A Gun To Your Head: Inside The Failed Peace Negotiations

Join Diana Buttu, the Stanford-trained lawyer who sat inside the failed peace negotiations as legal advisor to the PLO team and later advised the Palestinian president, as she explains why she came to call them a mistake.

One of the lawyers who won the apartheid wall case at the International Court of Justice, Diana describes the room where an Israeli mapmaker redrew the West Bank with a marker and told her the law would be recognized only when Israel was forced to recognize it, the night soldiers seized her apartment at two in the morning, and why her own presence at that table legitimized the process she now regrets.

Like to read? 👉🏼 Check out these blog posts:

The Protective Silence: Diana Buttu on Inheriting a Homeland Nobody Named

Bigger Prison Cells: Diana Buttu on Why the Peace Process Was Built to Fail

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Transcript

0:52

Welcome to Superhumanizer Podcast, where we promote empathy and understanding in polarizing viewpoints through stories told by people living them. Okay. Hi, y'all. Welcome back to Superhumanizer, the podcast where we explore the stories of impactful people who are making our world more caring, more fair, and more human. I'm Katie, and as always, I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Hani. And today we're talking to someone who has had a front row seat to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has come to believe that the process itself may be the problem. We're so honored to introduce Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer, political analyst, and former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization, aka the PLO. With degrees in Middle East Studies from the University of Toronto, law degrees from Queen's University and Stanford Law School, an MBA from Northwestern University, as well as a fellowship from the Harvard Law School, Diana brought a formidable intellect and a deep commitment to justice to the negotiating table. She was the face of the Palestinian negotiating team for years, a Western, educated woman who could articulate the Palestinian position with clarity and force. But after years of trying to negotiate freedom for her people, Diana has become one of the most prominent critics of the peace process. She has publicly stated her regret over participating in the negotiations, calling it a mistake to have negotiated with Israel at all. Her journey is a powerful story about the limits of diplomacy, the illusion of a level playing field, and the courage to speak out against a process that you believe is perpetuating injustice. Diana's story begins in Canada, where her parents tried to insulate her from her Palestinian identity. But she chose to embrace it, moving to the West Bank and dedicating her life to the Palestinian cause. She has since become one of the most important voices in the international media, challenging stereotypes, demanding accountability, and pushing for a new approach to peace that's rooted in international law and human rights. Today, we'll get to talk about your incredible journey, Diana, from being a young lawyer trying to change the world from the inside, to a seasoned analyst who believes that real change can really only come from holding power to account. We want to understand what it's like to lose faith in a process that you truly once dedicated your life to, and what it takes to keep fighting for justice when the path forward is unclear. Diana, to us, you're an ultimate superhumanizer because your story is about the courage to fight for what's right, and the strength to challenge not just the opposite side, but also your own side, and the unwavering belief that a better world is possible even when the odds are stacked against us. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your awesomeness with our community. Wow. Thank you both. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Dr. Hennie. You're far too generous in your introduction, and I'm really, really, really delighted to be with you today, and I'm glad we had a chance to finally make this work. Yes. Finally. So before we get into it, we like to play a game with our guests called What Brings You Joy? Would you like to play that game with us? Of course. Of course. Diana, Habibti, what brings you joy? There are so many things that bring me joy, but the first thing that comes to mind for me is my son. He brings me a lot of joy. He's now 12 years old, and seeing the world through his eyes, through eyes that are fresh, that haven't been jaded, is really, truly very joyous. It's been my absolute honor to be his mother. It really is. So, Katie, what brings you joy? What a beautiful opener, Diana. Thank you. One thing that's bringing me joy today is returning to the podcast with Dr. Hennie. It's been a minute since we've had our Aligned calendars. We're so excited that you're our reunion guest, too. We got to have a little, how are you, how are you, yapsash before you joined us. And so you're getting our enthusiastic energy of having you as a guest and our enthusiastic energy of getting to see each other again. So feeling a lot of joy and gratitude right now. And Hennie, my love, what brings you joy? Oh, thank you, my dear. I'm hearing you both calling me Dr. Hennie, and I want to say, please, my name is Hennie. And please feel free to say Hennie. That brings me joy. Everybody else calls me Hennie. And, of course, I will echo that, my dearest Katie. It's been such a minute that we haven't done this. And what a joyous and really profound gift to start us off again with Diana. So what brings me joy today is being here with both of you and especially you, Diana, because I've obviously, like, followed your journey for a very long time. And, you know, your presence, your power, and as well your kindness and your wisdom, like, all the things that make up who you are are so inspiring to us. So that brings me joy that we can share that with our guests. And when I watched your journey, especially, like, as I was growing up in the Middle East, I always thought that you are somebody who represented us, represented me, especially, like, how I identify myself as, like, a more modern Arab and somebody who can really, like, speak more holistically about things. And I learned a lot of that from you. So thank you so much for being here with you both. That brings me joy. Back to you. What brings you joy, my dear? This is kind of a funny thing. It's a funny way to answer it. But what brings me joy is Palestinian joy. Like, seeing Palestinians have joy. And the reason I say that is because so much of what Israel tries to do, like, when you live in Palestine, it's not