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Entrevista do Prof. Ilan Pappe, concedida no Centro de Estudos Palestinos, da USP. Ilan Pappe aborda as perspectivas da resistência do povo palestino face ao mais feroz e brutal processo colonial que persiste na atualidade.
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00:00Olá a todos, é um prazer receber nessa segunda edição do Entrevista CEPAL o grande historiador
00:15israelense radicado no Reino Unido, professor na Universidade de Exeter, Ilan Pappi. Ilan Pappi,
00:22it's a great pleasure to receive you here at the University of São Paulo, at the Center for
00:26Palestine Studies, e receber a convite nosso do CEPAL para realizar essa entrevista o professor
00:33Salem Nasser, da FGV, do canal próprio Selective Blindness, Cegueira Seletiva. Salem, muito
00:43obrigada pelo convite, é um prazer recebê-lo para essa entrevista. Eu que agradeço, é uma grande honra,
00:48obrigado mesmo. Eu queria só começar dizendo, antes de passar a palavra para o Salem, que a entrevista
00:54vai ser em inglês, por motivos óbvios, o professor Ilan Pappi vai responder as perguntas em inglês,
00:59e eu queria só mostrar os livros dele que estão publicados no Brasil. Ele tem 26 livros publicados
01:05em vários idiomas, esse livro foi o primeiro publicado no Brasil, A Limpeza Étnica da Palestina,
01:11uma pesquisa muito importante, que realmente mexeu muito com o campo da historiografia palestina,
01:18trazendo novos paradigmas e compreensões da história palestina. Está traduzido em 17 línguas,
01:23incluindo português. Foi traduzido pela editora Sanderman. Depois foi traduzido e publicado
01:3010 mitos sobre Israel. Continua com uma procura muito grande, tem também uma pesquisa extremamente
01:36importante para entender a história israelo e palestina ao mesmo tempo. E o quarto livro publicado
01:46foi A Maior Prisão do Mundo, recém publicado esse ano, junto com uma brevíssima história da
01:52Palestina, pela mesma editora Elefante. Então, aqui a gente tem a Sanderman, a editora Tabla,
01:58a editora Elefante. E eu trago também só mais um livro que está em português, mas português de
02:05Portugal, que é a história da Palestina moderna. Sai um pouco caro para comprar, porque tem que ser
02:10importado de Portugal, mas está em português. Então, os nossos alunos aqui na USP usam bastante
02:16esse livro, assim como usam muitos outros livros também. Então, it's really a great pleasure to
02:22receive you here for this interview at the Center.
02:24Obrigado, professor Aline. Muito obrigado por me. Professor Ilan,
02:34welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. It is a pleasure to have you in Brazil and to meet you
02:39in person. I would like to start by saying that I agree with Edward Said when he said that you
02:45were the foremost intellectual working on the Palestinian question. I believe he was right,
02:51and it still holds true. Thank you. I wanted to ask you a few questions,
02:59touching on points that are not at the center stage in these days when we are living through a genocide.
03:06So everybody wants to know about Gaza, about the genocide, about the actual present situation.
03:15But there are some things that you have said in other channels and other places,
03:21and that I would like you to deepen a little bit in the discussion. The first of them is one idea that
03:29has provoked reactions in the world, around the world. That is the idea that Israel is
03:36nearing its end. So some people have reacted to this statement by thinking that maybe this was
03:46something that was going to happen any time now. But I would like you to go a little bit more into
03:53the details. What does it mean for us to say that Israel as a project is coming to an end?
