Gaza today stands as one of the most devastated places on earth.

Entire neighbourhoods have been erased. More than a million people are displaced.

And what remains of its infrastructure teeters on the edge of total collapse. Yet beyond the numbers and the rubble lies a deeper crisis, a moral one, about how we see Gaza, what stories we tell about it, and whose voices we choose to hear.

In much of the Western discourse, this war is still reduced to two actors—Hamas and Israel—while ordinary Palestinians are portrayed as either powerless or complicit. But the reality, as always, is far more complex and far more human.

To help us understand that reality, I’m joined by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American writer, political analyst and Gaza native. He’s the head of Realign for Palestine, a project of the Atlantic Council where he serves as a resident senior fellow with its Middle East programs.

Ahmed is widely recognized for bridging lived experience with strategic insight, writing extensively on Gaza, the wider Middle East, and the moral and political dilemmas shaping our world.

In this conversation, we’ll explore what life in Gaza looks like today, narratives surrounding its shape global perception, and what a realistic path towards stability and dignity might still look like.

Ahmed, thank you very much for joining me on The Voices of War.

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to speak to you.  

So, Ahmed, before we dive into the current crisis, I’d love to start with your story because you are from Gaza and still have lots of family there. You’ve also lost many members of your family in this war alone. So, can you tell us a little bit about your life, how those experiences have shaped the way you see the world and what ultimately led you to your work as a writer and advocate?

Well, I’ve said my story so many times it’s hard to remember where to start, but what I will briefly share is that I’ll share three milestones, if you will, of my childhood. One is that I experienced the tail end of the Oslo process as well as the second Intifada in Gaza. And I like to usually highlight the contrast between the two because we did have an era where we had Palestinian passports. This was the Palestinian Authority coming into the Gaza Strip. I lived in Gaza City up in the north in a family building where each uncle had a floor. There was Palestinian Airlines and the short-lived Gaza International Airport where I flew into multiple times in 1999 and in the year 2000. And so I got to experience the optimism, the hope, the ethos of a shift towards the nation-building agenda rather than the perpetual occupation and ensuing resistance narrative.

So, then there was the second Intifada, which commenced in the year 2000 after the collapse really of the peace process. And so that brought upon a lot of violence, both between Israelis and Palestinians and certainly the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the what was called as a child, acts of resistance, Muqawama, against Israelis, but it also metastasized internally in terms of the trauma and the hardships and the societal dynamics were really challenging from within the Gaza Strip, from within the society, if you will. And I certainly saw violence up close, including the year 2001 where I had a very traumatizing near-death experience with the loss of two friends of mine who were killed in an Israeli bombardment, bombing of a police station. The concussive wave of the blast rendered me largely deaf in my left ear. And then I was really determined at the time at the age of 11 to pursue options to go outside of Gaza and just to explore ways in which I could leave. And that happened at the age of 15 when I was able to obtain a scholarship to come to the United States as an exchange student for a year, live with a host family with the idea of going back to Gaza once the program finished.

And I attempted to do so in 2006, but I was stuck at the Egyptian-Gaza border, unable to cross, after Hamas carried out an attack that abducted an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who would later be swapped with 1,100 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, the later mastermind of October 7. And so thanks to the support of peace activists and human rights activists, I returned to the United States. I finished high school, college. I applied for political asylum, which I received and ultimately became a citizen 11 years ago. What’s noteworthy is that my asylum interview took place on June 14th, 2007, which is the very day that Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip. So I was the first of a wave of Palestinians who obtained political asylum because of Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip, a forcible takeover. And I’ll just briefly say precisely, this was Hamas, the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlements, also known as the disengagement happened. I left one month before that occurred. I left in July of 2005. That withdrawal happened in August 2005. Then there was the 2006 infamous parliamentary elections that Hamas won and then there was the 2006 summer abduction of Gilad Shalit and then there was the 2007 takeover by Hamas and so that’s kind of the two-year timeline if you will in which Gaza’s trajectory radically shifted for the worse and I’ll just briefly share that in while in the United States I, my family all remained immediate and extended. I have two brothers and two sisters and my dad was an UNRWA doctor – UNRWA being the controversial UN agency that runs education, healthcare, a lot of refugee affairs. My mom’s a math teacher. I have a brother in Gaza right now still. He runs field operations for a medical NGO, a British medical NGO. I remained in close contact with him. I stayed close to Gaza’s affairs through activism, through humanitarian endeavors. I tried to build an internationally run airfield in Gaza 10 years ago that was Israeli-approved with US and international support. That was really my introduction to radical pragmatism and working with Israelis and working with Palestinians and using intermediaries to talk to Hamas. I even talked to Sinwar. And this is not a secret. I wrote about this in Newsweek. And so while that was also happening, I developed very robust relations with the Jewish and Israeli community in the diaspora here and across the spectrum, not just the left, but people who held different beliefs. I was very intrigued and curious about what folks thought. What is the meaning of Zionism? What is the whole idea of the Jewish return to the land, what is the Jewish ethos? I knew nothing about the Holocaust. I knew nothing about Jewish history. And so was those parallel tracks of being both engaged with my people and engaged with wanting to be of service to the Palestinian people in Gaza, while also building robust bridges with Jews and Israelis and wanting understanding and not dialogue as a starting point, but not just dialogue, wanting to actually act upon dialogue and common ground and a real actionable follow-up steps to build upon dialogue. Those happened in parallel. And I thought that was really important in my story to where I’m at today, because it ultimately shaped how I would respond to the horror of October 7th and how I would choose to shape my both attitudes, my views, my beliefs, my analysis, and how I refused to be entrenched in any camp. And that would have a lasting effect on what was to follow years later.

