1/7/26 Ramzy Baroud: The Genocide in Gaza Has Not Ended - Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

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[00:06]
A
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country?
[00:13]
B
We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly. When the president does it, that means
[00:23]
A
that it is not a liberal.
[00:25]
B
We're gonna take out seven countries.
[00:26]
A
They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now.
[00:31]
B
End this war.
[00:33]
A
And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. Okay, you guys, Introducing Ramsey Barood, of course. He's a regular@antiwar.com he runs the Palestine Chronicle and he's an academic fellow at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. And here are. Boy, they pulled up all the wrong books for me here. When I clicked on your name, what happened? Here's one of them anyway. I don't know why it did that to me. Ramsey Beru, before the Flood is coming very soon. February 3rd with Elon Pepe. And he's also written a bunch of previous books including these Chains Will Be Broken, the Last Earth, A Palestinian Story, Searching Janine, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. Gaza's Untold Story and and on like that. And again, he is a real great highlight and boasting point for me for his participation in the Scott Horton Academy where his course is titled the Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict. So welcome back to the show. How you doing, Ramsey?
[01:47]
B
I'm doing good. How are you, Scott?
[01:49]
A
I'm doing great. Really appreciate you joining us on the show today. So there's so much going on in the world. Eyes off Gaza, well, not good enough. So let's put our eyes back on it. Obviously we cover the headlines, you know, kind of day in and day out@antiwar.com and people are still being killed. I believe over 400 Palestinians have been killed since the so called ceasefire began in October. There's all kinds of, you know, developing stories about where the yellow line is drawn and is being moved to and plans to divide the strip in half. There's the ongoing crisis of winter weather and these tent colonies and all. You know, I saw one where a building collapsed and killed a five year old girl. I mean it's just hell on earth over there. I know, but would you please just start with getting us up to date on the situation for the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip as it stands right now?
[02:47]
B
Absolutely. I mean it's something that we have seen before during the genocide in particular. We have seen how the weather impacts people who are having to deal with the genocide but also having to deal with the constant State of displacement. Many of these families, rather hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been moved from one place to the other throughout the last two years. Plus now going from the north to the south to the center. Some of the people that I speak with, including family members, by the way, many of them, you know, have had like 15, 16 different homes, for the lack of a better word. There are no homes. They are just, they are lucky if they get a tent. And even the prices of tents, because they're not available, have went out how, how, you know, went up great deal in the last two years to the point that the tent would cost up to 12 and 1500 dollars. The kind of money that ordinary people do not have. The market does not have the capacity to for this kind of supplies. And as a result, many of them just live in, you know, in, you know, cardboard boxes in, within destroyed buildings. I mean, this is the issue. You know, I've been asked before, why are people, you know, just taking the risk in the first place? Well, what do you do? One of my cousins told me that she is one of. She is very lucky and she is grateful to God a thousand times that she's able to live in a house. When I saw the house, I couldn't believe my eyes when she sent me the video. Basically half of the building is gone. It just like sliced from the middle. So they kind of used blankets and, and various sorts of plastic sheets to cover the other half. And they are living in the other half. And she is feeling that she is one of the very lucky ones. So you can imagine the plight of hundreds of thousands who don't have access to, even to destroy buildings. So the situation is very dire. And of course Israel is manipulating this situation. This is what Israel does. Israel throughout history is very good at creating signing agreements that it does not respect, assigning certain lines, starting with the first armistice line in 1948 until today, or rather 1949 until today, lines that they don't respect. I mean, look what they did in Lebanon. They signed the ceasefire agreement and they have violated it not hundreds, but thousands of times according to the UN and independent sources. So you can imagine what they have done in Gaza. I mean, it's a constant. I mean, I don't even know what is the term when you violate an agreement every single day so many times. Is it really still an agreement? I mean, is this considered a violation? In my opinion, there's no agreement to begin with. It seems that only the Palestinians, the same case in Lebanon, only the Lebanese, only the Syrians are obligated to respect whatever agreement. While on the other hand, Israel is completely free to do as it pleases, as if it didn't sign anything in the first place. And this is exactly what's underway in Gaza at the moment.
[06:07]
A
Okay, so before we talk about the diplomacy and all the alleged plans and ceasefire agreements and all that, can you talk about how the so called agreement is being implemented on the ground? As far as the territory that Israel is taking, the yellow line and the, the plan to divide the, the, the territory at least in half. And I guess the, the Israelis are claiming they're going to occupy the entire northern half of the Strip from now on.
[06:37]
B
Is that it?
[06:38]
A
Right.
[06:39]
B
So, so this is very, very important. And I, you know, we have to be really honest of why Israel agreed to, to the October ceasefire in the first place. Israel agreed to it. And there's really no other interpretation of this, no matter how some analysts try to spin it. It agreed to it because it could not defeat the Palestinians on the ground. Israel's ultimate aim was to defeat the Palestinians on the ground and to push them out into Sinai. It's not a conspiracy. It is something that is like mainstream news in Israel. The question is what country was willing to accept them and what other was not. They spoke about Sierra Leone, about Somaliland, about Ghana, about South Sudan. They, they've been talking about it openly and freely and as if it is totally fine to ethnically cleanse 2.3 million people or whatever number of people that survive the genocide and just push them somewhere else. No international law, no humanitarian law. But Israel couldn't do this. It could not achieve its objectives. Two years and it was still going. They invaded Khan Yunis repeatedly, every single time. They could not sustain their occupation, so they had to leave. They did the same thing in Bethun, in Bethlehem, in the north, in Gaza City. They said they needed 200,000 soldiers to take over Gaza City and they could not provide that number. They could not take over Gaza City. They put a siege on Gaza City hoping that it would break. It didn't. So the ceasefire agreement was an acknowledgment that military force alone is not able to kind of break the will of the Palestinians. So they resorted to something else, which
[08:27]
A
let me just interject here, by the way, can I just say real quick that your second or third article after October 7th was Israel has already lost. And the article was about how they tried this in 2014 and they couldn't get past guys sniping them from the rubble. They just cannot win this fight. And so we know that the, the function of how many innocent Palestinians are going to be killed in the meantime is just a function of how long this goes on before they quit. Obviously, the Palestinians can't drive them out, but all the insurgency has to do is not lose, and Hamas will not lose. And so now here we are having this conversation at the beginning of 26, where even Netanyahu at least implicitly acknowledges that you were right all along about that.
[09:15]
B
Exactly. And this is, you know, I must admit that at times I thought, am I going too far in my expectations regarding the Palestinians? I'm not talking even about Hamas or the Islamic Jihad or the various socialists and communist fighting groups in Gaza. I am talking about the people themselves. Based on all the research that I have done throughout the years, Gaza has always been different. As if there has been a collective decision among Gazans that we would rather perish than surrender. I don't know how, I don't know why, but the fact is, historically, this has always been the case. Gaza could not be subdued. And we've tried it. This is not an Netanyahu phenomenon. Ariel Sharon has tried it. Rabin has tried it with the broken bones policies and all of that. Previous generals and prime ministers have tried it. Gaza cannot be subdued. And as a result, I reached that conclusion that indeed, no matter what, you are just killing children, you are just killing women, you are killing innocent people. There are some buildings that have been bombed dozens of times. The rubble is just of the building, the concrete pulverized over and over and over again. And they were trying to get different results and they couldn't. Now it is a state of siege. Let's see if we give the Palestinians the choice between, you know, kind of living on the brink, between life and death, or maybe we can give them an opportunity somewhere else. And they have been. I'm sure that Anti War has been reporting on this. You know, the mysterious airplanes that landed in South Africa loaded with Palestinians. How did they get there? Coming from Gaza? Then they discover that this comes through NGOs registered in Europe, Israeli, funded with the hope of finding kind of a soft method of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. But it doesn't seem like anything is working now. The problem is here we are stuck. The Palestinians cannot, will not surrender under any circumstance. They have nothing to lose. But Israel, on the other hand, does not feel like it has enough pressure to let go of this project. So we are now living in this strange zone where Palestinians are just dying slowly. And as you said from the Very beginning. The world is looking somewhere else.
[11:40]
A
