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Sam. Ra. SAM Foreign.
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I'm Jeremy Scahill coming to you From DropSite News. DropSiteNews.com thank you so much for joining us on our regular weekly livestream. I'm really honored that my friend and one of the great voices on Palestine, not just during this genocide, but for several decades, Ali Abu Namah, the executive director of Electronic Intifada, is going to be joining me for a wide ranging discussion on the state of the so called ceasefire in Gaza. And as we're speaking right now, Israel already is continuing its pattern of violating this supposed agreement that Donald Trump is touting as the most magnificent peace plan that has ever been unleashed on the Middle East. Israel has not upheld the terms of the agreement that it signed regarding aid that's going to be coming in. And you know, the term aid actually is not the appropriate word for what we're discussing here because as you'll recall, when Israel blew up the original January ceasefire deal on March 2, it did so by imposing a full spectrum blockade on the Palestinians of Gaza, where no food, no medicine, no fuel, no supplies were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip, neither from the territory controlled by Israel, nor through Palestine's international border on the Rafah crossing with Egypt. This withholding of aid, this blockade, of course, was a very clear war crime intended to collectively punish the Palestinians of Gaza. So when we're talking about aid deliveries, what we're really talking about are life essentials that Israel has systematically prevented from from reaching Gaza as it destroyed systematically the hospital and medical system in the country, the bakeries, the food distribution programs, basically imposed a situation where no international organizations that historically have been responsible for ensuring that flour gets to bakeries, that soup kitchens and community sites for people to get meals are functional, and they only allowed in their mercenary organization from the just ridiculously and lethally ridiculously named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. And of course, more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed since the GHF arrived in Gaza in May. So Israel has been refusing even to allow in the bare minimum of life essential supplies. And they're making all kinds of false allegations that the Palestinian side, that Hamas is not upholding its part of the agreement. And the Trump administration even privately last night told journalists that this is not true, that actually Hamas has not been in any way violating the ceasefire agreement. So this is exclusively on Israel. And Israel has also done a number of strikes. Palestinians continue to be killed by American bombs fired by Israeli forces. And the Palestinian resistance, of course, as part of this deal, handed over to Israel the 20 living Israeli captives that were still in the custody of the Palestinian resistance. And in exchange for those captives, some 1,700 plus Palestinians that had been kidnapped from Gaza in the aftermath of October 7th were returned to the Palestinian side. Some of them, though, have been deported to other countries, mostly Egypt. And others are coming back into Gaza and telling horrifying stories of the torture that they endured in the Gulags, that they were held by Israel. And if you compare how the Israelis look in the media coverage to how the Palestinians look, you can see a clear distinction. The Palestinian resistance was holding these Israeli captives while Israel was systematically bombing and targeting all of Gaza's territory. And the Palestinian prisoners look like the descriptions that you often hear of what it's like in these Israeli prisons. But they're emaciated, some are in wheelchairs, some have had limbs amputated, some have gone blind. And this morning I was looking at some unspeakably graphic images that have been released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza of the bodies of Palestinians who have been returned to Gaza as part of the exchange deal. You know, this is something that isn't often spoken about in Western media. It almost goes unmentioned. But for decades, Israel has had a practice of holding Palestinian bodies. There are more than 700 Palestinian bodies being held hostage even though they're dead by Israel, some of them for decades. There's one Palestinian political prisoner who died on hunger strike in 1980 and his body has been held for 45 years by Israel. And the formula in this so called ceasefire agreement is that for each body of a deceased Israeli that is going to be returned to Israel, 15 Palestinian bodies are supposed to be returned to Palestine. And Donald Trump has made a big deal about saying of Hamas that only sick and twisted people hold dead bodies. There are believed to be roughly 28 bodies of deceased captives, some of them killed by Israeli bombing, held by the resistance. Last night, the Qassam Brigades put out a statement saying that they have returned all of the bodies that they can retrieve without Israeli forces pulling back from areas where some of them are buried under the rubble alongside certainly Palestinians that have been killed. There are international teams that are supposed to be coming in now to try to help retrieve some of those bodies. But that has formed the foundation of Israel's new line that Hamas is violating the agreement because they haven't handed over all of the deceased Israeli captives. Last night, a senior Trump administration official gave an off on background briefing saying that Israel knew well that the Palestinian side had said that it would be impossible to retrieve all of these dead Israeli captives without massive equipment to remove rubble and without some international assistance. So it's just one example of how Israel twists the narrative in an effort to try to justify continuing to kill Palestinians, continuing to starve Palestinians. But I want to just emphasize this again. More than 700 Palestinian bodies are being held, many of them in freezers or refrigerators with just numbers or they're buried in just numbered graves. So while there's all this media attention and immediate identification of the deceased Israeli captives, Palestinian families don't even know if their loved ones are among the dead because they've been delivered in bags. Many of them, according to Palestinian health officials, show signs of torture or some form of execution, bullet shots to the head. And some of the bodies of these Palestinian prisoners, and I just saw images this morning that were released by the Ministry of Health. Their hands are still tied behind their backs. And the reason that the Ministry of Health released these photographs, and these are forensic photographs. In some cases, they're showing the teeth or body parts or clothes that are still on these deceased Palestinians that were taken captive by Israel is because they're trying to find a way to identify them. And they're asking that the Red Cross and others be able to do DNA testing against family members in Gaza. So this is just yet another way in which Palestinians are forced to suffer. And there's very little attention being paid to the condition that these Palestinian bodies are being returned to Gaza and both the living captives who have been tortured in Israel's prisons and dungeons, but also the bodies that are being returned now to Gaza. There is so much to discuss, and as I said, I'm honored and want to bring on my friend and a great journalist and analyst who is the founder of one of the most important news outlets that has been covering Palestine for several decades. I'm talking about Ali Abunama, the Executive Director of Electronic Intifada. Ali, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
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A
Thank you, Jeremy. And thank you for your generous words and for all your great work. And of course, we just had you a couple of weeks ago on the Electronic Intifada live stream. So we always benefit from your insight and we're very grateful for the work you do.