easy. And I know we're going to get into it. It's not easy. But Palestinians try to find joy in the smallest of things and sometimes the most difficult things. So for me, like, one of the things that I'm always shocked by and which brings me joy is the olive harvest season. If either of you have ever picked olives or had anything to do with olives, it is back-breaking work. It is hard work. And yet we find joy in it. And yet we find joy in it. We bring food. There's songs around it. There's tradition around it. And so for me, seeing Palestinian joy when there's so much stacked up against us really, truly does bring me joy. And it gives me yet another reason. And it kind of energizes me because I know that having joy is one of the keys to life. And I know that we're people who just want to live and want to – we don't just want to exist. We want to live. We want to love. We want to be able to appreciate and to just live. So that brings me a lot of joy. It really does. Beautiful. Katie. Something that has been bringing me joy recently is I'm living back in Connecticut with my dad and my stepmother for the last year of my doctoral program. And my stepmother has early onset Alzheimer's. And for the last – she's been diagnosed for about 10 years. She's quite symptomatic. And for the last several years, she really hasn't been cuddly or affectionate. And we do not know what has changed. But she's been so affectionate with my dad recently where like they'll be sitting on the couch and she'll put her head on his shoulder or like hug him. And every time he looks at me like a little boy, like, oh my gosh, can you believe this is happening? Like are you seeing this too? And it's so sweet and for me like such a beautiful example at home of an unconditional love. Like even when the conditions are like neurocognitive decline, sometimes love just supersedes some of these barriers. And it's been stunning to watch. So the fact that my stepmom is being affectionate is like bringing me a lot of joy. Of course. Honey, my love. What's bringing you joy? Wow. I'm really enjoying just hearing you both, you know, reflecting on your joys. And it's so wide, the range of your joys from family to traditions to heritage. And that's really bringing me joy. And one thing that I feel like we must celebrate today, Katie, my dear, is the fact that you are finally in your last leg of your PhD journey, which is a huge, relentless occasion. I know it was such a long and fraught road. And it always is when you're choosing those kinds of careers. But I'm so proud of you. Congratulations. So happy for you. And the fact that you're here brings me so much joy because I watched you do this, not for the entire range, but I watched you do this for a big chunk of the last part of the day. And yeah, just I know how much it means to you that we're here. So congratulations, my dear. It brings me a lot of joy for you. Thank you so much, baby. I'm very happy about it. Thank you. Thank you. Back to you, Diana, my dear. What brings you joy? Something similar. Friends and family. Friends and family. My friends and family are my support system. They're my joy. You know, when I hear their voices, get a message from them, a hug. They're my joy. Very much. And Katie. So I have been working recently with an organization called WAAD Community Fund, which is a grocery support organization in the West Bank that's helping Palestinian families resist the pressure of Israeli settlers. And, you know, food insecurity is a major reason. And food insecurity is a major reason that people who are under siege like this could choose to leave and resettle. And so providing grocery support and food security is a way to actively resist ethnic cleansing and efforts toward ethnic displacement. And what's so funny and bizarre to me about this connection is I learned about WAAD through a girl I went to boarding school with as a teenager who's been working with these Palestinian women in the West Bank for many, many years. And it's a women-led organization. And they collect funds and distribute like $200 to families every month so that they can purchase whatever grocery items they need. And so it's like this feminist network of household leaders across the West Bank making sure that their community members and loved ones are fed. And it's just so beautiful to me that this, you know, sweet, loving girl that I met at 13 years old wound up being a bridge from, you know, the United States to the West Bank to then provide some of this funding support to the women who have been doing this work on the ground in the West Bank for many, many, many years. And so they're like my primary organizational support right now. Like when I go on lives, the money from my lives goes to WAAD. And last month I think we raised enough to feed 15 families for the month, which I just – working with them is so stunning and rewarding. And it feels impactful and immediate like, oh, I know these families are going to have money to buy food next month. So that is – it feels tangible. It feels like grounded and real. And that is bringing me a lot of joy. And I know that there's been escalations of violence in the West Bank even in the last several weeks. So I just want to draw our listeners' attention there as well. Yes. But that is bringing me joy. And Hani, my love, what is your third joy? Thank you, Katie, my dear. You have such a powerful way of holding so many truths together at the same time. And that answer was like a remarkable example of that. Women, powerful women bring me joy. There's two of them on this call. Powerful Palestinian women bring me a lot of joy as well. And, you know, related to that, recently I've had the pleasure and gift of actually marrying two of my best friends who asked me to marry them. So I've never been like an officiant or anything like that before. And I'm not really like religious. So I don't belong to any particular denomination. And so I never thought of myself as, you know, doing that in my life. But it was truly one of the most beautiful moments I've ever had the gift of sharing with two humans ever in my life. It was so magical to just be in that bubble when two people are committing to each other for the rest of their lives. And on some level also being part of the voice that serenades that. And, you know, when I look at the mass weddings that happen in Gaza and, you know, the West Bank, but in Gaza especially, like the defiance that that represents, as well as, like you said, then, like the simple joy that that also represents. And we're talking about family and all that. And I saw like a line of Palestinians, you know, want to tie the knot there right after a lot of the genocide, let's say, went on pause or