Voices from Gaza (with Ahmed Alkhatib) – Econlib

Ahmed Alkhatib: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Ahmed Alkhatib: Certainly. I mean, as I had shared previously, our family moved back and forth between Gaza and Saudi Arabia during the 1990s. We lived in Gaza for almost three years out of that decade. We permanently moved to the Gaza Strip in June of 2000, right before the Second Intifada, three months before the Second Intifada. And, I remember always feeling an outsider, if you will, because I never–I mean, our accent that we spoke wasn’t exactly 100% in accordance to the Gazans who never left the Strip. And so, I remember that.

But once the Second Intifada took place, and once the violence began spreading as far as the demonstrations, the protests, the strikes, the funerals, later on suicide attacks and suicide bombings that took place within Israel, which would then elicit a significant Israeli retaliation–once that took place, I was very much so a Gazan, just like everybody else. There was a complete erasure of any differentiation.

We went to UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] schools because our family is from historic Palestine, and my parents were born in Rafah in refugee camps. And, the word ‘refugee camp’–I mean, they started as actual literal refugee camps. But, as time has gone on, they evolved to be their own mini small neighborhoods or even mini small cities, if you will. So, that’s why they’re exceptionally crowded. They’re particularly just undeveloped, and the scene historically of a lot of trash and sewer, whatever, even though as time has gone on, there have been efforts to improve them.

But, the area where we lived in Sheikh Radwan, right between the neighborhood of Rimal and Jabalia–you hear about the Jabalia Refugee Camp–that was, I would say, in a quasi-developed area where it was. We didn’t have any sewers. There were the people who had septic tanks that I just remember; and we didn’t have paved streets in the entirety of the area where we were in. So, just from a quality-of-life point of view, anytime it rained, the streets would become these massive ditches because there was no drainage, no infrastructure.

We went to UNRWA schools. It was crowded, it was rough. They had two periods–they had the morning period and the afternoon period. And, I always begged for the morning period. That way you could be done with school by 12:30–because I just despised going to school from 1:00 to 6:00.

Well, UNRWA schools were very crowded. They had a serious lice problem. I have an Afro: I actually have hair, but I choose to shave it. But, in Gaza, anytime you saw someone with my cut, you assumed that they had lice from school, and the UN [United Nations] and UNRWA would–well, I don’t know that it was an UNRWA directive, but a lot of the UN teachers would instruct us to use gasoline to get rid of the lice.

Nevertheless, I will say the UNRWA schools were very good in terms of the academic standards.

Ahmed Alkhatib: Well, it’s complicated in the sense that I don’t believe that UNRWA schools specifically teach to hate. UNRWA doesn’t control the curriculum. That is controlled by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, which is driven by the West Bank-based Ministry, which, historically–when I was there, for example, I was in the first year of the pilot program for a new curriculum that was funded by the European Union [EU]. And, I remember specifically–because I had a lot of family members involved in the Ministry of Education–I remember the stipulations that the European funders had for the curriculum such that there were things that you could not–there were clear and explicit instructions on what could not be said.

So, I think where a lot of the incitement and the potential for hatred comes from the instructions provided by the teachers, some of whom just believe that there’s–like, some of whom basically editorialize the content. But, I don’t believe that UNRWA specifically and explicitly either teaches hate or, at least on paper, allows for the teaching of hate. UNRWA does have standards for what its teachers can and cannot say.

I remember hearing stories of teachers getting in trouble, when I was in Gaza, for having overt political activism. Again, keeping in mind, this was before the withdrawal of Israeli settlements. This was before Hamas. Like, this was an entirely different era. So, I concede that perhaps some things might have slightly changed.

And, I’m not here to say that UNRWA was flawless. But I do think, unfortunately, there are reductionist, over-simplistic points of view and kind of statements made about UNRWA that are just factually wrong. They’re just factually inaccurate. UNRWA doesn’t control the curriculum. Neither does Hamas.

UNRWA schools, I will say, because they–so, 2/3 of Gaza’s populations are considered refugees; 1/3 are considered natives. Those are actual Gazans from Gaza. I mean, there are cultural and political differences between those two subsets, those two populations, and even just amongst each other, like, at least when I was there. And, things have changed, but nevertheless, it still exists today. It’s even a big thing when the refugees–we call them [foreign language 00:09:04, sounds like ‘hajirim’]–marry from [foreign language 00:09:08, sounds like ‘moachnim’], the native.

