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This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on October 29, 2024. Listen to the podcast here.
Jon Alterman: While I understand there’s a lot of diversity in Palestinian opinion, what are some of the different ways you’ve seen Palestinian citizens of Israel react to the war in Gaza? And are any of those ways surprising to you?
Amjad Iraqi: It’s definitely been quite a complex experience. I think first of all, Gaza’s not just sort of an imaginary construct for Palestinian citizens. There are very real family connections, community connections, and Palestinian history. Gaza is, and has always been, very much the center of Palestinian identity and politics and culture. And so, to experience it in this moment whereby you’re seeing Gaza decimated in the way that it’s been, I think has been very profoundly shocking to Palestinian citizens as much as it has to other Palestinians.
Now during the war, of course, there’s always this complexity whereby on the one hand because Palestinian citizens are on the Israeli side of the border, they are also potentially targets of Hamas rockets and the same in the north now with Hezbollah. And so, they’re within that state that is being hit. But even then, for the most part, Palestinian citizens still understand the context of these kind of wars. They still understand the context of this kind of violence.
It’s been even more so since October 7 and even though they felt a lot of the shock from that day and from the Hamas assault on that day, but then witnessing everything that’s happened since I think has been profoundly shocking. And again, it’s not just from a distance, but it’s that Palestinian citizens themselves are also caught up in the consequences of that war.
Jon Alterman: And you mentioned that the Palestinians, from wherever they are, have an intimate connection to Gaza. As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, I assume it’s been very hard for you to get to Gaza since 2007, when Hamas took over and Israel severely restricted access. Had you been to Gaza before? Is this a place that you have a sort of personal recollection of, or has it always been a little bit remote?
Amjad Iraqi: I personally have never been. There have been a lot of young Palestinians from my generation who have been, especially during the 1990s and certainly before. You know, Gaza, much like the West Bank, was quite open in terms of travel, not just for people with Israeli blue IDs and license plates, but also for Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, for working and visiting. Of course, the Second Intifada drastically reversed that, and the siege closed off the Strip further.
But with that said, Gaza has not only been a huge part of my consciousness. I used to experience it also in the Palestinians who would come from there, but certainly since I became much more politically and professionally active. I became very well-connected and engaged with Palestinian activists, Palestinian thinkers, and members of human rights organizations. That includes during the wars, especially since 2008 and 2009 through 2014, 2021, all the way until now.
It’s been very much part of that wider identity and that kind of political activism, and just thinking that, even though there’s this line that supposedly divides Israel and the Occupied Territories, that line doesn’t exist for the most part, and certainly not mentally.
Jon Alterman: How are you thinking about trying to use that newfound solidarity between Palestinian citizens of Israel, West Bank Palestinians, and Gazan Palestinians? Where is the opportunity, and what do you think are the roots for developing solidarity among those communities that have been increasingly divided?
Amjad Iraqi: We’ve been seeing this for quite a number of years. I think social media and the exponential growth of online platforms and communications has really allowed Palestinians of all generations, but certainly of younger generations, to really reconnect in ways that were not possible for previous generations. The way that people can witness an attack on Gaza—everyone knows about it instantly and you see it directly from people on the ground—has shaped Palestinian consciousness in this respect.
Jon Alterman: What can you do with consciousness?
Amjad Iraqi: Consciousness, for Palestinian citizens of Israel, was what drove a lot of them into the streets inside Israel for protests. We saw this in 2014, where there were huge protests. We also saw it in 2021, where there was a massive uprising across the country. You see this potential for mobilization, and not necessarily in solidarity with each other, but in partnership with each other.
They’re very aware of the massive asymmetries and dynamics concerning the rights and privileges that they all have, but Palestinians have made a point of capitalizing on that. And so that synchronization we saw in May 2021 was quite astounding. I’m not sure if you could’ve seen that in previous generations, and with that also comes the repression. This past year is indicative of that.
Beyond that dynamic, we’re seeing the unprecedented way the Palestinian diaspora has connected to activism and reality on the ground, in the media discourse and on the streets of London to New York. There is something there that cuts across the grassroots, to the civil society level, to the intellectual level. The political level is obviously much harder to break into at the moment. But you are seeing this wider connectivity, which is only growing more as the years go by.
