182. Palestine, Gaza, and Israel

27:34You go back to it. We are a nation and a society that knows what is the meaning of living together in harmony, the real coexistence in everything. It's Jerusalem and Bethlehem. We know how to accommodate them. They didn't know until now how to accommodate us. They came up with a very exclusive ideology, Zionism, that by definition could not see us as an equal nation. You can't deny that through that you can explain it, you can give people the context for it, you can't deny that if you're sitting on the Israeli side, you've seen a history that involves terrorism as they see it. You said earlier in one of your earlier answers, you talked about how you had this united leadership.

28:16But actually what you've described is a very divided leadership because you have West Bank where you guys are in control. You have Hamas in control of Gaza. That allows them to do things that you can then say, well, we wouldn't do like that. We don't want to operate like that. And of course, his, but I never, never. First of all, I didn't say we have a united political factions. I said that we are, we have a united people. Our people are united and our people are united by the fact of our oppression because we face the same oppression with a ringaza in Nablus, in Jerusalem, in Khalil. So we are united by oppression and we as a people united in our goals.

28:52We have one legitimate political system that is the PLO missing Hamas. So we need to find the formula, but unless we agree on the principles, that formula needs to be there and far. Because for a lot of people, they don't understand how this works. Do you have any control over them at all? Well, there were so many attempts at dialogue, including very recently. There were so many rounds of attempts at bringing them under the umbrella of the PLO and engaged in national elections again. So we renew our democratic process because we pride ourselves as Palestinians to be in a region that is not very democratic, but yet we are.

29:33So we offer elections and our elections are monitored by people like President Carter and they they brag about how transparent and democratic it is. But no, there hasn't been one for a long time. Well, it hasn't been since that situation that Rory referred to, but please, I don't want to forget or to deflate from the discussion about the Israeli society. Because it's very important. Because this discussion, many Israelis, according to your questions, think that they were targeting them or they are being targeted or anybody is targeting them because they are Jews. That's that's, you know, let me say this, let me say this.

30:07By the way, the most adamant vocal voices for Palestine and the world are all Jewish. Very strong voices from Nahum Chomsky downward. And many of my friends, this is not an ideological or religious conflict. This is a political issue. You know, it's very ridiculous that people think that had our oppressors, colonizers, besiegers, been not Jewish, we would have been okay with it. No, of course not. Our issue here is not the identity of our oppressors. Our issue at stake here is the fact of our oppression. That's the issue. And our situation is and what we are trying to do here is to say that we are in order not with you as Jewish or with you as Israeli even.

30:56We are in order with you as an occuper, as a colonizer, as a soldier that imposes a system of racial domination apartheid, very well documented by Amnesty International, by human rights watch, by numerous Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, by Selim, what are you? We are equal human being. Do not underestimate, this is my message to them. Do not underestimate people's desire for freedom. And when they desire freedom and when they don't accept your control, they will find hundreds of ways to try and make their voices heard. Now, there are of these ways that we don't accept and our approach is very clear.

31:35We believe in the power of nonviolence. But even those who try to nonviolence like myself, you know what the Israeli's call me? The Plomatic Terrorist. So they have a really thing for anything. We are not allowed to use, you know, if you use armed resistance, you are a terrorist. If you use peaceful resistance, they call you a violent activist and they shoot you by the way. And if British people like yesterday or Saturday, tens of thousands in the streets of London and Manchester and everywhere Scotland, they call them anti -Semites. If you really come out and support the rights of Palestinians, if Jewish people and many of them come in support of justice in Palestine and I tell you, you will be amazed how many of them there are.

32:14They told themselves, hating Jew, Jew. What, what are we supposed to do? If your political venues are blocked, your legal venues are blocked, your international venues are blocked. So what people are supposed to do? What did the younger generation must be thinking about? So what's the answer to that? What is the answer? Where do you take it? Where do you go? I think the answer to that is not solely the Palestinian experience. It has to be the global experience, the human family. We did not establish the post -World War II global order for nothing, Alistair. It took us horrors, massacres here in Europe, horrors.