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Thank you, Ali. I want to begin on this issue of Palestinian hostages, Palestinian captives, political prisoners, pick up from where I left off and maybe explain to people what this is like for Palestinians as their loved ones are either freed from captivity or they go on a macabre quest to try to determine if the bodies that have been returned to belong to their loved ones.
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I think the thing that has been really galling for me is seeing all the tweets from Western political leaders and politicians celebrating with ecstasy that all the so called Israeli hostages are now home and how wonderful this is for their families. Recalling that the last 20 Israelis released were all soldiers, prisoners of war, some of them even said they wanted to join the army and go straight back to helping to impose apartheid and settler colonialism and genocide on the Palestinian people. Yet these have all been presented as, you know, these lovely innocent people. Now I won't deny the joy of anyone being released from captivity or their family, but they have just completely ignored the 2000 Palestinians who are released and the many thousands more who are still in Israeli detention. And if you look at Palestinian media and social media over the last few days, what you see are these scenes of Palestinians embracing their loved ones who've just been released, sometimes in horrific condition. And there's been no attention to that. They, they're looking emaciated, they're looking like they have been through hell, because they have. They've been describing the utter degradation and humiliation that they have experienced in Israeli detention, including in the days going right up to their release. As Ad Damir, the Palestinian prisoners rights group, said the released prisoners appeared exhausted and frail, confirming that during the four days preceding their release they were subjected to various forms of abuse and ill treatment, including severe beatings, humiliation, prolonged shackling and threats. Not to speak to any media outlet about the conditions of their imprisonment. The prolonged suffering inside the occupations prison was evident on their faces and bodies. Many had lost dozens of kilograms and were visibly weak and fatigued. And let's recall of course, Jeremy, that, that there is no imposed famine in Israel. It is Israel's choice to starve these detainees. The other thing that's worth noting is who many of these detainees are. For example, one of those who was released was Dr. Muhammad Abu Musa, a radiologist from Nasser Hospital in Gaza, who, who was kidnapped in February 2024 when occupation forces stormed the hospital and kidnapped him while he was on duty. Other medical personnel were released by the Israelis. Why were they even detained in the first place? And of course there are many more doctors and nurses and medics who are still in Israeli custody, including Dr. Hussein Abu Sofia. And then if you look at the long term prisoners who were released, some 250 long and life term prisoners, the vast majority of them, 157 were members of Fatah, so they're not even members of Hamas, which shows that the Palestinian resistance is trying to represent and serve the entire political spectrum. Just over 60 of them were from Hamas and the rest were from other factions. And, and most of them have gone into exile, been forced into exile by Israel to Egypt and other countries. Of those long term prisoners, which again shows that this is not really freedom. They're not being allowed to return to their homes and villages and towns and families. They're being forced into another kind of prison, the prison of exile. And then I just want to point finally, Jeremy, to the fact that in this release, only a tiny handful of children were released by Israel and I think just a couple of women. And Adamir again notes that there are still over 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including 52 women, 400 children, and more than 3,500 so called administrative detainees. Those are people held without even the pretense of a charge or trial. And still more than 100 long term and life sentenced prisoners. So for all the joy of those being released, the vast majority of Palestinian political prisoners and prisoners of war are still in Israel's torture camps and dungeons.
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Yeah, you know, Ali, just, just to give people a bit of context about some of what you're saying here in the, in the context of the ceasefire, when the Palestinian negotiating delegation was dealing with Trump's people and dealing with the Israelis, and this has been true in all of these negotiations, one of the primary stated goals of Operation Al aqsa flood on October 7 was to free Palestinian prisoners and free Palestinian hostages from Israeli custody. In fact, Yahya Sinwar, the late leader of Hamas, he himself was freed from an Israeli prison in 2011 as part of an exchange deal for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. And when Sinwar was in prison, he was there for two decades. He had studied the memoirs of Israeli intelligence officials, became fluent in Hebrew, and then translated those memoirs into Arabic and distributed them among other prisoners. And part of the reason that, that, that, that was listed as one of the top goals of Operation Al Aqsa Flood is that history has shown that this is the only way that Palestinians who are given multiple life sentences by Israel ever, ever see the light of day again. And the, the, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners has always been sadistic, torturous, grotesque. But it's gotten even worse since Itamar Ben GVIR took over as the Minister of Interior Security. I mean, this is from the testimony we're reading and hearing of Palestinians that come out, the level of sadism, the intensity of the torture is increasing.
