Last week, we released our two-part episode on Palestinian statehood. It was a banger, and it started many conversations.We traced the history, the politics, and the competing visions for what statehood has meant, and still means, for Palestinians and Israelis.
The conversations with each of my guests were riveting, at least for me! So we’re bringing you the conversations in full, as special bonus content.
Today’s episode is my conversation with my friend Samer Sinijlawi. Samer is a Palestinian activist and political leader from East Jerusalem, who shared with me a vision of the future that really stuck with me. For Samer, the question of statehood isn’t just about what happens at the United Nations or what’s written on a diplomatic resolution. It’s about whether Palestinians and Israelis themselves can find a way to work together, to build something sustainable, and to shape their shared future with their own hands.
For me, that was the most hopeful message I heard in all of these conversations: the idea that peace, or whatever word you want to use, won’t be imposed from outside. It has to be created from within. And Samer believes it can be.
So let’s dive straight into my conversation with Samer.
Noam: I want to have a very intense conversation with you about Palestinian statehood. Why is Palestinian statehood back in the news right now? Why are we talking about Palestinian statehood, September 2025, what’s going on over here?
Samer: Well, I think because the whole world has been, you know, witnessing a dead end in this conflict. And the whole international community is fed up. They want to push things. I see their action now, of a group of countries to recognize the state of Palestine, as not only giving gesture to Palestinians, but sometimes in Europe, it has been clear for all of us that there is a public opinion that is against the war.
And this public opinion is pushing the political leaders. And these leaders, they need either to go the way like they have reacted to Russia, for example, in imposing sanctions, or to go the way in a more tough love situation with Israel, saying, okay, we don’t want to harm the historical relations with our friends. We will not impose actions or maybe arms embargo, but we will go into recognizing the state of Palestine.
So this political atmosphere has pushed this political move. And that’s why it’s here. It’s here after almost 22 months of war in Gaza that even most of the Israelis are not convinced that there is some reasons for this war to continue that long.
Noam: Right, so when you hear, Samer, when you hear that countries like France, the UK, Canada, Australia, they may recognize Palestine. Palestine is recognized as a state. What do you feel at that moment? What goes through your mind? What goes through your heart?
Samer: Let me tell you something. a Palestinian, I might feel happy. Okay, well, it is something ceremonial, symbolic. In practicality, it means nothing. Our life will not change. The facts on the ground will not change. If 190 states recognize the state of Palestine and Israel is not among them, it is meaningless. The only state that we as Palestinians should work very hard to get its recognition of the Palestinian state is the state of Israel, because then it will be a meaningful recognition. Then it will change the life of millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem.
So for me, OK, this is good diplomatic gesture. We will add some few more embassies all over the world, and we don’t have few. By the way, Canada, which is a G7 country, for example, it has only three embassies in Africa. We, Palestinians, we have 53 embassies in Africa. I don’t know what is the diplomatic value of such a diplomatic presence in Africa. If I were the prime minister, I would have closed all these embassies and opened liaison offices in every neighborhood in Israel and start engaging with the Israelis. Because if I am not able to convince 51% of the Israelis that they can trust me, that I can be a solution for their security concerns, I can be an asset into this, not a burden to this, they will not be able to move ahead into political horizons that might lead to a real Palestinian state on the ground. Our focus should be the Israelis and not the whole world.
I’ve learned something about the Israelis through my 35 years of engagement with Israelis. You cannot get good results from the Israelis if you use pressure. We cannot pressure the Israelis. The Israelis, they become very stubborn when you try to exercise pressure over them. We need to try to persuade them. We need to try to convince them. We need to touch their hearts and minds. This is the only way for us to succeed with them into opening the doors of political horizons.
And it’s only us who can do it. This job, the whole world cannot do it. Even the best American president, even the whole United Nations, the only people that are able to convince the Israelis that the Palestinians are not a threat, that the Palestinians could be an asset, a horizon for a better future, is us. And we need to communicate this. So we need to change to achieve this.
Noam: So Samer, you said so many interesting things there. You talked about trust, you talked about persuasion versus pressure. I wanna talk about trust for a second. How can you view the potential of a state, which I think is an aspiration of yours, right? Like a real state, is that right, Samer, or no?
Samer: Yes, of course. I mean, this is what every Palestinian is dreaming for, because this conflict is two words. It’s on the Israeli side, security. On the Palestinian side it’s self-determination, freedom, human dignity, if you wish. Okay?
Noam: Right. So, of course you want human dignity. Of course you want self-determination. When I see polls right now that support for a two state solution from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research says around 40% want that. When framed specifically as a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, that support rises to 61%. 64% say two states are no longer practical because of settlements. Only a third think it’s still possible.
