Hamas and the Future of Gaza (with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib)

Welcome to EconTalk

0:00Welcome to EconTalk, conversations for the curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. Today is August 5th, 2026, and my guest is Ahmed

0:40Fouad Al-Khatib, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council in Washington, where he leads the Real Line for Palestine project. Ahmed was last year in March of 2024 talking about Gaza and Israel. Our topic for today is his recent book, Hamas and its Two Million Hostages. Ahmed, welcome back to

A short book about hostages

1:04EconTalk. Good to be with you, brother. Thanks for talking to me. Now, this is a very short, fascinating book. It's a mixture of memoir and political analysis of Hamas's role in Gaza historically and in this moment. Why'd you write it? Well, I wanted it to be short and concise because I do feel, unfortunately, there's too much out there about this subject. People don't read anymore. There's a cacophony of noise out there. I didn't

1:34want to be using academic or wonky language. I wanted something that was accessible, something that had messages for a variety of audiences. I wanted to speak to the pro-Israel community and Israelis, Jewish Americans, self-described Zionists. And even through the title, which I did think about carefully, suggests that Gaza and the Palestinian people are in there are ultimately hostages of Hamas despite the presence of radicalization, despite the presence of isolation and support

2:11for some of what Hamas had done in the past. I wanted to talk to the pro-Palestine community and I wanted to really describe what Hamas is and their dark and grim history. I wanted to speak to Arab and Palestinian Americans and Muslim Americans, but also to Palestinians themselves about the need for agency, responsibility and accountability, even when accounting for the imbalance of power dynamics. It's very difficult to get folks to think about this framing because

2:43they just, there's this notion that we can't really do introspection or accountability or responsibility because we're perpetually occupied, because we're the underdogs, because we're occupied because of Israel, because of 1948, because of 80 years of the conflict. And I believe that it is well beyond time to do just that, given what's been going on. And then finally, I wanted something that was

3:15very simple for the curious reader, without a detailed description, if you will, of Hamas, of every single milestone of the conflict. Something that's digestible, that can give them a lens to Gaza that they're probably haven't been exposed to over the last three years. Yeah, it's only about 85 pages long. And it is, it's an excellent achievement in what you wanted to

3:46achieve. It's very accessible. And it teaches even someone like me, who's tried to read more, it's probably than the average person about what's going on in Gaza and here in Israel, a great deal. Now, we last spoke, I was shocked to see the date, we last spoke in March of 2024. That was six months after the attacks of October 7. You had lost two childhood homes in Israeli bombing raids. You lost over 30 family members from such raids. And yet, in March of 2024, it was clear you were, it staked out

4:24a very unusual position. You were hoping for a better day. You were hoping for change in the relationship between our two peoples, a Jewish Israeli, myself, and a Gazan American, I don't know if that's how you call yourself, but a person who grew up in Gaza. We're hoping for a better relationship between our two peoples. And two years have passed, a little over two years. In one sense, it feels like almost nothing has changed. And yet, I think that would be wildly inaccurate.

4:55What is your take on that? Do you agree? What has changed in your heart, if anything? And what do you think has changed on the ground, if anything, in Gaza and in the area that makes you more or less optimistic for the future?

Consistency and changing perspectives

5:08Well, it's, it is fascinating to look back at the timeline. I mean, it's just the compressed, so much has happened in almost a three-year window. And that's not a lot of time, but it feels like a lifetime for me because my life was truly turned upside down. And I was not expecting, when I spoke to you, I was still on a, what you would call a mini sabbatical, if you will, from my, from my job back then, which was working in for a philanthropic and a research organization. So I would say I've been

5:44consistent ever since then. I mean, the work that I had done, the personal and emotional and intellectual foundations and framing and scaffolding that I had done back then is why I am consistent to this day. And I think that's the number one, one of the like top three things that people appreciate about me is that I've been consistent. And by the way, I've had folks along the journey that I knew, including Palestinians and Israelis and Americans who have fallen off,

6:18either due to just the emotional stress of it all, or they got radicalized, or folks who were in, who were committed to the peace and healing narrative, and they walked away from that. So speaking for myself, personally, that has come at a very high price, in terms of how elements of my, what you would call my community. But on the other hand, the funny thing is, I've only built more and more

6:49credibility and access to the people of Gaza over time, because there's a disconnect in the discourse between Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, Palestinian Americans, the pro-Palestine movement worldwide, and the people of Gaza themselves. And that's actually what has changed that motivates me to stick around, motivates me to be hopeful. And this is something I wish the pro-Israel or the Jewish or the Zionist communities would register more and be willing to engage with, with less skepticism.

7:22I understand the skepticism, but just at least be open to this, to the validity of what I all have been claiming nonstop, which is that the majority of Gaza are or have turned against Hamas due to the consequences of October 7th, due to the totality of Hamas's rule over 20 years, due to the behavior of the terror organization during and after the war, due to how the Palestinian people were in Gaza were ultimately pawns in a regional geopolitical game at the behest of the Islamic

7:59Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the narrative warfares that Palestinians in Gaza became part of when it comes to the pro-Palestine industrial complex in Europe, in the United States, many of whom support Hamas, believe it or not. I mean, the DSA videos that of membership of, of, of, of committee members, you have 44% of American Muslims a month ago that told Pew Research they support Hamas. I mean, that is a disturbing amount. By the way, I think that's an undercount because of, of just those are

8:33the ones who are willing to say that, uh, to, to, to, to, to, to, to Pew. I think it's more from my personal experience. I think it's more like 70 to 80%. So the more disconnected the discourse has grown from the actual people that are supposedly being championed, the more hopeful I grew, um, that the people of Gaza, there's an opening, there's a window whereby they're not pro-Israel. They're not thinking about peace in the way you and I talk about peace, but there's, there's something there

9:07that could provide an alternative to the armed resistance narrative, to the forever wars, um, and move people towards the nation building agenda in pursuit of peace and coexistence. What I will say has changed also is the fact that Hamas, um, tactically and, and, and quite strategically in Gaza itself, I would say they're, they're completely, um, they're, they're largely decimated. They're completely out of options. Um, the Islamic Republic of Iran is

9:37unable to support them. Um, they're not really able to replenish weaponry through smuggling. Qatar right now is stuck in this conflict between the United States and Iran, and they can't export LNG, so they can't just pump billions, uh, of Hamas, of dollars into Hamas. And anyone who's engaged with Hamas, and Hezbollah, of course, has, in Lebanon is, is caught up in its own affair. So Hamas is, is, and, and they lost a lot of their, their, their trained and battle-hardened

