Dana Elkhorn (48:38)
On February 15, he announced on social media, his Truth Social, that he had gotten $5 billion pledged by members of his, quote, unquote, Board of Peace. As one article noted, reconstruction of Gaza is expected to cost $700 billion, according to United Nations, World bank, and European Union estimates, especially after more than two years of war. Trump has also claimed that countries had committed a bunch of troops to the international security force that's supposed to go into Gaza, secure Gaza, and disarm Hamas. He didn't name which of these countries had committed troops, but Indonesia did confirm that it will send 8,000 troops. And in that same Truth Social post, Trump again reiterated that, quote, very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to full and immediate demilitarization, end quote. So back in December, in an interview with Israel's Channel 12, as reported by DropSite News, US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said that the international security force was intended to disarm Hamas one way or the other. Specifically, he said, by all means necessary. And that, quote, obviously, it'll be a conversation with each country. Those rules of engagement are ongoing. I'll tell you this. President Trump has repeatedly said Hamas will disarm one way or another, the easy way or the hard way, end quote. Now, Hamas, for its part, claims it never agreed to disarm. In an interview with dropsite news in December 2025, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mishal said that while Hamas is open to freezing or storing its defensive weapons, it wouldn't disarm unless it was in the context of establishing a Palestinian army or security force capable of defending itself from Israeli aggression. Hamas has claimed that it only has a mandate to negotiate a ceasefire, an exchange of captives, and that every other issue needs to be handled through some sort of consensus process involving the other Palestinian political factions. And in that same interview, Mishal rejected the idea of an international security force disarming them, saying that, quote, we accept them on the borders as separation forces between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side, not as forces deployed inside Gaza as was intended for them, and as Netanyahu wants for them to clash with Palestinians and disarm them, end quote. So speaking at an Al Jazeera forum on February 8, the same person, Khalid Mishal, reiterated this argument, saying that the calls for Hamas's disarmament is not an international demand, but an Israeli dictate being pushed onto Washington. He also said that calls to disarm Palestinians while the occupation continues would, quote, leave Gaza defenseless against Israel's overwhelming military power and exterminationist agenda. As Job Site News reported on their social media, quote, michel acknowledged the need for a pragmatic post war framework to enable reconstruction and prevent a return to fighting, but explained that it could not be built on total disarmament. So with that as an introduction, I wanted to take this episode to talk about what Palestinians think of disarmament and broadly and more generally armed tactics. And when I say Palestinians, I hope it's clear I don't just mean Hamas. I know that comes as a shock to some, but Palestinians aren't monolithic. And there has been a great deal of debate since the October 7 attacks by Hamas on the role of armed tactics, armed groups, especially in the absence of national institutions or a functioning national liberation movement. In December of last year, 2025, the new Arab hosted a very interesting debate between different Palestinian representatives of Hamas, Fateh, the party of the Palestinian Authority, and a human rights activist and writer. And they hosted this in Gaza literally on the grounds of the bombed out Al Shifa hospital. And they've debated some key questions. For example, who has the right to decide war and peace for Palestinians? How can Palestinians understand October 7, does Hamas need to disarm? Who should govern Gaza? And you know what? This may come as a shock to both the American left and the American right, but the Palestinian speakers at this interview did not all agree with each other. So I'm going to give a brief rundown of what this panel discussed. The main Hamas spokesperson, Hazm Qasim, basically argued that decisions on war and peace should be made through national consensus within a unified Palestinian institution, not unilaterally by any faction, but that in the absence of functioning institutions, then Hamas is a part of the Palestinian body politic, has a right to engage in violence and defend Palestinians. He also argued that it wasn't Hamas's fault that there wasn't national consensus or functioning national institutions. His narrative was that Hamas consistently sought unity, first by entering into elections in 2006 and supporting election attempts that President Mohammad Abbas of the Fatah party and the Palestinian Authority ended up canceling. He also reiterated that Hamas doesn't mind handing over governance in Gaza to a technocratic body, which proves, from his perspective, that they aren't trying to govern alone. And on the question of disarmament, he said, Hamas would commit to ceasefire, they would commit to maybe storing their weapons, but they wouldn't disarm entirely, and they maintained that armed tactics are a legitimate right. He also emphasized that Israel alone was responsible for the destruction of Gaza and that no one could have anticipated the level of brutality Israel would unleash. Now. The fatehpaksprison. Mundar Hayek understandably disagreed with many of these points. He represents the opposing party, and from his perspective, the October 7 attacks were launched without national consensus, and that consensus could only operate through the Palestine Liberation Organization, the plo, which is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people. Hayek also made the reasonable argument that even if everyone agrees armed resistance is a right, that those engaging in that tactic should consider the regional and international context as well as the impact of these kinds of tactics and the likelihood of their success. And in his view, because these things were not considered, October 7th led to very negative results for Palestinians and a lack of meaningful international support. He also admonished Hamas leadership for making what he thinks is a political decision of not negotiating a ceasefire earlier, accusing them of having been able to stop the war in the first six months and limit the bloodshed. And finally, he criticized Hamas for prolonging negotiations and refusing to put the PA in charge of Gaza. And he landed on the argument that there could be no future for Hamas, from his perspective, as part of a national liberation movement, unless it accepted the plo, it disarmed, it renounced violence and understood that the pa, the Palestinian Authority, was the only legitimate authority that could control both territories, the west bank and Gaza. And the way to quote, unify Palestinian geography is through the Palestinian Authority. And doing that would be the only way to get back to the state building project. I'm just summarizing here to be clear. His words, not mine. Now, the