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00:00Welcome to the World of Trouble. I'm Sam Kiley and joining me today is the Palestinian Ambassador to UK, Hussam
00:07Zomlott.
00:08He is very largely British educated in the postgraduate sense and a member of FATA.
00:16Ambassador, welcome to the show. I want to start at the very beginning, if you like. You were born in
00:23Gaza. Why was that?
00:25Well, why was that? Because Britain has decided to promise the land where my father and grandfather and grandparents were
00:34born, the village they lived in all of their life, four generations, the land we have harvested.
00:41And as a result of that, Britain has not only issued the Balfour Declaration, but actually took mandate of Palestine,
00:51direct occupation of Palestine between 1919 and 1948.
00:57And during that time, the Zionist militias, Jewish militias of the time, started the Nakba campaign of 1947-1949.
01:07And as a result, my parents, my grandparents had to, under the force of gun, at gunpoint, leave our homes,
01:15our farms.
01:16In Sim Sim Village.
01:16In Sim Sim Village. And my grandfather was just walking with his, and by the way, I was reading yesterday,
01:23the Norwegian Refugee Council report about the displacement in the West Bank as we speak.
01:30The use of murder, killing by the settler terrorist militias, but also the use of sexual violence, the use of
01:37threat to the women and to the children.
01:39And my grandfather stories to me, because I was challenging him when I was a child, asking him your question.
01:46Why did you leave? I was very angry. Why did you leave our home? Why did you leave our farm?
01:51You told me you're a rich person. You told me my grandmother used to own huge amount of land. Why
01:56are we here?
01:57And he always came back with the things I've just read yesterday from the Norwegian Refugee Council about what the
02:05Israeli settler terrorist militias are doing in the West Bank.
02:09I'm answering this way to tell you, I had to be born there. It was not a choice. I was
02:14born in a refugee camp in Rafah.
02:16It's called Shabura refugee camp. And it was a direct result of the Nakba. So I am the son of
02:24the Nakba.
02:25Son of the Nakba, son of refugees. Just tell me, in your village, was the violent pressure that your grandparents
02:36came under and your parents came under,
02:38was that prior to the formal establishment of the state of Israel or after?
02:44No, my grandparents was before. My father was born inside the 48 areas in Simpson village.
02:52So but he was a child in 1948. But my father was a main reason why my grandparents decided to
03:00leave because they wanted to protect him.
03:01And in the conversation that I had with my grandfather all along, I had to come, you know, clean recently,
03:10apologizing to my grandfather after he had passed away many years ago for not understanding him.
03:16He was protecting his unborn grandchildren. He was protecting me before I was born.
03:23He knew what was happening and what was coming. So I'm saying this to tell you how recurrent history is.
03:32This is the first time in history a system is targeting the same refugees, displacing them again and again and
03:41again using the same toolkit again and again and again and displacing them for one reason, which is their identity.
03:52You're Palestinian, be it Christian, be it Muslim, be it in the West Bank, be it in Gaza, be it
03:57in Nazareth, be it in Haifa, in Yaffa, you are Palestinian.
04:01You must be displaced. And that's why we have gotten confused over the last 30 years or so.
04:08The world thought that this was about a troubled peace process. It was about a centimeter of land here.
04:15Since the foundation, so you're born after the establishment of the state of Israel in Gaza, and over the next
04:25part of your young life, you could move relatively, I mean, there was a great deal more integration and cross
04:36-fertilization in terms of economics and even political activity, I think, between Gaza and Israel, was there not?
04:45I mean, well, it wasn't the kind of enormous prison camp that it became.
04:49Oddly enough, Israel's occupation of the rest of Palestine in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, has
04:58unified the Palestinian people in terms of their movement, ability to move.
05:03Later on, Israel discovered that and then they started the policy of restrictions, movement restriction, you know, the hundreds of
05:11roadblocks.
05:12As you know, Gaza was severed already a long time ago.
05:16At the beginning of Oslo, Gaza was completely cut off.
05:20By the way, I was in the West Bank at the time.
05:22I was studying at Birzeit University to find out that I no longer can stay in Birzeit University and I
05:28have to go back to Gaza.
05:29I didn't.
05:29And I had to stay in the West Bank, according to the Israeli martial law, illegally until I finished.
05:35And I couldn't go back to Gaza to see my family until I finished my studies.
05:39But that's another story.
05:40But the story is, yes, I was born in a refugee camp.
05:42And I think that's the thing that shaped me the most.
05:46Did it shape you?
05:48I mean, how much anger did that pour into you?
05:51I mean, there is a sliding scale and a very strong difference of opinion and has been for many years
05:57now in the Palestinian political and military community, how to deal with Israel in the kind of Gaza context, particularly
06:06the relatively modern context.
06:07You have Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups who take a very hard line that Israel should be removed,
06:17certainly as the Jewish state.
06:18And then you have Fatah and the PLO, which is demanding right now that candidates in elections sign up to
06:28their charter, which recognizes the state of Israel.
06:31A child in a refugee camp does not see all that.
06:35What I encountered was not anger, maybe a bit of, you know, what's the word, defiance, refusal to submit, to
06:49surrender to reality, insistence on maintaining our narrative, our collective memory.
06:56Of course, they instilled in us, my grandparents and my parents, what has happened, but slowly, slowly.
07:01My grandfather took me, with my father, to Sim Sim, our original village, when I was six years old.
07:08Wow.
07:09What did that feel like?
07:10Can you remember it?
07:10I remember it vividly because it took them time.
07:13It took them a long time to locate the village because the village was leveled.
07:20And then when they found the village, when I was a child, I was, you know, playing around and unaware
07:26of what I am about to encounter and the stuff that will come my way and the conversation I will
07:32have with my grandfather and father.
07:35But I remember my father locating, my grandfather locating his home, destroyed just bits of stones, you know, the old
07:45style of building homes.
07:50I remember he located that home by the fig tree that he planted.