10:09fighters and, and, and almost all of their senior, uh, leadership, their military command, some of their political commanders, uh, as well, the Politburo. So things have changed quite dramatically since we last, last spoke to where we now have the possibility of Hamas even engaging in part, in disarmament, however partial, however phased, I think, nevertheless, in a manner that would have been impossible to even conceive of back when we spoke. So I remain very, very optimistic

10:42that we could see progress on the horizon, however, grindingly slow. So, well, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to hear that. I, I, I'm a little more pessimistic and maybe we'll talk about that later, but I do think there is a bit of a window here. Before we talk

Childhood memories of Oslo

10:57about that, talk briefly about your childhood, just so I've, I forgot listeners are not, may not listen to that first episode. Um, you were born in Gaza and you left, uh, what year did you, what year were you born and when did you? So, so I was actually, my dad at the time was working in Saudi. So I was technically born in Saudi Arabia, but, but we moved back and forth in the nineties. I lived like three years of my life in, in the nineties. And then we moved back permanently

11:28in, uh, 2000. Um, but basically I was born in 1990. I got to experience the tail end of the Oslo process. Um, as a, as a conscientious child, if you will. Um, I got to fly into Gaza in the year 1999 and the year 2000. Um, I was always an old soul in a young body. I was, um, I left the Gaza Strip one month before the withdrawal, the disengagement of Israeli settlements in 2005. I was 15, came to the United

11:58States as an exchange student just for a year long high school program and supposed to go back to Gaza, except Hamas. Um, right as I was in Egypt, about to cross back in Hamas abducted Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier that began a mini war and, and compounded the restrictions and, and the borders were really, um, uh, compromised because the European border police mission had left essentially. And so I was unable to go back, um, and the escalating civil war between Fatah and Hamas on one

12:31side and, and, and, and these guys, it led to me seeking political asylum in the United States. And ironically, the very day of Hamas's violent takeover, uh, and the ejection of the Palestinian authority in Gaza, June 14th, 2007 was also the very day that I, um, interviewed for my asylum. Um, so I was actually the first Palestinian from Gaza to receive asylum in the United States because of Hamas's control. But what I always like to just briefly say about my childhood is that I got to

13:07both experience the optimism and the tail end of the Oslo process and the hope and the, the march. And I remember that's why our family tried to move back permanently to Gaza and things were still unstable, but, but there was real, a real pathway to statehood. We got our first landline, our first cell phone, our first, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, this is witnessing the, the rise of state institutions in the Gaza Strip. Um, but then that all changed after the failure of the Camp David, uh, uh, uh,

13:39negotiations in the year 2000, the second Intifada in September of 2000. Um, and then seeing the other side of this, which is more violence, more, um, the entrenchment of the occupation, the military occupation, the entrenchment of the armed resistance narrative and the terror and the violence by Hamas, as well as their assent to power and the radicalization that that came with.

Two narratives of governance

14:06Yeah, I think most people, unlike people who live in this region, don't keep these facts and narratives clear. So I want you to talk about one piece of it, which is particularly interesting for someone who's on the outside. So Hamas wins, Israel withdraws in 2005 militarily. They still have a blockade of certain kinds. We've talked about that on the program before. In my view, it couldn't have been a terribly effective blockade because somehow Hamas was

14:40able to smuggle in an immense amount of concrete and weapons to build the tunnels, but people could debate about that. But the point is, is that Israel's involvement in Gaza was very different pre-2005 and after. At the encouragement of the United States in 2006, there's an election in Gaza that Hamas wins. And in 2007, they basically, as you say, are in a civil war with Fatah and the Palestinian

15:11Authority for total control rather than just having won an election, and that was the last election, of course, in that area. Similarly, on the other side of Israel to our east is the so-called West Bank, where the Palestinians already had a fairly serious amount of control and, of course, was jockeying for political positions with Hamas over this whole period. Talk about the two narratives of those two different streams of Palestinian governance.

15:51We have the Palestinian Authority on one hand, which you described as secular and nationalist, and then you have Hamas, which is much more religious and eager in a way, at least that the Palestinian Authority won't talk about, to not just get along or do their best as they can in the meanwhile, but have as a clear goal ending the state of Israel as a Jewish state. Talk about, as a growing up there, the things you heard from people, the things you experienced,

16:27those two narratives. So, I mean, one of the things that folks, I appreciate that you said kind of the pressure of the United States, if you will, because the Palestinian Authority back in 2006 made it clear to the U.S. administration, to the Bush administration, and to Condoleezza Rice, that they were not ready for elections, that Hamas would sweep those elections, or would at least win the majority.

16:58This is where the fraudulent, I believe, and highly manipulated Shikaki polls, Khalil Shikaki is a political scientist who does polling in the Palestinian territories. He's viewed as the gold standards. I have spoken at length about how deeply flawed his polls are, including during the war, by the way, when the IDF in August of 2024 found documents in Gaza that it released that showed how Hamas was correcting the outcomes of the polls and manipulating them and producing margin

17:33errors of a minimum of 20 to 30 and 40 percent to over-inflate support for it. A PLO official showed me classified documents of the discussions that were taking place back in 2006, then classified documents. Now they're kind of irrelevant. But they told the U.S., and then he sat down with Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza, who is one of the- Who sat down? A PLO official, Palestinian from Gaza, spoke to him at length.

18:08He gave me this long history in the form of documents and oral testimonies. And he told me that he sat down with Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza, senior Hamas leader and extreme far-right element, if you will, of Hamas. And Zahar bragged to him about how Hamas deceived the U.S. by understating support through the Shikaki polls. They told their members. They told all of their folks.

18:38They know when and how Shikaki does his polling and the randomization. Hamas knew that if the polls showed too much support for it, the U.S. would call off the elections. So Hamas wanted to make sure the elections took place to win. So they told their members, their folks who are adjacent to them, academics, whatever, don't, when, for this window of time, when Shikaki engages in questioning this, that, here are his workers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

19:11Don't say, no, you're not going to vote for Hamas. Like, understate that. And he was bragging about how they basically deceived the United States, Israel, and ultimately the Arab states. This was supposed to breathe new life into Palestinian political life because, unfortunately, up until then, there hadn't been any real elections that were contemporary, that were representative. And Hamas was supposed to adhere to what the Oslo process entailed, what the Quartet demanded,

19:43what the U.S. and even the Arabs demanded, which is the renunciation of violence and the acknowledgement of Israel and the pursuit of a political and diplomatic solution. And instead, Hamas did neither. And so what began was Hamas seeking to be a resistance movement and a government at the same time. Hamas also used the classic Muslim Brotherhood language of Islam is the solution. The idea was that even if you don't believe in us ideologically or if you don't support

