202. Is Peace in the Middle East Closer Than We Think? (A Palestinian & An Israeli's View)

26:39Aziz Abu Sarah:And I choose forgiveness to forgive Hamas. I choose to forgive the Israeli government and I'm focusing only in the future to create a just future for everyone. Aziz, I get the feeling that you, maybe because you were younger, you took a lot longer to get to that place of feeling that you could accept and forgive. And I'd love to, I've been to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, and it had a pretty profound effect on me. I get the feeling that that was a key moment for you, that up till that point, maybe you hadn't really thought about why Israel existed and why Jewish people felt so strongly that it should.

27:23So just talk through a little bit. First of all, is that right that you took a long time to get to the place that Mao seemed to have been right from the day his parents were murdered? And secondly, the impact of that visit to the Holocaust Museum? Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is why I was always amazed by Maoz and Magan and Maayan and more, the whole family being able to take this decision, because I knew how hard it is for me. I was 10 years old when Tayser died to torture in Israeli prisons, but also I lived the experience of occupation and day-to-day. I was shot at for a time when I was seven or eight years old.

28:07I had to go through checkpoints to school every day. I had to carry an onion with me because of tear gas. And I've had other family members who were killed during the years. So it's something that stays with you. And still today, I mean, my family today living literally in fear of everything that's happening in the West Bank. I have family in Hebron. I have family in Romella. I have family in East Jerusalem. So this is something that affects you on literally a daily basis. So after Tessir's death, I felt if somebody kills your brother, then the only thing you can do, the only normal response is revenge, is to be angry.

28:50And that if you're not, you're actually betraying your brother. You're actually betraying your loved ones. I was 10 years old, so this is the only thing I could think about. And for the next eight years, this was the feeling and the emotions that I had. This changed when I was 18 years old, when I went to study Hebrew in an Ulpan, which is where Jewish immigrants learn Hebrew. And it was the first time I met an Israeli Jewish person who treated me like a human being. And it was my Israeli teacher who smiled at me, who talked to me like a person who recognized my story and recognized my both personal and national narrative.

29:34And that's something I had not have encountered before. And she's the one who explained to me about the Holocaust. Growing up, I knew nothing about the Holocaust. I mean, I remember walking to classroom and hearing the siren, which is the Holocaust Memorial Day, and everyone stands still for a minute or two. And I'm walking by and I see this, and I freaked out. I didn't know what was happening. I literally thought there was like alien attack and it was controlling people's minds. This is how little I understood what was going on. And I lived in Jerusalem. It's not like I lived in a different city.

30:14That's when my Hebrew teacher told me to visit the Holocaust Memorial. I didn't know anybody who is a Palestinian who has been there. This is in the late 90s, and I decided to go. And honestly, I've considered turning back a dozen times. When I got there, I saw a group of soldiers with guns standing outside, and I'm like, I'm not coming in. I thought everybody was judging me. Everybody was thinking, why is this Palestinian coming here? But then as I walked in and I started reading and hearing and watching the videos in Yad Vashem, that all changed. Because again, that power of empathy, of understanding the pain, of suddenly when you see somebody suffering, I think you can't continue to think of them with labels.

31:06Oh, they're Jewish, they're Israeli, so it's okay. You can't do that. Suddenly humanity kicks in. And that's what happened to me. And understanding the history definitely makes a huge difference. It's a big part of what Mao's and I do is say, let's not let history dictate what the future looks like. It's very important for Palestinians to understand what happened in the Holocaust. And it's very important for Israelis to understand Palestinian history and what happened in Nakba in 1948. Without understanding each other's history, we don't have that empathy.

31:39Rory Stewart:How have people responded to you? I mean, you're a relatively small number of people. In fact, the peace movement feels smaller today than it was 30 years ago. So how do Palestinian friends or Israeli friends respond to you? Are you criticized by people? Do they think that you're making a mistake? Do they think you're naive? Are people supportive? I mean, what are the range of reactions you get when you talk in this kind of way?