And I believe though I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now that many Palestinians in the West Bank are supportive of the 7th of October attack and maybe those numbers have gone down. But you talk about this need for trust, this need for respect, for credibility, for transparency. But if Palestinians have these views that the 7th of October was not a bad thing, how do you persuade the Israelis to trust you? Yeah, and I mean, I could ask Israelis the same question about them towards Palestinians, but I’m asking you the question from the Palestinian side towards Israelis.
Samer: Well, I think there has been a long history of wrongdoings from both sides. And in a certain way and a certain moment, in certain events, we can find that both of us have been a little bit ugly. Okay. This does not mean that we are ugly. This means that we have committed certain mistakes in the relation towards each other. And I admit that we are the champions as Palestinians in committing a series of mistakes towards ourselves and towards the Israelis. The way that we have lost a lot of opportunities to try to materialize Palestinian statehood, while the Israelis were smart and pragmatic and jumped into opportunities and moved on. So lack of leadership on our side versus pragmatic, smart leadership on the Israeli side made all the difference that 80 years ago we were both a of militias fighting each other and fighting the British. And now Israel is an OECD country developed with army, economy, start-up nation, whatever you want. And we are meant to be a national movement, a group of militias up till now. So there is a lot of weakness, mistakes on our side and we need to admit it. We need to realize it.
And we need to realize that we need to change. This change will react, will result to starting gaining the trust of the other side. Because when the Israelis start feeling the change on the Palestinian side, what I call it the rebirth of the Palestinian people, to introduce the new Palestinians, a Palestinian Mahadashim to the Israelis. Okay, forget about this history. I agree with you. I don’t want to argue with you. Let’s start such, in every relationship, in a family with two people in partnership, in a relationship, you can always say, let’s start the phase and start some deep relation. You can always say, let’s turn the page and start something fresh. Let’s turn the page and start something fresh. My understanding, deep understanding to the Israeli society and my deep understanding to the Palestinian society makes me feel confident that it’s doable.
Let’s the plunge and start something fresh. I might understand it, deep understanding to the Israeli society and my deep understanding to the Palestinian society makes me feel confident that it’s human. Don’t underestimate, Noam, that we have common humanity that bonds us. By the end of the day, before being Israelis and Palestinians, we are human beings. And human beings, yes, there could be phases of mistrust, and this mistrust overnight can develop into trust.
Look at the example of Sadat and Israel. The guy that launched the war on October ’73 against Israel and caused the death of around 3,000 Israelis that day. It’s the same guy that overnight turned Israel 180 degrees into trusting him. He just invited himself to come to the Knesset and give a speech of one hour and changed all the dynamics of relations. So we can create the Sadat moment with the Israelis. Maybe not by bringing a leader to speak to the Israeli Knesset, it could be one of them. I was invited to the Knesset three weeks ago and I spoke in front of a committee there.
Noam: How did that go?
Samer: it was very good. And I think, you know, my experience with Israelis is that when you use this vision, of trying first of all to stop lecturing them. If you want to deliver a message, you need to set up an example. This is the best way that they can listen. Okay? So in a way or another, talking to the Israelis from wall to wall made me feel confident that always I can find a common ground with any Israeli I talk to.
And in most of the cases, I found that I am the first Palestinians that this Israeli or this group of Israelis are listening to. I meet an average of 300 Israelis a week, Noam. Small groups, big groups, conferences, whatever, this is the average. So I get engaged with 300 Israelis every week. I know them better every day and I can tell you they are looking seriously, sincerely for a way out of this situation.
No Israeli mother would like to see her son or daughter serving anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza. They don’t want to see their kids in war. And this is very understandable. So because I know the Israelis, I am confident we can gain their trust. But we should start doing something new. We should change the strategy of pressuring them and this includes using violence on the ground. This includes maybe not necessarily trying to mobilize the whole world against them because it’s not working, not this, not that. And using them direct contact and a process to persuade them, stopping lecturing them.
Third, we need to start from the basic changing the Palestinian narrative with the first step of recognizing the historical rights of Jews in this land, because this is a piece of fact. When we recognize the historical rights of Jews in this land and when we continue refreshing our memory that they have not been alone here and always there was others and these others are us and we have 4,000 years of coexistence, it’s only the last 100 years that went wrong. The rest of the 4,000 years were a common history that bonded us. This common history, when we recall it, we will be able to find the way to a common future together. Because it’s a long history of coexistence. And this is the first step. And then when you do all this together, when you start talking positively to them, automatically they will start taking similar steps towards you.
I give you one example, Noam. I wrote an op-ed in Haaretz newspaper in April this year. It was under the title, We the Palestinians Need to Start the First Steps of Change Towards Ending this Conflict. And I explained why we need to start the first steps, simply because we have a sense of urgency more than them. They are paying a price, as I have explained, but we are paying a price without having what they have, without having their state, without having their economy, without having their army, their passport that connects them, with two million people under plastic tents in Gaza. So there is an urgency. They can, with all the pain and the price they are paying, they can continue another 80 years in managing this conflict. We cannot stay another 80 hours in this conflict. So we have a sense of urgency. We need to change.