20:15our positions, a vote for us is a vote against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. So you don't like us, that's fine. But vote, at minimum, vote against the Palestinian Authority. People forget the majority of votes for Hamas took place in the West Bank, not in Gaza, because the elections happened in Gaza and in the West Bank. And most of the votes just on pure numbers for Hamas did occur in the West Bank. So then we saw the degradation of Gaza and the beginning of the travesty that ultimately led

20:51us to October 7th and the devastation here. But what we also did see, and there's two critical points about the West Bank model, led by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, the PLO, the guys that renounced violence, the guys that, especially under Mahmoud Abbas, unlike Yasser Arafat, doubled down on security cooperation with Israel, negotiations, working with Ehud Olmert, then Israeli prime minister, bringing in the United States security coordinator to train the Palestinian security forces to create

21:27a new generation of security, a Palestinian security apparatus that was not just based on the old revolutionaries of the 70s, 80s coming into security roles, but actually professionalizing this new class. And so you had two competing governance narratives and models, one in Gaza that was about resistance, that was about we're going to take it to Israel, we're going to turn Gaza into a citadel for

22:00armed resistance. And ultimately what they did is tunnels and rockets and smuggling and attacks and the oppression of the locals. But unfortunately, the Gaza model was sustained by a surge because Hamas was financially incapable. It was sustained by the NGO industrial complex, by the UN, by an avalanche of aid that ultimately actually kind of created a perverse incentive and said, oh, fantastic, Hamas said, let the international

22:32community take care of Gazans, what money we get from Qatar, from the Muslim Brotherhood, from Iran, we're going to use for our own purposes. So that was on one side. Then there was the Palestinian Authority right after the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, Salam Fayyad, then prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, a very compelling technocratic professional man who's nonpartisan, who oversaw the professionalization of the police force and the security forces, who oversaw the building of true institutions, who built some degree and measure of accountability.

23:10And where I will say this is something that people will argue, but this is my personal view, is that I think there wasn't enough support for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to turn that territory, that area into essentially a South Korea as Gaza was becoming a North Korea. And I do feel that it is very appropriate and important to highlight that elements within the Israeli political landscape

23:42sought to exploit the division, the duality between Gaza and the West Bank, instead of bolstering the moderates, however problematic there are elements of, and by the way, I'm very critical of the Palestinian Authority. I don't consider myself someone who's broadly pro-PA, even though I think they're necessary. But I think there was a case to create, to bolster them and create a South Korea-like model,

24:14where then you could have other Palestinian moderates rise through the ranks as Gaza was decaying and becoming a North Korea. And instead, unfortunately, we saw not just the expansion of settlements, but an aggressive form of settlement expansionism that was not conducive to the type of legitimacy that the Palestinian Authority needed to really draw Palestinians into its narrative. So that remains sort of the million-dollar question is, in addition to Palestinian agency and responsibility that I champion,

24:48I very much so ask a question that many ask. The Israeli policy choices that were accelerated under Prime Minister Netanyahu, could those have very much so contributed to the delegitimization of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority? Could those have actually fueled the radicalization across Palestinian society?

25:20And I believe the answer is very much so yes, and that was intentional. Yeah, the tragedy here, a lot of cooks stirring the broth, as they say, and all of them are caught, this is my take, you can agree or disagree, between a rock and a hard place, between Silla and Sherebdis. In the case of the Israeli politicians, over this time period, the left's desire for peace for a two-state solution decays

25:57under the suicide attacks over this time, right? The trade-off between risk-taking versus security pushes the suicide attacks in the Antifadas, the first and the second, push the Israeli left toward a much more pro-security, less risk-taking position toward our neighbors. And at the same time, as we embraced, to the extent that we did, and I wasn't here and I'm not speaking in any personal way,

26:32but to the extent that Israel encouraged Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank through the security apparatus we're talking about, which gave a lot of people hope, and just for those who aren't used to it, but basically this is a question of the more radical elements of, say, the West Bank, the more anti-Israel, the more anti-Jewish state elements that want to see an end to the Jewish state, who's going to stop them? Is it going to be the IDF? Is it going to be the Israeli police?

27:04Or will it be the Palestinian Authority who say they're more moderate? They want to be part of a solution down the road where we could live side by side. And, of course, the more that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority embraced any gestures, overtures from Israel for cooperation, the more they were seen as cooperating with the occupier and radicalizing, I'm sure, many young people who wanted a less cooperative stance.

27:38So each side was doing a dance. I am sure many mistakes were made by Israel over this time period that might have led us to a better present.

27:52But both sides were doing a dance that was kind of unwinnable in a certain dimension because of that, in my view, the radicalization that was always present and the intimidation that that presents, the threat of violence that hovers over risk-taking both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. I just before— Well, in my view, is that the rightward shift in Israeli society would not be what it is.

28:23It did not happen independent of what Hamas and some of the radical Palestinian elements were doing. And this is where I like to highlight to fellow Palestinians to the pro-Palestine movement is that, unfortunately, when—on the narrative side, even with all the flaws and the holes that you can poke in the Israeli narrative, the broad baseline of it is that Hamas basically turned what could have been an opportunity

28:56to demonstrate—to make a case for effective Palestinian self-governance into a compelling reason for why we shouldn't acquiesce territory or give up any more control. And October 7th was the icing on the cake, was the cherry on top, in the worst possible way, of course. I'm using that metaphorically. As far as you ultimately proved that narrative right, even if you disagree with it,

29:28even if you disagree with elements of it, even if you think Israel bears tremendous responsibility, I argue for Palestinian accountability to say, when you—Hamas in particular, and I focus on Hamas because I see them as the fulcrum of the radicalization of Palestinian society, the Islamization of an otherwise secular society, the promulgation of the moving of the Overton window, even for the moderates and the seculars, they moved, they shifted the entire society such that even those who hate Hamas,

30:05and I mentioned this in the book, for example, whereby you had to, like, criticize Hamas, but at the end put a disclaimer of, even though I respect all the honest resistors or whatever, like the resistance narrative was just taken over. So what I'm trying to say is, how do you expect Israelis to look at Gaza and Palestinian autonomy and the prospect of Palestinian statehood any differently when we have 20 years of—

30:37I mean, even if you believed in armed resistance, it should have stopped in 2005 in Gaza. I don't believe in armed resistance, but even if you did, that should have stopped in Gaza, and we should have focused on the gas field, the rebuilding the airport and the seaport and tourism and Gaza's regional integration and connectivity and accessing the Mediterranean, for goodness sake. We're the last territory overlooking the Mediterranean that hasn't had a functioning seaport for almost six decades.