04:02Is it the end of Zionism? Is it the end of colonial project? Is it the end of state? Is it the end of the
04:10Jewish presence in the Middle East? How do you see this end? Other than the time it will take? But what
04:19exactly does this end mean? Yeah. Thank you for having me once again. I was talking about, first of all,
04:26about the beginning of the end. Uh huh. So I can see indicators of a process that is only in the
04:33making. So it's not the end. But there are indication that this we are beginning here a process
04:41or a set of processes that can lead to the disintegration of the state or the undermining of
04:49of the regime. Of course, it's very difficult to predict the exact details. But what I mean by this,
04:58that there are two, almost two possibilities here. One, I'm quite confident about the other one. I am
05:08hoping about, which is not the same thing. What I'm confident about is that the social implosion inside
05:18Israel, it's economic crisis. It's international isolation. It's a very complicated and difficult
05:31relationship with young Jewish communities around the world. And it's continued. What for me is quite
05:38clear. It will continue to have aggressive policies that would alienate not only the Palestinians and
05:49the Arab world. I do believe would also make it very difficult for those Arab countries that now think
05:56that normalization is possible. I think even they would find it very difficult to maintain that kind
06:04of attitude towards Israel. And of course, given the fact that public opinion is important, I do believe
06:13that also the process, and this is a process I'm talking that I believe is happening, not one I'm hoping
06:19for. There will be also change, I think, in the European policy towards Israel. And I may even say, I'm not
06:28sure that the American unconditional support for Israel would continue, if not because of a change in the
06:36regime in America, mainly a more progressive democratic party coming to power. Again, not tomorrow, not the day
06:43after. Or even if there is a more Republican orientation, given the fact that Israel is going to be a huge
06:53economic liability, even that kind of American regime might find it difficult to sustain Israel. So for all
07:01these reasons, I feel confident that I'm right in saying that this is these the processes of this
07:09integration are happening and they create chaos. They create inability of Israel, I think, to properly defend
07:19itself. If we're looking at Gaza, one aspect of Gaza we don't talk about is the fact that every time the
07:28Israelis were trying to have a real confrontation with the Palestinian guerrillas, they are not winning. They are
07:36very good at bombing everything from the air. And the same happened with Hezbollah in Lebanon. After all,
07:43the Israeli army had to withdraw with its tail between its legs in the summer of 2000. Once it started to
07:51fight directly Hezbollah, and we're talking in both cases of guerrilla groups that are not armies, they don't
07:58have air force, they don't have proper, they don't have tanks, they definitely don't have great generals and
08:04strategies. And yet Israel find it very, very difficult to defeat it. So I think this kind of
08:12increased insecurity on the borders inside, I also do believe that the Palestinians in the West Bank will
08:20not remain quiet, especially if Israel will try to impose on them the same policies it does in the
08:26way in the Gaza Strip. So I'm, I'm quite confident there will be a third, maybe we should call it the fourth
08:32intifada. Maybe October was the third intifada. This is a would be a very unsafe, destabilized state that would
08:41push a lot of its elite outside of it. So maybe on paper, the state will still be there. But you know, I don't see it as a
08:50as a sustainable project. What I wish for, and what I'm worried and that's why I even want to talk to
08:57the Israelis about it, is that this is not my wish for Israel, neither for the Jews or the Palestinians.
09:04What I wish for is to try and convince people that since the disintegration is inevitable, maybe we could
09:13make this process less violent and maybe we can build. And this is of course a mission we should ask the
09:21Palestinians to take upon themselves to build an alternative. Uh, and, and the alternative is for me
09:29is a very clear one, but much less assured one, you know? So I, I, I rely on what I hear, especially the
09:37the younger Palestinian generation hoping for, I share these hopes for a democratic, uh, state from
09:45the river to the sea, a regime that respects equality that reconnects Palestine to the Arab world. All this
09:54I hope will happen. I try to believe that it will happen because of I'm an optimist, but I'm much more
10:01confident on the processes that will create the conditions for building something new. If we fail
10:09to build something new, we will not stop the old one from crumbling, but we can look at Syria and see
10:16what happens. If there is no clear alternative to a regime, you fall into years and years of chaos and
10:23budget. Yeah. It's much, thank you very much. It's much clearer now, especially the timeframe that is,
10:30uh, uh, uh, something more on the longer side. Absolutely. Uh, but I wanted to ask you, uh, still
10:40in relation to this question is, uh, before the 7th of October and before even the realization that
10:48Israel was now in the process of genocidal war against Gaza, it was almost impossible for us in the,
10:58the, uh, let's say mainstream debate to affirm that Israel was indeed a colonial project, right?
