Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREMIUM: "A Radical Vision for Palestine" with Palestinian Professor Omar Dajani

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PREMIUM: "A Radical Vision for Palestine" with Palestinian Professor Omar Dajani · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and the one issue on which
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  I receive by far the most hate from punters and peers alike is the Gaza war and Israel
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  and Palestine.
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  It's extremely heated.
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  I try to be measured.
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  The extent to which people seem to be siloed in their own echo chambers on that particular
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  issue seems to be more intense than almost any other with the possible exception of the
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  claim that the 2020 election was stolen and how that looms in the minds of Donald Trump
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  supporters.
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  And I suppose the easiest way for me to get clicks and engagement would be to produce
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  a lot of click baity clips of me owning some foolish Palestinian person or me talking to
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  some extremely right wing Israeli or me talking to some hummus sympathizer or me talking
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  to someone who just generally inflames the discourse.
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  I don't want to do that.
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  I'm not interested in doing that.
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  I think it's tiresome.
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  I think it's boring.
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  I think it contributes to the problem.
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  So today we have an articulate, brilliant, intelligent, and humane, prominent Palestinian.
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  This is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time.
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  Omar Dejani is just a man to have it with.
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  He's a Palestinian American professor and he was a negotiator for the PLO, the Palestine
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  liberation organization.
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  In fact, he was at the Camp David summit, which needless to say did not succeed in creating
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  a two state solution, but got reasonably close and they certainly tried that was convened
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  by President Bill Clinton in the year 2000.
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  Now Omar currently co-chairs a nonprofit called a land for all.
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  And it's interesting because it advocates a particular type of two state solution,
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  not a two state solution defined by separation, but a two state solution defined by power
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  sharing.
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  I'll let him articulate exactly what it would look like, but the vision is that instead
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  of Israelis and Palestinians having two antagonistic states hunkered down next to each other,
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  that you would actually reach a point someday where Israelis and Palestinians could live
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  and work on both sides of the 1967 Green Line and many of the problems that are thrown
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  up by the idea of a two state solution that is defined by non-porous borders go away
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  the moment you start permitting freedom of work, freedom of movement, and freedom of
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  residency between the two states.
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  Now that may sound wildly optimistic given how bleak things look at the moment, but you
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  need people like Omar articulating a vision like this to have any hope of its ever happening.
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  I hope you find as inspiring and thought-provoking and challenging as I did this conversation
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  with the one and only Omar Dejani.
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  Has your belief in the desirability or justice or probability of a Palestinian state changed
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  in the past year and a half?
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  I think it's only become more intense.
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  I think that what the last year and a half has made clear is that Palestinians in a predicament
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  of occupation are incredibly vulnerable.
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  And also that so long as occupation continues, the possibility of violence will always be present.
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  And so I feel that even though the last year and a half has made it harder to achieve the
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  kind of vision that my colleagues at a land for all and I have been fighting for, I think
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  it's also made it much more urgent.
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  Give us a sense of your background and where were your parents born?
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  Yes, so my father was Palestinian.
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  My mother was half Syrian, half French.
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  My father is from Jaffa, which is a city, as you probably know, just below what's now
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  Tel Aviv and indeed is incorporated now into the city of Tel Aviv.
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  Back in the day, Jaffa was Palestine's leading city.
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  It was the cultural, economic, political center of Palestinian Palestine.
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  My father was born there.
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  He comes from an old and big family.
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  My great, great, great, great grandfather was part of the delegation that went to plead
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  with Napoleon to show mercy on the local garrison when they infuriated him.
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  I feel like you're pulling in rage here, like ancestry ring.
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  How have you known I am a descendant of King Henry the Sam.
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  Well, that is true.
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  Well, you know, and I'm all French, so let's, you know, we have, we have that in common
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  French citizenship.
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  So, yeah, we may need to do a serious resume comparison.
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  That's right.