32:49I mean, you know, the most heinous crime in history was the Holocaust. Six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. And then we all learned the lesson, never again. And the never again brought about the international system. The international system created two things. Israel and rules. Unfortunately, Israel and rules have been in order with each other for 75 years. We need to allow Israel and rules once and for all. Listen, we were talking to Prince Said, the former UN High Commission of Human Rights. And that's an interview that we'll be bringing up after yours, Ambassador. And he was talking to us about what he calls the tribalism of pain, the problem that people have empathizing with the other side.

33:31And we also spoke to Yuval Noah Harari a few days ago. And he said, you know, he had close relatives there being attacked by Hammers. He was seeing peace activists being murdered in their beds with their children. And he said that psychologically, it's almost impossible at the moment to feel for the other side. You know, he's somebody who's very committed to the idea of decent treatment Palestinians, but he finds it very difficult at the moment. And then he said that he imagined the same was true for Palestinians, that Palestinians also, at the moment, find it difficult to empathize with the suffering of Israeli civilians, that on both sides, there's a tribalism of pain.

34:09People cannot feel each other's pain. Well, if you allow me, Rory, can I pick a disagreement with that? That would be true if there is any sort of symmetry. We are not occupying an Israeli city. We are not colonizing any Israeli areas. We are not laying besiegement on an Israeli population. We are not imposing a system of racial domination and apartheid. We are not. We are the ones under occupation. And therefore, you cannot equate between the occupier and the occupier. What Yuval said was that you can be victim and perpetrator at the same time. Okay. Okay. I guess what people, and I've watched lots of your interviews, and I completely understand you get frustrated.

34:48The same questions you, you know, you won't be I know I asked me why I want to ask you, you know, you know, you know, you know, please, you ask me why because, you know, everybody thinks that I don't want to the condemn violence. You know, I chose, I was a, I was a UN official and then academic and I studied here at the LSE and I went to Harvard. So I could have led a different part. I chose diplomacy because I passionately believe in the means of nonviolence to attain our rights. But I refuse the premise of that question because once you accept it, it's a framing mechanism whereby we become the aggressors.

35:22When in fact, the source of all aggression, the beginning of all aggression is the state of military occupation. The beginning of peace of some might be the acceptance of each other's victimhood, if you like, the acceptance that both suffer pain and both therefore need to accept the pain of the other before they can actually get together. Can I be very blunt here? Okay, we have been the ones massacred by Israel and we haven't done, okay, what happened on the 7th of October we discussed it has never happened before, like this, this scale and this scale, yeah, like this. The Jewish people are not our victims, they are the victims of the Nazis and the issues here happened here.

36:01So practically, Alistair and Rory, we are the victims of the victims. No, but to get from where you are now, but to get away from the victims of the victims, the victims of Europe should also have a place in their hearts for us. We haven't perpetuated that. You just said that many of the people who go in these marches are Jews, many of them do have that. Of course, right. Let me just ask you this question, you've been a diplomat, you've been an economist, you've been an academic, you understand this political scene inside out and yet you say you still have hope you can get there. Of course, who do you negotiate with at the moment?

36:36Where does it go? How does anything start unless you can say what the international community do this and the other, but ultimately, unless you, the Palestinians have some mechanism by which you can build trust and mutual respect with Israelis, this goes nowhere, isn't it? We will have to find a way to do the following. Number one, the settler movement in Israel has taken control itself from the Israelis to change it. But how do you negotiate with a person like Smotrich who's now the finest man? Very hard. And Ruri is very accurate because Smotrich published what Ruri said. He published it. It's public.

37:10Either you accept being a slave in your own land or you are you flee or we kill you. I mean, you negotiate with such a mentality. The Israeli, the Israeli people need to come up with a leadership that believe there is a different future. Netanyahu was a politician, not a statesman. Israel had Rabina at once who decided, okay, this is the line in the sun. We cut it. Unfortunately, he was assassinated by Israeli and Israeli fanatic. And guess the supporters of that fanatic are now where they're in government. In government. And you know, these settlers in the West Bank, and this is the problem with Israeli public.