Yeah, they always said, Scott, you keep drinking that much coffee, you're going to turn into a cup of coffee. And then it finally happened. I am coffee now. And if you go to scothorton.org coffee you too can get Scott Horton show flavored coffee branded coffee there. It's Ethiopian mixed with Sumatran blended coffee. It's so good. And I have some of it right here. In fact, I'm drinking my Libertarian Institute mug. You can see this is how I wake up in the morning and this is how I stay awake in the afternoon. And if I was a drunk, it would be how I get home from the bar at night. So sound advice to you guys there. You know, take an Uber Moondoz Artisan coffee. Get it? They hate Starbucks because Starbucks, well, first of all, doesn't taste that great. And then also they support the war party, but Moon Dose Artisan coffees does not. They support peace. So check us out@scothorton.org Coffee okay, so. Well, there's so many different topics. Let me, let me go back to what you're saying about sort of the, the, the soft cleansing, the kind of leaking appeal, because there are people who are severely, you know, injured and malnourished and unhealthy in a variety of ways who are being, you know, taken to, I guess, Qatar or UAE or whatever for medical treatment there. So, like, part of the time, the complaint is that Israel won't let Palestinians leave their captives there. While on the other hand, what they really want is to kick them all out. But then you do have sort of this, this, you know, kind of ongoing problem of people who get out in order to get medical care or help in whatever way, then they can't get back in. They don't really have much of a place to get back into. And so however, I guess as you're saying, though, the, ultimately the problem remains, there's still something like 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They haven't been able to get Ethiopia or Indonesia. They were talking about Indonesia. They haven't been able to get any of these other countries to agree to take the Palestinians and, and help them with their cleansing project there. The Egyptians won't, I guess they could push them all into. Well, they can't.
[13:59]
B
Right?
[13:59]
A
They, they wanted to push them all into Sinai, but they need the US Marines to do that. God, bite my tongue, man. I hope nobody in the Trump administration heard me say that. But, but then, okay, I read the Wall Street Journal and it's, I don't know. God help you if you ever had to watch the remakes of Star Trek. They're just so terrible. But there's one with the, the guy Cumberbatch or whatever is the Space is the Wrath of Khan. It's just so bad. Anyway, they had this like this floating city space station out there in outer space somewhere. And it was like this super high tech fancy Jetsons like Space City. And that's what the drawings look like in the Wall Street Journal of here's what Jared Kushner wants to do to the Gaza Strip. He's going to invest something like $999 trillion in completely remaking the entire Gaza Strip into the, the cleanest future scape of, of, you know, chrome plated science fiction from the 1950s kind of imagination type thing. And then. But yeah, that won't be for the Palestinians. That couldn't possibly be his plan to do that for the Palestinians. Although depending on which episode of the Wall Street Journal you read, sometimes they pretend that, oh yeah, he wants to do this for the Palestinians, but clearly the plan is there to still kick them out and turn this into prime real estate for Israeli Jews to live in. But. So I don't know, I guess it, the point here, the strategy here is just to continue to try to basically starve them and make them miserable enough to leave, even though they just turned the tempo down on the fighting and then, or I don't know if you want to get into some of the details of the plan and what's workable and what's not. I mean, I think, well, everyone must have understood going in that Hamas is not going to lay down their arms or turn them over to something because
[15:54]
B
that is collective suicide for the Palestinians. I mean, nobody came to the rescue. You know, I, I grew up in the refugee camps of Gaza and I tell you, like, my gosh, the kind of conversations that I grew up with, you know, people waiting for some liberator to come from outside. You know, I, by that time I did not even know about Che Guevara's famous statement, there are no liberators. The people liberate themselves. But back then the, you know, my dad used to say, oh, the Egyptians will not leave us alone. Then my uncle would say, no, no, it's the Algerians who will come via the sea. And there's always this idea. And by the way, this goes back to 1948, when nearly a million Palestinian was ethnically cleansed during the Nakba, the great catastrophe that established Israel on the ruins of Palestine. And that generation believed that there is an international system that will not allow Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed. And when they were, they were so convinced that the international system is going to take them back. Like, it just doesn't make sense for people to be pushed out the way they were. So my grandfather used to have this radio transistor. I remember it was orange and the batteries were bulging from the back and had all this weird duct tape on it. And he'll just be waiting, thinking that the news is going to declare Palestinian refugees go back. His politics were very simple, but the idea is Palestinians were being told someone is going to come from the outside and help them go back and free them. That never happened. Now that they are the only line of defense, the first and last line of defense, under what circumstance will Palestinians lay down their arms? Because doing so, it's the end of all things. It's just not going to happen. So this is. They are willing to fight to the death. And in fact, they proved that they are willing to fight to the death. But nothing has happened. No cracks in the international system. I know we have been talking for over two years about the tide is turning, the current is hitting the wrong way or the other, but nothing fundamental has yet happened, leaving the entire scenario in the hands of Mad Men, Jared Kushner and Israel Katz and weird meetings about floating cities in the Mediterranean and artificial islands and some really weird shit. Sorry for the language. Where. And you know, so. And nobody is coming offering anything else. Nobody is saying, no, this is ridiculous. It needs to stop. There's an alternative international legal system that is going to provide Palestinians with a minimal degree of support or protection. None of this. This is why the likes of Jared Kushner is a daily character on Middle Eastern news. Very frustrating because you know none of his nonsense is going to happen. You know that. But he's going to experiment at the expense of innocent people who need help, aid, love, support, protection. No. They are just waiting until Mr. Kushner and Witkoff and so many others conjure up yet new ideas. Let's experiment and see what happens. We have nothing to lose. So it's. The Palestinians are now the subject of a political experimentation, a grand political experimentation by crazy people in Washington who have no reason to stop because nobody is telling them otherwise.
[19:21]
A
Yeah. Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian Daryl Cooper. That is Martyr Maid, he's my co host and we host a show every Friday night. We might be switching to two days a week. Here sometime soon. But for right now, we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o' clock Eastern Time on the YouTubes. Checked out our Twitter handle provoked show
[19:47]
B
now.
[19:47]
A
So Hamas, obviously, they were under severe pressure, you know, just in pure violence and in the desperation of the Palestinian people to find a way to get a ceasefire here. Now, it was, you know, one year ago, they were killing about a Waco mask or worth of people a day. You actually usually above that. Waco is about, you know, 86 people. So it was something like between high 80s and, and like 120 or whatever every day. Like, somebody must have told the Israelis that you can kill about 100 a day, okay, and keep it like on that tempo or something. So by giving into this deal, Hamas lowered that tempo down to a few a day compared to 100 or so a day, which, you know, hey, that's a pretty big improvement. And some people got to go, quote, unquote, home, back to their old neighborhoods to squat in the rubble and whatever. But, you know, what they said at the time was that they were essentially just taking the word of Donald Trump that, you know, they know they can't really deal with the Israelis at all. But the President, United States really was sticking his neck out and was saying, I am guaranteeing peace here based on my word. I'm saying, you can accept this deal. And so that was basically all they had to go on there. There's, as you said, no one's coming from the outside to take their side. So the President of the United States insisting on a ceasefire on the Israeli side if Hamas will give in to xyz, basically let them no choice, I guess, but to give in at that point. In fact, that's the same deal that more or less, at least, that they had been willing to give in to for a very long time, even going back to when it was still President Biden. But, so, but they have no real guarantee of anything. And other than the shame of Trump somehow failing if the thing goes back to, you know, a higher tempo of violence again, which is not much in terms of a political price for Trump to pay, you know what I mean? It's letting the Palestinians down is not politically the same as letting the Israelis down. Right. So, so, yeah, I don't know. I guess I, I'm, I'm curious, I guess, what you think about just the kind of short and medium term future here of, you know, the rock and a hard place that really everybody is stuck in here. Trump can't get Netanyahu to really, you Know, live up to what he really wants, which is probably not too much better than what Netanyahu wants anyway, but he has a hard enough time just getting him to let food aid in and stuff like that. So. And, and of course, as you said, the Israelis already lost. They can't get rid of the Palestinians. But then the Palestinians, nobody's coming for them. And they don't have the ability to change the behavior of the Americans, of the Israelis, other than making them more violent by, you know, launching some rockets or whatever it is if they got some. So I don't know. Anyway, what do you think where we are here?
[22:47]
B
