Noam: Hey, I’m Noam Weissman, and you’re listening to Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. As always, I love hearing from you. So shoot me a note, email me, hit me up, be in touch with me, noam@jewishunpacked.com.
If you listen to last week’s episode of Unpacking Israeli History, you already know what I’m about to say. This week’s episode is a part two of such an important conversation that I had with my friend, Ahmed Fouad Alkatib. If you’re new and you didn’t listen to part one, first of all, it’s very strange to listen to part two of something that has a part one. So what you should do is go back to part one and then listen to this episode. But if you need a refresher, Ahmed is a member of the DC-based think tank, the Atlantic Council, and a frequent pundit and critic of Hamas, along with Israel and US policy.
In this episode, I want to do the following. I wanna focus on the present, how we got to the present, and the future of Gaza. So, let’s dive in. Yalla, let’s do this.
Ahmed, welcome back.
Ahmed: Thank you for having me again. Appreciate it.
Noam: Listen, there is so much to talk about. What I wanna start with is the time that I was in Israel, I spent, I was in Israel from 2003 on and off to 2006.
Ahmed: Mm-hmm.
Noam: And during this time period, there was the disengagement, where Israel had been in Gaza since 1967, since quadrupling in size when Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria, took Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, uh, the West Bank from Jordan, after Nassar, the Pan-Arabist, was making these ludicrous statements about getting rid of the Jews and getting rid of Israel in ’67. And Israel preemptively went down south and, uh, took care of the Egyptian air base as well as the Syrians. And in six days, they quadrupled in size.
From ’67 to around 2005, there were a number of Israelis living in Gaza. And Gaza has a big part of Jewish history, the story of Samson was in Gaza, and it was a big part of the Hebrew Bible. There were around 10,000 or so Israelis that lived in Gaza, and 1.5, maybe 2 million, Palestinians living there. And Ariel Sharon, who was known as the bulldozer, who was known as one of the leading Israeli military men of all time, somebody who was not viewed popularly at all in the Palestinians. Somebody who was known as a butcher in many ways by the Palestinians. This person who led the fight against Lebanon and the PLO in the first Lebanon war in the early 1980s, in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, this guy took the Israelis out, 9,000 Israelis out of Gaza, and it was called a, the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, in an area called Gush Katif.
And I wanna read to you some statistics from Gazans at the time, from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion:
Don’t you think that Israel should coordinate and, and negotiate with the Palestinian Authority prior to the withdrawal from Gaza in accordance with Sharon’s plan?
58% said yes, of Palestinians. 28% said no.
This question: the Israeli parliament, the Knesset approved last week Sharon’s plan of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. What do you think is the target of this plan? Listen to these numbers, Ahmed.
17% said withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from Gaza and dismantling the Jewish settlements there as a first step would lead to a second route, which may revive the peace process as the 17%. But the rest, 38% said it was freezing the peace process and undermining the Geneva Accord, as to deviate from the international pressure imposed upon Israel for its approval. And 33% said that the partial withdrawal from Gaza Strip and the deployment of this early armed forces was the goal.
I’ll give you one other story, one other stat here. Do you think that the Israeli government and the Knesset approval of the redeployment from Gaza Strip came as a result of either the pressure caused by Palestinian resistance during the second Intifada, or the economic and security uselessness of staying in the Gaza Strip or the international press international pressure on Israel, or no opinion?
47% said that the reason the redeployment from the Gaza Strip happened was due to Palestinian resistance. 32% said the economic insecurity and uselessness of staying in Gaza and 15% said the international pressure on Israel.
I want you to take me to where Ahmed was growing up in Gaza. How did you view the story of the withdrawal from Gaza? How did you think about it and what’s your take on when people say Israel left Gaza? And look what they did with it. Hamas takes over and now creates not the Riviera, not Singapore, but creates some extremist place that could lead to the 7th of October, could lead to the butchering of 1200 Israelis, kidnapping, torturing, raping, etc. Bring us back to Ahmed in 2005.
Ahmed: So I left the Gaza Strip one month before the withdrawal took place. I left on July 1st, 2005, to head to the United States as part of an exchange student in California, to live with a host family for a year, experience the United States, go to high school, and then hopefully take that back to the Gaza Strip and build cultural bridges. I remember vividly the lead up, particularly the last year, in Gaza and the lead up to the withdrawal, and how there really were two very competing narratives.
One that was promulgated by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah and Abu Mazen, and those who believed that this withdrawal is meant to kind of, the, the fact that it is only happening in Gaza. That it is happening without any coordination with the Palestinian Authority. That it is happening in a way that creates this vacuum, that creates this territorial spatial kind of vacuum. All of a sudden that could potentially be filled by other players such as Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority was of the belief that while we ultimately wanted to see Gaza and the Palestinian territories free of direct Israeli military occupation and settlers, this was being done at a time and in a manner that we’re not going to serve the goals of the peace process.
How they reach that conclusion, I think is partly because they just, just mistrusted Ariel Sharon, partly because they didn’t believe that Gaza was ripe for a Palestinian Authority controlled environment. This was also gonna happen right after Arafat was, was no longer in the scene. And Abbas was not charismatic. He was not well loved by the Palestinians. So that’s on the Palestinian Authority side that was trying to, that was in a sense, coming across as anti the withdrawal.