31:12So what are Israelis to think after six decades—after two decades, rather, of Hamas's control? So that's where I do think there's a shift, and I do think—I'm saying that in retrospective—from a retrospective point of view, but I do believe now there are people who are saying, so you, Hamas, ruined the fragile yet viable Oslo process in the 1990s. You weaponized the second intifada, and you basically staked out your spot as an indisputable player in Palestinian society.

31:48You took over Gaza and turned it into a citadel for violence and instability unnecessarily, wasted tens of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives for absolutely nothing. You arrested the development and the evolution of the Palestinian national project. For what? So that nearly 40 years later, you come back to where the PA and other elements— sorry, where Fatah and the PLO and others who realized that armed resistance is not going to achieve anything,

32:22and now you're willing to disarm because you're being forced and because Gaza is being destroyed? So I cannot understate—there is very much so an arc to Hamas, and I try, like, to—I mean, the next installment of this book might actually address the issue of disarmament as it unfolds and as it happens and the reactions to it, because I've just—just in the last week or so, I've been tracking what the society is saying, what people are saying, and it confirms wholeheartedly what I've been promulgating for two years,

32:59which is that the people of Gaza are ready to move away from Hamas. And even elements of Hamas have moved away from the group, realizing that you destroyed Gaza, you destroyed the cushy environment that we had set up for absolutely nothing, and now you're going to disarm, and we're going to have militias, we're going to have clans, we're going to have all these people that have—that want revenge upon us for all the atrocities and the killings and the torture that we've done. So that's where I think we cannot understate the potential—I understand that nothing's set in stone yet,

33:36but the potential for what's about to unfold, for it could very much so have not only consequences for Hamas and what that will result in in terms of Gaza's future prospects, a transitional period, but more importantly, in terms of the narrative warfare. The narrative component of the conflict is, I would argue, even more significant than the politics and geopolitics,

34:07and I think that's about to change. Well, I'm fascinated to hear that. I don't see any reason to have any optimism that there'll be any real disarmament. I hope I'm wrong. It's hard to negotiate with someone when they know that you want them to disappear. You know, Iran's negotiation has the same sort of flavor.

34:34When you have an opponent, an implacable opponent, concessions are usually not real because concessions risk the end of your control, the end of your power, the end of your life. And so Hamas, if it disarms, maybe they'll change their name. I mean, I just don't know what it even means. But I'd love to hear if you know something about what's going on on the ground in Gaza right now.

Tiers of opposition to Hamas

35:00But before you say that, expand on your point about the dislike of Hamas by the average Gazan. And I don't think that necessarily means they're pro-Israel, obviously, or they have accepted the existence of a Jewish state as their neighbor. But there is, it appears, people are tired of it. But it's not just that they did October 7th. It's they're a oppressive regime within Gaza on their own people.

35:35Precisely that. And like I said, there's tears to the opposition to Hamas. There is the bare minimum is just you got Gaza destroyed and we're paying the price for your suicidal nihilism and your jihadi adventures that got us nowhere. Then you go above that and then you start talking about those who believe that Hamas members and and influencers and the fan club essentially used the war to enrich themselves

36:11and engorge themselves with a lot of aid, fundraising opportunities, money that was collected in Mauritania and Algeria and Qatar and Turkey and Indonesia and Malaysia. Hamas has a vast network of financing. Hamas abroad, at least. And some of that money trickled back to Gaza. But most of it in some of that money was raised by Hamas folks in Gaza who then use that money to pay the bribe when the borders were open and then leave Gaza and pursue a nice life abroad.

36:44And from abroad, they're telling Gazans, stay there, resist, persevere, don't give up. So that's tier two is Hamas's behavior during the war, Hamas's refusal. I mean, basically, people are looking at the disarmament and we'll talk a little bit in a little bit about why I actually think I was very skeptical. But I do think that there's a big there and I do think we're going to see something that happens. And I think that's incredibly positive.

37:14So Hamas's behavior during the war, that's tier two, tier three, for example, is the totality of Hamas either over the two decades that they've controlled Gaza, essentially, or really their influence for the last 30 years since Oslo, since the 90s, and how all their suicide bombings, all of the undermining of the Palestinian Authority, all of the efforts to say that the two-state solution is bad, it's unacceptable.

37:46Only for Hamas to ultimately, Khalil al-Hayya, Ghazi Hamad, their leaders that are talking, they've basically accepted it during the war. They've come to accept that the two-state solution is the only way forward, is the only thing that the Palestinians could ever hope for. And then Khalil al-Mishal says, yes, I'm for two states. But then he'll say, like, oh, well, technically not because I don't accept that the Zionist entity will be there. But he knows. The Qataris tell him what to say.

38:17Like, it's a show. So anyway, so tier three is the totality of the last two decades and really the last three decades of Hamas' behavior. Then there's tier four of the large number of people who lost their jobs, who were tortured, who received citations, whose homes were destroyed, whose businesses were harmed, who were called in for interrogation at Hamas' infamous internal security service for Facebook posts and Facebook comments,

38:54not just to post a comment at times, who the folks who basically wanted – like, I had friends. I used to tutor a lot of young kids in Gaza to learn English remotely, virtually, and that way they could get out of Gaza. And I remember this one young lady told me once that she was meeting with a dude at a cafe during the day, like at 11 in the morning, because he was going to explain to her how to acquire a scholarship to Hungary.

39:30This was 2022, and she said that two of Hamas', like, secret police came up to them and asked if they were married and, like, why are they sitting together? And they asked the guy, like, what are you doing? Finish it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, basically the equivalent of Iran's morality police. And the guy was like, dude, we're sitting in public during the daytime, she's, like, three feet away from me,

40:03and we're just having a, like, coffee to talk about how she's going to do this scholarship. Like, so, taking – one of the first things Hamas did when they came to power is they outlawed women smoking hookah on the beach, and they said that looks un-Islamic, ew. And it escalated all the way to 2020 when Senwar tried to pass a law that said we're going to stop women from traveling outside of Gaza without the approval of a male guardian.

40:34Throughout their rule, Hamas tried to introduce the Sharia-based rule that you are going to cut off the hand of the thieves. So, Hamas is basically ISIS and Taliban light, a few, like, degrees below. They believe in a more gradual approach. They very much so have a better PR. They care about PR because the PR is what kept all the foreign aid, the NGO, the UN money flowing in.

41:09So, that's another layer. And then final layer of opposition to Hamas are the Fatah, the PA, the PLO folks, who are, like, roughly half of Gaza's adult population, if you will, or professional folks who worked for the PA, who are affiliated with Fatah. So, this is where I plead with the pro-Israel folks to not look at these ridiculous, logic-defying polls that Shikaki was pulling during the war, mind you, where Hamas's intelligence was running around, saying that 71% support October 7th and want Hamas to stay in power,

41:47whereas the Tony Blair Institute used Jim Zugby, who's not exactly a friend of Israel, but used Jim Zugby's polling. And they found that 93% of Gazans wanted Hamas gone. 86% of Gazans blamed Hamas equally for the destruction of Gaza. So, there is that, again, those folks, not all of them are also radicalized in the way that we think about radicalization.

