← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
Trump, Gaza, and the Palestinians
00:49:37
President Donald Trump is threatening to cut off aid to Jordan and Egypt if they do not submit to his outrageous demand to take in the Palestinians he hopes to forcibly displace from Gaza. Forced population transfers and denying people the right to...
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- [00:01]
Khaled Elgindy
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- [01:03]
Martin DeCarlo
Vote history as it happens February 11, 2025 Trump Gaza and the Palestinians the.
- [01:13]
Donald Trump
US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too.
- [01:18]
Martin DeCarlo
We'll own it and move Palestinians out.
- [01:20]
Khaled Elgindy
Of the territory, saying he's committed to buying and owning Gaza.
- [01:24]
Donald Trump
View it as a real estate transaction where we'll be an investor in that.
- [01:29]
Martin DeCarlo
Part of the world. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling his idea revolutionary.
- [01:34]
Donald Trump
It's right now a demolition cent. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
- [01:40]
Martin DeCarlo
Wouldn't that amount to forcibly displacing those people from Gaza? I don't think so.
- [01:43]
Donald Trump
I think if they had the opportunity they'd love if they had an alternative to Gaza. They have no alternative right now.
- [01:49]
Martin DeCarlo
President Trump's idea of persuading all Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently so the United States can take over the Gaza Strip and rebuild it like some real estate development scheme ignores some very important history. The story of Black September and more recently, the folly of the Abraham Accords. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin decara.
- [02:12]
Colette Elgindy
Operating from Jordan, they infiltrated the Israeli occupied West bank and Israel itself. The Fatah fighters swaggered through the streets of Amman, where Palestinian guerrillas could feel free to hijack foreign airliners to the Jordanian desert. It must seem to the world as if no part of King Hussein's Jordan is free of occupation. Tanks and Saladin armored cars were ordered into Oman shortly after 6, but the fighting in the past 24 hours has been in the two refugee camps Jebel Hussein and Jebel Huada.
- [02:41]
Khaled Elgindy
The Palestinian armed and political movement grew out of the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and other places of Palestinian diaspora that became the crucible of the Palestinian national movement. And the refugee camps themselves were launching pads for attacks and raids on Israeli targets after 1948, but particularly after 1967.
- [03:09]
Martin DeCarlo
In 1970, King Hussein of Jordan, as you'll hear in this newsreel footage, talked about his two biggest challenges.
- [03:16]
Colette Elgindy
One, the liberation of all our occupied territories occupied in June of 67. The second, the recognition of the rights of the Palestinians to self determination, the rights recognized by the United nations so many times in the past. I believe that the people of Jordan, both in the occupied territory and here, have exercised their right to resist aggression and to resist occupation, and continue to do so so long as there is occupation.
- [03:51]
Martin DeCarlo
Three years earlier, in the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel had seized the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the remaining Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the west bank then occupied by Jordan.
- [04:08]
Colette Elgindy
And that victory is a swift smashing and total one as crack air force, infantry, artillery and tank corps combine to sweep across the Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal, east into Jordan, north into Syria.
- [04:22]
Martin DeCarlo
By the end of this short but momentous war, Israel had expelled another 200,000 or so Palestinians from their homes, including about 100,000 who had been displaced in 1948, the year of Israel's creation. Many of these refugees now poured over the Jordan river into Jordan, where guerrilla organizations known as Fedayeen established bases from which to attack Israel. But as historian William Cleveland writes in A History of the Modern Middle east, the Palestinians who sought to escape the dreary confines of the refugee camps in Jordan by taking up arms posed a direct challenge to King Hussein's authority. We'll return to this story in a moment, but I thought of all of this after listening to President Trump say all Palestinians have to leave Gaza and that he would convince neighboring Arab states like Jordan, to accept them. So the US can then take over Gaza, cleared of all the destruction and redevelop it. But not for the nearly 2 million Palestinians who now live there. They would not be allowed to return.
- [05:26]
Donald Trump
The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down. They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job. Do something different. Just can't go back. If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years now.
- [06:30]
Martin DeCarlo
The President's idea is, of course, outrageous. Forced population transfers and denying people a right to return to their lands are both illegal under international law. There is something called the Geneva Conventions and also the UN Declaration of Human Rights. There is also history.
- [06:47]
Colette Elgindy
Out of the misery of their sad quarter century, the Palestinians have developed a nationhood in exile, a politics of frustration. They are fueled by anger at the Israelis and disillusioned by those Arab brothers who they fear would abandon them to secure a settlement with Israel.
- [07:04]
Martin DeCarlo
That was Michael Wallace reporting for CBS News. Remember after the 1967 war, thousands of Palestinians sought refuge in Jordan, whose economy was devastated by the loss of its agricultural land in the West Bank. As Ian Black notes in his book Enemies and Neighbors, the growing Palestinian presence, the PLO presence, destabilized Jordan.