11:09You had to mince your words and to measure your, cause if you said that it's like, uh, you are putting
11:18doubts on the legitimacy of the state of Israel. So, but now people are speaking openly about, uh,
11:26the fact that it is from the origin, a colonial project. And in this sense, I would like to ask
11:32you if you think that, uh, uh, there is a kind of a historical inevitability
11:40for the colonial project to see its end, right? To fail at the end. Of course, we know cases
11:48in which, uh, it has not failed in the sense that they took the land and they destroyed the local
11:54population. But is there something specific about this case, about the Palestinian case, about maybe
12:01the Middle Eastern context, you know, the history of the Arab peoples that make, uh, this colonial
12:08project, uh, fatally, inevitably failed one? Yes. First of all, I think the, the more precise, uh,
12:17definition is of settler colonialism, which is different from classical colonialism. And I do believe
12:24that, uh, Zionism was a settler colonial movement and created a settler colonial state. And you're
12:30absolutely right. When we say this, we are immediately attacked. It's, it's very curious.
12:35You can say openly that the United States is a settler colonial state. You can say that Brazil is a
12:42settler colonial state, and you can say that Canada is a settler colonial state and nobody would call you
12:48an anti-Christian. But if you dare to say that also Israel is a settler colonial state, you're
12:53immediately branded as an anti-Semite, but we have to not to cave in into this because we are saying it
12:59as academics, not as activists on a basis of our academic analysis. Now, I think there is,
13:07you're absolutely right. Some settler colonial projects, unfortunately succeeded. Uh, and, um,
13:14uh, even if they did not eliminate every native indigenous person, uh, they did take so much of
13:23the land and killed so much of the people and so much time has passed since they arrived as settlers
13:31that their struggles and the indigenous people are still struggling in Chile, in Brazil, in Mexico,
13:38in Canada and so on. But their struggle, uh, is not similar to the
13:43Palestinian struggle because it's more, it's about recognition. It's about compensation. Uh, it's about
13:51justice. Definitely. Zionism is different in two ways. One, it occurred very late in the day in the
14:00age of colonialism. And therefore it met a society that itself was already part of the age of nationalism,
14:09which is parallel to the age of colonialism. Many of the, uh, uh, other settler colonial projects
14:16where, um, uh, did occur or had occurred when nationalism was still not a very common phenomenon.
14:24People did not define themselves, uh, as national, uh, as nationalist groups. In fact, if we accept
14:32Benedict Anderson's theory of imagined communities, it is the settlers of Spain and Portugal that actually
14:43were the first one to create nationalism because they had to explain why as Spanish and Portuguese
14:49people that are different from the original Spanish. And there's something in that it's not the full
14:54explanation of nationalism, but it's not a bad one anyway. So Zionism comes in very late in the day.
15:00So that's one difference. And therefore it meets a much more politicized and much more nationalized a
15:06community that does not give in, uh, uh, to, to these policies. Secondly, uh, there's something about
15:16the colonialism in the Arab world, which is very different from the rest, uh, uh, of, of the world.