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  We'll go to ancestry.com and see history.
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  It was closest to Napoleon out of the two.
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  So, your dad is born in, in what is now Tel Aviv, and this is pre-40 years, I assume.
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  And, yeah, he was born in 1932 and so by the time 1948 comes, my dad is 16 and he finishes
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  his high school matriculation exam.
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  And within a few days, everything around him changes.
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  Zionist militias that within a few weeks will become the Israel Defense Forces.
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  Shell Jaffa from both sides.
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  The population in terror begins fleeing and that terror is bolstered by the fact that just
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  days earlier, a massacre occurred in the village of Jeddia scene near Jerusalem.
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  So Palestinians are very fearful about what will happen to them.
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  And my father's family decides in the space of a few hours that they will gather just
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  a few things, get on a fishing boat, which they go on with a partner in my grandfather's
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  business and sail north.
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  And so they do.
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  And head to Lebanon and then ultimately to Syria.
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  And then, and that's where my father meets my mother and so, as terrible as these events
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  are, I guess I owe my existence to them, so I mean, at the same time that that was happening
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  my paternal grandmother who had been fleeing the Nazis throughout the war was making her
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  way after the war to the big ships that were piling Jewish refugees onto them and heading
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  to the new world.
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  And she asked the clerk, where can I go?
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  And they said, you can go to America or Canada or Australia.
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  And she said, which one's further from here?
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  And that's why I'm Australian.
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  And that's why my father met my mother and, you know, through such random events, we
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  all are out lives.
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  So the fear of just to get straight to the question of Zionism, right?
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  The fear of the Israeli Zionist hawk is that you're, is that there's a double standard
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  in the sense that my, I do not expect any right of return to where my grandmother came
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  from in Poland, yet there's a fear that Palestinians still have their hearts set on your father
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  having a right of return to Jaffa.
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  Is that an unfounded concern?
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  I don't think it's unfounded concern, but I think it's an unfounded comparison.
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  So I think that number one, what's striking, and we're seeing this, this year is just
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  how many Israelis actually do have European passports.
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  And that's a consequence of a number of European states, Spain, Poland is one, Germany
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  is another.
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  Everything said, you know what, these, these people have connections to this place.
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  And we're going to honor their connection to this place by giving them a citizenship
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  that was wrongfully stripped from them.
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  And that is just, now, I understand why Zionists sought at the outset a space where Jews
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  would not be a minority again.
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  I understand that Jewish history leaves the Jewish people feeling that minority status
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  is just a prologue to discrimination, persecution, maybe even genocide.
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  The problem, of course, and this is, you know, something that people have talked about
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  endlessly, is that the place they chose as a refuge is a place where millions of people
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  were already living, people who had their own deep connections to the land.
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  So we can take the path of saying, either your connection will be honored or our connection
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  will be honored.
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  We can take a path where we say, both connections will be honored within the framework of a single
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  state, where there is a competition for power into eternity, which is the path that, understandably,
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  many Palestinians advocate.
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  They seek a single democratic state of the kind that they're familiar with in other places.
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  But the one that the folks I'm involved with that a land for all, and I advocate, is one
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  that walks the middle line that says, yes, it's possible for there to be refugee return,
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  but also for there to be Jewish self-determination.
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  And we achieve that through this framework we call two states, one homeland.
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  You explain that framework?
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  Sure.
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  So a land for all stands for a kind of two state solution, a Palestinian state would
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  be established alongside Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and the border based on the
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  June 4th, 1967 line.
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  So in that sense, it's very much like the kind of approach that was envisaged during
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  the days when I worked on what used to be called the peace process in 1999, 2000, 2000,
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  what used to be called the peace process.
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  It's like the artist formerly known as Prince or something, but the Middle East that used
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  to have a peace process.
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  Yes, exactly right, exactly right, except back of the day, Prince's hits were better
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  than the peace process, but so it's got all of that in common with the approach that was
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  envisaged there, two states, and self-determination for two peoples.