I think what you said about this being a numbers game, I think is absolutely right. In the beginning of the war, the number was, of course, much higher. It could go up to at one point in one single bomb. I think in jabalia it was 850 people gone in in a single American supplied bomb. So the number was much higher then. It seems that indeed they, they kind of settled. I mean, I've been reporting on this every single day. And, and yeah, it's like, how did they calculate that the number has to go between, you know, 80, 85 to 120, 130 max. Like how, you know, who is, you know, keeping track of these numbers to the point that if it's a day in which 57 were killed, it was like, well, that's a good day for the Palestinians. And then maybe just before midnight you have a bomb that will take, you know, the lives of another 40 or 50 just to make sure that the number stays the same, as if the Israelis have reached some sort of a conclusion that maybe we can kind of balance the, in the global rage regarding what's happening in Gaza and maybe we can prolong this as long as possible, but for the Palestinians, it's just too much. And I know that there's been a lot of discussions that Palestinians are under a lot of pressure from the Qataris and from the Egyptians and yeah, they have, they have. But the truth is Palestinians have been under a lot of pressure from the Arabs for decades. Their political decisions were not based or shaped by that pressure. Especially these countries have very little leverage. I mean, Qatar is the only country that actually had leverage over the Palestinians because they were hosting some of the leadership of the various Palestinian resistance groups. But Israel ended up bombing and killing, you know, various, you know, the resistance movements or members in Qatar itself. So here you go, here's the leverage that Qatar has. It was lost and nothing has happened. And they were bombed In a sovereign country, a very close ally with the United States, about 2, 3 kilometers from the US military base. Because I lived in Qatar, I was working for a news network there for years, and I know the proximity is a very tiny little country. So the Americans were just watching as their ally is being bombed by the Israelis, and they didn't do anything about it. So here you go. With the leverage that the Qataris have over the Palestinians, the real leverage that Israel had, despite of the strong talk of the fiery speeches of the Palestinians and all of that, is that these are children, these are innocent people who are mutilated every few minutes, every couple of hours, everywhere in Gaza. It's just too much. And any human being would break under these circumstances. They didn't. But in their mind, they found some kind of a balance. As you said, to lower the number, to. To take the tempo down a little bit was like, well, I mean, we lived with this number of dead Palestinians every day before the genocide. You know, maybe we can sustain this a little bit longer. But in my mind, this is the calculation of the Palestinians. This is a very strange era in the history of the struggle. Historically, individuals do not matter. Whether it's. It's Hakra Bin or Ariel Sharon or Paris or say, believe me, or Netanyahu. At the end of the day, Israel is. You know, Israeli policies are controlled by numerous variable in which the individual himself does not matter so much. That individual never mattered as much as. As today. Netanyahu does matter. The presence of Netanyahu, if it's someone else, maybe he would have played his cards differently. Maybe he would have tried to appease the Americans to get something else in return. Netanyahu seems to have total control. And really, I mean, I know people are going to say conspiracy theory, but really total control or had tapped into the American foreign policy code in such a way that whatever Netanyahu wants, Netanyahu gets, and the Palestinians know that. So they know that there's an element of time here. They need to be strong enough, patient enough, resilient enough that they survive these couple of years under Trump and Netanyahu, this deadly combination in the Middle east and beyond the Middle east, at this point, in South America and beyond. So this is it for Palestinians. This is a waiting game, hoping that the new variables could emerge in the future and save them. Not liberate them, not free them, but save them from this particular death trap under which they live right now.
[27:40]
A
Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it. Central banks are hoarding it.
[27:44]
B
Up.
[27:45]
A
And if you need some, you should go to RRBI Co. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy, Tim Fey. He's a really great guy. Him and this business. They've been over there for a very, very long time. And they will help you get your medals and they will always do you right. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. At RRBI Co. Can you tell me about this guy? I'm not. Probably not even saying his name right. Marwan Baruti. Is that the guy? People say he's sort of the Palestinian Mandela and that's why he's in prison. So the age old, you know, sloganeering about we have no partner for peace. Yeah, because he already assassinated them all. Or at least keep him locked in a cage. And I even read that they went ahead and beat the crap out of him in his cell a few weeks ago to punish him for whatever was going on. So can you talk a little bit about that guy or what you think about him?
[28:42]
B
Well, there are two Marwan Barbutis.
[28:44]
A
Okay?
[28:45]
B
Same individuals. No, you didn't. You didn't make a mistake. It's the same individual, but there are two representation of Marwan. You see. Sorry for misleading you there for a second.
[28:58]
A
Okay, I'm with you. So I was like, man, I didn't even know that. Really. Okay,
[29:05]
B
well, the Parwouti family is a huge family. And indeed there are so many individuals within the various layers of leadership. Indeed. But there are two different representations. There is the representation that matters to the Americans, to the West. I mean, I have in various seminars, conferences, I've been asked the question, do you think Marwan Barghouti is the strong man of Palestine? And I've been asked that about Muhammad and other characters. And this idea of the strong man as a representation is the man who can control the Palestinians and the Americans can do business with. This is the kind of discourse, this is the language they used to that Marwan Barghouti doesn't matter to Palestinians so much. Honestly, the Barwan Barghouti that matters is the Marwan Barghouti who is a mobilizer, an organizer, an intellectual, the founder of the Shabiba movement. That's the youth movement that made all the difference, that launched the first intifada, the second intifada. And he's a unifying characters. He is the only character who is liked by all ideological groups. The Islamists like him. His main group, Fatah, the original Fatah group, not Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, because Fatah itself is segmented between these various branches of power, the popular branch that is the one that is led by Marwan Barghouti, and that's why he is in prison. So all Palestinians want him out and they feel that, that this is a compromise that's going to make everybody happy if Marwan Barghouti is out. Indeed. And he's not killed immediately by Israel. Indeed. There could be finally kind of the signs of political unification of all Palestinian groups, that Marwan Barghouti matters so much to the Palestinians. And that's the Marwan Barghouti that Israel is very afraid of. But not only Israel is afraid of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Authority itself is very afraid of Marwan Barghouti to the point that various leaks in Israeli media have been reporting that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, have called on Israel not to release him along with the other thousands of prisoners who were released as part of the ceasefire exchange. Prisoners exchange, because they fear that his freedom could end up jeopardizing the entire political system upon which the Palestinian Authority is structured in the West.
[31:43]
A
Yeah. Meaning as the effective sock puppets of the United States and the Israelis.
[31:49]
B
That's right, exactly.
[31:51]
A
This is what we call in libertarianism, public choice theory. Right. Where the guys in charge, they make their decisions based on what's good for them because they don't become angels when they enter public service. They do what's good for themselves at the expense of their own people. Just like here, just like everywhere, just like in Israel. Okay, so before we wrap here, can you give us just, you know, some kind of brief word on the status of the situation on the West Bank? Because I think, as we've discussed before, the Israelis don't even really care about Gaza. It'd be nice to steal that land and go surfing and build a condo or whatever, but God says kill everybody on the west bank and steal that. And so this is really the top priority. It's just the problem is there's more Palestinians there and all these built up cities, more built up cities that they'd have to destroy and cleanse. And it's more politically difficult, I guess, for them to go ahead with that. But then again, it's, you know, we're seeing crystal knock type pogroms going on over there all the time at the hands of Israeli settlers. So that's attacks on Janine and all that.
[32:59]
B
So Gaza matters. Matters for Israel because they understand it's a line of defense not only for Gaza, but for The west bank as well. If Gaza falls, what are the chances of the west bank being able to withstand a prolonged fight against Israel? So that's really the calculation. They want to get rid of Gaza. In fact, I think it was Rabin who once said, I might be incorrect on this, but definitely a top notch leader in the Israeli government that said, or maybe it could have been Paris who once said that I wish to wake up one morning and to see Gaza being swallowed by the sea. They really don't want to go to Gaza. And this whole gibberish about Gaza becoming a resort and not a resort, why they don't have any other Gaza is very small. You're talking about 365 square kilometers, 181 square miles. They could find areas to build the resorts elsewhere. I think this is just something to entice those interested in that sort of business to get excited about the idea of destroying Gaza. But as you said, the real fight, the real struggle, the real outcome, or rather more correctly the real outcome of the Gaza fight is what's going to happen in the West Bank. Two days ago, unrwa, the United nations refugee agency for Palestinians came up with a report that said that there are 12,000 Palestinian children who are displaced in the northern West. 12,000. That means that there are thousands of Palestinian families in the west bank who've been pushed out of their home where as you said, Jenin, Ain Shams, Balata and other places. Ain Shams completely destroyed that refugee camp. They have been pushed out under the COVID of the Gaza genocide. Very little media coverage of their plight. They have never been restored to their own homes that most likely will be erased in order for more Israeli settlements to be built. So this is really the big fight is the west bank that nobody seems to be talking about it on our side. Maybe we are not talking about it because the nature of the horror underway in Gaza, but others are not interested in talking about it because it also means accountability and pressure and that sort of thing in the rest of the international community. But we need to be talking about the west bank because this is Israel's gaze has been at the west bank from the very beginning. While they are killing large number of Palestinians in Gaza, they are building settlements, destroying home, ethnically cleansing entire communities, especially in the northern part of the region.
[35:44]
A
Yeah. All right, you guys, that is Ramsey Barud. His great publication is called Palestine chronicle. That's at Palestine Chronicle.com he's a regular@anti war.com and again academic fellow at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. I urge you all to really check out his fantastic course at the Scott Horton Academy, the Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict. And I thank you for being part of the academy with me and the rest of the guys. Ramsay It's a really fantastic course. I think I'm going to take it again, in fact.
[36:15]
B
That's fantastic. You had a great honor, really. Thank you for including me and including Palestine and that critical discussion. And I wish you all the success.
[36:23]
A
Thank you. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Rich Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand, Enough Already and my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scothorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scotthortonshow.com and patreon.com provoke Scott Horton show bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.