So, like, when you just–people’s last name can be indicative of, ‘Oh, where are you from?’ And, they don’t mean, like, what neighborhood do you live in? Where are you from, from? What part of Palestine are you from?

And so, there is this kind of segregationist mentality that exists within Gaza’s community that are descendants of refugees such that those are the populations that go to school–to the UNRWA schools. That’s the population from which the teachers come. So therefore, there’s very much so this sense of historic injustice. Like: We’re kind of languishing in these–a lot of the students are living in horrible, crowded refugee camps and throughout the Gaza Strip, and a lot of them are aid dependent. For a variety of reasons, including Hamas’s practices and choices later on.

So, I believe that’s where a lot of the hatred that we hear about comes from.

Ahmed Alkhatib: Certainly, no–I mean, and that’s the irony. That’s, again, the nuance and the multiple truths and just the need for kind of an intricate understanding of this without the simplistic reductionist views–on either side.

Ironically, Gaza got its first shopping mall in the year 2010, and it was during the height of the Israeli blockade and restrictions. And, it was also, ironically, a bunch of Hamas-affiliated businessmen who got together: I mean, Hamas invested in luxury and leisurely stuff and businesses and shopping centers, partly because it was a way for them to collect more taxes and a way for them to create an economic base that filled the vacuum due to the financial sanctions on them, the blockade. And, it was an economic engine to help Hamas sustain its government and its group and its members.

But also, because–and as we’ve seen in other parts of the world, like, with the kind of information technology, with digital technologies–like, there is an economic evolution in different parts of the world that includes in the Gaza Strip that has happened while the blockade took place–while 70% of Gaza became aid-dependent, while youth unemployment reached 76%, while overall unemployment in Gaza kept worsening, reaching up to 41%.

So, that’s what’s challenging: is to understand that multiple things happen simultaneously.

However, it is absolutely the case that there are beautiful parts of Gaza, partly because just random people decided to develop them, partly because there were businessmen and there was commerce, and partly because of Hamas-led initiatives.

And I’ll say, finally, that Qatar actually poured some of those billions of dollars that Qatar has poured into Gaza were in fact directed toward economic development and infrastructure projects that really transformed parts of Gaza.

Ahmed Alkhatib: Absolutely. So, generally speaking, yes, I have not only kept in contact with what’s happening in Gaza, I’ve also very much so been–through family, through contacts, through friends–making a point of understanding the developments, political, economic, the humanitarian, kind of the security, having an understanding of how Hamas operates, what are they doing, who are the players, how are the tunnels being dug. Like, down to even understanding how Hamas even digs its tunnels.

And I’m not saying I have information that other people may not have. I’m simply saying that in addition to keeping up through just the news and the analyses and the developments and the political events, I have been interested in Gaza because–like I shared in the Foreign Policy piece–I’ve always envisioned using the privilege of being in the United States, using the privilege of having lived there, to ultimately turn around and do something useful and meaningful and pragmatic and practical that helps people there.

So, I had every intention of eventually being involved in Gaza’s affairs, even though I didn’t know how exactly that would transpire.

Now, I haven’t physically accessed Gaza since 2005, but I honestly would claim that I know Gaza in a way that most don’t, by virtue of having family and having kept those contacts.

I will further add that I launched a nonprofit organization in 2015 to advocate building an international airport–a humanitarian, internationally run, IDF-approved [IDF=Israel Defense Forces] airfield in Gaza. And, I worked through an army of volunteers and emissaries and intermediaries in Gaza to collect information and relay it to relevant parties. So, that was also particularly helpful. Since October 7th, it’s become exceptionally difficult to just–because the network doesn’t work; there’s no Internet. Nevertheless, I do maintain contact with quite a few contacts and family members there.

Ahmed Alkhatib: Absolutely. I mean, I have–this is a recurring theme in terms of, yes, I mean, let’s say 5,000-10,000 people celebrated. And I think that was shameful. And, I think there was also just the initial–I think there was just a spectacle of having how the attack unfolded with the paragliders, with naval commandos and the sappers[?] blowing holes in the wall, and the motorized units and the motorcycles, and the successive waves of the attack. That, I think to a lot of people, it was just unprecedented and there was definitely a spectacle component of it. There was a wow component to it. And then, scenes of Israeli Humvees being driven around Gaza. I mean, that’s never happened before. Scenes of dozens of hostages being brought back to Gaza, some of them being paraded, some of them being subjected to horrendous abuse, which I once again think is shameful.