07:55Here is the fig tree.
07:57It has grown much bigger.
07:58Here it is.
07:59Here is my home a few meters away.
08:01And that was it.
08:02But then the whole conversation started then, between me and him.
08:06Wow, what a beautiful, you know, a child, see all these fields.
08:09By the way, most of these villages are still empty until now, Sam, by the way.
08:13They have just been leveled, completely erased, demolished.
08:18And they started to grow some trees to confuse people.
08:22So there was never life here.
08:24It's just bushes and wildlife.
08:27And the whole message was, you know, for him and don't forget, you are the new generation.
08:34I left to protect you.
08:37At that time, I really did see tearing eyes of my grandfather.
08:42The experience of the refugee camp is very empowering in the sense that you almost fed in a very, in
08:49a very honorable, in a very constructive national way, your real, actual story, your collective memory.
08:57But it's also a story of love, Sam.
08:58Refugee camps have a very special, warm atmosphere because those who are displaced realize that the best they have is
09:08themselves.
09:08They lost their material base.
09:10They lost everything.
09:11And all what they have now is themselves.
09:13Just the community.
09:14Just the community.
09:15So I have lived and raised by the best sense of community you can ever have worldwide.
09:21I always make it, always make it a joke.
09:24Like as if one, one mother is not enough.
09:27You know, for a child, the mother was like the controller.
09:31You would just want to avoid your mother.
09:33But in the refugee camp, I had 20 mothers as if one is not enough.
09:37Because in the refugee camp, literally, literally, if you want to define what a communal life, that's it.
09:43This is a communal life.
09:44There is no one mother.
09:45There is no one children.
09:47The children belong to the community.
09:49You know the saying, it takes a village to raise a child.
09:52It takes a refugee camp to raise a man and a child and a woman.
09:56The amount of sharing and community because of the collective experience is just absolutely, you know, inspiring.
10:04For instance, I'll tell you.
10:05There was only one TV in that refugee camp.
10:07So all children will go and watch that TV in this small little thing called the living room in that
10:13house, in that home, in that refugee home.
10:16And we used to have the phone, the landline.
10:19Remember the big, the landline.
10:22So you had the only phone.
10:23So, yes.
10:24But our phone was not ours.
10:26It was our phone.
10:27It was our.
10:28My father was an educator.
10:29He was a teacher in the high school in the Rafah city.
10:32So he could get a phone.
10:36It was at the time, the wiring and all that.
10:38I was born in the 70s.
10:39So it was that old analog.
10:41It's all right.
10:42I understand analog.
10:43Yeah, I understand analog.
10:44Yeah.
10:45Maybe we're the same generation.
10:48But, you know, so I was working as a central, literally like a receptionist.
10:55I would be calling Om Ali, Om Mohammed.
10:58Oh, your cousin is calling from Saudi Arabia quickly, quickly.
11:01But that communal life teach you something, teach you something that you really belong to a nation.
11:07You really share everything.
11:08And there is something to share with your nation, which is the future that has to be shaped.
11:13So no, the refugee camp was, and many people think that major part of the Palestinian people is anger, is
11:19resentment, is rage.
11:21It's untrue.
11:23What my community have made sure of was exactly not that.
11:29In fact, I do not remember any conversation between me and my grandparents or parents or family or mothers or
11:38the community that would turn me angry.
11:40In fact, I did not know about Israel or the Zionist movement or the Nakba or the colonization until the
11:46first intifat.
11:47I didn't know.
11:48They shielded us completely.
11:50They will say it in third party sort of language.
11:53They did not want the children to inherit anything.
11:57But a realization that something has happened to their parents and grandparents and that we need to find a way
12:03to resolve it.
12:05The biggest cause of incitement in the refugee camp is Israel itself because it comes to the refugee camp with
12:13their, you know, armed vehicles.
12:15Refugees kill this person, your neighbor.
12:17It arrests your classmate.
12:20And then you start realizing, wondering what is exactly happening.
12:25I don't want to get too bogged down on the long debate here, but I have to put it to
12:28you that, you know, the Israeli argument and indeed the argument of others is that the persistent existence of refugee
12:35camp,
12:35the fact that the refugee issue, the right of return has not been resolved or let alone actioned, means that
12:42refugee camps are inevitably an incubator for resistance,
12:46whether that is violent resistance or political resistance.
12:49Surely that has to be true.
12:50I joined Fatah simply because Fatah looks like the Palestinian people, feels like the Palestinian people.
13:00I joined Fatah because of the idea and because how simple the idea is.
13:04I joined Fatah because I never liked all the other ideas.
13:07I don't think Palestine...
13:08How did you sum up the ideas of Fatah?
13:11I don't like to import ideologies.
13:14I mean, the, you know, the communism and the Soviet Union era and to import it to Palestine.
13:20I mean, we are the origin of all civilizations.
13:22We have enough ideas and enough heritage or the even, you know, strictly look at the situation from a religious
13:31prism.
13:31Our issue is an issue of national strive for liberation and justice.
13:39And it is the Palestinian people through the unity of the people.
13:44Regardless, your height, your belief, your creed, your color is one in that fight.
13:51It's very simple.
13:53We are a nation.
13:54It's a, it's a national strife.
13:57It's not a religious.
13:59It is not a civil situation, civil rights.
14:03It is a national rights because the key thing for us, and that's why, by the way, Fatah is the
14:10only political movement in Palestine that has al-watani in it.
14:13The word watani.
14:14You know what watani means.
14:16National.
14:17Haraket al-Taharrur al-Watani al-Palestine.
14:19The Palestine National Liberation Movement.
14:23Now, national is the only, Fatah is the only party that has national.
14:28Look at every other political party in Palestine.
14:31I am a nationalist person, not the vulgar nationalism that you and I can discuss later.
14:37But nationalism means that I am so proud to be a Palestinian.