Summary7 min read

Scott Horton Show – Just the Interviews
Episode: 1/7/26 – Ramzy Baroud: The Genocide in Gaza Has Not Ended
Date: January 10, 2026
Guests: Scott Horton (Host), Ramzy Baroud (Academic, Author, Editor of Palestine Chronicle)

Brief Overview

In this compelling episode, Scott Horton interviews Ramzy Baroud, an academic fellow, author, and editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle, to discuss the ongoing realities for the Palestinians in Gaza, the alleged "ceasefire," and broader Israeli-Palestinian dynamics. The conversation is rich with historical context, commentary on present suffering and displacement, Israel’s strategies, prospects for peace, and the wider neglect demonstrated by the international community. Baroud brings both analytical depth and personal experience to a situation he describes as hellish and unsustainable, offering both factual reporting and a passionate moral critique.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humanitarian Crisis and Displacement in Gaza

Ongoing Atrocities despite Ceasefire
- Baroud details that over 400 Palestinians have been killed since the so-called ceasefire began. The violence has merely slowed, not stopped, and suffering is compounded by dire winter conditions and displacement.
  - "We cover the headlines... and people are still being killed. I believe over 400 Palestinians have been killed since the so called ceasefire began in October." – Scott Horton [01:49]
- Basic shelter is a luxury: tents are scarce and unaffordable (up to $1500 each), many families live in destroyed buildings or makeshift structures.
  - "They are lucky if they get a tent... many of them just live in cardboard boxes, within destroyed buildings." – Ramzy Baroud [02:46]
Personal Stories
- Baroud shares the story of his own cousin, who considers herself "lucky" to live in half a building with makeshift coverings, underscoring the level of deprivation and shifting norms.
  - "She is grateful to God a thousand times that she's able to live in a house... half of the building is gone." – Ramzy Baroud [03:30]
Manipulation & Non-compliance by Israel
- Israel is accused of consistently breaking agreements about ceasefires and occupied boundaries. Baroud asserts the real “agreement” is one-sided, routinely flouted by Israel while Palestinians (and other Arabs) are held to standards Israel ignores.
  - "Israel... is very good at signing agreements that it does not respect, assigning certain lines... lines that they don't respect... I don't even know what is the term when you violate an agreement every single day so many times." – Ramzy Baroud [05:00]

2. The Strategic and Political Landscape

Israel’s Failure to Achieve Objectives
- Horton and Baroud argue that Israel agreed to the ceasefire out of military necessity—they could not eliminate Palestinian resistance or induce mass flight to other countries, despite open discussion in Israeli discourse of ethnic cleansing as a policy option.
  - "Israel agreed to [the ceasefire] because it could not defeat the Palestinians on the ground. Israel's ultimate aim was to push them out into Sinai... It could not achieve its objectives." – Ramzy Baroud [06:38]
Resistance and Unbreakable Will
- Baroud reflects on the unique character of Gazan resistance:
  - "Gaza has always been different. As if there has been a collective decision among Gazans that we would rather perish than surrender." – Ramzy Baroud [09:14]
- Even historied Israeli leaders have failed to "subdue" Gaza, and new Israeli tactics such as blockades and psychological pressure have not broken the resistance.
- The situation is portrayed as a “war of attrition,” where the main Israeli strategy is to inflict enough suffering that Palestinians will choose to leave. Yet, mass flight has not happened.