32:05Aziz Abu Sarah:For us, naive are those who believe that war can defend, that bombs can bring quiet, and war can bring security. They are naive and fooled because they failed all through human civilization. It never works. Not in Israel-Palestine, not with Hezbollah, with Hamas, with PLO, with Egypt, but not for international power. Well, we can see now in Hormuz Strait, we can see before in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Vietnam, everywhere we look. So we are the voice of reason and we are the voice of logic. And the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement has been matured since October 7th. It's been growing, gaining momentum, and is much more synchronized and structured than it has ever been.

32:52Aziz Abu Sarah:We don't see it yet in the political spectrum or sphere, but on the ground, there are daily peace activities between the river to the sea in the West Bank, in Israel, and even in Gaza nowadays. And we can see the demand. The future is peace is a new time bestseller. It will be published by a big mainstream publisher in Israel and soon after in Arabic. It's becoming an international book, already been published in France, soon in Germany, then Italy, Spain and the Latin world, Portugal. So we are part of a global movement. And modestly, I would say we are leading it by offering a very bold and courageous vision.

33:39Aziz Abu Sarah:And minority and majority, you know better than us. It's very flexible. The settlers, the extremists that are controlling the land nowadays, they are also a minority, but they got into power. So the question is not just being how big or small we are, is are we in power? Are we are creating the political will to solve the century-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict? And we have a roadmap, we have a plan, we have a structure how to achieve it by 2030. So in less than four years from now, there should and must be a peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I'll give you maybe a couple of important examples right now.

34:19And I think one thing that peace movement learned since October 7th is not, peace isn't only about dialogue. Dialogue is the starting point. You start in dialogue, but you also have to create facts on the ground. We also have to confront injustices. And that's what the peace movement has been doing. And one of the projects that's happening today for October is around the olive harvest, where we see increased violence, significantly increased violence by settlers. And the response to it is not the peace movement only talking about, well, we should love each other and Kumbaya, but actually be there with the Palestinian community in Area C and be there with the farmers in the olive harvest.

35:06And so we, dozens of organizations have come together and said, we will be in the harvest. We calling the whole initiative, Protect the Harvest, Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals between mid-October to mid-November, we will have a group of people there at every given time. And anyone can come to that. Any British, any American, any European, any Israeli, any Palestinian can come to that. And the more we convince people, not just to talk about peace, not just to believe in peace, but to start act. Because peace and hope is not the sentiment. It's an action. And the moment we get more and more people acting on that sentiment, acting on the belief and the values that they believe in, that's how you create facts on the ground.

35:55And today, there isn't a one situation almost happening in the West Bank where there aren't Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers involved. So I have the settlers on one side, you know, supported by the state and by the Israeli military. But you also have peacemakers, people who believe in justice, people who believe in equality there at the same time. Because peace, equality and justice are not opposite sides. They are on the same side.

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37:42This is The Rest is Politics. Can we turn to, if you like, politics with a capital P, maybe? because of course your work, I'm imagining, is not made easier by the reality of some of the politicians that are very, very high profile in this whole process. So I'd like to ask you both really your sense of Netanyahu, your sense of Trump, who as I understand it is pretty popular in Israel still, and also your sense of the politicians in Palestinian Authority. I get the feeling that you feel, maybe start with you on this Aziz, that you feel that the reason, one of the reasons that Hamas is the force that it's become is actually because the Palestinian mainstream politicians are so weak and old and corrupt.

38:31Yeah, absolutely. I think we are plagued. One of my friends used to say that Palestinian cause is a just cause with terrible lawyers. and the Palestinian Authority has been in many ways that. We have a president who's been the president now for 21 years with no re-election. We don't have a parliament at the moment. We keep being told there's an election coming, but God knows when that's going to happen. And there is no constitutional, even court. So the president can make all decisions on his own and people can see corruption. Our president has less than 20 % approval rating. I don't know any other president in the world, regardless how unpopular you are, getting less than 20%.

39:19At some points, it was single digits. And one of the things I remember him saying is, I'm going to walk and march into Gaza to support the people in Gaza. And I thought, this is incredible. Finally, he's showing leadership. We're still waiting for him to do that. There isn't anything on the ground. people being attacked by settlers. I haven't seen him to any of the villages in the West Bank where people being attacked by settlers. You don't see him outside his fancy office. And when people don't feel their leaders, supposed leaders, politicians with them on the ground, they look elsewhere. And that's where Hamas shows up.