Then there was Hamas, which I vividly remember. I mean, and I grew up in Gaza during the second Intifada, I remember the propaganda machine of all the different armed resistance attacks that they would film and distribute. There’s the Netzarim corridor that we hear about all the time, but it was a small settlement, but it had a checkpoint on a coastal checkpoint and one on the Salah al-Din Road, the main coastal highway connecting Gaza’s north to the south. And then there was the Gush Katif complex, which there was also the mirage, by Rafah. And in the South, Hamas got to a place where they were, they mastered the art of digging tunnels and emerging underneath settlement blocks and attacking from within emerging that basically booby trapping tunnels and making them collapse. They mastered the art of smuggling. They basically did exact a heavy price. They were harassing. They weren’t pushing out in a conventional fight, the Israeli military out of Gaza, but especially in the 2003 and above. And so Hamas’ narrative was, this is the result of resistance. This is what we’re achieving for you. Gaza is finally going to be liberated.
So you have these two narratives that were happening, but among these two narratives, that what was missing, and I remember, and I’m going back to like, when I was there and, I hung out with political figures. I sat on Yassar Arafat’s lap as a child. I met Ahmed Yasin, the founder of Hamas. And I mean, like, we, all of those figures were part of–
Noam: What does that mean, you sat on his lap? Was he like pinching your cheeks?
Ahmed: They would go to different spaces. They would go to different–
Noam: Places. So was your family just very well connected also?
Ahmed: Like my, my mom’s oldest brother, uh, uncle Yusef Shahada, he was basically the United Nations of Gaza. So he was not affiliated with anyone. He worked for the Palestinian Authority, but he was not a Fatah guy. He was not a Hamas guy. But also Gaza’s this small. Ahmed Yasin came to the mosque right next to our family’s home. And this was part of Hamas’ strategies to take over mosques and turn them from houses of worship.
Noam: You met Ahmed Yasin?
Ahmed: Very much so, yes.
Noam: That is wild. When I think of Ahmed Yasin. I’m just telling you my reaction. That’s one scary dude. Meaning like, what I of Ahmed Yasin, I’m like, whoa.
Ahmed: He was highly revered in how he was presented. And he was kind of this frail elderly–
Noam: He was paraplegic.
Ahmed: Yes, frail, elderly man who was of kind of like a spiritual guy. Like he had his armed guards with him, and they would show off these M16s that they seized from Israelis, but he would also like have 50 shekels and he would pass it out to young kids.
Noam: The shekels, the shekel bills. Does it have the Israeli heroes?
Ahmed: Oh, yes.
Noam: Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that not funny? That’s, that’s not the right term, not funny.
Ahmed: Ironic. <laugh>
Noam: Ironic. Yeah.
Ahmed: And Hamas’ guys are all walking around. I mean, more shekels is more rockets, more, more recruitment, more tools, more, like It is highly ironic. Yeah. I remember vividly how there were a bunch of us as children, and one of Ahmed Yasin’s guards, I’ll never forget this, he had a Range Rover that was driving Ahmed Yasin. He had three guards.
Noam: That’s nice.
Ahmed: And he was whipping out like the stock of the M16 rifle. And it was an Israeli, uh, they called it katzar. I don’t know what that stands for, but it was like a shortened M16.
Noam: Well, katzar means short.
Ahmed: Oh, okay.
Noam: The context, but could be that, that’s what it means. They
Ahmed: Use Israeli Hebrew language, uh, uh, parlance. And he would make the kids press on the shoulder stock and like, just make the kids like one by one pull in and out the stock. That’s like to say, I touched the weapon of Ahmed Yasin’s guards, and he was like, if you go to the mosque and you do your homework and you obey your parents, then maybe one day we can see you at camp.
Noam: Wow. It sounds like the, almost the opposite of like Hasidic rebbes who are like these great rabbis who you get to, like, if you eat what’s called their shirayim, their leftover food, like, it’s really exciting. You get to eat like the, the Hasidic rebbe’s food. This is like, like a bizarro version of that.
Ahmed: <laugh>. Yeah, there you go. But, my point is that what was missing from the discussion was, what are we gonna do with this withdrawal? Hamas was basically not making it clear what they’re gonna do beyond just like, this is vindication of the armed resistance narrative. Fatah and the PA were like, well, this is Sharon basically trying to set Hamas up to take over Gaza. And I can’t say they were entirely false. Unfortunately, now, I don’t know if this is part of history, if this is part of Revisionism, right? Revisionism to say that Ariel Sharon’s plan all along was for Hamas to take over. Is that really accurate or is this an attempt to abdicate agency and responsibility?
Noam: I, I could like, here, let me be the skeptic again. Lemme be the skeptic. I’ll give you another reason. I don’t believe, let me speak like this. I don’t believe that Ariel Sharon was merely just being a saint and saying Gazans, takeover. I don’t believe that that is the full story. I think that part of the story is also that there was an Arab peace initiative going on in the early aughts.
Ahmed: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Noam: And they felt, meaning the Israelis felt, Sharon specifically felt as though there was gonna be too much pressure on the Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank. So what he’s gonna do is, he is going to withdraw from Gaza and have them avoid more pressure from George Bush, who was the head of the United States at the time.
Ahmed: Mm-hmm.
Noam: And basically say, we’re not gonna leave the West Bank, but we will leave Gaza.
And there was a second issue that, a reason to leave Gaza for the Israelis, which is there was the demographic challenge. Israel views itself as a Jewish and democratic state. And if you’re gonna have 10,000 Israelis live amongst over a million Palestinians
Ahmed: At the time, 1.4,
Noam: 1.4 million. Okay. So we gotta leave.