October 7th, I was working in international development with an organisation, a philanthropic and a research organisation working in Africa, primarily with global health and poverty alleviation, malaria and neglected tropical diseases. So, and I was more on the operations, finance and donations side of things. I have a business background in undergrad, but then for my graduate studies, a few months before October 7th, I actually obtained a master’s in intelligence and national security because I was seeking to kind of go in a different direction, if you will, career-wise. I always had an interest in the intersection of national security, diplomacy, and militarism and military affairs and how they shape complex global geopolitics. That of course was all put on hold with October 7th.

Well, I mean, think it’s fair to say that we share a lot of similar interests. Again, I don’t think I mentioned it in my intro to you, but I was an intelligence officer in the Australian Defence Force for 16 years. So that’s also deeply shaped my interests, but also my willingness to kind of scratch below the surface of dominant narratives, which is what most of us live by—you know, the black and white of war, the black and white of conflict. And as I mentioned before we started recording, I mean, I’m from Bosnia, which is very much a global stage of competing narratives that deeply impact what happens regionally but also locally. Does your stance set you apart from other commentators and also your experience? How much is your personal experience and intimate understanding of Gaza through your own eyes, but also through your broader family links? How has that set you apart from the commentaries of especially people—other people in the West—that are speaking on this topic?

Well, and I appreciate you sharing that. When people hear intelligence in an academic sense, they fail to appreciate that it’s actually a social science. There’s a whole methodology to how you go about analysis. And I specialised in both operations and analysis, and both are in very different realms. But one of the things that people don’t appreciate when they hear intelligence, they just go back to, you know, like 1950s notions of a spy at the corner hiding behind a newspaper. But what I appreciate most about intelligence is the heavy-handed research component of it. You have to research, you have to sift through information, you have to come up with competing hypotheses, you have to use evidence, you have to sometimes make guesses based on estimates, but you have to dig through a lot of information. You have to actually link history, link personalities, link psychology, link politics all together. So it’s a really fascinating and well-developed, in my view, science and arena within academia that most people just don’t think about because they immediately think of the practical application of it in the form of intelligence agencies or informants or low-level intelligence operatives.

Yes, and their disruptive effects ultimately.

Precisely. For example, think about who’s negotiating between Hamas and Israel to achieve the ceasefire deal. It was the head of Mossad, the head of Egyptian intelligence, and the head of Qatari intelligence and the foreign minister. And why are the intelligence chiefs taking on that role? And then there was Bill Burns of the CIA for quite a few months trying to do so because the intelligence realm also sits in between the kinetic military component of statecraft as well as diplomacy and the public-facing apparatus of nationhood. They’re somewhere in between. And so that’s why I pursued it.

I share this with intrigue because a lot of folks have unfortunately said, “Well, this just proves that you’re a Mossad agent and you’re a plant and you’re this and you’re that.” To which I would—and I have all of my intelligence certificates on my LinkedIn—and I’m like, yeah, because a Mossad agent would just readily volunteer all of that information on LinkedIn.

Yeah, hiding in plain sight, right? That’s the narrative.

Exactly! But going back to your question, there are components of my lived experience and my background that are truly unique. I kind of had a foot in both worlds. And people want to—again, a lot of my detractors want to say, “Well, you’ve been out of Gaza for 20 years, and therefore you don’t know anything about Gaza,” which I would actually argue that my connection and relationship to Gaza has become 50 times stronger as a result of my departure, in the sense that I can have the safety and luxury of having the bird’s-eye view. I have the family, I have the humanitarian networks, I have the work from 10 years ago when I did the Gaza airport work. I had an army of volunteers and workers in Gaza who were helping me figure out who’s who, people going to plots of land, doing surveys, doing social media. And I built a Facebook page—I really mastered the use of social media for a Gaza audience. I built a Facebook page with like a quarter-million followers in less than a year because I couldn’t reach the people of Gaza on the ground.

I didn’t know how to—the people that I had weren’t scalable enough to survey people, to get information, whatever. And so I just blanketed Facebook with paid promotions to disseminate information, and it really made me for some time a household name in Gaza. And people have short attention spans, and now 10 years later no one remembers who I am, and that’s great. I need it that way. But the idea is that there’s a component of being abroad that has enabled me to be very close to Gaza and be analytical.

And then there’s me kind of breaking down the barriers, if you will. And this is a little bit more unique in that I did talk to Zionists and Israelis and Jews across the spectrum. And I did so publicly. I wasn’t ashamed of doing that. I wasn’t hiding that. I didn’t think it was a bad thing. I thought it was positive. That was information. That was getting to know my foes up close, and people that are my enemy up close—but many of them, I didn’t even view them as enemies. I viewed them as allies.

Over time, that’s when radical pragmatism as a framework began developing for me—at a time when a lot of Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans and Palestinian-Americans were so heavily invested in the boycott, in anti-normalisation—“Don’t talk to Zionist Jews, don’t talk to Israeli Jews unless they show you their credentials that they’re anti-Zionist, or unless they’re so heavily anti-Israel.” In a way, the people here in the United States who are pro-Palestine were a lot more radical than some Palestinians themselves. They felt a need to overcompensate for the fact that they, whether it’s guilt, whether it’s just luxury, or wanting to feel good about being well-off, they doubled down on extremism instead of acting as good custodians of the cause.

