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Palestine in 2024: A Year of Israeli Impunity & Genocide
1 Plays1 minute ago
In this episode of Rethinking Palestine, Yara Hawari highlights the key discussion points with our guests in 2024 as the Israeli regime's settler colonial genocide has continued unabated across Palestine.
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Transcript
Introduction: Year-End Podcast Compilation
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Speaker
In our final podcast episode of the year, we have put together some of the best sound bites from all the episodes in 2024.
Analyzing the Palestinian Struggle in Gaza
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Speaker
This year continues to be one of unfathomable loss and devastation as the genocide rages on in Gaza. At Ashabaka, we have tried to analyze and produce content that not only speaks to this pivotal moment in the Palestinian struggle for liberation, but it also challenges the hegemonic narratives that have contributed to this mass slaughter and Israeli regime impunity.
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From
Introduction to 'Rethinking Palestine' Podcast
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Speaker
Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine.
Arab Support for Palestinians: Protests and Boycotts
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Speaker
At the very start of the year, we spoke with Elham Fakhro, a research fellow at the Exeter University's Center for Golf Studies, an associate fellow with the Chatham House MENA program on the Arab world and how it's responded to the genocide and how overwhelmingly the peoples of the region continue to stand with the Palestinian people.
00:01:04
Speaker
There's been massive support for the Palestinians across the entire region and I think that's quantifiable in in three ways actually. We've seen popular protests taking place across the Arab world, particularly as you noted, in the countries where protests are more or less allowed. The numbers that we've seen coming out onto the streets in places like Jordan,
00:01:24
Speaker
Egypt, even Morocco, Yemen, haven't really been seen since I would say the Iraq War protest shook the region and in 2003 and during the Second Intifada. um So there's huge,
Revival of BDS Movement Against Occupation Supporters
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huge popular mass support for the Palestinians in Arab cities. We've also seen a revival of the boycott movement, a lot of support for BDS right now.
00:01:44
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particularly targeting the brands that support occupation, that support the settlements in particular. We've seen Starbucks targeted, McDonald's, even lesser known brands like Caribou Coffee. People do their research. um Caribou, for example, operates in the settlements and people have targeted them as a result. So it's a really expansive boycott movement.
00:02:05
Speaker
Even Joe and the Juice, you know which is which is not a usual target for these movements, has also been targeted for boycott in cases like Bahrain. um So people on social media are really raising awareness of this. They're educating themselves when access to this information just isn't available, unusual.
00:02:21
Speaker
media networks and on the mainstream media. and We're also seeing evidence of this support just in polling data that's been coming out in
Arab Opposition to Israel Normalization
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Speaker
the past few weeks. So, for example, a recent poll from the Washington Institute in Washington DC found that 96% of Saudis now oppose normalization with Israel. This is a a jump from previous numbers. um Another released from the Doha Institute found that 97% of Arabs experience psychological stress from the conflict in Gaza. People are deeply, deeply affected by the devastation and the genocide that they're seeing play out.
00:02:55
Speaker
on a day-to-day basis. And I think it's it's interesting. i mean I'll just anecdotally point out in my own experience, social media is flooded with images from Gaza, and it has been every single day for the past three months. People aren't letting up. um You might expect there to be fatigue at this point, but there isn't. People are determined to keep awareness going and to keep pressure going as much as they can.
00:03:17
Speaker
This
Arab Regime Complicity in Israeli Actions
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stands in direct contrast to most of the Arab regimes who by and large have been complicit in the genocide and or have failed to use any leverage they might have to disrupt it. Abdullah Larian, assistant professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar and the Shabaka policy analyst explain this disparity.
00:03:35
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If you told someone even just a few years ago or a decade ago or more, the idea is that the military capabilities of Arab states would be mobilized in support of an Israeli genocidal operation, a genocidal war that has been unleashed on Palestinians. People would say, no, that's that's a bridge too far. That's not something that Arab regimes could ever dream of doing, let alone actually putting into practice. And yet that's exactly what we've seen in terms of the mobilization of of various Arab forces as a means of shielding Israel in the midst of its its genocidal atrocities in Gaza, in the West Bank, by protecting them from any retaliations retaliatory strikes.
