00:00:00: So this kind of common history that we have will help us find the common future.

00:00:09: So if we start thinking differently in this conflict, we will be able to find easy way out of this conflict.

00:00:21: But it needs one side at least to start changes.

00:00:26: If one side changes, it will lead that the other side also starts taking steps

00:00:33: to change.

00:00:36: Welcome to another Candid Conversation on Palestine, Israel

00:00:39: and Europe.

00:00:40: This time, my colleague Anne Bauer, a political officer at the Candid Foundation, speaks with Salma Sinjilawi, a Palestinian political activist and founder of the Jerusalem Development Fund.

00:00:52: As a teenager during the first Intifada, Salma spent five years in an Israeli prison.

00:00:58: Today, he works

00:00:59: to promote

00:01:00: dialogue and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.

00:01:04: From his childhood in East Jerusalem to his encounters with Israelis across political divides, he shares a rare perspective on trust, empathy and leadership.

00:01:33: Samar, I think there's so many different ways I could possibly introduce you and so many stories to be told.

00:01:40: However, I think it's best if I let you tell your own story.

00:01:44: You grew up in East Jerusalem during the First Intifada, and you yourself have served several years in Israeli prisons.

00:01:53: However, today you're one of the most prominent voices advocating for Israeli-Palestinian peace and coexistence.

00:02:01: How did you get here?

00:02:03: Thank you very much, Anna, for inviting me.

00:02:06: It's a pleasure to speak to you and to the audience.

00:02:10: I am a Palestinian Jerusalemite who was born in the old city of Jerusalem, fifty-three years ago.

00:02:19: And my childhood was a normal common childhood of any kid.

00:02:28: I am a Muslim that went to a Christian school.

00:02:32: College de Flair, it's a French Christian school and at this early years of my childhood I didn't realize that there is some kind of a conflict in my city because all the diversity that I have been witnessing around me was part of my identity.

00:02:57: I was able to go to my school start the day with the Christian prayers And then when I go back home, my grandfather takes me for the Muslim prayers in Al Aqsa Mosque.

00:03:13: So everything was easy going.

00:03:17: There is no complication.

00:03:20: In my city there were people who go to synagogues, to churches, to mosques, people who speak Arabic, people who speak Hebrew.

00:03:30: I didn't feel there was a conflict.

00:03:33: I was doing piano lessons.

00:03:36: I was going to swimming pools in the weekend until the first Intifada erupted.

00:03:44: Intifada is the uprising that started from nineteen eighty seven and ended in nineteen ninety three.

00:03:55: With this Intifada, I started seeing every day on the screens some kind of a conflict happening.

00:04:06: There was us and them.

00:04:08: We were in Kofias throwing stones and they were in uniforms with guns and in gypses and that's how the conflict invaded me.

00:04:23: I think it invaded my generation not only the Palestinian young generation but also the Israeli young generation.

00:04:31: This conflict started to give us a new identity and I found myself throwing stones in the streets of my city.

00:04:42: I became Fatih because Fatih was the mainstream.

00:04:47: Nobody recruited me to Fatih.

00:04:49: Maybe you need to quickly say what is Fatih.

00:04:51: This

00:04:52: is the main political party in the PLO, headed by President Arafat at that time.

00:04:58: And this brought me to five years in jail, in Israeli jail.

00:05:04: I can tell you one of the difficult days that I had in my life.

00:05:08: I still remember it.

00:05:10: When I was in front of the Israeli military judge and he sentenced me to five years and I was in a shock to start counting when I will be released.

00:05:23: But there inside prison, I started discovering the other side.

00:05:30: I started talking to my guards and I started learning Hebrew.

00:05:36: I speak very fluent Hebrew.

00:05:38: How old were you

00:05:39: at this age?

00:05:40: I was fifteen years old and I was released at the age of twenty.

00:05:45: So my journey of discovering the other side, talking to the other side, started in the jail.

00:05:51: Of course, it was a prisoner with a guard, but also the guards stayed long hours in the prison.

00:05:58: So we did develop this kind of personal relation.

00:06:03: We started talking about stories, names, memories from the outside.

00:06:10: and when I went out in nineteen ninety three it was already the Oslo agreement.

00:06:16: so the political atmosphere and environment changed.

00:06:19: we were engaged with the Israelis officially in negotiations on the political level.

00:06:26: I am a political activist.

00:06:28: I was elected as the head of the Fatah youth and I started talking officially to the Labour Party Youth Organization.

00:06:37: Labour Party was the mainstream Israeli party led by the late Prime Minister Tsakrabin.