42:19Many of them are eager to be integrated into the world because they want to travel. They want to see 70% of Gazans have never left the Gaza Strip. Almost two-thirds of the population are under the age of 30. They've only known Hamas. They've only known the world through their smartphones. So, that's where I believe the opening lies and the opportunities lay. So, I've made that point many times about polling. You know, when you're – I actually saw somebody online saying that, you know,

42:50because so many people went to Khomeini's funeral in Iran, it shows he was popular. Not understand that when you live under a police state, you can die if you say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. There's an immense amount of coercion. You're not going to tell a pollster what you really think if you think it's going to get your kid killed or yourself killed. So, I've always taken those polls with a grain of salt. But the question is not a grain of salt, with great skepticism, a big – a pound of salt. But my question is this.

43:23Two-thirds under the age of 30 who've gone to schools that I think were different from the ones you went to when you were a boy in the, say, the 90s. And you mentioned a phrase, Islamacization.

The desire for a normal life

43:38What – the $64,000 question is what portion of the Palestinian people in Gaza want a better life for their children, for themselves? They want to travel. They want to have a nice job. They want to have a pleasant place to live, and they don't see Israel as a religious question. They might see it as a moral question. It might be a big part of their identity to oppose a Jewish state because of what they feel was done to their grandparents or their parents.

44:14But are – is there a significant group of people who want to just have a normal life? And that's the question I think all Israelis – not all, but most of us here – we want to believe that we could live in peace with our neighbors, and we're desperate for evidence to that effect. And understanding, of course, that even if there is a large group like that, if they don't have power or voice, it doesn't matter, which I think is why Israeli politics on security issues has moved so far to the right over the last three decades.

44:48But respond to that. Certainly. There are tiers to that, and I like compartmentalization because the nuance lends itself to understanding that there really are subpopulations within a population. There are people who are driven by economic interests alone, and that very much so, I would say, is the largest population of Gazans who would –

45:20just on those grounds alone, want to see peace and stability and no more war with Israel, no more conflict on economic grounds alone. There's another population that very much so acknowledges the inevitability of Israel's continued existence, and that Israel is here to stay, and that there is no – I mean, one of the most – I think I mentioned it also in the book is like, Hamas kept saying, oh, well, our predictions – because they have like –

45:54they literally would promote these voodoo sauce, like, secret recipe where they were going to predict when Israel was going to collapse. And they're like, well, actually, the predictions believe that Israel is going to live for just 80 years, and they're going to collapse. Oh, they're going to collapse in 2020. Oh, October 7th to them was basically the big – supposed to be the beginning of that collapse. And so – but that rhetoric – and I went to school in the 2000s in Gaza, and I went to UNRWA schools, the UN schools.

46:29Like, I remember – so that – a page is being turned on the religious-inspired fantasies and prophecies of Israel's collapse. And what that has generated and is generating is a new mindset among a population in Gaza that is saying, actually, yeah, no, the Israelis aren't going anywhere. They're not being destroyed. They're not going to be destroyed. They're not going to vanish. Then there's another subpopulation.

47:01I mean – so I have a friend who lives in Jerusalem and who got out 10 years ago and only went back to Gaza once because Hamas literally dragged her and her father to interrogation because she was going to the Hebrew University as an advanced cancer researcher that we've had to hide because of the fact that she's working with an all-Jewish, all-Israeli team. Even though she's a committed Muslim hijabi woman whose work led to the development of a patent who actually represented both Palestinians and actually even Israel at the global stage.

47:40But as a Palestinian woman who had to destroy her and as a Palestinian woman who reopened and as a Palestinian woman who aspired to do business in Israel, to receive treatment in Israel, to access education in Israel, to have cooperative relationships with Israelis such that if that were to – if the environment were to be permissive of that, both from the Palestinian side and from the Israeli side,

48:14you would see not just day laborers and workers in restaurants or agriculture or construction, but you would see academic, economic, and cultural relationships between Gazans and Israelis being bolstered. So, so far we've made the case for the economic need. We've made the case for there's not going to be a religious fantasy prophecy of the destruction of Israel.

48:45And those, I believe the numbers of those populations are increasing. There are others who would love to work in Israel and access Israeli institutions and academia. Then you also have those who believe that to operate inside Gaza, excuse me, as a businessman, or as an organization or as an NGO, you need to have robust relations with Israelis for importation to access global markets, to access capital markets, etc.

49:19So, this is just you staying in Gaza, but the renaissance in Gaza is going to need Israel much more than it's going to need Egypt. Because Egypt, you have to go through the Sinai Desert, you need six hours before you get to mainland Egypt, to Africa, to civilization. Whereas Israel is right there. So, you asked, couldn't there be, this is the million-dollar question of like, well, where is the leadership? Like, who are the people that are going to change that reality? I believe strongly.

49:49And this is why, in theory, I support the model of the technocratic committee, the NCAC, the Board of Peace Appointed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. Because what the model says is you can have nonpartisan, professional individuals be part of administration. And this is where I believe the future lies for Gaza. You cannot rely on factions, Hamas, Fatih, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the leftist, Marxist groups.

50:23You need non-factional political and professional life. And out of that, there already are there tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of professionals, academics, teachers, administrators, people that will rise within a short period of time to actually be of service, to be of a new generation of Palestinian leadership. They're not in power right now. I don't know their names, and neither do you, Russ. But I promise you that if we create the environment, they can very quickly upscale and access power, access enough control and enough administration so that they can actually implement the aforementioned de-radicalization of attitudes towards Israel.

51:13I love that potential, and of course, that potential cannot be realized when there's the threat of violence and death over people who cooperate, who want to build something together with Israel and so on. And because of that, Israelis are right now extremely uncomfortable, loathed, I would say, to go back to the idealism of even five years ago when there was still a substantial number of people who were optimistic about the future and some forms of coexistence.

51:50And in particular, you know, a lot of people are going to challenge what you just said by saying, well, you know, October 7th, a lot of the people who perpetrated the atrocities of that day had been doing exactly what we were talking about. They've come over to Israel and worked either as construction workers or were taken, you know, in gestures of kindness to medical treatment and so on, and they betrayed the Israelis who had befriended them. And I'm hoping that's a small group, but give me a reason to be optimistic.

