Brian Lehrer:  Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll continue to get different perspectives on the war in the Middle East. On Friday, we had journalist Julia Ioffe from Puck News, who said she wrote from her Russian-Jewish background perspective about what she called historical illiteracy about the Jewish experience that many other people have.

Today we'll get some thoughts from Tahani Mustafa, Palestinian by background, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group with a focus on Palestinian affairs. The International Crisis Group is an independent organization working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world. That's how they describe themselves. A tough job right now. Dr. Mustafa has a background in security reform and security governance in the West Bank. She's worked with the United States Security Coordinator, and the Jordanian Public Security Directorate, and has been an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Mutah University in Jordan.

Dr. Mustafa, thank you for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Tahani Mustafa: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: I saw that you were quoted in a Washington Post article back in March called, "A new generation of Palestinian fighters is rising up in the West Bank." They quoted you saying that across the West Bank, "the widespread public frustration and desperation is there" for another Palestinian uprising. You said, "I think it's going to be a lot bloodier, far more diffused, far more fragmented." Can you describe what you were seeing back in March as some recent background before we get to the present?

Tahani Mustafa: There'd been a new phenomenon, or what everyone was classifying as a new phenomenon that had been brewing since 2021, May 2021, which was the last cross-border conflict we saw with Gaza and Israel in the Unity Intifada. For the last two years, you've seen younger generations of Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, which for a very long time, for the last decade and a half has been very quiet, start to resort to armed resistance. Even those that weren't necessarily engaged physically in armed resistance were starting to support the prospect of re-engaging in armed resistance, which for a long time has not been the policy of the Palestinian Authority or the governing party Fatah. They relinquished that trajectory of liberation during the signing of the Oslo Accords.

It was a huge moment, back in 2021, when you start to see the formation of armed factions primarily composed of young men that were 18 to 25. They had come from areas where the PA, or the Palestinian Authority, is largely marginalized. More importantly, they weren't affiliated to any single established faction, so they started to form their own groups. A lot of the thinking behind that was many of these young men were incredibly frustrated with the status quo. Many of them felt it was no longer sustainable.

This had nothing to do with economics, which was the perception at the time that these are young, deprived, poor young boys who have nothing better to do. That was not the case at all. A lot of them actually came from very well-to-do families. A lot of those that were engaging in armed resistance did not come from the poorest segments of their communities and the primary root of a lot of their drive was political. A lot of them were frustrated at the denial of their basic rights, like the freedom of movement. You could be born in Jenin or in a place like Nablus and never ever have the right to ever go to a place like Jerusalem, or never have the right to go visit Haifa and go to the beach.

That frustration really brewed and started to show itself or started to manifest itself in the form of armed resistance. For the last two years, especially since 2023 with the new right-wing government, I mean these last two years have been some of the deadliest in the West Bank since the Second Intifada.

Brian Lehrer: I saw you quoted in a Times of Israel story in October of last year about Palestinian feelings about Hamas. You cited "trends within the Palestinian political arena in which Hamas garners widespread support because it's the only organized alternative to Fatah," which is governing in the West Bank, "and the despised status quo it embodies." I think that we're still relating to the West Bank. Were you surprised by the attack from Gaza last week in that context?

Tahani Mustafa: No, not at all, and I don't think we should be treating these two territories as mutually exclusive. Because a lot of the sentiments that were being echoed in the West Bank are exactly the kind of sentiments that were being echoed back to us over the last week as to what drove this attack, as to what Hamas' conception of victory is, what the ultimate rationale behind all of this is, and how Gazans themselves are perceiving the cost and benefit to this. We really shouldn't be treating the sentiments that are being felt across the territories as two entirely different things. They're not at all.

There is a general united sense of frustration amongst Palestinians. To go back to that point about the support that Hamas was generating over the last year or over the last two years, there's a reason for that. Palestinians are completely divided politically, they've been divided for a very long time, but the one thing that they are united on is their frustration at the status quo.