And then maybe what this argument that you’re suggesting is, it reminds me a little bit of when people say that Bibi Netanyahu helped create Hamas to be able to do what they did on 7th of October. It just, yes. Is it true that Bibi funneled money from Qatar to, to Hamas for whatever reasons? Yes, that did happen. But to the, the subtext is, the reason and the blame for this–
Ahmed: October 7th is, is on Bibi. Yes. No, I agree. This is where I say to this, and this is where I anger a lot of my compatriots and a lot of my fellow Palestinians, is that I say, at what point do we have any responsibility whatsoever in–
Noam: You didn’t have to vote in Hamas.
Ahmed: Well, beyond that, we voted for Hamas. Hamas took us to our first “divine victory,” as they call. That’s how they, that’s literally in quotation–
Noam: What’s the divine victory? ’05?
Ahmed: No, after every war against Israel, they, they come out and say, by virtue of the fact that we are still in power, and we are still ruling Gaza, and we haven’t collapsed in 08-08, 2012, 2014, 2021, after every one of these rounds, the fact that it ends with a ceasefire and Hamas is still standing, that is divine victory (arabic words) means victory.
I’m saying this obviously sarcastically. My point is, I am somewhere in the middle that is marginally empathetic to the Jewish perspective that Gaza was an opportunity for the Palestinians, and it was turned into a platform for terrorism. Uh, not marginalized, I should say. I’m quite empathetic to that point of view.
Noam: But just for a second, it is the case that Israel left Gaza and different things could have happened.
Ahmed: Well, and, and,
Noam: And I love, I love being dystopian. I love imagining what…
Ahmed: But there’s also a case that Israel, when it left, I mean, it wasn’t like the Palestinian Authority, for example, was interested in discussing the potential to bring back the Gaza Airport that was destroyed in the second Intifada. And like the control over the airspace, control over the territorial waters, like that was very robustly enforced. Even though the Palestinian Authority was down to negotiate security arrangements, there was the general Keith Dayton, who was working with the Palestinian Authority and Abbas, and establishing this agreement with the Jordanians to train the new cadre of Palestinian Authority security personnel.
Because Yasser Arafat played a double game. Towards the end of his life, he didn’t really want to proceed with Oslo in the way that he had envisioned. And he was very resentful after Israel kind of isolated him in his compound in Ramallah. And Abbas wanted to completely do away with that, and was largely able to kind of save the West Bank from becoming a total hub for Hamas and working with the Americans, working with the Jordanians to do counter-terrorism, to do security, to reestablish security coordination.
So we as Palestinians, just because Sharon may have wanted this trap, we didn’t have to fall in the trap through the Palestinian Authority’s inability to come up with a compelling vision for how Gaza could be transformed into the role model for what the West Bank would look like.
And I’m gonna tell you a little piece of history here, and a little cultural, something, that is very taboo to speak about in the Palestinian context, but for why the West Bank-based Authority neglected Gaza. So the Palestinian Authority neglected it. Hamas was like, my goodness, now we have all this ground to train our fighters to work with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
By the way, this was the time when Khatami, the former president, Muhammad Khatami, a really supposedly pragmatic leader of Iran, his reign was coming to an end. Ahmadinejad was coming in. It was a much more of a hard liner conservative figure. This was a time when Hezbollah was really re-arming and getting ready for its own 2006 war. So Hamas decided to plug into the Iranian structure for supporting the “resistance.” Border controls between Gaza and Egypt were, loose tunnels were the name of the game. And Hamas was like, my goodness. And now the Israelis have left the Philadelphi corridor. We are going to double and triple down on this. The 2006 elections was a failed attempt that was really forced by the United States. It was not an organic.
Noam: And they were shocked, the United States was shocked.
Amhed: And they were shocked. Yes. United States were shocked, yes. To find out.
Noam: Were you shocked? Mean, were you shocked when you, when you found out Hamas won?
Ahmed: Not in the slightest. You
Noam: Weren’t in the
Ahmed: I wasn’t. I maintain, and people will analyze this to death, but in my conversations with people, I maintained contact, close contact with Gaza throughout my time here. It was very much so a vote against the Palestinian Authority rather than a vote for Hamas.
There were like two to three issues that people in Gaza were genuinely terrified by. The Palestinian authority allowed chaos on lawlessness in Gaza. It was the norm for people to actually walk around with AKs and guns and kind of show off and shoot in the air and do all of those things. Believe it or not, later on, it was Hamas that prevented that. Hamas, I instituted a system, I mean, monopoly on violence 101.
That’s, you know, a lot of these Islamist groups, that’s why wherever Hamas or the Taliban or ISIS or Al-Qaeda take over all of these Islamist groups, whenever they take over, crime and lawlessness goes down to a minimum.
Noam: Wow.
Ahmed: Because they make a point of establishing a monopoly on violence. So Hamas capitalized on that sense of vulnerability that so many people, my dad told me the story of, they wanted to go check out Gush Katif. There was like a convoy, just like onlookers, just like people took taxis. And he and my mom and my sister and a family friend took a car to go to Gush Katif. Let’s look at this land that we’ve never been into. And there were all of these just thugs all around with guns and AKs.
And there was Palestinian Authority police nearby, but one of them tried to, got into like a road rage incident with the driver of the vehicle that my parents were in. And this was like right after the withdrawal. And this guy like came and like tried to like battle and kill the driver of the car where my family were in. And the Palestinian police were just standing there and like doing absolutely nothing.