reduced volume. It's still ongoing. But that was one of the first things they did. And to be in that moment with two people and then, you know, see that happen. It just gave me a different perspective about what that means for them, what it means in general for us when we get married. And what brings me joy is seeing people resist through joy and also find their way back to joy, even when the impossible odds are stacked against them. All right. Thank you so much. That was so delightful, let's say, to get to know you both. Thank you. Thank you so much, Diana. Thank you. All right. Well, I will bring us into our questions. So, Diana, you were born and raised in Canada to Palestinian parents who had left Israel due to discrimination. And you've said that your parents did not discuss their Palestinian identity and really tried to insulate you from it. But you chose a very different path. So you pursued degrees in Middle East studies and law and eventually moved to the West Bank to dedicate your life to the Palestinian cause. So can you take us back to that journey? What was it like growing up in a household where your Palestinian identity was something to be hidden rather than celebrated? And what led you ultimately to not only embrace that identity, but to really make it the center of your life's work? So that's a really great question and kind of hard to answer, but I'm going to try to unpack it as much as I can. So my parents were in the aftermath of the Nakba in 1948. Both of my parents were people who remained. So my father, my late father was born in 1939. My mother was born in 1947. And my father's family fled, but then came back, which was very unusual at the time. And my mother's family remained in Nazareth. They were both from my father's family was just outside of Nazareth. My mother's family was from Nazareth. And so both of my parents grew up under the system of military rule that existed between the period of 1948 to 1966. And what that meant for them was very much what you're seeing today in the West Bank, not Gaza, West Bank, was modeled after what the Israelis did between 1948 and 1966. But add to that, they had just come out of this ethnic cleansing slash genocide and were survivors. And their families were both, both families were survivors. And I had an uncle who, when he was, I believe he was about 13 years old, he was killed by an Israeli drunk driver just months after my parents had gotten married. And the combination of the mass amounts of discrimination, when I mean discrimination, it's even worse than that. That's not even the appropriate word. But they were effectively caged in into their cities as they watched the Israelis take over their land and destroy the country as they knew it. And the Nakba wasn't just an ethnic cleansing process. It was the entire destruction of Palestinian society. And so for my parents, the combination of living under this military rule, and then my uncle being killed by an Israeli drunk driver who was never held to account, was what pushed my father. In fact, we don't even know his name. It's what pushed my father to leave and to move to Canada. And I tell you this because I don't want people to ever think that my parents were ashamed of their Palestinian identity. They certainly were not. But it was their form of shielding me and my two other sisters from the pain that they lived through growing up as children and then as adults. So growing up in Canada was for them, it was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they felt that they had fled a place that was not only rejected, but had turned them into this unwanted stranger in their own land. But on the other hand, on the flip side, they were new to Canada and they didn't know the limits of expression. My father, for example, was somebody who was thrown in prison for demanding accountability for his brother's killing. Wow. So they didn't know the limits of where is it that, what can you say, what can you do, what can you not say, what can you not do. So my parents very much shielded us from this. So I knew that I was Arab. I knew where we were from, but I didn't know the ins and outs of it. And so much so, I laugh about this and I'm sometimes hard on myself for this. But I knew that we were from Nazareth, but I didn't know what Nazareth was. I didn't know it was a city. I thought it was something bigger than that. And so when did I find out was in 1987. It was the start of the first Palestinian uprising. It was the start of the Intifada. And just months before, my late grandmother had come to live with us in Canada. And I was really attached to her. She was a powerhouse. She was really like a formidable powerhouse. But I couldn't communicate with her because I didn't speak Arabic. So we had our own way of communicating. There were a few words that she knew or a few words that I knew. But our language of communication was really love. And that was it. And so she had decided to go back to Palestine after spending six months with us. And then in December of 87, my father said, what would you like? My birthday is at the end of the year. And I said, I want to go to Palestine for my birthday. I want to go to Nazareth. I didn't say Palestine. I want to go see my grandma. And so I went. And when I arrived, the first Intifada had just begun. And seeing all of this, and I shouldn't be so hard on myself because I was young. But that's what changed things for me. I suddenly felt like, why don't I know any of this? Why don't I know what's happening? Why don't I understand? And especially when you come to Palestine, you can see just the way that the geography is. How these Jewish-Israeli towns are planned. They look very much like what Canada, what a Canadian city looks like. And then Nazareth does not. Nazareth is like this house on top of a house on top of a house on top of a house. It's kind of chaotic, but there's a beauty to it. And I didn't understand why Nazareth looked like Nazareth and why Upper Nazareth, now the name has been changed, but why Upper Nazareth, which is built on the lands of Nazareth, the stolen lands of Nazareth, and it was turned into a Jewish-Israeli town, why it looked like Upper Nazareth, the way that it did. So all of this put me on a path of wanting to know more and wanting to hear more and to learn more. And it was through that that I started to immerse myself both in learning Arabic and learning about Palestine and then finding out the truths of my uncle being killed, finding out that my father was internally displaced, finding out that my father's family had fled in 1948, and then finding out that they were like about 20,000 others who smuggled themselves back into the country. And so all of that was the