00:06:47: Tsakrabin was the one who signed the peace accord, the Oslo Peace Accord with Arafat.

00:06:54: And I continued for the last thirty-eight years my journey of dialogue and discovering the Israelis.

00:07:05: Today, Even during the very sad and sensitive days of the seventh of October and the war in Gaza, I did not disconnect with the Israelis.

00:07:17: I continued talking to the Israelis.

00:07:19: I talked to Israel from wall to wall, left, center, right, Haradeem, secular, young, old, all kinds of Israelis, academia, media, politicians, activists, civil society.

00:07:36: media.

00:07:37: I show up a lot in the Israeli media.

00:07:40: I write in the Israeli media.

00:07:42: I attend conferences.

00:07:46: I am now a student of master degrees in conflict resolution in the Hebrew University.

00:07:54: My engagement with the Israeli society is very intense.

00:07:58: And I can claim I am an expert in the Israelis.

00:08:02: I can claim I know the Israelis better than they know themselves because I speak to all of them.

00:08:08: they don't speak to each other.

00:08:10: and I learned lots of things.

00:08:12: and I learned first of all when you start seeing this conflict and any other conflict in the eyes of the other side you will develop a deep understanding for this conflict.

00:08:30: without seeing it in the lenses of the other side you will not be able to understand it completely because each conflict has two sides.

00:08:39: you cannot only see it from one side.

00:08:43: you will be missing lots of things.

00:08:46: and I can tell you that maybe to a lot of Germans or Europeans or outsiders they feel that this conflict is very complicated.

00:09:00: I can tell you that this conflict is very silly and naive.

00:09:04: Very simple.

00:09:05: We make it complicated.

00:09:08: This conflict is two words.

00:09:11: It can be summarized by two words.

00:09:12: From one side, the Israeli side, it's security.

00:09:16: Full stop.

00:09:18: From the Palestinian side, it's self-determination.

00:09:23: Freedom or human dignity if you want.

00:09:25: So it's two words from each side.

00:09:28: And there is no contradiction.

00:09:31: we can fulfill both needs without sacrificing any needs of any of the sides and I can tell you that there is no complication in the scenarios of the hard issue of this conflict whether it is Jerusalem or the borders or the refugees or the settlements.

00:10:01: the main challenge and here is the heart feelings that are occupying the hearts of Israelis and Palestinians.

00:10:12: We both suffer from a cocktail of heart feelings, pain, anger, hatred.

00:10:27: It fills our hearts, both sides.

00:10:31: If we are not able to defeat these heart feelings, we will not be able to move ahead.

00:10:38: In conflict resolution theories, Most of the conflict resolution theories say that once you conclude a political deal you will start a phase of reconciliation and you can achieve reconciliation.

00:10:55: In this particular conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you need to start with reconciliation to be able to go towards a political horizon.

00:11:07: With these hard feelings occupying us, we will not be able to move.

00:11:12: If we control them, everything is going to be easy.

00:11:16: I want to give you a small story to show you how silly and naive this conflict is.

00:11:26: Everybody knows Hamas.

00:11:29: The co-founders of Hamas were two people, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, a handicapped religious figure from Gaza, and Abdul Aziz Rantisi.

00:11:42: Both were assassinated by Israel.

00:11:45: Abdul Aziz Rantisi was a refugee in Gaza.

00:11:50: He originally came before nineteen forty-eight from a small village in Israel called Yavni.

00:12:01: When he and his family used to live in Yavni, his father was married to two women.

00:12:12: His mother, a Muslim woman, and another woman, a Jewish woman.

00:12:17: A Muslim man can marry two or three or four women at the same time.

00:12:25: So he the father of Rantisi had kids from the Muslim woman and have kids from the Jewish woman all of them living under the same ceiling.

00:12:37: all of them shared the same food on the same table every evening and all of them called the same man father.

00:12:48: when the war erupted in the forties And Palestinians started to emigrate waves of emigration, flying the war.

00:13:05: Rantisi wanted to escape with all his family together.

00:13:11: His Jewish wife told him, maybe I should stay with my kids.

00:13:16: By the end of the day, I'm Jewish.

00:13:19: My kids are Jewish in traditional Jewish standards.

00:13:24: And nobody will harm us.

00:13:26: So let me stay, keep our home and property safe.

00:13:32: You can go because there is a risk on your life.

00:13:36: When things calm down, you will come back.

00:13:39: And that's what has happened.

00:13:40: In one night, the same family became two parts.

00:13:47: Half of it became refugees, Palestinian refugees in Gaza and one of them established Hamas.