The clans that Netanyahu wanted to somehow empower as the alternative to Hamas, those clans were notorious for being drug lords. And I’m sorry, all love to my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza, who are part of the famous clans, I’m not speaking, I’m saying there were elements within many of these clans because of their large size, because of their control of territory, there were no go zones. Palestinian Authority police couldn’t touch them.
Hamas, Hamas’ whole ticket for the, the elections in 2006 was law and order. We’re gonna stop lawlessness, we’re gonna stop the chaos of the guns. We’re gonna stop the proliferation of all of this chaos that the PA is unable to stop. And then on the other side, they said, we’re gonna bring you the best of both worlds, Palestinian people. We’re gonna bring you the benefits of resistance that freed Gaza.
And Al Jazeera Arabic made it completely a viable narrative. Al Jazeera was always on the side of Hamas. I mean, Al Jazeera is the media arm of Hamas. And I’m not saying that as hyperbole, I’m almost a free speech absolutist, but I wholeheartedly believe in the necessity to ban Al Jazeera, and even to go a step further to prosecute them for crimes against the Palestinian people. I’m just talking about the Palestinians.
So we’re gonna bring you the benefits of resistance, and we’re gonna actually be like a governance body. We’re gonna bring in on our religious piety means no more corruption, means law and order. We are not afraid of death. Those PA Palestinian Authority policemen who are too afraid to confront these, we are gonna go and confront these clans. We’re gonna confront the lawlessness and we’re gonna bring you the best of both worlds.
And it wasn’t an overwhelming majority that won. And I remember vividly, my mom told me the story. So my dad ran an UNRWA clinic in Jabaliya. The UNRWA being is the United Nation, the currently the currently controversial United Nations refugee and works agency.
Noam: They’ve been controversial. They’ve been controversial for a while. I wrote a piece about them in 2006,
Ahmed: Certainly, certainly. But like, especially,
Noam: But now, right now there’s been a lot controversial, especially a lot of talk right now.
Ahmed: So my dad ran an UNRWA clinic and, and, and he worked in Rafah and then eventually in Jabalia and ended up, uh, being there. But, uh, my mom was a math teacher at a high school in a government school.
Noam: Are your parents still there?
Ahmed: Uh, my dad passed away four years ago. I got my, my mom’s out of Gaza and, and I got some other family members out. But, so my mom told me the story of how the Fatah guys and the PA guys were so nervous and anxious that they were passing out all of the, like right outside of these voting booths. They were passing out these parcels, something that Hamas had mastered brilliantly in the eighties and nineties by setting up a social welfare system.
The Fatah thought, oh, we’ll just mimic Hamas. So they passed out rice bread, cooking oil, sugar, lentils.
Noam: I like everything so far, except for the lentils. Not the lentils.
Ahmed: Yeah. <laugh> and powdered milk. Oh,
Noam: Oh, no, not for me.
Ahmed: And, and, and, um, flour. Okay. And some other like staples basically. And were like, vote for Fatah, vote for prosperity. And then she said, some people were just like taking the parcels and going in there and voting for Hamas anyway.
I think it’s worthy of understanding when people say they voted Hamas back then was not Hamas of, now Hamas back then was a completely, like, it was a, a tiny shell of its current former self.
Noam: In terms of power.
Ahmed: Power infrastructure reach, messaging control, access, weaponry in terms of the range of the Qassam rockets–
Noam: Okay, but their charter from 87, 88 is like, was wild.
Ahmed: Oh, of course. I’m not disputing the ideology. I’m simply saying–
Noam: When we Americans read the charter, we’re like, you voted that in? You like, what? And your answer is, well, it’s not really how they were thinking. They were thinking in terms of law and order. They were thinking in terms of social services, alternative to the corrupt–
Ahmed: Alternative to the corruption of the PA.
Noam: Corruption of the PA, again, to me doesn’t absolve, but still, I can at least understand the Palestinian people in Gaza much better that way.
Ahmed: And I promise you, the Palestinian people in Gaza, like, who voted for Hamas, not one of them has actually read the charter of Hamas. And it’s kind of like, it’s irrelevant at this point. Like if you’re a day laborer, you just, you’re hoping that Hamas’ social welfare system could somehow be expanded, um, onto others.
Noam: I have a random question for you. Could you be publicly gay in Gaza?
Ahmed: No. And that preceded Hamas.
Noam: You cannot be publicly LGBTQ.
Ahmed: No, no. Absolutely not. And that is–
Noam: Why not?
Ahmed: is true, because it’s seen as not in line, not just with Islamic values, but Palestinian cultural values. I mean, you can as ascertain in the United States, why was it illegal for, you know, gay people to get married in the United States until 2013? You can ascertain that it was based on a Judeo-Christian tradition that informed law.
What I’m trying to say is Palestinian society, in that sense, for this issue, is conservative, irrelevant, and irrespective of, um, Islam.
Noam: But the Islamism of Hamas only made it more extreme.
Ahmed: Precisely.
Noam: I don’t, I don’t wanna I don’t wanna shock you, but there are probably many gay Palestinians living in Gaza.
Ahmed: Sure. But they, Hamas executed one of their own, um, military commanders, one of their top military commanders that because they accused him of homosexuality.
Noam: Wow.
Ahmed: And Hamas in fact allegedly executed some of its own members who were involved in October 7th because they were engaged in homosexuality.
Noam: I mean, this is fascinating to me. And fascinating also, I think when you see, like extreme progressives in the US support Hamas, when you’re like, wait, wait. Do you understand who Hamas is? How do you square that?