15:21Uh, the, the colonialism that arrived in the Mashreq in the Eastern Mediterranean where Palestine is,
15:27what the Europeans call the Levant was actually never fully colonized. The imperial powers arrived there
15:34after the first world war when, uh, Arab nationalism was already, uh, a recognized phenomenon, uh, where, uh,
15:43people were already aware of their collective rights. Uh, and therefore actually they were never called
15:52colonies. They were called mandatory states and already, even if there was no genuine French or
15:59British wish to allow full independence, it was not a proper column. So already there that, that created
16:07a difference. And the only proper other settler colonial project we have in the Arab world in
16:16North Africa is Algeria. So if we look at Algerian, we can learn a lot from Algeria. Settler colonialism
16:23failed in Algeria. Eventually it failed. Uh, and I think people in the Arab world know it. And that's why
16:30for the Palestinians, uh, the Algerian, uh, model is very, very important. So I think for all that,
16:36these reasons, uh, the settler colonial project of Zionism, both in its historical timing in its
16:46geographical location, uh, is, uh, an abnormal creature, uh, that was imposed on the Arab world,
16:55was imposed on the Palestinian. And that is a ticking bomb inside it. We, we don't see it because
17:02for all kinds of reasons we might discuss, um, there is an alliance that believes that this impractical
17:10project serves the interests of different, uh, actors on the international scene. Uh, but, uh, it is,
17:19and it is sustained not by legitimacy or morality, it's sustained by force. And there is a limit to
17:27force. Yeah. I will, I will follow up with one other question about this, uh, let's say the factors
17:35that weaken Israel, uh, with, with the passage of time. But, uh, since we spoke about nationalism,
17:42I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh, uh, step over it and then come back. Okay. Uh, there is one thing that,
17:49impresses me much is that, uh, uh, we usually think about sectarianism, the idea that, uh, Arabs and
17:58Orientals in general, uh, have, uh, sectarian differences that, uh, put some against each other
18:05for the longest time. We always think about, I never believed in it as an explanation for,
18:11for chaos and conflict in the Middle East. But, uh, and we, I tend to read it as, uh, let's say,
18:18an instrument of the divide and conquer strategies of the West, no? But, uh, there is some, uh,
18:26precision here that I would like to see whether you can help me see the light.
18:30that is that, uh, even if we don't accept it as an explanation for conflict, we can feel that
18:38ethnicity and, uh, religious, uh, uh, ideas or religious, uh, uh, beliefs are still very important
18:51in certain regions of the world, more, much more than they are in the West. So they still help us
18:57understand society, politics. And this is also the case in the Middle East.
19:03So sometimes when we criticize a process, like for example, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and then the
19:09mandates, we speak of, uh, of artificial boundaries that were created by the West. And usually we follow
19:19up with the second part of the criticism. That is, it is artificial because we have separated
19:24ethnicities that were together and we have separated religious groups that were together and we put
19:33together in places that they should not co-exist people from different ethnicities and from different.
19:40So sometimes we can, we feel the, the, the need almost to jump to our conclusion that
19:47maybe the best thing would be to have exclusive ethnic and religious states, which would, by the way,
19:55uh, favor Israel as a legitimation process, right? So how can we escape, uh, this trap,
20:05but at the same time, understand a real fact that ethnicity and religion still matter in the region,
20:13even though they, they used to always live as a mosaic of, uh, diverse societies? No, how, how can we
20:22find this balance? Definitely. This is a great challenge. Uh, and I think what was unique about, uh, the
20:29mosaic before the, uh, intervention of the colonialist powers and before Zionism became a force to reckon
20:38with that these identities were ethno cultural, they were not ethno political and because they were
20:45ethno cultural and of course one should not romanticize it and one should not idealize it.
20:51Nonetheless, the exception was tension, not the rule. The rule was actually a genuine coexistence,
20:59interest in one another, helping one another and so on. And, um, uh, uh, I think that thinking about
21:08the ethnic groups, uh, in the, uh, in the Middle East as, um, uh, especially in the, uh, in the
21:14mosaic and Eastern Mediterranean as ethno culture rather than ethno national one is, is something that
21:20I think would benefit people. And I know I have these discussion with my Kurdish friends who are,
21:27even those who are pro-Palestinian, they, they, they still would like to think about
21:32Kurdish nationalism and ethno national. But I think even they begin to,
21:36to question whether this is really a necessary, I mean, wouldn't, uh, a fair representation for the
21:44Kurds in Syria, even respect to their achievements, which are very impressive, their, uh, attitude to
21:52gender, the lack of, uh, uh, religious fanaticism, brilliant attributes that could help Syria. No doubt
22:00of it. Isn't that more important than having a Kurdish state in, in the north of Syria? Yeah. And I think
22:07some of them are beginning to think like this. So I think it's, it's, it's somewhere to work towards
22:13this ethno cultural. Of course, you don't ever return in history to the same thing that doesn't
22:19happen. So you take into account the new reality and you navigate between the new reality and the
22:26important legacy from, from, from the past. I always like to say that in, in, in order to deal with
22:33this issue, and I will come back to, to, uh, the sectarianism in a minute in order to deal with this
22:39issue. Uh, I always say that the mistake for many, uh, people in the Arab world and especially in the
22:46Maastricht was to go to the European supermarket of ideas to think that there you can buy the solution.
