a boss and a subordinate. They actually had relations, and I heard nuggets of those stories, but unfortunately, as Hamas was rising to power, as things were changing in Gaza. The dominant narrative was that of Israelis as this monolithic group, Zionists all want to erase Palestinians, Zionists just want to take it over. And to this day, man, the other day, just like literally right before I went to the Middle East, I was talking to this kid that got out of Gaza. But this kid, I was like, now you’re in the United States and now we have to like, now is a time to learn and seek something different and start looking less at Gaza or Palestinian or Arabic social media. And I want you to just get out of your comfort zone and like really challenge yourself.
And we talked about Zionism and he’s like, well, aren’t Zionists just the ones that want to kill all Palestinians? I said, no, no, no, no, no. This is an oversimplification. Zionism is an idea. It’s an ideology. There’s liberal Zionists, there’s agricultural Zionists.
Noam: I want to hear your definition of Zionism. What is Zionism to you?
Ahmed: I have gotten to register that there’s basically two or potentially three central components of Zionism. Zionism is the broad idea for many people that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination. And so for some people, it stops at self-determination.
Then the next brand is self-determination in the land that was in their ancestral land or homeland or in their biblical homeland.
And then for the third extension of that is the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland through the realization of a modern nationstate that can be guarded and well-defended against threats to the Jewish people. And the latter being something that is especially relevant in a contemporary sense, given all the pogroms and the Holocaust and what has occurred.
But so to me, from like an outsider’s perspective, and this is where I catch so much crap from a lot of the pro-Palestine, pro-Palestine folks, is that, I’ve come to realize that for the majority of the original Zionists, at least the initial ones, really was the realization, like there really was not an explicit mandate for Zionism to be a success, we need to get rid of whoever happens to be there in the land. Whatever is. you know, the Arab populations or the Muslim populations that were there, that whoever is there must be expelled. However, there was a branch of Zionism that was a later branch that as the formation of the state of Israel was nearing, was approaching rather, and this is, I mean, I’ve read enough Benny Morris to, and others, but, you know, he’s—
Noam: Now you’re just showing off.
Ahmed: Well, just to realize that there were some who said actually in order to have Jewish majority areas, like we do need to basically push off a lot of the Arab people in there. But that the original vision of Zionism was not to have Jewish self-determination happen at the expense of whoever is in the land. And I think that’s important to note because when I call for healing and reconciliation and when I say that Palestinian and Israeli aspirations are not mutually exclusive. People like to harp on the supposed idea that Zionism in its original inception actually called for the expulsion of anybody they encounter. And I do not believe at this point in my journey of learning, I do not believe that to be true.
Noam: Well, I’m gonna tell you a few interesting things. One is, I wanna see your reaction to this. Einat Wilf described you as somebody who is an Arab Zionist, who’s a Palestinian Zionist, deeply believes in being Palestinian and believes in Zionism. And I said to her, I don’t know if Ahmed would take well to that characterization, But I’m not sure, because I think that what you’re saying right now is, well, if Zionism means that the Jewish people have the ability and the right to develop their own state in their ancestral homeland, then great. And that the Palestinians also have a right and the ability to develop a state in their ancestral homeland. Is that right?
Ahmed: I mean, the challenge with that is, there is an element. So I’ll tell you why there is an element to that. And by the way, she’s not the first to describe me as such.
Noam: I want to hear you have to say, but I want to say I think that’s a great thing. I’ll tell you why I think.
Ahmed: No, and I’m not like, I’m not like how dare she like I’m not I’m not offended. I don’t have like, like, there’s a certain—
Noam: But it rubs you the wrong way because I’m guessing because people in the Palestinian world and the pro-Palestinian world view the Zionist world as being zero sum. Right?
Ahmed: Precisely, precisely. And people accuse me of being a Zionist all the time and being on the Zionist payroll and the Zionist this and the Zionist that.
Noam: It’s a slur.
Ahmed: They use it as a slur. But that’s not, that alone isn’t why I’m saying, I’m saying this. What I mean by that is that unfortunately in 1948, like both of my grandparents on my mom’s side and on my dad’s side, were forcibly pushed, like they lost their homes, like they were pushed out and they made their way into Gaza.
Now, I am at a point in the journey, in the lineage of pragmatism, of understanding that there is a greater good here to be served by acknowledging that Gaza is the home of my family, that they’re just like many parts of the world in the 20th century. Look at India and Pakistan and look at Kosovo and the different movements and migrations and look at like people move, wars happen. Like there’s a part of me that’s pragmatically willing to accept that that’s where we are 80 years later.
And there’s a part of me that’s like that is an unfair consequence of Zionism. We can talk about the Arab Higher Committee. We can talk about the Arab armies. We can talk about Hajj, Hajj Amin al-Hussaini and what he did. We can talk about all of that, but I will be Sir overly simplistic here for just a little bit and say, you know, like, this is a hard swallow for me to say that I am a Zionist, that I support what happened to my grandparents.
That said, that said, this is where the principle of multiple truths and seeing the different threads coming in, I and descendants of my grandparents, there’s not gonna be the right of return, as like millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees from 48 are not going back to mainland Israel. And instead of harping on that, this is where I’m willing to move forward.