Ahmed: Well, let’s just step back a little bit from Hamas and say like, I am a believer that, and I’m obviously like my values here in the United States right now, and after years of living here, and I was in San Francisco for heaven’s sake, for, you know, for, for a decade and a half. So my values now are obviously not reflective of where I was when I was in Gaza, nor are they reflective of where many Palestinians are in Gaza or in the West Bank are.
But nevertheless, my observation is that the Palestinian people have not had the space or the time to evolve societally and to deal with these social issues and to deal with honor killings and to deal with women’s rights, and this isn’t an attempt to exonerate it as much as it’s an attempt to understand why is it that the Palestinian people are not friendly to the LGBTQ community when Israel very much so is.
And obviously I am repulsed by anyone who thinks that Hamas is somehow representative of the Palestinian aspirations, the legitimate aspirations for freedom, dignity, independence, and therefore are willing to overlook the fact that Hamas are an Islamist terrorist, extremist, horrendous organization.
Hamas started in 2008. I remember there was a decree of like, and I don’t know if it persevered, but oh, women can’t smoke shisha, hookah, on the beach because that’s unbefitting of Palestinian values. And then in 2020, they try to get to a place where like, oh, women can’t leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing without the authorization of a, a male guardian.
And then in like 2022, I was talking to a friend of mine that I was nurturing her, uh, tutoring her rather to speak English and get out of Gaza on a scholarship, uh, to go to Europe. And she told me that she met with a guy who, uh, went on the same scholarship and they met at a coffee shop. And she was just like trying to understand, you know, what, what the, is all involved.
And then like Hamas’ version of the FBI came up to them and said, Hey, are you guys married? You know, and then they asked the guy, they were like, her friend. So would you like it if your sister just went out randomly with a dude to grab coffee in the middle of the day? And he was just like, escalating with the Hamas like police and like, you know, so like this, so in five or 10 years of October 7th didn’t happen. Like we could see like a scenario where like the hijabs are like forced. We could see a scenario where the Overton window keeps shifting ever so slowly.
Noam: To much more extreme conservative values.
Ahmed: Precisely, precisely. That said, what I personally and listeners can disagree with that, that’s fine. I get irritated by the attempt to somehow belittle the entirety of the Palestinian people strictly based on their position vis-a-vis homosexuality. And I’m, again, my point is, in the United States, in Israel, in the liberal western world, there are many who purely on faith basis or on cultural basis… look at the backlash towards the trans movement in the United States by people who are not even that religious, who are just against the gender non-binary movement.
And, I’m not saying right or wrong, I’m simply saying that that is somewhat of a global phenomenon, and there’s a nefarious attempt to especially rub it in the Palestinian face and say, this is how backwards and inferior you are. With all due respect to my gay brothers and sisters, I’m much more worried about dealing with issues around violence against women and women’s ability to not face horrendous situations in Gaza and certainly in the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority’s law still skews heavily towards a conservative version of the society.
Noam: Right. I think it’s just, people view it as their odd bedfellows, these two groups, like, like seeing American campuses filled with people who are
Ahmed: Queers for Palestine.
Noam: Yeah. It just, it seems like it, it seems odd. I wouldn’t have created thought of put two together in Jewish terms. I wouldn’t have created the shidduch. I wouldn’t have like said, you two should get married. I would, yes. It wouldn’t have been my first thought.
Ahmed: Yes.
Noam: So, so let’s, I wanna get to the present now. So 2023, October 7th, 2023 happens. You’ve had at least 30, 31 people in your family killed
Ahmed: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Noam: In Gaza. Yes.
Ahmed: 33.
Noam: 33 people killed in your family, killed by Israel in response to what happened on the 7th of October. And yet you’re sitting here with me today, talking about the history of the Palestinians, the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and not just that, but the future, the future. What does the future hold? Why are you talking about this? Why are, why is this important for you to figure out and what does the future hold?
Ahmed: Well, there are different threads that have kind of converged to get me here. I would say at a rudimentary level, for me, I, I feel that October 7th has become an existential threat to the very existence of the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip. I think that what Hamas did on that day, what Hamas unleashed upon our people that, and I view October 7th to me as the totality of the past, you know, almost 20 years leading, it passed the withdrawal of, of Israeli settlements and the many missed opportunities and the decisions and the, you know, my thesis is that within the imbalance of power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians, with Israel clearly having the overwhelming military, political, economic, and other advantages, there very much so is a, there’s space for Palestinian agency accountability and responsibly responsibility, rather, in a way to defy the simplistic oppressed-oppressor dynamics that while true in many regards, overlook critical junction junctures at which the rulers of the Palestinian people in Gaza, could have made different decisions that would’ve avoided the bloodshed, that would’ve avoided the destruction of Gaza.
That would’ve actually turned Gaza regardless of Ariel Sharon’s vision, regardless of the Palestinian Authority’s, upsetness with the withdrawal could have turned Gaza into a role model for effective Palestinian self-governance. Into a compelling example that can actually pressure Israel to withdraw from more settlements in the West Bank, which at the time weren’t as populated as they are nowadays.
That could have been compelling to young Palestinians to have the heroes that we talked about in the last episode, to have the vision for, this is my home. We get to build a nation. How exciting, how thrill, like most people around the world, like their nations are established. Yeah, you don’t have, people are trying to figure out how to make money, but here we’re building a nation. I feel like Gaza could have been ground zero for the revitalized Palestinian nationhood and statehood to finally start defining what are we for much more than what are we against to finally move away from some of the historic inclinations of the Palestinian national movement to coalesce again around the Palestinian identity in response to Zionism, in response to Israeli aggressions and wars and actions.