22:52No, the solution is in the supermarket of the past. It doesn't mean you take it as it is. You don't
22:57want the Ottoman Empire back, but, uh, but there's something about the way the Ottomans allowed these
23:05ethnocultural groups to coexist. That is worth looking at. Um, and I think you're absolutely right. What
23:13turned this ethnocultural sectarianism into, uh, a malad into, uh, a very dangerous phenomenon is the,
23:23the meddling in, in the, in their affairs by, by the West arming the people, pitting one group
23:31against the other. It began with a mandate system that preferred one group over the others created a
23:37terrible legacy. Some of the regimes that took over, such as the Assad regime, continued this idea that
23:45instead of respecting the mosaic is to highlight the groups in the mosaic. They were more vulnerable
23:51and therefore would be more loyal to the regime. Similar thing happened in Iraq, uh, with very
23:56negative, uh, and cruel consequences, but we should not take this determinist view. I mean, there, there is
24:04in the area, the ability, I think, uh, uh, to rethink about it. Also Jews in Palestine, to my mind in
24:12the future have to accept to be an ethnocultural group, not a national group. Uh, and, um, uh, and this
24:19is something that if people were not accepted theoretically, I think reality on the ground would
24:25force them to go in that direction. And I would just add, of course, I, I, I don't think anyone in
24:31the Arab world, apart from very militant Islamists say everything from the west is bad. People respect
24:38the enlightenment, its ideas of individual freedoms. They might as well been thrown into the mix of
24:46building a better society, but the foundation to my mind has to be based on the legacy of the past,
24:54not imported, uh, from the west. Yeah. Yes. Uh, do you think that when Saidi Nusebe wrote,
25:02what is a Palestinian state worth? It was some kind of idea related to this that he had in mind,
25:07although I was a bit bothered by the book because he doesn't, uh, uh, show how to arrive there. And he
25:14kinds of, uh, uh, conceives of, uh, maybe, uh, uh, an acceptance for this kind of, uh, situation, but without
25:21full political rights. Yeah. Uh, so there, there was something very, um, disturbing about his conclusions,
25:29but at the same time, I had the feeling that possibly this was a bit of what he had in mind
25:33when he thought about, uh, uh, not having national rights as like the most important, uh, uh, idea on,
25:43uh, on, on the table. Yeah. Partly of this, I think what really motivated Sari in this book
25:50was the fear that if the Palestinians would continue to insist on national rights,
25:55they're not going to get the same support. And if, if they insist on human rights,
26:02uh, unfortunately in both cases, it didn't work. Yeah. The world was not impressed when the
26:07Palestinians stressed human rights. He was not impressed when the Palestinians stressed civil rights,
26:13and he wasn't impressed when they stressed national rights. And so I think I can, I understand where
26:18where he was coming from. Uh, and there's also someone like Radha Karmi, professor Radha Karmi.
26:24Also, they think that the idea was to convince Israel to allow the Palestinians, uh, in the West
26:29Bank to participate in the election, even with limited, uh, rights, uh, in order to, to have better,
26:37better life. Um, uh, this may could have worked if there was an Israeli partner for this. Uh, even
26:44if I don't like the idea or do like the idea, it's a nonstarter. Uh, I I'm talking about something that
26:51differentiates between historical process, which I believe are inevitable and not all of them are
26:58positive. Uh, but they create, uh, different realities and, but I think yes, some of it was
27:04there. Some of it is there. Sari also reflects this historical fact that Palestinians from the very
27:12beginning of the arrival of, uh, uh, of Zionist settlers do not object of hosting Jews in Palestine.
27:20Yeah. Jews who were refugees. What they objected to is the ideology of these refugees that they have
27:27the right to the land and the Palestinians don't have to. Um, yes, uh, I, I do think it's a contribution
27:35uh, uh, but I think we, we are now even moving further than that. And, and, and another thing I
27:41think that is different, what I'm talking about, I don't think it can be just a Palestinian conversation.