The responses that I have received, massively, from everywhere. We agree with you in everything, but we disagree on one thing. We, the Israelis, should start the first step of change. So when you assume responsibility, you show that you are an adult, they will start also reacting the same way and they will raise the level of responsibility.
Noam: Love it. Yeah, I call this Newton’s third law, which is every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Right? That’s what Newton taught with physics. The same thing is true with human behavior. So, Samer, you’re saying, hey, listen, if I’m telling you I want to take the first step, you’re going to say, you know what? Let me also take the first step. Right? But if you say to someone, it’s all your fault, then they’re going to say it’s all your fault. And so we could all continue in this cycle. So I call that Newton’s third law. I love that.
I want to challenge something you said earlier and get your reflections on this. You said that there’s one word that sticks out for Israelis and there’s one word that sticks out for Palestinians. The one word that sticks out for Israelis is security. The one word that sticks out for Palestinians is self-determination. (Okay, there’s a hyphen, it works. It’s fine.)
I want to read to you a quote from the son of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook. His son is Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and he spoke in 1967, 19 years after Israel’s independence, a few weeks before, or really right before the Six Day War broke out. And he said these words, he said:
Where is our Hevron? Are we forgetting it? Where is our Nablus, Shechem? Are we forgetting it? Where is our Jericho? Are we forgetting it?
And he says, this is basically the heartland of the Jewish people. So, lovely that we have Yaffo and Tel Aviv, but really the heartland of Jewish history, like you’re mentioning, is the story of Shechem, which is in the Hebrew Bible, the story of Hebron, which is in the Hebrew Bible, which is Yericho, which is in the Hebrew Bible. So I’m wondering if there’s not just a security issue that Israel has, but if we’re being a little bit more broad, maybe a theological and historical and Biblical, such intense connection to this land that’s not just about security.
And then on the other hand I want to challenge what you said about the self-determination of Palestinians, there’s also this Muslim concept called a hudna which is a long-term truce, but that Hamas and people like Hamas would never accept an actual peace with the Jewish state in a land in which Muslims had authority over for a long time. They’ll never actually accept another authority, certainly not the nebbish, the pathetic little Jew to have a country in the Middle East where there was Arab and Muslim leadership for so many years.
So it’s not just about self-determination for the Palestinians and security for Israelis. For Israelis, it’s also, for a whole broad swath of them, it’s all also about something theological and religious. And for Palestinians, it’s also about something that is theological and religious. What are your thoughts on that?
Samer: Well, you are trying to say that maybe a long-term hudna is better than trying to end this conflict. Well, I was speaking about the sense of urgency on the Palestinian side because, well, there are several millions of Palestinians here that are not really part of one state. Okay, because I mean, we are not voting to the political system that most powerfully determines and decides the details of our life. And we are not part of the two states because there is no Palestinian state. We are in a reality of more a two-floor state, where in one floor there is the masters and in the other floor there are the servants, in terms of capability and ability to determine things and participate in the public life and enjoy the benefits, and etc. This is not a healthy situation.
I wish, Noam, that we can a little bit postpone the idea of going to a two-step solution now and leave it for further notice. But here the big question will come, how will Palestinians be able to feel that they have some respect, they have some rights, that they have a say in the system that determines lots of the details of their lives. It’s a very complicated situation. And I do understand that postponing the solution may not serve the best interests of Israelis because in a way or another, Israelis need to live in their Jewish democratic state.
Now with millions of Palestinians under this umbrella, this state cannot be Jewish, cannot be democratic. The only way to achieve a really democratic Jewish society is separate from millions of Palestinians.
Now, how can we respect the Jewish ties with Hebron, and Jericho, and Nablus, Shechem, because we don’t need to read the Bible or the Torah to understand and discover the historical links of Jews in this land and the religious importance of this land to the Jews. If we read Surat Al-Baqarah in the Qur’an, you will find the whole Jewish history in detail there. Our Qur’an is a document that proves this, but we don’t want to see it, you know, for political reasons. We don’t want to refer to it, but it’s there.
What I think is doable. The two-state solution means the following. There will be the state of Israel of around 78% of the land, where there will be a majority of 80% of Jews, but still Israel is keeping the 20% of its Arab minority. But this Arab minority will enjoy for rights and they will not be able to change that this state is a Jewish state. They will not change the identity of this.
Noam: They can’t change the character of the state. It remains a Jewish state. Okay.
Samer: It remains a Jewish state. Now, the state of Palestine needs to accommodate all these Jews, all those Jews. First of all, you know, a two-state solution means there will be a swap of land. Maybe 80% of the settlers will be annexed to Israel because they live almost on 5-6% of the West Bank that is adjacent to the Green Line.