Jon Alterman: Can you talk about the political level? On the one hand as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, you’re trilingual, you’re reading Hebrew press. You’re reading Palestinian press and social media. You’re interacting with English language press. I assume that gives you an unusual set of insights into Israeli politics, but you also have unusual insights into Palestinian politics as somebody who lives in a country with free and open elections and extensive civil liberties. What kind of insights does that distinct position give you into these two communities, which have politics many people on each side say are really broken?
Amjad Iraqi: It’s definitely a very nuanced vantage point. You think about Palestinians in the Territories primarily experiencing Israelis as settlers or soldiers; in Gaza, as snipers and jet pilots. I think to be exposed to Jewish-Israeli society at the civilian level, the socioeconomic level, and even participate in things like the Israeli elections, does provide a different consciousness.
Politically, for decades, Palestinian citizens have tried to achieve full equality. Even though we’ve had Israeli citizenship since the establishment of the state, we’ve never really had equal rights. The right to vote does not mean equality. You had 20 years of military rule up until 1966, which was basically the military system you see today in the Occupied Territories. There were two decades for the state to develop military practices of controlling the non-Jewish population.
And though you’ve had a steady progression since then, it’s been very much a hard-fought battle in the legal courts, the Knesset, and in public discourse. We’ve become very used to using these institutions to try to shift our status, but also to challenge the premises of the Israeli state. This is why you have political parties that are demanding full equality.
But what Palestinian citizens have experienced for a long time, and more so in past years, is the regression of their rights, precisely because Israeli society, or especially the Israeli-right, sees Palestinian citizens as more of a threat than before. As a result, different discriminatory laws have been passed, et cetera. Even as Palestinian citizens are pushing for a different reality, the state and the people in power are trying to drag them back. A lot of Palestinian citizens are now very disillusioned with their status. They know they are not occupied Palestinians, and in many ways, they feel they’re outside of the core Palestinian politic of Fatah, and Hamas, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. And they certainly feel excluded from the Jewish-Israeli political system, not just by the Israeli right, but by Zionist center-left political parties. This has been even more so the case this past year, during which Palestinian citizens have been put in the crosshairs by the political echelon all the way down to the grassroots.
It’s a very alienating position. There is a unique positionality here, but it’s not really clear how we can use it strategically. And especially inside a state that is now viewing us as part of the problem. It’s very difficult to take full advantage of our position as Palestinian citizens of Israel in that context.
Jon Alterman: I want to come back to that because there’s also the Palestinian-Israeli role in Palestinian polity. But I want to follow up on this issue of the Israeli-Jewish left. The segment of Israeli society which supports a secular state, territorial compromise, and peaceful coexistence, has been a shrinking constituency, and it’s been shrinking sharply since October 7. Is that true of the various Palestinian communities, that Palestinians look at what’s happening and say, “There is no horizon here,” or is it more complicated?
Amjad Iraqi: I think it is shrinking. And with that I would reemphasize the power asymmetry that still defines that reality. Before October 7, even as the occupation was violently entrenching itself in severe ways, there was still this paradoxical reality in which the one-state system that had sort of existed was allowing for different kinds of thinking. The idea that there was a strong partition between Israel and the Occupied Territories was whittling in different ways. This was mostly to the benefit of Jewish Israelis, but Palestinians in the Territories were also experiencing it, even though many of them could not get permits to cross into the Israeli side. But Palestinian citizens of Israel were able to go in and out of the West Bank all the time, although this wasn’t the case for Gaza. There were socioeconomic and political currents that were starting to shift things. They were making this greater interconnectedness between Israel and the Territories material, and just not imaginative.
I do think now, having witnessed the onslaught on Gaza and the increasing military and settler violence in the West Bank, there’s a sense among a lot of Palestinians now that this the reprisal of the Nakba and they can’t fathom a life next to Jewish Israelis. It is much more difficult to imagine for Palestinians, and that includes Palestinian citizens of Israel who, despite always being second-class citizens, are used to being among Jewish Israel society. From the past year, everything from the rhetoric you see in the media, to the way Israeli politicians speak about you, to when you go to the grocery store, or to the university, you sense that Jewish Israeli society has bought into this almost totalitarian pact that says, “We are recruited by the state to watch over Palestinian citizens, and to remind them not to speak up, to remind you that you need to maintain a second-class status.” And you feel that all across society.