27:47Right. I think it has to be a mashraki conversation as to include the Eastern
27:51Mediterranean, at least the Eastern Mediterranean. Maybe I won't go as far as Iraq, but I don't think
27:56you can talk about the future of Israel and Palestine without talking about the future of Lebanon,
28:02of Syria and Jordan. We can, for the time being, I think we can exclude Egypt in Iraq,
28:08although they should be part of the story, but definitely that organic part of the Arab world,
28:15that was divided by Sykes-Picot and in it, uh, a Jewish state was thrown into it needs to be
28:22restructured, uh, and re redefined so that most people who live there would feel at home.
28:29And I don't think either Zionism or the current nation states of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan provide
28:37enough solace and promise for all the people who live there. And you need to include as many people
28:43as you can to feel that they benefit from a political system. And this hasn't happened yet.
28:49Uh, now coming back then to the fragilities of Israel in a recent, uh, talk, I heard you say
28:58something about the rot in Israel being too deep. Uh, I want to, I would like you to expand a little bit
29:07on that. I understand, I have my own understanding of what this rot would be. It includes a profound
29:14divisions within Israeli society and several kinds of divisions, no religious, uh, migratory, original
29:25cultural, uh, setups from where people have come, the local Jewish communities. Uh, but I, I would like
29:34to understand more about what is becoming rotten, uh, besides the division or because of the division,
29:41right? Because, uh, one thing that seems to unite most of Israelis is, uh, radicalization of their
29:49position, uh, before Palestinians or, um, in face of the Palestinian question, no? So, uh, as we maybe
29:59could say about other societies that are, are also in the same process, no, of, uh, being less, uh, inclusive,
30:07less, uh, tolerant, less, uh, but, uh, we usually don't discuss this about Israel, or if we try to discuss
30:15it, we don't have access to the information, uh, here, at least. I never hear people speaking about
30:23what's going on inside Israel. Yeah. So, uh, to have you here is this, the, the special opportunity
30:31to have this insider look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um, well, it's, first of all, it is an
30:38intra-Jewish, uh, uh, um, roughness, so to speak. This is not something that Palestinians have caused.
30:47Unfortunately, at least immediately, it will not affect, uh, the Palestinians. It would not change
30:55much in the relation between Israel and the Palestinians. It has to do with the inner
31:01contradiction of the idea that the Judaism is not a religion, but nationalism. It begins there.
31:09Uh, uh, the Zionist movement was able to push aside this question
31:17by saying we need to be united against the enemies. Uh, but there is a limit of how much you can use
31:24this excuse. And we saw it when, uh, the position that at least until the 1970s used to be seen as
31:35marginal lunatic even, uh, and therefore didn't bother most Israeli Jews became very popular and
31:42dominant. And this position of what does it mean to be a Jew in Israel, uh, was born in the Jewish
31:50settlements in the West Bank, uh, in what I call the state of Judea. Judea. And, uh, it was very
31:56marginal to begin with, and people didn't notice how much it influences the rest of Israel. And that
32:03particular, uh, state of Judea, uh, that became even stronger since Benjamin Netanyahu in his 15 years
32:12of rule, since he came to power for the second time in 2009, decided they are the best allies. Uh,
32:19since then that, that particular view is, is even more clearly articulated today than it was articulated
32:27in the, um, in the past. Uh, I can give you one example from, uh, uh, a speech given by one of their
32:37leaders, which I think exemplifies the problem, the rot as I would call it. He said, uh, uh, in the,
32:45in the history of the Jewish people, we had two kinds of profits. We had the more, uh, kind of junior
32:55prophets, uh, who dealt more, more with the material side of life. And they were very important to build
33:02the kingdom, uh, to build an army, to build the foundation of the biblical state of David and
33:10Solomon. But then came the real prophets, not the junior one. And they, uh, understood what the junior
33:19prophet did not understand that, uh, in order to sustain the achievement of the junior
33:28prophets, you need to be very pious. You have to be strict in the way you, uh, exercise everything in
33:37life, both to be merciless towards the Palestinians, merciless towards secular Jews,
33:44merciless to anyone who is not living according to our understanding of the Bible. The enemy is not
33:53just the Palestinians. The enemies are Jews who are not, uh, behaving as they should because they
33:59are delaying the redemption. Now, when we heard these speeches in the 1970s, we laughed, you know,