There will remain another 18% to 20% of the Israeli Jewish residents of the settlements that are deep in the West Bank, especially in areas like Hebron or Nablus or Jericho. And these people should be allowed to stay there as Israeli Jewish citizens, but residents of the state of Palestine, where they can stay freely. They can pray freely. They should be protected by the state of Palestine and the laws of the state of Palestine. They should be given freedom of movement and worship, and they should be given free accessibility and connection to their homeland, to their state, to Israel proper. Okay, so a two-state solution does not mean that the state of Palestine should be zero Jewish presence. At the opposite.
Because I do understand that for some Jewish people, they cannot feel Jewish if they are not really connected with Hebrew. This is part of their ideology, this is part of their identity, and we need to respect this. If there is a will, there is a way. We need to understand the needs of each other.
And I told you that we need to do certain steps including one of the major changes is recognizing the historical rights, but it’s not enough. If I want really to get the trust of the Israelis, we need to take another very hard and tough decision. Very tough, very complicated and very painful because it’s for a leader that needs to sacrifice the rights of millions of Palestinians, which is the redefinition of the right of return. We need to redefine the right of return to be the right of return to the state of Palestine, not to the place that the parents or grandparents of the refugees has left in 1947, 1948. Because I cannot say that I am pro-two-state solution and then I want to flood Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees that will no more make it a real Jewish Israeli state, it will be another bi-national Palestinian state. It doesn’t make sense.
So this is how each one of us need to take a lot of compromise. Israelis to withdraw from territories that they have occupied through war, that is part of their identity and ideology, and us as Palestinians to sacrifice the right of return. It is a lot of sacrifice from both sides. It’s a real compromise. But there is nothing else that can accommodate the national religious needs of both people and aspirations and security needs and create new dynamics in the Middle East.
Noam: Samer, what would you say to someone who’s listening to this and says, wow, Samer, you sound like somebody who has got real vision for change, and it’s so beautiful. And then they end their sentence with, but. But, how many people actually are going to follow Samer on this? How many Palestinians really believe in what Samer is saying?
I’ll ask you a question. I know that you’re a father. Do your children, and does Gen Z, does this generation, how are they viewing these sorts of questions? Are they hardened by what they’re seeing in the last few years or are they like, you know what, daddy’s got it right. Are you just being utopian right now or is this something that you think the other Palestinians would agree with you on?
Samer: Well, we spoke about polls. All the polls, all the results that you have quoted or mentioned shows us one thing, brings us to one conclusion. Palestinians are confused. Israelis are confused. Both people are, their hearts are full of a cocktail of feelings. It’s sadness, it’s grief, unfortunately it is hatred also. If you ask me what is the major challenge now? Is it Jerusalem? Is it the right of return? Is it the borders? Is it… None of these, Noam. All these hard issues of the conflict…we can find 10 different scenarios for each one that can get the majority of Israelis and Palestinians support.
The main challenge, the main enemy, the mutual enemy for Israelis and Palestinians is the hard feelings in their hearts. With these hard feelings, there is no way to do business. We need first of all to defeat these hard feelings, to defeat the fear inside the hearts of the Israelis, to defeat the hatred and incitement that are manipulating our thinking, to defeat the leadership, the current political elites that did not show us a workable vision, a practical way out of our suffering and pain. There is one prime minister that is a magician. Nobody can argue about how smart he is, but he’s handicapped. And we have a very lazy, dumb leader on our side that has done business with eight prime ministers in Israel, starting from Rabin to the current Netanyahu. Eight out of 14. He did not succeed with any of them. He has done business with six American presidents. He did not succeed with one of them. He has done business with three Saudi kings and two Jordanian kings, and he did not succeed with any one of them. And still he’s continuing to try. What is he trying to do? I’m not understanding.
But if we defeat these hard feeling, and there is a leadership that a little bit can organize the thinking of Israelis and Palestinians. And you do poll at that moment, you will receive different results.
Now for Gen Z and my kids, I have nine kids—
Noam: Nine kids. Are you a Hasidic Jew?
Samer: No, I am a Haredi Palestinian, yes. I have kids from one and a half years old until 27 years old. So I have Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y, all the Gen’s I have in my family. I’ll tell you one answer from…
Noam: Yeah. Wait, have a child who’s a year and a half?
Samer: I have, it was one and a half years, almost.
Noam: I have a baby, They should get together. They should play together.
Samer: Yeah, Next time you come to Jerusalem.
Noam: I’m coming to Jerusalem and I’ll be there in a couple months. They’ll play together.
Samer: I’ll be happy that we do a family meeting and get the kids to know each other. So one of my daughters, she’s 21 years old. I once asked her, what do you prefer? A one-state solution or a two-state solution? She told me, well, Daddy, you know lots of Israelis. I prefer you ask them this question. I will sign in for whatever they choose. Tell them what they want to do with us. Do they want to go into a two-state solution or in a one-state solution path? And I am happy to do both.