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  What makes it different is this.
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  What we looked toward is a framework that over time would provide for freedom of movement
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  and ultimately freedom of residence for all Palestinians and Israelis within what is
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  a common homeland because at the end of the day, when we think about the space that
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  we're attached to, we're not just thinking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip, my family
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  as I was telling you, comes from what's now inside Israel.
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  And for many Jews, they think of Judea and Samaria, as many Israelis call it, not
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  as some incidental sort of backwater, but as the place where the kingdoms of ancient
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  Israel stood, our connections to this entire place are deep and long-standing.
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  So, a land for all honors those connections, but at the same time, what it does is it makes
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  one more move.
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  It severs citizenship and residency, just in the same way that is the case here in Europe
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  where I am right now, so here I'm a French citizen like you, and I live part of each year
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  in Greece where I have residency.
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  And as a Greek resident, I'm allowed to vote in local elections, but I'm not allowed
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  to vote for the Greek National Assembly, though I can vote for the French National Assembly
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  and as an American for the U.S. Congress, right?
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  So my citizenship and residency are severed from each other, but my connection to this
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  local area has maintained my access to political institutions has maintained through my voice
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  and the municipality.
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  What we want to do in Israel-Palestine is similar, that a Palestinian refugee looking to
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  live in Jaffa would be able to vote in Palestinian national elections, but local elections in
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  Israel.
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  A Jewish settler who currently lives in Malay, I don't mean would live in what would become
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  an integrated community, not a Jewish-only settlement, but could vote in the Knesset,
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  and in the city council, maybe even the provincial government of the area where she lives.
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  Got it.
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  And what are the steps to that?
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  Because that sounds obviously very distant at the moment given the level of animosity
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  and suspicion that exists between the two ethnicities.
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  So how do you get from here to there?
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  So it's hard, obviously.
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  I think that the first step has to be coming to terms with the fact that occupation, the
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  grinding experience that Palestinians have every day of living under a government that
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  doesn't represent them to which they don't have access and that doesn't privilege their
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  rights and liberties.
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  But that is a source of at best security for one side, and as we saw on October 7, 2023,
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  very, very incomplete security for all peoples in that space.
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  And so to my mind, a first step needs to be thinking through a transitional administration
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  that can get us from the point where we are now, to the point at which it's possible
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  to begin making steps toward a political transformation.
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  And that transitional administration is something that may take some years to fully do its
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  work, work that would involve institution building on the Palestinian side, that would involve
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  ensuring that the IEDF scales back its presence on a, on the basis of regular steps, but
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  also on the basis of security for everyone in the region that also begins dealing with
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  the humanitarian catastrophe that exists in the Gaza Strip and the real humanitarian
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  issues that are in the, in the West Bank.
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  This is the sort of operation that we see undertaken all over the world all the time.
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  Like the main impediment.
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  So if we look at the Balkans, what we saw was the international community step in to
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  ensure that there would be a transition in Kosovo, a transition that ultimately led to Kosovo's
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  independence.
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  We saw something similar in your neighborhood in East Timor, and that affected a transformation
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  from Indonesian occupation to Timoree's independence.
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  We saw a similar approach in Cambodia.
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  We have seen again and again across conflict areas in Africa, in South America, the international
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  community stepping in to ensure that as a transition is undertaken, no one actor is
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  able to engage in chaos making or at least to minimize the chances of that.
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  Isn't part of the problem that the stakes are so high for whoever puts their hand up
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  to do the international institution building and peacekeeping?
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  I mean, the cynical part of me or the skeptical part of me, perhaps, things will be great
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  if the Arab world would take on the job of policing the Gaza Strip and it would be great
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  if the Arab world were willing to take on the administration of the West Bank.