- [07:28]
Colette Elgindy
It was these Palestinians, after the Arab rout in the Six Day War, these Fedayeen who picked up the fallen Arab banner, they vowed vengeance.
- [07:38]
Martin DeCarlo
Black Wright's Israeli attacks against the Fedayeen forced them to abandon the Jordan Valley and find new sanctuaries that increased tensions with the Jordanian authorities. Alarmed by the increasingly confident Fedeen presence in Amman and elsewhere.
- [07:51]
Colette Elgindy
It was the exploits of Yasser Arafat's Fatah that first caught the imagination of the Western press. Operating from Jordan, they infiltrated the Israeli occupied West bank and Israel itself.
- [08:03]
Martin DeCarlo
In 1969, Fatah was mounting 200 operations a month from Jordanian territory and drawing harsh Israeli retaliation.
- [08:11]
Colette Elgindy
The Fatah fighters swaggered through the streets of Amman, became a kind of occupying force inside King Hussein's capital.
- [08:19]
Martin DeCarlo
And now we'll return to William Cleveland's analysis. By 1970, the Palestinian commandos were operating independently of the King's authority, establishing their own administrative networks in the refugee camps, conducting raids into Israel that provoked the usual Israeli reprisals and generally behaving as though their organizations were exempt from the jurisdiction of the Jordanian state. The tension reached a breaking point in September 1970, when the radical popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four civilian airliners and landed three of them in a portion of Jordan that it defined as liberated territory.
- [08:56]
Colette Elgindy
The moderates among the Palestinians have little control over extreme elements like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The recent hijackings, widely condemned in the Arab world, were the work of this group. Its leader is a volatile and forceful Christian Arab doctor who George Habash.
- [09:16]
Martin DeCarlo
As the Jordanian army stood helplessly by, the PFLP threatened to blow up the plains and kill the hostages if any attempt were made to interfere. The PFLP's flaunting of its independence from the government was a signal to the King that he faced two unpleasant he either had to break the power of the guerrillas or tolerate the further erosion of his authority and the probable takeover of his kingdom by Palestinians. As he had done on previous occasions, the King chose to preserve his throne.
- [09:48]
Colette Elgindy
Guerrilla snipers are still holding out in the old center of the town, with the army using artillery and tanks to blast them out. But the main fighting in the past 24 hours has been in the two refugee camps, Djebel Hussein and Djebel Huadat.
- [10:01]
Martin DeCarlo
On September 15, 1970, the Jordanian army was commanded to restore order. Thus began the ten day carnage known as Black September. The Jordanian military directed all the force at its disposal against the Palestinian presence in the country, making no distinction between civilians and armed guerillas. The Jordanian troops bombarded the refugee camps in and around Amman and relentlessly pursued the commando groups throughout the country.
- [10:27]
Colette Elgindy
The army have been pouring mortar fire into the camps, which are heavily defended by the guerrilla.
- [10:32]
Martin DeCarlo
When a ceasefire was finally arranged on September 25, more than 3,000 Palestinians had been killed and the PLO would be driven out of Jordan. And that is the story of Black September. Now imagine today if Gaza's Palestinians were forced to live in Jordan or Egypt, countries that have peace treaties with Israel. How would Israel respond under Benjamin Netanyahu if it were attacked by armed groups seeking to avenge their expulsion from Gaza? Even if there were no violence, An Al Sheelin in a report for the Quincy Institute, says Jordan, already home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees, could be in serious trouble. Sheline says the Israel Hamas war has exacerbated economic pressure on the Hashemite kingdom. As of June 2024, Jordan's debt was 90% of its gross domestic product. Unemployment was at 22%, 46% among youth, tourism and foreign direct investment, she says, have been undermined by regional violence. The war has also strained Jordan's economic partnerships with Israel, such as those intended to address Jordan's crippling lack of water in his first term. Donald Trump's Middle east policy also sought to wish away the Palestinian issue by bringing about the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab states. The Abraham Accords in an essay for Foreign affairs, the scholar Khaled El Gindi writes, the fact remains the Abraham Accords were originally conceived as a way to bypass the Palestinian question and suppress Palestinian agency in the hope that Palestinians would have no choice but to accept whatever long term arrangement the United States, Israel and the region imposed on them. In fact, the Abraham Accords, says El Gindi, were themselves one of the many trends working against a two state solution, a sign that certain Arab states had moved on and were no longer willing to subordinate their bilateral or geopolitical interests vis a vis Israel to the unicorn of an independent Palestinian state. But instead of producing peace and stability, the Abraham Accords have blown up on the region because of what happened on October 7, 2023. Colette El Gindi is a visiting scholar at Georgetown University center for Contemporary Arab Studies and he is the author of America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump. Colette Elgindy, welcome back to the show.