So even inside Israel, there are a lot of Palestinians who are finding it difficult and thinking “How do I survive this society?” Many of them feel like Israeli society has shown its true colors with what has happened in Gaza. In Jewish Israeli society, there’s still this adrenaline rush from October 7 that’s still surging in many respects, and that includes inside the country. It’s like October7 is still playing over and over with no grappling in Jewish Israeli society with what is happening in Gaza or in the West Bank. And so, I think as long as that’s the case, it’s very difficult to see how you can really reestablish connections, trust, or a sense of safety among both societies. Even then, there’s still one group in power and the other is being subjected to that power. Whatever possible ways forward need to take that seriously into account.
Jon Alterman: But is there a way in which the Palestinian Israeli experience, if it were to reach a better point, could inspire confidence in a different kind of solution for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza? Is there a way in which demonstrating the potential for coexistence to both Israeli Jews and others could suggest a different possibility than military conquest?
Amjad Iraqi: It certainly could, and it has for many years. But the problem, especially since the 1990s when the PLO adopted the two-state framework, is that you had both Jewish Israeli politics and mainstream of Palestinian politics accepting the idea of partition, and the idea that there must exist a separateness to make a solution fair, equitable, and just. That’s been critiqued and whittled away for quite a few years, and there’s a bit of a resurgence in criticism now, because Palestinian citizens defy this idea of separateness. They defy it in their identity, they defy partition in their experience of the land, and in the status they have been afforded, et cetera. That model is still there. But if the main Palestinian political parties are still thinking about two-statism and seeing their future as only bound to a portion of their historic land, even though the Palestinian public is much more critical of that position—and Jewish Israeli society either wants to be completely separate from Palestinian society, or in the worst case scenario, to expel them—then neither of those fully connect with Palestinian citizens who are saying that there is an alternative way. It’s not necessarily a rosy coexistence model. In the end, there are a lot of imperfections and some aspects of separateness that can exist there.
But the question is: is it premised on inequality or equality? There were spaces for those conversations on October 6, but now any solutions seem much further away in the shadow of October 7 and the Gaza War. But they’re still there. That political and intellectual work of Palestinian citizens alongside their lived experiences remains there to be take advantage of and to follow. However, as long as the war and the ideologies that are driving it are still in full force, I’m worried that this model will be cast aside and deemed unrealistic.
Jon Alterman: If you look at what’s happening, do you sense we are getting close to the end of the war in Gaza? Do you think we’re far from the end of the war? On both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side, how willing people are to move to a new phase?
Amjad Iraqi: To be honest, I think it’s misleading to even think about an end to the war because even if there is one, whether it’s a couple of weeks, months, or years away, there’s still likely going to be an occupation, which is a war on Palestinians by other means. Structures and mechanisms of violence are still going to be there. That’s really important to put on the table because there’s all this talk of “the day after,” and most policy conversations that I’ve been seeing rarely put Palestinians at the center of that what they need, what they want, the fact that they have the right to the ownership of their own land and building, reconstruction, and the future. The Israeli state still sees itself as entitled to decide that externally, but also internally.
As long as that’s the case, you won’t see a true end to the war. This is manifesting in the divergences in the ceasefire negotiations regarding how international actors are planning what Gaza is going to look like if they even get to a cessation of hostilities. That needs to be very, very deeply challenged. This is why it’s crucial, even as actors are trying to push for a ceasefire, to make those principles clear that Gaza belongs to the Palestinians. It’s not for Israelis to dictate. That’s exactly part of the problem. That’s exactly what’s generating the kind of Palestinian resistance in all its forms, whether it’s in Gaza or the West Bank. Also, the idea that Jewish Israeli society takes precedence in what is security, what is safety, and even the very concept of the Jewish state and being able to sustain that by any means necessary. We’re seeing a manifestation of that in Gaza.
I also think Palestinian citizens of Israel are very much under threat. They’re all interconnected. It comes back again: is this land supposed to be a place that is defined exclusively or predominantly by one people, by one ethno-national group? Or can it actually be envisioned as a different kind of shared partnership that exists? That would require a rethinking of the way that partition has seeped into our political and policy thinking, and that really needs to be whittled away.