39:55Hamas shows up and builds clinics. Hamas showed up and helped people build schools. Hamas showed up when people were in need. And so we can, there's a lot of problems with Hamas and their ideology, but they showed up just like the settlers in Israel do the same thing. And so it is no surprise that Hamas became who they are and how popular they are, because in times of corruption, that's where you go. So that's one issue we have. I'm also a U.S. citizen. And sadly, I would say the U.S. and the international community has been tremendous force in the wrong direction. And we can blame Trump, but it's not only Trump.

40:38Biden was not much, much better than Trump in the sense he said sometimes the right things. But when it came to action, when it came to pressure, it really baffles me why the United States is not able to use its weight to push for the right direction. I mean, Biden invited Netanyahu multiple times. He gave him cover. Again, we can criticize Netanyahu a lot, but without Biden, Netanyahu would not have survived. So American politics is important. I would go even beyond. Today, the United States does not allow visa for Palestinian peacemakers to come into the U.S. This is how far off the United States and the international community have gone, not allowing peacemakers.

41:23My life has changed since Trump come in. when I travel from and out of the U.S. back, I get stopped for hours. I get interrogated for being a peacemaker. Because to them, being a peacemaker, to the current administration, is anti-American, is anti-patriotic, which I believe is an absurdity. I think being a peacemaker is being patriotic, whether you're Israeli, whether you're Palestinian, whether you're an American. So yes, when it comes to politicians, they're not on our side. But that has always been the case in war zones. Politicians are the last usually to show up. And that's where our focus is to get people to push those politicians, to change the sentiment.

42:08When Maoz and I went to Congress in 2024 to talk about sanctions on stopping sending bombs to Israel, members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress looked at us and said, if you mention that, you'll be kicked out of every office in Congress. That's what we were told in 2024. You fast forward to today, that has completely changed within the Democratic community and the Democratic lawmakers. And it changed not because they suddenly grew a conscience. It changed because people who vote for them, told them this is not acceptable anymore. And that's where the work of Maoz and I is important, is to work with the people so we can push the politicians to get to where we need to be.

42:56Rory Stewart:Maoz, can I bring you in on the question then of the plan? So you've told us about the long-term vision of peace. You've talked about your own personal experience. You've talked about the psychology of it. But what is the political roadmap? How do you get to where you want to be in 2030?

43:16Aziz Abu Sarah:Yes. So we are offering only a five-step journey and then a five-chapter roadmap. The five-step journey is the journey to fulfill our dreams. It can be to end poverty, like the TED Talk you gave back in 2024. We were in the audience. It was a brilliant talk and it can be a lasting peace in Israel and Palestine. We must have a dream. We must agree on our shared values that will base our dream upon, equality and dignity, match both our dreams. We must build a coalition because we cannot fulfill big dreams on our own. We must have a roadmap and we must implement the roadmap. Those are the five steps to fulfill our dream and vision.

44:02Aziz Abu Sarah:And now we do have a roadmap for a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The first chapter is going back to the basic to offer a vision. And this is what Aziz and I are doing. And this is what was being done by the extremists, by Hamas and the Israeli government. A vision of one people in one land, ethnicity, ethnical supremacy, religious supremacy. and for too long, maybe three generations, I'm speaking from the Israeli point of view, since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, no Israeli politician offered a vision. And so while our politicians are still not there yet, this is where we are as civil society leaders offering this vision.

44:50Aziz Abu Sarah:The second chapter is to amplify the vision. We must amplify to share it if it's in a best-selling book, if it's speaking all over the world, but we do many public speaking and private speaking also here in Israel and Palestine. And we are not alone. There are many, many that do the same work. The third chapter is to legitimize peace. And this is why for us being interviewed in your prestigious podcast, this is exactly how we're legitimized because the episode before us, the episode after us, of course, you had a beautiful episode with the account bin face, but you also have presidents and policymakers from all over the world.