- [13:00]
Khaled Elgindy
Thanks for having me back.
- [13:02]
Martin DeCarlo
Before we get to your essay on the legacy of the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals between Israel and several Arab states. Before we get to that, I do need to ask you for your reaction to President Trump's I don't want to call it a plan. Openly musing about displacing ethnic cleansing all the Palestinians in Gaza to neighboring countries.
- [13:23]
Khaled Elgindy
It's a bizarre proposal. It's, I think, equally dangerous. I think the fact that it's coming from the president of the United States means you can't just dismiss it out of hand. I don't think it's viable. I don't think it's useful. If it actually sees the light of day, it will have sweepingly negative repercussions, I think for generations. It's a monstrously stupid idea in addition to being inhumane and illegal.
- [13:55]
Donald Trump
I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle east, this could be something that could be so bad, this could be so magnificent.
- [14:04]
Martin DeCarlo
Well, we know that President Trump is not a student of history. He does like to say things like this as a negotiating tactic. I mean, who knows, who knows if he actually believes this is feasible, if we even put any thought into it. What I do think it does, it sends a signal about this administration's attitude toward Palestinians. I mean, what he said is music to the ears of the ultra nationalist religious fanatics who are running Israel's government in Netanyahu's coalition right now.
- [14:32]
Khaled Elgindy
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're the only people with whom this idea resonates. I mean, there's no one in the world who would think that this is a constructive idea except the people who, for their own, as you said, messianic and ideological reasons, would like to get rid of the Palestinian population and resettle Gaza and do the same in the west bank if they can. They feel on top of the world now that the President of the United States, of all people, is endorsing ideas that probably just a couple years ago would have been so far in the fringes, the fringe of the fringes. And it is now seemingly US Policy. It's a dark moment in history.
- [15:14]
Martin DeCarlo
Seemingly US Policy. That's a good term for. Because some of the administration figures who heard this, they then tried to walk it back the next day. But I mean, the President, when the president says, I mean, that's what goes, not what his underlings say. The next day, Egypt and Jordan and other Middle Eastern states immediately said, this is impossible. And some have said, well, why won't the Jordanians and Egyptians take them? I mean, how would you respond to that question?
- [15:38]
Khaled Elgindy
There are so many reasons why Jordanians and Egyptians won't take them. But first and foremost, Palestinians don't want to leave their land. Even though Gaza is destroyed. I still think the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza would rather remain in Gaza. The reality is that they know from their own history that anytime Palestinians have left the borders of Palestine, they've never been allowed back. So the prospect of being forced out, even though some might say it's temporary until it can be rebuilt, nothing is temporary. When the Gaza Strip was created, it was a repository for refugees who fled their homes and lands in what became Israel and their destroyed villages and towns and neighborhoods. And they thought when they landed in what became the Gaza Strip, they thought that their presence there was temporary. It was only, you know, when the war is over, then they'll go back to their homes. So this is, I think, even suggesting the idea to Palestinians is triggering and traumatic from the Egyptian and Jordanian standpoints. I think there are clear national security reasons if you uproot a population by force, because that's the only way that they would leave. Wherever you deposit them, that place is going to become unstable. Because we've seen this in south Lebanon, we've seen it in Jordan. We've seen it in other places that will become a, a hub for attacks on the people who force them out on Israel. And the Egyptians have said very clearly we are not going to turn Sinai into a base for future Palestinian guerrillas. That's nothing intrinsic to the Palestinian people. That's just, that's just the reality of when people are forced out of their homes, guerrilla fighters will emerge to try and fight the people who, who did that to them.
- [17:31]
Martin DeCarlo
Now, we're going to get into the history here in a little bit concerning Jordan and Black September 1970 and the PLO. You know, the implication of Trump's position, and even my question was that the Palestinians have no say. It actually doesn't matter what they think. We're making this decision for them. You mentioned the Gaza Strip. And after the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, according to historian Jean Pierre Fillu in an essay he wrote for Foreign affairs, why Gaza matters, 25% of the Arab population of British Mandate Palestine was now confined in the Gaza Strip to just 1% of its former territory, with Israel absorbing 77% of that territory and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan another 22% through its annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Of course, that changed in 1967 when Israel began occupying the West bank after the Six Day War. This conversation, or this part of the conversation, does tie into what you covered in your Foreign affairs essay about the fallacy of the Abraham Accords, because that was done under the Trump administration. So you wrote, Until 2020, the consensus among Arab states had been that normalization with Israel would come only after the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The decision, you said, by Bahrain, Morocco and the uae, United Arab Emirates, to break ranks, therefore effectively rob Palestinians of an important source of leverage against Israel. So what changed in 2020? Why'd they do this?