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And it started before October 7th. I mean, this is really crucial to point out, of course, for decades. It's estimated that more than three quarters of a million Palestinians have been put through Israel's prisons since the occupation of the west bank and Gaza in 1967. That number dates from before October 7th. It's considerably higher now. And the treatment has always been terrible. We can go into that history. But the severe, deliberate degradation of that treatment, the deliberate imposition of extreme, cruel and unusual degrading treatment, including denial of food, denial of medical care on a mass scale, denial of showers of hygiene, was started by Itamah Ben Gvir long before October 7th. And so that treatment of the prisoners was one of the precipitating factors for the October 7th resistance operation. And it's important to point that out because, you know, in the Israeli Western narrative, nothing ever bad had ever happened before October 7th. The first people ever to suffer in captivity were those Israelis taken captive on that day. And there's no acknowledgment given to the horror that Palestinians, including hundreds of children each year, are put through an Israeli detention.
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And children, as you've written about, as I've written about, are often subjected to a military trial system where they're denied basic fundamental rights to legal counsel or meeting with lawyer or to see evidence against them. And, and it's what, you know, Israel is in company with some of the most rogue regimes on earth with treating children, with subjecting children to military tribunal systems.
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It's the only country in the world that has been doing that systematically. And that that all predates October 7th.
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And, and so the other, the point I was getting at here is that when the Palestinian negotiators went into these negotiations with Trump's people, they understood that for many of the Palestinian prisoners who are serving multiple life sentences, you know, people, there's been a lot of focus on Marwan Barghouti, and rightly so. He is a very popular, well known Palestinian political prisoner, a leader of the Palestinian intifada. He is not Hamas. He is someone that consistently polls at the top if there were to be democratic elections in Palestine. But he is not the only prisoner that was on that list. And I think it's interesting you alluded to this or stated it quite directly. A non Hamas figure from a party that is the direct rival to Hamas was always number one on Hamas's list for release. And I've heard liberal pundits who are pro Palestine make a point saying, oh, Marwan Barghouti would represent a threat to both Israel and to Hamas. And I think that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of these prisoners to all Palestinians, but also how the resistance views someone like Marwan Barghouti. You know, Hamas is portrayed in an oversimplified, cartoonish way. And if you actually speak to people who are in the leadership of Hamas, they view themselves primarily as a national liberation struggle. And throughout the course of this genocide, they have not just said, well, Hamas decides what happens in these negotiations. They consult with a wide range of political factions. And that's also why on the negotiating team officially this time was not only Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but also pflp, a secular, historically left wing organization. And it was Fatah, the ruling party of Mahmoud Abbas, that has refused for two years to engage in this intra Palestinian dialogue. So I wanted to ask you about this because I've heard from Palestinians within the resistance also. They were extremely disappointed that they did not succeed in getting some of these high profile political prisoners sentenced to multiple life sentences out, and that their last opportunity basically for freedom was when Donald Trump was in that airplane his way to go to Israel and Sharm El Sheikh. And that some felt that there could have been, that they should have tried to exert more pressure knowing that Trump wanted to land with those living Israeli captives already freed, if you understand what I'm saying, that strategically I've heard some criticism that maybe they should have pushed harder and withheld the release of some of those Israeli captives until Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Sadat Abdullah Barghouti, others were on that list to be freed.
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I can't second guess the negotiators. We know, and we talked about this when you were on the electronic intifada live stream recently, the pressure that they were under, the pressure that they felt on themselves to end the bombardment, to end the massacres and the bloodletting, to get aid into people. And I think the more distance we get from the agreement that they signed on October 10, the more clear it is that they protected fundamental principles, even though they had to make tactical compromises here and there. So I would imagine that they would have pushed as far as they could go. And they have said, at least from statements I've seen that, that they don't give up on any prisoner. There are still, as I just said, more than 9,000 Palestinians in the Israeli torture camps and prisons. And I assume they would have wanted to get all of them released also. They would not have wanted anyone to be forced into exile. And yet they had to accept that too. So I'm not going to second guess them and say, oh, they could have done more here and more there. I'm certain they would have pushed as, as hard as they could. And as I pointed out, the majority, 157 out of 250 of the long term and life sentence prisoners were from Fatah, were from the, that rival faction of Mahmud Abbas. I don't want to impugn those prisoners because absolutely they were giving their, they gave their freedom in, you know, for the cause. But when we talk about Mahmoud Abbas, that's a different story. And he is openly hostile to Hamas and to the resistance and still closely allied with Israel. And yet the resistance actually freed mostly long term and lifetime prisoners from Mahmoud Abbas's movement.
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Pick up on the point I was making earlier though, about the discourse around Marwan Barghouti. And also I should say that some prisoners that were freed in this exchange issued some very severe warning alarms about the abuse that he has been subjected to. You know, there's been a trickle of some information about him. And I would imagine this applies to many of these Palestinians that are locked up by Israel, serving these life sentences that particularly after October 7th. The Israeli, I think one of the freed Palestinian prisoners said that they declared war on Marwan Barghouti After October 7 and really intensified the torture and the beatings. And he's been held in solitary confinement. His family hasn't been able to visit him for an extended period of time at all. And he's been severely restricted to the amount of time he can even see his lawyers. But this discourse around him where people are saying, where you hear some people saying, well, well, Barghouti would represent a threat to Hamas, it just, I think it sticks with me because I think it is a way of trying to denounce the right of Palestinian armed resistance by portraying Marwan Barghouti in a certain sense, but also feeding into the narrative that what Hamas wants is just power and that somehow there isn't any principle at play here.