00:04:17
Speaker
If you told people just a decade ago that while the population of Gaza is being starved in the worst starvation policy and siege that we've seen in modern times, and yet the Arab States would be rerouting trade goods, food for Israelis, I think people would have been shocked and would have basically said, no, that that could never happen. right Despite everything we know about these regimes, that this would be something too far.
Public vs. Governmental Support for Palestine
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Speaker
And I think that has been quite shocking for a lot of people. I mean, we know, for instance, that Egypt has maintained its role in the siege of Gaza for going on two decades now. And yet, what we're seeing now, I think, is signals a kind of a drastic escalation, just given the severity of the humanitarian toll that this has all taken on Palestinians, to see that Arab states are only reacting to continue to invest in a regional security relationship that they believe is going to serve their interests.
00:05:11
Speaker
And again, the interests not of the people, but the interest of these regimes, that this is the only thing that is keeping them essentially in power is this relationship. And so they're willing to do everything in that regard, even if it means dooming the people of Palestine to to these horrific conditions. I think that has obviously been, for many people, a surprise. Despite everything we know, as I said, and despite all of that history, but seeing it kind of devolve to this level, I think has has been really unnerving.
00:05:39
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And I think what this speaks to is one fact, which is I don't think that we've ever seen this much of a disparity, a gap between where the Arab populations are and where their leaders are.
Historical and Current Student Activism in the US
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Beyond the region, we have seen massive grassroots mobilization against the genocide. In the U.S. earlier this year, campuses were awash with encampments and continuous demonstrations. Samir El-Atul, a Shabaka policy analyst and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was assaulted and detained by police at the encampment on his campus. He came on the podcast to share some important historical context of American student political mobilization.
00:06:18
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There is a long history of student activism and almost always those student activist movements have been brutalized by police force and police violence and almost always they affected change.
00:06:34
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So while they are ongoing, they are faced with violence, and then within a decade or so, they seem to be succeeding in changing the discourse around, for example, Vietnam War or civil rights or apartheid South Africa.
Israel's Disinformation Tactics in Gaza
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They seem to have changed the discourses around those, and you end up with a tidal kind of wave of change in general, right? Not only at the university level,
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And so usually, when people talk about student movements in the US, people are often proud of those movements, of course, in hindsight. So for example, um the university here university chancellor in the 1980s apologized about how the university dealt with the students during civil war. but So they issued an official apology for how they brutalized the students in the 1960s and 70s. So they recognize that later on, but at the time that these movements happen, there is a lot of brutalization.
00:07:43
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A crucial aspect of the genocide in Gaza has been the Israeli regime's disinformation apparatus, which has been used to normalize and legitimize violence against Palestinians on a barbaric scale. A Shabakah's U.S. policy fellow Tarek Keneshawa explained in detail how this is done. Israel recognized that the only way to get away with carrying out genocide in Gaza is by effectively controlling the information environment.
00:08:08
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and deploying narratives that ultimately delegitimize Palestinians and justify their murder, their wholesale murder. And there are several tactics Israelis have used to these ends, but you know for ease of explanation, we can kind of divide Israel's disinformation strategy into three overarching prongs. The first being exaggerating the actions of of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups.
00:08:30
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painting civilian targets as military targets, and discrediting and delegitimizing Palestinian voices and narratives to create artificially create a fog of war to deter international intervention. And all of these are are ultimately designed to justify genocide. So
Gaza Survivors' Journey to Egypt
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what does that look like in practice? like what We'll go through one, two, and three. So when it comes to the actions of Hamas on on October 7, we've seen Israeli officials make horrific false claims, just you know one example being The false claim that Hamas beheaded 40 babies. And of course, you know claims like these have have been rapidly debunked, but not before they spread like wildfire and not before the repeated at levels as high up as, for example, the president of the United States. um And it's clear what Israel is trying to achieve here. They want to paint Hamas and and in turn paint Palestinians as a whole.
00:09:20
Speaker
as brutal and and violent, essentially deserving of of whatever Israel does next. Once that foundation is laid, once those ideas are planted in people's minds, they really become a point of reference, regardless of their veracity and regardless of whether they're debunked, and they always are debunked.