However. Where this becomes more difficult is when people are saying, actually, yeah, you’re willing to move forward. I’m willing to accept a Palestinian state on 22% of what was historically referred to as Palestine. But actually now, actually we’re gonna have sovereignty over the West Bank. There’s gonna be no Palestinian state. We’re going to have Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Look, I’m going to negotiate with Ben-Gir and Smotrich? Those are the people that the Israelis are like, whoa, how dare you declare that you’re going to recognize a Palestinian state, you should be negotiating with the Israelis. And I’m like, who’s there to negotiate with? Who?
Like, and by the way, this is where then I’ll come back to the Palestinians and I’ll be like, guys, we gotta acknowledge that after October 7th and Hamas and Gaza and 20 years since the withdrawal in 2005, there needs to be an assessment of like what, like that went terribly wrong for us. Forget just the Israelis, for us as a people. Tens of billions of dollars have been squandered. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost. We empowered the far right in the narrative that you can’t give Palestinian sovereignty because what you’re gonna get is another October 7th.
So, like, for me, I’m able to weave in and out, in and out, in and out of all of these different narratives. And that’s where I do see the benefits of recognizing the state of Palestine in kind of bolstering the perseverance of the Palestinian people as a nation on their land, on their historic lands, but also acknowledge that in tag at a time when there’s still hostages, when there’s still the war going on, when there’s still no clear resolution, it antagonizes large segments of Israeli society, especially with the mass rhetoric that we’ve seen around pro-Palestine advocacy. And so I’m able to hold space for both.
Noam: Okay, so I’m gonna go on a little monologue here. I wanna tell you what I view as Zionism, okay? Zionism is, this is what it is to me, and what is so a lot of Jews, even philosophically if they’re not realizing it.
Zionism is, Moshe Halbertal, a great Israeli philosopher said it, it’s a movement that aims to deliver the Jews from the historical disgrace of dependence on other entities to determine their own fate. First of all, just that right there should help people understand what Zionism is trying to do. It is a movement that says the Jewish people are not going to be subject to the whims of other governments anymore. It’s been a couple thousand years and they are going to return to their ancestral homeland, to lead their own lives. That’s definition number one that I want to utilize.
Definition number two is something that I say often. Yes, it is the national liberation and rescue movement of the Jewish people, but really it’s the activation to ensure the Jewish people have their own state in their ancestral homeland, which is Jewish self-determination in Israel. Zionism is about Jewish belonging.
It is a Hebrew word, Tziyonut, which means towards Zion. Towards Zion means the land of Israel, the land of Jerusalem specifically. That’s what it is about. Now, having said all of that, there are Jews that deeply believe that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. And the land of Israel includes the most Jewish lands of all, Hebron, Jericho, Shechem, Nablus, all of these areas. Like these are the most Jewish areas of all.
Now, the challenge becomes the following, what happens when that negates Palestinian national identity? What happens when Palestinians are no longer allowed to have their national identity? Well, the question is now reversed as well. When Palestinians have a distinct national identity, is there room for the belief that the Jewish people should have what I described with Moshe Halbertal’s definition, with the Jewish people’s definition of the return to Zion, returning to their ancient longing, their ancient hope of returning to this land, and building out their own identity?
The challenge is very clear. Palestinians believe that the whole land is theirs, and Jews believe that the whole land is theirs.
But I’m going to dig deeper and make this even more complicated for you, Ahmed. The argument goes like this. In 1937, there was the Peel Commission and pragmatically, the Jews said, you know what, we’re going to take this land even though we don’t like the deal and maybe our future dream will be something different. But right now we’re going to take the deal.
Palestinians said no. Or let me say it differently, the Arab leadership said no in Palestine. Hajj Amin Al Husseini was the leader. Okay. And that’s who ultimately was guiding these decisions at this point in time and other Arab leaders, okay, fine. Then you have 47 and the Arab people deny the ability to have you have your state, we have our state. After 67, the first time that a victor has sued for peace and the defeated rejected it. And in just right now, by the way, in September of 1967, the Khartoum resolution, three nos, no recognition, no negotiation, no peace with Israel. It goes on and on and on.
And I want to bring you to something in 2007, 2008, which is something that you and I both lived through, which is the Annapolis Agreement. And in this Annapolis Agreement, it’s not spoken enough about. Ehud Olmert was going to withdraw. This is after the Camp David Accords, was 94 to 95% of the West Bank. Palestinians would receive five and a half to 6% in land swaps inside Israel proper, including territory near Gaza to create a contiguous Palestinian state. Jerusalem, I believe it was described that there would be a shared capital with Arab neighborhoods in Palestine, Jewish neighborhoods to Israel. Refugees, Israel would acknowledge the refugee problem, which I think is big, to acknowledge a problem. And there would be, most refugees would be resettled in Palestine or third countries with international compensation.
In terms of security, a Palestinian state would be demilitarized. The international force would monitor borders and security arrangements. This is big stuff, Ahmed. And Olmert, to the reality, was a bit of a lame duck. He had corruption scandals going on and Mahmoud Abbas simply did not have the leadership. How do I know that? Because Hamas took over your homeland, which is Gaza, and Hamas took over there.
And I’m going to read to you one more quote. Hussein Agha, I don’t know if I pronounced that correctly and Robert Malley wrote a book called Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine. And they say:
The idea of an Israeli-Palestinian partition into two states has an interesting troubled and foreign pedigree. What it has not been safe for a relatively short period is an indigenous Palestinian or Jewish demand.
This is, they argue, because:
The two state solution is not the natural resting place for either Israelis or Palestinians and runs counter to the essence of their national identities and aspirations.
