Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Meherbel jarekontaktmet ali salim an palestine die besloftan.
Er.
And the palestine huite in a vruchtlingen camp and warum helovte freda alain mohlicis also palestine criti surface in dese exclusifending dild ali sein verhal.
Ali we can only speak to you in this video call when your face is not visible and your voice is blurred. We also use a fake name for you. Can you explain why this is the case?
[00:01:18] Speaker B: First of all, thank you Sarah for this opportunity of which I'm gonna share with you some of my thoughts, some of my life experiences during the last, the last several years, ever since October 7th. I mean, I would like to share with you more because I, I believe I personally started a different journey inside Israeli society, getting to know the Jewish story and the Jewish narrative, which made my thoughts totally different and totally changed. And this is the journey of change that I went through personally.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: But we cannot look you in the face, huh?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Why is this.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: That's the part, yeah, that's the part that I'm gonna, that makes, that makes, makes it difficult so many times for me to share my thoughts with my real identity and showing my face and with my real voice. Because unfortunately, talking generally speaking about the Arab culture, the Arab culture doesn't accept self criticism, doesn't accept those who oppose the strain. It's unfortunately, it's a culture of obedience.
So if you want to narrow this a little bit and go drop deeper inside the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the different and the non mainstream ideas, opinions and thoughts are also not welcomed.
And as you all know, the, the Arab culture and the Palestinian culture as part of it is, is the honor based culture. You have to always care about your reputation, you always have to care about your, your social reputation which is part of your honor. Because the moment you lose it, basically you lose a lot. And it's not only you, it's. It's your, your, your family members, your friends, your, your beloved ones. And unfortunately this is what happens.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: What would be the reaction if you would talk to us publicly, showing your face, showing your voice and your real name?
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So what would happen sometimes cannot be expected, but there would be harm done. So for instance, if you oppose, for instance at this time, if you oppose what Hamas did, if you oppose what so many Palestinian factions did on October 7th or even before that, you would be portrayed as a betrayal, as the one who stabs his people and his people struggle in the back.
And this, this adds the connotation of being a corporate cooperator with the. With the Israelis, of course. And that of your being portrayed this way in such society, in the Palestinian society, this opened the door widely for the harm you might be physically harmed, People may burn. If you have car or a house, people may burn this.
But the most important thing is that your social reputation, you will lose your social reputation. You will be portrayed as the traitor. And this leaves no place for you to live in this place anymore.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: No. But you still choose to do it, to speak out, even though we have to blur your voice and use a fake name. Is it worth the risk for you?
[00:04:29] Speaker B: For me, it's worth it. Definitely worth it. And again, I'm doing my best because. Because of course you have to care about your safety.
But of course it's worth it, because I want. I want the world. I want everyone who hears this and who hears, or he already heard my speech and my opinions and my perspectives in the past to know that there are Palestinians who are thinking differently. There are pragmatic Palestinians who are thinking about the future more than about the past. They don't want to be stuck with the past and its issues, and they want to face the reality as is thinking and hoping for a better future between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: We're going to talk about the future more, of course. But first of all, you live in a refugee camp on the West Bank. Can you describe to me what life in the refugee camp looks like?
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
So this, this has been always the very tough question, because to describe or to talk about something you will never be able to, to deliver exactly the way it is, but I will do my best to do that.
So I always portray the refugee camp and refugee camps in general west bank and Gaza as exactly the sardine can or the tuna can, because you lack the very basics in life, including the space, a little bit space around you, including. And this, this space inside your house, inside your school, in the street.
You grow up as a child craving some of the basics that each and every child hopes for, which is a place to play, some green area, playground, etc. So everything.
Yeah, so you fantasize a green area, you fantasize a playground. You fantasize a place that you can practice your childhood as a, As a, As a, As a. As a child to just play, which is the very basic right of yours.
So everything is tight. Your house has barely space for you, your school has barely space for you. I remember from my childhood when usually we spent nine years studying at the UNRWA schools because The UNRWA is in charge of the refugee camps regarding the education, regarding the health care and some municipal issue, just like the cleaning.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: You mentioned the unrwa, which is the UN organization who is responsible for the Palestinian refugees, such as yourself, and you describe how the place is crowded, but I can imagine that many people would think that if you live in a refugee camp, you live in tents. Do you live in tents?