00:13:54: The other half stayed in Israel to be Jewish Israeli, part of the state of Israel.

00:13:59: Technically, one of the siblings of Abdul Aziz Rantiz, he could be the one who decided to assassinate him or was the pilot who shot him.

00:14:11: This is how silly is this conflict.

00:14:13: One family became enemies in one night for no reason.

00:14:18: The last hundred twenty years are the black era.

00:14:24: in relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Holy Land.

00:14:29: The other four thousand years were years of coexistence.

00:14:34: We managed always.

00:14:36: Jews have been present in this land for thousands of years and one of the big mistakes historically and morally I can say is that we Palestinians We are refusing to recognize the historical links of Jews in this land.

00:14:59: It's a historical fact.

00:15:00: Jews have been here for thousands of years.

00:15:03: And I think we should the Palestinians change our narrative to include recognizing the historical links of Jews in the Holy Land, Israel, Palestine, but reminding them that they have never been alone.

00:15:23: during history.

00:15:24: There was always others and these others are us.

00:15:29: So this kind of common history that we have will help us find the common future.

00:15:38: So if we start thinking differently in this conflict, we will be able to find easy way out of this conflict.

00:15:50: But it needs one side at least to start changes.

00:15:55: If one side changes, it will lead that the other side also starts taking steps to change.

00:16:04: So in your work, like I see you're using stories to try and reframe the narrative and also you mentioned before, you make a point of talking to everyone.

00:16:16: you're going into, you published at settler universities like Ariel and you're also attending right wing Israeli conferences.

00:16:23: So when you share these stories that you told right now and also your personal story, what is the reactions you get from the Israelis, but also what is the reaction from your own society?

00:16:37: because To say the least, it's not very common for a Palestinian to go talk with the right-wing Israeli settlers.

00:16:43: So what's the reactions you get from the people who listen to you on both sides?

00:16:49: Well, I'll give you examples, especially in the last two years.

00:16:56: Whenever you go to a conference in Israel, if a left-wing Israeli speaker goes to the panel and starts speaking, There will be right-wingers in the audience that keep disturbing him, shutting him down, yelling on him.

00:17:17: Okay, it's part of the tension that was inside Israel, especially from early twenty-twenty-three when the Israeli, current Israeli coalition started the Judical Reforms or the Judical coup.

00:17:32: If a right-wing speaker starts speaking, there will always be left-wingers in the crowd shutting him down.

00:17:41: And sometimes I was in a conference invited to speak.

00:17:48: Every single Israeli speaker was shut down.

00:17:51: When I come out and speak, all of them applause to me.

00:17:55: So I became in a way more accepted to all of them than they are accepting each other.

00:18:04: And it is for a simple reason.

00:18:07: You need to understand the mentality of Israelis.

00:18:12: I can tell you that I learned few things about Israelis among it.

00:18:19: First, we need to stop lecturing the Israelis.

00:18:26: Whenever we Palestinians start lecturing the Israelis on international law, we lock their ears.

00:18:32: They don't want to listen.

00:18:35: If we stop lecturing them and we try to deliver a message by setting an example.

00:18:46: I was one of or maybe the only Palestinian with a political profile who condemned the atrocities of Hamas from the very first hours of seventh October.

00:18:59: And I condemned it publicly, I condemned it in front of cameras, I condemned it by visiting the envelope of Gaza in a condolences visit.

00:19:11: And it was a very hard visit because I was on the borders in Farazah.

00:19:17: Farazza is only one kilometer away from Gaza.

00:19:22: And when I was condemning what my people have done to them, I was seeing life in the background, the war in Gaza.

00:19:34: And I know what was happening there.

00:19:36: I've heard the bombs.

00:19:38: I can feel the earth that is shaking.

00:19:44: I've seen the smoke.

00:19:46: I've seen the fire.

00:19:47: And I know that each bomb of this is taking lives of kids and other innocent people, maybe taking lives of Hamas fighters, but it's also taking lots of innocent lives.

00:20:02: But at that moment, I didn't want to turn back because what's happening there is not my responsibility.

00:20:09: It's their responsibility.

00:20:11: What has happened here is my responsibility.

00:20:14: What my people have done here is what I should condemn.

00:20:19: So I don't want to lecture them about what's happening there.

00:20:22: I want to set an example of what should I do as a human being that is always emphasizing on our common humanity.

00:20:32: We are human beings, first of all, before being Israelis and Palestinians.

00:20:38: Setting such an example means a lot to the Israelis.

00:20:43: Stop lecturing them.