In the absence of having any alternative, any viable political alternative to the governing party of Fatah, which has done its utmost to ensure that there has been no opposition to it over the last three decades, Hamas really is the only alternative. Not because people are necessarily religiously inclined, but because the Left are completely divided, Palestinian civil society is almost nonexistent, all other factions and political parties exist in all but name. The only viable opposition, organized opposition is a group like Hamas, whether it's politically or militarily.

Brian Lehrer: How popular among Gazans has the Hamas leadership been, though? Reading now from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank website describing a poll conducted in July that found Hamas' decision to break the ceasefire with Israel at that time, not as much in the global news as what's happening now, but that was a thing in the summer, was not a popular move.

It says, "While the majority of Gazans, 65%, did think it likely that there would be a large military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza this year, a similar percentage, 62%, supported Hamas maintaining a ceasefire with Israel." Moreover, it says, "Half, 50%, agreed with the following proposal. Hamas should stop calling for Israel's destruction and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders." Finally, it says, "Across the region, Hamas has lost popularity over time among many Arab publics. This decline in popularity may have been one of the motivating factors behind the group's decision to attack."

I'm curious how much you agree or disagree with that political analysis and take those numbers as meaningfully representative.

Tahani Mustafa: There's far more nuance there than just concrete statistics and certain checkboxes that often come with statistic polling, but I will say this. There is some partial truth to that. Hamas' lack of popularity is certainly something that is hard to grapple with for quite a few years now. That's primarily because it has an abysmal governing record. Hamas is, like I said, no different to Fatah necessarily. I mean, in terms of being an organized opposition, yes, but otherwise, in terms of its governing record, corruption, the way that it too has in Gaza clamped down on dissent, people are equally unhappy with Hamas as they are with Fatah.

I think we need to start thinking about Hamas as any other kind of political party. Not all Palestinians necessarily adhere to its ideology or support it, but that doesn't mean that the frustration that Palestinians feel is enough to completely rule out an organization like Hamas that really does present the last vestige of organized resistance to the occupation. Because ultimately, whatever their micro differences may be amongst Palestinians, one thing they are united on is their frustration at the status quo.

Now at the time, yes, many Gazans, and including our own colleague, by the way, who we have now on the ground in Gaza, many Gazans were anticipating an attack at any moment. Many just felt the situation was completely on edge for the last two years and everyone was anticipating something kicking off. Again, I can't really speak to how that polling was done, but from the sentiments that myself and other observers who have been on the ground for the last year were getting was that something like this may not be what people necessarily wanted, but at this point in time, Hamas has managed to-- at a time where it has been deeply unpopular, it's moments like this where its support tends to see a rise.

That's what we're seeing, is that there are numerous segments of the Palestinian population that, again, do not adhere to its ideology but do support what it ultimately represents, which is pushback. Pushback against what? In the West Bank has been the deadliest year for Palestinians against the backdrop of continued Israeli-targeted assassinations, search and arrest operations, which have numbered something like 500 a week for the last year now. We're seeing the continued process of settlement, expansion, land grab, settler attacks, especially with the new government, that has only served to embolden settler violence in the Gaza Strip. Gaza has been under a blockade for the last 17 years. Life has been completely uninhabitable.

When Hamas did conduct its operation, the fact that you had vast amounts of Gazan civilians joining in on that-- this was something they kept very tight-lipped, even their own political leadership were not aware of it. The fact that you had vast amounts of civilians and the fact that it actually gave Palestinians a real sense of agency for the first time-- for many, when we were trying to gauge public sentiment in both territories, the first thing people were saying was for the first time, it was clear Israel cannot act with complete impunity, which is what the international community allowed for it.

Brian Lehrer: You're saying agency in the form of killing 1,300 civilians and taking hostages, right?

Tahani Mustafa: No. No, that is not what I'm saying. Actually, that has been very much condemned amongst many Palestinians. Unfortunately, it's not something that the international media has really given a voice to. In fact, I think Palestinian analysts have largely been very much omitted from that analysis. We're not talking about the killing of 1,300 civilians. We're talking about the breakdown of a separation barrier that was quite literally the very thing that was caging Gazans inside a territory that they've been physically trapped in for the last 17 years.