14:42I belong to such a nation in its history, ancient history, and its current situation.
14:47And, yes, I want to see that nation free.
14:50And the right to self-determination and sovereignty and independence is a major one.
14:54We are not just seeking to have human rights.
14:58Yes, we do seek human rights, but not just.
15:01Or civil rights.
15:02We are seeking national rights.
15:04We seek independence, self-determination, freedom.
15:07And we seek to determine our own future.
15:11That's why I picked Fatah.
15:12Okay.
15:12So you picked Fatah.
15:14And for the 60s and 70s, into the 80s, and then the very early 1990s, among the systems
15:20of pressure that Fatah employed within the PLO and as a freestanding body was the use of violence.
15:28And then that came to an end with the so-called peace process got underway through Oslo.
15:35Where did you stand then and where do you stand now on the use of violence?
15:42Was it a mistake for Fatah to join a peace process, for example?
15:46You cannot just simplify the whole story by saying it was a mistake or it was not a mistake.
15:54It was part of a historic process.
15:57So nothing is right and nothing is wrong.
16:00Everything is relevant to the time it was there.
16:04You call it violence.
16:06International law has a different term.
16:08They call it resistance.
16:10And there was a UN General Assembly resolution in 1973, as early as that, giving the Palestinian
16:19people the right to armed resistance.
16:22Of course, defined very clearly in international law to be targeting the army of the occupation
16:29forces, targeting civilians is a war crime and illegal and all that.
16:33Watch the terminology here and see.
16:35But Fatah in the 60s decided that its strategic way of liberation is armed resistance.
16:42But through that process, and I was a child then, a child, I was not born.
16:47I was not, neither you and I were born.
16:49I was born.
16:49You were born, okay.
16:51Then you were a little bit older than me, sir.
16:53But down the line, the national movement, the PLO, yes, Arafat.
16:59Remember, Fatah became the dominant party, the leading party, the pillar of the PLO.
17:04Throughout, there was an evolution process where the strategy became a diplomatic political
17:12track for as a liberation strategy.
17:14You know, we did the armed resistance.
17:17We did the reaffirmation of us as a national camp.
17:21Remember, the biggest, biggest success of Fatah was between the 60s and the early 90s of
17:30affirming that Palestine has one address.
17:33That is the PLO.
17:34It was recognized by first the Arab world and then by the rest of the world and has a seat
17:40in the UN.
17:40And that's the result of that success, of that achievement.
17:45But then down the line, you know, the political track, the PLO discovered that it was another
17:51Israeli trick to actually manage the status quo, minus, rather than resolve the issue.
17:58So it was a big...
17:59When do you think the penny dropped?
18:01The penny dropped from the first day, in my opinion.
18:05From the first day.
18:06We should have realized that ops, things are not going in the right direction.
18:10At least after 1999, 2000.
18:15Because you cannot in any way or shape...
18:17You know, the key question, Sam, here, the key question is, is this.
18:22Does Israel consider its presence in the occupied territory temporary or permanent?
18:29That's a key...
18:30But that was under Rabin, who was murdered, of course, by a right-wing Jewish-Israeli terrorist.
18:37But under Rabin and Ehud Barak, arguably, who himself had a long history of the exercise of violence in pursuit
18:47of his country's national agenda as a special forces officer in general.
18:52But both of those men, who were men of violence originally, just like Yasser Arafat and the people around him,
18:59had moved to the position that they believed in a two-state solution, that a two-state solution was not
19:05only viable but desirable from an Israeli perspective.
19:10They did argue that the occupation, at least in public, they argued that the occupation of the West Bank and
19:17Gaza was temporary.
19:18And indeed, later on, moved the settlements out of Gaza.
19:23Okay, I'll give it to you.
19:24There was a short period, and then it came to an abrupt ending by the murder, the assassination of T
19:30'hak Rabin, by, you call him, a right-wing.
19:34I would call him maybe a mainstream.
19:36By the way, the ones who are involved in all that are now in government.
19:41Yeah, we'll come to that philosophy.
19:45And anybody who attempted to do that, not just was assassinated physically, but assassinated politically, like Olmert, for instance.
19:52You know, all of a sudden, Olmert was taken to prison and all that because...
19:56Olmert being a former prime minister who was jailed for corruption charges.
20:00Yes, yes.
20:01So the Israeli establishment is always ready to close on anyone who would, you know, dare to be closed, to
20:10consider the occupation to be temporary.
20:12So that question is very important.
20:15I believe that Israel, at least for the last 20 years, at least two decades, and I think much longer,
20:23does consider its presence in the occupied territory to be permanent.
20:27And that answers your question because every act they have taken during the Oslo peace process, what should have hit
20:34us and you, Sam, and all of us in the face that, oops, what they're doing is permanent, irreversible, everything.
20:42What do you mean?
20:44Do you mean by that the expansion of settlements, for example?
20:47One example, you know, Israel has been building high roads in the West Bank, you know, in the last couple
20:51of years.
20:52In the last couple of years only, only.
20:54Israel has opened 134 big roads inside the West Bank.
21:01You know how many billions of dollars?
21:04Yeah.
21:05But before we...
21:07A hundred...
21:07Let me remember the number.
21:09But before we come to the present day, I want to go through because for our listeners...
21:12No, no, no, but it's the evolution.
21:13It's been an evolution.
21:14But in that period, in the 1990s, and even in the 2000s, even during the second Intifada, where I was
21:23reporting on it, which was extremely violent.
21:26But one of the problems that Fatah faced, yes, the Israelis were continuing with their settlement expansion, even though it
21:38was being criticized by their allies in Washington and elsewhere.
21:42And it was Washington that kind of under the Bush senior administration and Baker, secretary of state, kind of made
21:50the Israelis take part in this process.
21:52They thought it was a gamble.
21:54But notwithstanding the fact that there might have been some backsliding, if you like, from the Israeli perspective, from your
22:02perspective of the Israelis, which we saw the settlements did expand in that period.