45:35Aziz Abu Sarah:So this is how you're legitimating us as we are speaking now. The force is to change policies. Aziz start touching on it. Maybe later we can also talk about what role the UK can play. We believe the UK can play a major role in creating a lasting peace. And the fifth chapter is to create a political will. the political will not necessarily the political power because many times unfortunately those who signed the peace treaties the peace agreement the day before they were war criminals and even if we go to israel history begging and sadat 1977 israeli prime minister menachem begging who was the wanted terrorist by the british mandate till 1948 he's becoming the prime minister all through his political career only advocating for wars and bloodshed between Israel and our Arab neighbors and Anwar Saadat who only four years before waged a war of surprise against Israel and then he's arriving to Israel.

46:42Aziz Abu Sarah:There was a poll two weeks before Saadat's visit and the majority of Israelis, vast majority, more than 70 % were against negotiation, not against peace, not against let's swap, against negotiation. Moshe Dayan, Israeli warrior, said it's better to have Sinan Peninsula without peace than peace without Sinan Peninsula. And Golda Meir said, the Prime Minister during the Yom Kippur war, said there will be no peace in our lifetime. No peace in our lifetime. And only two weeks after, President Sadat is arriving and the children of Israel, the children of Israel are waiting for him in Tel Aviv, in Be 'er Sheva, in Haifa, in Jerusalem.

47:23Aziz Abu Sarah:And I'm meeting them now. When I do my public speaking, we meet them, those children. And they tell us, we waved with two flags, the flag of Israel and the flag of Israel's biggest enemy. And the discourse completely flipped. And this is how two war heroes or criminals you can decide for yourself they become peacemakers and Rabin and Arafat it's the same Rabin was the Israeli security minister defense minister who ordered to break the arms and legs of the Palestinian protesters exactly the time Aziz brother was arrested and tortured in prison to death and Arafat for me growing up in Israel Arafat was an are he terrorists?

48:08Aziz Abu Sarah:And they signed the Osto Agreement. And everywhere we go, around the world, we can see more and more proof that war criminals can be transformed. And we need to make sure, we need to transform them. We cannot wait. We don't have the privilege to wait to the election, to that, the middle. So many people are dying. There is a huge urgency, the level of dehumanization, the extremismism is rising so we must make peace now and two weeks before peace or four weeks before peace embark many times we don't see it coming if it's the Berlin Wall the end of the genocide in Rwanda the apartheid in South Africa so what I am stating is that we are always between two weeks to four weeks from peace and what can we do now what can we do today to make it happen and to prove once again that no one could have seen it coming.

49:04Aziz Abu Sarah:Afterwards, the historian will tell us, of course, all the signs were already there. Okay, Maus, that of course, you're right. These things will come. And the reason I said right at the start, it feels so distant, but of course it can come. But there's a couple of things you said. I do want to come back to the point about Britain because I think sometimes we as Brits underestimate our role in the history of this and therefore maybe also underestimate our role and what we can do to create this future that you're trying to create. But there's a point in the book where you say this, the Palestinian cause has been reduced to a talking point in speeches.

49:38And I think that's a very fair point. And we're guilty of this as well. Rory and I will regularly say there's no other solution but a two-state solution. Am I right that you basically think that what we mean by the two-state solution as things stand has absolutely no chance at all? You're talking about a different outcome. We don't talk much, Maaz and I, about where the lines are going to go, because I think that's not the hardest part. We talk a lot more about the will and about steps that get us there. And so we feel a lot of times the talking points is kind of people argue about things outside their power instead of focusing on what is in our power.

50:18for the united kingdom for years we've been trying to get the uk to do simple stuff like for example limit the amount of money coming through charities in the uk to support settlements that should have been something easy back in the times i know tony blair or david cameron or any of these leaders to do only recently there have been minor steps in making that happen and those minor steps are important because it shows it is possible. So I think we got to start thinking, what is it that the United Kingdom, what is it that we all over the world can do to put that pressure? The UK can pressure both Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas significantly.

51:03There's a lot of political power that the United Kingdom has. There's a lot of political power on how things work, you know, even talking about Palestinian elections. The UK has a lot of political power and influence over the Palestinian Authority and over the legitimacy of leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu. And we want that kind of power to be used. It took until last year for the United Kingdom to recognize Palestine. I don't understand why it took 20 years, 30 years of us advocating and lobbying and so on for it to happen, for that to happen. It shouldn't take atrocities for this to get to where we are.