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yes. This is the irony, because as part of my work in the past, I used to bring foreigners to visit the camp and to have some little tour inside. And they were shocked. They were asking me, where are the tents? And I said, we don't have, we don't live in tents anymore. We live in, in this certain area that is, in a way, surrounded by so many. But basically we live in, I don't want to say normal or average houses, but you know, it's just like a huge forest of cement, tall buildings, tight buildings, but it's not, it's not dense anymore. That's how it started 70 years ago, but not anymore.
So.
So the UNRA, the United nations for Relief and Working Agency, which was, as you said, specified, and its work was specified to the Palestinian refugees, is in charge of the education, is in charge of the health care, and is in charge of the, some, some municipal issues in the camp.
And this has been the situation ever since my experience as a child, when I was, when I studied for nine years there until now, it's the overcrowdness. As a part of my work, I do visit the, the schools and I do visit.
We, we actually, we have two schools, one one for boys because the education is always separate.
So as part of my work, I do visit there and I unfortunately see the same overcrowdness, some classes that have around 55 to 60 students in the same class.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: So you say it's very crowded. Is the refugee campus safe place to live?
[00:08:42] Speaker B: To be honest, under the current circumstances, due to the fact that the Palestinian refugee camps represent also the, the source of the political activity in the past, I could say, I could argue that not right now, it's a lot less than it used to be, but during some certain times, during for instance, the second intifada in 2000, 2000 till 2004, the Palestinian refugee camps were actually the heart of the intifada. So many Palestinians, so many of the, the fighters and the, and the ones who committed suicide bombings, they were actually refugees who lived in these camps. So basically these camps were always the targets due to the fighting and fighting back of the clashes between the Palestinians and the Israelis right now, I could see that the situation is much different. It's much, much more quiet than it used to be, yet it's still dense. But generally speaking, it's not unsafe and it's not safe. It's just like in between.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to talk with you later a bit more about the refugee camp. But first I want to talk with you about the war, because almost three years now, Israel in war with its neighbors, with Hamas, with Hezbollah, and also with Iran.
Can you describe to me in one sentence how you have experienced this period?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Sometimes I don't find the words, sir, the words fail me to describe how awful this experience is in all aspects, social, economic, political.
And the most important is the future.
Because I can't find a better word than the words that, that Yahya as Sinwar used.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: The Hamas leader in Hamas in Gaza.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Exactly. The former Hamas leader was actually, as they call it, as he called him, the engineer behind the attacks of October the seventh. He said, he said it literally. And this is exactly what I'm witnessing and what you are witnessing also, not only here, but also in the West. He said the main purpose of this attack was to create a political earthquake that's going to start in the Middle east and will resonate in the West. And until this very moment, I'm living the consequences of this unstopped earthquake, political wise, economic size, social wise. So talk about the politics.
Ever since October 7, we are living now in a state of regard because as you know, the Israeli army is in charge of west bank or in control of West Bank.
So ever since that, we're living under, as it's called the martial law or the emergency martial law. This means more checkpoints, this means more soldiers, more presence of the military in west bank, more.
For, for instance, before the war, I would barely remember the, the army invading my refugee camp. But ever since October 7th, this is becomes like, like a monthly habit.
So this is one aspect, another aspect, which is which, which affects my life and so many Palestinians life the most, which is the economic wise. Because on October 6, just at one day, right before the attack, there were around 200,000 Palestinians working on a daily basis in Israel in construction, in hospitals, in so many fields, but mainly in construction.
And we're talking about 200,000, you're talking about the population of west bank is about 3 million Palestinians.
200,000 means those are in charge of nearly a million Palestinians who are basically getting their income from Israel because they were working on a daily basis in Israel. And ever since October 7, no Palestinian is allowed to get inside Israel. I mean the vast majority of those now, they lost their job. Imagine three years living as a part of that. Because when you, when you work in Israel you get the Israeli income and I don't know, maybe we should address that, the difference, the economic difference between the Palestinian economy and the Israeli economy. So as a Palestinian, if I'm working in construction in West Bank, I would get probably to maybe, maybe a thousand dollar or less per month. But if I'm working Israel, I would get at least twice as much, 2,000 or $3,000 per month.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: So the economic impact is also huge because of the war.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: This is the major impact I could see.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: How did you yourself experience what happened on October 7th when you saw the images of destruction by Hamas in Israel and the rapes and the kidnapping of people? What did you think when you saw these images?
[00:13:23] Speaker B: You know, the attack took place exactly about 6am, 7am and I woke up at the, the sound of the sirens due to Hamas's attacks by rockets. And then gradually, and this is, this was the, the saddest part in my eyes that I really got to a point that I couldn't be watching anymore because the images, the clips that Hamas members who were committing the attacks, who were killing and who were murdering people, they were taking the clips and the photos by themselves, spreading this on in the very beginning on TikTok and then later on they were deleted.