22:08But at the same time, Hamas, you could set your watch by a Hamas attack designed to literally blow up
22:17the diplomatic process.
22:18I mean, so it wasn't just a binary conversation, just as there were people on the Israeli side, like Rabin
22:25and others and Barak, men of violence who'd become convinced that the future lay in a peace process and a
22:33two-state solution.
22:33So there was on the Palestinian side, you had groups like Hamas and P.I.J. who were extremely violent
22:41and would go out of their way to use violence to destroy that process.
22:46That's got to be acknowledged by you, surely.
22:49Yes, but of course.
22:51And Hamas has declared from day one that they want to derail the whole thing.
22:55But if you enter in a peace process and you accept the premise of that peace process, you have to
23:02be set on the goal and you have to be ready for the spoilers and you have to be ready
23:05for people who want to derail you.
23:08So don't tell me that, you know, because you know they are doing that, you derailed yourself.
23:13I mean, this is not statesmanship and this is not leadership.
23:15In fact, Rabin, who had gone through some of the Israeli terrorist attacks against the Palestinians during the height of
23:22the Oslo Accords, said that I will fight terrorism as if peace doesn't exist and I will make peace as
23:28if terrorism doesn't exist.
23:30So if you really want to pursue a path that you believe in, you don't take that as a pretext
23:36to stop it.
23:36And that's what successive Israeli governments, it's a it's a of course, of course, in any process, look at Northern
23:42Ireland, look at South Africa, look anywhere around the Balkans and the story.
23:46You will always have spoilers.
23:48You will always have opposing agendas.
23:50And but you have to be set.
23:53Absolutely set.
23:53But no, I think I think Israel was absolutely ready, ready to take that as a pretext to pursue the
24:00path of blocking any possibility of establishing.
24:06But that blocking path didn't exist until after the Second Intifada.
24:09We moved.
24:10We really moved.
24:13The Second Intifada should have been another striking example for Israel to quit its occupation.
24:20It took it the other way because it wants to take it the other way.
24:23Well, it also drove the terrorism from the more from the extreme groups.
24:27You know, you can you can acknowledge that a nation or an occupied population has the right to resistance, violent
24:35resistance against the occupier.
24:37That's just established.
24:38That's not controversial.
24:39That's just a fact of international law.
24:41Yes.
24:42When you've got children being blown up.
24:44No, that's criminal.
24:45Then that's criminal.
24:46And you've acknowledged that.
24:48But you had both during the Second Intifada.
24:50By the way, this has nothing to do.
24:51You had a hardening of the Israeli.
24:55Hamas and the extremists played into the hands of the Israeli right and and vice versa.
25:01Did they not?
25:02I mean, what's happened here is a marginalization of your party.
25:07But you put your hands in the hands of Yasser Arafat.
25:11That's the founder of our national movement.
25:13That's the founder of our, you know, contemporary, at least political system.
25:17And with his group, his people.
25:21And that was the mainstream.
25:23So if you are genuine about peace, you really work together to make sure that the fringes, the fringes do
25:30not spoil the whole thing, do not derail the whole thing.
25:33Unless you see them as an opportunity because you are not interested.
25:37Remember, since 2000, it was Sharon that was elected.
25:41So the time of Rabin you're talking about was gone.
25:44And Sharon wanted to disengage from Gaza, not as a way of quitting his occupation, but as a way to
25:52consolidate the occupation because they want to see Gaza severed from the rest of the occupied territory.
25:58Because they want to see the disunity, the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, because that's a much easier way of
26:06controlling and blocking the emergence of the Palestinian state.
26:09And it goes all the way to Netanyahu, who brags in the Knesset up until the 7th of October.
26:15Go back to the record, Sam.
26:16That he allows for $30 million every single month carried by Israeli soldiers and officers to go to Gaza to
26:26support Hamas.
26:27It's the same logic, same logic from the Sharon in 2000.
26:32We, Israel, decided to break the bone of the Palestinian state.
26:37They besieged Yasser Arafat immediately, the peacemaker with them, right?
26:41Yeah, during the, this is in the early 2000s, when he was driven to effectively, well, not effectively, he was
26:48completely besieged in his office.
26:49Severed Gaza completely from the West Bank, slowly removed themselves from Gaza, thinking that this will further fragment.
26:57Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, the coup d'etat that happened.
27:02Against Fattah.
27:03Against Fattah.
27:03Israel has an interest to keep that division between the Palestinian people, besieging Yasser Arafat and eventually assassinating Yasser Arafat.
27:13And now, look, President Abbas and the current government.
27:17I mean, how more peaceful one can be.
27:20Yet they are besieging them.
27:22They are withholding our own money.
27:24And the PA has just announced, the Palestinian Authority, a few days ago, it is completely and utterly bankrupted.
27:30The money that, just explain what money they're holding back from.
27:34According to Oslo, back to Oslo, because our money, our taxes, like any other state, come through trade via the
27:43borders.
27:44You know, on the borders, the UK has its customs, right?
27:47So you levy the taxes as.
27:49But the Israelis collect your customs.
27:51Now, because Oslo did not give us, that was a huge, the biggest mistake of Oslo, it did not start
27:57with a mutual recognition of the two states.
27:59Yes, we recognize Israel, the PLO recognized Israel in writing as a state.
28:04But Israel never recognized us as a state.
28:06It recognized the PLO.
28:08So whose fault was that?
28:09Our fault.
28:09We should not have accepted it.
28:11So you keep coming to this, and it's something that has struck me.
28:14Our fault.
28:14Our fault.
28:15At Camp David, where Arafat and Ehud Barak met under Clinton, for example, they were trying to forge.
28:24There was quite a positive air around.
28:28And I know from contacts of mine at the time who were in the Palestinian delegation that the Palestinians didn't
28:35bother to turn up with any maps.
28:36So they were completely, they just stuck to the absolute positions that they had.