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A
I think when it comes to Marwan Barghouti, we have to distinguish between two Marwan Barghoutis. There is Marwan Barghouti the man man, and there is Marwan Barghouti the symbol. And Marwan Barghouti the man is a Palestinian political prisoner being held by Israel, being tortured and abused like thousands of other prisoners who deserves to be freed because all Palestinians should be out of the dungeons of this colonial occupier. That is very clear. And so Marwan Barghouti should be freed like all of the Palestinian political prisoners, including Ahmed Saadat and the other leaders of various political factions. Marwan Barghouti, the symbol, plays a different role for different audiences. He is clearly seen by the Palestinians, by the Palestinian people at large, as a symbol of their struggle and as someone who is paying a very high price for his involvement in that struggle. And therefore he is someone who gains a lot of sympathy and support. But what Marwan Barghouti stands for politically is beyond that is sort of a blank slate. And people are imposing on him all sorts of views of what they would like him to represent that, that we don't know if he does or he doesn't. And one of those is that, oh, he is this charismatic leader who could challenge Hamas and sweep Hamas away in elections and they like him for that reason. Another view that exists on the Israeli left, where we've seen, you know, the so called Israeli left, to the extent that there's a left in Israel, is that Marwan Barghouti is a Palestinian leader with the credibility and the popular support to be able to make concessions to Israel. And therefore we've also seen in recent years expressions of support from the Israeli left for him to be freed. All of that is speculation and it's extremely unfair to Marohan Barghouti, who has not been given the opportunity to articulate his own political outlook in the current circumstance. He's been cut off from the world for decades by being held in these extreme Israeli conditions. So I think we have to be very careful about the efforts to project onto Marwan Barghouti all sorts of political significance that he may or may not have. But absolutely as a political prisoner, he deserves the full support and solidarity and deserves to be freed as soon as possible. And it would have been, of course, a moment of great joy if he had been freed in this exchange, which is precisely why Israel wouldn't free him. Because they don't want to give Palestinians the, that satisfaction and that sense of victory. By seeing Maran Baroti or Ahmed Sadat or some of these other major struggle figures released, it would have deepened the sense of Israeli frustration and failure. And probably that's something that the, that the negotiators understood that this was just going to be a bridge too far at this phase and, and they had to make that decision. And I wouldn't be in a position to second guess it.
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B
Yeah, fair. Fair enough. I want to, I want to shift gears and ask you about the way that this issue of disarmament is being talked about, because this is now and we talked about this on Electronic Intifada as well, that this was going to immediately become the focus after the Israeli captives were returned or released. Now, you know, Israel, the Israeli media, the Israeli government is, is saying if Hamas doesn't essentially surrender, if it doesn't, you know, disarm, that Israel is going to do it. And which is interesting in and of itself because that's been the goal for two years. And they have been militarily.
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Why, why didn't they, if they could do it? What, why, what stopped them? If they have some magic formula for disarming and demilitarizing Hamas, why haven't they done it? Clearly they can't. And Donald Trump saying the other day, they're going to disarm very quickly or we're going to do it very quickly and very violently is just empty talk because they did everything they could. There's scarcely anything worse that we can imagine that Israel and the United States could do to Gaza in an attempt to destroy the resistance. And because Israel had no capability militarily to defeat the resistance, they did what Israel always does, except to much greater extremes, which is go after the civilian population. That's the Israeli doctrine. You target the civilians, you bomb them, you starve them, you displace them, you terrorize them. And the hope that you'll inflict so much pain and suffering on the civilian population that, that they will turn against the resistance. They will say, you brought this upon us, you irresponsible men with guns. If you had not done what you did on October 7th, we wouldn't be suffering this way. And maybe there are a few Palestinians who feel that way. And I wouldn't begrudge them that feeling after the horrors they've been through. But clearly that has failed on the large scale. And on the contrary, the, what we see is Hamas and other resistance factions still with very strong support in Gaza. The resistance fighters have strong support and people seem to be supporting the Hamas led forces coming back into the streets and restoring law and order, which is something that Israel deliberately set out to destroy by, you know, recruiting these mercenary collaborator gangs, the Yasser Abu Shabaab gang and others. And even Donald Trump came out and said, you know, yeah, we let Hamas keep its weapons and they cleaned up some very bad gangs. And, you know, there's a lot of criminality. So even Donald Trump apparently supported that. But the question is, can he now do anything to take away the weapons of the resistance? And not by force. And so the question is, is this, you know, this is a huge built in landmine into his so called peace plan because it's impossible to see the resistance disarming voluntarily outside the context of a comprehensive agreement that restores Palestinian rights. And I don't see Israel also, you know, backing down on this. And so it seems to be a built in major landmine.