start of my journey. And I felt like it was like this both mystery and a puzzle that I was putting together. Hannah, you'll be, you might find this funny. I actually wanted to be a doctor. That's what I wanted to be. And then in 1987, after seeing the Intifada and going through this, and then it became a lifelong process, that was at the end of 87 was when I said, I don't want to be a doctor anymore. There are plenty of doctors. I want to be a lawyer. Wow. So that's what my journey was. In 1993, when Oslo was first signed, now everybody rightfully dumps on Oslo, rightfully. I'm the first to say that. But in 93, at the time, especially for Palestinians who held Israeli citizenship, were from inside, it was actually a very moving moment. And I remember watching my father tear up at Oslo because he thought the Israelis were finally going to acknowledge what they did to him and to his family and to his friends and to the Palestinian people. He was wrong, of course. But in that moment, he thought differently. And so I, from the period of like 93 onward, kind of checked out. And it was only in 96, I went back to Palestine and started to see more and more settlements pop up. Hmm. But I was sort of delusional, like most people, thinking, oh, you know, this will all go away. It'll all go away through some negotiations process. Hmm. And then finally decided to move back to Palestine in the year 2000. And I arrived the first day of the second Intifada. So I have this history of the Intifadas being my education system. Wow. Yeah. That's so incredible. I mean, I have two things that are really sticking with me from what you said. The first being this beautiful way that you framed your parents' protectiveness. And I think so often there's this kind of twisted way that people look at assimilation efforts of originating from shame rather than originating from an understanding that their culture and traditions of origin are sacred. And so not only were your parents protecting, you know, you from the difficulties that they had gone through before they emigrated to Canada, but in some ways they're also protecting their Palestinian identity of, I don't want this identity to have to keep undergoing violence in this new place that I am. It's like a double-edged protective love. And I think oftentimes people frame this assimilation process as shame-oriented instead of love-oriented. So your reframing of that I think was really beautiful. And also this process that you talk about as a teenager of coming to like a Palestinian political consciousness because you're finally getting the information that you didn't have growing up is a very parallel process to what I've heard anti-Zionist and Zionist critical Jews talk about when they first begin learning about Palestine and are given like a primary political path out of their Zionism of like, oh, I can learn about this other group of people. I can like start to unpack the mythology of the state of Israel. I'm starting to hear about Palestinian history more. And it directly contradicts the mythology and the lies that I was told. And I wonder how many, like as you are coming to this Palestinian political consciousness, how many Zionist critical and anti-Zionist Jews, at least in my generation, have had a very similar path of around 16, 17, the world starts to just open up differently. I thought the way that you framed that was so beautiful and at least for me, very relatable. Thank you. Yeah, I would say similarly that I am, what, 38 years old now. My birthday was about a month ago. And I realized just in October 7th when that happened, 2023, that that was a place for me to ask more questions at this age. Like I grew up in a, you know, Lebanese-Palestinian household, but my identity was mostly Lebanese. And my Palestinian identity was kind of a afterthought my whole life until October 7th, 2023 happened. And then I started asking questions. I almost have some shame about that. It's like, why didn't I ask questions growing up? And I would remember that I did ask questions, but I was redirected so many times that it just kind of became my programming that, oh, Palestine, redirect, Palestine, redirect. And as an adult, you know, I replaced that shame with an understanding and knowing that our identities are so loaded. Anybody that comes from a lineage where they experienced genocide, and certainly I've heard you, Katie, speak the same way, is it's such a loaded identity. And how does one human know how to do what they can do with that identity, especially when they're raising kids, especially when they're trying to just give them a normal life? You know, you started with your son, Diana, and you said like that, that new kind of eyes, those fresh eyes for the world. That's what we want to protect when we love people. And sometimes that comes in the form of us putting the things that are really loaded and painful aside for us to have that normal life. And we come back to it. You know, I came back to it in my age. Diana, thank God you came back to it when you came back to it. Katie, thank God you came back to yourself and your freedom from Zionism when you did. And here we are trying to make a difference together. And although, like, I know you were a reluctant negotiator, Diana, the fact that you participated in the negotiations and how you showed up was so important to us. And, you know, you said everybody dumps on Oslo and now you dump on Oslo. And there's so much for us to learn from that. Like, why are we dumping on Oslo? There's something there that's really important for us and our listeners to understand. But, you know, let's go back to, you know, that time and almost like the worst of that time. You've said that you had mixed feelings about negotiating for Palestinians with Israel from the very beginning, describing it as, quote, negotiating with a gun to your head. What was it like to walk into those negotiating rooms as a young lawyer, knowing that the power dynamics were so unequal? And how did you reconcile your personal doubts with your professional responsibility to represent the Palestinian people? Remember, I've arrived. It's now the second intifada has begun. And with the second intifada, there is a one-two punch. And I'm using punch because in the violent sense, because it was violent. And the one-two punch was, on the one hand, we had, or maybe even three punches, but on the one hand, we had the Israelis. And then the second punch was the international community, if you can call them that, Israel's cheerleaders. And then the third punch was the international media. And so in that one-two-three punch, being in those rooms meant that you were being bombarded, if not assaulted, by three different, on