28:41And they, the talks broke down, the Israelis ran rings around them.
28:46And then you had a tubber when the Clinton proposals, I'm not going to go into too much detail on
28:52this, but they were, it was always described as a pretty, pretty good offer for the Palestinians, certainly much better
28:59than anything that came since then.
29:01But Arafat by then was unable, arguably, to deliver a deal of that nature to, because he'd already lost support
29:13of his own population.
29:15That's not accurate, Sam.
29:16You see.
29:17He was surfing a wave of chaos by then.
29:19We're talking in the kind of, well, tabber, I can't remember what year it was, 2001.
29:24So Ehud Barak is guilty of spreading that to the Israeli public.
29:30And then the result was the end of his own career and the end of the entire so-called peace
29:35camp in Israel.
29:36Because, you know, he argued this case.
29:39It's an issue of principle, not maps.
29:41Are we together in a peace process and political process towards a two-state solution?
29:47And this takes me to two things.
29:49Number one, the world through you, Sam, need to understand the two-state solution is not a Palestinian demand.
29:55People think now the Palestinians are demanding a two-state solution.
30:01The two-state solution was a Palestinian concession, not a demand.
30:06It was the most historic, painful.
30:10And by the way, your friends and my friends, Yasser Arafat, paid heavy price for accepting a state on 22
30:17% of historic Palestine.
30:19So having been such a historic compromise, and why did Yasser Arafat and our national movement accepted that?
30:26Because they wanted to ally themselves with international legitimacy.
30:30International law suggested that Israel must leave the territory it occupied in 1967.
30:36That's 22% of historic Palestine.
30:39That's the two-state solution.
30:40So giving up on the land that your parents and grandparents abandoned.
30:43Yes, giving up on my own home.
30:44I mean, okay, but not giving up on my right to return.
30:48Because that's also international law.
30:51Now, that's number one.
30:52Number two, this whole logic about the two-state solution being up for grab and up for negotiation is a
31:01wrong logic.
31:01Because once you have offered that painful compromise, the 1967 borders is the absolute maximum you could offer and the
31:10absolute minimal you could accept.
31:13There was no room.
31:15It was the bone.
31:16There was no room for Yasser Arafat.
31:18And then the Israelis wanted to take the peace process as a beginning for haggling.
31:26Is that a term I can use?
31:28Literally haggling with us every time.
31:30They don't want to meet us in historic Palestine, between the river and the sea.
31:35And I'll tell you, not Yasser Arafat, not Mahmoud Abbas, not any Palestinian leader would ever accept less than the
31:4322%.
31:44No way.
31:46And read my lips here.
31:47No way.
31:48Because that came out of a historic national process when Palestinians had to bite that bullet and accept that formula.
31:56And it's too cheap of the Israelis.
32:00But give us this bit of land here.
32:02Give us this bit of land there.
32:04Come on, grow up.
32:06Grow up.
32:07And the issue with Israel now is not just that they have taken a decision long before Netanyahu, because everybody
32:13thinks that Netanyahu is the problem now.
32:16They have taken a decision not to allow for a Palestinian state.
32:20But guess what?
32:21Where we are now.
32:22Where we are now.
32:23It couldn't look more distant.
32:24Listen, up until that era, Israel had no intention.
32:28And I would claim from Rabin onward, they had no intention, including Rabin, to establish a sovereign state of Palestine.
32:36There was no intention.
32:37Go back to what Rabin said in the Knesset just before his assassination.
32:41Every successive Israeli government have always had one scenario, one offer, self-rule, right?
32:52Al-Hukm al-Dhati, which means self-governance.
32:55At the time, Israel still did not see a state for Palestinians throughout history, but still saw Palestinian people.
33:03What happened in the last 20 years, particularly in the last few years, they no longer see a place for
33:09the Palestinian people.
33:10That is final.
33:12And that's why now you have the genocidal mindset.
33:16You know what's happening to our environment?
33:18And what they did in Gaza, the genocide, as per the ICJ, and now Israel has been taken to court
33:25for the plausible crime of genocide, complete utter destruction.
33:30I mean, can you imagine?
33:31The media is so guilty of not knowing what has taken place in Gaza in the last two and a
33:36half years and still taking place in Gaza.
33:39I mean, 47 women and girls every single day slain.
33:44So, you tell me now this is about a state and two states?
33:48Really?
33:48Seriously?
33:49This is now, in the Israeli mindset, is about the complete erasure, erasure.
33:55If you're right about that, Husserl?
33:57Of our people.
33:58If you're right about that, why do you think that you're any closer to getting a state of your own?
34:06I mean, they look like they're winning.
34:09Okay, they look like they are winning, but they are not winning.
34:13They are losing big time.
34:15How are they losing?
34:16Number one, the whole thing in Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas.
34:21I was warning the world on the 7th of October, 2023, genocide will happen.
34:26Because you could follow the mindset.
34:28You could see the Benghirs and the Smotrich.
34:30You are reading them, and I believe them, but you didn't believe them.
34:34The media did not believe them.
34:36Nobody believed them, that they are genocidal.
34:39The main plan was kill as much as you can, destroy as much as you can, turn Gaza, remember, into
34:45a parking lot, which they did, by the way,
34:47and then spread the words from the Israeli president to the prime minister that there are no innocent people in
34:53Gaza.
34:53For God's sake, 75% of the Israeli public believe that there are no innocent, according to the polls, no
35:00innocent children in Gaza.
35:02I mean, can you believe?
35:03Can you believe the mindset that we have gotten to?
35:05But what was the main purpose of all that genocide?
35:08It wasn't just kill for the sake of killing.
35:10They wanted to drive our people again.
35:12Again, they wanted to drive the 80% of the Gaza population who are refugees, 80% are like me,
35:18by the way, drive them again,
35:21but this time completely outside the homeland, this time towards Egypt and the rest of the world.
35:26That failed, and that will always fail.