00:20:44: You set an example, they start thinking.

00:20:47: They will start thinking.

00:20:49: I was invited to the Knesset one month ago, and M.K.

00:20:57: Naamalazimi, she was the head of the committee that invited me.

00:21:02: In the introduction that she gave to allow me to speak, she said that when I visited the Yardenbibas Shifa, which is the condolences week in Jewish tradition, and that handshake with him.

00:21:23: I came with a delegation and me apologizing for what we have done to his family and asking for his pardon made her cry.

00:21:35: So sometimes a message is stronger than hours of lecturing, okay?

00:21:42: If one side starts this changing, the Israelis will also feel themselves responsible to take the same steps, okay?

00:21:55: Where they can start first and then we follow or we can start first and they would follow.

00:22:02: I think we are.

00:22:06: we are the side that should start the first steps because in this conflict we both are paying very heavy price, okay?

00:22:19: We are losing lives.

00:22:21: They are losing lives.

00:22:25: It's not comfortable for us and for them, but the Israelis, they have a country.

00:22:33: It's an OCED country, very developed, start-up nation, very strongly economically.

00:22:41: They have a very strong army with nuclear power.

00:22:46: They have a passport that connects them easily to hundred sixty countries without needing a visa.

00:22:53: They have been going on airport.

00:22:56: They have everything they need and they can maybe wait for another eighty years to solve this conflict.

00:23:08: We don't have anything of this.

00:23:11: And with the current situation of two million Palestinians in Gaza under plastic tents, we cannot wait another eighty hours for this conflict.

00:23:19: So we have a sense of urgency to end this conflict more than them.

00:23:25: So we are obliged to start the steps and the change.

00:23:30: But what do Palestinians think of this from your own society?

00:23:35: What is the reaction or how you think you can convince them?

00:23:42: It is not very popular.

00:23:46: Whatever I have done was not popular.

00:23:50: Because there was a public mood that was in a different direction.

00:23:56: Okay, the seventh of October and the days after created a lot of anger.

00:24:03: Okay, and nobody wanted to show any sympathy to the other side.

00:24:08: Each side was very much looking at his own pain and he doesn't want to understand anything about the other side.

00:24:18: pain but leadership.

00:24:23: if You cannot be a leader if you are not taking certain contradiction steps.

00:24:33: If you are always sitting on a fence trying to be balanced, led by the public mood and trying to lead the public mood and change it, you are not a leadership.

00:24:45: Leadership needs some kind of courageous steps, contradiction.

00:24:52: And I've learned something from... Einstein.

00:24:57: Einstein was one of the founders of the Hebrew University where I go and I will tell you a story about the Hebrew University now.

00:25:09: So they put his status in several places and they put some of his wisdom written and I've seen one of his wisdom he says a social political change leading a social political changes like riding a bicycle uphill.

00:25:35: It's very difficult.

00:25:37: But in order to reach to the top of the hill, you need to continue biking.

00:25:42: If you stop biking, you lose balance.

00:25:46: And you don't only stop, you start going backward, downhill.

00:25:55: And this is what's happening here.

00:25:57: When you start introducing hard changes in a political, social, dilemmas you need to come to have the courage to continue.

00:26:10: don't stop.

00:26:11: when you continue people will start.

00:26:14: first they attack you then they stop attacking you and then they start arguing with you.

00:26:20: and fourth they will start convincing.

00:26:24: they will see that yeah you have.

00:26:26: you have some reason.

00:26:28: when they cool down When they get used to that, this is your identity and you are leading this change.

00:26:34: You sign them in.

00:26:36: So most of those who attacked me are now partners with me in a framework that is called Alliance for Two States.

00:26:45: And they come to meetings with hundreds of Israelis each type.

00:26:50: We had three hundred fifty Israeli and Palestinian activists, civil society activists met in Paris in June to support.

00:27:01: the political horizons and the end of the war and releasing the hostages and creating a two-state or going to the path of the two-state solution.

00:27:11: This came because there were people on both sides who did not want to surrender to the public mood but start changing it.

00:27:22: I told you I want to tell you a story about the Hebrew University.

00:27:27: When I was released from jail, And I wanted to continue my study.

00:27:35: It was not allowed for any Palestinian to consider going to the Hebrew University.

00:27:41: If you go and have a walk around the fences of the Hebrew University, this could have been seen as an act of disloyalty.

00:27:56: Two years ago, at the beginning, after the seventh of October, I decided to go to the university.