- [19:06]
Khaled Elgindy
Well, lots of things changed, and not necessarily all in 2020, but in the preceding years. The region has changed. In the preceding decade, in particular, the Arab Spring rearranged the Arab Spring and winter, since it didn't have happy conclusions in most places. But it sort of redrew the map of the region. It changed the balance of power to Iran's favor. Arab states like Syria and Yemen and, you know, even Egypt were sort of bogged down in these internal either insurgencies or protest movements or some kind of instability. Iran came out already ahead as a result of the US Invasion and destruction of Iraq a decade before. Then, the Arab Gulf states became the dominant Arab players in the region, a new convergence of interests emerged, merged between certain Arab Gulf states and Israel. For example, vis a vis the threat coming from ascendant Iran.
- [20:10]
Martin DeCarlo
What were Bahrain, Morocco and or uae? You can take them as a whole or individually. What were they doing on behalf of Palestinians before the Abraham Accords? I mean, this is a long running issue. Who's the best spokesperson or representative of the Palestinians if not the Palestinians? You know, the Arab states had claimed that they would help the Palestinians work on their behalf against Israel. The wars of the 50s, 60s, 70s, you know. So what were these countries doing to help Palestinians before they signed the Abraham Accords? Anything?
- [20:41]
Khaled Elgindy
Yeah, I mean, I suppose all Arab states historically have played a role. They had been backers of the plo, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group that represents all Palestinians. All Arab states essentially paid dues to support the PLO financially. That changed after the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, in the early 90s. I know Morocco has played a role as the chair of the Jerusalem Committee in multinational forums. But these three Arab states, and I suppose if you want to add Sudan, although the status of that normalization deal I think is certainly in question, they're not the primary advocates for Palestinians. Historically among Arab states that has been either Egypt or Saudi Arabia, Jordan, sometimes Kuwait. Kuwait has been quite supportive of the Palestinian issue. Historically. These aren't the most important. You know, they don't have the closest ties historically with the Palestinians. From their standpoint, they saw, well, look, we have bilateral interests vis a vis Israel and the United States, and those two are connected and we have regional interests and we need to pursue those on our own, either bilaterally with Israel or multilaterally without being encumbered by this Palestinian issue. That's just never going to go away and it's never going to be resolved. And in any case it's sort of dormant and we can ignore it. That was the thinking at the time.
- [22:14]
Martin DeCarlo
As you say here in your essay, that if we have Israel integrated into the region, normalization between it and these Arab states, that is more important to the Arab leaders in the cause of Palestinians. Is that still true now or has there been a change among Arab states, say Saudi Arabia, which has been talking about a normalization deal?
- [22:35]
Khaled Elgindy
It's partly true. The Palestinian issue resonates with Arab publics very, very strongly and has historically. And that hasn't diminished. It's waxed and waned in different moments of turmoil, obviously the Syrian civil war or the Egyptian uprising. Egyptians and Syrians were more concerned about their internal situations than they were about their neighbors in Palestine or the Palestinian issue. But. But on the whole, the Arab publics, whether in Morocco or Bahrain or anywhere in between, deeply resonate with the Palestinian cause. There is a bit of a gap between where Arab regimes are and where their citizenry is. From the standpoint of the Arab regimes, obviously they're interested in self preservation first and foremost. Whatever issue is going to keep their regime intact and help them consolidate and expand their power in the region, or whatever their narrow interest are, the Palestinian issue doesn't play that role for them. And it's only useful occasionally to whip out and say, look at me, I'm a champion of the Palestinian people. That was one way that Arab leaders used to burnish their nationalist credentials, by playing up the Palestinian issue, whether they meant it or not.
- [23:53]
Martin DeCarlo
But now with Gaza destroyed, what some historians, scholars, analysts say is genocide, the Saudis are pointing to that, are they not? And saying, well, the terms of any potential normalization deal would have to be different now.
- [24:07]
Khaled Elgindy
Oh, absolutely. Gaza's changed everything as far as the normalization deal. I mean, it's totally upended. The logic, the underlying assumptions that the Abraham Accords were built on the idea that you could circumvent the Palestinians and just rush headlong into normalization without any accommodation for the Palestinian issue at all, well, that's been blown up on October 7th, literally. And so the moment that large numbers of Palestinians are being killed again, well, now Arab publics are paying attention even, you know, with whatever may be happening internally in their countries. And in those early few weeks of the war, in the fall of 2023, we saw protests erupt spontaneously and organically in different Arab states. You know, in Egypt, for example, there were mass protests, but they were quickly shut down because they very easily turned from supporting Palestinians and chanting against Israel to chanting against their own regime for their complacency or in some cases, complicity in what was happening to Palestinians. So the regimes shut those down. But that, I think that was a pretty clear sign that people cared about the issue.
- [25:20]
Martin DeCarlo
Trump's National Security advisor, Mike Waltz, said that the President's proposal, idea, whatever we want to call this, to take over Gaza, actually have the US Take over Gaza, was meant to pressure neighboring Arab nations to come up with a solution.