I’m perhaps speaking in general terms, but there are a lot of wonderful people from the Palestinian community that I’ve met—I want to make that very clear. But I’m trying to weave in and out of how, in some ways, the fact that I lived with an American host family and then I kind of lived alone without my family… and I’ll be honest with you, living without my family, while it was painful and sad as a young man—I’m 35 now—but I’ve basically been living on my own effectively without a family since I was 15.

I mean, I had a host mother, an American host mother who was like a grandma, if you will, that I lived with, but I had to basically raise myself. That was really hard and brutal and difficult. And mommy and daddy didn’t send me money from Gaza—it was actually usually the other way around. That was difficult as I had to become a man at a really young age. However, it also became an opportunity for me to be somewhat free of constraints, because if my family were here, that means they likely would have connected with other Palestinians and Muslims and Arabs. And the more these social networks are stacked, it can be incredibly difficult for those who want to be different, who want to think differently, behave and speak differently, to break out from underneath that.

Yeah, because there are exit costs that come with that. And I think that’s something I’ve addressed on this podcast in general for diaspora people. And I see myself in a lot of what you’re saying there, having come from Bosnia and then even in Australia. So first we were refugees in Germany for three and a half years, then migrated to Australia. And my parents had the great sense to not go where most of the Bosnian refugees went, to certain areas in Sydney, where effectively in some parts you don’t even need English—you get by because there’s a strong Bosnian community or Balkan community in general. And my parents had the good sense to get us away from that and go into the kind of more, quote unquote, Australian or Anglo areas.

Assimilated space. That’s exactly what I did. I assimilated with everybody, including—and my host mother, she was a former Catholic nun turned atheist, you know, like, and she’s a white woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She’s the oldest of fourteen, very… she was very pro-Palestine, very supportive, but she helped me assimilate in a way that she helped open… she gave me the option. She helped open up doors for assimilation and I decided to take them. I didn’t, you know, because I figured early on that you could retreat back to your own community, but that also potentially sets a ceiling beyond which it’s hard to rise.

And by the way, I want to be clear—Palestinian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans are some of the most successful, well-off, highly accomplished people. I’m not just talking in terms of material or academic gains; I’m talking about intellectual curiosity. Because I was genuinely just hungry for information and people and just… I did not want to be restricted by, “Well, don’t talk to these people because they’re Zionists,” or, “Don’t—this is—this is too scandalous, you went into this.”

So that’s something that is a little bit different for my lived experience. But I want to make—just to close that point—on the other hand, I think there are a lot of components to my story that, while different and unique, they’re not particularly compellingly exceptional, in the sense that I’m not trying to say that I champion more than just saying, “Ahmed’s experience was unique and therefore there will never be another Ahmed.” What I try to always put forth is that, no, I’m not a unicorn. I’m not alone. I’m not this once-in-a-generation figure. Far from it. There are tens of thousands of Ahmeds out there who are different, who are just thinking about it differently.

It ultimately comes down to choice, to priorities, and to the willingness to bear the consequences of your actions. Because I have had friends, for example, from October 7th onward, who were somewhat—you can say— weaving in and out of my world. But some of them had to step back. Some of them have succumbed to the anger, or to the vengeful zeal, or to the communal pressure, or they’ve just become too afraid and too scared. Or they felt that I’m kind of moving the Overton window, that I’m pushing things a little bit too far for their comfort. And I can respect that. But what I believe is that that’s not because they’re any less capable than me of doing and saying what I’m doing—it’s just that either they weren’t in a situation where they could make the choice to continue, or they made a choice to take the path of least resistance.

I find that really interesting. Because what you’re saying to me—what I hear you saying—is your assimilation and your journey has allowed you to separate yourself from the dominant narratives, the competing narratives, oftentimes encased in this kind of victimhood mentality. And I see that in the Balkan diaspora and in the Balkans itself, that you have to take a side and you have to hold that side, hold that line. And that’s what I was saying before: if you don’t, the exit costs can be quite high—or at least one might perceive them as high. But in reality, when you actually step outside of that, oftentimes, as you alluded to, there are many people who actually see the world as you do. It’s just that they’re not getting a voice and they themselves, for whatever reason—individual or collective—are staying quiet, are staying suppressed. You know, in Bosnia, oftentimes as long as they’re not shooting, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. It doesn’t matter—they’re all the same; they’re just shifting chairs, but as long as they’re not shooting. So there’s this kind of passivity that persists in the broader community, oftentimes because there’s a loss of hope that something can be different, because these narratives and these structural divisions are so deeply entrenched that people, especially people who are close within those communities, the cost is simply too high. Which is why I think people like yourself, who have managed to step away from that and have developed a life that doesn’t solely depend on that identity—but you’ve got broader access to relationships that aren’t just in one enclave, relationships that see the world in different ways, you’ve educated yourself in a different way—I think that’s a refreshing approach to these deeply entrenched problems. And there is no more entrenched, deeper problem in the world at the moment than Palestine–Israel. Perhaps that allows me to turn to… as you understand, through the people you speak with—I imagine on a daily basis—your family that’s there, your friends that are there. What is the life of the average Palestinian like today? We’re a week or so out from the ceasefire; aid’s come in, although there were restrictions, it was turned off again, applied pressure; of course, we’ve had attacks, at least allegedly, we don’t really have clarity on exactly what’s happened, by Hamas on IDF, which then has of course led to further attacks, further deaths of Palestinians, and so on. Based on who you speak to and what you know of the situation on the ground, what is the lived experience of the Palestinian people in Gaza today?