definitely two different angles, and then the third when you stepped out of the room with the media. And so what was that like? I think the best way to describe it is by giving a couple of anecdotes. And then, and maybe that will be able to give you the feeling. But, you know, with the holding a gun to your head is definitely one of them. I've heard of Ghassan Kanafani much later. I didn't know this quote until much later, where he said, it's like negotiating, the negotiations between the knife and the neck. And yeah, I mean, that was his quote, which I didn't know existed until much, much, much later. But the ways in which they would, the Israelis would behave was very much as though, as though we as Palestinians needed to, quote unquote, control ourselves. And, and that meant that we weren't allowed to be angry. We weren't allowed to complain about the occupation. We weren't allowed to have rage. We weren't allowed to feel any emotions when, when our loved ones are killed, when our homes are destroyed. We're supposed to just be, accept the fact that there are checkpoints up. Like, it was all very much this, like, you just need to accept the Israeli way of thinking and all of the, of, like they would say, of our trauma, as though we never had or lived through any trauma. So for them, the neck of it didn't exist. It was, they were either apologists for it or deniers of it, or, or cheerleaders, to be quite honest. Or, and so we didn't have, you know, we weren't supposed to even think about the neck of it. And then all of the harm that was created by them throughout these years of military occupation were also supposed to be ignored as somehow necessary. So going into these rooms, we had that Israeli attitude, coupled with the similar attitude on the part of the international community that would say things, these are representatives who would say to us, well, isn't it better that you accept something rather than nothing? Isn't it, isn't, do you really want to be living under military occupation? And when, you know, when we would describe like, this is just a repackaging of the occupation, they would just, like, too many details, too many details, too many details. It was that kind of a, of a life. And then stepping out with the journalists, it was the same type of assault. So the anecdote that I want to give you is one in which this is now several months into the Intifada. The prime minister at the time was Ehud Barak. This is the man who created this whole propaganda of, we gave them the most generous offer. The United States backed that propaganda by repeating the same claim over and over again. Hillary, sorry, Bill Clinton wrote about it. Hillary Clinton said it. And so this was the last round of negotiations before the Israeli elections. And he knew that the only way, he being Ehud Barak, knew that the only way that he would be able to win those elections was if he could come forward and say that he had reached some sort of an agreement. But instead of doing that, he wanted to show just how tough he was. And of course, he lost the elections to Ariel Sharon about a week later. And so here's what being in that room was like. These are exact quotes. We were at the time discussing borders. Now, there are a number of negotiation issues that were spelled out in Oslo. Refugees, Jerusalem, water, security, borders, and settlements. And so this was a session in which we were talking about borders slash settlements because they're kind of connected. Of course. And there was an Israeli mapmaker in the room, and he drew a map with a kind of very thick marker. And he also had it on a screen. And he draws this map, a new border. We're talking about the West Bank. And the border goes slightly along the Green Line. And then it swoops in 26 kilometers. I don't know what that is in miles, but like, let's say 18 miles, something like that. Deep into the West Bank. And then loops around. And taking in this one of the largest Israeli settlements called Ariel. And, you know, you and I don't live on, none of us on this call live on a map, right? We live in cities. We live in towns. We live in villages. And so there are a whole slew of Palestinian villages that get taken up in this, you know, deep entrenchment into the West Bank. And I knew that these residents meant that they were going to destroy these villages. So I asked their lawyer, and I kind of kicked out, like laughed, chuckled or whatever. And I said, on what basis of international law are you taking all of this territory? And his response was, we will recognize international law. Oh, first he said, there's no such thing as international. What is this international law that you're talking about? And then he said, we will recognize international law only when we're forced to recognize international law. And until that time, it's just you and me in a room. Oh, wow. Okay. So you're talking about not only a power dynamic, but age dynamic, gender dynamic, you know, all of these dynamics of, in the ways in which they, the Israelis behave like it was as though we, you just need to sign off on anything that we say. And you should be grateful for the fact that we are even in this room together, giving you the opportunity to say what it is that you want to say. So for them, for the Israelis, the alternatives were, it was like occupation this way or an occupation in which you sign off and consent to. So the dynamic was, was that. And, and then when you stepped out of the room, like when I stepped out of the room and when we had meetings with the internationals, they would look at me like, and so like, that's just the reality. Hmm. And then, and journalists would say, and why would you, like, why would you say no to something like that? They would say, look at all this territory that you're going to quote unquote gain. So the whole thing was never, it was never framed as though Palestinians have rights, that we have a right to exist, that we have a right to live, that we have a right to live on our own, on our land, that, that the Nekuba happened and that this was a major concession already. It was always like, or more, more, more, more. And, and so it, it felt, it felt violent. And that's why I use that phrase to describe it because it was very violent. It was a very violent, violent process. Very violent. Yeah. I mean, absolute political gaslighting too. Like, please question your own, like what you're seeing in front of your face, question your eyes, question your family's history, question everything that you've learned of your people's history in law school and through your studies. And like, take our word for it, you know, which it's never a trustworthy thing to hear from an ethnocentrist nation state. And I'm