- [25:36]
Khaled Elgindy
You know, everybody's heart breaks for the Palestinian people across the region, and rightly so, but he's not seeing any realistic solutions on how those miles and miles and miles of debris are going to be cleared, how those, you know, essentially unexploded bombs are going to be Removed how these people are physically going to live for the at least a decade, if not longer it's going to take to do this. So the fact that nobody has a realistic solution and he puts some very bold, fresh new ideas out on the table, I don't think should be criticized in any way. I think it's going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions.
- [26:20]
Martin DeCarlo
It's been pointed out that there was a solution proposed, the Arab Peace Initiative. This was first floated in 2002, then re endorsed in 2007 and then again in 2017. Arab Peace Initiative Full normalization and peace with Israel in exchange for Israel ending the occupation and creating or agreeing to create a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. Now, now it's that last part of there that's a non starter with Israel, of course, but this is a proposal. What can you tell us about what's happened with this Arab Peace Initiative?
- [26:54]
Khaled Elgindy
Well, the Abraham Accords sort of supplanted and undercut the Arab Peace Initiative because again, the idea was that once there was a Palestinian state, then all these Arab states would normalize with Israel. If Israel could have normalization without the price of a Palestinian state could have its cake and eat it too, then well, that's fantastic. And that's what happened.
- [27:17]
Martin DeCarlo
I was going to ask you who gained what from the Abraham Accords? Well, we know what Israel gained. It wouldn't have to deal with the Palestinian issue. What did these Arab states gain? In your essay you say some of them now kind of regret the accords.
- [27:31]
Khaled Elgindy
I'm not privy to these internal conversations in any of these regimes, so I, I can't say. But we know countries that were celebrating and very vocal in their support of their newfound relations with Israel were now downplaying those relationships. Business dealings continued, but they weren't seeking out publicity. They were avoiding publicity because people didn't want to be seen as betraying the Palestinians. It was just an uncomfortable moment to talk about your relationships with Israeli leaders or business leaders at the same time that masses of Palestinians are being killed. But in countries like Saudi Arabia where they don't have normalization with Israel and ideas from a domestic standpoint, quite unpopular, whatever the Crown Prince may believe or not believe is important. That's a real constraint. So even if a regime wants to normalize with Israel, if the public sees it as a betrayal, I think that is what is mainly constraining the Saudis.
- [28:36]
Martin DeCarlo
For example, in the journal Liberties, Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian Christian, wrote an essay that I shared with you, titled Hamas's victory causes defeat. He raises this question, or he reiterates a question that still really hangs over all of this. It's been a subject of discussion on my podcast a couple of times over the past year or so. And that is, what was Hamas trying to accomplish, if that's the right word, by attacking Israel and murdering civilians and kidnapping others to use those human beings as bargaining chips? Hasan says what was their goal in committing the atrocities of October 7th? He writes, Hamas leaders are not in agreement on the answer to this question. As of this writing, they remain divided over the objectives of October 7. Even after the ceasefire, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk admitted that Hamas failed to achieve its stated goals, while Khalil Al Haya insists they had succeeded. Now, I bring this up because what one Israeli journalist, Shlomi Eldar, concluded. He wrote this remarkable essay that appeared in Haaretz. I believe that the top leadership of Hamas truly believed they could defeat Israel and usher in a new era. Whereas there's another argument out there that the attack was done to undermine the Saudi Israeli normalization. This issue we've been discussing here, the Abraham Accords, do you have a position on this?
- [30:00]
Khaled Elgindy
I have a theory or a set of ideas, I suppose, about what Hamas is thinking. I mean, we may never know exactly what their calculations were, but we can approximate. I think on some level, the main thing Hamas was trying to achieve was to deliver a shock to the Israeli system, one that would reverberate across Israeli society, that would shake them out of their complacency with regard to the Palestinian issue, that just because we're out of sight, we can't be out of mind to reassert the Palestinian issue, to put it back on the regional agenda and the global agenda in its most basic form. I think that was the goal. Obviously, they achieved that they put the Palestinian issue back on the agenda, but they did it at an enormous cost with hugely negative consequences. And they did deliver that shock to the Israeli system. But that produced a counter shock to the Palestinian system many, many, many times greater. The question that I don't have the answer to is, did Hamas intend to carry out the attack exactly the way it was carried out, or was it something much more limited initially that then got out of control? I think there's a case to be made for the latter, but I don't.
- [31:16]
Martin DeCarlo
Know, man, I have no idea. I can only go by what I read and who I speak to on this show, Hassan in this essay in the journal Liberties, and I'll share a link to this in my weekly newsletter. You can sense his fury. It's palpable. His fury at Hamas for what it brought on Gaza and his fury at Israel for how it prosecuted its war over the past year.