Elliott Abrams, who writes for the Tikvah Fund and is part of the Tikvah Fund, says this, and I’m going to be the voice of the critic right now, which is what Abrams says:
The problem is that Palestinian nationalism is fundamentally about destroying the Jewish state, not building a Palestinian one.
So when you were talking about how some people describe Zionist aspirations as destroying Palestinian identity, right? It’s also true that Abrams points out that the problem of Palestinian nationalism is fundamentally about destroying the Jewish state, not having a vision for building a Palestinian one. And I want to know, do you agree with this assessment? And if you disagree with this assessment, give me examples. I want to hear examples.
Ahmed: For the most part, I’m right there with you in terms of acknowledging poor leadership. And I get called a Zionist and I get called a Zionist and a Mossad agent and a this and a that, because I want to call these things out. And I want to say that—
Noam: And you have a Palestine flag right behind you. I just need to say that to everyone.
Ahmed: I do, and it’s also, says, I don’t know if you can, there’s too much light. It’s time to replace, to fight, it’s time to fight radical extremism with radical pragmatism. So.
Noam: Right, okay. So you’re saying you weren’t around in 1937 when radical pragmatism was an option. So let’s not look back at history from 80 years ago and let’s look to the future.
Ahmed: Well, I think to be fair to Abbas, as much as I am not a fan, to be honest, to put it nicely, and I spoke to the president at different times. I think he felt that he didn’t have a mandate in 2008 after Hamas took over. I think he felt incredibly weak. Dahlan had messed up the end game.
Noam: Who’s Dahlan?
Ahmed: Mohammed Dahlan is a powerhouse in Gaza at the time, was the head of one of the security services. He received hundreds of millions of dollars to fight off Hamas, but he basically ran away from Gaza and allowed Hamas to take over the Gaza Strip. Hamas took over on June 14th, 2007, which is the very day of my asylum interview. And so I have been calling for historical assessment and like a reflection of, why was, and so many Palestinians get defensive when you tell them, why did Arafat walk away from the 2000 Camp David proposal?
Some will say, well, he just wanted to bring it back to the Arabs because it was a radical idea and he wanted to get their thoughts. Some will say he wanted better teams. Some would say he wanted more time. Some would say he didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. And I’ve read the Bill Clinton books, I’ve read different opinions, I’ve talked to people who were present in the negotiation team. And they said, Arafat made a big fat mistake and then he thought that the second intifada would actually bolster his position.
But what I will add, and I met with Hussein Al-Agh about a year ago in London. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the fact that statehood was not really a component of the Palestinian national movement, early on. It was very much so the retrieval of the land that was taken in 1948.
Now, what I will counter with, and this is where I think the Palestinian people have experienced an injustice of epic proportions from which there has never been a correction is that our narrative has never really truly been shaped by ourselves. Our narrative was shaped by the Arabs. Like think about between 1948 and 1967, why wasn’t a provisional Palestinian state, even if you wanted to get rid of the Jewish state, why wasn’t a provisional Palestinian state established between 48 to 67 in the West Bank and in Gaza with East Jerusalem. Why did Jordan annex the West Bank? And that was actually a decision that got Jordan kicked out of the Arab League for a year. But then they went back in there. Why wasn’t it until 1964 that a Palestinian Liberation Organization established?
Now, I want to correct the record for a moment. Unfortunately, for so many quote unquote pro-Israel voices, they want to point to 1967 as this is the time when the modern Palestinian identity was born. And that is hogwash. That is entirely false. The Palestinians referred to themselves as Palestinians long before 1964. My grandparents, in the 30s, they got married in the 30s, they referred to themselves as Palestinians. They were from a village outside of Ramla called Zarnuga that was destroyed. And they went to Yaffa, Haifa, Akka, the Galilee, whatever, et cetera. But like, it was all part of a region, and a national identity.
And it wasn’t just a region that began being called Palestine when the British Mandate necessa… Like the British mandate, yes, create consolidated the establishment of Palestine as borders, but the region of Palestine and the Palestinian identity that the Arabs, the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Bedouins from Negev or from Sinai, the folks from Syria and from Lebanon, from the coast coming up and down. Like there were people that identified as Palestinian even if a modern makeover of the Palestinian identity happened at a later stage. And it’s also entirely normal for people that I mean, it’s like the Kurdish people, for example, they’ve been an identity and a people and a heritage for a long time. But as they were oppressed and cut up by the, know, between Syria and Turkey and Iraq and Iran, as Saddam Hussein gassed them, as the oppression happened in Syria, by ISIS and all these like their national identity consolidated, became stronger. Their flags, their fighters, who they are. In the 1980s, when the PKK launched their insurgency, the symbolism of the Kurdish nationhood came out of Southeastern Turkey.
So I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be this revelatory, it was only like after the war that the Palestinians started becoming this cohesive national identity. That is not unique to the Palestinian people, it’s human psychology.
But so going back to my grand point though, is that unfortunately, I believe that our identity, our national project, our vision, who we are as a people, like Palestinian nationalists were being arrested after 48 who wanted to form a provisional government.
Noam: But Ahmed, why is it the case from 48 to 67? Why did Egypt not give Palestinians living in Gaza citizenship? Why did Jordan? Not only didn’t they give citizenship to Palestinians, but they got rid of it. They made it essentially illegal to have Palestinian national identity and they got rid of the name Palestine. That’s when they created the name West Bank because they don’t want anyone calling anything Palestine. like Palestinians are part of the Arab people. They’re a distinct national identity, but they’re part of the Arab people. And so why would the Arab people not allow Palestinians to develop their own national identity and people like to blame the Jews and Israel, Zionists as it’s called as a slur, for erasing Palestinian national identity. I don’t know, the skeptic in the room could rightfully say, hey, Arab leaders, it sounds like you did a lot of the erasing of Palestinian national identity as well.