And to finally define, who are we, how are we different than the Jordanians? How are we different than the other Arabs? What’s unique about, is it Gaza? Is it the Mediterranean? Is it the knafeh? And there are actually subcultures within Gaza versus the West Bank, versus Northern Gaza and Southern Gaza.
And instead of Gaza being ground zero for transformation and nation building and invigoration and using our most precious asset, our demographic advantage, our large number of people who are under 18, Gaza became ground zero for the most ruthless terror organization to hold our people hostage, to dumb down the level of education, the level of culture in the Gaza Strip, to reduce Palestinian nationalism to Islamism and alliance with the worst actors in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran that’s loathed by the majority of the Iranian people. Hezbollah, that’s loathed by large segments of Lebanese society, Syria’s Bashar Assad, who was literally carrying out some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity, I would argue in, in modern history.
And I’m not a sectarian. I love my Shia brothers and sisters. I’m simply saying that ISIS was able to exploit the criminality of Iranian backed Shia militias in Iraq who were brutalizing the Sunni population in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s collapse. And the Houthis, my goodness, the Houthis that these NGOs reported on as having brought back slavery in parts of Yemen and brought, you know, like taken, you know, Ethiopian women and workers seeking to escape, uh, and going to Saudi Arabia or whatever as slaves. This is who Hamas aligns us with as part of the axis of resistance.
The Palestinian people who have, despite their conservatism, been very secular. My family’s very Muslim, like, there’s no one who’s not a hijabi in my family. I’m not particularly religious. And I, I’ve had some friction with my family over my inclinations, even when I was younger. ’cause I would ask a lot of taboo questions.
Noam: If you have a lot of questions, you could just become Jewish.
Ahmed: One question has how many answers?
Noam: Exactly. You just keep on asking questions.
Ahmed: So I’m, but like Gaza became ground zero for Hamas to abdicate its responsibility as a government. And we saw Mousa Abu Marzook saying right after October 7th, the responsibility of taking care of our people is for the UN and the international community. That’s not our responsibility. And we built our tunnels to protect ourselves. And unfortunately, the NGO industrial complex, many of whom are my friends and and my family are involved in that and many of whom are partners.
And whether it be the international aid organizations or UNWRA or all these, and this is not a carte blanche condemnation of UNWRA. And I almost would rather not touch UNWRA from that for the time being. But just understand that I, I hold multiple truths about UNWRA. And yes, I do see a lot of problematic things about it beyond just what the kind of pro-Israel classical narrative has. And yes, it’s horrendous that some of its members allegedly took part in October 7th. And I think that is worthy of an investigation and consequences.
What happened on October 7th is the crowning achievement of Hamas failure, ironically, like failure at such a grand level that it almost counts as an achievement, which is squander billions of dollars worth of aid. And Palestinian people’s resources cause the loss of life of tens of thousands of peoples, um, enable and empower the far right in Israel.
And those who believe that the Palestinians should never have statehood and should never have autonomy and sovereignty for they will always turn it into a platform to attack. Israel, destroy the peace movement in Israel, many of whom were literally butchered and burned to death on October 7th in the kibbutzim.
I was telling a friend of mine when I walked in, ’cause one day I hoped to visit the kibbutzim that were impacted by October 7th. And in Gaza, the narrative and the story is that there’s no recognition that these kibbutzim go back tens of years or, or or decades. There’s no acknowledgement of the peaceniks that live there. There’s no, even though some of those peaceniks in the kibbutzim were helping the Gazans–
Noam: I’ve met a number of them that had very close relationship with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Ahmed: Precisely. But the widespread narrative that Hamas promulgates is that these are settlers. They were all lumped together as, oh, well, Israel just moved the settlers out of Gaza and spread them across the border. Israel is using the settlers as a way to keep us all trapped in here, without saying the fact that like, well, these are Gaza’s internationally agreed upon borders. This is the 1967 borders. So who Israel chooses to put on its side of the fence is not something that is the jurisdiction of Hamas, even if they were settlers from Gaza. But again, it’s a way to dehumanize the communities that live in the Gaza Envelope
Noam: Well, if you’re able to get rid of your cognitive dissonance, then it makes it much easier to do things that are heinous.
Ahmed: APeople ask. And I used to be of that belief, and like to this day, a lot of analysts, a lot of commentators, and I actually have changed my mind on this, that Hamas deliberately attacked the Kibbutzim to kill the peace movement, to promulgate hate, to push for it.
Noam: Oh, wow.
Ahmed: And I used to be of that belief, but honestly, I actually think Hamas is ignorant of these. They might be sophisticated in warfare and tunnels and combined arms that led to the success, the tragic success, I should say, of October 7th. But they’re not sophisticated to understand that these are a lot of like, kind of hippie type peaceniks who absolutely looked at Gazans for the most part as their neighbors and sought long-term relationships with them.
Hamas wasn’t even that sophisticated to 3D game it and think, wow, this is how I’m gonna make sure there’s perpetual conflict, is by further weakening the peace movement and attacking the kibbutzim.
Noam: So let me ask you this. What’s the future? Tell me what, not as a politician, but we talked, spoke about the past, we spoke about the present. Just I want to end this episode with you telling me, just, uh, give me a couple highlights. What does the future hold?