But they were flooding the social media in the very beginning.
They were taking photos of them carrying the bodies and of course taking the hostages. Some of them were alive, some of them were just bodies.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: But what did you think when you saw all these images?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: It was so sad for me to see such terrible images.
It's unbelievable. I mean I didn't believe that one day I would see people committing and killing on like life on, on, on, on Tick Tock and on other social medias. So this, this is, this is like a heart bleeding scene. You, you really don't believe what you're seeing and you don't believe that there are human beings who could do this and just document what they're doing.
So in a way they were proud of what they're doing. They were, they were very proud from, from what, from the footages that they saw. They were very proud. They were different, that they were doing something honorable while they're doing, they were, they were massacre innocent people there.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: And what was the reaction that you found in the refugee camp where you, where you live? From the people there were. They happy about 7th of October or did they condemn it?
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Now to be honest, the reactions were varied, were different.
The major reaction was actually, of course in the very beginning everybody was shocked.
But deep inside you know that Israel is going to retaliate. Israel is going to, to take revenge. Because what happened on that day was, wasn't something, wasn't something easy or simple as, as the. Let's say. I don't want to say that the, the previous operations were simple or simple, but what happened was a crisis. Literally a crisis. So deep inside the vast majority of the people whom I know around me, where I don't want to say they were happy or they were sad, but they were worried because okay, what will happen tomorrow? What will happen to my, to the, to the, to the current situation? What will happen to the economy?
I wanted to next day because the vast majority of the Palestinian actually they're not, you know, they belong to the, to the middle class. I work day by day. If I don't get my income today, I'm gonna be on death the day after. So the vast majority were worried about their income. But also there were, there was a, there was a certain percent of them who actually, they felt happy because they felt what Hamas did was basically taking revenge. They took the revenge of a 70 year old conflict that they finally killed Jews, they finally, finally killed Israelis. They finally showed the Israelis humiliated because, because so many times you feel that this conflict is what. Who's whom you humiliating. Who The. The Palestinians and the Arabs feel humiliated by the Israelis for 70 years due to their endless defeats.
But they saw that this day is actually the day that Israel and Israelis were humiliated. So I'm not hiding. There were many Palestinians who were happy. Many were also distributing sweets. And even there was a reaction that I couldn't forget. There was a person who I met and he said, you know, I would, I would say that October 7th is gonna be my birthday from my own, from, from, from, from this day on
[00:17:08] Speaker A: because it was such an important day.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Many people as a victory.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: You said that, you know, the reactions from your village, they were different to October 7th in the beginning. He also said, you know, that it's not accepted in the Palestinian society to speak out against your own leaders. But can you speak out against Hamas?
[00:17:32] Speaker B: No. Right now I could say before October 7, because just, just to make the picture clear here we have a, we have, we have a very deep division between west bank and Gaza. Ever since 2006 when Hamas took over Gaza Strip and Fatah took over West Bank. It was okay for you to criticize Hamas in West bank, and it was okay for, for the, for the Gazans, for the Palestinian living Gaza to criticize Fatah because of this state of division, deep division between them.
Ever since October 7, the situation became different because now it, this took us back to the situation where it was in 2000. Now Hamas is the freedom fighter that you cannot criticize. So if you criticize them, basically you are stabbing your people in the back. You are, you are, you're. You're stabbing the struggle of your people. You're stabbing your freedom fighters, basically. So of course you cannot criticize them.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: No. So what is, what actually is happening after October 7th in Europe is that worldwide, not only in Europe, but worldwide, many people are protesting against Israel and they're cheering for a free Palestine, many of them also calling for a global intifada. What is your opinion about this? That this is happening worldwide?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I see this all the time, actually, with social media, and I see how demonstrators are flooding in the streets calling for free Palestine. From the river to the sea.
The part that I always doubt is to what extent do those people know about me as a Palestinian? To what extent do they know about Palestine and to what extent do they know about the reality? Do they really know what river from the sea means or from the river to the sea means? Do they know about me? Do they know about my struggle?
What exactly they know because sometimes your enemy is actually the one who supposedly, who, who wants to support you, but he's blind about you.
And sometimes that. This is the way that I see it. So many of those people, I mean, again, I'm not expert in this field because my, My ex is limited. I'm not so familiar with, with, with, with what's going on in campus. And this I just see, I just get my information from the social media.