00:09:36
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So that leads us to to the next primary, the next tactic, which argues that Palestinian civilians, those who have never taken part in any form of armed resistance, are legitimate military targets. And that this is the claim that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes or uses civilians as human shields. and And that justifies somehow the killing of civilians. And a great example of this that we saw over the last couple of months is the case of Ashifa Hospital, which has really come to represent a microcosm of Israel's unprecedented assault on Gaza's entire health care system. The facts and figures of the genocide have been well-documented and disseminated, but perhaps the less-known aspect is the journey that survivors of the genocide made to reach Egypt. Ali, a Palestinian humanitarian aid worker from Gaza now in Cairo, described for us the agonizing and uncertain process of getting out of Gaza prior to May 2024, when the Rafah crossing was taken over by Israeli regime forces.
00:10:33
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From November to early December, this who managed to escape to Cairo had to catch up over, you know, $12,000 per person, even for decades. kids And here's the kicker. There is no guarantees. um This money often went to coordinators who scammed family out of their money. Some people even made extra.
00:11:01
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helping it with speed up the things, only to end on the list connecting to Egyptian nationalities. But then on the other hand, by the mid-January, things shifting a bit with the Ahala Company coming back.
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They charged a person $5,000 over 16 years is old and for the kids said $2,500 while it seems more organized but it was still missing.
Supporting Palestinian Efforts via Al-Shabaka
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There is a thousand registering daily but only 300 to 315 names get the percent each day because of the Israel restrictions and security checks.
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This journey is full of uncertainty and fear. Once you're adjusting, there is no turning back and you wait like 20 to 13 days holding your breath, hoping your name will get approval. Tragically, some people don't survive the war long enough to see their name coming up. Physically, that the trip is brutal.
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Imagine having with almost nothing, crossing danger, bombarding areas, a traffic crossing. After you finally get to the Palestinian side, you are stuck waiting four to eight hours on the Egyptian side under harsh conditions.
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You cannot move around or asking questions. And if you ask many times, you got shouted at, definitely. Some refugees had to wake over 10 kilometers from the north in Gaza to the crossing, exhausting and in need of rest. This journey is it's a testament to the resilience and strength of the humanity spirit.
Israeli Actions in West Bank and Zionist Plans
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If you're enjoying this podcast, please visit our website a al-shabaka.org where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
00:13:11
Speaker
The horror in Gaza has not been happening in a vacuum. As the Israeli regime continues to bombard Gaza less than 100 kilometers away in the West Bank, annexation, land theft, settler, and soldier violence continue at an alarming pace. Ashabaka's Palestine policy fellow Fatima explains how this is part and parcel of the larger Zionist project.
00:13:32
Speaker
The plans for the West Bank can't be seen in separation from the plans of the Gaza Strip. I mean, even from the beginning of the war, people were talking about pushing the people of the Palestinians of Gaza out into Sinai and making re-establishing settlements again.
Gaza and West Bank in Strategy of Displacement
00:13:47
Speaker
this is not different at all from what's happening in the West Bank and what they are planning for the West Bank or what would they would like to happen in the West Bank, expanding more settlements, kicking out more Palestinians. This is all part of the same, you know, struggle. It's part of the same colonization efforts. We can't look at it separately from what's going on, even in Jerusalem or even within 48. It's all connected. And I think one of the biggest successes really of the occupation of 67 is that it's really tried to reinforce these kind of segmentation of Palestinian society and to kind of make this a fact of life and a natural part, rather than it being something imposed on us very recently. In a joint episode with the Magda Sis Street podcast, I elaborated on this further. We heard the Israeli foreign ministers or our cats say that this would be a war for everything.
00:14:36
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and that it would include, as you mentioned, the so-called temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents from the West Bank. And we know that that language is code for ethnic cleansing. I mean, it's not particularly good code, but that's what they mean when they when they say it. And, you know, Palestinians are not, you know, they they know that this is not separate to to what's happening in Gaza, you know.