Well, it’s one of—I would say two—there really are two common themes that you hear. So let’s start with where things are at. People are picking up the pieces. Some are trying to go back to what remains of their properties. Some are looking for survivors, for family members. Some are trying to access more aid. Some are feeling that the return to war is inevitable and they’re just trying to use this as an opportunity for a reprieve. Some are trying to walk around and not be confined to their area. Some are trying to keep their heads down and not say too much because Hamas has retaken Gaza—that is indisputable. Hamas controls the part of Gaza not held by the Israeli military, the part beyond the so-called yellow line, which is a feature of the first phase of the ceasefire.

Which, correct me if I’m wrong, that’s about fifty-three percent still held by Israel, right?

Precisely, precisely. And there’s just a significant amount of damage and devastation in the areas controlled by Hamas. But we’ve seen Hamas carry out public executions and try to re-assert its presence in Gaza, and so a lot of people are intimidated by that. I mean, someone with a gun can take control of an entire market of people who have no guns, you know?

That’s the starting point. And there are different levels. There are people that have a little bit more resources than others. There are people in tents. There are people who managed to get a job with an international NGO. There are people who managed to rent a place. There are people who built up that tent into something more substantial. There are people still within their homes in Nusayrat and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. So there are tiers of hardship and suffering, all with a common thread—no running water, no sewage, no electricity, trash everywhere, trauma everywhere, misery visible on every face.

That leads us to basically three groups of Gazans right now. The first group only and singularly cares about when the borders will open so that they can leave. They actually resent the idea of staying. Some even say, “I wish we’d been pushed out into Egypt so that at least we could start life somewhere else.” And I’m going to be honest—and I don’t want this to be misinterpreted or misunderstood because someone will clip this and say, “Look, Ahmed is promoting ethnic cleansing.” What I’m saying is that people are so furiously intent on getting out and angry with life in Gaza that they genuinely say, “We don’t care about Jerusalem, we don’t care about the West Bank, we don’t care about the Palestinian cause, we don’t care about Palestine at all. I just want to get out of here. I’m done. I want no connection to this place. It means nothing to me.” And that’s a sizable—coming up on fifty percent of the people of Gaza. Even if Al Jazeera or some Qatari-funded propaganda channels show you token Palestinians saying, “We’re steadfast, we love our home, we’ll return to Palestine”—that’s a lie.

It’s a narrative. I mean, it’s absolutely a narrative. Yeah.

Well, keep in mind there are Palestinian tokens in Gaza whose sole purpose is to produce this narrative and direct it outwardly. They’re not talking to other Gazans, because if a Gazan talks to another Gazan about steadfastness, they’ll take off their shoe and beat you with it. So that’s the first group—the group that is militantly wanting to leave Gaza, blaming Hamas and saying, “We’re done.”

Then you have the rest split into two groups. One says, “We just need temporary housing units—something better than tents, an upgrade from the tent life where rodents and cockroaches and sewage are everywhere.” They want to stay and rebuild but need something better—caravans, shipping containers, anything. Those are the people who still have hope for a better future. Those are the people who have some interest in seeing Gaza rebuilt, reconstructed, in picking up the pieces.

And then there’s a third, smaller group that wants to stay but says, “This has to be Gaza’s last war. We cannot live again under Hamas. We cannot ever again accept the presence of a terror group that governs us. We need structural change. We cannot have Qatar rebuild Gaza for Hamas.” It has to be rebuilt as part of a new vision that doesn’t allow siphoning of billions of dollars for terror and violence.

So it’s important to understand: the people of Gaza are not monolithic. They’re diverse in their views. Most are vehemently against Hamas. It doesn’t mean they’re pro-Israel. It doesn’t mean they’re Zionists. It also doesn’t mean all of those who oppose Hamas are ready for peace with Israel. We have to be transparent about that. There are tiers of opposition to Hamas, just as there are tiers of support.

Most ideological support for Hamas is small—a drop in the bucket. Actual ideological Hamasniks are few. Then you have people who are brainwashed and just… half of Gaza is under eighteen. They’ve only known Hamas their whole lives. Imagine being born in the Soviet Union and never knowing anything else—you can’t even conceive of an alternative. Seventy percent of Gazans have never left the Strip. They’ve been trapped their whole lives. People are a product of their environment.

So you have people who support Hamas out of ignorance, or brainwashing. Then you have the network of patronage Hamas has built—jobs, access to aid, protection. It’s like a mafia. And then you have Hamas the movement, and Hamas the government. The terror movement created influence over the government, which is separate from the Fatah-based Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

If you wanted jobs, the imam at the mosque had to like you. Even UNRWA is penetrated. So it’s very important to understand the tiers of opposition and support in Gaza if we’re serious about socially re-engineering and reconstituting Gaza post-war, so that we change the dynamics and ensure there isn’t another war five or ten years from now.