- [31:36]
Khaled Elgindy
Plus yeah, and I think this really highlights an important point that I think people lose sight of, and that is the question of blame and responsibility. People tend to think of it in very one or two dimensional terms. Hamas is to blame for all the deaths that happened since October 7, including the 50,000 Palestinians, and all the destruction because it started it. That's one way to look at things. I don't think that's a rational or reasonable approach. Obviously, Israel has agency. Israel is responsible for its own actions in the same way Hamas is responsible for its actions. But I do think the question of blame is multifaceted. In the same way that Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures of October 7, the intelligence failures, the security failures that allowed attack to take place. But they also obviously blame Hamas for taking the hostage, for killing the people. And so blame is not a one dimensional thing. Heb's essay, I think underscores this point from the Palestinian side is yes, Palestinians absolutely blame Israel for the death and destruction that Israel has wreaked in Gaza, and it is responsible for its actions. Israeli soldiers don't have to commit war crimes. They're not compelled to do so just because Hamas fighters committed war crimes on October 7th. Israel doesn't have to commit crimes against humanity and destroy everything in Gaza, but it chose to do so. So, yes, Israelis are to blame for their own atrocities, but we can also lay blame as Palestinians, on Hamas for the wisdom of its own decision making without serious consideration to the consequences. And also the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, which I think also bears a lot of the blame for their fecklessness and ineptitude.
- [33:31]
Martin DeCarlo
If nothing else, he's unsparing in his criticism of Hamas. He points out how Hamas is still trying to rule, if that's the right term, and the places of Gaza that aren't pure chaos right now because everything's been destroyed. But where it can assert its control, Hamas is still asserting its control and celebrating. After they brought on all this destruction, they actually are still ruling with an iron fist, he said, killing and kidnapping Palestinians who dissent or object to the way they're running things. And another important point he makes is even after everything, the Netanyahu government is still Hamas's biggest supporter. What does he mean by that? Well, we all know that prior to October 7th, for many, many years, Israel had been propping up Hamas through Qatar and other intermediaries, allowing money to go into Gaza that Hamas then used in part to build up its tunnel network, etc. But the idea was to have a stronger Hamas in Gaza to discredit or to balance against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The reason being if there is split Palestinian leadership, then we can't negotiate with anyone. We can't negotiate with Hamas, even though of course Israel had always been negotiating with Hamas. But you get my point, right? I mean, the Israelis are still using them as a piece to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. And obviously that whole mowing the grass strategy blew up.
- [34:49]
Khaled Elgindy
Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a colossal failure. And it's another extension of the responsibility the United States and the international community for going along with the mowing the grass strategy that led to repeated wars in Gaza and that allowed a blockade to suffocate life for 17 years. Blame and responsibility is a multifaceted thing. But Netanyahu is all about staying in power. And also one of the ways he does that is by keeping Palestinians divided. That has been a key part of his strategy. Even now, if there's so much objection to Hamas, which is understandable, then why not not allow the Palestinian Authority to go back? But that is something that they have also ruled out, that the Israelis have said no way, no Palestinian Authority. And there's only one reason for that. And that is because if the Palestinian Authority were allowed to go back and assuming it had the consent of people in Gaza and other political factions, including Hamas, then that would be another step toward a Palestinian statehood, which is something that they desperately want to avoid. They would much Israelis would much rather sow chaos because at the end of the day they don't really care about the well being of Palestinians and allow criminal gangs and business leaders or local notables whoever to sort of run things than to allow any kind of national or political Palestinian entity to play that role for ideological and political reasons, not for security and not because of 10-7-2 state solution.
- [36:27]
Martin DeCarlo
Netanyahu has never really been behind it. And, and the people in his coalition who are further to the right than he is, they're dead set against it. It's anathema to them. They don't want a two state solution. They want one state. They want Jewish control over all of the territory. They are just as maximalist as Hamas. So let's talk a little history here. Again, this relates to President Trump saying Palestinians are just going to have to relocate. Egypt and Jordan protested. He said no, they're going to. They're going to have to take them. Palestinian refugees had, of course, been living in surrounding countries or in the Gaza Strip. They couldn't really go into the sinai desert after 1948 because it's unlivable. But there are Palestinian refugees in Gaza, in Jordan, Lebanon, other places dating to 48, and then again in 1967 after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. If today is a hypothetical, Palestinians were, say, driven into Jordan and an armed group, whether it's Hamas or some other militant group, said, you know, we're not tolerating this. We're going to launch an attack back into Israel to try to regain the territory that we've been kicked out of Gaza. In this case, Israel would then presumably retaliate against that armed group in Jordan, a sovereign country. I mean, this has already happened. What I'm getting at is black September 1970 is so destabilizing the idea of stuffing all the Palestinians into Jordan. And we kind of know what happened already based on history, right?