00:14:58
Speaker
Israelis use different tactics for different communities. But the end goal is always the same. you know In Gaza, the committing genocide in the West Bank, we've seen over decades this incremental use of forced displacement, of incarceration, of colonization. And the end goal is to squeeze as many Palestinians in even less and less land. So it's less Palestinians for more land. And and I think the scary thing is that Israelis, the Israeli army, the Israeli regime you now see this as an opportunity They see that they've gotten away with killing tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and obliterating Gaza, and they have yet to face any consequences from the international community. okay Yes, we had you know the ICJ
00:15:43
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come out and say that there are plausible acts of genocide that hasn't resulted in any kind of sanctions. And actually, on the contrary, they've been rewarded. They've been rewarded for their actions in Gaza with continuing diplomatic relations, with increased arms sales. you know This is really a prime opportunity for them to launch something a lot more serious in the West Bank because they don't they'll get away with it. And I think that's something that A lot of Palestinians are fearing, but I think it's also something that we've always known. We've always known that they're not going to stop, you know, at Tel Aviv, they're not going to stop Ascalan, they're not going to stop at Yaf and Haifa. The end goal has always been the whole lot of
Palestinian Cause in UK Elections
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Palestine. And we've known that all along. And I think we've been gaslit for so long by the international community with the sort of promotion of the facade of the two states and and the respect for international law. And that's what it's been. It's been consistent gaslighting for for over seven and a half decades.
00:16:42
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In July of 2024, the yeah UK elected the Labour Party into government, and foreign policy platforms were unsurprisingly a major talking point during the campaigns. Whilst the major parties continued to follow a line that would ensure continued complicity with the Israeli regime's genocidal actions, it was quite clear that Gaza had united a wide cross-section of British society. Sarah Hosseini,
Is the Irish Peace Model Suitable for Palestine?
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director of the British Palestinian Committee and the Shabaka policy analyst, explained this for us.
00:17:11
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Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. And what you're pointing to there is is something that has happened in despite a really difficult environment. There's a dynamic that we've been seeing playing out through the elections and beyond. Attempts particularly by the previous government, elephants, the mainstream media to stir up real divisions in the UK to kind of frame or try and make Palestine a sectarian issue, a Muslim issue, a matter of Muslim Jewish communal tensions and sort of stoke these kinds of culture wars.
00:17:37
Speaker
when actually what we've seen, as you've said, is we know in reality and what we've seen has been quite the opposite. Palestine has actually been a singularly unifying issue. We've seen that in the hundreds and thousands of people taking to the streets every week, week in, week out, over the past nine months, and people you know from all communities, struggles, walks of life, and that's been reflected also then, you know as we're speaking now in the election, in terms of the election of not only the independents, the Greens,
00:18:02
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but also the really narrowing labor margins of victory in very, very many constituencies that have gone, you know, ah less reported, but ah very important to her take note of. So Palestine really, people are seeing, people understand that this Palestine is not a singular issue. it It's so an issue of ah ah our collective humanity. It's an issue that that unites people and brings people together because they see the injustice and recognize that.
00:18:29
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Across the short stretch of sea from the UK, in Ireland, solidarity with the Palestinian struggle has a long history. Whilst there are many similarities between the Irish struggle for freedom and that of the Palestinian one, there are also problematic attempts to copy Irish peace and reconciliation efforts in Palestine. Brendan Brown interdisciplinary scholar at Trinity College Dublin explained why this continues to be a harmful practice.
00:18:54
Speaker
who in their right mind is going to say that peace building is problematic? that You come across as some kind of lunatic if you say that, you know, and but actually you're weaponising peace building when you try and impose it upon people without their, you know, addressing lots of the structural issues in the room. and In our own context in the north of Ireland as well, and We have made great attempts at engaging in sort of people to people type projects on the ground in Belfast. You know, I was a product of these products, but whereas in the sort of 80s and 90s, they didn't really work as well because the wider political reality wasn't addressed, the wider structural problems weren't being addressed. We were just being brought together to sort of talk to each other and assume that that would be enough to trickle down and and build peace.
US-Israel Relations in a Potential Trump Term
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What's happening? And we have
00:19:48
Speaker
as you've pointed to what's happening is people are bringing that model of contact theory people to people processes as you've written about yourself Yara in the past and bringing them into the Palestine context and saying look if you only talk to each other things like this will will get better in the future without actually saying well no we need to radically look at the way society is structured here we need to look at the militarized nature of Israeli society we need to look at the rights that you enjoy and that I don't enjoy So I do think it's really important and the last point I would make on that and maybe this is a bit cynical is that it's become quite a big business, it's big industry, you know exporting the peace process from Northern Ireland has seen a proliferation of NGOs who've made this their modus operandi and exported it to other conflict zones, not just Palestine by the way, but to other spaces and I think when you do that you kind of
00:20:43
Speaker
You flatten power dynamics in a way that is deeply, deeply problematic, and I really wish people would stop doing it. In November, we also saw elections in the US, and Americans voted in Donald J. Trump for a second term. Ashabaka's US policy fellow, Tarek Inisha, explained what might be in store with this incoming administration.