3. The “Soft Cleansing” Strategy & International Response

Medical Evacuations as an Engine of Displacement
- Some severely injured Palestinians are allowed out for treatment, but are then unable to return—contributing to a gradual depopulation known as "soft cleansing."
  - "People who get out in order to get medical care... they can't get back in. They don't really have much of a place to get back into." – Scott Horton [11:40]
International Indifference & Political Experimentation
- Neither regional powers nor the broader international community have intervened effectively, leaving Palestinians to their own fate. Outlandish "solutions," like Jared Kushner's vision of a rebuilt, futuristic Gaza, are seen as cover for expropriating land rather than genuine proposals for Palestinian welfare.
  - "The Palestinians are now the subject of a political experimentation, a grand political experimentation by crazy people in Washington who have no reason to stop because nobody is telling them otherwise." – Ramzy Baroud [19:21]
The Numbers Game of Casualties
- Both speakers discuss the grim calculus by which a “tolerable” number of Palestinian deaths per day seems to be pursued to avoid further international outcry, with Baroud describing detailed day-to-day casualty counts.
  - "It was something like between high 80s and, and like 120 or whatever every day. Like, somebody must have told the Israelis that you can kill about 100 a day, okay, and keep it like on that tempo." – Scott Horton [19:46]
  - "If it's a day in which 57 were killed, it was like, well, that's a good day for the Palestinians... as if the Israelis have reached some sort of a conclusion that maybe we can kind of balance the global rage regarding what's happening in Gaza." – Ramzy Baroud [22:47]

4. Political Leadership and Intra-Palestinian Dynamics

Marwan Barghouti – The Imprisoned Leader
- Baroud provides insight into Marwan Barghouti’s significance:
  - He is more than the "strongman" the West seeks; he was a unifying figure and mobilizer, central to both intifadas and widely respected by all political factions.
    - "The Marwan Barghouti that matters is... who is a mobilizer, an organizer, an intellectual, the founder of the Shabiba movement... he is liked by all ideological groups." – Ramzy Baroud [29:04]
  - Both Israel and some elements of the Palestinian Authority fear his potential release as a threat to established (and for some, self-serving) leadership structures.
    - "Mahmoud Abbas... called on Israel not to release him... they fear that his freedom could end up jeopardizing the entire political system upon which the Palestinian Authority is structured." – Ramzy Baroud [31:43]
Self-interested Political Leadership
- Horton ties domestic (US) public choice theory to the PA and Israeli leadership:
  - "The guys in charge, they make their decisions based on what's good for them... Just like here, just like everywhere." – Scott Horton [31:51]

5. The West Bank: The Overlooked Front

Ethnic Cleansing and Settlement Expansion
- While Gaza dominates headlines for humanitarian reasons, Baroud argues that Israel’s ultimate aim is control over the West Bank, with ongoing displacement, home demolitions, and settlement growth receiving far less attention.
  - "Two days ago, UNRWA... said there are 12,000 Palestinian children who are displaced in the northern West [Bank]... Jenin, Ain Shams, Balata... have been pushed out under the cover of the Gaza genocide... more Israeli settlements to be built." – Ramzy Baroud [32:59]
Gaza's Broader Strategic Importance
- Maintaining resistance in Gaza is perceived as essential for Palestinian resistance elsewhere, particularly in the West Bank.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

On the Ceasefire Reality:
- "Is it really still an agreement? In my opinion, there's no agreement to begin with." – Ramzy Baroud [05:00]
On Gazan Steadfastness:
- "As if there has been a collective decision among Gazans that we would rather perish than surrender." – Ramzy Baroud [09:14]
On International Hypocrisy:
- "Nobody is saying, no, this is ridiculous. It needs to stop... None of this. This is why the likes of Jared Kushner is a daily character on Middle Eastern news." – Ramzy Baroud [15:53]
On Israel’s Numbers Game:
- "Who is keeping track of these numbers to the point that if it's a day in which 57 were killed, it was like, well, that's a good day for the Palestinians." – Ramzy Baroud [22:47]

Timestamps for Key Segments

[01:49] – Current conditions: Ceasefire, ongoing deaths, shelter crisis
[03:30] – Personal account: Living in destroyed buildings
[05:00] – Israeli manipulation and ceasefire violations
[06:38] – Israel’s military failures and displacement objectives
[09:14] – Historical perspective: Gaza’s unbreakable resistance
[11:40] – Medical evacuations as “soft cleansing”
[15:53] – Kushner and “futuristic Gaza” proposals
[19:46] – Numbers game of daily Palestinian deaths
[22:47] – International inaction and waiting game for Palestinians
[29:04] – Marwan Barghouti’s impact and the fear his freedom would spark unity
[32:59] – Situation in the West Bank: Displacement and settlements

Tone

The conversation is sobering, at times indignant, deeply empathetic, and frequently laced with both the dark humor and skepticism characteristic of Scott Horton’s style. Baroud speaks with measured passion—combining analytical clarity, historical awareness, and personal anecdotes—to highlight the urgency and moral gravity of the crisis.

Conclusion

Baroud paints a bleak but necessary picture: Gaza endures under a slow-motion genocide, Israeli and US policy remain unchanged by world opinion, and the “peace process” is either a façade or an active means of prolonging suffering. The conversation ends with a reminder that the West Bank’s fate hangs in the balance, its ongoing tragedy often hidden by the greater humanitarian calamity in Gaza.

Listeners are encouraged to seek further analysis at Palestine Chronicle and the Scott Horton Academy, and to remain vigilant as the international community continues to look away from a crisis in need of urgent attention.