Jon Alterman: One place where it hasn’t whittled away is in the Palestinian right and the Israeli right. Their maps of Palestine or Israel look identical except whether they include the Golan Heights or not. The Hamas map and the right-wing Israeli map are the same. Do you foresee a way to have a pact that would bring together people who agree that there needs to be some sort of partition and a mutual agreement to exclude people who are arguing for domination of one over the other? If you do that, how do you deal with the fact that so many of those people who are arguing for domination see themselves as guided by God?
Amjad Iraqi: I mean, the map illustration is very indicative of this. On the one hand, it does seem like a right-wing or maximalist vision. At the same time, it’s actually the reality. There’s often this myth that the one-state reality has been sort of in existence only for a couple of years or just in the past decade, but it actually began from the moment that Israeli troops set foot on the Jordan Valley and the Gaza coast in June 1967. That was the moment that the full state and historic Palestine as Palestinians see it, or the land of Israel, was kind of complete. That’s the irony of the June 1967 war. In many ways, the green line did not exist for two decades until Oslo instituted the permit system and different kinds of checkpoints.
In a very strange way, that map is actually correct. This again comes back to the core issue: whether the societies can envision that without that domination or that exclusivity. On the ground, there are much more complex and sobering ways in which the sides have learned to live with that, more so than ideological or intellectual debates. Palestinians and Israelis have lived beyond the green line in many respects. Trying to create the political and socioeconomic conditions that make that doable without having to feel that you need the other person to give up X and Y rights. That requires a massive reshifting of the conditions that allow that.
At the moment, the structures are incentivizing Israeli Jews to maintain that dominance. If you’ve secured a one-state reality for, let’s say, the past 15 years in which Jewish Israelis have actually accepted the no-state solution or this kind of de facto one-state solution because they say, “Oh, we actually come out on top.” Trying to revise an equilibrium is about empowering Palestinians to increase their rights and their status under that system and reducing Jewish Israelis’ ability to dictate that. This comes back to all the policy conversations we’ve had for a long time, such as questioning the massive military support that Israel gets to maintain that physical dominance.
On the Palestinian side, even with groups like Hamas, which still obviously sometimes has maximalist rhetoric, they have also shown political pragmatism for years now by accepting things like the 1967 borders, even though they still see historical Palestine as a homeland. I don’t think you can erase that from Palestinians’ minds any more than you can erase it from Jewish Israelis’ minds that this is the land of Israel. I do think that there’s a way to ideologically piece that together. This is where you have ideas like the confederation model or different models of the one-state solution. There are many complex issues and institutions, but I think there are ways to go about this, but they do need to be given more legitimacy in the public discourse.
It’s hard to do that inside now, but even trying to legitimize that a bit more internationally to understand why the two-state solution is not actually in anyone’s favor in many respects, and why partition is undesirable by both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. Showing that reality rather than trying to pretend that it’s something that it’s not will at least psychologically enable that space a bit more. It’s hard work, and it’s much harder now, but I think the infrastructure is there to think about it very differently. Again, Palestinian citizens of Israel have done that work for many years, so there’s a lot to build off of.
Jon Alterman: I wonder how you pivot from the current circumstance where Israelis feel more threatened than ever before, and Palestinians feel more aggrieved and suppressed than ever before. How do we go from that to the degree of trust that one would need to make that system work? I don’t know how you get the intermediate steps from where we are.
Amjad Iraqi: To be blunt, a key starting point is requires making Israelis realize that they don’t have the same impunity anymore. The problem is that if Jewish Israeli society sees that there are no consequences for embracing the most extremist elements of Zionism, then why would they change course? It’s not just an ideological embrace; it’s a very rational thinking whereby they say, “If we’re winning this way, then why would we do anything differently?”
Imposing that impunity on the dominant society is really crucial because then that has to invoke some self-thinking and re-strategizing. There are conversations sometimes about parallels with the 1973 War, the Yom Kippur War, in which Israel won militarily after that shock, but it created these political after-effects, which led to groups like Peace Now, the occupation, and the later peace treaties with Arab states. But it provoked some different thinking in Israeli society.
Now that’s not always necessarily to the benefit of Palestinians. You can obviously say the same with the First Intifada, et cetera, but these are critical moments where Israeli society needs to understand that it can’t have its own way all time. When that’s created and accepted into their minds, that’s when you will start to see a psychological and material loosening that creates different spaces and opportunities to intervene.