Ahmed: Well, thank you for raising that point. And this is again, I believe in agency. I am tired of us blaming others for our problems. Okay? That is true. And the early onset of the Palestinian national movement and project, was not only hindered, but it was shaped, it was molded by Pan-Arabism, of which Egypt was kind of the flag bearer, and Jordan. And Jordan, it’s complicated. Jordan was technically not friendly. It was part of the Arab League, but they weren’t very friendly with Abdel Nasser, who was the creator of Pan-Arabism. Saudi Arabia was not particularly friendly with Nasser, but Nasser, like, so there was even rivalry within the Arab League, within the Arabs. Like, for example, the Saudis supported essentially what are now the Northern Yemen, like part of like the Houthis essentially. And then Egypt went and supported and sent its army to Southern Yemen to support the socialist Arabist government there basically. And so like, the Egyptians and the Saudis were in direct competition. And part of that put Egypt and Jordan in an uncomfortable competition with one another. And one of the battlefields where that played was Gaza and the West Bank. And so to me, that’s first roots of the Palestinian national movement after ’48.
And then after 67, when Pan-Arabism basically showed, like collapsed and showed that it was a fraud, showed that it was weak, showed that it was sloganeering, showed that it was nothing. And, you know, the war of attrition, whatever, and then Abdel Nasser dies in the 70s.
Basically, there were two directions in which the Palestinian national movement went in. This nationalist secular PLO led effort, and then this other Marxist leftist Soviet supported effort, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLB, which splintered then into multiple other groups. Then there was the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, DFLP, these guys are the ones that indeed had a lot of support from the KGB and the Soviets and the Japanese Red Army and all of those conspiracy theories that you hear the pro-Israel folks saying the Palestinian identity is fake because it was all manufactured by the KGB and Soviet intelligence.
The conspiracy is that the Soviets literally created Palestinian identity, that it was literally a construct of the KGB. And this is a very widespread view among, at least that I’ve encountered online, among many of the pro-Israel community. So they’ll combine, they’ll say the Palestinian identity is fake. Palestinianism is the product of 1964, when the Arabs created the PLO in Egypt and the KGB at the same time.
Noam: Right, but it is not a conspiracy theory. I really don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory at all to suggest that the Soviets did a lot to try to isolate Israel and fight Zionism and to lead actually this fight against Zionism being racism, which I think maybe that’s what’s being conflated a bit.
Ahmed: What the Soviets did play, I mean, because Israel became an outpost of the US-led Western order. And the Soviets supported Egypt and Syria with arms, with intelligence, and the Soviets were… I’m not disputing that. I’m not disputing Soviet psychological operations.
Noam: Right. Okay. But your point is that you, Ahmed, are not the result of a Soviet KGB effort.
Ahmed: Precisely, the Soviets were working with Palestinian nationalists and militants, but I’m saying that to reduce Palestinian, the modern or the contemporary national identity of the Palestinian people to a mere Soviet intelligence and psychological warfare operation is truly inaccurate and quite ignorant.
So we have the Palestinian narrative, national movement, political, what some are referred to as Palestinianism is Pan-Arabism.
Then you have the secularism and national, the secular nationalism of the PLO and the Marxist Leninism of the PFLP, and communist organizations in Palestine. The ones who were blowing up planes and hijacking planes and all of that.
And then you fast forward. And of course in that you had the PLO being in Jordan and being expelled out of Jordan and then the PLO going to Lebanon and doing their thing. And by the way, throughout that whole time there was the Syrian regime coming in and out of the picture. The Syrian regime tried to intervene in Jordan to support the Palestinian Liberation Organization against the Jordanian regime.
And then the Israelis, with American air support, kind of repelled them, the Syrians. And then the Syrians invaded Lebanon to fight the PLO against, you know, like, it’s just, it’s a mind.
Noam: This is a complicated history, but I do want to explain a little bit to everyone what pan-Arabism is. The concept of pan-Arabism is that Arabs share a common identity. That’s language, that’s culture, that’s history, that’s heritage. And because of that shared identity, they transcend existing borders and that they could form some form of a unified Arab world. Like you said, Gamal Abdel Nasser was the biggest champion of it. And this was inspired partly by anti-colonial struggles. And they had some serious resentment of European imposed borders, which still is in existence today. But the decline that you’re talking about took place when they were, they had a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. It totally discredited Nasser’s vision and something else emerged, which is pan-Islamism, Islamism.
Ahmed: Mm-hmm. That’s what I’m going to next. And that’s where Hamas came in after that.
Noam: Right, 20 years later officially, it’s interesting that, not interesting, but I think a lot of people don’t understand what took place, that there was this whole pan-Arabism world that then became pan-Islamic world, and where the Palestinians fit into this is where, where?
Ahmed: Well, so in the late 70s, you had an Islamist wave. you actually had, believe it or not, after Nasser, he repressed the Muslim Brotherhood, he put him in jail. Sadat actually had a detente with the Islamists and that backfired horribly because they ended up assassinating him, which shows you never trust those people.
Noam: Those people meaning Islamists, extreme, yeah.