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B
Yeah. And, and for now, just to to be clear, the official position of the two main armed resistance organizations, or the two main organizations that have large armed resistance factions, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, their official position remains that disarmament is a Palestinian issue and that this cuts to the heart of the legitimacy of the struggle for self determination in a Palestinian state. And that any suggestion about laying down arms can only happen in the context of the constitution of a Palestinian national army capable of defending itself in the world. And so that remains whether or not there will be a technical way of trying to have some decommissioning or there's going to be pressure from Arab states. That's all stuff that, you know, if you talk to Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials, they'll say these are issues that need to be discussed with a broad section of Palestinian society. And it has to be in the context of a hudna, a long term truce, and the constitution of an actual armed force operating under the banner of the Palestinian flag and an independent state. That remains the official position. I definitely want to talk to you about this issue. Of the rest, you know, the actions that are being taken against people accused of being collaborators, war profiteers, thieves, looters, et cetera. But just one other issue on disarmament, I wanted to read you, Ali, from last night. As I said earlier, a couple of senior Trump administration officials gave one of these background briefings to reporters where this is common among all administrations, where you can't say their name, but they're sort of answering questions. I just want to read you some comments on a couple of these issues you've mentioned. So on the issue of disarmament of the Palestinian resistance and demilitarization of Gaza, one of the senior advisors to President Trump acknowledged that demilitarizing Gaza is complex and difficult element involved with the ceasefire negotiations. And this is a quote, right now we're in the process of defining how to get there in a way where everyone feels safe. It's not realistic to think everyone's just going to walk in, drop their arms and say, there you go. A lot of the people, even on the Hamas side, are fearful of retribution from other people inside Gaza. So it's a very complex dynamic. Still, the advisor said the US Quote wants to continue to work together to find a way of doing it. We're all working very closely, creatively and aggressively to find the right outcome that satisfies everyone's objectives. What do you make of those comments?
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A
Well, you could take it as recognition that they understand that just getting the resistance to surrender is not realistic. But, you know, all of this depends on what the bigger vision is. If they want to just treat Gaza in isolation, that's not going to go anywhere. Gaza is a fundamental part of Palestine. The people in Gaza are part of the Palestinian people and their struggle is part of the Palestinian struggle. Gaza didn't you know, the resistance in Gaza didn't just fight for, for Gaza, which is just 2 or 3% of historic Palestine in terms of land area. They fought for the Palestinian cause. And we've heard analogies which very, very cheaply made analogies without real depth to, you know, even the language that was in Trump's 20 point plan was stolen from the agreements that were signed in the context of the peace process in Ireland, that, which talk about a process of decommissioning, of placing weapons beyond use, of, of demilitarization and so on. But in the context of Ireland, those were reciprocal agreements where both, where all the parties had to decommission and demilitarize as part of an overall political settlement. So it wasn't just the Irish Republican army and Irish Nationalist factions that had to decommission and demilitarize. It was also the loyalist and unionist factions. It was the British army had to be withdrawn. It was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was the sectarian, thuggish police force of the British state had to be dismantled and replaced with a non sectarian police service in Northern Ireland and so on. And people can criticize, people do debate and criticize those agreements, but the point I'm making is that there was a reciprocal process here. There is no reciprocity. Why should the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people have to disarm when they are under occupation, when they are fighting for liberation? Israel should have to disarm. Israel, which perpetrated the Holocaust, should have to disarm. Its army should be placed under international supervision and monitoring. Its war criminals need to be taken for trial and justice. So the whole discourse that focuses on Palestinians as if they are the problem and not Israel, is fundamentally unjust and unworkable. And so even those comments from that administration official you cited, Jeremy, which seem to recognize the difficulties, they still exist within that context of blaming the Palestinians for resisting, which is their right against Israel's brutal genocidal occupation.
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B
Yeah. And you know, I mean, picking up on what you're saying about, you know, the, the, this is a total inversion of, of, of, of truth. But watching Trump's appearance at the Knesset, you know, some days ago with him and Netanyahu and all of the war criminals assembled there, I mean, the, you know, I, I, I, I think Joe Biden and Tony Blinken were sad that they didn't get to come to the celebration of the genocide that they, I mean, it was one of the sickest displays I've seen. It was, I mean, what I really felt like I was watching was like an inverse Nuremberg trial where the people that should actually be in the criminal docks facing the justice for their crimes were celebrating one another. And Trump was openly bragging that Netanyahu would ask him for more weapons and then he would give them to Netanyahu. And then Netanyahu, boy, he was using them in such a great way. I mean, it was such a sick display. But for anyone who knows and can recognize the truth is actually true, it was this, it was an inverse Nuremberg trial. But to the issue of disarmament, it is such now the mainstream view among European leaders and others that this condition, that somehow a condition for peace is that the Palestinians lay down their weapons and there's momentum with this. You hear it from Macron, you hear it from all of these European leaders, what they're really saying, and I mean, I know you know this and I know it, but I really want to drill this into people's head. What they are saying is we're demanding that the Palestinians surrender the actual cause of liberation. We are demanding that they accept an apartheid state that is going to dictate whether they live or die. And if they are allowed to live, then they're going to live as third and fourth class citizens subjected to all of this abuse, all of this annexation. But at the heart of it, the issue of disarmament is not about guns. The issue of disarmament should, it, shouldn't, we shouldn't even be talking about as disarmament. They're asking that the Palestinians surrender their basic rights. That that is what these so called peace plans are about that are being promoted by European leaders primarily.