We're talking about the fact that they were able to take down Israel's southern command, its southern command that has been quite literally governing the Gaza Strip, what comes in, what goes out, for the last 17 years. That's where they felt pride, not in the killing of 1,300 civilians. If anything, that has been widely condemned amongst Palestinians, but unfortunately, like I said, it's a narrative that Western media has very much deliberately omitted.

Again, Hamas were very clear in its orders, and this is no justification, but Hamas were clear in the orders it gave. Now, like I said, there were numerous factions involved and many civilians had crossed in with them, so what ended up happening there is something that at some point will, hopefully, be properly verified and those culprits will be properly brought to account. That's not to say that Hamas doesn't share some responsibility in that, but that misses the point of the larger context that really surrounds what the initial operation was.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for Tahani Mustafa from the International Crisis Group on Palestinian politics and circumstances mostly, and the role of Arab countries we'll get to, and a little bit of the US perhaps in those things in Palestinian politics and circumstances. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Dr. Mustafa, on that bigger picture in the last 17 years, as you were just describing it, Israel's version is that it always says it wouldn't be doing any kind of siege of Gaza over the many years since they ended the formal occupation, except that Hamas has continued to attack. I'm curious if you disagree. Supporters of Israel would ask, what other motivation would Israel have? They even forced Israeli settlers to leave at that time. Very different from their actions in the West Bank, to be sure, but they'll tell you they wanted to be done with Gaza, but Hamas would never let them, with its tunnels and its rockets, continuing to fight rather than use their resources to govern the country.

Fair point by Israel to any degree in your view?

Tahani Mustafa: No, not at all. By the way, those that had been evacuated from Gaza were resettled in the West Bank, and those settlements have tripled in number for the last two, three decades. Quite literally, settlements are now triple the number that they were. Those that were in Gaza had been resettled back in the West Bank, where Palestinians have continued to see the loss of land up until today.

With regards to the siege of Gaza. Look, ultimately, first of all, let's just bear in mind that Hamas' takeover of the Strip was partially a result of the fact that Israel and the US, with the help of European countries, had preempted a coup against what was then a legitimately elected government, the government of Hamas. They had preempted a coup, which is how we ended up seeing Hamas then take over the Gaza Strip. Since then, we have literally seen the continued blockade of the Gaza Strip, and whatever concessions Israel has offered have been very, very minute. On top of that, that Strip has been subject to numerous Israeli assaults.

You may see a few rockets coming out from here and there, but a lot of that has to do with the frustration at the blockade and various political factions, not just Hamas, and various frustrated Palestinians trying to put some pressure where the international community has failed in order to lift that blockade. Again, Palestinians in Gaza have tried numerous mechanisms, not just through rocket fire, which, by the way, there have been periods where things have been completely quiet.

I remember a few years ago, actually on Israel's own Ministry of Defense website, they actually had a kind of tracking monitor for moments of quiet on the border of the Gaza Strip. There was a period, I think it was before the 2018 assault, where literally not a single rocket had been fired from Gaza for quite a few months. What had preempted that war was an Israeli assault. I think that that whole narrative needs to be completely debunked.

Again, context here is critical. Gazans have tried everything. Back in 2018, we also had, don't forget, the great return march where Palestinians, Gazans were going to the border fence with Israel peacefully demonstrating and hundreds, thousands were shot at. They had an actual policy to quite literally target protestor limbs. It was absolutely insane the images we were seeing, the fact that they were targeting, again, journalists, medics, in clear violation of international law. Gazans have tried everything.

Hamas has tried to-- and again, this is no defense of Hamas, but again to claim that Hamas has not engaged in any kind of conciliatory politics with Israel is completely false. Hamas has been entirely politically marginalized for the last 17 years. Despite the fact that today you have an Israeli right-wing government that doesn't even conform with the same standards the international community has put on an organization like Hamas in order to engage with it politically, but yet we're continuing to see the same engagement with Israel on every level: economic, political, security. The duality of approach here and the hypocrisy is absolutely outstanding.