curious too, you have the experiences in the room of the way that these men with a lot of political and social power perceive you. But then at that same time in the early 2000s, you became the face of the Palestinian negotiating team across Western media. So this is right after the failed Camp David initiative. And I mean, you spoke to this earlier. So many people will recognize that photo of then President Clinton standing between Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO, and Ehud Barak, who you already mentioned, the Israeli prime minister at the time. And the economist referred to you as part of a, quote, Palestinian makeover, which even like the gendered language there of makeover is so stark. And you were praised in this context for challenging stereotypes. You're often the only woman in the room navigating this really male and white dominated political landscape. And your presence there at the same time is challenging both Western and Palestinian patriarchal political norms. So what was that experience like, not only in the room one-on-one with these people, but to be thrust into an international spotlight and tasked with representing your entire people, Arab womanhood, Palestinian womanhood, and femininity? And did you ever feel pressured to present a particular image? You've already spoken a bit to like downplaying anger, downplaying frustration, you know, suppressing emotion. But I'm curious what your experience was as this image of Palestinian liberation. Yeah. There's a funny story to it. I'll try to keep it brief. Please don't keep it brief. Please don't keep it brief. Yeah. So you understand what happened. Because there was definitely not a makeover. Nor was it anything that was planned. What happened was, it was March the 16th, 2002. And the reason I'm giving you the date is because it's important to keep in mind the landscape, the media landscape that existed at that time, which is the aftermath of September the 11th. And this extreme hostility, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism, all of it that was on TV at the time and on radio. And which we see now and people can label now. But at the time, people were not labeling. They were not labeling. So what happened was March 16th, 2002, my house was literally taken over by the Israeli army. The army came into my house and kicked me out and threw me into a gun battle. Literally. This is exact. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. I was on the phone with my late father. My father, this man who survived the Nekpa, was walking me through and telling me what I should do. He said, stay away from the windows, grab your passport, grab any valuables that you have, stand in the center of the house. When they come, because we could hear them coming, tell them that you have no weapons, etc. And sure enough, that night, the army came into my building. They spray painted the peephole of my apartment. You could hear them smashing everything. You could hear them pulling my neighbors out of their apartments. And they came to my door and used my neighbor as a human shield to get me out of my apartment. I was going to open up the door anyway. They didn't need to use her. And they took over my apartment. And they took over my apartment. Why am I telling you this part? Because my roommate and I were, we drove the wrong way on a one-way street, barely made it out of our neighborhood, and managed to stay at a friend's place for three days. Where he had no food, no water. He had a bag of spaghetti, and that was it. And it was after that, Katie, that I did my first interview. Wow. That was what got me on doing interviews, was people started asking me about what happened. And I remember being, three days later, being on the BBC. At the time, Dick Cheney was planning a visit to Ramallah. He was the vice president at the time. And I just remember the ways in which the journalist was talking to me, like, you must renounce terrorism. And if you renounce terrorism, then Dick Cheney is going to come for a visit. I thought, like, why do I want Dick Cheney coming? Screw Dick Cheney. Why would anyone want Dick Cheney to visit? Great prize, you know. And I was very defiant. And I was defiant both because I didn't believe that this was such a great prize, but also I had just come out of the army, literally taking over my house and kicking me out of my house for three days, sending me into a gun battle. We were lucky to be alive. There were tanks throughout the whole town, the whole city of Ramallah. And then it was after that that journalists kept starting to ask me to appear on the news. And I was like, I was never a spokesperson, never anything. I was just speaking from my experience. And a lot of it was because I had the ability to exit Ramallah. I had a foreign passport. Mm-hmm. And I was very, like, angry about, rightfully so, very angry about what had happened to me. Were there times where I felt like I had to change myself? No, not directly. But I think just that watching so much of the ways in which people were being verbally abused on television at the time, I think probably did impact me. I'm for sure that, I'm certain that it impacted me. And so for me, the whole thing was that I just felt like people didn't know what it was like to be Palestinian. They didn't know what it was like to live under military rule. It's not normal to have your house taken over by the army. It's not normal to have a tank on your street flattening your neighbor's cars. It's not normal to have a tank, you just flatten all of the trees that were on your street. This is in the year 2002. Like, none of this was normal. And that was the message I was always trying to convey. And it's so much pressure to put on, you know, a person who's just been through something really frightening. And something that I so respect and admire was your decision, because it's not just a reaction, it is a decision, to bring your anger into a media space that you knew was already hostile, that you knew was already disrespectful and dehumanizing your entire people, and to give your anger room to be a change-making agent. I think so many women are, like, socialized out of doing that, of, like, your anger isn't supposed to have a place in these negotiations where you have to be fully emotionless. And I expect or would assume that some of the momentum of these invitations is in part because you did allow your anger to exist, which, unfortunately, there's, like, an entertainment factor of that for people, particularly if it's, like, a beautiful woman who is angry. And also, there's an exquisite truth to feminine political anger that is so often marginalized. And I just, I think it's brave as hell that you