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A
And that's exactly the model of the so called Oslo Peace Accords that were signed in the early 90s. And it was the idea that Palestinians are given some easing of their prison conditions in exchange for basically giving up their national rights and becoming enforcers of the Israeli occupation on behalf of Israel. That's what Yasser Arafat signed onto and created the Palestinian Authority, which immediately, as soon as it was created in 1994, the began repressing Palestinians on behalf of Israel. It's the ugly truth. Did it work? Now we're almost, you know, two generations later, did it work? Did the Palestinian cause go away? Did the Palestinian people decide, okay, well we're getting more consumer goods and now we can get credit cards so we don't care about our rights and freedom. That didn't happen. And so it's an attempt to reimpose a formula that has failed time and time again to try and bully, murder, besiege, bribe Palestinians into giving up their rights. They will try everything. Israel and the so called international community, they will try anything except giving Palestinians their rights and freedom. That's the one thing that's off the table for them. And you know what? They should try it because it will work. It will work. Palestinians want their rights, they want self determination, they want the right of return. But all of that runs against what is the real European and American priority, which is maintaining Israel as a Jewish supremacist ethnocracy that's incompatible with the rights and self determination of the Palestinian people. And that's why they insist we have to get the power, we have to starve them, bomb them, demonize them, criminalize them until they surrender. Well, it's been 80 years almost since the Nakba. It's been more than 100 years of Zionist colonization in Palestine and it hasn't worked. The Palestinian people still committed to their rights more than ever. And those who want to surrender them and, and collaborate with Israel are marginal and they remain marginal and they always have been. Despite the promotion and the boosting and the support they get from the west, they remain marginal.
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B
Ali, I do want to talk about this issue of restoring order in Gaza because it's being weaponized and exploited in an effort to try to justify a resumption of the full scale genocide or attacks against the resistance in Gaza. But just to close the loop on this part of it and the broader Trump plan, what do you see as the strategy right now that the Americans, the Europeans are using with this constellation of Arab states and Islamic nations, as well as Mahmoud Abbas sort of being allowed to stand on the periphery of the Sharm El Sheikh summit, you know, this kind of peace, you know, charade that was, was put on there, but because of the level of nuance that you operate with on this, I really, I want to ask you, what do you think the strategy is Here with Abbas, with the Palestinian Authority. Given that on the one hand, he is a, just a. He's. He's widely seen as a collaborator with the Israeli occupation. Hussein Sheikh, who's been, you know, tapped to potentially be his successor, you know, put up, put a post on X the other day, showing himself meeting with Tony Blair in a airport lounge in Jordan. It appeared to be. Or something. Maybe after he served the nuts and drinks, they let him sit down with Tony Blair.
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A
But the.
- [45:52]
B
But you have Hussein Shaikh, who's very close to the Americans, was deeply involved with the Americanization and Israelization of the Palestinian security forces in the occupied West Bank. You had a boss on the periphery of that summit, and you have Israel saying that they, they still don't want any role for the Palestinian Authority, even though they're, you know, client collaborators from the, in the view of many Palestinians, what, what do you think they're trying to arrange here regarding Gaza and the day after plan and all of this stuff, but specific to their game plan with the PA and Palestinian actors in all of this?
- [46:28]
A
It's exactly what I just described, Jeremy. It's an attempt to revive the Oslo model of, of Palestinian collaborators, corrupt collaborators who are willing to sell out their people for privileges and to police their people on behalf of Israel and the U.S. that's it. They have no imagination. They can't come up with anything new. Because the alternative to recycling all these things is to stop standing in the way of the liberation of the Palestinian people in the land of Palestine. And that is just beyond the pale for them. They will hang on to. They will try everything to prevent freedom for the Palestinian people. And so if that means trying to, you know, breathe life into the political caucus of Mahmoud Abbas, they will try. If it means getting another slightly younger collaborator like Hussein El Sheikh or Majid Faraj or all these other figures or Muhammad, they will try. None of it will work. None of it will succeed in quenching the desire of the Palestinian people for liberation. They tried it for years in Gaza, bribing people, attempting to get them to pull away from the resistance. And what we didn't see, yes, people in Gaza suffered. They saw their, their families wiped out. They wanted an end to this. They were desperate for the ceasefire. Yes, and they deserved the ceasefire. And that's why I felt joy and so many people felt joy at the news of the ceasefire, because it's what people in Gaza wanted first and foremost. But none of the. They didn't surrender. They never said, we surrender. Let Israel do what it wants they said we were steadfast and we are battered but we, we stood by our principles and nothing will get people to give that up after all this. And your question Jeremy, about do you want me to address the issue of what's happening in Gaza with the collaborators?