Brian Lehrer: Lou in Belle Mead, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Tahani Mustafa. Hello, Lou. Lou, are you there? Lou once, Lou twice. Let's try Mendel in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Mendel, can you hear me? No? All right. I guess we're having some trouble with the phones.

Dr. Mustafa, you're still there, right?

Tahani Mustafa: Yes, I'm still here.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip from CNN State of the Union program yesterday of former US UN ambassador under Trump, Nikki Haley, now Republican presidential primary candidate, speaking about the Arab states.

Nikki Haley: Where is Qatar? Where is Lebanon? Where is Jordan? Where is Egypt? Do you know we give Egypt over a billion dollars a year? Why aren't they opening the gates? Why aren't they taking the Palestinians? You know why? Because they know they can't vet them and they don't want Hamas in their neighborhood. Why would Israel want them in their neighborhood? Let's be honest with what's going on. The Arab countries aren't doing anything to help the Palestinians because they don't trust who is right, who is good, who is evil, and they don't want it in their country. They're going to come and blame America, they're going to come and blame Israel, and don't fall for it because they have the ability to fix all of this if they wanted to. They have the ability to go in and tell Hamas right now to stop what they're doing.

Brian Lehrer: CNN State of the Union show had Nikki Haley there yesterday. Dr. Mustafa, how much do you disagree or agree with any of that?

Tahani Mustafa: Again, I would have to completely disagree with that. The logic here is ultimately that these countries have not created this problem, so why should they then have to take the responsibility of dealing with any spillover? More importantly, Jordan has the largest number of Palestinian refugees in the region and in the world and again, it was a problem that Jordan never created. The same thing for Egypt. The rationale here is why should it have to take on a problem it hasn't created or has no part in.

Secondly, there's no assurances that Israel will allow for those refugees to go back. That is the real concern here, is will those Gazan refugees be made permanent refugees just like Palestinians before them in 1948 and in 1967? I think that is a very, very [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: You mean if Egypt were to allow them in, correct?

Tahani Mustafa: Yes, that's correct. The concern is that there are no assurances from the Israeli side that those refugees would be allowed back into their land.

Brian Lehrer: I think we can try Lou in Belle Mead again. Lou, you're on WNYC. Do we have you now?

Lou: Yes. Hi. I wanted to make the point that when discussing this, a lot of people talk about Palestine and Gaza being, A, apartheid, but then they don't follow through with the analogy and realize that apartheid was solved peacefully by visionaries who were very, very frustrated too, like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu. That in today's day and age, if you're going to throw off your colonial masters or oppressors, you have to look to them, to Mahatma Gandhi, to Martin Luther King.

Post 9/11, terrorism will just set you back time and time again. The ANC learned this lesson when they were fighting apartheid. They engaged in a bit of terrorism and it kept backfiring. Reagan and Thatcher kept portraying them as evil terrorists, even though that wasn't entirely true, but they just kept losing the PR war of being portrayed as terrorists, so they stopped that eventually and started engaging in economic sanctions and getting the West to divest in investing in South Africa. That's what led to the process of gaining their rights and freedom.

When they got equal treatment, they didn't seek revenge. They didn't seek vengeance. They weren't then trying to oppress the white ruling class in South Africa. They formed a homogenous power-sharing agreement. I feel like this is the model, the only model that would work with regards to Israel and Palestine.

Brian Lehrer: Lou, thank you very much. Dr. Mustafa, what do you think?

Tahani Mustafa: Again, I think that's a bit of a kind of sanitized view of history. Each of these liberation movements did have very violent elements to them, and that always came in tandem with some of the more peaceful trajectories they then tried to pursue. Let's just bear in mind here that when you talk about economic pressure, when you talk about diplomatic pressure, Palestinians have had the most conciliatory leadership in their history for the last three decades in the form of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah. In that time, they have not seen a viable Palestinian state, not even anything resembling a viable Palestinian state. At this point when we talk about the death of the two-state solution, that is because Israel has effectively consumed so much land in that time that there is literally nothing left, territorially speaking, of a viable Palestinian state, never mind economically.