I told her, OK, they will tell you. We would like to have a one-state solution, but it should be a Jewish state. What do you think? Are you willing to be part of a Jewish state?
She said, Daddy, if they give me rights, if I feel respected, they can call it a Buddhist state if they want. I don’t care.
The young Palestinian generation does not really very much care about symbols. They care about practicality, rights, horizons, opportunities, equal opportunities, progress. These are the things that dominate their interest.
The question of how many Palestinians think like you, I receive these questions a lot. I answer it with one question. When they tell me you are the only Palestinian we know that says these things, my question is how many Palestinians did you meet? Most of them will tell me you are the first Palestinians. Then I tell them, okay, start meeting more. I didn’t know the Israelis until I started building blocks of them. Then when I had the feelings I know all of them, I have more confidence how they think and I have more confidence in them because I started knowing them. If I continue seeing the Israelis, typically through what Ben-Gvir says, then I really cheat myself, first of all. So we need to know each other better.
And there is only one way. This conflict does not come to end in a road that goes via Washington DC or Berlin or Riyadh. It can come to end via Tel Aviv, via Ramallah, via Jericho, via Zikron Yaakov, via Rishon Lezion, via Nablus. When we start talking to each other, when we start looking at these eyes from the eyes of the other side, when I wake up every morning and say I need to learn something new today about how the Israelis are seeing this conflict what’s their problem today why they react like this today and I spend my day into trying to understand this conflict. What their problem can be. Why they react like this today. As I spend my day into trying to understand this, I will be able to understand this conflict and I will be able to think better in how to end this conflict. And it needs to happen by both sides. We need to open our hearts. We need to start feeling the pain on the other side.
I told you I was invited to the Knesset three weeks ago by MK Naama Lazimi. She’s the head of the Youth Affairs Committee in the Knesset, and she was trying to discuss about the possible political horizons and its impact on Israeli and regional youth and youth in the region. And when she introduced me, she said that my visit to the Shiva of the Bibas family, to Yarden Bibas, I went there with a delegation. And she said that handshake caused her to cry. I have visited Yarden Bibas because I felt a human responsibility to go there and share his pain and also ask for his pardon because we have killed his kids.
And this is not conditional that maybe somebody from Israel should go to somebody in Gaza and say also, it’s not conditional. I do things that I feel are the responsibility of me as a Palestinian. It falls on my shoulders. What the other should be done, should do, it’s upon them. They need to decide the moment and the way, maybe not necessarily it should be exactly the same. I leave it. But this kind of setting an example, it touches a lot of hearts in Israel. They see it. They see something new is happening and it connects to them. This is the only way, Noam, we can change the dynamic of this conflict. Changing the dynamics of relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
Noam: And you first started meeting Israelis, I believe, in the late 1980s when you were in prison, when you were incarcerated during the first Intifada, when you were 14 or 15 years old, if I recall correctly from our last conversation, where you were arrested and you emerged from prison to serve as international secretary of Fatah Youth. And that
That put you at the center of the Oslo era diplomacy. And today you’re the chair of the Jerusalem Development Fund and you’re deeply engaged in Palestinian civic life even as international recognition surges. So when you think about this trajectory from symbolic awakening to political insider to civic leader, how do you and Palestinian leaders today regard to international recognition. Is it a tool? Is it a victory? Is it a distraction? Right now it sounds to me like you’re saying it’s actually a little bit irrelevant because this generation is much more interested in the practical changes on the ground than on the international symbolism of this all. Is that right?
Samer: Well, yes, it is right. This kind of recognition is coming in September in New York as part of intergovernmental network that was called the Global Alliance for the Two States. And this Global Alliance for the Two States remained an intergovernmental networking. They did not even think about how to include the Palestinian and Israeli civil society in the process. This is completely a waste of effort if they don’t create a mechanism that would facilitate the engagement of the Israeli and Palestinian society in this dialogue, in this process.
Yes, it is a diplomatic development. The Israeli media called it a diplomatic tsunami. We need an Israeli-Palestinian tsunami, not an international diplomatic tsunami. And I think if the world is keen into helping the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way out of this conflict, they need to invest a lot of resources into trying to bring more Israelis and Palestinians together.