- [48:35]
B
Well, let me just set that up. There were a couple of points I wanted to make about this first of all, and our colleague Abubakr Abed was making this point in a very clear way last night. But it bears repeating. Gaza was governed by a political movement that won an election, Hamas. And actually Hamas didn't just win the the elections in 2006 in Gaza. They wanted an all of Palestine where they were, where people were allowed to vote. And Ismail Haniyeh was supposed to be the Prime Minister of Palestine and of course know things, things didn't go down that way. And you had this power struggle that took place. You had Abbas completely reject the, the democratic elections. And so Hamas was governing Gaza. But Hamas is not just Qassam Brigades and armed resistance Hamas. And I know you know this, but I just really want to drive this home for people. When they were running a government, they had to pick up the trash. They had to pay payroll and salaries, make sure that the hospital system was administered in a proper way. And they also had police forces like any society in the world has some form of law enforcement. And within those police forces, this was not Qassam Brigades, this was not exclusively Hamas. You had civil servants from a variety of Palestinian political parties and political viewpoints serving at all levels of the state apparatus within Gaza. And so when throughout the genocide and particularly in the past year, when the Palestinian police in Gaza or security forces from the government would go to try to stop looting of convoys, the Israelis would often then give air cover for the looters and they would come in and bomb the police forces. In recent days, since the so called ceasefire went into effect, we have seen a number of actions that have been conducted by these official forces. It's reported in the broader Western media as Hamas did this. But I just want to draw this distinction that there are police forces as part of the civil government in Gaza that are responsible for the restoration or the preservation of law and order. Just to put that on the record, you also have units within Qassam Brigades that are like intelligence units that are in the business of counterintelligence, counter espionage, who have also targeted Palestinians that they have identified as collaborators. There are a number of dynamics here and it just gets set as o Hamas is doing this. So I just Want to first establish this basic factual understanding before you describe all of this, Ali. But we then saw a couple of things happen. There were some battles between armed factions within some larger families within Gaza against Qassam Brigades. And then there were public executions of individuals that had taken part in this action. And those executions were carried out by members of the resistance. But you also had raids that took place against people, people that were war profiteers and extorted money from Palestinians and took exorbitant fees to give them cash in return for bank transfers. But the entire thing is being portrayed as Hamas is executing Gazans that are their political opponents in public. Break this whole thing down for us, Ali.
- [52:14]
A
Well, Palestinians don't. I think Palestinians know that that's not the case. By and large, yes, there are a few who are trying to portray it that way in a way to suit the agenda of the Palestinian Authority or others. But by and large, what's happening in Gaza is uncontroversial in the sense that during the genocide, Israel deliberately fostered chaos, destroyed or tried to destroy all of the infrastructure of governance and civil life, including the courts, including the police, including, you know, everything, and deliberately sponsored these collaborator gangs made up of criminals to loot what little aid they let in to black marketeer and profiteer, to sow division. And that was one of the main complaints Palestinians had in Gaza was the lack of safety, lack of law and order, the, the black market profiteering, the sale of aid that was stolen. That aid would come in, that's supposed to be distributed fairly, but it would end up being sold at exorbitant prices in the markets. As you said, we know that people who, because all the banks were destroyed, there's no ATMs, you can't just go withdraw from your cash from the, from your account. So people who had bank accounts who would receive payments or remittances from abroad, in order to get their cash, they would have to transfer online using their phone. If you transferred $100 to one of these money changes, you would get $50. So they're taking 50% commissions to give people desperately needed cash in order to buy supplies. And people know more or less who was responsible. Of course, in a wartime situation, some people are led to things they shouldn't do. So that seems to be who's being targeted. In an ideal world, this isn't how it would be done. There would be courts, there would be trials, there would be, you know, all sorts of robust due process. But it seems to me that the critics of this, for the Most part people who were perfectly okay with Israel destroying the civilian infrastructure and the court system and the governance in Gaza. And now they're complaining and they're saying we're seeing summary justice and we're seeing all sorts of things happening that shouldn't happen. Well, you cheered for the destruction of whatever civil governance structures there were in Gaza. The war, you know, genocide and war. What we saw after World War II, we saw all the European countries that preach about human rights going after collaborators. And often that's an ugly process. And I don't condone everything that happens. I don't want to get that, give, give, give that impression. What I'm saying is that none of this is extraordinary. This is what, what happens. And it, it's, it is a consequence of the chaos Israel deliberately tried to sow. What we're not seeing in Gaza is a general campaign of political repression by Hamas or going after its rivals. It does seem to be an attempt to restore law and order, you could say, to go after the war profiteers, the looters, the collaborators. And that's happening in a way that would not be ideal in a perfect situation. And that's not something, that's something that you have respected Palestinian human rights groups like euromed, Human Rights Monitor, saying that there should not be chaos. There should be a, a judicial process and trials and all that sort of thing. And I agree with that. And if Palestinians are left to govern themselves without foreign interference, they could do that, but that's not what's being allowed. And so inevitably, you're going to have some forms of street justice. And that is just a highly regrettable fact of life in this situation. And I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we said otherwise.