35:28Our people have learned the lesson of the Nakba.
35:30They are not going anywhere.
35:32Our people in Gaza are not going anywhere.
35:34Our people in the West Bank are not going anywhere.
35:37And they're also not being led anywhere, are they?
35:39I mean, you've got in the Palestinian Authority, you've got ancient, I mean, Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, as he's known,
35:47is, I think, 90.
35:48Not that being old in itself is a disqualification, but he's hardly the most dynamic politician.
35:53You've got cabinet of old men.
35:57There's no leadership that is offering the Palestinians a course of action at all, is there?
36:06I mean, and as a consequence of that, we're seeing support for Hamas rise on the West Bank and in
36:12Gaza, according to polls.
36:13Well, we have agency.
36:15We have agency and not just political agency.
36:17And you cannot reduce it to only, you know, the government, but also, you know, and President Abbas has come
36:25to the fore for advancing a negotiated two-state solution.
36:29And then extensive structures were built in partnership with Europe and the rest of the world to make sure that
36:34we go in that direction.
36:36And now?
36:37So seriously, you want to blame that model, given what we are doing?
36:41I mean, OK, now there is elections in Fatah, now, on the 14th of May, because of many other reasons.
36:47Our democratic renewal process sometimes gets delayed, distracted.
36:51But like you haven't had elections since 2006.
36:53Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we are guilty of that.
36:54That's 20 years.
36:56No, no, but next week we are, next week, next week.
36:58No, no, this week we are having elections at the local level all over Palestine, including in Gaza for the
37:04first time.
37:05In parts of Gaza.
37:05In parts of Gaza.
37:06In parts of Gaza, primarily, and I'm so delighted for that.
37:08And this should become regular, and then we should go national, not just the level of the local government.
37:14We must go for parliament elections and for a president election.
37:19But leave that, leave that, please, Sam, leave that to the, please, leave that to the Palestinian people and to
37:24our institutions.
37:25And we have got to respect our institutions.
37:27When the elections of 2006 happened, Hamas won the international community.
37:33You didn't respect the results of that.
37:35Well, you didn't respect the results of that.
37:37No, no, no, the president, Mahmoud Abbas, our president, formed the government of Hamas and handed them the power.
37:44No, no, no, no, no.
37:45It was the international community led by the U.S. and including the U.K. and Europe who led siege
37:50on that government.
37:51No, that's not true.
37:52And we wanted that experience to succeed.
37:55Of course, there are rivalries between political parties.
37:58But in effect, elections happened.
38:01We made sure that the elections are transparent, are democratic, and we are so proud of that.
38:06And our opponent won.
38:07But aren't you seen now?
38:09Bad for us.
38:09They won.
38:10But good for us.
38:11Good for us.
38:12Yeah, OK.
38:13Good for us.
38:14We insisted on the democratic process.
38:16Do you see Barghouti?
38:17Marwan Barghouti?
38:18I used to know him well on the West Bank.
38:19Do you see him educated in the Sorbonne, very much a younger energy within Fatah?
38:25Do you see him as a potential leader?
38:26Do you think there's any chance that he would ever get out of his Israeli prison?
38:30Yeah, of course.
38:30He is a leader.
38:31He is a leader very well respected by my movement, by Fatah, and respected by the Palestinian people right across
38:37the board.
38:38But he must be released.
38:39He must be released.
38:41But there's not much chance of that now that the Israelis have brought in a death penalty for people that
38:46they say, that they accuse of being behind the murders of Israelis, which is what Marwan Barghouti has been jailed
38:52for.
38:53Yeah, but that's your role and my role and our role to make sure that that doesn't happen and to
38:56make sure that Israel does not commit another crime.
39:00And Marwan and many of his colleagues in the national camp and the Fatah camp and the PLO camp must
39:07be there as the actual leaders and interlocutors of the international community.
39:11And what Israel is doing is completely and utterly pointless.
39:16It's...
39:17But isn't that...
39:18Okay, let me put to you a scenario.
39:20Put aside all the conversation.
39:22It's, you know, about legality, morality.
39:24All what Israel is doing is completely criminal, absolutely murderous in every sense.
39:29But from a practical point of view, what are they doing?
39:32I mean, why are you...
39:33Why are you collapsing the PA?
39:35I mean, why?
39:36Why are you targeting civilian structures in Lebanon?
39:39Why are you targeting hospitals in Lebanon?
39:41What are you doing?
39:43This is the second phase, the evolution of Israel from blocking states, wanting failed states, like they always did, around
39:50them,
39:50to actually wanting disintegrated societies.
39:55And that's why no matter what you need to do, you need to think about not just the current and
39:59the leaders who will offer Israel another peace plan.
40:01We offered Israel so much, so much.
40:0478% of our land, including my own grandparents' house and farm.
40:09This is not about...
40:10The Arab peace initiative.
40:11Do you really believe that?
40:12You know what's that?
40:12So explain that.
40:14Explain what you think is the second phase there of the Israeli strategy that you claim.
40:21Impunity combined with supremacy.
40:25There is U.S. supremacy now.
40:28Plain.
40:30Combined with sense of entitlement because supremacy produces entitlement.
40:37Put on the top of that mix that they are the only victims and the eternal victims.
40:45And impunity.
40:47If you put that in a mixture, in the mix, you come up with this.
40:52You come up with, you know, I can go to Lebanon, bomb the hell out of the country, kill 83
40:59innocent people in one day, 100 raids, 100 in 10 minutes.
41:05Mostly buildings, mostly buildings, civilians.
41:07You've seen that.
41:08A soldier of theirs goes to the south of Lebanon and brings down the...
41:12And, you know, smashes the head of Jesus Christ, who's Palestinian.
41:17Do you think, for example, that you suggested that they're smashing up, in your words, Lebanon, they're involved in Syria,
41:28they've obviously flattened most of Gaza, you've got a progressive land grab going on in the West Bank.