Now, if really, I don’t know what was the cost of all this diplomatic effort, because, you know, there was a series of meetings for the Global Alliance for the Two-State Solution in different capitals, and now there was the preparatory meeting in July in New York, and there will be the big conference in, I think maybe a few hundreds of millions of dollars were invested. If they put one million, one billion dollars, to create people-to-people connectivity between Israelis and Palestinians, to help the Israelis and Palestinians discover each other. The real Israelis and the real Palestinians in reality by nature, no, I know very good the Israelis, I know very good the Palestinians, I know the Israelis better than they know themselves because I talk to all of them, left, center, right, they don’t talk to each other, I talk to all of them. I talk to every Israeli that is willing to have a conversation with me. I have a new friend. I don’t want to mention the name and the position, but he is a mainstream from the leading political party in Israel now, and he lives in a settlement near Hebron. I was in a Zoom with him today for 30 minutes. We communicate in a very respectful way to each other with all the disagreements that we have on issues, but in a very respectful way.
So I do have a way of communication with every Israeli. I know that by nature, with our DNA, we have the capability to coexist. We are born to coexist. But we lost the way because somebody kidnapped us politically. OK.
The lack of leadership is not helping us. If we can bring up the type of leadership that can create trust, and this trust, I think, should be engineered top-down. If a Palestinian leader comes one day and he understands that he needs to make the Israeli prime minister his best friend, regardless if he comes from the Likud or from the new party, that will run to election under Bennett or even if he comes from Otzma Yehudit. Whoever sits in Balfour needs to be my best friend. And I need to do an effort in knocking his door every day and try to impose my friendship until it becomes a genuine friendship. This trust on the top of the pyramid will find its way quickly down the pyramid. It will find its way in the mainstream media. The Israeli public opinion, which will mobilize all the political muscles and machines to try to push.
Noam: I’m joining you, Samer. But how do you know this? Is there any empirical proof that you have? Is there any historical evidence? Are there any stories? Is there any point of history that you could be like, oh, I could turn to this and be like, look at this. We could just copy it.
You mentioned Sadat earlier when he flew to Jerusalem after, you know, unleashing a very scary and destructive war against Israel, that over 2600 Israelis were killed and then he flew to Jerusalem. But what about from the Palestinian Israeli side? And what you’re saying is you’re really talking about the speed of trust, which is super quick if you demonstrate it, if you behave in a way that’s trustful. So I’m wondering how you know this to be true. I know that you believe it to be true, but how do you know it to be true?
Samer: Because I’m talking to lots of people who might be the coming Israeli prime minister. I’m talking to all of them, from left to right. I know all of them. I can tell you, Noam, we can find a common ground with every one of them, regardless.
It works every time with every Israeli. It means this 100% success story every day with every Israeli, will be definitely a collective success story with the whole Israel if we adopt it as a Palestinian national strategy. It’s not guessing. It’s working.
Noam: Okay, so let’s speak about the Palestinian leadership for a second. I think that the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which is called the state of Palestine by some people. His name, nobody knows who he is. His name is Mohammed Mustafa, right? How does that work? Explain the distinctions. I’m asking a few people this because I want to understand it. There’s the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO. There’s Fatah and there’s the Palestinian Authority. Then there’s Mahmoud Abbas or Abu Mazen, who’s the president of the PA. And you have Mohammed Mustafa, who is the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. And then you have Hamas. What is all of this? P.A. P.L.O. Fatah Mohammad Mustafa Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen Hamas What is this?
Samer: In the West Bank there is only one player. He is Mahmoud Abbas, the current president. He controls everything. He controls the money, he controls the media, he controls the security. Every Palestinian law comes as a presidential degree. He’s dominating the West Bank. He is the diplomatic address for the Palestinian people in front of the whole world. He’s very corrupt. And Palestinians are fed up from the corruption that Abbas imposed on them in the West Bank.
On Gaza, there is Hamas that also forced itself with a very bloody coup in 2007. They shot people in the streets. They killed a lot of people and they controlled Gaza. the people in Gaza are fed up from the destruction that Hamas brought upon them by the end of the day. This is the result of 15, 16 years of the Hamas regime in Gaza. The whole Gaza was erased from the surface of the map. There is no Gaza now. This is what they have contributed to the Palestinian people with the way they have managed the situation.
So the Palestinians are fed up of both Abbas and Hamas. Now, Mohammed Mustafa is just a puppet. He’s a prime minister, but he’s a puppet in the hands of Abbas. The only way to change all of this is Palestinian elections. And I know that a lot of people hesitate to support the Palestinian elections from Israel, from all over the world, because they say, well, the polls say Hamas will win this election.
Noam: Yeah, it’s a scary thought, no?
Samer: I don’t think so. And I think Hamas will be defeated. The only way to defeat Hamas, we need to do two things, Noam. First of all, we need to defeat Hamas in the election boxes. And the only way to defeat Hamas, the Israeli army can stay another 20 months in Gaza, it will not achieve anything in addition. The only way to defeat Hamas in Gaza is for us to defeat them in election boxes, and I think now we are capable to do this.
Second, we need to elect and bring to the Palestinian politics a Palestinian Ben-Gurion. Some people will say you need a Mandela. We don’t need a Mandela, we need a Ben-Gurion that will use the Altalena option when needed, by forcing that there is only one law and one arm in statehood.