- [37:57]
Khaled Elgindy
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there's no way to ignore the lessons of history, unless of course, you're the U.S. administration. The Palestinian armed and political movement grew out of the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and other places of Palestinian diaspora that became the crucible of the Palestinian national movement. And the refugee camps themselves were launching pads for attacks and raids on Israeli targets after 1948, but particularly after 1967. And there's no doubt that were Palestinians to be displaced into Egypt, let's say, from Gaza, that you would have the exact same dynamic and scenario there. And that is precisely why the Egyptian military and the Egyptian regime would not allow that to happen. In addition to the fact of they wouldn't want to be seen seen as being complicit in the liquidation of the Palestinian issue or to be accommodating to what is basically an ethnic cleansing scheme that would turn Egyptians against their own regime and be very destabilizing for them. So there are many reasons why the Egyptians and the Jordanians wouldn't want to do this. First and foremost, because it would undercut their own regimes, not to mention their peace treaties with Israel. So this is another kind of bizarre dynamic here. Even if you care nothing at all about Palestinians and care nothing about Egyptians and Jordanians, why would you take the two countries that have peace treaties with Israel, the longest peace treaties that border Israel, and destabilize them and undercut your treaties with Israel? It's not good for Israel. The fact that they're blind to that is also a Little bit stunning.
- [39:42]
Martin DeCarlo
Egypt Peace Treaty 7879. Well, Camp David Accords are in 78 against. The peace treaty was signed in 79 and then the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. Preparing to speak to you, I picked up Rashid Khalidi's book, the Hundred Years War on Palestine. Actually, I learned something I didn't know here. Just nine months after the 1967 war, the Israeli army invaded Jordan to go after a group of Palestinian guerrilla fighters. Were concentrated in a town called Karama. K A R A M E. Karame. Karame. Thank you. You. A small Jordanian town. Israel went in there with 15,000 troops, armor, artillery, air support, and they were driven back by this concentration of Palestinian fighters. But this was a very small victory. Moral of the story here was that the PLO and the armed groups that were in Jordan never really had a chance at strategically defeating Israel. But it caused so many problems. Right. What was Black September?
- [40:44]
Khaled Elgindy
Just to clarify, the Israelis eventually were driven back in part by Palestinian guerrilla fighters, but mostly as a result of. Of Jordanian regular forces.
- [40:54]
Martin DeCarlo
That's right.
- [40:54]
Khaled Elgindy
And that moment that Karama, the Battle of Karama, became legendary across the Arab world. It put the Palestinian national movement on the map. You know, this victory, what they spun as a. As a victory for the guerrilla fighters, became part of, of the lore and was very heavily romanticized across the Arab world. The Palestinian national movement also kind of exploded onto the world scene after that. That's the nature of asymmetric warfare. If you are the weak party, you don't actually have to defeat your enemy. You just have to be able to deliver significant blows and then withstand and survive. If you can survive your much more powerful enemy's attack, then you are seen as the victor. And that's what Hama, Hamas is doing in Gaza. They've been able to survive. They've been able to replenish their numbers. For them, that's a victory. It's, as Ihab's essay points out, it's a hollow victory given the costs in human and material terms. But that's how political military groups operate, as Kissinger said.
- [42:01]
Martin DeCarlo
I'm not apt to quote Henry Kissinger very often, but he said guerrillas win by not losing. So yes, there was this battle of Karame. The reality in. By 1970, the Jordanians had had enough because a guerrilla group, they were called the Fedayeen, Palestinian Fedayeen, they attack into Israel. What is Israel doing? They attack with much greater force back into Jordan. Jordan's a sovereign country saying, we can't tolerate this anymore. So we get something called Black September in mid September 1970. What happened there?
- [42:30]
Khaled Elgindy
The Israeli strategy is to not just punish the people who launched the attacks on them, but to punish their host countries. And so that is where the Jordanian monarchy got to a point where they'd had it with the Israeli reprisals, but also with the fact that the guerrilla fighters themselves, particularly after the Battle of Karameh, were triumphalist. There were stories like one of the Jordanian princesses being stopped at a checkpoint by Palestinian fighters. They certainly controlled life in the Palestinian refugee camps and adjacent areas. And so the monarchy saw this growing force of Palestinian fighters as a threat to survival as a, as a regime, as the, as a monarchy, especially when you consider a Palestinian demographic majority in Jordan. And so there was a particular incident, I think it was a hijack airplane hijacking that took place by one of the smaller PLO member groups, the pflp. That became the trigger for this civil war between the PLO and the Jordanian army. And eventually the Jordanians drove the PLO out of Jordan. The PLO leadership migrated to Lebanon where they set up a similar sort of arrangement, kind of ruling over Palestinian refugee camps there.