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Transcript39 lines

[00:06]
A
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country?
[00:13]
B
We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly. When the president does it, that means
[00:23]
A
that it is not a liberal.
[00:25]
B
We're gonna take out seven countries.
[00:26]
A
They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now.
[00:31]
B
End this war.
[00:33]
A
And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. Okay, you guys, Introducing Ramsey Barood, of course. He's a regular@antiwar.com he runs the Palestine Chronicle and he's an academic fellow at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. And here are. Boy, they pulled up all the wrong books for me here. When I clicked on your name, what happened? Here's one of them anyway. I don't know why it did that to me. Ramsey Beru, before the Flood is coming very soon. February 3rd with Elon Pepe. And he's also written a bunch of previous books including these Chains Will Be Broken, the Last Earth, A Palestinian Story, Searching Janine, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. Gaza's Untold Story and and on like that. And again, he is a real great highlight and boasting point for me for his participation in the Scott Horton Academy where his course is titled the Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict. So welcome back to the show. How you doing, Ramsey?
[01:47]
B
I'm doing good. How are you, Scott?
[01:49]
A
I'm doing great. Really appreciate you joining us on the show today. So there's so much going on in the world. Eyes off Gaza, well, not good enough. So let's put our eyes back on it. Obviously we cover the headlines, you know, kind of day in and day out@antiwar.com and people are still being killed. I believe over 400 Palestinians have been killed since the so called ceasefire began in October. There's all kinds of, you know, developing stories about where the yellow line is drawn and is being moved to and plans to divide the strip in half. There's the ongoing crisis of winter weather and these tent colonies and all. You know, I saw one where a building collapsed and killed a five year old girl. I mean it's just hell on earth over there. I know, but would you please just start with getting us up to date on the situation for the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip as it stands right now?
[02:47]
B
Absolutely. I mean it's something that we have seen before during the genocide in particular. We have seen how the weather impacts people who are having to deal with the genocide but also having to deal with the constant State of displacement. Many of these families, rather hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been moved from one place to the other throughout the last two years. Plus now going from the north to the south to the center. Some of the people that I speak with, including family members, by the way, many of them, you know, have had like 15, 16 different homes, for the lack of a better word. There are no homes. They are just, they are lucky if they get a tent. And even the prices of tents, because they're not available, have went out how, how, you know, went up great deal in the last two years to the point that the tent would cost up to 12 and 1500 dollars. The kind of money that ordinary people do not have. The market does not have the capacity to for this kind of supplies. And as a result, many of them just live in, you know, in, you know, cardboard boxes in, within destroyed buildings. I mean, this is the issue. You know, I've been asked before, why are people, you know, just taking the risk in the first place? Well, what do you do? One of my cousins told me that she is one of. She is very lucky and she is grateful to God a thousand times that she's able to live in a house. When I saw the house, I couldn't believe my eyes when she sent me the video. Basically half of the building is gone. It just like sliced from the middle. So they kind of used blankets and, and various sorts of plastic sheets to cover the other half. And they are living in the other half. And she is feeling that she is one of the very lucky ones. So you can imagine the plight of hundreds of thousands who don't have access to, even to destroy buildings. So the situation is very dire. And of course Israel is manipulating this situation. This is what Israel does. Israel throughout history is very good at creating signing agreements that it does not respect, assigning certain lines, starting with the first armistice line in 1948 until today, or rather 1949 until today, lines that they don't respect. I mean, look what they did in Lebanon. They signed the ceasefire agreement and they have violated it not hundreds, but thousands of times according to the UN and independent sources. So you can imagine what they have done in Gaza. I mean, it's a constant. I mean, I don't even know what is the term when you violate an agreement every single day so many times. Is it really still an agreement? I mean, is this considered a violation? In my opinion, there's no agreement to begin with. It seems that only the Palestinians, the same case in Lebanon, only the Lebanese, only the Syrians are obligated to respect whatever agreement. While on the other hand, Israel is completely free to do as it pleases, as if it didn't sign anything in the first place. And this is exactly what's underway in Gaza at the moment.
[06:07]
A
Okay, so before we talk about the diplomacy and all the alleged plans and ceasefire agreements and all that, can you talk about how the so called agreement is being implemented on the ground? As far as the territory that Israel is taking, the yellow line and the, the plan to divide the, the, the territory at least in half. And I guess the, the Israelis are claiming they're going to occupy the entire northern half of the Strip from now on.
[06:37]
B
Is that it?
[06:38]
A
Right.
[06:39]
B
So, so this is very, very important. And I, you know, we have to be really honest of why Israel agreed to, to the October ceasefire in the first place. Israel agreed to it. And there's really no other interpretation of this, no matter how some analysts try to spin it. It agreed to it because it could not defeat the Palestinians on the ground. Israel's ultimate aim was to defeat the Palestinians on the ground and to push them out into Sinai. It's not a conspiracy. It is something that is like mainstream news in Israel. The question is what country was willing to accept them and what other was not. They spoke about Sierra Leone, about Somaliland, about Ghana, about South Sudan. They, they've been talking about it openly and freely and as if it is totally fine to ethnically cleanse 2.3 million people or whatever number of people that survive the genocide and just push them somewhere else. No international law, no humanitarian law. But Israel couldn't do this. It could not achieve its objectives. Two years and it was still going. They invaded Khan Yunis repeatedly, every single time. They could not sustain their occupation, so they had to leave. They did the same thing in Bethun, in Bethlehem, in the north, in Gaza City. They said they needed 200,000 soldiers to take over Gaza City and they could not provide that number. They could not take over Gaza City. They put a siege on Gaza City hoping that it would break. It didn't. So the ceasefire agreement was an acknowledgment that military force alone is not able to kind of break the will of the Palestinians. So they resorted to something else, which
[08:27]
A
let me just interject here, by the way, can I just say real quick that your second or third article after October 7th was Israel has already lost. And the article was about how they tried this in 2014 and they couldn't get past guys sniping them from the rubble. They just cannot win this fight. And so we know that the, the function of how many innocent Palestinians are going to be killed in the meantime is just a function of how long this goes on before they quit. Obviously, the Palestinians can't drive them out, but all the insurgency has to do is not lose, and Hamas will not lose. And so now here we are having this conversation at the beginning of 26, where even Netanyahu at least implicitly acknowledges that you were right all along about that.
[09:15]
B
Exactly. And this is, you know, I must admit that at times I thought, am I going too far in my expectations regarding the Palestinians? I'm not talking even about Hamas or the Islamic Jihad or the various socialists and communist fighting groups in Gaza. I am talking about the people themselves. Based on all the research that I have done throughout the years, Gaza has always been different. As if there has been a collective decision among Gazans that we would rather perish than surrender. I don't know how, I don't know why, but the fact is, historically, this has always been the case. Gaza could not be subdued. And we've tried it. This is not an Netanyahu phenomenon. Ariel Sharon has tried it. Rabin has tried it with the broken bones policies and all of that. Previous generals and prime ministers have tried it. Gaza cannot be subdued. And as a result, I reached that conclusion that indeed, no matter what, you are just killing children, you are just killing women, you are killing innocent people. There are some buildings that have been bombed dozens of times. The rubble is just of the building, the concrete pulverized over and over and over again. And they were trying to get different results and they couldn't. Now it is a state of siege. Let's see if we give the Palestinians the choice between, you know, kind of living on the brink, between life and death, or maybe we can give them an opportunity somewhere else. And they have been. I'm sure that Anti War has been reporting on this. You know, the mysterious airplanes that landed in South Africa loaded with Palestinians. How did they get there? Coming from Gaza? Then they discover that this comes through NGOs registered in Europe, Israeli, funded with the hope of finding kind of a soft method of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. But it doesn't seem like anything is working now. The problem is here we are stuck. The Palestinians cannot, will not surrender under any circumstance. They have nothing to lose. But Israel, on the other hand, does not feel like it has enough pressure to let go of this project. So we are now living in this strange zone where Palestinians are just dying slowly. And as you said from the Very beginning. The world is looking somewhere else.
[11:40]
A