It cannot be that a Palestinian state is there and any Palestinian that possess a gun can declare war against Israel any moment he wants, the way he wants. Like what Hamas has done on the 7th of October. They simply took 2.3 million Palestinians in a collective suicide attack against Israel without thinking about the responsibility towards civilians. What will happen next? You go full speed against Israel, you kill 1,200 people in one day, and then you don’t show any sense of responsibility towards 2.3 million civilians that will pay the price of the reaction of Israel. This is the attitude that has been experienced by most of the Palestinians.
So we need a Ben-Gurion that will say enough is enough. So if I need to shoot down that ship on the shores of Tel Aviv like Ben-Gurion has done, I will do it. If I need to shoot that ship on the shores of Gaza, I will do it. I will stop any military group that will challenge my sovereignty and statehood. I need to control everything. And I need to change the way I’m handling my relations with Israel. From now on, we need to talk to them, we need to convince them, and that’s it.
We need to fight hatred and incitement on both sides. We need to change the way the media is working. Palestinian media needs to start talking positively, to get some positive stories about Israelis. And I need to help them, also, the Israeli media, to start picking up positive stories about Palestinians. We need to change this kind of atmosphere. We need to enable Palestinians to relax and Israelis to relax and cool down, and start opening their hearts and minds to the other side. This is the way.
So I’ll tell you something. Now, let us say theoretically we may lose this election for Hamas. OK? At least we will pay a price out of choice. Today we are paying a price out of no choice. Nobody has asked us. Hamas did not make a referendum if they can continue building military regimes that continue to have security threat to Israel. And this is the strategy that Palestinians believe in. They did not consult with us. We are paying a price without any choice, without having a choice, at least when we go to election boxes. Let’s say that the Palestinian people are so dumb and elect again Hamas. Fine. Then we pay the consequences of this choice. Okay. But you need to allow the Palestinians to say something of who is going to cover and lead them in this very critical phase of their history.
Noam: Give me three names of people who could become the David Ben-Gurion of the Palestinians. Could Marwan Barghouti be that? Can Samer Sinijlawi do that?
Samer: I don’t know. I worked with Marwan for seven years. Marwan is now in prison for 23 years. He is a black box. I don’t know him. We need to ask him three questions when he goes out of prison. We need to ask him, define your opinion on Abbas, if he doesn’t see him as a corrupt regime that needs to be replaced, if he does not bring justice back to the Palestinian society in what all the wrongdoings are. Noam, just this month, two people were killed inside Palestinian prisons during interrogation by the Palestinian security apparatus. And it’s not Hamas people, it is civilians that are opponents to the regime. People just who are expressing their thoughts in social media.
Noam: Wow.
Samer: So, I mean, there should be some justice. And we need to ask Marwan about, what does he think about Hamas. If he says that, okay, they need to pay for what they have caused, this damage they have caused to Gaza, then this is something. If he says they are part of the Palestinian politics and we need to accommodate, this is something. And we need to ask him about Israel. How does he define the relation with Israel and how can we end this conflict?
Without knowing these answers from Marwan, I don’t know if Marwan is the solution or not. Honestly, he’s a very good people, he’s a charismatic person. I enjoyed the years I worked with him, but now I don’t know him. And you cannot build up a strategy based on guessing. This guy was a true leader. Now, I told him, he did miscalculations in 2001, 2002. Miscalculations that has led to him being in prison for 23 years, losing lots of years in prison.
Noam: But you call it a miscalculation. Do you mean he’s guilty of murder?
Samer: Well, at that moment, I think maybe President Arafat felt that he needs to react in a way to put a lot of pressure on Israel. Okay? And I think this kind of vision from the leader has mobilized a lot of people behind him. Okay? Nobody has realized that if you take out this genie from the bottle, you will not control him anymore. Everybody lost control. The level of violence went beyond limits allowed. Okay.
So that’s where we came to a situation that the Israelis launched the big operation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it was a very terrible moment because the second Intifada has destroyed the Israeli peace camp. The first Intifada, the Intifada that I was part of, where we were demonstrating and maximum throwing stones, it created the peace camp in Israel. The second Intifada, when we started using arms, shooting, it killed the Israeli peace camp until now.
Noam: And suicide bombs also. Right, yeah.
Samer: Of course. And it started by Hamas in 95, where Rabin was proceeding with the Oslo Accord. He was evacuating Palestinian cities, delivering cities to the PA, entering Palestinian forces to the middle of the Palestinian cities and Hamas was bombing the bus in the morning in Tel Aviv and in the evening in Jerusalem for God’s sake to the interest of whom they were working at that moment. I mean the guy was moving on, evacuating Palestinian cities, implementing the Oslo Accords. We were going in the past to a two-step solution and they bombed it. They destroyed it.