52:24Well, in addition to, yes, statistically, I do believe that is a small group from a pre-war population of 2.3. I mean, what is going to be fundamentally different is that moving forward, and this is what I've been very clear about, this is why Hamas is practically my sole focus. Where things could be different in the future is operating without Hamas, without an army, a terror army that's in control of Gaza.

52:55That is going to be a world of difference. It's a game changer. It would be a game changer. Well, in terms of the Palestinian people's willingness to expand their cooperation and engagement with Israelis, but also, let's just talk realpolitik. In terms of the risk, it's not going to be zero, but it's going to be exponentially reduced to a very manageable level, I believe. When you've eliminated Hamas' ability to govern, Hamas' ability to run intelligence and counterintelligence, Hamas' ability to carry out the type of attack that happened on October 7th, Hamas' ability to recruit potential Palestinian, call them informants, call them infiltrators.

53:44So that alone, the realization of a potentially disarmed and demilitarized Gaza, the introduction of a transitional period, the rise of a new generation of Palestinian professionals and political leadership, this will certainly take time. But the totality of the aforementioned, even in a short-term window, can absolutely make a world of difference versus trying to have individual threads of good gestures on both sides when there's basically an ISIS light that is in charge of a territory.

54:27Yeah, so that's – I would call that the – I don't know if it's possible. I don't know what is going to be possible, but obviously there are historical examples of – I would call them fascist regimes that were demilitarized successfully. Japan is an obvious example. Germany is an obvious example. It required the administration of – from the outside. I don't know if that's going to happen. It's hard to imagine, but let's see what happens.

Reinventing Palestinian identity

54:55I want to talk about you for a minute. The people – I mean, there's a lot of parts of the book we haven't had a chance to talk about and can't, but I encourage people to read the book, and it's short, and it's a very interesting and informative read. But a lot of people would look at you and say, look, you left Gaza when you were a boy, 15.

55:20It's easy for you to sit in Washington, D.C. and encourage people to do something that's complicated. Let's just put it that way. The people in the West who are not Palestinian and are the supporters of Hamas would see you, I think, to some extent, as a traitor to your people. Oh, and they do, believe me. They do. You've criticized the best national identity that Palestinians could have through Hamas, and you're doing it from the outside.

56:02And on the other side, you have Israelis. I'm not one of them, but certainly there are many Israelis who would say that, you know, you're selling snake oil. You're selling an opportunity that sounds good, but it's so utopian. Tragically, it's 20 years away, which actually would be amazing if it were only 20 years away. So maybe that's the wrong time period. But I'm curious what your goals are.

56:29I'm amazed you wrote this book. I think it's a dangerous book. I assume you've gotten death threats.

56:36Let me know if I'm right or wrong about that. But it's a brave book to write. And other than trying to open this window of opportunity for a Palestinian autonomy that is not destructive, is the way I would describe it, what are you hoping for? Certainly. And let me just start backwards a little bit from the question of identity. I mean, one of my goals is I think it is beyond necessary at this point to essentially reinvent Palestinian identity.

57:13I think a lot of people in Gaza feel similarly. Like, Palestinian identity has been so heavily defined by our opposition to Israel, the conflict. But it's time for us to define what we stand for, who we are, rather than what we're opposed to and what we're against. And I understand the variety of reasons. I'm willing to understand the variety of reasons for why that hasn't occurred because we've been pawned, because the people in the land have a hard time, et cetera.

57:48But, for example, this is where the role of the diaspora comes in, in the same way that, you know, the diaspora-based Jews and the modern Zionist movement, they created this vision for Israel. They created this vision for an Israeli or a Jewish identity that later became Israeli. And in a sense, I actually believe that the Palestinians need something akin to a Zionist movement, if you will, something that brings together the different threads of Palestinian identity, which is very different in Gaza versus the West Bank versus East Jerusalem versus Lebanon, Jordan and Syria versus the Palestinians in Chile or Brazil versus Palestinian Americans, Europe, Australia, the Arab world.

58:39So, there's a faint notion of Palestinian identity, but you dig beneath the surface, I believe there are some unhealthy common units, common denominators, if you will, some of which are rhetorical, some of all the talk of resistance and the right of return and like things that we just regurgitate mindlessly without actually thinking about what does that actually mean in practice. It's being reduced to the symbolism of the symbolism of the symbolism of the symbolism of the symbolism of the symbolism of everything, the symbolism of grandpa's key, the symbolism of the keffiyeh, which I just, it's not even like in its origin, it's not even actually like historically a Palestinian symbol.

59:25Like, how are we, how are we as a Palestinian people different than Jordanians? How are we different than other Arabs? Like, what, is it the land? Is it the Mediterranean? Is it the food? Is it the Levantine accent? Do we accept that there are parts of, you know, our Palestinian identity not belonging to the land? And I believe the people do belong to the land, but like, do we accept that we have a modern nation state identity that we need to craft and make relevant to the modern day?

59:56Um, I, if I had a penny for every time I hear the idea that somehow my voice is illegitimate because I only lived in Gaza for a few years and I left as a boy. I mean, these, and by the way, if I were pro-Hamas, if I were pro-resistance, if I, people, just if I had lived in Gaza for six months, people would say he's the real hero, he lived in Gaza, he knows. This is only invoked because I am sharing an inconvenient truth, by the way.

1:00:31So, like, this is the, the, someone who has never set foot in Gaza, but says the right things, quote unquote, they don't have to have ever touched the territory, but they're somehow viewed as more legitimate, even though I'm largely deaf in my left ear because of an Israeli bomb that almost killed me. I lost half of my family. I lost my childhood homes. And by the way, I have two brothers and two sisters. My dad worked for UNRWA, the not-so-controversial UN refugee agency. He ran their Jabalia refugee clinic camp.

1:01:04He was a doctor. My middle brother, who's no longer in Gaza right now, but he, he ran the beach camp. My oldest brother is in Gaza right now. He is running the field operations for a major international medical NGO. My family, my, my surviving uncles and aunts are still there. I have an army of contacts in there. Ten years ago, I tried to build an internationally run Israeli approved airport in Gaza. I talked to Senwar and I got through to Hani and I got through to all of these Hamas leaders. I sent messages to Herzi Halevi, Victor Lieberman.

1:01:37And, and, you know, I've been, I, my connection to Gaza was actually bolstered as a result of leaving, as a result of stepping away, as a result of having the freedom to become an American and to shed some of the restrictions of, oh, talking to Israelis, oh, normalization, oh. But, but, but I, I don't, I don't view, I mean, I, I don't view these, these, these remarks as, as really actually representing my authenticity or the lack thereof.

1:02:11I view them as being specifically deployed either by those on, at worst, by those who seek to delegitimize me or by good people who are otherwise skeptical that think I am somehow out of touch. That I am, like you said, selling snake oil or that I am too optimistic.