Again, I can draw so many parallels, both through my own experience, but also the Balkans in general, as to how the kind of capture of thinking and individual voices through incentives in one way or another—whether that incentive is less pain or whether that incentive is greater prosperity—people are pushed and pulled in different directions. And radicalisation itself—you know, there are steady processes that people go through to become radicalised in some sense. One of the things I want to touch on—you were talking about that first group of people that you mentioned, the ones that just want to leave, and you said that it’s around fifty percent. My question is, isn’t that part of the structural, imposed reality? Because that will just solve the problem for everyone—most certainly for Israel and the IDF—if people just left. And we can’t in many ways walk away from the fact that, prior to October 7th or October 6th, life in Gaza wasn’t a dream. There were many, many issues—mowing the lawn, strategies, and the division of Palestinian cohesiveness—structurally done so, of course supported by Israel. Of course, we know fully well that Hamas in fact was funded by Israel. Of course, how it used those funds was to its own interests. But in other words, there’s also an interest from the Israeli side to keep that enemy alive, right? Because when you have an enemy—and this again parallels the Balkans—if you prop up that enemy, then you’ve got an enemy to channel your anger towards, in support of whatever your ultimate intention might be.

So the last point—just like I’m saying the Palestinians are not monolithic, Israelis are not monolithic. And I don’t believe it’s an accurate assessment to say that all Israelis, or even many Israelis—particularly those involved in the military infrastructure, the security apparatus, or even in politics—are, notwithstanding the Ben-Gvirs and Smotriches and Netanyahus of the world, actually interested in keeping Hamas alive as a scarecrow, if you will. Many in Israel, especially in the military, feel ashamed and a personal sense of responsibility for the failure of October 7th. There is a desire to rout Hamas—both physically and politically.

Physically and politically, and geostrategically, that might be inconsistent with what Smotrich said—“Hamas is an asset.” Now, that said, the allowing of Hamas—that at this point is indisputable: the Qatari suitcases of funding, allowing that to occur as part of an indirect arrangement. Basically, Israel had this detente with Hamas, and it ultimately failed. It fed the monster, and the monster blew in our faces, as Ehud Barak said. That, I believe, is absolutely valid—and absolutely something that should be part of the accountability for the failures of October 7th, which include the lead-up period in which Israel accepted Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

It knew about the tunnels, it knew about their exercises, it ignored warning signs, it understood the extent of their arsenal, and it intercepted some of their plans only to have those intercepts dismissed—effectively due to the belief that, “Well, these are probably just aspirational plans, they’re not really going to execute them.”

Which in itself is a huge question mark, is it not? Because I hope that at some point we’ll get to understand that better. Because to me, knowing what I know of intelligence, or what I know of intelligence services in the region, that to me is really striking. It’s surprising, given what we know.

Well, I think we’ve stuck in normalcy and confirmation bias. One of my courses in my degree was Indications and Warnings. There’s that classic example of the Yom Kippur War, in which the Egyptians moved the Overton window with regular exercises and manoeuvres they’d have by the Suez Canal on the western bank. They started small, then did them regularly; Israel would mobilise its reserves, only to find out it was an exercise. They did it dozens, if not hundreds of times. And that is the classic case of normalcy and confirmation bias setting in—normalcy in the sense of “we’re used to it,” and confirmation in that, “No, the Egyptians don’t have an air force, the Soviets didn’t rebuild it for them.”

So, normalcy in Gaza—in that Hamas did have an indirect security coordination with Israel, going up to the fence on a regular basis. Hamas’s presence near the border, its manoeuvres—that was normalcy. Then came bias. And then Hamas, with Sinwar and some of his intercepts—the five-page intercept that allegedly was taken from his brother’s bunker, Mohammed Sinwar in Khan Younis, when he was assassinated earlier this May—

Which showed the whole plan—that what you’re talking about?

Well, it showed Sinwar ideating the plan—yes, that plan. This was handwritten notes by Yahya Sinwar himself, in which he specifically wanted brutality as part of his strategy, wanted it filmed to strike fear in the enemy’s heart, etc. There were a couple of lines, and it was in Arabic, and I read the whole thing in Arabic. There was a line about doing these manoeuvres over and over—these Hamas manoeuvres and exercises leading up to October 7th—so that the enemy thinks they’re normal. That’s the normalcy bias.

Then there’s the confirmation bias—and by the way, I’m not in the business of defending Israelis. I’m simply saying I don’t believe—like, I think a combination of hubris and arrogance and ignorance and moving forces to the West Bank to protect the settlers and Ben-Gvir and all of that—and the arrogance of Netanyahu thinking, “We’re bribing Hamas”—that confirmation bias of “We’re paying them off.”

And Gaza, by the way, before October 7th, was at its most developed era in the entire history of the territory. Let me repeat that one more time: Gaza, before October 7th, was experiencing a period of development the likes of which the territory had never seen. There were five to six shopping malls. Shelves were stocked. There were luxury, five-star hotels. Gaza was better than numerous parts of the Arab world—Syria, Yemen, even parts of Iraq and Egypt.

The amount of aid money that went in—and by the way, I was sending money to my family members and to other friends and relatives there—the amount of aid money going in, the remittances through Western Union… My mum would show me pictures of where they’re shopping and where they’re going. Now, it is true that seventy percent of the people of Gaza before October 7th had reliance in some form on aid dependency. But that reliance does not mean this was a North Korean-style famine in the 1990s, because aid simply meant you’d get a bag of flour—and sometimes they’re like, “Yeah, a free bag of flour is cheaper than one for sixty shekels.”