did that. And I have a lot of admiration for it. Thank you, Katie. I can't say I was so angry. That's the problem. That's part of my, I'm angry, but I'm not, I don't express myself in angry ways. And it's interesting, because just yesterday, a friend of mine was saying, how do you stay so calm? I said, I don't know, I'm just the way I am. But I'm angry inside. You know, I'm angry inside, but I don't know how to, but it doesn't come out. It doesn't come out in anything, really. It's just, I think I've learned to replace, I can't say I've learned to replace it, because I am angry. But I don't know what it is, but my anger maybe comes out as calm. I don't know. Like it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. For me, the big thing was that I wanted to tell people that, to flip things on its head and make sure that people felt that what it's like to be a Palestinian, that this is not normal. And that's always been my thing, is that this is not normal. What we live through as Palestinians is not normal, nor should it ever be normalized. And, I mean, that's always been my attempt. Whether I'm good at it or bad at it, I don't know. But that's always been my, what I try to get people to understand. Hmm. Well, I want to start by saying, like, Diana, you would have been a great doctor, because, you know, your sense of standing up to injustice, obviously is, like, ingrained in you. It's part of your makeup. It's part of who you are, which, you know, of course led you to become the lawyer that you are and have the seat at that table that you had. And I think about, like, the people who've affected the most impactful changes in history, and how when you look at them speak, like, most of them are not sitting there shouting or screaming, right? Like, there's a fierce, there's a fierce energy there, but at the same time, it's calm and it's clear. And that's what people need in these situations, is we're already explosive, we're already, you know, angry to the point where rage can consume us and destruction can happen from there. But that's not what has led to the resolution of horrible issues in the past. And at the same time, for us to have somebody to look at that can hold our anger and at the same time, communicate clearly and potently, that's also what we need in our anger. So when you hold that for us, when you held your anger the way you did and you were still able to have potency and clarity, that's exactly what we needed. And that to me is true leadership, especially when you're on some level, you know, realizing that this process wasn't working. You said you were in these rooms and you're being gaslighted. You weren't being, your basic humanity wasn't being recognized. The basic recognition of the Nakba wasn't happening in that room, which to me feels like, should be like one of the first premises. First, like before we even talk, let's recognize what happened before we can have any kinds of conversations. And not only was that not happening, it was happening to where you were having to concede in every attempt at a negotiation, there was concessions. And so this was really just rigged from the beginning. And in 2018, you wrote a powerful op-ed in Haaretz titled, I advised the Palestinian negotiating team. It was a mistake to have negotiated with Israel at all. It marked a major turning point in your public advocacy from a negotiator to now a critic. What was the breaking point for you? Was there a specific event or a gradual realization that led you to believe that the entire process was a mistake? And what did it feel like to publicly renounce a process that you dedicated so much of your life to? Yes, there were turning points. There was one specific turning point, which was in 2001. And that was that conversation I just told you about. And there were more, more that happened that week. And it was after that week that I thought to myself, I can't keep, I can't keep part of being part of this. I can't keep being part of this. And at the time, that's when I started to shift and think I should probably do a lot more outreach to people so they understand what occupation is like. And so for a period of about, oh, it was over a year, my colleague and I, we would do things like hold information sessions. We were going out and meeting people and going to doing these, doing a lot of advocacy around the world. And so all of that shifted. Like my, my period as the negotiator, so to speak, shifted to where it just became part of the routine. And I had no faith in it, but that became the springboard for doing a lot more advocacy. And, and that lasted for years. Um, when did I leave the whole thing? I left in 2005, at the end of 2005. By then, I had now been appointed to be an advisor to, to the Palestinian president. Yes, Arafat had, had died. Abu Mazen, who had been my boss, by the way, he was the head of the negotiations team at the time, before that. Um, he became prime minister, became prime minister and later president after, after Arafat died. And working with him was what made me realize that, that we're stuck in this trap. Um, I had already known that before, like 2001, I was vocal about it, but working with him was what, was the struggle that broke the camel's back. And why? It was a few things. It was that every meeting that we were having with, um, members of the international community, the goal was no longer independence. It was no longer freedom. It was no longer liberation. It, the goal was now, we need to get you back in the room speaking to people. Now, if your goal is to get me back in the room speaking to the same people at best, who are the ones who had insulted me back in 2001, then this is really messed up and flawed. And, and so for, um, so I, I quit my job in 2000 and at the end of 2005, um, and stayed quiet for years. And in part, the reason I stayed quiet was, was because I didn't want, I didn't want to be used as ammunition, um, by the Israelis. You know, and say, oh, look at she, even, even his own advisor doesn't like him and thinks that he's, that, you know, he's whatever. Um, so I stayed quiet for years and years and years. And the, the first time I really, really spoke out against the Palestinian Authority was in the, was in 2009 in the aftermath of, of the Goldstone report. This is, uh, in 2008, 2009, Israel bombed Gaza. This is what began this path of normalizing the bombing of Gaza was something the Israelis called Operation Cast Lead. And in, in December of 20, December 28, 2008 until 2009, early 2009, the Israelis kept bombing and bombing and bombing Gaza. And they started creating these euphemisms like mowing the lawn. Yeah. Um, and in the aftermath of Israel doing this massive bombing campaign, the UN