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  And ever since 1967, I think a majority of, certainly a majority of Jews and probably
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  a majority of Israelis and definitely a majority of Israeli generals have felt like the
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  occupation is not just a moral stain but a strategic error and has to end and have tried
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  to grow towards finding ways of doing that, sometimes instantly, frequently, imperfectly,
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  as you know, from having been involved in Oslo and having been a negotiator on the Palestinian
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  side yourself, there have been attempts to come to some kind of an accommodation and if
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  one regards the history of Israel since 2008 as a derailment of Israeli optimism and a
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  sense of Israeli kind of right wing backlash fatalism against an impossible situation,
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  then one can imagine a scenario in which a reasonable Israeli, a pre-2008 anti Netanyahu
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  Israeli, says, where's our help in figuring out what to do with this problem?
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  The Arabs, the Arab states all seem to hate the Palestinians more than we do.
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  I don't want to help them, they don't want to give them work visas, you know, the Lebanon
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  is a basket case, his baller keeps shooting at us, it's what he wants, we'd love to get
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  rid of these things.
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  So how do we?
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  Yeah, it's a great question and I think there's a lot there, so let me just try to unpack
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  a few things.
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  So first of all, at a core level, one of the big mistakes that we made with the process
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  that I was involved in was that we understood ourselves to be making a transition, but
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  we never agreed on either from what or to what we were making a transition.
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  We didn't agree on the status of occupation that existed before and it took us months
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  before the words Palestinian state were even uttered by Israeli negotiators on the other
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  side.
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  But lack of clarity about even the broad contours of the ultimate framework that we were
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  headed towards, lack of clarity not just from Israelis and Palestinians, but also from
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  the international community meant that it was much easier for spoilers on both sides to
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  say this process is headed nowhere fast.
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  This process is going to undermine Palestinian rights or this process is going to undermine
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  Israeli security.
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  What is really crucial is for us to do the opposite, to start from the end, to articulate
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  a vision that is fair, that is responsive to both people's needs and aspirations, that
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  is rooted in values that we across the world have come to a guard as fundamental international
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  human rights and democracy and to say, okay, listen, we're not there yet, but that's
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  where we're headed, make no mistake, this is the destination, and then reverse engineer
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  a process to getting there.
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  I think that if you start from the end and work backwards, we'll have much, much greater
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  chances of success than the other way around.
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  The other thing that it does, and this gets to the point that you're making about third
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  party intervention for the Emirates, for the Saudis, when they're invited in to become
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  the new custodians of Gaza.
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  What they say, and I was in meetings in New York fairly recently with folks from the Saudi
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  government about their vision and their efforts to try to move things in a different direction,
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  what they say is there is no way that we are going to step into a situation like this
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  without any indication that the occupation is going to come to an end, without any clear
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  indication that the outcome is going to be Palestinian statehood and freedom.
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  Otherwise, the target shifts from the Israelis to our backs, and why would we do that?
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  Yeah, I mean, that's sort of what I mean, but the occupation, do you mean the occupation
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  of any Palestinians, because the occupation of Gaza obviously ended a long time ago?
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  Well, I think that the occupation of Gaza, which is not, which is not to justify the
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  blockade and then, you know, all of the other imiseration of Gaza, I mean, it's not
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  a semoral catastrophe.
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  You can't require people to live in open air refugee camps in perpetuities.
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  I'm not defending that.
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  But when you say that the Arab leaders would be more open if there was a long-term plan,
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  I understand that at the same time, it's understandable that they don't want to go into an
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  enclave where everybody who tries to impose order gets shot in the head by a jihadist
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  death cult.
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  Yes.
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  And, you know, so there is a worry about the kind of the cultural fabric of the Palestinian
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  culture or the Palestinian people as a result of the failure of the institutions there that
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  makes it a particularly intractable problem.
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  Yeah.
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  So there's a lot there.
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  So first of all, I think that for most of us Palestinians, we don't see that the regime
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  that's existed since Israel with redeployed its army out of Gaza in 2005, 2006 constitutes
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  a full end of occupation.