So, aid was abundant—abundant in ways—and I’m not making it rosy; I’m just saying this idea of open-air prison is wrong. There were restrictions to travel, but you could ultimately travel. Gazan businessmen and women, high-end ones, had a card called BCM. It literally allowed them to go into Israel without any questions. I knew some of Gaza’s top contractors who are literally touring the United States and Europe right now, asking for more aid as we speak. And they’d say, “My wife loved sushi in Tel Aviv. We’d leave Gaza for the weekend, go to Tel Aviv, eat sushi, and come back.”

Does that mean refugee camps were wonderful? No. Does that mean everything was perfect? No. But I refuse this blind, ignorant insistence that Gaza was this regressive nightmare. And by the way, that happened in spite of Hamas, not because of Hamas. There were entrepreneurs, Gaza Sky Geeks, coders, businesspeople… but Hamas siphoned off a lot of that money.

And Hamas itself, to escape sanctions, imposed taxes, invested in leisure businesses—in order for your contract to get approval from the ministry, you had to fork over money. So I refuse the narrative that Gaza had to be destroyed because of the blockade. The blockade was elastic. It’s not a static thing that Israel just imposed for no reason. It ebbed and flowed. There were times when it was harsh, and times relaxed.

The blockade existed because Hamas—a terrorist organisation sworn to Israel’s destruction—kept saying, “We’re going to smuggle weapons. We’re going to align with Iran. We’re going to build tunnels and rockets.” And they ultimately proved Israel right.

So I’m just saying this blockade narrative—it’s not like Israel left in 2005 and just decided to impose a blockade. And I say this again, not in defence of Israel—I could care less about their narrative—I say this because we need to learn how to avoid that mistake in the future. How are we going to learn from twenty years that have been wasted? Tens of billions of dollars—maybe a hundred billion—were wasted in Gaza. More aid per capita was spent on the Palestinians than any other people on earth, and yet somehow we keep repeating the same regurgitated talking points: “the blockade,” “open-air prison,” “they had no choice but October 7th.”

That’s where I want us to learn. I want us to take responsibility—not because I’m blaming the victim, but because I want to empower the victim. My thesis is that within the imbalance of power—with Israel clearly the superior party and often acting in nefarious ways—there is still space for Palestinian agency through responsibility and accountability.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s great because that’s a point I actually want to pick up on, because I think—I don’t want it to be perceived in any way, because I imagine you probably face a lot of criticism, perhaps even from Palestinians themselves and the Palestinian diaspora, because it could be misconstrued that you’re almost arguing the Israeli narrative. That, well, Palestinians have to free themselves of this, which certainly in the Western media would be perceived, I imagine—and correct me if I’m wrong—as perhaps a betrayal of your own people, which is probably why you’ve been called a Mossad agent.

Well, may I just ultra-briefly—exactly. But like, if one plus one equals two, if an Israeli Zionist—if Netanyahu comes and says it tomorrow, “one plus one equals two,” do I by default then have to disagree with that just because Netanyahu said it? There are some relatively clear facts and easily discernible truths that—even if Israel says them—don’t become false by default.

Yes, there’s Israeli propaganda, hasbara. Yes, Israeli propaganda is often embarrassing, and Israelis are the worst at PR. But I’m speaking about this from a Palestinian self-interested point of view. The reality, nevertheless, is there are things that—just because they are argued by Zionists or Israelis—it doesn’t mean they’re wrong or not factual.

So that’s overly simplistic thinking, and unfortunately what we’re lacking isn’t intellectual intelligence—we need emotional intelligence. We need to rise above the emotionality of this and to say, it’s hard to acknowledge that your camp recycles a lot of at-best exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims, and at worst has adopted Hamas’s disgusting talking points, thinking that that’s somehow going to make our point stick more than Israeli propaganda.

For me, I have to be able to weave in and out of whatever camp in pursuit of information—what I perceive as the truth, facts, inconvenient facts, and uncomfortable truths—so that I can actually be of service to my people. Otherwise, there’s a difference between leadership and being a representative. A leader is someone like Sadat—he tells his people what they don’t want to hear. He’s ahead of his people, but not so far ahead that they can’t catch up, and he says, “You know, this war business since 1948 for Egypt hasn’t worked out too well for us, and we’ve spent all of this money. Let’s make peace with the Israelis, get our land back, and have pragmatism.”

A representative, meanwhile, just asks, “Where’s the wind blowing?” and amplifies what people already want to hear, even if it’s false or inaccurate.

I think the recognition that these narratives don’t need to be totally swallowed… I remember, again, from my own life—when we were in Germany as refugees—I had become quite, dare I say, radical. I was ten years old, very pro-Bosnia, anti-Serb, anti-Croat. That was how I viewed the world. And my dad came out—who had fought in the war for three and a half years—and when he saw my rage toward Serbs and Croats, he said, ‘Look, I’ve shot at all of them. Don’t hate anyone. This is all politics. This is all designed to keep you locked up in this view of the world.’ And I think that’s what I heard you say—a lot of that. And I think I recognise you saying that we need to step outside of entrenched narratives to find a different way. So how does that happen? We’ve been talking about Hamas for nearly an hour—how do we step away from that narrative in a structural way? Because of course we know now, as you said at the start, Hamas is back in charge of Gaza. How does the world get rid of Hamas?