- [56:56]
B
Yeah, you know, we only have a few minutes left, Ali, But I did, I'm sure you saw this, but there was sort of a surreal interview that took place the other night on Saudi television on Al Hadad channel. And of course, the Saudis are very, very anti Hamas. And also the Saudis themselves are great fans of public execution. So they interviewed, though, on Al Hadad and a sheikh from Nusirat in Gaza, Sheikh Husni Al Mugni, who's head of the Supreme Committee for Palestinian Tribal Affairs. And, you know, he, he's deeply involved with civil society actions. He's not a member of Hamas, and it was clear that they wanted to get him to, you know, condemn Hamas. And I just want to read part of what happened in this interview, and you can check our Twitter feed. We posted the whole Transcript of it, but in response to the to the host's first question, he said, these events didn't come out of thin air or from rumors. They're based on facts. This misguided group collaborated with the enemy and committed shameful acts, murder, theft, looting. These people have existed since the first truce. They've been doing this for a long time. During that period, they killed many people, robbed and terrorized others. No one could tolerate what they did. Now, after the situation has stabilized and the ceasefire has taken hold, the security forces are working to restore safety and stability among the people. This deviant group, which practiced all forms of violence and looting, had to be held accountable. The host then says, but should it be handled this way? Less than 24 hours after the ceasefire in Gaza, they're executed publicly without any legal process or accountability. Sheikh Al Mugni says, my sister, please understand. There are no functioning courts, no police, no judiciary right now. What exists is field justice. Tell me, when a 10 year old boy goes out to bring home a little flower for his siblings because his father was martyred and someone attacks him, steals the flower and kills him in the street, who will hold those killers accountable? These people have to be rooted out. They're a corrupt element that does not belong to our society. The host then says, but surely you've also heard of excesses by Hamas members themselves. Mugni says, if there are violations by Hamas members, there are authorities who can stop and punish them. Who holds Hamas accountable? Anyone can report misconduct to the higher authorities. They'll investigate and punish. Hamas has leadership and internal accountability and it goes on from there. And then he says at one point, there should be more holding accountable the people that committed these crimes during the genocide. I'm just giving this as one example and the reason I'm reading it is not that I'm co signing anybody's particular narrative, but because the way this is being presented right now to the broader public is part of the broader narrative of dehumanization and part of the broader effort to try to justify what a continuation of the genocide and the portrayal of Palestinians in the same genocidal terms that the Israelis have been using for decades and intensified their use of after the genocide. So Ali, I'm going to give you the last word here. You can pick up on that or you can make any other point that you think people should be aware of right now.
- [60:00]
A
No, I couldn't have put it better myself. That's a realistic description of the reality that people are dealing with. And it's, you know, like to see functioning courts in Gaza as they were functioning by and large prior to the genocide. But that has to be Palestinians who self determine and who govern themselves. Not Tony Blair, not, not the United Arab Emirates sending in troops, not Jordan and Egypt, but Palestinians. That's what this struggle is about. And I'll just close by saying, Jeremy, I want to echo a point that we've both made, which is, I think as this discussion shows, this is far from over. This, this struggle was not about just obviously the ceasefire was urgent, but that's a ceasefire doesn't solve anything. It stops the bloodshed, but it doesn't solve the fundamental injustices. So it's just to urge everyone who has been so active and so mobilized and so vocal in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel's system of occupation, apartheid, settler colonialism and genocide to stay active, to keep up the pressure, not to stop talking about Gaza and justice in Palestine because Israel is on the back foot. They have lost the public relations war, they've lost public opinion. And we have to make sure that they do not get to reimpose their false narratives now on the public and on the mainstream.
- [61:41]
B
Ali Abunama, the executive director of Electronic Intifada. You can find their work@Internet intifada.net, really also one of the best, if not the best, just consistently produced web stream that's available with a breakdown of so much of what's happening in Gaza, but also in general in Palestine. Many reporters and contributors on the ground. It's been a vital, vital source of information for many, many decades. I was honored in a different lifetime, Ali, during the buildup to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, I was doing a project called Iraq Journal and Electronic Intifada would also publish my journalism early on. Ali and I are now older guys and that's how long it's been around and been and been doing this. But I really encourage people to support them, donate to them, watch the stream, support their work. It really, it blazed the trail for news outlets like Dropsite that also have tried to work closely with Palestinian journalists on the ground. So I just want to once again publicly express my gratitude and admiration for the work, Ali, that you do and your whole team at Electronic Intifada. So thank you so much for taking the time with us today.
- [62:52]
A
Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy.
- [62:55]
B
All right, and that does it for this live stream. We can assure you that we're going to be here every week. We've been doing it on Tuesdays, but now we've switched to Thursdays at 9:30am and on behalf of the entire team at Dropsite, I want to thank you for your support. Dropsite News does not have a paywall. Instead we support we rely on the support of people who make a voluntary contribution to become paid subscribers to support our work. If you're in a position to do that, you can go to dropsitenews.com and find out how to become a paid subscriber. If you can't afford to become a paid subscriber, that's okay. Just let your friends, your family, even your foes know about our journalism. And make sure to always check out our social media feed, particularly our feed on X. I know some people don't like X Twitter, but our our team, led by the great Herman Gill, works 247 to provide what we hope is a valuable news service for people. Primarily in this period. It's focused on the Gaza genocide, but we cover a range of other international and national issues. You can find that@dropsitenews.com thanks so much for joining us. On behalf of everyone on the Dropsite News team, thank you so much. I'm Jeremy Scahill.
- [64:15]
A
Sam.