34:07who cares about these people? Now, these are the gurus of the minister of interior, the minister of
34:16also the minister of interior, the minister of finance, the minister of, uh, uh, of home security
34:24and so on. So, so it became a very important ideology. Uh, so that there, the attitude of the state of
34:33Judea to what the one probably can call the more liberal secular Jews are not liberal about the
34:39Palestinians, but the secular about their own life, liberal life is that, uh, uh, they call them the
34:46Messiah's donkey. They brought the Messiah and now they did the job and they are expendable,
34:53expendable, you know? So I think that this created a rift that is unbridgeable and what the Israelis
35:01found to their great horrors that even a traumatic event like the 7th of October, which really shook
35:09the Israeli society, traumatized it. And people said, okay, after that, probably we will be united,
35:16you know, given what had been done to us. Even that did not help to, uh, bridge the gap. And then
35:25they are manifestation of this, uh, which are another manifestation of rottenness. For instance,
35:32this group of people do not believe that the game of democracy, the very fragile game of democracy
35:40that isn't somehow succeeded in upholding for Jews, at least not to Palestinian and gained it, this idea
35:47that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Uh, they don't believe in it. They don't believe it's
35:53Jewish. They don't believe it's necessary. In fact, they think that this is a fifth column that it
35:59creates problem. So they want to cancel the Supreme Court. They want to cancel, uh, uh, any democratic,
36:07uh, features of the Israeli society because they see them as a point of weakness. Uh, and to their
36:14great horror, the Israelis, uh, who are still 40, 45% of the population do not know how to deal with
36:22them. And the reason they don't know how to deal with them is two reasons. One is that they don't
36:28have an alternative. They really don't have enough to say, we want a Jewish democratic state. I agree
36:33with the right wing of Israel. There isn't such a thing, a Jewish democratic state. So at least I
36:38agree with them there. You can be either democratic or Jewish. You cannot be both. Secondly, if you want
36:43a democracy, you have to work with the Palestinians. Comes back to sorry. You have to work with the
36:49Palestinians. If you really want a democratic state, the Palestinians are the most willing
36:54partners in the world. You have for building a democracy, but they're too racist to do this.
37:01So they lose elections one after the other. They leave the countries in great numbers
37:07and they don't know what to tell their children and the grandchildren apart from the fact this will
37:12not be only a future where we will fight the Arabs and the Palestinians, whoever, maybe it's a future
37:18where we will fight each other. And that is rot. That is deep, deep rot. And what the 7th of October
37:26did, it just shook the foundation that were already very shaky. Well, thank you very much. I think you
37:34probably have somewhere else to be very soon. So I will end with this question. Is that something else
37:42that we would not be able to say a few years ago was that there was a situation of apartheid in Israel,
37:51right? And the great human rights organizations did not dare to say it until very recently.
38:01Yeah. But when they said it, finally, they said that there was a situation of apartheid that extended not
38:08only to the West Bank and to Gaza, but also to the Palestinians within Israel and to the Palestinians
38:15in the diaspora and to the Palestinians that are refugees around the world. So I would like you to
38:20tell us more about these Palestinians within Israel that also suffer this situation of apartheid or
38:28of differentiation or deal. And because I think you also refer to them as the forgotten Palestinians.
38:37So let's remember them. Yeah, let's and forget them. Yes, let's and forget them. Yes, I think it's a
38:43very important group of people. Nowadays, there are about 2 million of them. And they are forgotten both by
38:49the Palestinians and the Israelis and the rest of the world. And in many ways, they are the future because
38:55they are the only Palestinians who know the Israelis not only as settlers and soldiers. They also know
39:01the Israelis as normal human beings with which they have normal relationship. And if there's any
39:08chance for reconciliation and building something together, it is because these Palestinians would say
39:16there are other Israelis. They're not all the same. They're very important in this respect. And of
39:21course, they also know Hebrew. They understand the Israelis better than the rest of the Palestinians
39:27and so on. They are a very important group and their suffering is usually forgotten because
39:34unfortunately, there is degrees of suffering. And those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are far worse
39:42than ever, whatever they experienced. Nobody can compare it. And yet they are victims of apartheid.