Ahmed: So the Islamists, the Islamists, which is a political, like it’s political Islam. It’s a political philosophy that combines Islam into political life with the goal of establishing hegemony of a religious rule over the population.
Noam: So Iran, Iran is a big, is a good example of that.
Ahmed: Well, so you have the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Then you have the incident in Mecca, which most people overlook that…
Noam: What’s the incident in Mecca? It sounds interesting.
Ahmed: That was when a very extremist Muslim individual who claimed to be the new the Mahdi, which is like a Muslim version of the Messiah. And so he took over the Mecca, the mosque, the big mosque, the Kaaba in Mecca.
Noam: Yeah, the Kaba, yeah.
Ahmed: And it took weeks to dislodge him and hundreds of people were killed. This was during Hajj and it took Pakistani special forces, the French special forces, the Saudis.
Noam: When is this? When is this?
Ahmed: This was in the late, I believe it was 78. This was a very pivotal moment in Saudi history because the, and he was accusing the Saudi government of becoming heretics, you know, becoming too Westernized.
And so the Saudi government actually responded by becoming even more Wahhabi and more extreme and more religious to say, no, no, no, no, no, we don’t want future. Jeyman Latiba is the name of the guy who took over. So it was a big moment where, so that then got the Saudis to fuel even more political Islam forces.
So you got the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. You got the Saudi Wahhabi injecting forces. Then you got the beginning of Jihad in Afghanistan in 1979 when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. You also have the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. Then you have in Gaza in the late 70s, the Mujammal Islami, the Islamic complex that was approved by the Israeli authorities to allow the nucleus of Hamas to start operating in there, in the Gaza Strip.
And that basically was the kind of the nucleus of Hamas that in the 80s started slowly forming these different cells. In 1987, with the first Intifada they launched.
Noam: Well, it’s not that Hamas launched that first Intifada. It was the people of the West Bank and Gaza really that launched it. It was the people. Then Arafat and the leadership then claimed, they had to be like, hey, we’re part of this too. But it was the people that started from. I wasn’t saying Hamas. Because Arafat wasn’t even there. Tunisia.
Ahmed: Absolutely. I wasn’t saying Hamas. I apologize if I misspoke. He was not. He was not. He was in Tunisia and Algeria. But so basically Hamas kind of formally launched itself or claims to have used the first Intifada as the launching point. Their official launch date is 1987. Which is ironic because, I mean, throughout the 80s, they were throwing acid in the faces of Palestinian women in Gaza who were dressed immodestly. And then later in the 80s, they would go after and kill suspected collaborators. And Sinwar was in jail, not for killing Israelis.
Noam: One second, second. Ahmed. So this is very interesting. So what connects Iran to Palestinians is very interesting, because what, I’m just connecting the dots here. Iran is Shiite, Palestinians are Sunni. Iran are Persians, Palestinians are Arabs, and they are connected between Iran and Hamas because of this radical Islamic ideology. That’s around Israel. Fascinating. Yeah.
Ahmed: Around Israel in particular, and how Iran, well, Iran wanted to use the Israeli Arab conflict as a way to posture regionally and penetrate the Palestinian scene and become hegemonic in the region. So what I’m trying to say is there was this regional in the across the Middle East and the Muslim world, there was in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran, in Afghanistan and then Iran would later insert in Lebanon and use the Shias and later on establish Hezbollah, there was a mass wave of Islamism spreading all around the region.
Noam: Got it. Got it.
Ahmed: So then the Palestinian National Movement as the PLO, as the national seculars, as the Marxists and the Soviet Union was waning, the Islamists and Hamas started rising. So that’s when Hamas came in, slowly in the picture and Palestinian Islamic Jihad also came in. Fathi Shaqaqi.
Noam: Wait, so, so, Ahmed, so let’s bring this back now. So let me, let me understand something. It’s September. The United Nations are going to be talking about declaring Palestinian statehood. Many, many Western countries, except for the United States, are going to be voting for or voted for statehood. And the United States, this is like remarkable, not only is not going to be okay with this, but the United States is not allowing the Palestinian Authority into New York City, to be part of the United Nations.
Okay, so what does it matter for Palestinians to have it be declared that they have this thing called the state of Palestine when the US and Israel do not recognize or acknowledge it? Because I don’t know what from their perspective, what they’re even acknowledging. Like it’s not clear still.
And number dos, why should Israelis want to have a Palestinian state next to them? Make this argument for me. When we just spent the last number of minutes talking about this emergence of identity of Hamas seeming to have a serious influence on the people, not just in Gaza, also the West Bank and people maybe even preferring Hamas to the Palestinian Authority.
And the Palestinian Authority is a government, corrupt government right now that has historically had this program called pay to slay that if you kill Israelis, that you get paid as a family as a result of that. If you do a suicide bombing.
So I want you to tell me why Palestinians should be excited that the state of Palestine was created when Israel and the US are not okay with it. And why should Israelis at all think that this emergence of all these identities that you just described, should they be okay with a state of Palestine right next to them with what we described so far?