00:28:05: start my master degrees there because I wanted more to live the Israeli life under the circumstances of the seventh of October and so I thought the Hebrew University studying there will give me more engagement or a possibility to enter to the Israeli society.

00:28:30: The first day I went there I was shocked to see at the entrance of the main gate there there is security check.

00:28:40: in the queue I noticed a lot of ladies with hijab.

00:28:46: then I discovered that twenty percent of the student body comes from my city where twenty five years ago this was a taboo.

00:28:57: now twenty percent of the student body comes from my city and they are coming every day to this university at the time of war at the time of the seventh of October at the time of war in Gaza and everybody enters there and goes to the classes.

00:29:15: you can see that by nature people are able to coexist.

00:29:21: the universe is an example.

00:29:23: I noticed even that some of our students Palestinians and some of the Israeli students Jewish Israeli students They move in the university with necklaces of the whole map, okay, from the river to the sea.

00:29:46: You can distinguish the Israeli from the Palestinian because the Israelis, they have the Golan Heights.

00:29:52: The Palestinians, they have the same map without the Golan Heights.

00:29:57: It's a declaration of war against the other side because when you put the full map, the other side does not exist.

00:30:03: You need to push him to the sea.

00:30:06: But Do really these kids who put these necklaces, and by the way, both necklaces are made in the same factory in China.

00:30:14: They just drop it difficultly and sell it.

00:30:17: Does any side really wants to throw the other side to the sea?

00:30:23: Bullshit.

00:30:25: For the simple reason that they both come to the same university, they go to the same classroom, they listen to the same professor, and sometimes that professor gives them a group work where two Israelis, two Palestinians, each with his knock-less, start working together as a group because they want to produce a research that gets the highest mark possible and presented to the professor.

00:30:52: So the necklace is part of the confusion they are living.

00:30:58: Their attendance to the classes in that university is part of the reality of their nature.

00:31:04: that by DNA they are able to coexist.

00:31:08: So what we need to do is a little bit organize their thinking, is a little bit free them from the impact of a political elite on both sides that took them for years hostages in their bunkers, manipulated their thinking and their beliefs created incitement and hatred toward the other side, because this serves the political survivor of the current leadership on both sides, whether BB on the Israeli side or Mahmoud Abbas on the Palestinian side.

00:31:47: So anyway, or another, we are victims of a political elite that survives by this conflict continuing.

00:31:58: They might lose their power if this conflict ends.

00:32:02: An interest is to keep this conflict going on and on.

00:32:08: By the way, let me end with saying something related to these necklaces.

00:32:15: I was invited in April to a conference in Jerusalem, JNS Conference.

00:32:23: It's a hardcore right wing Israeli-American conference.

00:32:28: And I was giving a lecture in a panel.

00:32:32: And I noticed on the first row, two Israeli Jewish ladies, maybe Jewish American ladies, putting a necklace, each one.

00:32:43: And then I asked them, ladies, may I ask you from where did you buy your necklaces?

00:32:49: They said, we bought it from the old city.

00:32:51: I told them, okay, you bought the wrong necklace.

00:32:54: They were putting the Palestinian necklace without noticing that they are putting the enemy's symbol.

00:33:02: So we are that confused that we started using the other side symbols without noticing.

00:33:10: That's how big is the mess that both population are living

00:33:16: in.

00:33:17: I am confident that the majority of Israelis the majority of Palestinians would like to end this conflict would like to go to a model of coexistence But they need a leadership that gives them the confidence, that eliminate their fears.

00:33:38: We as Palestinians, we need to understand that our real enemy is not the Israeli people.

00:33:44: Our real enemy is the fear that occupies the hearts of the Israelis.

00:33:50: I don't need to defeat the Israelis.

00:33:52: I need to defeat that fear in their hearts.

00:33:55: If I defeat that fear in their hearts, I'll find a way out of this conflict easily.

00:34:02: This maybe brings me to the role.

00:34:05: Europe can play since Epicon, in the scope of which we're hosting this podcast, looks at European, Palestinian, Israeli, trilateral engagement.

00:34:13: And you just outlined to us many different ways in how the two political leaderships and societies are sort of locked in a deadlock and cannot get away out of this when the two, when leaderships are profiting from this conflict.

00:34:28: So do you see any role for Europe and European countries?

00:34:32: We have seen some movement in the past months.

00:34:35: there is different foreign policy tools if we want to go a bit more into the policy level.

00:34:40: So what role do you think Europe can play in all of this?

00:34:45: Well, I come from a school that says the peace in the Middle East does not come via Berlin or Washington DC or Paris or Cairo or Riyadh.