39:49But as Desmond Tutu said, they are not victims of the same apartheid we had in South Africa. It was not
39:57it's not as bad. Whereas he said the apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is far worse than the one. Now,
40:03it's important to explain a little bit about what they went through when when they became the Israeli citizens
40:11in 1949. They were put under military rule. Now, everybody in Palestine knows what military rule means
40:18after 1967. But people forget that the Palestinians inside Israel suffered from this
40:25rule before between 48 and 66. And also there was a big massacre because of this
40:32a rule. It's true that the military rule was lifted after 1967 and the glass ceiling became less visible,
40:44but it existed Palestinians. If if you tell people around the world that there are cities in Israel
40:53and there are settlements in Israel in Israel, not in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
40:57where Palestinians are not allowed to live in. People don't believe you because we're talking
41:01about Israeli citizens. They cannot live in exclusively Jewish places. They are very limited
41:11in the land they can buy because most of the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish National Fund
41:15that is not allowed to sell land to non-Jews. They are discriminated in budgets. The police treats them
41:23very differently from the way it treats Jews. The legal system treats them very differently. So it is true
41:29that they can be elected to the Knesset and elect to the Knesset, but their members of the Knesset are
41:36really not calculated. They're not factored into a pursual of policies which matters.
41:44So they are actually used by Israel to beautify the Israeli experience by saying what you want. They
41:51can be in the Knesset, but in practice they are not really part of what in political science we call
41:59the common good in Republican terms. They're not part of the common good. They're not part of the common
42:04people. They are outside of it. They are outside. When Israelis talk about a state and a people,
42:11it does not include the Palestinians and the situation is getting worse.
42:16If it, it really gets worse by the day. First of all, through legal system by 2018,
42:23all the practices against them that were de facto are now the Europe. They became laws. So that's far
42:30worse. Secondly, Israel is now using a different tactic that never used before.
42:35It allows criminal gangs to run the life of the Palestinians in Israel. These criminal gangs are
42:41not stopped by the police. They're very heavily armed and they terrorize. These are Palestinians who
42:47terrorize the Palestinian society. I think the idea is to make life impossible for the Palestinians in Israel
42:55so that they would leave. And in fact, unfortunately, a lot of them did leave. So this is a very unique
43:02combination of apartheid that is imposed on them. And this is such a big mistake because this is a
43:12community that has a human capital that would benefit the future Israel and Palestine, whatever we will call
43:19it. And it would benefit the Arab world as a whole. This is really a unique group of people. Anybody who
43:26met them and read them understand this. And they are the most democratic group, not in the Arab world. I
43:33think they are the most democratic group in the world. They really believe in democracy like nobody. I think
43:39most people lost a lot of confidence in democracy. They are the ones who are craving for a democratic
43:46state. And so I think we should talk about them with them, about them. And I, and I would say finally,
43:54my last sentence, they took a strategic decision, which I understand not to be involved in Palestinian
44:00politics, only in Israeli politics. I think that one of the things that can contribute to a better future,
44:07if they would play much less in the Israeli political field and begin to play more significantly
44:12in the Palestinian political field. Professor Ilan, thank you very much. I once came up with the
44:20image that told me what happens to the Palestinians. I said that Palestinians speak against the wind because
44:27nobody seems to listen to them. And now these days we are living in times of an unacceptable silence
44:35when the world is watching the genocide that is taking place. So in this circumstances, in both
44:41circumstances, your voice is such a precious gift to us all. Thank you very much for speaking to us and
44:50for continuing to speak. Thank you very much. Thank you both. Thank you very much. Thank you very much,
44:54both. Thank you so much for having this wonderful interview today. And thank you, Ilan, always. Thank you.
45:01Thank you. Thank you. Well done. Thank you.
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