Ahmed: The United States and Israel, leadership-wise, have been incredibly lackluster, to put it very kindly, when it comes to being viewed as serious partners for peace in the Middle East right now, particularly when it comes to solving the Israel and Palestine issue, working with the moderate forces within the Palestinian community. And yes, while the Palestinian authority is corrupt, the United States works with corrupt authorities and regimes around the world. Israel works with corrupt regimes in Africa, in Asia and elsewhere. The idea nevertheless remains that when faced with a choice between Hamas and the PA, you have an authority that is saying we are committed to nonviolence. They are coordinating with the Israeli authorities, up to a certain level, at least now, because the Israeli authorities don’t want to coordinate with the Palestinian Authority. They’ve withheld all of their resources, all of their munitions. When the Palestinian Authority went to fight terrorists in Jenin, they ran out of bullets, and the Israeli Defense Minister, Katz, would not give them more bullets. That’s how bad things are. And then said, look, the Palestinians are incapable of fighting terrorists. We have to go do it in ourselves. And this was shared to me personally by a three-star US general. And so we’re talking about a situation where Israel faces an actual apartheid condition.
Israel itself, I’ve said to people, is a state where everybody in there enjoys equal rights before the law. Arabs and Muslims and minorities have access to services. They can be judges. They can be teachers. Of Haifa’s hospitals, the third of the doctors are Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.
However, in the West Bank, as things stand, and as the Smotrich finance minister in Israel just announced, we’re looking at six little ghettos, bantustans, that are about to be declared, whereby the West Bank in its entirety is going to be annexed by Israel, and the Palestinian people are going to be reduced to these small, isolated ghettos where they’re separate and unequal, run by a violent military occupation, that is going to make Israel a bona fide state, apartheid state, as its detractors accuse it of on a regular basis in the West Bank. so,
Noam: Who says that’s gonna happen though? I mean, I definitely take your point that if it is the case that Israel annexes 82% of the West Bank, which is something that I seen recently and they do not give and the people are living under their authority and they’re not given citizenship but they want citizenship. That to me sounds majorly problematic. But tell me, you’re saying you’re giving me an if right now, right? Like this isn’t something that
Ahmed: But so the if is tomorrow Mr. Netanyahu is meeting with ministers to decide on this plan in response to the upcoming recognition of the Palestinian state. This is a solid plan that has been declared that that is leveraging the fact that the United States is indifferent at best or supportive of annexation with our ambassador in Israel and with the current administration that we have. And so unfortunately, with that, I mean, the United States and Israel are not seen as serious players in the international scene. It is recognized that there will be a change in the Israeli government in a year. There will be a change in the United States in three years. And so the world and the Palestinian people and the Arabs and the United Arab Emirates today and everybody is no longer going to wait until there is serious leadership that is going to stop the violent settlers, stop this Palestinian people being a nation in waiting that is going to continuously sideline an authority that now, however weak, however out of touch, has nevertheless stopped a third intifada from happening, kept basic services functional in the West Bank, as stated by Israeli generals and experts who are saying, thank God, like we don’t have to do that ourselves.
Look at the disaster in Gaza right now, even with UNRWA’s bad history, UNRWA being the UN agency that provides services for Palestinian refugees, that Israel has largely decommissioned and shut down. And that’s why you have all of these humanitarian crises in a way that you didn’t have in previous wars, because the UN was able to take care of the civilians in Gaza. Now Israel is being expected to take care of the civilians. So the Palestinian state, recognizing a Palestinian state as a symbolic gesture is going to prevent the erasure of the Palestinian people as a nation. It’s going to draw a line in the sand, even if it’s symbolic, even if it doesn’t lead to immediate changes that says, wait a minute, there are problems, Hamas has to go, the hostages must be released, there needs to be reform, there needs to be changes, not only to corruption, but to education, to de-radicalization, to the very nature of the Palestinian national movement. And I have been the first to say that. And not only me, there are thousands, tens of thousands of mid-tier bureaucrats, business people, professors, media personalities in Palestine, in Gaza, certainly, and some people that I don’t even know them, you don’t know them, but if given a chance after 18 years of Hamas’s rule, after all the devastation of the last two years, after all the Islamism and the rhetoric about resistance and being a part of the Iranian-led axis of resistance and the ring of fire and Gaza being a base for terrorism, they’re done. They’re finished.
Noam: Are there top tier leaders who would say the following? We accept the state of Israel as a Jewish state.
Ahmed: I think there can be, but here’s the thing. In 1945 in Germany or in Japan, were there top leaders that came out and said, accept the Western led order? We accept being subservient? Like this is a process, this takes time.
Noam: But why, but Ahmed, the question that people want to understand and people want to know is, Arafat had many opportunities to say he believes that Israel has a right to be a Jewish state. But he never said that. What they said was that Israel has a right to exist. And then they said, and we believe that there should be a right of return for Palestinians to Israel. And you’re like, wait a second, okay, so you mean all Palestinians should go, or descendants, and live in the US and live in Syria and Lebanon and Egypt and wherever else, should go back to Israel?
So then you don’t want there to be a Jewish state because there will be a Palestinian majority, so I’m left wondering again—
Ahmed: Well, I’m left wondering now, why is a dude from New Jersey and Brooklyn, and I see them, this is not antisemitism, this is mainline literature and reports. I can send you five links right now in the next 30 seconds. Why are these dudes going to the West Bank, bragging to the BBC about they’re terrorizing the Palestinian people because they’re Americans, they’re French, they’re British, and they have a right of return?
Why is there a right of return, when you have a state of Israel, a mainland Israel, when you’re an American and you live here in New York, and yet you want to have a right of return on top of a Palestinian family, when are Israelis and Jewish majority going to acknowledge the existence of a Pal… Like, I feel like we have this, the Palestinian people are being reduced to drops on the map. And as they’re being choked, as they’re being drowned, we’re saying, okay, you’re dying, but, do you recognize this?
Noam: You’re saying now’s not the time, right?