37:47And I'm going to come to the Palestinian public. The problem is they didn't make the link between what these guys are doing with us in the West Bank and what they started doing to the Israelis themselves. I mean, this whole judicial reform thing, they turned back against their own people. So there has to be the link in Israel that occupation, colonization, besiegement, murder of people, arrest of people without charge and trial corrupts your own society. And the outcome of that is the big views and the smotrage of the Netanyahus. One of the things I don't understand is what on earth Hamas really thought they were doing in this attack eight days ago because they're not Islamic jihad.

38:25They had a state. They were a kind of government. They were running social services. They were running education. And by this attack, they have guaranteed that they're never going to be a government again. And also I think most Muslims feel very strongly that you don't attack civilians. And most of my Muslim friends, you know, of course, they feel strong, strong solidarity with the Palestinian cause. But they're uncomfortable about Hamas killing women and children in this way. It's not comfortable for people. So what did Hamas think it was doing? I haven't, Rory, I haven't seen verified accounts of that.

38:58And I'm really eager to see. But if this happened, I would be the absolute first, not only to condemn it, but to shout out that this is non -Palestinian, this is non -Arab, this is non -Muslim. We are innocent and we are absolutely we disown such act because we belong to a culture that definitely forbids such thing. And we as the victims of such attacks for 75 years should always make sure that we do not blur the lines here. Having said all that, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, please talk to them. And I don't know what has gone in their head side. I really, I truly, truly don't. They must have known, this was the reaction.

39:37They must have known that a government might not know who's going to do what is now. I am surprised like everybody, surprised at the incident, but I have to say I have been warning everywhere I go in media with governments here. And I also that something is coming because, you know, politics is like physics. It does not fancy vacuum. And there is no international leadership for the last so many years. Trump and, you know, moving the embassy and completely trying to undermine the Palestinian issue. But Aniyah, how claiming that now he has made peace in the Middle East, he meant with Emirates and Bahrain, Israel was never at war with Emirates, Bahrain, Israel is at war with us.

40:10Israel is at odds with us. And Israel can only achieve peace and security with us. But he was trying to do the Abraqad Abra, you know, that peace is here. I have liquidated the Palestinian issue. That vacuum that was created, that lack of hope in the hearts of the millions of Palestinian youth was very dangerous, very dangerous. How it would have been manifested nobody knew. We have got to learn the lessons here. And the main lesson, the one lesson that we need to learn is that this is a political issue. It's a political issue. No matter how you look at it from a security situation, you have got to find political solutions.

40:45Now you're at the ambassador here. As you say, you were the ambassador in the United States until the Trump administration closed the mission and went down the route of saying that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. So today, we're recording this on Monday, Rishi Sunat was just stood up in the House of Commons and said that six British people were among those killed. There were 12 more missing. I just first of all, you think of that, you're reaction to that, but also whether you worry that that maybe makes your job here because you are being put through this frame that you keep objecting to, which I understand.

41:17I get your frustration on that. But whether that makes your life here as a diplomat, as the ambassador of Palestine more difficult. I hope not because the British government knows very well that this is Hamas, not us and they make the clear distinction, the difference between the PLO and the government and the Palestinian legitimate representative, the representation of Hamas and Mr. Sunat the Prime Minister made it today in his remarks and the foreign secretary cleverly made it yesterday with me in Sunday morning, BBC. So the distinction is there and the British public also know that that distinction.

41:47You've been very critical of Britain's role historically. What's your assessment of the British government and British politics generally? And I guess the opposition's important, this because the opposition might become the government reasonably soon. We talked about Oslo being the high point politically in the UK was Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour Party, the high point for you because he was so committed on this issue. Well, this was never about one individual in the Labour Party. The issue of Labour government recognizing Palestine was started by a debilament to be accurate and precise. So this is a Labour movement and Labour Party progression of policy that got us to Labour being much more supportive and much more clear on the internationalism side and the international rules side.

42:31And your assessment of the government is positioned now today? Well, both the government and the opposition need to stick to the issue of international law. That's the most significant part. And the first few days of the situation since the 7th of October, I felt that the big government was off balance. Talking about Israel right to defend itself without any qualifications or you know, adding that international law needs to be special international and humanitarian law needs to be adhered to. We were feeling that that will give the fanatics in this government a green light to commit the massacres.