Yeah, they always said, Scott, you keep drinking that much coffee, you're going to turn into a cup of coffee. And then it finally happened. I am coffee now. And if you go to scothorton.org coffee you too can get Scott Horton show flavored coffee branded coffee there. It's Ethiopian mixed with Sumatran blended coffee. It's so good. And I have some of it right here. In fact, I'm drinking my Libertarian Institute mug. You can see this is how I wake up in the morning and this is how I stay awake in the afternoon. And if I was a drunk, it would be how I get home from the bar at night. So sound advice to you guys there. You know, take an Uber Moondoz Artisan coffee. Get it? They hate Starbucks because Starbucks, well, first of all, doesn't taste that great. And then also they support the war party, but Moon Dose Artisan coffees does not. They support peace. So check us out@scothorton.org Coffee okay, so. Well, there's so many different topics. Let me, let me go back to what you're saying about sort of the, the, the soft cleansing, the kind of leaking appeal, because there are people who are severely, you know, injured and malnourished and unhealthy in a variety of ways who are being, you know, taken to, I guess, Qatar or UAE or whatever for medical treatment there. So, like, part of the time, the complaint is that Israel won't let Palestinians leave their captives there. While on the other hand, what they really want is to kick them all out. But then you do have sort of this, this, you know, kind of ongoing problem of people who get out in order to get medical care or help in whatever way, then they can't get back in. They don't really have much of a place to get back into. And so however, I guess as you're saying, though, the, ultimately the problem remains, there's still something like 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They haven't been able to get Ethiopia or Indonesia. They were talking about Indonesia. They haven't been able to get any of these other countries to agree to take the Palestinians and, and help them with their cleansing project there. The Egyptians won't, I guess they could push them all into. Well, they can't.
[13:59]
B
Right?
[13:59]
A
They, they wanted to push them all into Sinai, but they need the US Marines to do that. God, bite my tongue, man. I hope nobody in the Trump administration heard me say that. But, but then, okay, I read the Wall Street Journal and it's, I don't know. God help you if you ever had to watch the remakes of Star Trek. They're just so terrible. But there's one with the, the guy Cumberbatch or whatever is the Space is the Wrath of Khan. It's just so bad. Anyway, they had this like this floating city space station out there in outer space somewhere. And it was like this super high tech fancy Jetsons like Space City. And that's what the drawings look like in the Wall Street Journal of here's what Jared Kushner wants to do to the Gaza Strip. He's going to invest something like $999 trillion in completely remaking the entire Gaza Strip into the, the cleanest future scape of, of, you know, chrome plated science fiction from the 1950s kind of imagination type thing. And then. But yeah, that won't be for the Palestinians. That couldn't possibly be his plan to do that for the Palestinians. Although depending on which episode of the Wall Street Journal you read, sometimes they pretend that, oh yeah, he wants to do this for the Palestinians, but clearly the plan is there to still kick them out and turn this into prime real estate for Israeli Jews to live in. But. So I don't know, I guess it, the point here, the strategy here is just to continue to try to basically starve them and make them miserable enough to leave, even though they just turned the tempo down on the fighting and then, or I don't know if you want to get into some of the details of the plan and what's workable and what's not. I mean, I think, well, everyone must have understood going in that Hamas is not going to lay down their arms or turn them over to something because
[15:54]
B
that is collective suicide for the Palestinians. I mean, nobody came to the rescue. You know, I, I grew up in the refugee camps of Gaza and I tell you, like, my gosh, the kind of conversations that I grew up with, you know, people waiting for some liberator to come from outside. You know, I, by that time I did not even know about Che Guevara's famous statement, there are no liberators. The people liberate themselves. But back then the, you know, my dad used to say, oh, the Egyptians will not leave us alone. Then my uncle would say, no, no, it's the Algerians who will come via the sea. And there's always this idea. And by the way, this goes back to 1948, when nearly a million Palestinian was ethnically cleansed during the Nakba, the great catastrophe that established Israel on the ruins of Palestine. And that generation believed that there is an international system that will not allow Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed. And when they were, they were so convinced that the international system is going to take them back. Like, it just doesn't make sense for people to be pushed out the way they were. So my grandfather used to have this radio transistor. I remember it was orange and the batteries were bulging from the back and had all this weird duct tape on it. And he'll just be waiting, thinking that the news is going to declare Palestinian refugees go back. His politics were very simple, but the idea is Palestinians were being told someone is going to come from the outside and help them go back and free them. That never happened. Now that they are the only line of defense, the first and last line of defense, under what circumstance will Palestinians lay down their arms? Because doing so, it's the end of all things. It's just not going to happen. So this is. They are willing to fight to the death. And in fact, they proved that they are willing to fight to the death. But nothing has happened. No cracks in the international system. I know we have been talking for over two years about the tide is turning, the current is hitting the wrong way or the other, but nothing fundamental has yet happened, leaving the entire scenario in the hands of Mad Men, Jared Kushner and Israel Katz and weird meetings about floating cities in the Mediterranean and artificial islands and some really weird shit. Sorry for the language. Where. And you know, so. And nobody is coming offering anything else. Nobody is saying, no, this is ridiculous. It needs to stop. There's an alternative international legal system that is going to provide Palestinians with a minimal degree of support or protection. None of this. This is why the likes of Jared Kushner is a daily character on Middle Eastern news. Very frustrating because you know none of his nonsense is going to happen. You know that. But he's going to experiment at the expense of innocent people who need help, aid, love, support, protection. No. They are just waiting until Mr. Kushner and Witkoff and so many others conjure up yet new ideas. Let's experiment and see what happens. We have nothing to lose. So it's. The Palestinians are now the subject of a political experimentation, a grand political experimentation by crazy people in Washington who have no reason to stop because nobody is telling them otherwise.
[19:21]
A
Yeah. Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian Daryl Cooper. That is Martyr Maid, he's my co host and we host a show every Friday night. We might be switching to two days a week. Here sometime soon. But for right now, we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o' clock Eastern Time on the YouTubes. Checked out our Twitter handle provoked show
[19:47]
B
now.
[19:47]
A
So Hamas, obviously, they were under severe pressure, you know, just in pure violence and in the desperation of the Palestinian people to find a way to get a ceasefire here. Now, it was, you know, one year ago, they were killing about a Waco mask or worth of people a day. You actually usually above that. Waco is about, you know, 86 people. So it was something like between high 80s and, and like 120 or whatever every day. Like, somebody must have told the Israelis that you can kill about 100 a day, okay, and keep it like on that tempo or something. So by giving into this deal, Hamas lowered that tempo down to a few a day compared to 100 or so a day, which, you know, hey, that's a pretty big improvement. And some people got to go, quote, unquote, home, back to their old neighborhoods to squat in the rubble and whatever. But, you know, what they said at the time was that they were essentially just taking the word of Donald Trump that, you know, they know they can't really deal with the Israelis at all. But the President, United States really was sticking his neck out and was saying, I am guaranteeing peace here based on my word. I'm saying, you can accept this deal. And so that was basically all they had to go on there. There's, as you said, no one's coming from the outside to take their side. So the President of the United States insisting on a ceasefire on the Israeli side if Hamas will give in to xyz, basically let them no choice, I guess, but to give in at that point. In fact, that's the same deal that more or less, at least, that they had been willing to give in to for a very long time, even going back to when it was still President Biden. But, so, but they have no real guarantee of anything. And other than the shame of Trump somehow failing if the thing goes back to, you know, a higher tempo of violence again, which is not much in terms of a political price for Trump to pay, you know what I mean? It's letting the Palestinians down is not politically the same as letting the Israelis down. Right. So, so, yeah, I don't know. I guess I, I'm, I'm curious, I guess, what you think about just the kind of short and medium term future here of, you know, the rock and a hard place that really everybody is stuck in here. Trump can't get Netanyahu to really, you Know, live up to what he really wants, which is probably not too much better than what Netanyahu wants anyway, but he has a hard enough time just getting him to let food aid in and stuff like that. So. And, and of course, as you said, the Israelis already lost. They can't get rid of the Palestinians. But then the Palestinians, nobody's coming for them. And they don't have the ability to change the behavior of the Americans, of the Israelis, other than making them more violent by, you know, launching some rockets or whatever it is if they got some. So I don't know. Anyway, what do you think where we are here?
[22:47]
B