But what I see the most or what I.
The way I see it from my own perspective is that many of the demonstrators, they don't demonstrate for me because they love me as much as they hate Jews and Israelis.
So it's not based on the love and the support of the Palestinians as much as in the base of the hate to the Jews and the Israelis, which is something very, very problematic.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So if we're talking about the conflict that is constantly in the news, also in Europe, we see that also the bank is regularly a news item because of the violence of Jewish settlers against Palestinians.
Do you experience this kind of violence from Jewish people living in the neighborhood?
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah, this is an important issue. Because this phenomenon also had dramatically increased right after October 7, which is the extreme. Jewish settlers were living in the. In the Jewish areas and the Jewish settlements in West Bank.
Now, personally, this is something, you know, I can always, or I always experience it even in the middle of the darkest times. You can find some little lights here and there. So, for instance, I live in a place where I used to have some good relation with settlers. Friendship.
We built things together. We, you know, even during the war, we would keep checking with each other, we would ask each other, how do you do? How do you feel?
So one of the, one of the things, one of the victories that I think I decided that I kept these relations and because these hard times are the time that you experience whether this relation is. Is genuine or not. So hopefully and successfully, I've managed to keep personal relation with many people whom they. People call settlers. I don't call them settlers. They're human beings like me. The problem is that in. In the north of Uzbekistan, there is the phenomena that. That started increasing right after October 7th, which is the extreme. The extremists who started settling in these Jewish areas started inciting, started commit violent crimes against Palestinians while living around.
So in this case, they want to see that the violence or the settlers violence is all over West Bank. In certain areas there are some good relations. And on the contrary, I could, I could say from my own experience that in some villages, in some Palestinian villages, they were calling their friends, their settlers friends to protect them from other settlers. And they did.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: This is a whole other image than what we hear in the news here.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Exactly. And this I was personally involved in some of these incidents. And it happened so many times that the people who we are in touch with inside the Israeli settlements, they managed to protect us and to secure. Because the moment those extreme settlers know that there are Israelis there or there are Israelis involved in a way, they just don't attack or don't approach to these areas. And this is, in a way, I believe it's one of the fruits that we did because we built some good relationship together before October 7th.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Exactly. So talking about a life in the refugee camp, because many Palestinians who live in the refugee camp are descendants from the Palestinian Arabs that fled during the war in 1948.
So what about you and your family? Have you been living in the refugee camp since 48 for generations?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, it started with my grandfather who was in 1948, living in a village, one of the suburbs of Jerusalem.
And what happened after the establishment of Israel and the United nations decision of the separation or establishing an Arab state and an Israeli state, a Jewish state, due to the refusal of the Arab League back then to this.
To this situation. As a consequence, there was the war.
My village had experienced something which was. There was the Iraqi soldiers there, and the Iraqi soldiers in 1948, they have asked all the family or the.
Or the village members or the ones who are living in the village. In my grandfather village back then were nearly 500 people. They asked them to leave this area until the Arab League armies and the, The Arab armies just wipe Israel out of the map and wipe the Jews out of the map. Literally, they said it.
So my grandfather and the people of the village, they. They followed the instruction of the Arab League soldiers and they left and they left.
And again, this is an experience because in some experience, some other villages, yes, there were fights, they were clashes, they were massacres. It's a war.
But there were also different experiences because so many of the refugees, they just fled in advance. They were scared for their life, so they fled. Doesn't mean that the massacres happened there or, or there was bloodshed. But generally speaking, there was a refugee issue. Around 700,000 Palestinians fled to several places, including West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. So what happened with my grandfather that he left with all the village, the people of the village and until hoping that what that this war would end and following the instruction of the Arab League soldiers at some point, it's a huge return.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So since then your family has lived in the refugee camp. Have you ever wished to live somewhere else, to move out of the refugee camp?
[00:25:35] Speaker B: This is actually one of my dreams, and I just maybe want to stress something here.
The refugee camp is not surrounded by a physical barrier or a physical wall. It's actually surrounded by two barriers.
One of them is the emotional barrier, and the second one which is the most important is the financial barrier, the emotional barrier, which means.
I'm not talking about my generation, because my generation now, we're just hoping to leave the camp somewhere else where we can live a decent life.
But the previous generation, they had this emotional barrier, which is me being in this camp means that I keep my right of return, which is one of the.