43:02And the Israeli government? Yes, and the Israeli government of course, the likes of smotrach and being fear, the green light or it will be interpreted by them that this is just a license to do whatever they wish to do. But that balance is regained now by the statements that international law needs to be respected and civilians need to be protected. So just as we come to the end, I just wanted you to reflect a little bit on what you've been through over the last 10 days. You've gone from a situation in which sometimes you must as the Palestinian ambassador have been struggling to get access to British news coverage.

43:39And now you've gone to the other extreme. You are basically in television studios all the time. I mean, you've come to us having just done hard talk and I don't know how many. I mean, hundreds of interviews that you've done over the last week. What does it actually feel like to become a sort of permanent media commentator? Do you are adrenaline running going from studio to studio watching your words all the time? And I worry that as an ex politician and maybe Alistair feels the same that when you're in the heart of that arguing, fighting all the time, it's difficult to step back and have the time to think and to empathize and to see the bigger picture because you're being you're attacking and defending all the time.

44:18Well, I'm not attacking. I'm really defending a people, a beautiful people that I was raised by and you know, I love passionately and I belong to. And it wasn't hundreds of interviews, maybe five, six, but it felt like hundreds because it went viral. People have attention on them. And I was strategic in my selection of these interviews, including with you now. So I did the CNN once. I did BBC twice and I did Skywants. And now you and the hard talk and that's about it. But the rest of my time, which is the majority of it, is with the government, with the parliament, with political parties, with the civil society and trying to really push for an immediate ceasefire, trying to save whatever we could save of our humanity really before we see further atrocities being committed against innocent civilians.

45:07Much of the time is trying also to ensure that humanitarian aid and assistance is delivered immediately. And we as much as there were some challenges at the beginning with the government and the opposition, we have so many friends here, friends of international law, friends of humanity, friends of justice. We have friends who believe that this cannot be, cannot end just atrocities for the majority of people I speak to in the UK, believe that this has to bring a political end to this conflict. You've got a lot of experience as well as the UK, the USA. And I wonder whether that kind of balance that you say the government and the opposition have rediscovered has been partly driven by the fact that Joe Biden has been, kind of had that balance from the word go.

45:51And he mentioned Trump. I just wanted you wanted your reflection on how much more dangerous this might be if Trump had been in charge in America when this was going on. Well, we don't know. Really, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. And I was there when he was president. I met him with my president a few times. Met his team, cautionary and green blood and others many, many times. And you know, Trump is very transactional. And what we really lack now is true leadership, statesmanship, wisdom, the world lacks it. You know, if we had the grand personalities as we used to have many years ago, this would not have happened.

46:37And if it happened, this would have been contained much easy stuff happened. And it's very regrettable. And we all really ache and we are pained by what we have seen over the last nine days in all sides. But we are equally pained by the lack of international leadership to see statements from very senior officials saying that it's Hamas that hides its operatives and soldiers in hospitals and in schools from international actors, meaning almost giving cover for Israel to bombard these schools and these hospitals is really beyond my own comprehension and conscience. We are desperate for international leadership and to do one thing to say we apply rules equally.

47:18Look at Ukraine and look what was dead. And I always say, would you ask the Ukrainian ambassador to do this or that or condemn this or that? You know, the British government announced that the Royal Navy is off to the Middle East. And I said in one of my discussions with colleagues that I think they are sending it to protect the occupied, not to support the occupier. Maybe they are sending it to build hospitals, make shift hospitals in the sea to help all these civilians. So this is a time when we have every nation, including the Palestinians, need to feel that there is such a thing as international system.

47:51There is such a thing as rules. And there is such a thing as these rules are applied equally and there is no one race or one kind that is a lesser of a nation, lesser of a people or a children that are a lesser of a guard. My final question is really just to ask you, I heard you talking earlier about you're talking about your sister, you phone regularly, you've had other members of your family who've been directly hit injured. So one power they and you're here working around the clock as you say trying to kind of keep on top of things and influence government, influence opposition, influence media and so forth.

48:25But you're also having to deal with that. Presumably, can you get through your sister which I found out how is that working? I mean, more difficult. What's happened? What was what happened with the rest of the family? They go ahead. Well, a cousin of mine, her husband, her four children and her mother -in -law and father -in -law were sitting in their home just at the beginning of the Israeli bombardment and boom, their home was bombarded by an Israeli missile. My cousin died, her husband died, two of her children four years died. They other two who are twin are in intensive care. I heard last night that one of them, the boy, it's a boy and a girl, Carmel and Karim.