Nevertheless, I immediately–and I remember very vividly; it was October 6th here. It was Friday night, and I had just come back from a long walk. And I went immediately to social media, which I have thousands and thousands of accounts that I check out and follow and whatever and list from my airport advocacy days.

And I saw hundreds of posts of people saying, ‘Oh my God, you just signed our death sentence.’ ‘Oh my God, guys[?] as we know it is going to cease to exist.’

Some people, for example–I saw–opposed the scene of that one elderly woman who was paraded on a golf cart and they thought that this was shameful. Like, why didn’t you at least put that woman in a closed off area and just, like, offer–this is an elderly woman. Why did you have to parade?

Like, people detested the acts that anticipated the consequences or knew that this is Hamas basically running away from its failures as a government, as a political entity, as an economic provider for the people of Gaza by launching this horrendous attack.

I think the other thing that is absolutely true, in the same way that I have Israeli friends who tell me that in Israeli media right now, in the mainstream media at least, is very sanitized. You don’t see images of dead Gazans. You don’t see widespread imagery of the maiming and the killing. Similarly, in the Palestinian Press and in kind of, like, the Arabic media led by Al Jazeera, led by Hamas propagandas, they don’t put it out there that Hamas killed civilians.

Many Palestinians still believe that the Israeli military erroneously or deliberately killed a lot of its civilians during October 7th, either during the confusion of the battle or during the execution of the so-called Hannibal Directive–which, some of that may have been true, but therefore they’re, like, ‘Oh, well, Hamas didn’t kill any civilians.’ And, Hamas put out this long statement recently about, ‘Well, we don’t actually target civilians and we never have.’ Other lies, of course.

So, there’s that component to it.

Well, I think what’s shameful, in my opinion, is–while I can understand why some people in Gaza think that way and are impacted by either, call it the conditioning, the priming, the circumstances, the totality of their lived experience leading them to, or many of them or some of them to believe that–what I think is exceptionally shameful are the folks who purport to be pro-Palestinian, in the Western world, where there is kind of a broader margin for accessing information and doing your own research and doing your own homework, parroting those Hamas talking points, further propagating the idea that this was strictly a military attack that did not target civilians.

And, that’s where I think–I, talking to people on the ground in Gaza and interpreting them–I mean, even some of my own, like, extended family members, initially, didn’t believe that there were any civilian casualties.

And, when I sent them some pictures and I sent them some videos and I detailed to them what was going on, not only did they believe it, but they genuinely, there was this feeling of, ‘Oh wow, we really are screwed, aren’t we?’ And, I said, ‘Yes, we’re absolutely–this is going to be a continuous disaster of epic proportion.’ And, I never once thought that even though there’ve been the Palestinian National Movement and the armed resistance in the past has engaged in some horrific crimes, either in the Munich Attacks or the 1970s and 1980s with a secular or Marxist resistance, or in the 1990s and early 2000s with the Islamist resistance and the suicide bombings. But, even though that was horrific in its own way, I was horrified that this was yet another chapter of brutality that I never–I’m ashamed to have that be permanently now associated with what I perceive as the urgent and just Palestinian quest for freedom and self-determination, and statehood, and sovereignty.

The other thing that I will say is that: I understand, I mean to me, this is not just an opposition to Hamas based on their ideology or based on what I perceive are their corrupt practices, etc. But, for years and years and years–personally, through my own personal, professional work, or just through my contacts, hearing about what Hamas does to torture people, hearing about Hamas beating up protestors, hearing about Hamas schemes for essentially, like, siphoning off not just the aid that’s coming in now, but historically, a lot of the development money that makes it into the Palestinian Territories or in Gaza in particular–how Hamas had the best of both worlds: basically, it outsourced its responsibility as a government to the United Nations, to UNRWA, and turned its people into aid-dependent subjects while it received funding from Iran for its militant component and armed resistance efforts and money from Qatar and other sources for its members, for its leaderships, for its government.