51:45And so our message to the UK, let's move faster. We don't have time to do these minor steps. We need bigger steps. And this is the time. This is the time to make it happen. That's how we get to what Ma 'os said, two to four weeks away from reaching an agreement. And we've seen it again happen in Northern Ireland. You know, Jerry Adams and David Trimble were not the most well-known peacemakers in the world. And yet, they were willing to get on board with a Good Friday agreement. And if my memory right, you both know better than me, they didn't even shake hands. I think David Trimble refused to shake Jerry Adams' hands until he died.

52:29And yet, they got on board. And pressure is what got us there.

52:33Rory Stewart:I get the sense that when you think about a peace process, you're not really thinking about mapping out obstacles, opportunities, steps in the way that maybe a diplomat normally does. i mean normally when you have this conversation i don't know with someone who's worked on the middle east peace process they will lay out a roadmap and they will say you know the biggest obstacle is the israeli government or the biggest obstacle is the palestinian government and and then the next stage is we need to work out a b and c and all this kind of stuff but you seem to be doing something much more radical which is saying that this is actually missing the point that in a sense, an attitude of radical hope can shortcut a lot of these things that we see as obstacles?

53:25Rory Stewart:Or am I misunderstanding? You are absolutely right. We were recently in a meeting with a Liberian ambassador to the United Nations, and he was one of the people who negotiated the peace agreement there. And he told us what the two of you are doing is exactly what gets people eventually in the negotiation room and make sure that that negotiation room will lead to peace. It's like many people will tell you, focus on exactly where the lines are and how it's going to work. And yes, that's important at some point, but right now what's needed is exactly this work. And it is to push for the right people to be also in the room.

54:08So one of the things we keep talking about right now, every negotiation that happened between Israelis and Palestinians has been a bunch of lawyers and generals, usually in the room.

54:18Aziz Abu Sarah:And ex-politic, you say politicians? And politicians. Ex-politicians. Tony's always there. Tony's always there. Yes, or ex-politicians. But one of the things that have worked really well for Liberia and worked really well for Northern Ireland is it was a much bigger mix of people. There were also the radicals there. There were also peacemakers there. There were the Women Peace Coalition, for example, in Northern Ireland. We've never had a seat at the table as peacemakers. And so when we assemble that room that is going to negotiate, it cannot be only the generals and politicians and ex-politicians and lawyers.

54:59It needs to be a bigger mix of people and including peacemakers, women, and other part of civil society and religious leaders, including some extremists in the room. And that's something Northern Ireland did have. You know, the prisoners who many saw as terrorists actually had a room in that negotiations and without them, an agreement would not have been reached. So it is rethinking how we pushing for for peace. And yes, believing that it can happen, pushing for the radical hope and saying, if we will it, it will become a reality. Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of that. I don't think the Northern Ireland thing would or could have happened without having the right political leaders at the right time in the United States with Clinton, Tony Blair in the UK, Bertie Ahern, and then, as you say, all these other groups that were around it and making an influence in different ways.

56:01Can I maybe ask you, Myos, to go back to this point about the role of the UK? I mean, Britain, in a way, Britain, in a way, was largely responsible for creating this landscape that we're still trying to make sense of. Do you feel that we do, we have historically taken enough responsibility? Aziz has mentioned some of the things that we could do. But should we be reminded occasionally of that? And might that force us to do a little bit more? It feels to me right now that Trump is the only show in town when it comes to outside political forces. Our voice isn't as strong as it should be.

56:39Aziz Abu Sarah:Yeah. So again, I don't want to go into the blame game and to go back into history to the British mandate, to Palfour declaration, the petition. Maybe Aziz does. Maybe Aziz does. I can do that. I want to go to nowadays. I want to go to summer 2026. Both Aziz and I have many friends in the UK. I have my brother, but we have many friends, Israelis, Palestinians. And we are also aware, we are aware of the rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We witness and we see how you are importing the conflict to your streets, to your universities, to your communities, to your cities, to your national politics.