49:04I heard that Karim is in a very difficult situation. It's really hard breaking. My sister lives in the south of Gaza. When Israel asked people to leave one mass, a mass expulsion from north to south. You know what Rory and Alistair is important to remind people, Gaza is only 300 square miles. It's one quarter of the size of London. One quarter of the size of London is a very small and it's inhabited by 2 .3 million. So to ask 1 .1 million to move from one dense area to another dense area is crazy. But then my sister, being the gorgeous lawyer, she is and the very generous, opened her doors and her home.

49:44That should not accommodate more than seven. You know how many people live with her since the start of the 150? It's almost like a movie of horror. Black out no electricity, no water, no food, no supplies. They don't know when the next Israeli missile will head. She sent her child, my nephew Ammar yesterday, to a shop nearby, just nearby, to buy some groceries. Knowing that Israel has announced that the south from the valley of Gaza and the south will not be attacked so people should go there. But she lives in the south beyond that valley. And then the building where her son was going to buy was bombarded.

50:22And one of his siblings took a video of that. I bought it on my own social media. He was saved by a split of a second. He went out of this huge smoke. Ammar is 80 years old and he is full of life. So I can't describe to you how reckoning that an entire people right now in Gaza, they have to make choices like, should we move, should we leave our home, should we go to the south, should we stay, how do I protect my children? I can't tell you how people who have kidney failure and they must do dialysis every three days in a hospital. Now they can't. They can't. People who have diabetes who need a refrigerator to build their insulin.

50:59What Israel is doing is nothing short of war crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are punishing the people who have nothing to do with this. You know how many doctors were killed in the last few days? 41 healthcare workers were killed. Most prominent Gaza workers. They are even deprived Gaza of major health capacity. So injured people and ill people now are asked to leave hospitals. They bombarded the hospital the day before yesterday, the early hospital which belongs to the Anglican Church, sponsored by the Anglican Church. And Israeli spokespeople appear that's why I spent some time in the media because I hear all these lies.

51:38We will never and we will not attack a hospital. We are not after the Palestinian people. We are also only after Hamas. And when I hear these lies and I am on the phone every hour with my own family, I feel like it's a duty on me and on all of you to really call it out and stop these lies because words kill. How is it that we can think about beginning to get the political temperature down? Because this is so passionate. I mean, I come back to Zaid Radz point about the tribalism of pain. We interview in Israeli and we hear the most horrifying stories about atrocities committed by Hamas. We interview you.

52:16We hear horrifying stories about these atrocities that your family are experiencing. And these are like two parallel conversations. Nobody is recognizing that there is the other story on the other side. It's as though there's only one story. How do we get to a world in which people can acknowledge that both are happening, that you can be the victim and the perpetrator at the same time? Well, first of all, my heart goes for every single family that lost loved ones. And I know exactly how it feels. Second, I don't think we need really to invent the will here. We need to do three things. Number one, we need to ensure that international humanitarian law is applied.

52:54That's it. That is it. The law is very clear and it was not created for no reason. It was created after what we did to ourselves in the second world war. Second, we need to create accountability. All those from all sides, Rory, who committed crimes must be brought to international justice. Let the international criminal court come to Palestine. We, the Palestinian leadership, PLO government have exceeded to the Rome statue and we have exceeded to the ICC giving fuljurous diction to the ICC for the occupied Palestinian territory. So now they have full mandate to come and investigate any war crime committed by the Israeli occupation or by Palestinian groups.

53:35We accept that. And you know, this is the way forward accountability because we need to prevent next atrocities. It's a prevention act. It's a deterrence rather than just accountability for the past. Number three, when there is such a thing as security council that was created to resolve conflicts that all the world sets on it that Britain has a permanent seeder and decides 50 years ago many resolutions. We just need to set create a venue to implement these resolutions. However, to expect the Palestinians to compromise even on 22 % of the land, to sit with all successive Israeli governments who want to share part of the 22 % they want to meet a somewhere between Jerusalem and the West and Jericho in the East.