41:36What is the end state you think that they wish to achieve?
41:41Those who are strategists, or at least, you know, they want two things.
41:47They want the complete devouring of whatever left of Palestine, Eurasia, from the...
41:54They want greater Israel from the river to the sea.
41:57And I'm talking about the moderates now.
41:59Those are the moderates in Israel.
42:01And for that, they're doing what you're seeing on the ground.
42:04The land grab, the settler terrorism, the Gaza genocide, all that.
42:08But for a growing number of them, it doesn't stop there.
42:12I'm sure you've heard the Israeli, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, when he was asked by Tucker
42:19Carlson a few weeks ago, if he thinks Israel is okay to take over most of the Middle East, from
42:24the Nile to the Euphrine.
42:26And the ambassador said, well, good for them if they do.
42:29That's a growing mentality, mindset, ideology in Israel.
42:34So what's the end game?
42:36Dominance.
42:38And further colonization of bigger chunks of the region.
42:41So what can the Palestinians do about it?
42:43Dominance.
42:44The Palestinians need to continue being in the forefront of fighting this...
42:49Does that mean a physical fight?
42:50This expansionist, racist system.
42:54The Palestinian people need to be very principled.
42:57And first of all, we have to continue remaining on our land.
43:02That's the major thing.
43:03We have to be absolutely resilient.
43:06And I need not to tell you how resilient we are.
43:10But at the moment, the Palestinian Authority, for example, has security arrangements that means that it is, I mean, they're
43:17on and off in terms of, but broadly speaking, the Palestinian Authority has certainly adopted a policy of nonviolence towards
43:27Israel.
43:27It has a policy of arresting and detaining, jailing and worse, more violent groups such as Hamas and PIJ and
43:38others.
43:39But it seems to me that what you're arguing for is an end to that kind of cooperation and a
43:45return to a physical fight for the Palestinians against Israel to prevent the continued lag grab on the West Bank,
43:54which nobody can deny.
43:55No, the time for a physical fight is not now.
44:02It's behind us.
44:04And the time for only negotiations without creating leverage has been tested for the last 30 years, and it didn't
44:11work.
44:12Not only didn't work, it was very counterproductive because we started with 100,000 settlers, 110,000 settlers.
44:18Now we have three quarters of a million settlers.
44:21And Israel keeps telling us, we cannot change this.
44:23This is irreversible.
44:25So it didn't work.
44:27Only negotiations didn't work.
44:28So what works?
44:30It is a system of nonviolent resistance.
44:32Absolutely.
44:33This is one of my favorite subjects when it comes to the Palestinians because you've never tried it.
44:38Well, you have tried it.
44:39And whenever you've tried it, Fatah, and it was broken up by Fatah.
44:44That's not the truth.
44:45Yeah, it was in Beit Jala.
44:48Fatah hated the nonviolence protests there because it's not, because it's very empowering.
44:53It's democratizing.
44:54And I saw it for myself.
44:55You mean in Beit Sahor, not Beit Jala.
44:57Beit Sahor.
44:57Okay.
44:57And in Ramallah, when...
45:01I don't know what book you have read.
45:04I've talked to eyewitnesses who survived it.
45:08And in the second intifada, I was physically present when thugs came along and broke up Hannah Neshrawi's attempt to
45:17get a nonviolent protest physically blocking Israeli tanks.
45:21And at that time, I can tell you, because I wrote about it and Israeli military officers came to me
45:28and they said, do you think it's real and is it going to catch fire?
45:31And I said, well, I'm not spying for you.
45:33I don't work for you.
45:34But you can read what I say in the paper.
45:35And as I said in the paper, the thing about nonviolent protests is that they were worried that they had
45:43no antidote to it.
45:45You can't drive tanks over people's legs if they're lying in the street in nonviolent protests.
45:50No, that's not true.
45:50They have driven tanks.
45:52Well, you can't do it perpetually.
45:54They did it perpetually.
45:55And every single nonviolent act we did was met with not only sheer violence, mass terrorist attacks against us, including
46:04in Gaza, just before all this.
46:06Remember the March of Return?
46:09Thousands, thousands of our people were sniped as they were nonviolently just demonstrating in Gaza by Israeli soldiers.
46:16This was when they...
46:172018.
46:18Yeah.
46:19Go back to the record.
46:20Yeah, no, I covered it a bit.
46:21And not only that.
46:22In the West Bank, Fatah has adopted the popular mass movement to resist the occupation.
46:28And every time Fatah members go, look what the Israelis do.
46:33You know what?
46:33Even BDS, even attempts at bringing some sort of international boycotts, speaking of, or divestments, sanctions, speaking of South Africa
46:42and the anti-apartheid movement model, they are immediately accused of being anti-Semites.
46:47And I'm talking about the international camp.
46:50So, no, the idea of nonviolence has been adopted by Fatah.
46:54The first anti-fada was completely led by Fatah.
46:56Maybe they were operatives of Fatah here and there, like some of the stories you mentioned, they were doing it
47:02on their own head and what they did is wrong.
47:04But the idea of actually engaging the entire nation in a mass movement to resist the occupation nonviolently is a
47:13Fatah strategy.
47:13100%.
47:14Are you going to do that now?
47:16100%.
47:16And we must find a way that it becomes mass because when you involve the entire society, you actually have
47:23the moral high ground and you actually can drain your occupier.
47:27Yes, we need to make sure that we find a way for that.
47:30But that has to be coupled with an international campaign similar to that of South Africa to suck oxygen out
47:38of the settlements, out of the occupation, to make sure that the price – we cannot do it alone.
47:44Fatah understands that the first thing we need to do, us, is the unity of our people and making sure
47:50our people remain on our land and we resist it in all effective modes.
47:55Now the effective mode is nonviolent resistance, but we have to redefine resistance.
48:01It's important.
48:02Resistance is not just armed resistance or even popular resistance.