57:21Aziz Abu Sarah:It's the highest ever, if I'm not wrong, cases of antismism and Islamophobia in a long, long time. And we believe that instead of importing the problem, we can all invest in the solution and invest in a lasting peace between Israel and Palestinians. And then you will be able to import the solution. Because if Aziz and I can form a brotherhood, and Rory and Aristel, you can have a very popular podcast, so does the Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK. And they must partner, they must work together and to force and to demand from the UK government and policymakers to start investing in peace.

58:10Aziz Abu Sarah:and recently last month a peace fund was announced by the UK government with Australia and Canada each country is giving 1 million pound for 3 years 3 million so it's a tool it's a start how long it will take us the peacemaker to see these funds probably I don't know we will have many more episodes you will have a new digit in your counting but it's a tool. We must invest billions of pounds like was invested in North Ireland, like the Marshall Plan in Europe. It's the model I would like to envision also for the Middle East, not just for Israel, for Lebanon, for Syria, for Jordan, for Egypt, for the greater region.

59:01Aziz Abu Sarah:So it's change of policies, investing in peace and tools of construction, not tools of destruction and sanctions. those who choose violence those who choose bloodshed it doesn't matter if they are prime ministers they are civilians they are generals in the IDF or wherever they must be sanctioned and hard and strong and not wait because we cannot wait because it's our life on stakes it's not winning about winning an argument or winning a debate it's about winning life and if we all work together to achieving this achievable lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, again two to four weeks, that should be the timeframe we should discuss.

59:46Rory Stewart:Aziz, final one from me, and thank you both so much for your generosity and your time. What is it that you find most frustrating when you have interviews? What is it that you often feel that you wish you could say or explain that is sometimes quite difficult to get across when you're being interviewed? Wow. I'll use something Maoz loves to say. When we talk about reaching a peace agreement, and we say our goal is to get one by 2030, almost everywhere when we are interviewed, people go, wow, that is soon. How are you going to do it? That sounds naive, so on. Until recently, one journalist asked us and said, why the lack of faith?

1:00:31Why do you think it needs four years. And I think that's our hope is that this is how people respond is why should it take that long? But before we finish, if you allow me, one of the things we like to do, we both love poetry. We both work in travel. Ma 'oz started the Fauzi Azhar and Abraham Tours, and I started Majdi Tours. And our tourism work is peace work. And so we came across this poem by Sameach al-Qasim, who is a Palestinian Druze poet. And he wrote this poem about peace and travel. And we thought it fits really so much into what we do. And he said in it, The day I'm killed, my killer rifling through my pockets will find travel tickets.

1:01:19One to peace, one to the fields and the rain, and one to the conscience of a humankind. So I beg you, my dear killer, do not waste such a thing. Do not ignore these tickets. Please, I beg you to go traveling. And so much of what Maoz and I are doing is exactly that, saying we have those tickets to peace, to the fields and the rain, and to the conscience of a humankind. And wherever we go, we are begging people to use those tickets, It's not to be tribal, especially to the Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK. Your role shouldn't be defending everything your people in Israel and Palestine are doing.

1:02:03Your role is to help push us toward the peace. And when Hamas did what it did, you know, I didn't see it. My people did it. I'm able to speak against it. When Israel is doing what it does in Gaza, Maoz doesn't see it. My people are doing it. It is wrong and needs to stop. and we can defend atrocities, we should work together to stop atrocities, because that will also protect us everywhere. So this is our message. My final question, guys, is it really goes to the very personal, in that you've both, in a sense, decided on the back of your experience that you're going to dedicate yourselves to trying to build this peace in the future.

1:02:47And I get the feeling as he's reading your sections of the book that to some extent that has put pressure on you and at certain points also on your marriage and on your family. And I think Rory and I can, well, I can certainly identify with that at various times in my political life. And likewise with you, Mao, you have a point at which you say, I'd like you to explain this because you see your son in uniform. Every Israeli has to do military service. And it really seems to hurt you that your son is in the IDF. I just want to understand that because what's going on in your mind there? Because you knew when he was a child that was going to happen at some point.

1:03:29What did you want him to do? So maybe you go first and then Aziz come back on that as well.