Ahmed: I think with Hamas in control of Gaza, there is no future. I have gone to great lengths to try to war game scenarios in which Hamas could be politically rehabilitated, in which some of them could be recycled as the IRA model or Shin Finn, or as what happened with the F ARC rebels in Colombia and the power sharing agreement, or even what happened with the Palestinian Authority where many of the PLO’s then-recognized terrorists became kind of the nucleus for the security forces that came back to the Palestinian territories. I fail to see beyond acknowledging that some Hamas members and even fighters are just in it because of the jobs, because of, yes, there’s ideology, but it is a job. There’s a salary behind it. This is what they know. They’ve been ideologically indoctrinated into it.
They are enthusiastic about being a part of Hamas. They are enthusiastic about the martyrdom narrative. They’re enthusiastic about this idea of, I want to be here because this is good for Palestinians. This is courageous. But I strongly believe that many of them are young enough that perhaps if there is an alternative with enough of a kind of low period, maybe some of them are, and hopefully many of them can be salvaged. Because at the end of the day, other than the elimination of every single member you, which is not feasible for a variety of reasons, it’s really difficult to imagine Hamas, the idea you can replace Hamas the idea with a better idea, but you cannot replace what’s in the head of every Hamas members with war and with attacks. So what I thought about endlessly, about ways of systems of, do you just exile some of them? Do you give a system of incentives? Do you do weapon buybacks?
Noam: Should the US own it?
Ahmed: Absolutely not. This incoherent plan that has been provided, I mean, this has been such a distraction. It has sucked the oxygen out of the room.
I believe the US can and should play a role in helping transform Gaza and should pressure the Arab world. Like how about the US pressuring the Arab world? I would’ve been totally fine if Mr. Trump got all of the Arabs in uniform fashion to say, Hamas, you’re finished, you’re done Show me one formal Arab statement that explicitly condemns Hamas since October 7th that calls out their corruption, that calls out them holding the Palestinians hostages that calls out them sabotaging the two state solution. And part of that is, they have hostile populations that have been incited by social media and by Al Jazeera. But still like that I would like to see Arab leadership on just is separating Hamas from Gaza and isolating them and saying., you have to go, you have to leave.
Noam: Right, because if, if Egypt did that, and if Jordan did that, and if the Saudis did that, then what happens?
Ahmed: Then Hamas understands that it no longer has political cover. And we get the Qataris that, I mean, Mr. Trump can easily, with the Al Udeid air base that the United States has on Qatari soil could easily get the Qatari to stop al Jazeera’s meddling basically. And being a pro Hamas outlet, he could pressure the Turks into pulling back on providing any shelter, basically dry up Hamas’ political, economic and territorial support so that they’re isolated and out of options.
Noam: And what about the future of the Israelis and the Palestinian people? Meaning, from a humanitarian lens and from like a just human to human lens? And one of the things that I, I think about, and you’ve spoken about this in the past, is I would love Israelis to learn Jewish Israelis to learn Arabic. And I would love Palestinian Arabs, and Gaza and the West Bank to learn Hebrew.
Ahmed: The Palestinian Authority. One of the first things they did when they came to Gaza, which was such a horrendous decision, they took Hebrew out of the curriculums. It used to be the norm that all schools taught Hebrew.
Noam: Wow.
Ahmed: The older generations of my uncles and everybody in the past learned Hebrew in schools. And the Palestinian Authority, as part of bolstering Palestinian nationalism, and the separation, stopped teaching that to them.
But going back to the history piece, I mean, look, this has kind of been a, a life altering moment. My life has never been the same since October 7th. And since this
Noam: Are you nervous about Hamas coming at you?
Ahmed: For sure, but I’m also like, I’m not backing down. I’m not afraid, and I’m not saying this as like a pumping my chest, but I, Palestinian pragmatists, rational voices and moderates, though my least favorite word, word of all times.
Noam: Yeah. Moderate is, people don’t view moderate as like a sexy term. How do you create a movement outta being moderate?
Ahmed: Well, I wouldn’t be doing all of this if I didn’t think that there is a possibility for a future that is promising for Gaza, where it is rejuvenated, not just reconstructed. I don’t want Gaza to just be reconstructed so that we go back to the old cycles, especially with Hamas’ control, but also like, as part of the reconstruction, as part of the renaissance of Gaza, has to be kind of a cultural and a political evolution of the Palestinian narrative. And that’s going to be difficult because it’s hard.
I mean, look at some of the backlash that I receive. I get a lot of Palestinians who are privately interested in what I’m saying and who are fascinated by it. And they think I’m an important voice and that I should keep going. And there are people who view me as somebody who is part of the discourse, but they’re afraid of, and and some will tell me, thank God someone else is saying this publicly. Or I have family, I have children, I have a job. I can’t do this publicly. I wanna normalize and create a critical mass of Palestinians that can say this. So that security concerns and fear of backlash become less and less of a kind of the barrier of a barrier to entry.
Noam: What’s interesting about you is, when I was listening throughout this, this entire conversation and, and the first episode as well, listen, you said things that I, I don’t, like you had language and framings that I don’t necessarily agree with, but there’s something about you that allows me to, like, I trust you. I believe you. I believe that you believe in a really better future. I believe that you’re trying to solve the problem not to entrench yourself in the problem.
Ahmed: Certainly.
Noam: And, and, and that is, that to me is, is heroic.