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  And that's where I would urge listeners to check out the website of the Israeli NGO Gisha,
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  which is a really spectacular human rights organization focused on freedom of movement,
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  which says, listen, occupation isn't an on-off switch.
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  It involves degrees of control and Israel has maintained very significant control, not
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  complete control by all means, otherwise Hamas wouldn't have had the latitude that it's
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  had over these last 20 years inside the strip, but it's maintained very significant control.
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  And so that's an important thing to bear in mind.
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  And of course, you alluded to the lived experience of Palestinians in the Gaza strip around blockade
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  and its consequences, which have very much affected how Palestinian sea Israelis.
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  I mean, I would just add a note that it would be interesting to see what the blockade looked
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  like, or if it existed, had the Palestinians not elected a jihadist death cult.
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  I mean, if I'd elected a liberal democratic government, then maybe the blockade would have been
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  the idea.
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  Let me push back on the idea of Hamas as a jihadist death cult.
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  I think that while, for me, what was done on October 7th was repugnant, was morally and
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  legally reprehensible.
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  And I have said that since just a few days after I received the news, there's no
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  question in my mind that they transgressed the boundaries of law and morality on that occasion.
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  But to frame an organization that is trying to lead a people that have been under occupation
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  for five decades and that have been disenfranchised from their lands for longer than that.
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  And that is engaged in resistance, some of which is lawful, some of which is clearly unlawful
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  terrorism, but they do engage in both that provide services to people to and very significant
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  services across the range of areas from health to welfare for Palestinians to analogize
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  them to jihadist organizations in Iraq and Syria like Al Qaeda, I think it's just a caricature.
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  And I think that it also minimizes the fact that Palestinians have been living under occupation
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  for all this time, that we have been deprived of our freedom during all of this period.
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  And what we are pushing it for is not death, it's not destruction, it's not a cult built
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  around the veneration of murder, it's a cult built around a desire to achieve freedom
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  for people.
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  But Hamas, I mean, yeah, take your point that we should not regard Hamas as being synonymous
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  with garrisons, but just because I mean, we're not synonymous with garrisons, but also not
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  synonymous with Al Qaeda, yeah, I know I understand that, but I mean jihad means more than al Qaeda
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  or I say, I mean, jihad has a meaning and Hamas is quite comfortable.
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  I mean, yes, they provide services and health and water.
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  Well, the mafia provide services in areas where it extorts people as well.
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  I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to regard garrisons as being prisoners, not just
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  of Israel, but of what I would call a jihadist death cult because I think that's plainly
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  what Sinwara thought that Hamas was.
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  I mean, he spent a lot of time killing Palestinians and he spent a lot of time butchering,
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  you know, he didn't get his nickname, the Butch or Hanyunas for nothing.
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  He was butchering his fellow Palestinians as well.
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  It was a criminal, if you don't want to call it jihadist, a criminal gang of Jew hating
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  psychopaths who had no compunction about putting civilians in front of military equipment
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  and being as aggressive as possible towards their foes.
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  I find myself in an awkward position because in the days when I was working for the UN there,
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  I used to have a lot of fights with Hamas people.
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  They don't represent for me what I hope the future of Palestine will be and I've pushed back
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  then and I continue to regarding the ways in which they implement their liberation strategy.
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  I find it deeply problematic, but I also find reductive the way in which you are characterizing
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  them. Yes, they engage in fierce retribution against Palestinians in May,
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  regard as collaborators with the occupation and what we have seen in other circumstances.
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  I'm not defending killing people unceremoniously without judicial process,
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  but to suggest that it is unique to Palestinians or rather than being common to pretty much
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  any circumstance of military occupation that you can think of.