And then somebody came from Israel and assassinated Prime Minister Rabin. So in a way or another, we have killed possibilities for peace, we in our hands as Palestinians. The memories of the Second Intifada and the memories of the 7th of October will stay long with the Israelis. And this is a challenge. How can we convince them that they can start fresh with us? It needs a lot of effort. It’s not easy. But we need to be sincere and to be serious. And we need to start this and hope that the Israelis will open their hearts and minds again.
Noam: Are you in Jerusalem right now, Samer?
Samer: Yes.
Noam: Okay, so it’s getting very late in Jerusalem and I want to ask you three closing questions though you didn’t answer beyond Marwan Barghouti and maybe not even Marwan Barghouti, you didn’t give me an answer of other Palestinian names that could become David Ben-Gurion.
Samer: I will tell you, I see a collective leadership that has partnership between Hamad Dahlan, Nasser Qudrun, Tawfiq Al-Tarawih, Jibril Al-Rajoub. These group of Palestinian leaders that are older than me, I think they can start the process of maybe the first step of recognizing the historical rights of Jews. But then later my generation needs to take the harder decisions that are related to the right of return and maybe to a Ben-Gurion style of building up the Palestinian state by very serious decisions.
Noam: Okay, so let me ask you now three closing questions. Question number one, and let’s do this rapid fire, as we say. For international listeners, what do you think the world misunderstands the most about the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian perspective? What do we misunderstand the most?
Samer: You don’t misunderstand, you understand. We need to change. I mean, we do have a wrong narrative. Okay, we, there is something wrong in what we are doing and what we are saying. Okay, of course, well, sticking to the international law is something that cannot be politically wrong, but it does not help us in maneuvering new paths.
So I think, they might judge us permanently and massively by being barbarians because of the 7th of October. On the 7th of October, there was atrocities and barbarism there, but it’s Hamas, okay? They might not understand why Palestinians might look at supporting the 7th of October, while in reality, they are not willing to question the justice of our cause. Sometimes the Palestinian, when he tells you, I am pro-7th of October, he means that he is in solidarity with Gaza. Okay? But we need to work on our communication capabilities and we need to clear the mess that we have in our mind.
Noam: Okay, so on that front, what do you think that for Israelis or for Zionists across the world who are listening, what do you most want them to understand about what Palestinian statehood means?
Samer: I think Palestinian statehood in a framework of regional arrangements, including normalization with the Saudi Arabia and the whole Arab and Muslim world, where Saudis are the unchallenged leader of the Islamic and Arab world. The day Israel signs the agreement with the Palestinians and allow a Palestinian state and open the doors of normalization, is the day that Israel will change from being the villa in the jungle to the villa in a very nice neighborhood that endorses Israel, opens the doors of cooperation.
I keep saying that if I were Israeli, I will redefine the day of independence for Israel from the 15th of May to the day that Israel signs with the Saudis and Palestinians because this is the day that Israel will be fully integrated in the region and the whole life of Israelis and Palestinians and the region, the peoples of the region will change forever. I feel this day is very close and this is not fantasy.
I think soon, Noam, you as an American, me as a Palestinian, soon we will be able to invite a mutual Israeli friend and drive together for a lunch in Gaza, maybe same day for a dinner in Beirut, and then continue our ride for a long weekend in Riyadh. If you think this is fantasy, you are mistaken. Not believing in it is the fantasy. This is part of our destiny. It can happen. And I can see the majority of Palestinians are willing to reach to that day. And I am sure the majority of Israelis would like to reach to that day.
Noam: What a day, what an experience. Last question for you. If you could speak directly to President Macron or another leader who’s considering recognition of the Palestinian state right now, what would you say to them?
Samer: Well, I will say that it’s a step that needs further steps, okay? That this step by its own, it will not help. If this step brings mechanism, resources that will be provided to Israelis and Palestinians to start a mechanism of talking to each other, building bridges. If this will help Israelis and Palestinians to start discussing their future together, convincing each other on the possibility to trust each other, then this is a welcome step. It further should come to this step.
I am happy as a Palestinian that more states are recognizing the Palestinian state symbolically. But I will be sad if this will not be completed by providing Israelis and Palestinians with mechanisms of communication to try to solve things among themselves.
Noam: Well, I would be fascinated and would love to see the day come where you and I can go to Riyadh, go to Beirut, go to Gaza, go to Jerusalem, go to Tel Aviv together, have our daughters play with each other. And that would be amazing. And your point is that if you believe there is a will, then there can be a way to make all of this happen.
And I guess we’ll see if enough people have the will to make it happen. But it sounds like Samer, you are definitely one of those guys who needs to be in the room to make it happen. So Samer, thank you so much for joining me and really looking forward to continuing our conversations.
Samer: Thanks for now. Bye bye.