00:35:07: The road to peace goes through Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Haifa, Nablus, Reshonin, Rezion, Zechron Yaakov, Jericho, Jerusalem.

00:35:25: I don't expect a lot from the international community.

00:35:31: Well, now Europe has gone into a path of recognizing the state of Palestine.

00:35:42: I think it makes sense because Well, if you raise the slogan of two-state solution, you cannot recognize one state and not the other.

00:35:57: It makes sense that France, UK, before them Spain, Canada, Australia are recognizing the state of Palestine.

00:36:07: I think this is more of a reaction towards the policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in making this war in Gaza go so long for no reason and in crossing certain red lines.

00:36:33: especially Europe is living in a dilemma of imposing sanctions on Russia and doing nothing on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

00:36:45: so I think Europe wanted to show some tough love to Israel.

00:36:53: And recognizing the state of Palestine comes as a reaction and alternative to imposing sanctions, for example.

00:37:03: Europe needs to do something because internally now the public opinion inside Europe is not very much happy about what's happening.

00:37:12: There is a lot of pressure over governments to do something.

00:37:17: For me as a Palestinian, I am happy to see more countries recognizing the state of Palestine, but in practicality, in political reality, it does not change anything.

00:37:30: The only country that I need to convince to recognize the state of Palestine is Israel.

00:37:37: What if they're not convinced?

00:37:39: What if Bibi Netanyahu keeps on saying it would be a reward to Hamas?

00:37:45: Well, Hamas never put the target of achieving two-state solution, the target of Hamas.

00:37:51: on the seventh of October before and after is to eliminate Israel.

00:37:57: And the current recognition of the state of Palestine is conditioned on the fact that it should not include Hamas.

00:38:06: So it is the worst punishment, the worst nightmare for Hamas.

00:38:11: And don't listen to them when they try to claim credibility.

00:38:19: First of all, there were One hundred forty six states recognizing the state of Palestine before Hamas even was established.

00:38:26: It was from the eighties when Arafat decided to adapt to the two-state solution and he declared the independence of the state of Palestine in nineteen eighty eight.

00:38:38: So most of the countries recognized the state of Palestine even before Hamas was established.

00:38:46: And this reaction It's not because of what Hamas has done on the seventh of October, on the seventh of October, the whole world, including France, including Australia, including Canada, all these countries who are leading now the wave of recognition to the state of Palestine, considered us barbarians.

00:39:08: And ISIS, Hamas made us look in front of the eyes of the world as barbarians, and this stain will be sticked to us forever.

00:39:22: In the collective memory of history and humanity, on the seventh of October, we Palestinians were barbarians.

00:39:32: We killed women, we killed babies, we kidnapped them, and I have seen them released during the exchanges.

00:39:42: So we don't need a proof that we have done lots of atrocity.

00:39:49: This is the result of the work of Hamas.

00:39:54: But the solidarity now that is coming to the Palestinian people and the wave of recognition of the state of Palestine, it is because of the suffer of the average Palestinians in Gaza.

00:40:06: When every day the whole world is witnessing that a classroom of kids is killed in Gaza, thirty-five kids today.

00:40:14: An average of thirty-five kids are killed in Gaza.

00:40:18: People are starving.

00:40:19: People are the whole Gaza disappeared from the surface of the map.

00:40:28: There is no Gaza now.

00:40:29: Everything is destroyed.

00:40:31: Everything is sand and rubber.

00:40:34: So the suffer of the people created this move, not the axe, the atrocities and the barbarian atrocities of Hamas that resulted in recognizing the state of Palestine.

00:40:49: I see the state of Palestine a prize and reward to people like me who are working to coexist with Israel who are working day and night to achieve the two-state solution not only because we deserve a state but also because the Israelis they deserve to live in a Jewish democratic state and with fifty percent of the population non-Jews this state cannot be neither democratic nor Jewish.

00:41:20: the only way to have a Jewish democratic state is for the Israelis to separate from millions of Palestinians.

00:41:28: So the only solution is a two-state solution.

00:41:32: Anything else by definition is not a solution because anything else means that one side defeated the other side, okay, eliminated the other side.

00:41:44: So to keep both sides with the right to exist in an independent Palestinian state and in a Jewish democratic state is the two-state solution.

00:41:56: If there is any other solution, please put it on the table.

00:42:00: If you take off the two-state solution, what do we have?

00:42:04: We have chaos, the current chaos.

00:42:06: And I think most, if not all European states deal on paper, pay lip service to a two-state solution.

00:42:13: However, what are... The steps towards that we mentioned, recognizing a Palestinian state is something symbolic.