One of the lies that the UNRWA and the Palestinian National Movement had installed inside the Palestinian mindset. But the most important barrier that prevents me from leaving the camp basically is financial.
There were many Palestinians who used to live in this camp. They worked, they succeeded, and they left the camp.
So basically, if someone who has enough money or even some enough financial Support. They wouldn't say no to the idea of leaving the camp and living in a decent place.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: So you say it's very hard to leave the camp because of the financial situation that many refugees are in. Is that correct?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Right now, this is the main obstacle. It's economical, it's mainly financial barrier.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: So you mentioned already a few times unrwa, the UN organization for the Palestinian refugee camps. Can you describe what the role of UNRWA is for the Palestinians in the West Bank?
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
So back to history. In 1949, when the United nations decided to establish this specific organization that would just take care specifically of the Palestinian refugee issue, the UNRWA started functioning in and out 19, 1949.
And its basic job was to sustain the Palestinian refugee issue until there is a solution to the refugee issue.
So basically back to the story of my grandfather when he left his village somewhere else.
The unra, the UNWRA workers, wherever they saw that there are Palestinian gathering in a certain place, they provided them with tents. They provided them with some basic food, basic health care. And it was needed back then because it was during the war, refugees, etc. But what happened next, which is the part that really deeply rooted the Palestinian refugee issue, made it more complicated than to solve it, which is that the UNRWA started building camps and started deepening the idea of a Palestinian refugee camp. In the Palestinian mindset that you're going to stay here as long as you say you're going to stay refugees and hoping that one day you will return.
So the camp, this is why we don't have tents anymore. In the very beginning, there were tents. Then gradually these tents became small like rooms each, each family. Like, I remember my grandmother, my grandfather used to tell me that in the very beginning, when they moved from the tent to a small room, it was like about 10 people in one room. But the whole idea of changing the tent to something concrete, this means you are building something here. Tents are movable. So you would know one day, okay, this, this camp is not my destiny.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: But the house is permanent.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Exactly. The house is permanent. A concrete is permanent. And this is what the UNRWA did. They deepened the idea of a refugee camp inside the Palestinian mindset as a way of showing the world here there are Palestinians who are suffering there. And this deepened the refugee mentality inside the Palestinian refugees.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Is this also deepening the problem that Palestinians are facing now?
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Definitely. It deepened the victimhood mentality. Your I'm a refugee, I'm whining here. The world owes me. Everyone in this the west owes me because deep inside in the Palestinian mindset, the west is the reason behind establishing Israel and establishing Israel is the reason why there are refugees so deep inside in the Palestinian mindset. This deepened the victimhood mentality. And what's worse, it deepened the Palestinian independence because instead of thinking, okay, I need to leave this camp to think about a better future, no, I'm whining here. I'm stick, I'm sticking to this place. And the world owes me, this whole world owes me to pay me and to send me money. You know, sometimes I'm thinking about the budget of the, of the honor. It's billions over the over 70 years, over nearly seven decades, billions of billions worsened to the other. Instead of just settling the conflict or settling the air, Palestinian refugee issues and integrating them wherever they are, whether they're in west bank or Gaza or Lebanon or Syria or Jordan, they were just deepening the problem by spending more money on sustaining the problem than the integration of the Palestinian refugees. So this is ongoing. General?
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah. If we talk about UNRWA in Gaza, because UNRWA there is being accused by Israel of having close ties with terror groups just like Hamas. What is your viewpoint on this?
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Now? To be honest, I'm not so familiar with the situation of Gaza. How is it, I mean UNRA and Gaza. But I could see from my own experience now unra, when they employ, when they hire people here talking about west bank, it's preferable. Or they choose people who don't have any political issues, like if you belong to Hamas or if you belong to PFLP or if you belong to left, any radical group, they don't prefer that you're involved in their system.
But the problem is with those people who are not labeled as they are part of Hamas or part of bfl. The people that you don't know probably about their hidden political activity. But I could say generally speaking, because the UNRA also is, is.
I mean, their criteria of recruiting is very tough because it's basically something Western. So you have certain criteria that you have to keep, to sustain. But in Gaza, I think the situation can be a bit complicated because you don't know about the hidden agenda of their employees who were approved by the unravel.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: So it's difficult to say something about the situation over there about undra.
So Ali, we're coming to a conclusion. Israel has been in a war already for almost three years and also you in the refugee camp are also suffering from the consequences of it. What do you think is the road to Peace.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: To be honest with you, Sarah, at this moment, I see a tiny hope of a solution that will end the consequences. You know, the woman I look at, I look at it, you know, the, the world before, let's say from 1948 until October 7th is something, and October 7th until now is something else. Because the consequences are heavy on the Israelis, on the Palestinians.