I think what you said about this being a numbers game, I think is absolutely right. In the beginning of the war, the number was, of course, much higher. It could go up to at one point in one single bomb. I think in jabalia it was 850 people gone in in a single American supplied bomb. So the number was much higher then. It seems that indeed they, they kind of settled. I mean, I've been reporting on this every single day. And, and yeah, it's like, how did they calculate that the number has to go between, you know, 80, 85 to 120, 130 max. Like how, you know, who is, you know, keeping track of these numbers to the point that if it's a day in which 57 were killed, it was like, well, that's a good day for the Palestinians. And then maybe just before midnight you have a bomb that will take, you know, the lives of another 40 or 50 just to make sure that the number stays the same, as if the Israelis have reached some sort of a conclusion that maybe we can kind of balance the, in the global rage regarding what's happening in Gaza and maybe we can prolong this as long as possible, but for the Palestinians, it's just too much. And I know that there's been a lot of discussions that Palestinians are under a lot of pressure from the Qataris and from the Egyptians and yeah, they have, they have. But the truth is Palestinians have been under a lot of pressure from the Arabs for decades. Their political decisions were not based or shaped by that pressure. Especially these countries have very little leverage. I mean, Qatar is the only country that actually had leverage over the Palestinians because they were hosting some of the leadership of the various Palestinian resistance groups. But Israel ended up bombing and killing, you know, various, you know, the resistance movements or members in Qatar itself. So here you go, here's the leverage that Qatar has. It was lost and nothing has happened. And they were bombed In a sovereign country, a very close ally with the United States, about 2, 3 kilometers from the US military base. Because I lived in Qatar, I was working for a news network there for years, and I know the proximity is a very tiny little country. So the Americans were just watching as their ally is being bombed by the Israelis, and they didn't do anything about it. So here you go. With the leverage that the Qataris have over the Palestinians, the real leverage that Israel had, despite of the strong talk of the fiery speeches of the Palestinians and all of that, is that these are children, these are innocent people who are mutilated every few minutes, every couple of hours, everywhere in Gaza. It's just too much. And any human being would break under these circumstances. They didn't. But in their mind, they found some kind of a balance. As you said, to lower the number, to. To take the tempo down a little bit was like, well, I mean, we lived with this number of dead Palestinians every day before the genocide. You know, maybe we can sustain this a little bit longer. But in my mind, this is the calculation of the Palestinians. This is a very strange era in the history of the struggle. Historically, individuals do not matter. Whether it's. It's Hakra Bin or Ariel Sharon or Paris or say, believe me, or Netanyahu. At the end of the day, Israel is. You know, Israeli policies are controlled by numerous variable in which the individual himself does not matter so much. That individual never mattered as much as. As today. Netanyahu does matter. The presence of Netanyahu, if it's someone else, maybe he would have played his cards differently. Maybe he would have tried to appease the Americans to get something else in return. Netanyahu seems to have total control. And really, I mean, I know people are going to say conspiracy theory, but really total control or had tapped into the American foreign policy code in such a way that whatever Netanyahu wants, Netanyahu gets, and the Palestinians know that. So they know that there's an element of time here. They need to be strong enough, patient enough, resilient enough that they survive these couple of years under Trump and Netanyahu, this deadly combination in the Middle east and beyond the Middle east, at this point, in South America and beyond. So this is it for Palestinians. This is a waiting game, hoping that the new variables could emerge in the future and save them. Not liberate them, not free them, but save them from this particular death trap under which they live right now.
[27:40]
A
Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it. Central banks are hoarding it.
[27:44]
B
Up.
[27:45]
A
And if you need some, you should go to RRBI Co. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy, Tim Fey. He's a really great guy. Him and this business. They've been over there for a very, very long time. And they will help you get your medals and they will always do you right. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. At RRBI Co. Can you tell me about this guy? I'm not. Probably not even saying his name right. Marwan Baruti. Is that the guy? People say he's sort of the Palestinian Mandela and that's why he's in prison. So the age old, you know, sloganeering about we have no partner for peace. Yeah, because he already assassinated them all. Or at least keep him locked in a cage. And I even read that they went ahead and beat the crap out of him in his cell a few weeks ago to punish him for whatever was going on. So can you talk a little bit about that guy or what you think about him?
[28:42]
B
Well, there are two Marwan Barbutis.
[28:44]
A
Okay?
[28:45]
B
Same individuals. No, you didn't. You didn't make a mistake. It's the same individual, but there are two representation of Marwan. You see. Sorry for misleading you there for a second.
[28:58]
A
Okay, I'm with you. So I was like, man, I didn't even know that. Really. Okay,
[29:05]
B
well, the Parwouti family is a huge family. And indeed there are so many individuals within the various layers of leadership. Indeed. But there are two different representations. There is the representation that matters to the Americans, to the West. I mean, I have in various seminars, conferences, I've been asked the question, do you think Marwan Barghouti is the strong man of Palestine? And I've been asked that about Muhammad and other characters. And this idea of the strong man as a representation is the man who can control the Palestinians and the Americans can do business with. This is the kind of discourse, this is the language they used to that Marwan Barghouti doesn't matter to Palestinians so much. Honestly, the Barwan Barghouti that matters is the Marwan Barghouti who is a mobilizer, an organizer, an intellectual, the founder of the Shabiba movement. That's the youth movement that made all the difference, that launched the first intifada, the second intifada. And he's a unifying characters. He is the only character who is liked by all ideological groups. The Islamists like him. His main group, Fatah, the original Fatah group, not Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, because Fatah itself is segmented between these various branches of power, the popular branch that is the one that is led by Marwan Barghouti, and that's why he is in prison. So all Palestinians want him out and they feel that, that this is a compromise that's going to make everybody happy if Marwan Barghouti is out. Indeed. And he's not killed immediately by Israel. Indeed. There could be finally kind of the signs of political unification of all Palestinian groups, that Marwan Barghouti matters so much to the Palestinians. And that's the Marwan Barghouti that Israel is very afraid of. But not only Israel is afraid of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Authority itself is very afraid of Marwan Barghouti to the point that various leaks in Israeli media have been reporting that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, have called on Israel not to release him along with the other thousands of prisoners who were released as part of the ceasefire exchange. Prisoners exchange, because they fear that his freedom could end up jeopardizing the entire political system upon which the Palestinian Authority is structured in the West.
[31:43]
A
Yeah. Meaning as the effective sock puppets of the United States and the Israelis.
[31:49]
B
That's right, exactly.
[31:51]
A
This is what we call in libertarianism, public choice theory. Right. Where the guys in charge, they make their decisions based on what's good for them because they don't become angels when they enter public service. They do what's good for themselves at the expense of their own people. Just like here, just like everywhere, just like in Israel. Okay, so before we wrap here, can you give us just, you know, some kind of brief word on the status of the situation on the West Bank? Because I think, as we've discussed before, the Israelis don't even really care about Gaza. It'd be nice to steal that land and go surfing and build a condo or whatever, but God says kill everybody on the west bank and steal that. And so this is really the top priority. It's just the problem is there's more Palestinians there and all these built up cities, more built up cities that they'd have to destroy and cleanse. And it's more politically difficult, I guess, for them to go ahead with that. But then again, it's, you know, we're seeing crystal knock type pogroms going on over there all the time at the hands of Israeli settlers. So that's attacks on Janine and all that.
[32:59]
B
So Gaza matters. Matters for Israel because they understand it's a line of defense not only for Gaza, but for The west bank as well. If Gaza falls, what are the chances of the west bank being able to withstand a prolonged fight against Israel? So that's really the calculation. They want to get rid of Gaza. In fact, I think it was Rabin who once said, I might be incorrect on this, but definitely a top notch leader in the Israeli government that said, or maybe it could have been Paris who once said that I wish to wake up one morning and to see Gaza being swallowed by the sea. They really don't want to go to Gaza. And this whole gibberish about Gaza becoming a resort and not a resort, why they don't have any other Gaza is very small. You're talking about 365 square kilometers, 181 square miles. They could find areas to build the resorts elsewhere. I think this is just something to entice those interested in that sort of business to get excited about the idea of destroying Gaza. But as you said, the real fight, the real struggle, the real outcome, or rather more correctly the real outcome of the Gaza fight is what's going to happen in the West Bank. Two days ago, unrwa, the United nations refugee agency for Palestinians came up with a report that said that there are 12,000 Palestinian children who are displaced in the northern West. 12,000. That means that there are thousands of Palestinian families in the west bank who've been pushed out of their home where as you said, Jenin, Ain Shams, Balata and other places. Ain Shams completely destroyed that refugee camp. They have been pushed out under the COVID of the Gaza genocide. Very little media coverage of their plight. They have never been restored to their own homes that most likely will be erased in order for more Israeli settlements to be built. So this is really the big fight is the west bank that nobody seems to be talking about it on our side. Maybe we are not talking about it because the nature of the horror underway in Gaza, but others are not interested in talking about it because it also means accountability and pressure and that sort of thing in the rest of the international community. But we need to be talking about the west bank because this is Israel's gaze has been at the west bank from the very beginning. While they are killing large number of Palestinians in Gaza, they are building settlements, destroying home, ethnically cleansing entire communities, especially in the northern part of the region.
[35:44]
A
Yeah. All right, you guys, that is Ramsey Barud. His great publication is called Palestine chronicle. That's at Palestine Chronicle.com he's a regular@anti war.com and again academic fellow at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. I urge you all to really check out his fantastic course at the Scott Horton Academy, the Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict. And I thank you for being part of the academy with me and the rest of the guys. Ramsay It's a really fantastic course. I think I'm going to take it again, in fact.
[36:15]
B
That's fantastic. You had a great honor, really. Thank you for including me and including Palestine and that critical discussion. And I wish you all the success.
[36:23]
A
Thank you. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Rich Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand, Enough Already and my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scothorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scotthortonshow.com and patreon.com provoke Scott Horton show bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.