- [43:58]
Martin DeCarlo
And that led to two Israeli invasions of Lebanon because of the destabilizing effect of having a guerrilla organization launching attacks from a country into another country. So the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon, 78, second one in 1982, which I've covered a lot on the podcast over the past year. Another point to make here is that after the Jordanian Civil War of 1970, better known as Black September, the United States provided aid to Jordan to help with reconstruction. I don't know if the United States wants to be on the hook for doing something like that again today. Point being, if this crazy idea of Donald Trump was ever put into effect, it's just asking for more war and more destruction.
- [44:38]
Khaled Elgindy
No question that it would lead to more war, more instability, more misery, and more anti American sentiment. I mean, if you wanted to write a script for how to, to transform the Arab world into a hotbed of anti American sentiment, it would be to have an official U.S. endorsed plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It's bizarre and mind blowingly mad.
- [45:05]
Martin DeCarlo
Yeah. Irresponsible for the President of the United States to say something like that. Got one more question for you, Khaled, but you mentioned before about how the Israeli policy was to not only punish the guerrilla groups that were attacking them, but to punish the host country. That was called the Ben Gurion Doctrine, right?
- [45:22]
Khaled Elgindy
Yeah, I believe so.
- [45:23]
Martin DeCarlo
What is the status now, of the the two state solution, or maybe the better question to ask you to wrap up here is on the heels of President Trump's plan or proposal, what would it take take to get a two state solution back to viability?
- [45:36]
Khaled Elgindy
It would take a lot, and I think it would take mostly in the political realm. You would need an entirely new leadership in Israel, one that was not ideologically committed to the Greater Israel agenda. And that's a tall order because that requires changing Israeli politics and public opinion. And that's not something that you do even in an election cycle or, you know, it's, it's probably a generational process. You would also need a new Palestinian leadership. You would need a Palestinian leadership that is genuinely representative, that has legitimacy, that is not divided and fractured, that is not beholden either to regional powers like Iran or to the United States and Israel, as in the case of the Palestinian Authority. That will take time as well. Palestinian politics right now is deeply fractured. And that's part of the problem, why things are as bad as they are. You have Israeli and American leaders who want to deny Palestinian agency. And the fact that you don't have a cohesive, credible Palestinian leadership plays into that denial of their own agency. Then you would also need, I think, a new US Leadership. You can't have a Trump administration that believes in dislocating and expelling a population riverfront property.
- [47:01]
Martin DeCarlo
That's what his son in law said, the president's son in law.
- [47:04]
Khaled Elgindy
It's adding insult to injury. It's like you want to build this fancy beachfront property on the wreckage of an entire society, on the mass graves of people. It's so callous. First to even imagine the idea of uprooting people and then to just coldly plan to build your money making scheme on their remains is just so, so it's dehumanizing.
- [47:31]
Martin DeCarlo
Cruelty and aggression are being celebrated now, unfortunately, in American politics. You know, when Jimmy Carter died a month or so ago, he won a lot of plaudits and obituaries for the Camp David Accords and finally getting Israel and Egypt to sign a peace treaty after so many wars. But what's often overlooked in that history is how the Palestinian cause wound up being betrayed. I mean, there's a soundbite I've played quite a bit from President Carter during the news conference after the the accords were struck about how this was going to finally solve the Palestinian dilemma. Israel will agree to leave, stop occupying Palestinian lands, and there will be an autonomous Palestinian government within five years. Well, the opposite. I don't know if that was the intention, but the opposite was the result. And here we are, two generations, three generations later, still talking about the same thing.
- [48:25]
Khaled Elgindy
It is sad to see. You know, there was a moment at the height of the Oslo process when there was I don't want to say, I don't want to overstate it, but there was a degree of optimism in the mid-1990s that the Oslo process, as flawed as it was, could lead to an independent Palestinian state and an end to the Israel Palestine conflict once and for all. And it almost happened. It almost happened, but it never quite got there. And everything that has happened since then has only moved the parties and the process much further away from that goal. There's currently no grownup out there that is willing to or that is in a position to put the parties on a different track toward a historic reconciliation. No one has that vision. Instead, you have people who either reluctantly go along with Israeli plans Allah, Joe Biden or who enthusiastically embrace the worst impulses of the extremists in Israel. Allah Donald Trump. But there aren't real people with vision who can understand. What's required is also to acknowledge Palestinian rights and Palestinian humanity and Palestinian agency, and without those, you'll never have peace.
- [49:44]
Colette Elgindy
It deals specifically with the future of the west bank in Gaza and the need to resolve the Palestinian problem in all its aspects. The Frank the Framework document proposes a five year transitional period in the west bank and Gaza during which the Israeli military government will be withdrawn and a self governing authority will be elected with full autonomy.
- [50:20]
Martin DeCarlo
On the next episode of History As It Happens, what do the names Smoot and Hawley mean to you? The Smoot hawley tariff of 1930 Trump and tariffs next as we report History as it Happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com.