On the Israeli side, of course, it deepened a dilemma, an old dilemma, which is that we cannot trust the Palestinians because the moment we offered solutions, they didn't commit. Hamas was, was, was ruin it. The other, other radical groups were ruined. So it deepened the whole notion that we cannot trust the Palestinians. No, on the Palestinian side, it deepens another issue, which is this land has no stability, you know. Do you know how many Palestinians are thinking about immigrating and leaving the west bank and Gaza, but the problem is that they don't. Yeah, you know, I'm just giving you some specific number from some European representatives in Ramada.
Before October 7, there used to be application or people applying for, for European visas to visit European countries. And the number was, the weekly number was about 30 to 40% for 30 to 40 applications, application per week.
But ever since October 7th, the. The average amount of applications by Palestinians to apply for visa or for visas to Europe is not less than a thousand per week.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: So many people want to leave, so
[00:33:51] Speaker B: many, because they don't see anything positive in the horizon. The situation just getting worse and worse. And unfortunately, talking about the west, how, how so many times I'm thinking the west is paying the price of this endless conflict as well. But because basically those people, when they come here, they. I don't want to. Maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe we can talk about this later, but when you have more people immigrating from the Middle east to, to Europe, basically you are talking, you're facing another problem. It's like transferring the problem and the issue that we have here to Europe.
So this is unfortunately the reality.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: I want to come back to my question. What is, according to you, a road to peace? Do you believe there will be peace someday?
[00:34:33] Speaker B: I have to believe, because if I lost this belief, then basically it will just cause me a situation of despair. So I have to believe that there is peace because based on my personal interaction with my own friends, with my Israeli friends, with my Jewish friends, the moment I see that we have managed to build a good relationship that was really tested in such difficult times, I have to believe in peace. But the problem is that we can build this peace on personal level. How to transfer that over a higher level to the people's level, facing all these challenges on the Palestinian side and on the Israeli side, on the government's level.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So what would be, according to you, the right path to peace now it
[00:35:18] Speaker B: requires to solve so many challenges on the Palestinian side.
I don't believe that we can move to peace or to any permanent solution with the Israelis as long as we have this current leadership, whether Fatah and Hamas, because we're talking about f is the corrupt leadership that's trying to exploit this ongoing conflict as much as they can. So basically, it's like, as we said, it's like the chicken that brings them golden eggs. And on. On the Gaza, of which Hamas, the radical group that's taking. That's taking Gaza to the nowhere, I can't really believe that they can move to any peaceful and permanent solution. So on the Palestinian side, number one thing, number one challenge, we cannot move forward with the current ship. There must be a dramatic change.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: And the Israeli side.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Same for the Israeli side. Yeah, the same goes for the Israeli side. Because I don't see the current Israeli leadership is offering anything. And I can understand October 7th and the aftermath of October 7th had totally ruined any pieces of trust between the Palestinian and the Israelis. But yet at the same time, I don't see that they're offering anything on the horizon. And I think the ball now is in the Israeli court again. With so much work and with so many things on the ground, we have to get to a point that we have to find a solution to this conflict. But I don't see that the current Israeli government having this vision at all as a concept even.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Last question, Ali. What can we pray for?
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Yes, There is so much to pray for here, sir.
Number one is peace and permanent peace. Because during the last 70 years, even more, this land barely witnessed peace. So this is something that I hope that people will pray for.
And the other thing is that let's pray that people would soften their heart, would accept each other. He would accept, would just forget about the past, forget about the so much incitement that they're having about. Just don't give attention to this incitement and just open their heart toward their other so they would accept each other on this land and to pray that one day this land will be for all, for each and everyone who's lovely, for each and everyone who respects and belongs to this land and that let's pray that humanity will prevail at the end and will overcome all the differences between us. And all the challenges and all the difficulties between us.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Ali. And we will also pray, of course, for you and for your family. But thank you for agreeing to this interview.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it. And I appreciate your prayers. And I appreciate this opportunity, because so many times I really feel that it's a privilege for me that I can share my thoughts, even, you know, without my real name, without my real identity. But I feel that this sometimes gives me some relief, because so many times you can't even share the basic thoughts with your colleagues, with your friends, with your family members. So thank you so much for the support.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Well, we're very happy that you want to do it here. Thank you so much.
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