1:02:31What am I trying to do? I am desperate to, I mean, I have, I've like, like several main themes. One of them, again, is to promote self-critical Palestinian introspection that is not about blaming the victims, that acknowledges the power imbalance of, between, you know, Israel here and the Palestinians here, but also says within this imbalance exists plenty of space for Palestinian agency, responsibility, accountability, and, and, and soul searching.

1:03:02And that is not self-hatred. I am very proud of my heritage and my background. I love Gaza. Gaza has had so many unique, beautiful memories to me that are just so inspiring and, and, and, and so fabulous. And it's also not blaming the victim. It's actually the first step to empowering the Palestinian people is to assign a sense of agency and responsibility. The second thing I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, I am a believer in the thesis that nothing good will happen in this conflict until and unless Gaza is solved.

Solvability of the Gaza issue

1:03:38And I actually believe that Gaza is entirely solvable. Gaza has finite borders. Gaza, you, you have access to the Mediterranean. You have access to, it's a small enough territory. I don't believe that there's really any serious plan to settle Gaza. Um, so I think Gaza, by Israelis, by Israelis, by Israelis. Yes, yes. Um, I, I, I think with the right mindset and narrative shift with the right security atmosphere and landscape with the political, uh, apparatus being fundamentally changed and that will be messy and will take time.

1:04:15I think Gaza is totally going to, to, to change. The question that I have is, will it change into yet another stagnant territory that's half Somalia, half, uh, I don't know, that name a place that's sustained by humanitarian aid in the world that's never going to prosper? Or, or hopefully, this is actually what I'm trying to do, push for visions, be a visionary for Gaza being the, the role model for successful Palestinian self-governance.

1:04:48Um, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a way of signaling to Israelis, not just to the world, not just to the UN, but to Israelis, that we are capable of being your neighbors. We are lovers of life. We're not martyrdom projects. We don't love life, death more than your love for life and this cultism. Um, so I think that, and by the way, just to, on a note on that, Gaza being transformed isn't just a function of flashy towers and beachside developments.

1:05:25There needs to be a renaissance, a mental shift, an attitude shift that isn't just about crony capitalism and corrupt West Bank style capitalism for the ruling class. And I'm not saying that in any socialist or communist terms. I'm, I'm simply talking that if you look at the cronies and, and the oligarchs in the West Bank, they're the corruption. This is, they're part of the corruption machine that independent of Israel has weakened the Palestinian authority. I want capitalism that lifts everybody in Gaza because I actually don't want perpetual humanitarian aid, perpetual UNRWA, perpetual NGOs, and this aid dependency that breeds laziness and has turned Gaza into an aid junkie.

1:06:13So that's another thing that I'm trying to do. And then third is I'm trying to show that there's a lot more to being pro-Palestine than being anti-Israel. What we have right now is a largely, largely anti-Israel movement. It is not really pro-Palestine. Whether it be the extreme forms of anti-Zionism, whether it be the apologists for Hamas, whether it be those who believe that only through on resistance you can do one, two, three,

1:06:46or whether those who believe that Zionism, I mean, at a time when Gazans are coming to a realization that no, actually we need like some form of stability that could lead to peace. We need to live, whatever. You have the diaspora communities, you have the pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist movements in the U.S. and in Europe and the Western world doubling down on armed resistance and doubling down on no, we have to de-Zionize Israel and the Jewish religion and faith.

1:07:22And so there's a complete opposite movement abroad. And that's why I almost want to dedicate just as much to sometimes engaging, sometimes convincing, and at times confronting these, I mean, elements of the movement that I think have become really hateful and really damaging.

Leaders versus representatives

1:07:42I love you, Achman.

1:07:47I wish you had more friends. I know you have some, and it gives me hope for the future, but you have staked out a philosophical and ideological position that is brave. And, again, I worry somewhat lonely, but I hope this book and others and the things you do will rally people to your perspective. Well, to that point, just briefly, I mean, there's a difference between, and I very much so don't necessarily consider, one of the things that I learned recently from one of my many friends, that there's a difference between being a representative and a leader.

1:08:29And I don't, I'm not a self-appointed leader, et cetera. That's not what I'm talking about. However, a representative is someone who's like, where's the wind blowing? Let me, okay, so Hamas is popular. Let me go on Piers Morgan and dance around the point five times when Piers Morgan asked me, do you condemn Hamas? I have to spend 10 minutes twisting into a pretzel. And I'm like, why should we even wait for Piers Morgan to ask us to condemn Hamas? Yes, I wholeheartedly condemn Hamas, and they're the single worst day, I'm ashamed that my once beautiful Gaza is connected to the single worst day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

1:09:09Like, that doesn't take away from my being actually pro-Palestine. That bolsters my morality, and it's also what I genuinely feel. So, but that's a representative. Or, oh, now it's okay to criticize some elements of Hamas? Okay, I'm going to say, Hamas, you need to do a ceasefire right now. So, like, a leader is some, on the other hand, a leader is someone who's ahead of their people, is someone like Sadat, who is not too far ahead where you lose track of the people behind you.

1:09:43But Sadat realized that there is no perpetual war with Israel, and that you need to actually move the needle. And he had the whole Arab world against him, and elements of the Egyptian state who were against him for, after the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptians called it the October War. Saying, like, you know, no, actually, like, he was like, no, no, we're going to use this as a way to engage the Israelis. And I'm going to go to their Knesset, and I'm going to talk to Henry Kissinger, and I'm going to do one, two, three, four, five, because war is an extension of strategy and diplomacy.

1:10:20And that's a leader, is someone who tells their people what they don't want to hear, is someone who's ahead of the curve. And so, sometimes I do fear that I am a little bit too far ahead in terms of where the Palestinian people are at. I've sort of given up on meeting where the pro-Palestine, the anti-Israel movement is at, because they're irrelevant, although they do a lot of damage. But I still am hopeful that there are plenty of Palestinians around, and I am far from the only one.

1:10:55There are hundreds, there are thousands of Ahmads who are just eager for the opportunity to rise up to the occasion. And I wholeheartedly, I actually believe that. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to sustain myself. I mean, this is very, sometimes can be very depressing work. You asked earlier about, like, the security side of things. Like, yes, and I do have to deal with that on an ongoing basis, and, you know, it is what it is. But I am far from, I'm lonely, but I am far, far from being alone.

1:11:28I love it. But there's an expression in the Talmud, it's, it talks about man and men, but it means, in those days, it meant man or woman. But the expression is, in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man. Meaning, if people don't stand up for what's right, you should stand up. And, you know, the Yiddish expression is a mensch. You're a mensch, Achmed. And I so appreciate it.

1:12:00I want to close with a tough question.