54:18They want to chop this piece of land and that piece of land. They don't really want to give us our full sovereignty on the occupied city of East Jerusalem. That formula has been tried for 30 years. It didn't work and it will not work because it's a loose win formula. I think we have the win -win formula. I think the international resolutions on the basis of the 67 is a win -win formula. I think the territorial appetite and much of the Israeli establishment has got to be kept. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for the rest of the day.

54:52Okay, Royce, he gave us a lot of time there but he pointed out that he'd been doing work. He did look very, very tired by the end. I didn't jump in because he would just let you another kind of chewing and fraying. I think it was pushing it somewhat to say there were no verified reports. There are definitely verified reports of women and children being killed. His interesting is how he kind of wants to condemn without condemning in a way and he got very, I've seen him in his interviews where he gets very frustrated with the why won't you say what we want you to say in the way that we want you to say it as it were.

55:25That's kind of what he sometimes feels, I think. But I thought that was, I think what we were trying to get was the Palestinian perspective and we definitely got that. This presumably is something you were used to, I mean, I guess we saw that a bit when we interviewed Jerry Adams, didn't we? I tried to push Jerry Adams on to get him to say that the brightened bombing in which innocent women were killed was unacceptable and he wasn't prepared even, I guess, 40 years later to condemn the brightened bombing. I think if the ambassador was still here, he would say he had a greater distance from what's happened in Israel in the last few days than Adams and the brightened bomb.

56:07But I suppose what I'm getting to is that your experience of the Northern peace process, presumably it's an experience of recognizing that the two sides on this were not really willing to recognize each other. That's why I was trying to get him to ask him, who would you negotiate with now? How do you? I can't see where this goes at the moment. I really can't. We didn't really talk about any Northern Ireland parallels but the world moments where that felt like it was going absolutely nowhere and it was done. So I was just trying to get him as you were to do the thing about being victim and perpetrator at the same time to accept that that's what's going on.

56:44But no, I think if you were absolutely locked in, you can't. And it's his job, his job isn't it, it's his job. And I guess it's also, and I was infusing Theresa May on Friday, trying to get it to say nice things about Kirsta Amat, which she was a relaxing to do. I guess when you're in As It Were campaign mode, you find it very difficult. So you don't want to give an inch. So clearly, we are working our way towards getting different voices on. And now that we've had an official Palestinian spokesman speaking, we will be looking for other Israelis to speak because I think we feel, and you're always teasing us and saying, well, not the BBC, it's not so much about balance, but it is about, I think the only way to really learn about this conflict is listening to these different voices from the different sides and realising how little they often have in common.

57:32I mean, how much people are speaking in separate echo chambers? Yeah, absolutely. We're an exacerbated. We hadn't really talked about it. Maybe we should talk about this on the main podcast. I mean, the impact of social media is having on this thing is utterly horrific. And we've run an interesting interview coming with Zaid Rad, who was the Jordanian UN High Commissioner for Human Rights coming later. I mean, I think, though, what we're doing here is good, which is long -form interviews, allowing people to express their views and maybe not us analysing and judging so much as letting listeners come to their own conclusions, hearing the raw stuff.

58:09There were lots of things that he said there where I could feel and where in Australia he's sitting on my shoulder, saying, say this, what about this, what about this, what about that? And I think what aboutery is one of the worst things that's happening at the moment. And actually, because there are so many people who are clearly following this quite closely, but don't really know that much about the history, I think the point he makes about Balfour, you mentioned it in your explainer, which I see has now had almost a million views on YouTube, Rory. You mentioned it in your explainer, but if you asked most people, even quite well informed people about the role of the Balfour Declaration in this, which he clearly, it was the first thing he raised, he's basically saying, you know, he wasn't quite saying this, but he said that it wasn't for you lot, this wouldn't be the moon being this mess.

58:56So I think that history is important, and I think it's also important. I thought actually he did pretty well in not being, there were moments where he was clearly just being the kind of, you know, the table thumping, it's all there fault, but I thought he was much more reflective at points, and I've seen him in the other interviews he's done. Yeah, well thank you, and we'll obviously discuss more about this in the pod tomorrow. Yeah, thank you, Alistair. Bye.