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  I mean, my mother-in-law tells me about what things were like in the French resistance during
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  World War II. There were similar kinds of tactics waged against other French people by French
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  resistance. Similarly, while killing civilians is never acceptable, I clearly, as I said a few
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  minutes ago, there's no basis for rationalizing that. Even though some people do, I don't think
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  that that's possible. But what I do think is the case is that we see civilians being sacrificed
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  by a lot of different actors, including the Israeli government and doing it in circumstances that
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  for me really give the lie to the idea that there is an attempt to protect civilians in that context.
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  Now, I don't think that that justifies saying, all right, well, this is an actor that
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  we have to wipe off the face of the earth before we can even begin to have a conversation about
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  what the next step looks like. And going back to the topic that we were discussing a little bit
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  earlier, how do we move from where we are now to heading forward? I think it's really important to
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  bear in mind that when Saudis or Emiratis consider whether they should put their toe in, whether
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  they should undertake to, or Egyptians, or jarganyans to contribute to the security situation,
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  they're also looking at what Israel is doing in the occupied territory, not just vis-a-vis the
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  security situation, but also with regard to its territorial ambitions. I mean, you'll have seen the
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  news in the last few days of Israel establishing a large corridor in the middle of Gaza and saying
• 29:26
  that it's not going to be returning that land to the Palestinians anytime soon. And there are
• 29:32
  some, including those in the Israeli government who say, this is the beginning of precisely what
• 29:37
  we did in the West Bank, where military areas will be transformed into civilian settlements.
• 29:42
  And I know you know, Josh, as well as I do, that there are 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West
• 29:49
  Bank, including East Jerusalem right now. And Palestinians see that as an indication that whatever
• 29:57
  the talk of security, that the real motivation behind Israeli actions is territorial aggrandisement.
• 30:04
  And I know enough Israeli is well enough to know that that's not the case for many, many people,
• 30:11
  but it is the case for many in this government. But why is this government a pound?
• 30:15
  There are religious, you know, there are right-wing maniacs, messianic maniacs in this government
• 30:22
  who absolutely have no intention of ever tolerating a Palestinian state. And they're in power because
• 30:28
  of the disillusionment that the Israeli population, which prior to, you know, which 20 years ago,
• 30:34
  was overwhelmingly in favor of a two-state solution. And in the aftermath of 1967 had been
• 30:40
  overwhelmingly in favor of handing back the occupied territories, have become
• 30:46
  bludgeoned by reality, and then literally bludgeoned by on October 7 in ways that just made them feel,
• 30:54
  and just to pause on, before we completely abandon the sort of the minutiae of moralizing about
• 31:00
  Hamas, it would be remiss of me not to just push back on the French resistance analogy.
• 31:06
  There is a philosophy in Hamas, which is not just about liberation. It really is about the annihilation
• 31:16
  of an ethnic foe. It is a, there is a messianic, jihadist strain in, of, you know, radical Islamism,
• 31:26
  which Sinoir was hell-bent on, and Hamas devotees are hell-bent on, which sees no problem with
• 31:33
  annihilating as many of this member of this ethnic, members of this ethnic group as they possibly
• 31:40
  can. That really is not akin to my grandfather who fought in the French resistance. I mean,
• 31:45
  everything that, just imagine the thought experiment of what would happen if each party was able to
• 31:51
  achieve its goals. Like, I mean, if the French resistance had been able to achieve its goals,
• 31:56
  they would have just let all the civilians live, and they would have just had a free France,
• 32:01
  and they would have just had the Germans go back across the border. If Hamas could have its goals
• 32:05
  fulfilled, it would annihilate all the Jews in the Middle East. So, again, I'm not an expert on
• 32:12
  Hamas, and I'm not an advocate. Well, just listen to what Sinoir says. No, but, but let's take
• 32:19
  seriously what Sinoir says, and what Hamas has made clear in his charter. One can believe the
• 32:25
  charter are not as it's been revised. The way they see the future is they say what we are after
• 32:31
  is by no means elimination of Jews or genocide. What we are after is regime change.
• 32:36
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