00:21:04
Speaker
what we should expect is essentially just a ah closer relationship with Israel and one that's a lot more unapologetic. But we also need to recognize that Trump is known to be unpredictable and and he's known to be a lot more transactional and self-interested than Biden. So where Biden was kind of a self about Zionist, right? and And he was a proud Zionist and he really made sacrifices or what he saw as sacrifices for what he believed to be Israel's self-interest and Israel's defense, i don't think I don't see Trump doing the same thing or taking the same approach. So for example, where Biden was willing to deploy US troops and assets to come to Israel's defense, there's a question as to whether Trump would do the same because he might see that as violating his America First principles
00:21:55
Speaker
or making it more difficult for him to achieve his ah wider goals of, for example, expanding the Abraham Accords, reaching an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So where where Biden was willing to sacrifice US and regional interests for the defense of Israel,
00:22:12
Speaker
Trump might not be as willing to do so. That's where we might start to see some differences in how the two administrations interact with Israel directly. But then it's also extremely important to to consider the fact that Trump is going to be surrounding himself with some of the most bloodthirsty, neocon war hawks in US history. So these are people like Brian Hook, you know Marco Rubio,
00:22:34
Speaker
Mike Huckabee, Jared Kushner, who all will attempt to drag Trump into more more confrontational US foreign policy in the Middle East. They'll they'll have no reservations about deploying US forces and assets. And I think this will come into conflict a lot with Trump's America First approach and Trump's reluctance to to actually spend money and and actually devote resources to these
Reviving Palestinian Revolutionary Strategies
00:23:00
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conflicts. But in many ways, I think i think the more concerning fact are the people that Trump surrounds him with. And these are the people who will go to bat for any wider regional war and and definitely try to to drag the administration in with it.
00:23:14
Speaker
In our penultimate episode of the year, Shabakable president Tarek Baklone sums up this moment for the Palestinian struggle and offers some reflections for moving forward. Strategically and politically, I think the Palestinian movement is immense today. It's bigger than it has been for a long time. And I think we now have global support and grassroots power and allies and solidarities in ways that would have been unimaginable this time last year.
00:23:42
Speaker
At the same time, I think that we need to be more strategic in terms of how we push this popular power forward. How do we develop political power? How are we able to engage with questions of international law, with foreign policy towards global staff actors with questions around global governance. These are strategic questions and not coincidentally by design our leadership, our revolutionary leadership of the past of the 60s and 70s has been co-opted and emptied of content and and imprisoned and exiled and executed. And we need to rebuild that. We're coming out of three, four decades of the narrowing out of our revolutionary potential as Palestinians, our institutional power, to sort of carry out the colonial agenda. And we need to rebuild that. And it's urgent that we rebuild that, because in the absence of that, I think foreign interests and certainly Western hegemony will try to reassert a paradigm that certainly does not center Palestinians or Palestinian rights.
00:24:47
Speaker
So the
Ashabaka's Reflection and Recommitment to Liberation
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question for me today is how do we think about this moment, post-October 7th, this moment and of of genocide, how do we think about it as a as a way of re-resuscitating our revolutionary legacy, of going back into our roots and bringing out a political project, a decolonial project that's not about going back to the past because there's no going back but it's rather about how do we think about decolonization and revolutionary politics today in this day and age thinking about all of these global challenges and i think that's our our most urgent task today.
00:25:26
Speaker
Thank you for listening to our End of Year podcast. Each month we have strived to bring you the most cutting edge analysis from Palestinian experts and this episode has showcased some of the very best bits. At Ashabaka we have been devastated and horrified by the genocide in Gaza that has been ongoing for over 14 months. We have also been moved by the unwavering support around the world for the Palestinian struggle amidst one of our darkest moments in history.
00:25:53
Speaker
There are many challenges that lie ahead and we know that the path will not be easy but we as an organisation recommit ourselves to Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a better and just world. If you want to support our work please visit our website where you can find out more about how to do so.
00:26:15
Speaker
Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide. For more information or to donate to support our work, visit al-ashabaka.org. And importantly, don't forget to subscribe to Rethinking Palestine, wherever you listen to podcasts.