1:12:06And I want to say something in passing because it's important. And the book deals with this claim that Netanyahu was a supporter of Hamas. And, of course, it's a very complicated historical question. And history will judge Netanyahu's strategic decisions with funneling money from Qatar to Hamas to oppose the Palestinian Authority. I don't know anything about that, so I don't comment on it. But that's a meme that's very popular in social media these days.

1:12:36And I just want to say, we didn't talk about it, but your book has a very nuanced treatment of that. You're both critical and understanding of some of the complexity.

1:12:45But I do want to mention the possibility that in three months, there is an election coming in Israel. And we don't know who the next prime minister will be. But there is a chance it will not be Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a certain amount of baggage, obviously, both for his historical policy record and with respect to the Palestinian question and all the complications that he has – that come with his staying in power, which I'll just leave alone.

1:13:22But let's suppose it's somebody else. Now, he's a very skilled man, Mr. Netanyahu, he may stay in power. But let's suppose it's somebody else without his baggage. There are a number of candidates who have a real possibility of winning. We're in the Middle East, and even outside the Middle East, sometimes campaign promises get ignored. So we're going to ignore what the candidates are saying now about the conflict and so on. But let's imagine that someone wins without Netanyahu's baggage, and what would you like him to do?

The great reset proposal

1:13:58What would be your – we're going to leave to decide whether he could do these things because he'll face his own rock and a hard place, or she will. What would you like to say, what would you like to say from Israel? And you could ask – say, what would you like to say from me, too, as a citizen of Israel who is very worried about security but also would like to live in peace? I would love for the first 100 days with the Palestinians to have an initiative called the Great Reset.

1:14:33And I'm worried about the nomenclature because people associate it with Klaus Schwab's Great Reset with all the conspiracies. But I would love to see a three-month window where there is basically a cap, an agreement of zero violence, even if it's just for three months. And that is a commitment to rein in the violent settlers. We're not even talking about dismantling the settlements or nothing.

1:15:04Just the violent settlers that are terrorizing Palestinian communities that are basically – This is in the West Bank. In the West Bank, that are continuously generating imagery, footage, headlines, that are just radicalizing people, that are pouring gasoline on the fire. We need to just – to stop that, to just seize that and to stop it. Similarly, we would – this new prime minister would work with the Palestinian Authority and say that, please do your part.

1:15:43We're going to lift some of the restrictions on the movement of your security forces. We need you, the Palestinian Authority forces, to go after any effort. And we already have the mechanisms for cooperation to engage – for violent actors, for terror actors, and we need you to impose law and order. That way, we go three months without hearing about a single incident or tragic death or hopefully terror attack in the West Bank for three months to just bring down the temperature.

1:16:16Similarly, by then, I hope that there will be some concrete steps towards beginning the 500 or the 1,000-mile journey towards Hamas's disarmament. So, we get a commitment from the Israeli government through the military to cease attacks on Gaza unless it presents compelling evidence that this attack was about to – was repelling an incoming threat to the state of Israel.

1:16:48That way, we go three months in Gaza with zero loss of life. I'm telling you, Brother Russ, if we do that and we generate three months or 100 days with a great reset, and we just use that time to make sure that the headlines, no headlines on Google mention any loss of life of Israeli, Jewish, or Palestinian, that is one incredible first step that we can use to begin to actually then form something equivalent to the

1:17:22a committee for a committee for mutual cooperation, an entirely new body, and not just have it be the Palestinian Authority negotiating team and the guys that have been at it for four decades now, but actually open up this new transparent body that is internationally under the auspices of we can invite Saudi Arabia, we can invite the UAE, the Egyptians, the Europeans, the Europeans, the United States, and form this Israeli-Palestinian committee to engage and create new blood, a new cadre of Palestinians and Israelis that are transparently and openly talking through new mechanisms.

1:18:09Because if we go back to the old mechanisms, no one is going to pay any attention to it, the old negotiations, and Mahmoud Abbas said this, no one cares what Mahmoud Abbas says, no one cares what Jibril al-Jub says, and quite frankly, the way Israel negotiates, it's kind of like, okay, it's kind of like, okay, it's kind of like, okay, it's this top-down Israeli negotiators, etc., but let's put faces, let's put names, let's create this as a public exercise to normalize the act of Palestinians and Israelis talking to each other.

1:18:41After you reduce the violence and you encourage this public display of open, transparent diplomacy, even though the goals, there should be practically no goals, there should be just, we're creating the framework for how we're going to begin talking about the complex subjects. And there could be one for the West Bank, there could be one for Gaza, by the way, there could be two committees, just that alone, and then get the Palestinian team to present their, what they want, the Israelis to present what they want, and have it be open, and have it be transparent, and then kind of have everybody be able to see what happens in it, to showcase to the world how you do engagement and diplomacy.

1:19:28I think we need to go back to the basics, man, we need to just stop the violence, we need to begin the future, and the future is more exchanges and conversations, but by the way, these are not kumbaya conversations just for the sake of conversations, these are phased conversations, because at this point, I would like us to go back to a place where Palestinians and Israelis can talk to each other, and not need Qatari, and Egyptian, and Turkish, and American, and European, and like 500 layers of negotiators between them. I think it's actually, I mean, and fine, we can use support from other negotiators, but I think direct, normalizing the act of Palestinians and Israelis talking directly to each other in a transparent manner to problem solve, I think that could create the seeds for a new generation of Israeli diplomats and peace activists beyond the left and

1:20:28all the baggage of the left and beyond the lethargic class of Palestinian authority, political cadre that is really incompetent and has failed to produce much in recent times, because they're worried about public reception. So that's one. I have a few others, but to me, those two, if we achieve those, my goodness, like, I think that will inspire so many people.

1:20:58Well, I have a friend here who tells me, which is just, this is like somebody talking about, feels like the Middle Ages. He said, oh yeah, back in the, I don't know whether it was the 90s or the early 2000s or the 80s, I used to go into Gaza all the time. I'd go into Gaza City, I'd have coffee. It was such an interesting and vibrant place. So I dream, Ahmad, that there'll be a day when you and I will meet for coffee in Gaza City.

1:21:31It'll be a thriving, it'll be a thriving, commercial, flourishing place for people to make better lives for themselves and their children. And then they'll join me here in Jerusalem and we'll do the same here. Inshallah. And yeah, may that day come sooner than later. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you will it, it's not a dream. And, but if we start, if we stop the violence, the future will begin.

1:22:03My guest today has been Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib. His book is Hamas and its 2 Million Hostages. Brother Ahmed, thanks for coming back to EconTalk. Always a pleasure. Thanks for listening. Talk to you on Monday.

1:22:44We'll see you on Monday.