So, like, there’s just thousands and thousands worth of, I don’t know how to quantify them, call them words, call them pages, call them minutes of conversations that I have at recently and historically, and since 2006 when Hamas won the election since 2007, when they violently took over the Gaza Strip–they took over on June 14th, 2007, which was actually the very day that I was 17. But, I was here in the United States having a political asylum interview–the very day of my interview–when they took over.

So, all of that information enables me to be, like, ‘Okay, well, there’s obviously Israeli propaganda and some of it is real. Some of it has kernels of truth. Some of it I think is false.’ But, nevertheless, I have a detailed understanding of how nefarious and destructive and sinister Hamas is, in a way that a lot of others–including again, the well-intentioned pro-Palestine, people who think they know and think that simply by just focusing on Israel and everything is Israel’s fault–that that is somehow doing a service to the Palestinian people.

When I actually think it’s doing a disservice, because we need to normalize critique of Hamas. We need to isolate them. We need to humanize our people. We need to separate Hamas from Palestine. We need to condemn them and isolate them and call them out, not normalize them and call them resistance fighters and legitimize essentially the horror that they did on October 7th.

And, I try to write about this–I’ll leave you with this: One of the biggest challenges for me, unfortunately, and yes, I’m big on dialogue, I’m big on engagement, and I have a large following of pro-Israel folks or Zionists or self-described Zionists and right-wing Zionists, or left-wing Zionists, and centrists, or a lot of Israelis across the spectrum. And, that is deliberate. That is by design. Because that is an unreachable target audience right now, and I want to build bridges because peace and coexistence are the only path forward.

But, one of the challenges for me is that there’s so much that I know about Hamas. There’s stuff that I want to talk about Hamas. From–and, again, from their tunnel digging, from their use of civilian infrastructure, from their, even, strategies–indirect strategies–of using human shields: It’s not like they’re holding Gazans and being, like, ‘Okay, let me use you as a shield,’ but it’s an indirect strategy.

I want to write–I have tens of-, hundreds of thousands-worth of words that I want to write about it.

But I struggle; and I still am writing about it.

But, I struggle with that because that then gets picked up by folks who are blindly pro-Israel. And then, they use it to say, ‘Oh, look, Ahmed Alkhatib, he’s a Gazan[?]’–it gets used to dehumanize my people. It gets used to justify horrible mistakes by the IDF, including the killing of dozens of my family members to say, ‘Oh, well, don’t blame us.’ The idea of, ‘Blame Hamas for using them.’

That’s where I struggle: is, like, how can I relay this information as a matter of, like, a historical record? And, I have the gift of writing and the gift of just being, kind of, detached, a little bit, without inadvertently feeling the dehumanization of Gazans and my own people.

Ahmed Alkhatib: So, starting with October 13th, soon after the horrible events of October 7th and the massacre, that’s when my family home where I grew up was hit. It was–and I’ve kept in contact too with, like, I’ve kept tabs on understanding who are my family members? Who are they associated with? What are they doing? And, again, with the full confidence that I have, I can assure you that there were no tunnels or Hamas militants or fighters in that building where I grew up. Which is multiple stories. And each uncle–my dad and our family lived on one story, and then each uncle kind of builds above. That’s a very common Gazan practice due to the lack of space.

So, it was hit, with 33 people, no warning, and miraculously most survived in that building, although a lot of people were injured horribly. And then–and my brother and his children were there, and he has four kids, and he and his 13-year-old boy pushed their way out of the rubble to try to escape and everything was gone.

Then some of my uncles and some of my cousins moved over just a few houses down to try and seek safety with their in-laws. And then, on the 25th–about a week later or two weeks later–another massive strike basically wiped out the whole neighborhood, and that’s when I lost my dad’s brother, Uncle Riyad. We had lost my niece–my cousin’s daughter was 13 years old, she’s one of a twin–and my cousin, who was quadriplegic, then, who was, who became quadriplegic, and my uncle’s body wasn’t retrieved for nine days.

And then, slowly my brother and his family began moving from house to house, even southern Gaza, moving south within Gaza City. And he works for an international NGO [Non-Governmental Organization], and he was responsible for a lot of, not just some efforts that he was working on, but he was also, like, looking after our surviving family members who were in the Shifa Hospital and who were injured. And, basically he made the decision not to leave the north because he said if he left, they would die. There’s no one just to even change their gauze and administer basic, basic care due to just the sheer numbers of casualty. And then, they slowly started making their way down south.