00:42:19: What about the other tools Europe could have, especially right now in the situation in Gaza, but also long-term towards a Palestinian self-determination, Palestinian statehood?

00:42:29: Well, I believe the real focus should be in creating mechanisms of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

00:42:43: Now, We Palestinians, we have around one hundred fifty embassies all over the world including, for example, fifty-nine embassies in Africa.

00:42:56: Canada, which is a G-seven country, they have only three embassies in all Africa.

00:43:03: We are still a movement, a national movement, that did not come to a level of statehood and we have fifty-nine embassies.

00:43:13: If I will be a prime minister, One day, I will close all these embassies.

00:43:20: I will keep ten embassies all over the world, in Berlin one, in Washington DC, in Paris, in London, in Riyadh, in Abu Dhabi, the important, you know, capitals, and all the other offices.

00:43:32: I will close them, and I will open liaison offices in each neighborhood in Israel.

00:43:40: That's where we should focus.

00:43:42: How can we reach to the Israelis?

00:43:45: How can we as Palestinians convince them that they can trust us, that the Palestinian state will not be a threat to them, that the seven October did not happen because there was a state in Gaza.

00:44:00: It happened because of a lack of statehood for Palestinians, that the Palestinian state is the solution for the Israeli security, that we are capable to be an ally to Israel, that we have the means how to help integrating Israel in the region?

00:44:22: because now the Palestinian statehood is coming within a package normalization with Saudi Arabia.

00:44:29: Saudi Arabia is the unchallenged leader of the Muslim and Arab world.

00:44:37: there is no number one except of Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim world.

00:44:43: once the Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians signed peace treaty with Israel Israel will change from being the villa in the jungle to be the villa in the very nice neighborhood that integrates Israel complements Israel.

00:45:03: you can imagine the horizons that we can open for every Israeli and Palestinian citizen every citizen in the Middle East.

00:45:15: When we have the intelligence of the Israelis, they are developing as a start-up nation.

00:45:27: They are very smart in managing finance.

00:45:31: When we have their capabilities with the energy powerhouse in the Gulf countries, with the financial resources combined together, we can change the surface and the life of hundreds of millions of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East.

00:45:51: It can be a totally different place.

00:45:56: We should go there.

00:45:58: And this is not fantasy.

00:46:00: The fantasy is denying it.

00:46:02: It is reality.

00:46:03: We can see it.

00:46:05: We can see how quickly the Israelis clicked with the Emirates when the Abraham Accords was signed today.

00:46:17: During the war, do you know that?

00:46:18: during the war, left-hands stopped flying to Tel Aviv, while Emirates, fly Dubai, Etihad and the Emirati was there, conducted eighteen flights a day between Tel Aviv and different Emirati cities.

00:46:39: Connecting the Israelis with the Far East, without these flights, the Israelis would have been totally disconnected.

00:46:47: It was only El Al that was flying, and the Emirati companies.

00:46:52: El Al and two Israeli airlines, Arkea and Israel, together with the four Emirati's flight companies, these were the airplanes that took the Israelis everywhere.

00:47:10: So it was the Abraham Accords that risked the Israelis from being not able to travel during the war.

00:47:19: Lufthansa, Delta, all the European and American airlines stopped because it was a commercial decision.

00:47:27: The risk and the insurance cost was too big to be able to make these flights visible.

00:47:35: They stopped them.

00:47:37: But it was a political decision in Abu Dhabi to keep the Emirates flying.

00:47:42: the Marati Airlines flying out of Tel Aviv.

00:47:45: This was an example.

00:47:47: Another example was on the several times that Iran attacked Israel.

00:47:55: The defense started at the borders of Iran, not at the borders of Israel, two thousand kilometers away.

00:48:03: It was the Saudis who first operated the system to knock down these rockets and then the Qataris and the Emirates and then the Jordanian.

00:48:16: even the Air Force of Jordan was in the sky shooting down some of these.

00:48:21: So only less than ten percent of the rockets were handled by the IDR and Rome and the defensive system of Israel.

00:48:29: Most of it was shot down by the regional arrangements that was created thanks to the United States who forced everybody into into such a mechanism and were All.

00:48:42: the Arabs have been proven that they are the best ally to Israel when it comes to defensive situations.

00:48:51: Palestine can be another country that can help deepen and strengthen the Israeli security.

00:49:05: And again, I tell you, it's not fantasy.

00:49:08: This is the reality that we need to believe in.

00:49:13: And we can be there in no time, few years.