Ahmed: Okay, you said two states, you said, but now you said you’re willing to do it, but you need to go further. The goalpost keeps moving further. And of course there’s gonna be radicalization. Of course there’s going to be groups and nefarious terrorists like Hamas who are going to thrive in that environment.
I have, for example, I am working behind the scenes right now on a project to revisit some of the curriculums in Palestine and in the Gaza and to look at them and just to explore, we’re at the exploratory phase. And I have a friend of mine from Nablus who’s a millionaire, who is a mega, mega millionaire and it’s not Al-Masri. And he says, Ahmad, I can make peace with Tel Aviv Israelis like that overnight.
He was like, I will defend them with my life. He says, the problem is you can do all the de-radicalization work, but it takes one day of humiliation at the Mahasim, the checkpoints. One day of, and these are like kids and ladies and old dudes and a bride, you know, he showed me pictures. One day of humiliation at checkpoints to undo all the de-radicalization.
Noam: So here’s what I’m hearing you say. What I’m hearing you say is this, hey Noam, what you’re now describing or representing is just as it is the case that for Israelis, like when they’re afraid of making peace and having states with Palestinians who are like Hamas, let’s say, but they would be able to, if there was Palestinians that said, hey listen, the Jewish identity and Jewish state of Israel, good to go, Tel Aviv, fine. But the same thing is true on the other side where Palestinians are saying, hey, you know, it’s also the case that we’d be happy to make peace with those folks, but we’re afraid of what you’re describing as people from Brooklyn moving to settlements in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, where you are like, hey, listen, those are not people that I could imagine making peace with. Is that what I’m hearing?
Ahmed: People are afraid of a rhetorical right of return for the Palestinians, but somehow they disregard the Palestinians actual realized physical right of return that many Jews and self-described Zionists are exercising at the expense of Palestinian safety. So like we know, everybody knows, there’s not going to be the right of return as described over generations. But for the Palestinians, they’re like, why do these guys feel that they have to come and right of return on top of me and push me out? So one is theoretical, one is actual, which, our people have a right to be afraid.
Now that said, again, I have said at the beginning of this conversation that I understand the legitimate fears. I understand that unfortunately the Palestinian people have made, their leadership have made mistakes. And that shows not just in the leadership, but it makes its way in how the society internalizes those things and expresses views and opinions and how people behave and how some people are prone to radicalization.
But on the other hand, as much as this might be hard to swallow for some, I actually don’t believe that we have to wait until 100% of Palestinian society is completely on. Like Israel is a fait accompli. Like it’s a reality. Like Palestinians, once they see the fruits of peace.
And Gaza, as much as I do believe October 7th was a choice and it was a disaster and it was a horrible tragedy of epic proportions, like, things were not okay in Gaza before October 7th. And that was because of Hamas. That was because of Like the restrictions, blah blah blah, etc. But people in Gaza, they were isolated. They were closed off. They only knew Hamas. They only knew Israel through checkpoints. 70% of Gazans have never left the Gaza Strip. 70% or 75%. People are a product of their environment.
And so when you get people in Gaza or in the West Bank who have unfortunately terrible leadership, they’re experiencing the military occupation, they’re experiencing violence, to them the prospect of a symbolic recognition of their mere existence as a people, even in an imaginary state, is something that puts them on the map somewhere.
Like I had a friend of mine tell me who was like, at least now when I apply for my immigration visa, when I press the dropdown menu, at least there’ll be the state of Palestine. He literally said to me, at least I’ll get to experience Palestine on my way out of here. Because he’s like, I’m finished, I’m done, dude. Hamas can have it. Israel can have it. The settlers can have it. I just, I don’t want any of it. But he’s like, at least I’m gonna get to choose Palestine on the drop down menu when I apply to a European country for a student visa.
Noam: K, I got another question for you. I love the passion, Ahmed, for real, like I really, really appreciate it. The passion with like, I’m not trying to sound pedantic, but I believe that all of us in life should be having difficult, passionate conversations that are not simply polite, but we’re hearing each other, talking to each other, sharing ideas, and nuance doesn’t mean not being passionate.
Ahmed: Absolutely.
Noam: It means you could have conviction about your passions and hear each other. So I want to suggest another idea that I heard that might be easier for Israelis to swallow, though I don’t know if this is the case. I heard about this idea also from Elliott Abrams, and it’s not just from him, but from many others, that there’s another potential outcome to the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what’s called a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, comprising the Hashemite kingdom and the West Bank, where Israelis might view a Jordanian security presence in the West Bank as reliable.
And the point about confederation should be clear. It would partition the old Palestine mandate into a Jewish part and an Arab part and do so in a way that guarantees through the Jordanian army and Mukhabarat that Hamas, meaning I think that’s the security of forces, that Hamas—
Ahmed: Mukhabarat is intelligence, Jordanian intelligence.
Noam: Yeah, the intelligence I meant, sorry, that Hamas and other terrorist groups would not take over the Arab part, or use it as a launching pad for attacks on Israel. What do think of this? Is this something that’s realistic or do you smirk at it?
Ahmed: I mean, I think the Jordanians would be very reluctant to agreeing to something like this. I am down for transitional solutions, ones that bolster the Palestinian people’s ability to remain on their land, ones that present the Jewish Israeli people with security guarantees, and ones that create separation where it’s needed, particularly from a security point of view.