Well—and this is the challenge now. You have Hamas back in there, and then you have the Western diaspora, the external-based pro-Palestine movement that has unfortunately adopted a very maximalist set of views that are very difficult.

Look, man—look. I believe it is the role of the allies of the Palestinian people to help moderate the discourse and walk away from the tragic devolution we’ve seen since October 7th: the normalisation of Hamas, the normalisation of the “resistance” narrative, and the promotion of that as if it’s the true saviour of the Palestinian people—without realising that the more resistance we engage in, the more loss our people are going to face, the more suffering, the more waste, the more missed opportunities.

So to me, on the narrative side, it’s about who is going to do it—because unfortunately, for the people of Gaza, they’re both stuck between the trauma and the horror of what just occurred over the last two years, and trying to pick the pieces back up and push forward—while Hamas now re-entering the scene ensures their lives will be hell for the foreseeable future.

But where we have power and influence is on the outside. Those of us who can moderate the discourse through the adoption of radical pragmatism—through the embrace of multiple truths—that multiple things can be true at once without them having to be in perpetual opposition.

Multiple things can be real that affirm Palestinian rights and aspirations and legitimacy and grievances, and affirm the Jewish and Israeli people’s right to safety and security and belonging, to be free of hatred and antisemitism, and to not face regular threats at the hands of jihadi terrorists.

I think those two things can actually come together—or at least work in parallel—even if some people will never embrace Zionists or Zionism. But to simply acknowledge that, you know, just like the Serbs and the Bosniaks, they’re both here to stay. No one is going anywhere. The Jewish people in Israel are here to stay—all seven million of them. Same with the Palestinian people, who are not going to be pushed out—except if Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists continue to fall into the trap of the fraudulent “armed resistance” narrative and make life hell for the Palestinian people.

Then that’s going to automatically get Palestinians to voluntarily leave the Gaza Strip without Israeli interference.

And so, as much as we want to talk about the horrendous rhetoric of Israeli ministers and government figures who want to push Palestinians out and ethnically cleanse them, we need to have just as strong—if not stronger—conversation about what got us here in the first place. Gaza was not perfect before October 7th. Now it’s an absolute disaster that’s going to exacerbate the disengagement of many Palestinians from the cause and cause them to leave.

So then you have the political track—not letting up the pressure on Hamas, not letting up the pressure on the Qataris and the Turks and what they’ve done. I’m worried about the recycling of Hamas. I’m worried about its rejuvenation under the guise of, “Well, they’re just now part of the new security services.” That’s why they’re not wearing uniforms. Or, “Well, Hamas is actually going to now be part of the future Palestinian technocratic government of consensus.”

So there are multiple tracks. But nothing—this isn’t purely a political issue. You can solve a lot through politics and policy, but there’s a narrative component that has to give way to normalising the existence and rightful aspirations of both peoples.

And that, for the time being, can only happen in the diaspora. Because also, by the way, a lot of Israelis are extremists. A lot of Israelis are traumatised. A lot of Israelis are disengaged. A lot of Israelis just want this issue to go away and not be bothered by it—especially now.

And they’re also influenced by the Smotrichs, Ben-Gvirs and Netanyahus because in fact—that’s a question. What do you think is Netanyahu’s goal for Gaza, for the West Bank? What do you think is, at least as he’s the head of Israel, what is Israel’s goal for the Palestinians?

It’s been interesting to see how that’s shifting now, or being altered by the intervention of Trump. It appears that President Trump is at least trying to kind of put the kibosh, if you will, on Netanyahu going further—but that’s not saying much. I mean, there is annexation of the West Bank that has happened thus far.

And it just passed again in the Knesset, didn’t it? Just a day or two ago—again, symbolically. Yeah.

Well, that particular vote was a symbolic one, but it did anger the United States quite a lot. My point is that it’ll be curious to see—and it seems like a lifetime away—but we are theoretically a year away from Israeli elections. And so it’ll be interesting to see what the new government looks like, who’s part of it, who’s going to shape what.

Assuming Netanyahu stays in power—there’s a very good chance he will, which would be really catastrophic in some ways and very unfortunate. But assuming he stays, what coalition keeps him going? Is it something like the current coalition? If so, then it’s clear—Israel is going to face a situation where within a decade it may very well end up being a Jewish Afghanistan.

And I’ve heard that from Israelis, by the way. I’ve heard that from the most die-hard Zionists and pro-Israel people—Israelis in Israel—who said, “Listen, if Netanyahu wins again…” These are not leftists. These are not liberals. These are people that are like, “I run businesses, I run major efforts, I’m part of the government.” They’ve said, “No, I’m really going to pursue life outside of Israel, because the dominance of the far right and the settler movement—you can’t just keep that contained in the West Bank. There is blowback. It comes back and harms Israel from within.”

So it’s hard to predict, but even without attempting to analyse what’s ahead for Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, the de facto policy right now is one of continued horror and suffering and hardships and pain that is making life miserable for many Palestinians in the West Bank.