Ahmed: I’m a believer that even if other people want to tokenize me, that’s their problem. I will never tokenize myself. That is a power that I hold. And this is what I tell Palestinians, who often tell me what, you’re saying is right, Ahmed, I believe the Hamas and the failures of the Palestinian national, Arafat, oh my God, you are completely right. But I am worried about saying this and then the Zionists are gonna flock to me. This is how they literally say, and in, in the, I put in quotes, uh, for the listeners, the Zionists are gonna flock to me and they’re gonna agree with me, and I don’t know how to feel about that.
And I’m like, first of all, what’s so awful about having a tactical agreement, even if you’re ideologically, let’s, let’s even a tactical agreement with the Zionists that we may disagree on all of this, but Hamas is a horrendous player. The Israelis and the Jewish people see it this way, and Hamas see, and, and, and Palestinian nationalists see it as this way. Like why can’t we agree on that? What’s wrong with that?
Number two is, aren’t we Palestinians and the pro-Palestine people, the amount of people that love Gidon Levy when he writes for Haaretz something that’s so anti-Israel, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, I can never say his last name,
Noam: Gidon Levy. Ilan Pappe. These folks, yeah.
Ahmed: Like people gravitate towards them as you see, or, or, or Omer Bartov who is an Israeli scholar that supports the allegation that what is happening in Gaza is, is a genocide.
I have, by the way for the record, said that as horrendous and as awful as is, I, I don’t believe what’s happening in Gaza is genocide. Yet, right now, I believe there could be elements of genocide there. I think there are people in the Israeli government who would like to commit genocide. I think there are people in Israel society who would absolutely endorse genocide. But is it the official policy of the state of Israel to carry out a genocide in its textbook definition? Absolutely not. That doesn’t take away from the fact that half of my family are dead, half of my folks are destroyed in Gaza. I have called it war crimes. I believe strongly that targeting civilian areas, even if there are terrorists with immense collateral damage, quote unquote, I’ve talked to American, uh, fi war fighters, I’ve talked to American commanders, I’ve talked to Kurdish commanders in Northern Iraq who said, we have had situations where we know is an ISIS fighter is hiding in a building with all these civilians, and we make a decision not to target it. So like, I’m happy to have that discussion, and I will go to the moon and back in believing that there have been war crimes committed.
But it is this obsession with labeling it a genocide, which is something that some protestors were doing on day two before the war even began. I think it’s a distraction. I think it’s a conversation ender. I think it ignores the fact that you cannot cry wolf or play games with international law and established norms and words that carry meaning. But for me, I find it really problematic that people are afraid to speak out against Hamas just because Jews might agree with you, or Israelis might agree with you.
When the pro-Palestine people look to Omer Bartov to prove, oh, we have an Israeli, we have this one or two, or this other professor, um, we have these two Israelis that say it is in fact a genocide, so therefore it’s a genocide. Like, aren’t all people always looking for somebody who bolsters their argument? So you can make a decision to not tokenize yourself by believing what you’re believing by holding multiple truths, by not giving up ground just because Jews and Zionists agree with you on this one issue.
Noam: See, and that’s why I wanted to speak to you because things that you said don’t validate my perspective. And to everyone listening, you heard things from Ahmed, these last two episodes. Some of the things that you will agree with, some of the things you will disagree with. He is not here to validate your views. He is not here to make sure that you could tell your mother or your father, see, Ahmed said that, he is not to be instrumentalized by you or by me that way. But what we heard and what I heard were conversations about Palestinian history, about the story, about what it’s like to grow up there, about what it was like that you learned there, about what it was like for you to experience the, the unilateral withdrawal, for your telling of the story of Hamas, which is so important to understand the story of Hamas, and to think about what the future holds. So I want to thank you so much for spending a lot of time with me.
Ahmed: Can I end on a really important note, please? We started with the first episode by saying, I am not a historian and I am not here to claim to represent Palestinians or the Palestinian view. And I encourage anyone and everyone to be skeptical of anybody who claims I am speaking for the Palestinians, even if they’re a Palestinian authority official, or Hamas official, or a pro-Palestine protestor. What I want to leave you with is that while I might be the loud mouth, while I might be difficult to scare away, while I might be uncompromising in my views, in kind of like my radical pragmatism, there are many Palestinians who hold a variety of the beliefs that you heard. The pragmatic beliefs, the pro peace, pro coexistence the need to evolve, the desire to forge a different pathway forward, the recognition that the fates of both of our peoples, our intricately twined intertwined.
And that doesn’t mean kumbaya, but there’s different modalities for at times separation, at times cooperation. I am far from alone in believing that in Palestinian society, in the diaspora. But what I care about the most is in the Gaza Strip. The people there may not speak English as well as I do. They may not have the platform that I do, and trying to run away from either bombardment or from Hamas’ persecution is a difficult task. So I am not a unicorn. That is not a helpful way to look at me. I am merely an example of how when a Palestinian is given an environment to thrive, to ask the questions, to learn the history, to not be corralled into a narrative based on kind of an enforced conformity. This is what you get. You get diversity, you get creative thinking. We are an educated, talented people. And I believe that we will absolutely come out of this better. If we will it, for it will not be a dream.
Noam: Amen, brother. Ahmed, thank you.
Ahmed: Thank you so much.
Noam: Thank you so much. For being here with me on this snowy day in Washington, DC and thank you all for listening and see you next week.
Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media. Check out Jewishunpacked.com for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts. You can hit me up at noam@jewishimpacted.com. Your email might even get on the show.
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Rob Pera and Alex Harris. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for being here and see you next week.