I do not see this working out unless this is part of a temporary custodianship that is very time bound. But I think at this point, some kind of an international presence that bolsters the PA’s ability to repair its institutions and actually bolster the presence of security. I’m worried about the popularity of Hamas in the West Bank. And I think some of that is people haven’t had to experience the consequences of life under Hamas. The West Bank, believe it or not, is a very, like, you can buy liquor, you can go to nightclubs, you can wear whatever you want.
Noam: Why wouldn’t you? You’re saying because you’re Muslim, because you’re saying because of Islamic society, because of Muslim-
Ahmed: Because it’s a relaxed and it’s not Islamized in the way that Gaza is.
Noam: That’s what I’m saying. The reason you wouldn’t is because I don’t think people necessarily understand that.
Ahmed: Well, I’m saying unlike Gaza, where it’s very rigid and it’s gonna take, Gaza for example, like in the second Intifada in the year 2000, I remember vividly one of the first things that Hamas did when the second Intifada happened and we got a problem with Israel, whatever, they went to Gaza’s sole bar and they burned it down. But what does that have to do with…like Hamas, for example, they basically attacked and prevented Gaza from having the sole cinema, the sole movie theater from playing, from operating. That was something that, and even the PA itself never really worked to restore it. And so, like, basic things like that all exists in the West Bank in ways that, know, so they haven’t like…
Like I have a female friend of mine, more power to her, right, in the West bank and Ramallah. And she makes good money selling spandex, like a knockoff Lululemon. And she’s like, I can’t keep up with demand, you know, over there. And some ladies will wear it out in public, like more power to them. That doesn’t happen in Gaza. It’s, you know, I’m worried about Hamas’s popularity in the West bank, but I strongly believe that if they really experience life under, like everybody hates the Palestinian Authority until the beginning of the month when they want a paycheck. Everybody hates the Palestinian Authority until they want to go to school and a hospital, until they want to renew their passport to go to Europe, to go to the United Arab Emirates and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Australia and everywhere. And so there are some pragmatic considerations that people talk a big game about, like about, about, about radical ideas.
But when it comes down to brass tacks, I very much so believe that an international or Jordanian or some kind of a custodianship that can initiate a transitional period, I just don’t see the Jordanians going for it, to be honest.
Noam: Ahmed, let me ask you this last question. What gives you hope? What gives you hope right now? Despite setbacks that have taken place, tell me the hopeful story that’s going to emerge and develop three to five years from now.
Ahmed: Honestly, and I’m gonna be very frank and blunt here, short term, very short term, like there’s nothing to be hopeful about, honestly. Like it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. But the only reason why I’m persevering in this and continuing in this is that I actually think the best is yet to come in Gaza. I actually think there’s a real opportunity unless Israel messes it up and unless Hamas sticks around and unless the conflict gets frozen and nothing happens. I actually think Gaza out of all the ashes and the misery and the hopelessness and like it’s kind of like a blank slate. We get to start fresh and we get to actually reimagine, not just rebuilt Gaza, but I think there’s an opportunity and this is what I want to work on.
I want to reimagine Gaza. I want to reinvent Gaza. And I’m not going to do that single-handedly, obviously. But I want to be a part of that process with other Palestinians, many of whom, like I said, they’re ready to do it, but they’re just struggling to say so publicly, is that I don’t wanna just rebuild buildings and beaches and homes and cities in Gaza. I wanna rebuild mines. I wanna reinvigorate the Palestinian identity. I want to take people away from all the radical garbage that Hamas has been talking about, the resistance and the liberation ideology. And I want to move people away to the nation building narrative. I want Gaza to become the jewel, the crown achievement of the Palestinian people. I want it to be a model for Palestinian innovation, self-rule, effective governance. I want it to be a mini Dubai in Singapore, not in how big and fancy, it’s never necessarily gonna rival Dubai and Singapore, but never say never. But it’s not just the glitz and glamour and the appearance. I’m talking about, that we’re an educated, intelligent people.
And when we’re given a chance at agency, when we’re given a chance at actually innovating, at self-determination without an Islamist terrorist, despicable, fascist Nazi army controlling us, without an occupation that hinders our ability to be our true self, without a corrupt, morabund authority, we can create the future that hinders our ability to be ourselves without a corrupt, more abundant authority.
We can be the neighbors to Egypt, to the Israelis, to the whole world. We will be something to be proud of as Palestinians. Because I want Gaza to be something to be proud of. I don’t just want to wave flags around and wear keffiyah and kind of the hollow symbolism. I want that to be backed up with something new. I want to get rid of this hollow symbolism. I want Gaza to be synonymous with progress and innovation and development and the smartest, brightest minds. And I think I see that being attainable and achievable. I really do. And that is something that I see on the horizon.
Noam: Inshallah, that should happen. And in Judaism, we have this concept that there is a dialectic always, between Hishdadlut and Emunah, meaning effort and faith. You have to have a vision. You have to have belief. You have to have something guiding you. I believe in a higher power called God. Other people believe in other higher powers. Fine. But you have to have faith. And you also have to put in effort, Hishdadlut, effort, effort, effort. But you have to have that vision that you’re describing, Ahmed, and you have to have the willingness to execute and to implement and to make things happen, to get stuff done. And it sounds like with people like you, with a vision like that, that is hopeful and it is possible, but you got to combine both emunah, belief, faith, and hishtadlut, effort.
Ahmed: Inshallah, habibi.
Noam: So Ahmed, Ahmed, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. And I really appreciate speaking to you as always, my friend.
Ahmed: Always a pleasure, brother. Thank you.