00:49:16: There is a political will on both sides, the Israeli and the Palestinian side.

00:49:22: Thank

00:49:22: you.

00:49:23: The key word here is political will.

00:49:25: Like every time I talk to people like you and many other wonderful people, we have another project, I always realize there is... no lack of visionary thinking, of great ideas.

00:49:36: But what's lacking is the political will.

00:49:39: And maybe this brings me to my last question is, maybe it has two layers.

00:49:45: First of all, a post-war scenario in Gaza.

00:49:48: for now, because it's the most urgent.

00:49:50: Like everything we talked about now is some for now far away vision for a future Palestinian state.

00:49:57: But what, in your opinion, could be the best post-war solution for the Gaza Strip that on a second layer then could take Palestinians towards leadership that also in a potential future state could lead the Palestinians?

00:50:14: because clearly Hamas has brought nothing but destruction and the Palestinian Authority is known to be highly inefficient and corrupt.

00:50:22: So what's left for Palestinians?

00:50:24: Well, thank you.

00:50:25: You summarized it in a very good way.

00:50:27: Palestinians are fed up from the destruction that Hamas brought upon them in Gaza and the corruption that Abbas brought upon them in the West Bank.

00:50:39: I am confident that nothing is going to happen in Gaza as far as there are the three triangle who are controlling the situation and the scene.

00:50:52: The triangle of Hamas, Abbas and Bibi.

00:50:58: If we are stuck with one of them, Nothing will change.

00:51:01: The three parts of this triangle should disappear from the life of Israelis and Palestinians.

00:51:09: So to change, to end the war, to release all the hostages, to open political horizons for Israelis, Palestinians, Saudis and the whole Arab and Muslim world, to change the face of reality in the Middle East, we are one elections away.

00:51:29: We should have elections in Israel and we should have elections in Palestine.

00:51:34: And we the Palestinians should defeat Hamas in these elections.

00:51:38: And the Israelis should defeat the extremism.

00:51:41: This is a war between the worst of both of us, okay?

00:51:47: So sometimes maybe we need to defeat ourselves, not the other side.

00:51:54: We the Palestinians, we need to defeat the wrongdoings, the extremism.

00:52:02: in our political life.

00:52:04: And the Israelis too, they need to defeat the Ben Gvirs and the Smodrids in their political life.

00:52:12: When we defeat ourselves, we will be able to open a new horizons.

00:52:19: So we are one leader away on each side from peace.

00:52:23: We are one elections away from peace.

00:52:27: I have a strong feeling that it's going to be the elections of twenty twenty six.

00:52:33: The Israelis definitely are going to go to elections either early elections in January to March or the normal elections in November twenty six.

00:52:43: Let's hope we the Palestinians will have our own elections because now there is a commitment from President Abbas that was signed in writing to President Macron and to President Trump.

00:52:56: and to MBS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, where he committed since the ninth of June to organize a legislative and presidential election within twelve months, so within ten months now.

00:53:09: Let's hope these elections happen on the Palestinian side.

00:53:12: We defeat Hamas.

00:53:13: We create a leadership that brings to stage a Palestinian Ben-Gurion that will, because statehood is not built by recognition only of the others.

00:53:26: Statehood is built by practice, by tough decisions, by resorting to the Al-Tilene option where Ben-Gurion knocked down a Jewish boat full of Jewish fighters and weapons that came to Israel to help fighting.

00:53:46: the Arabs and the British men did, but it arrived to the shores of Tel Aviv when Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel, and he said, I will not allow more than one arm in my statehood.

00:54:03: When they refused to deliver the arm, he knocked them down.

00:54:07: Sixteen Jewish people were killed.

00:54:10: by the Jewish leader who established the state of Israel.

00:54:14: So this is statehood and we need to learn a lesson from this and resort to it when it is needed.

00:54:20: Because if we as Palestinians, by practice, we don't recognize our own state, the other's recognition will mean nothing to us.

00:54:30: Thank you, Samar.

00:54:30: Thank you.

00:54:31: For this really interesting discussion.

00:54:33: Thank

00:54:33: you for being with us.

00:54:34: Thank you so much for hosting

00:54:35: me.

00:54:35: Thanks.

00:54:35: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Epicon Podcast.

00:54:43: Epicon stands for European Palestinian-Israeli Trilateral Dialogue, an initiative that creates and fosters dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates and European opinion leaders.

00:54:56: Epicon is implemented by the Candid Foundation with the financial support of the European Union.

00:55:02: For more information visit the Canon website and follow us on our epic on social media

00:55:07: accounts linked in the description.