1:03:37Aziz Abu Sarah:Yeah, well, that's a huge topic to end with. And we can really talk, I think we literally can talk hours just on that. Joining the IDF is a kind of gravity force. All Israelis know when they will be parents, they will raise their kids, and then when he or she will be 18, they will be drafted to the IDF. That's a force of nature. And the IDF didn't protect my parents. They didn't. They had many units, combat units in the West Bank, oppressing, occupying Palestinians, but they weren't there when they was needed. So I don't trust the IDF to bring any security and safety. It didn't work to my parents.

1:04:21Aziz Abu Sarah:It's not going to work in the future. The only way to achieve security and safety, which is what Israelis and Jews need the most, is only through dialogue, only through diplomacy and reconciliation process between Israelis and Palestinians. So my, my, my, our kids, they made, they are grown up. They are a free spirit individual and they do whatever they want. We can advise, we can support, we can be there. We can tell them, well, we think they are doing wrong. And it's the same with my three kids. So my eldest son choose to join the IDF. And I told him, okay, I think it's a mistake, but it's your decision.

1:05:07Aziz Abu Sarah:and after six months in the service, he realized that it's not for him. So after six months, he basically withdrew, quick-ended his service, and now he's doing a social service in an organic farm, while he's part of the staff and the employees are youth that are working in the farm. It's his decision. My second son is also not going to do. the IDF is not going to ever be listed and the same with my third but it's their decision I can say now that more and more Jewish Israelis refuse to go to serve the IDF you won't see any numbers it's all hash hash and of course the IDF Israeli government will never give any details or statistics about it, definitely many are not going to the reserve but there is no numbers.

1:06:03Aziz Abu Sarah:I can just show you between my community and between my friends and colleagues more and more refuse to go to serve the IDF. And Aziz? There's a big human toll and trauma that we all go through. And one of the hardest parts I've written in the book, I want it to be in the future space honest about that price. And I think growing up, seeing so much injustices and being unable to do anything about it since I was a kid had a tremendous influence on who I am. And I did not deal with it. Even becoming a peacemaker, it in some ways sometimes exasperated it instead of helping because I found my way of escapism and instead of dealing with my issues and the person who had to suffer the most out of that was uh is my wife uh where our relationship was going through a very very problematic reality I I was there but I was never there um where I would get angry very quickly i'm very good outside you won't see my me being angry when when i'm doing my piece work but at home i wasn't and eventually i had to come to an understanding of that and seek help and seek therapy and i remember we went to a a couple's uh therapy and after a few minutes literally the therapist goes i think we just need to talk to you for you know a couple of sessions i'm like why are you saying I'm the pro?

1:07:49No, it's just a couple of sessions. Anyway, a few months later, I was still talking only to me. And I'm very grateful for that because that is what saved our relationship. If I didn't get that help, and it is important to say for most Palestinians, they don't have access to that, access to therapy, access... We don't have enough even therapists if people go to seek therapy. people can't afford it i think of people in gaza it's two million people with severe trauma who don't have access to safety but also don't have access to that therapy and the children who are growing up in this reality it's something i think about every day this is much worse reality than the one i grew up in and there's so much need of healing and so much need of of support that this is why we don't have four, five years to do this.

1:08:49We need to get peace soon so we are able to go to these places and offer healing because the alternative is, I can't even imagine how terrible it is. Yeah. Well, listen, thanks for talking to us and thanks for the book as well. Actually, to that point, Aziz, the thing that really comes strongly in the book to me is just the absolute buggeration of life for Palestinians day after day after day. and I think you know anything that keeps the spotlight that and there's a a good thing to do and I hope you two carry on without the need for couples therapy I mean that sounds like um you've got a good partnership there but thanks very very much for your time

1:09:28Rory Stewart:thank you both very much really appreciate it thank you

1:09:34Rory Stewart:Alastair I think the first thing we need to begin with is a thank you to Fiona Yes. She met them and was very, very keen to make this happen. And I'm really pleased it did happen. And the thing I took away from it most is this idea of hope, radical hope, existential hope. I don't know how you get around it. That amazing Seamus Heaney poem about hope. I mean, in a sense, when he's trying to reflect on what happens with peace in Orland, he comes back almost the idea of a miracle, the sense that you can't quite in advance ever believe that with all the problems and resentments and politics that everything is ever going to end up right so anyway i that's what i took from it over to you well if you remember the event i did at davos in gold's house last year was all about how hope is an action hope is not just the kind of feeling it's what you do to bring it about and i mean i do think especially when you understand the the horror of their story and it's interesting how they don't want to dwell on i guess they You said to them, what do you not like about these interviews?