Right now, Rafah is horrible. Yes, you see Rafah and Deir al Balah–you see resemblance of what looks like daily living, people walking around, people trying to fetch food, trying to fetch water, trying to fetch supplies. Some of that is just organic things that people have had, and it’s dwindling and running out. Some of that is those tiny bit of the trickle of aid, making it through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings.

There’s unfortunately–like, multiple things can be true also at once. For example, some people who have some money are able to afford the extremely expensive supplies that are in there. Some of these supplies are stolen aid goods that get resold for massively inflated prices. And, that’s done partly by Hamas, partly by organized crime, partly by just desperate civilians who are basically, they’re, like, ‘Okay, well, I have a little bit of food, but my mom has diabetes and there’s very little medication of that left in Gaza, but it costs a thousand shekels, and so I’m going to take the little bit of food that I have and go and do a little stand in the street and sell it.’

Some of that is barter-based system. Some of that is just utter desperation.

Also–and a lot of these things are incredibly uncomfortable to talk about–but I mean, we’re talking, people haven’t taken showers in weeks, and even if you do clean up, it’s simply just you do a basic wipe, you do just a basic wash. Imagine going through that. You can’t do a laundry. It’s cold. A lot of children and young girls are placed in horrendous crowded conditions. They’re at elevated risks of sexual abuse and being molested or whatever. Like, there’s just layers upon layers upon layers.

Then there’s obviously the elephant in the room, which is ongoing Israeli bombardment–ongoing in that it doesn’t always happen in a sustained fashion. Sometimes it’s like a series of strikes, successive strikes, and those tend to be particularly horrifying because when they happen, those tend to be like when you have the fight-or-flight response: there’s fight or flight or freeze. When a bunch of strikes happen at once and you see them and they surround you–and they call them these fire belts, these successive strikes–you’re, like, ‘Oh, where do we go? What do we do?’ Versus, like, one strike here: you know you can retreat somewhere.

So, then you have the threats of the incursions in Rafah where people are, like, ‘Well, okay, we want to head back up to Deir al Balah, to the center. My brother, who again went through seven different displacements, with each time the place that he and his team were at being partially or fully destroyed. Now they’re in Rafah. They found a place in central Gaza in Deir al Balah, and then all of a sudden after they found this place for his team, there was just an unprecedented increase in the amount of bombardment, such that two days ago–I’ve shared this on Twitter–there were three families that had fled Gaza, sorry, Rafah, and went to the center in anticipation of this military operation, and then they were killed, Deir al Balah. So, the horrible irony is that they might have been better off just staying in Rafah than leaving.

So, the IDF has identified a bunch of supposed safe zones along the coast–and we can talk about this more in detail later–but, you can’t simply just tell people, ‘Okay, well here’s a bunch of coastal areas’–right on the water, where it’s freezing, where there’s sand dunes. Like, there’s nothing. There is no infrastructure, no tents, no access to any food. You’re cut off from any tiny supplies that are coming through the Rafah crossing. People aren’t just going to pack up and say, ‘Okay, well let me leave my tent and whatever and go and freeze to death in front of the ocean.’ So, like, that’s where I have been calling for the IDF itself, because it has units there; the United Nations, Arab Nations, using small boats that can offload some tents and supplies and some food to make it feasible for people to just sustain themselves, to not freeze to death or starve to death onto the coast.

So it’s, again, layers upon layers from the bombardment, from the lack of treatment, from just–you have blood pressure, you have diabetes, you have any chronic illnesses and diseases, forget any kind of follow up or care, even having regular access to your medication. You have the weather conditions.

You have, even just–I had friends who were doctors who went in there as part of delegates to go and do surgeries in Deir al Balah and Khan Yunis’s Nasser Hospital before it was taken out of commission, and now they’re at the Emirati Field Hospital in Rafah or the Yousef El-Najar Hospital, which my uncle who was killed in an airstrike used to manage. He retired a few years ago. They speak of the stench, man[?] just of garbage everywhere–of the smell of dust, the smell of gunpowder, like I said, the lack of sanitation, the lack of people having showered, people having taken, people can’t do laundry. Just the smell of death. It’s just the stench. Gaza is now just has the stench of misery that you can just immediately detect, any- and everywhere you go.