48:06I'll tell you what is likely to happen, and this is by no means an endorsement of it, but if
48:13the Israelis have created unlivable circumstances in Gaza, which has occurred,
48:20and if the Israelis continue to create unlivable circumstances on the West Bank, then many Palestinians will leave those places
48:29forever, especially if they've given an incentive to do that.
48:35Now, that may well be the plan.
48:37So how do you counter that plan?
48:39Exactly.
48:40By making sure that your resistance strategy includes –
48:43What is it?
48:44I'm asking you what the resistance strategy is.
48:46To empower them.
48:47How?
48:47By making sure that if you have $10, $9 go to their steadfastness remaining.
48:54You think, how did we survive as the Palestinian people?
48:56You think we – armed resistance in the 60s that you quoted was a small little thing.
49:01It was really not much.
49:05A couple of things here and there.
49:07The key investment of the PLO historically and of Fatah was in our national institutions.
49:12You know, Fatah paid most of its resources to universities in the West Bank and Gaza.
49:20Our ability to solidify our national fabric, our lenience on – our reliance on education was our secret weapon.
49:29Every grandmother, every parents in Palestine, they decided that the best mode of resistance is to bring about an educated
49:37nation,
49:38a new generation that can take up the struggle, and that exactly tells you why Israel has been targeting all
49:45of our universities, all of our schools, etc.,
49:48because they know that an uneducated nation is much easier to control and eventually erase.
49:58Sometimes I look at the PA and I see the administrations I saw in the old days of apartheid,
50:05a sort of Bopatatswana, Laboa, a Bantustan administration contributing to the problem
50:12by limited self-determination, by allowing the occupation forces to claim that they have given a degree of autonomy to
50:25the occupied.
50:27Isn't that what's happened?
50:29Yes.
50:29How is that for a quick answer?
50:31And I raise my hand that, you know, this should not have happened and we should not have accepted to
50:36evolve into this situation.
50:38Oslo was an interim accord, an interim arrangement for only five years.
50:43It should have ended by 1999.
50:44So, how can you go back? What is next? What move do you have? You've got vague idea of popular
50:52resistance, non-violent resistance, international pressure.
50:57Is the level of pressure on Israel turning now? Do you think that, under Netanyahu, support for the Israeli position
51:08may be waning or being diluted?
51:12That's another yes for you. A big time. Changes are happening all around us.
51:18Media has played such a role over the years and the decades to defame the Palestinian struggle and have almost
51:24blindly adopted a narrative.
51:26I'm not going to say the Israeli narrative, but something very close to it, that it is the Palestinians who
51:31should have always been on the defense.
51:34So, we have to defend ourselves. We have to come clean.
51:38Is that turning? Is it changing now?
51:40It is.
51:41How? How and why?
51:43Big time. Because all of a sudden, the world have discovered that Israel is the root of all the issues
51:48in the Middle East and worldwide, and that Israel must be brought into compliance.
51:52This conversation did not happen before, and it's happening here in Britain, it's happening in Europe, and certainly it's happening
51:58now in the U.S.
52:00So, for the first time, we see not only the Democrat or the Democrats part, but the Republicans having a
52:06serious conversation about the U.S.-Israel relationship.
52:09Has that been brought on by the invasion of Iran?
52:12Yes, it has brought that back to the fore, and then it brought it back to Iraq and back to
52:17everything that happened and that, what is this?
52:19What is the interest of the U.S. in this? What is the objective of this? Okay, it seems Israel
52:24wants to destroy every nation, every people around them, but what does this serve us in any way or shape?
52:30Well, the Israelis would counter and say, but they're just creating buffer zones because you've got Hezbollah that does want
52:36to erase Israel, you've got elements within Syria that want to do that, you've got Hamas that wants to do
52:43that, you've got the Iranian regime that wants to do that.
52:45I mean, he doesn't have a lot of friends in the region.
52:48Hezbollah did not exist before 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. They invaded Lebanon to defend their colonization, settlements, and occupation
52:56of Palestine. They invaded Lebanon to attack Yassarafath and the PLO.
53:00And Hamas did not exist up until recently. If they think Hamas or any Palestinian group, for that matter, is
53:06the cause of the conflict, they must think again. They are the consequences of this conflict.
53:11And if they think they can have security without a real resolution, without giving people their rights, I don't know
53:18which galaxy they're coming from. This logic that, you know, I want peace for peace. I want to exchange peace
53:24for peace.
53:25Isn't there another logic that just says the Israelis can punch their way to safety?
53:31They can't punch their way to safety. The only way they can have safety is by respecting the equal rights
53:38of everybody around them, by realizing that we are a people on our land, and they have to give up
53:43their dreams of just subjugating control, theft, and sheer, sheer racism.
53:50Brutality is not going to lead them anywhere, sheer power. You know, we've seen in the last few weeks during
53:55the war with Iran, the limitation of power.
53:58Did you see it? I think we all saw it. The limitation of power. You have to redefine yourself.
54:03If you really want to normalize your relationship and your being, your existence in the region, that doesn't come with
54:09just bombing everybody.
54:10It comes when you normalize yourself first. Israel has got to normalize itself. As a country, as a people, what
54:18do they want?
54:18And the only way to normalize themselves is to finally realize that, you know, no, no, no, we are among
54:26equals here.
54:27We are not better than anybody. It is not chosen. We are all chosen by one God.
54:34And, you know, we all have one rights or equal rights under one law. Respect it. Respect the people around
54:42you, and you will see different and better security.
54:46Think that your security comes from the insecurity of others. It doesn't work.
54:51Think that your security comes from all failed states around you. It doesn't work.
54:56That produce for you groups that are way more even radical than the current groups.
55:01Think that by threatening to dismantle entire societies, it brings peace for you.
55:07Think again. The only way peace can come is by you thriving and everybody else thriving.
55:13Ambassador, thank you very much.
55:15You're most welcome.
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