Jon Alterman: There’s also polling that suggests that about two-thirds of Israelis and Palestinian Arabs believe that the other side has genocidal intentions, and the events of October 7 and the aftermath validated the assessment of the genocidal intentions of the other.
Amjad Iraqi: Indeed, and this is where correct political analysis is really crucial. October 7 was undoubtedly a massacre and huge trauma to Israeli society. But also having to put it into perspective with the Israeli war that has happened since and, without minimizing the harm of October 7, to also understand what do those power dynamics, what does that death count, and what does that level of destruction say about which violence is actually really turning the tide in these different ways?
There’s this repeated line that October 7 is not the start of the conflict. and there’s also the fact that the occupation is itself a form of violence. These cannot be missed. While it’s quite understandable why there are those feelings, instilling that public and political knowledge, awareness, education and reality-check for both communities is really crucial. Jewish Israelis need to understand that their power is what is really mutating the possibility of a different kind of fairer life. Palestinians need to realize the extent to which violence is actually reinforcing this Jewish Israeli urge to launch revenge or retrench those structures of violence. Also, Jewish Israelis are not going away.
It’s quite mixed and complex in both societies and their different segments. Sometimes things are known in private, but not always said in public, least of all on social media. However, there are opportunities there. In the end, Palestinians especially are looking for a basic life and dignity. There are ways to fulfill that, and that’s where most people are at. I think Jewish Israeli society has become so used to dehumanizing Palestinians in large part because they’re also not seeing them and connecting to them, even in the ways of the past, and that’s allowed for probably the worst war in the history of the conflict. That dehumanization needs to be cracked down.
Coming back to one of your earlier questions, Palestinian citizens know both societies very well. They understand power asymmetries and feel that as long as Jewish Israeli society can still treat them as Palestinians regardless of their citizenship, then there’s a fundamental problem. Palestinian citizens can still act as a way for Palestinians to understand that this is actually how you can live next to Jewish Israelis without that occupier-occupied dynamic.
Jon Alterman: To my understanding, you’re now based in London. You’ve moved from being in Haifa and central Israel where you were born and grew up, and now you’re part of the Palestinian diaspora. What do you think you’re missing by not being on the ground, and what are you gaining from having a little bit of distance?
Amjad Iraqi: I’ve certainly gained a lot of freedom to say and do my work. I remember when October 7 happened, and especially during the first weeks and months of the war, I took it upon myself to say yes to a lot of media events, podcasts, interviews, writing opportunities, et cetera. I understood that my community back home was very much paralyzed with fear. I hoped that I would do what I could until everyone else could catch up, but that paralysis really went on for a long time. A lot of people, even a year on, are still very terrified with very real reasons to fully speak up. The oppression, threats, and racism that’s been experienced by people there is quite severe.
I went to London three weeks before the war by cosmic chance, so I have been very conscious of my privilege. I can play my role by taking advantage of the freedom that I have. I’m surely not facing the same physical risks of any kind of violence, whether by Jewish Israelis or by rockets, right now. In terms of what I’m missing, nothing can ever really change your understanding of life on the ground when you’re on the ground. When you’re seeing it all for yourself, when you’re feeling it. I went back for a visit a couple of months ago. I haven’t been able to go back just because of the fluctuating war, rockets, et cetera. But you can’t escape all those very real nuances that exist in day-to-day life, and to be honest, the fear. The fear that really cuts across everywhere.
It’s always a double-edged sword, but I’m taking my position for what it is at the moment. I’m hoping to go back to experience those things and do what I can. Among many, many, many others, I’m trying to hold the line as much as possible, taking my cues as part of the Palestinian diaspora, and trying to shake things up in capitals, and but also obviously experiencing disillusionment of not being able to. Despite the massive mobilization over the past year, that’s meant very little on the ground. I’m very conscious of the disconnect between the conversations and the actions that are there. It’s a very strange position to be. But it’s all hopefully contributing, at least somewhat, to the end of this war and then hopefully the thinking for ways forward, especially for Palestinians. Most of all, I think Palestinians in Gaza need every helping hand to get through this.
Jon Alterman: Amjad Iraqi, thank you very much for joining us on Babel.
Amjad Iraqi: Thank you, Jon.