Ahmed Alkhatib: To begin answering that is that I–and while I speak for myself, I can confidently tell you that a huge number of Gazans don’t want Hamas. They don’t want the group to be back in charge. They want this to end as soon as possible. We share the goal of seeing a fundamentally transformed Gaza with a different future and different administration.

I have studied elements of military science and insurgencies and counter-terrorism, intelligence and national security. And, what I will tell you is that unfortunately, there are inherent limits to what can be achieved militarily when organizations like Hamas or others hold hostages. I mean, look back at the crisis of the American hostages in Iran in 1979 and 1980. Look back at what happened with the pirates in Somalia, for years, initially, at least back in 2007, 2008, and 2009, when they would have taken hostages from commercial ships.

And, the strategy initially was very much so to have a negotiated settlement of a lot of these hostage-taking situations. Look at what happened with Bowe Bergdahl. I mean, there are multiple examples where–Bowe Bergdahl was a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who was released in a deal with the Taliban.

So, I don’t think there’s an alternative to negotiating with Hamas and to having a settlement that entails the release of some Palestinian prisoners.

Now, who gets released and how–I understand that’s the thorny sticking point. And, I also know that Hamas is now presenting pie-in-the-sky, like, ridiculous conditions or statements about–they call this the Aqsa flood, and now they want to present things about the Aqsa Mosque and what’s happening in Jerusalem, etc., which is not even under the Palestinian sovereignty. It’s like between Israeli control and the Jordanians. So, I do think Hamas’s negotiating strategy and positions are ridiculous.

And I wish–and you saw what I wrote in Foreign Policy. I called for unprecedented pressure on Qatar to get Hamas to moderate its position, even if we have to push the Qataris through kind of the cornerstone of their national security, which is the Al Udeid Air Base. And I’ve talked to–like, I put that out there because a lot of people are thinking it, but for some reason it’s very taboo in Washington to bring that out even though people are genuinely thinking it, and they know that Qatar would ditch Hamas–and wants to ditch Hamas, which is ultimately becoming a geopolitical headache.

So, that’s where I believe that–I don’t believe the military strategy right now is going to help with either retrieving the hostages–which we know a lot of hostages were killed by a lot of the bombardment. Yes, of course: like, it’s criminal for Hamas to have them in the first place, 1000%, but because of how they’re dispersed, in tunnels, above ground, among the population. And, because of few attempts we saw at increasing pressure on Hamas, hostages were killed by Israeli bombardment.

So, I dispute the idea with the exception of the limited successful operation, which we know came at the expense of dozens of Palestinian civilians and children in Rafah last week. This operation has not achieved that goal, Number One.

Number Two, in terms of degrading Hamas–I mean, I don’t think you can do both at once. I don’t think you can work out–you can pressure Hamas to release the hostages while also degrading the group’s military capabilities because of how they fight, because of how they’re embedded among the population. Even though you can weaken Hamas, you can’t fully eliminate them. And, I don’t know that eliminating Hamas fully and entirely should even be the goal. I think you weaken Hamas enough to prevent them from controlling Gaza, prevent them, obviously, from launching another massive attack on Israel.

And then, you do a political settlement to basically starting out with a long-term truce–5, 10, 15 years–between Israel and Hamas. You basically push for some kind of a political and administrative rehabilitation of Hamas–what remains of Hamas in Gaza–even though you offer alternate options for leadership to leave, but the actual rank and file.

Just like we saw with the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in the Oslo Peace Process, just like we saw with the FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] rebels in Colombia. Just like we saw with the IRA [Irish Republican Army] in Northern Ireland. There are precedents where people who were involved in either violent ideologies or extremist actions, with the exception of those who are maybe involved in especially egregious acts, there could be a political path forward to basically transform what remains of Hamas and turn them into a new administration.

That’s my vision, is: I don’t think the military operation–I’ve talked to families of hostages. I talked to a couple of former hostages who were held by Hamas and released. And I’ve been making a point of trying to humanize the hostages. And, any time I talk to Palestinians or pro-Palestine activists or people who want to do a ceasefire proposal or resolution, city councils and across the United States, I say, ‘Don’t call for a ceasefire without calling for the immediate and release of Israeli hostages. Pair both of them.’ Like, you cannot forget about the hostages. You cannot lose sight of the humanity of the hostages while also mourning the lives of dead Palestinians. So, I don’t believe the current campaign is going to retrieve the hostages, unfortunately. [More to come, 50:01]