Again, Palestinians have tried going down the route of economic sanctions through campaigns like PACBI, like BDS, and they've been met with the typical anti-Semitic designations and attempts to outlaw them. Again, protests. Palestinians have tried protesting. They have tried elections. They have tried going to the ICC. They have tried every avenue possible, and not any of that has been enough to generate any kind of substantial support from Western policymakers. I say Western policymakers here because they are the ones that ultimately do have the leverage to pressure Israel. We've seen time and time again Israel get away with complete impunity when it has outright violated international law.

When we talk about a system of apartheid, again, Palestinians are divided on this issue as well, so we also have to be very careful when we try and frame mechanisms of liberation around a concept like apartheid. Because Palestinians, because of the way that they've been divided geographically, again, by Israel, the way that they understand apartheid and see apartheid as an operational term is very different. For those living in 1948 territories within Israel, they suffer an entirely different system of discrimination where they are classed as second-class citizens. When you talk about Palestinians in the occupied territory, you're talking about outright settler colonialism. Apartheid is just one element of that.

When Palestinians talk about apartheid, they talk about it, at least in the occupied territories, not within the frame of wanting a one state or equal rights. They talk about it in the sense of wanting liberation. Not many Palestinians want to live in a state under Israel. Many of them want their own state because they fear for what that means for their national rights. Again, these are discussions that they cannot have because continuously, whenever they do, they're slapped with these designations of anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli discourse.

Brian Lehrer: To follow up on the last caller's question and to ask a closing question of you, he was framing it in terms of what would be successful for the Palestinian cause. I saw you were quoted saying, "I don't think anyone really knows what the endgame is at the moment, but given the amount of planning involved in the assault last Saturday, it's difficult to imagine that Hamas hasn't tried to strategize every possible scenario," you said. Here we see Israel going to the extremes that it's going to, to try to destroy at least the current leadership of Hamas and their infrastructure, at least the military infrastructure. They're destroying a lot of other pieces of infrastructure with it, unfortunately.

How does this end well for the Hamas leadership? What endgame do you think they might have if they strategized this from the beginning, assuming they anticipated this kind of response from Israel?

Tahani Mustafa: I'm sorry. Just to go back to the previous point, my point was Palestinians have pursued more peaceful mechanisms that have pushed away from armed resistance. [crosstalk] This reversion to armed resistance is a new phenomenon. My point is they've never been able to generate the fair support that it deserves because again, they've always been smacked with the same accusations of anti-Semitism.

Brian Lehrer: Understood.

Tahani Mustafa: With regards to Hamas' endgame. Ultimately, look, no one knows what their endgame is. Again, like I said, their political leadership were kept out of the loop when it came to this operation, so even they couldn't really necessarily give you a clear picture of what their endgame is, but it is very clear from what we can tell is that Hamas is now trying to shake up the status quo. What it is ultimately trying to achieve is a change in the status quo, and a change in the way that both Israel and the international community deal with Palestinians and their demands.

This just goes back to a sentiment that was echoed to me when I started working on these armed groups. When I was asking why young people were starting to suddenly engage in armed resistance and clashes and what had suddenly made the West Bank start to make some noise, which like I said, had been very silent, had been very quiet for the last decade and a half, Palestinians were unanimously in agreement at the idea. I'm quoting one of the militants here when he said, "When Palestine is quiet, the whole world ignores us. Everyone's attention is diverted elsewhere. But suddenly when something kicks off here, the whole world's attention is on us." That's exactly what you can now see being echoed by Hamas.

Brian Lehrer: Tahani Mustafa, Senior Analyst at the International Crisis Group with a focus on Palestinian affairs. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Tahani Mustafa: Thank you. Thanks.

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