Yeah. I mean, the way I—and I’d be keen to hear what you think about this—I’ve written about this and spoken about it on the podcast as well. The way I perceive the situation is that because these extremes on both sides—both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side—have captured the narrative, at least that’s how I perceive it: one is of resistance and the other is, without a doubt, ethnic cleansing, certainly by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu himself—expansion of settlements, the Greater Israel project, etc. And it is so embedded, at least as a narrative, that both sides are so morally degraded now that they cannot see the other as human. And that is continuously reinforced, reinforced, reinforced. And I’ve said a number of times, I actually don’t think Palestinians and Israelis can solve this right now because both sides are so deeply entrenched in their own trauma—and we have to remember this is generational trauma—that the outside world has to step in. Of course, the world has its own competitive interests and it’s just a pawn on the global chessboard. Which is why I’ve said I’m hopeful that President Trump’s motivation to achieve peace, incentivised by whatever—whether it’s money, power, or the Nobel—I actually don’t care what it’s incentivised by. Give it to him, whatever he wants, just to get us to a cessation of hostilities, of carnage, death, and further moral degradation. I wonder if you see it that way as well—if that’s the crux of the problem, that the world has remained disinterested, or interested only while it matters to them or while it’s pursuing some of their interests. Ultimately it’s the people of Gaza, but also Israelis, who are paying the price. And whether that is where you might hold some hope as well with what Trump is doing.

Well, precisely to your last point—the world was disinterested. Part of that is because of Palestinian failures, part because of the facts on the ground that Israel imposed, and part because there really is no alternative to U.S. leadership. No amount of European involvement will supplant that role.

Then you have, unfortunately, this view that October 7th brought the Palestinian issue back to the fore—and people say, “This is why it’s a good thing for the Palestinian people.” The tragedy is that supposedly the only way for Gaza and the Palestinian issue to be relevant is when it’s bloody and horrible and full of carnage. The people of Gaza don’t want to be cannon fodder to get a few headlines in global press.

What concerns me—and gives me hope—is that once Gaza’s out of the headlines, even though this is far from over, a lot of people will move on and lose interest. There was momentum leading to the ceasefire—UN General Assembly recognitions, U.S. interests, the sheer carnage and destruction. Now that there’s a lull—a temporary lull—there might be disengagement.

What gives me hope nevertheless is that after the recognition of a Palestinian state, there’s an elevated level of attention and interest beyond symbolism. There’s recognition that this cannot be left to simmer because of the strategic location of this issue—it’s literally at the intersection of East meets West meets South.

We saw its implications for Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, the Suez Canal, Saudi-Israeli normalisation, Iraqi militias, Iran, the Houthis, freedom of navigation through Bab al-Mandeb and piracy, global and maritime shipping safety, the Russia-China intervention in the region. There are so many layers. And for Western governments, we saw the proliferation of extremists in Europe and outright jihadis in the open; the anti-Israel movement in the United States and the Western world.

This didn’t just stay there. It has regional and global ramifications. I do believe there’s recognition now that simply kicking the can down the road won’t work. I agree with you nevertheless that I don’t think right now—this very minute—either Israelis or Palestinians are ready for a Palestinian state or real peace. You still have Hamas around; both populations have radical elements.

But I hope that over time, as the kinetic, deadly phase of this chapter gives way to slightly more enduring calm—if that can be achieved—both in Gaza and the West Bank, level heads will prevail. We’ll see new leadership in the Palestinian territories, new voices in the diaspora and Western-based pro-Palestine movements, so that it actually becomes more pro-Palestine than simply anti-Israel.

I hope to see Gaza—and this is why I’m doing what I’m doing. If I didn’t have hope, I’d have stayed home and kept my old job and walked away from this discourse. I believe Gaza can be developed in a really compelling way—to make for a better future that can become a role model for effective Palestinian self-governance, development, moving away from aid dependency and the UN/NGO industrial complex.

Gaza, with its strategic location, can be a portal—a gateway—for Palestinian and regional integration, as well as Israel’s. Think Saudi-Israeli normalisation, IMEC—the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. Gaza having a seaport, an airport, a corridor connecting it with the Gulf—through oil pipelines, a rail line, fibre optics—so that Gaza is the city of the future.

So that we have data centres, because real estate alone won’t transform Gaza or its future trajectory. I have hope. I believe there are enough Palestinians in Gaza who want to be part of the future. And we just have to keep paying attention to this issue, lest we fall into the same trap we did before October 7th—somehow leaving this up to Netanyahu and Hamas to figure out.

Yeah, yeah. On that note, Ahmed, I know we’ve gone a little bit beyond our originally agreed time, so I think we’ll leave it there. But I just want to say, firstly, thank you for being this voice—this voice that deeply resonates with my view of the world about needing to step away from the radical voices and embracing them wholesale without actually understanding what the issues are on the ground, and trying to walk the middle ground. Which I think—and I think both you and I would agree on this—most people actually think like this and are reasonable enough to see the nuance that exists there. It’s just that we’re not given the choice. We’re incentivised to be radicalised, to be angry, to scream—for whatever algorithmic or financial motives, it doesn’t matter—but that’s the world we live in.

Precisely.

So I thank you for your advocacy. Of course, you’re standing for your people and I cherish that and respect that deeply. And I really look forward to reaching out to you again, because I think there were so many more aspects I wanted to touch on today. But I think we spent a lot of time on the human dynamics of this conflict, which I appreciated, and I look forward to having an opportunity to again in the future.

Love it, man. Thank you for taking the time, and inshallah we’ll cross paths again.

Absolutely, inshallah. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Cheers.