final panelist, Mustafa Ibrahim, is a writer and human rights activist in Gaza who took a critical position of both parties. He basically said that both Hamas and Fateh share the blame for the division in the Palestinian body politic and the fact that there was a lack of mechanism for collective Palestinian decision making and no functioning national institutions. He blamed both sides, and he accused both sides of not actually being serious about any of the dialogue sessions that were held between the two parties in the past in Cairo, Beirut and Beijing. But he agreed with the Fatah spokesperson that October 7th has not been allowed to be assessed properly and that Palestinians never got to decide if the consequences justified whatever October 7th was trying to do. And he blamed Hamas for that. So agreeing with the other panelists that the right to resist is legitimate, he also acknowledged that disarmament was an internationally demanded condition. So he posed the question, how would Palestinians navigate this? And from his perspective, Hamas should be more flexible on the weapons and disarmament issue, especially given the degree of people suffering and the need for reconstruction in Gaza. I summarize all of this for you, because this debate held in Gaza among people who had directly lived through the last two years of genocide should demonstrate that there is no national consensus and that it's not because Palestinians don't know how to resolve these issues. It's because they haven't been given the space to do so. There has been a lot of discussion about how to unify these different parties, about reviving the Palestine Liberation Organization, making it more inclusive and democratic, and therefore more legitimate as an actor, so that it could make decisions the Palestinian people would accept, and so that not one faction can do what it wants, can engage in tactics without considering the consequences. But none of these attempts, and there have been plenty like the Palestinian National Conference, have really been incorporated into discussions of post conflict processes or management by the international community. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when the idea we're going with is the, quote, Board of Peace basically functioning as a colonial oversight board and a club for authoritarian regimes. But I digress. I think it's also important to make two points here. First, that polling of the Palestinian people by the Palestinian center for Policy and Survey Research shows that most Palestinians are not supportive of either party, neither Fatah or Hamas. There is a degree of malaise and cynicism where both parties are seen as a part of an unacceptable status quo. For example, when asked about whether they would support a Hamas candidate or a Fatah candidate if elections were held for the presidency, 34% of Palestinians say they would vote for a Fatah candidate. 24% would say Hamas candidate, 9% would say they would keep President Mahmoud Abbas, and a whopping 32% would say they wouldn't even vote. And this non voting percentage goes up to 47% if the elections are just between Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas candidate. And they also ask about direct support of political parties. So there's a more direct question in the latest poll from October 2025. Again it shows 24% support Fatah, hardly a majority, 35% support Hamas, again, hardly a majority, 9% support third parties and 32% either say they don't know or refuse to answer. So this is not a situation where either of these parties have a mandate. And it's clear that neither party is representing the Palestinian people right now, nor do their actions have majority support. Now some might wonder, is this debate emerging because of the sheer level of destruction in Gaza? We are talking over 70,000 people killed in Gaza that we can even confirm so far. Is it that in this context, this context of severe consequences from Israel, what prompted this debate and self reflection? Well, the short answer is no. Palestinians have always debated these issues and in the absence of a functioning national liberation movement with all of its institutions, they haven't been able to hold any particular party accountable for its actions. I could point to a lot in Palestinian history to demonstrate this, but I'll point out an essay by a Palestinian intellectual, Azmi Pshah, that he wrote and released within a month of October 7th. This essay, titled Moral Matters and Hard Times, again demonstrates that Palestinians have never shied away from this discussion and indeed made criticisms of these political parties very quickly following the attacks. Now, of course, Bashara lays the blame for civilian deaths on Israel, given that it targets Palestinian civilians, as he argues out of racism and as he argues to try to turn the population against armed tactics and armed resistance. And he quotes Israeli leaders directly here. So he talks about President Herzog saying there are no innocents in Gaza, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the time calling people in Gaza human animals. And he also points out that Israeli society at the time was overwhelmingly supportive of cutting off food, water and medicine to Gaza. So although Bashara rejects this kind of absolute evil framing of the attacks and says we need to understand the context of a 17 year siege on Gaza, settlement expansion, incursions on the Al Aqsa Mosque and prisoner mistreatment, he also plainly argues that immoral acts committed during October 7th. So to him, documented instances of harm to civilians, theft, mistreatment, etc are not acts of resistance. And in fact from his perspective, they harm legitimate resistance. And he argues again a month within the attacks that the leadership of the, quote, unquote, resistance have a duty to clarify what happened and condemn those immoral acts. He says, quote, having recognized a people's right to resist occupation, can it be concluded that we are not permitted to judge the morality of acts of resistance to occupation? My answer is that, on the contrary, it is not only permissible but perhaps necessary, end quote. So he argues that the right to resist does not exempt these movements from moral judgment. And distinguishing between legitimate military operations and immoral acts against civilians is essential to maintaining the justice of the Palestinian cause, even as we can acknowledge and emphasize the, quote, moral depravity of the Israeli response, end quote. Now, whether you agree with him or not, whether you side with one of the panelists I mentioned from the interview or the other, what I want people to take away from this episode is that all of this clearly shows Palestinians have been taking seriously the strategic and moral implications of all of these tactics, arm tactics included, and that there isn't any one party that speaks for what Palestinians want right now. The only way to get national consensus is to allow the Palestinians to create or revive the institutions necessary for that to take place. Disempowering Palestinians, ignoring their aspirations and ignoring the need for their input or blocking them from undergoing this essential process will only prolong the conflict and prolong the suffering. That's it for me today. Thanks for listening.
