Foreign Policy / April 18, 2025
[via email]
It’s been roughly a month since phase one of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas ended without the two sides agreeing to a phase two deal, and Israel restarted air and ground attacks in Gaza. Israel has escalated its operation there in the time since, while continuing to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
Israel put forward a new cease-fire proposal this week, which included a call for Hamas to disarm. The militant group rejected it, but on Thursday said it’s willing to release all remaining hostages as part of a deal to end the war and in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Meanwhile, Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday said that troops will indefinitely remain in “security zones” in Gaza to act “as a buffer between the enemy and (Israeli) communities.”
FP’s Situation Report (SitRep) recently spoke with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American peace activist who spearheads the Atlantic Council’s Realign for Palestine project, about the current humanitarian situation in Gaza, recent protests in the enclave against Hamas, and where he thinks the war is heading.
Alkhatib, who spent much of his childhood in Gaza, has lost 33 family members in Israel’s bombardment of the enclave. Yet he remains a passionate advocate for having a more nuanced dialogue on one of the world’s most divisive conflicts.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
SitRep: You’ve lost family members in this conflict, and all of this is obviously deeply personal for you. How are you holding up?
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: I am struggling, to be honest. On the one hand, I was able to get some family members out. My mom’s out, my sister-in-law is out, and I got four nieces and nephews out. My brother’s still there. I was just talking to him earlier this morning, basically begging him to decide to go. He’s the field director for one of the biggest British medical NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] on the ground in Gaza, and things are horrendous. He’s based in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Things are really awful.
The city of Rafah is gone. People are being vaporized in Gaza. The Israeli war strategy right now is like they can’t get rid of Gazans, but it appears that there’s an effort to basically concentrate them in certain areas and potentially let malnutrition and starvation do the rest. So, things are tough on that front.
SR: Have you been encouraged by the recent protests against Hamas in Gaza?
AFA: Absolutely. I have been both immensely optimistic but also extraordinarily frustrated and disheartened by the dismissal of these protests as effectively inconvenient timing-wise for the so-called pro-Palestine movement who are singularly focused on Israel’s role without giving space for nuance and understanding that Hamas is inseparable from Israel. Hamas is the reason why Gaza is being annihilated and reoccupied.
The people of Gaza are completely against Hamas and against the group’s terror and the squandering of their lives and resources for absolutely nothing. The people of Gaza are completely against the suicidal nihilism and the death cultism and the fascist Nazism of Hamas that has destroyed the Palestinian national project.
SR: Are you concerned that Israel’s moving toward a long-term occupation of Gaza and perhaps even a return to settlements and annexation?
AFA: Without a doubt. I sat down with some who are part of [far-right politician and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich’s party, and I was sharing with them ideas I had about stabilizing the [Gaza] Strip, and they were in my face telling me [that]. In the first half of the conversation, they were talking about the need for the Strip to lose half of its territory and just be annexed by Israel as a way to show the Palestinians consequences. Then the second part was like: Well, it wouldn’t be so bad for settlements to be created in northern Gaza. And from their perspective, northern Gaza is where a lot of the deadly Hamas presence has been, so therefore that’s where they need to build settlements.
That said, having had extensive conversations with a large number of Israelis who are part of the national security apparatus, that remains a minority view. The interest is in neutering the security threats that are emanating from Gaza, rather than actually looking to really have long-term settlements in Gaza. However, in terms of a longtime occupation in Gaza, that seems quite likely, because any mention of the Palestinian Authority remains taboo because any connectivity with the West Bank brings up the thought of the two-state solution.
I am completely, completely terrified about the prospect of direct military occupation killing the hope of Gaza’s rejuvenation and reconstitution. I don’t want just [for] Gaza to be rebuilt. I want it to be reconstituted. I’m terrified about the consequences in terms of loss of life, and I’m terrified that’s going to potentially keep Hamas relevant because that’s actually what they ultimately desire.