1:10:39Maybe it's the fact they have to tell the same stories again and again and again. We didn't linger on that. But when you've been through what they've been through, and then you turn that into trying to bring about the change that you believe in, and you keep telling yourself, this could happen in two weeks. Right. Now, they've been doing that for quite a lot of fortnights. Okay. And yet they still say, this can happen in the next two weeks. No, I think they're both extraordinarily impressive. And it's a great book because it just sort of, that sense of hope does run through it. And they're a team as well.

1:11:16You can see they're a good team.

1:11:17Rory Stewart:Isn't there something strange about hope? Because it's very difficult to see. I mean, I think as humans, our brains are set up to think that the way things have been in the past or the way they will be in the future. And we're very good at explaining why things are where they are. But if you'd thought about the world in that way, you would have probably said to yourself, well, why would white people in the United States ever give rights to African Americans? Why would men ever allow women to vote? I mean, don't be ridiculous. Why would turkeys vote for Christmas? Why would wealthy people ever pay income tax?

1:11:48Rory Stewart:And yet those changes happened. And they didn't always happen because of pure force. I think slavery, civil rights, universal suffrage, a lot of it was driven by idealism. A lot of it was driven by hope. It wasn't actually, in some strange ways, always that somehow it happened because, I don't know, that women made it unbearable and left men with no choice. It was because women and men together decided this was the right thing to do. There's a lot of Irish poetry in this book. And you know, you quoted Seamus Heaney there. And I think I get the feeling that Aziz in particular is really driven and motivated by what he studied in the Northern Ireland peace process.

1:12:28And just on that, I wrote a book about the peace about Northern Ireland. And I think it was in the introduction, I said that if you asked me to explain how this finally all came together, I can tell you what happened at a particular moment in time. But I still can't actually explain how it all came together at the time that it did. And so they're absolutely right. He said 1990. He'd never have said in 1990 that by 1997, 8 would have had the Good Friday Agreement. But you wouldn't frankly have said it the day before. So I think this idea that they've got of saying this can happen really quickly if we all try to make it happen quickly, I think that's a really powerful way of thinking about this.

1:13:07And it's also why they resist, I think, being treated like politicians are expected to do what you were saying, you know, well, what's the roadmap here? And what if this and what if that? They're basically just saying, we can make this happen if we, the totality of we, come together with enough force and decide it's going to. So all power to their elbow. It's a great book. I strongly recommend it to our listeners and viewers and good luck to them.

1:13:34Rory Stewart:Here's my final pretentious moment. You can't get by without pretentious. So from the prophet Jeremiah. So he says, the prophets who preceded you and me in ancient times prophesied war, disaster, plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as the true prophet. And it's a very, very strange statement because he's basically saying all these people in the past, they were accurate when they talked about famine and war and pestilence. But in some sense, they were false prophets, whereas the one who prophesies peace is a real true prophet.

1:14:11Rory Stewart:There we are. Well, I don't find that at all pretentious. I think it's utterly in keeping with the spirit both of their book and the interview. So I think it's a very good place to end. Thank you, Alistair. And thank you to Piona. See you soon. Bye.

1:14:54Rory Stewart:We'll be right back. outdoor protection plans starting at$49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012. Some personality quirks are really funny. Like, I talk to my left foot more than I talk to my right. You know what's not funny and not a personality quirk? OCD. Although the term OCD is widely recognized, it's misunderstood by most people. It doesn't mean being tidy or clean. It's having obsessive fears, thoughts, and urges. You question your character. You question your safety. that's OCD. Breaking the OCD cycle takes effective treatment. Go to NoCD.com to learn more.