appointed a man named, uh, he was a judge named Goldstone from South Africa. who did this whole report, who then called for Israel to be held to account. And the report is still around, obviously. Um, but the Palestinian Authority did absolutely nothing about it. And that was, for me, that combined with the earlier work I'd done, I'd done some, I'd been one of the lawyers who challenged Israel's wall, um, before the International Court of Justice, the first case before the ICJ. We won. that and, and the, the combination of that and, and their, like, failure to do anything on that case as well as Goldstone is what led me to, to, to come out very vocally. The piece that I wrote in, I then wrote a number of pieces, one in 2017 in the Times about, um, about the PA and then 2018 about the process. They were all, it was all kind of cumulative. And the reason I spoke out about it was because I knew that this was the new thing that they wanted us once again to go back to. Even today, when you read the newspaper, or you, or you watched it, it was, it's always about, oh, how can we get these people in the room and just talk it out? And it's completely ignoring the context of occupation, of ethnic cleansing, of genocide. We're the only people who have to negotiate an end to our genocide. Yes. And, and that is the part that I want people to recognize is that we weren't put on this earth to be negotiating our freedom. Our freedom should come because we are humans, not because we negotiate our way out of, out of an occupation that should never have happened to begin with. Yes. This whole concept of, do you believe that Israel has a right to exist? You know, like I had, I had a friend of mine reach out the other day, a really good friend of mine who's a lovely human being, but, you know, is an American, you know, that grew up here and has drank all the Kool-Aid about Israel and genuinely was like asking me, I want to know from you, you know, but like, I have to start with the question, do you believe that Israel has a right to exist? Because I certainly do. And that question comes from that basic humanity of wanting to see a people not perish. And so, you know, long story of, you know, successfully explaining to him all the things and ending with, but do you believe Palestinians? have a right to exist. And so, we constantly have to go the roundabout way of just getting people to recognize that we are also people that have a right to exist. And it's that simple. Why do we have to negotiate our freedom? Why do we have to negotiate our existence as a people? And it's the amount of times we've heard from, you know, profound humans who have been in important seats in this podcast come to this conclusion that you got to, my dear Diana. It's really devastating. And of course, like, everybody ends up springboarding from there to try and do more advocacy because then what else can you do? Like, if you can't be part of the solution that brings this to a place where the basic humanity is recognized in all people, you know, but especially the oppressed, why can't we get there? I just, I don't get it. And so, recently we interviewed Aida Tumas-Tayman who was a member of the Knesset. I'm sure you probably know her. She's a friend. She's a friend. Of course she is. Of course she is. And she also reached to that conclusion. And so, we all reach that breaking point. But since we have you here, I'm going to go off script just for a moment. I wanted to like ask you this question because we have you here and we have to learn more from you. A lot of our listeners don't understand what were the points of contention when that, you know, negotiations were happening. You mentioned like, you know, right of return and borders and water and all those kind of things. And you also mentioned that, you know, Ehud Barak was platforming on we promised them everything, right? And that's like the Kool-Aid that everybody has drank. Can you walk us through the terms and deconstruct that for us? And what eventually, what was like the landing point that you got to with each other that was like, hell no, we're not going to agree to this and why? Okay. So first, I want to back up just a little bit and just about the question of the, the questions that your friends ask you. You know, these are, these are questions that are only asked of Palestinians, right? These morality test questions. Like, I want to test your morality before I am going to hear you out. Yeah. And, and, and we never do that to anybody else. I mean, no, there's never been in my lifetime that I've seen a single mainstream journalist, mainstream media journalist, ask an Israeli about Palestine's right to exist or whether they support the occupation, whether they think it's evil, whether they believe genocide is acceptable. Like, they don't get those morality test questions that we are always asked. The number of times that I was asked about, do you condemn? Do you this? Do you that? We, now, there's never an Israeli official who's asked to condemn the horrendous actions that they actually support, but we're always asked to condemn the actions that we don't, we aren't even engaged in, like, that somebody else is doing. Yeah. And it's those morality tests things that just are so wrong and that, if anything, like, I would love to see that part. Same. And, you know, but it's important to name it. Okay, where did we land? So, so, I mentioned the six issues and where we landed was, in short, and I'll give you the brief and then I'll break it down, was that Israel wanted to repackage the occupation but not end it. And why am I reaching this conclusion? Because, first, let's talk about land. the Israelis wanted to make sure that almost all of the illegal Israeli settlements remain on Palestinian land. Now, these settlements are illegal under international law, honey, you know that, you know that, Katie. and so, why should I as a Palestinian have to pay a price for Israel's crime? Doesn't make sense to me. Nobody could ever respond to that question. So, first, they wanted all of the settlements to remain. Now, the settlements alone only make up about 2% of the West Bank, but that wasn't what they were talking about. They were talking about the settlements, the expanded areas of the settlements, the infrastructure of the settlements, and so on. That was the first thing. The second thing is that they wanted to have the Jordan Valley, which is the part of the West Bank that's the closest to Jordan. They wanted that to be classified as being part of a Palestinian state, but that the Israelis would have the right to enter at any moment, at any time, to take over the land for what they called early warning, security, for security reasons. So you're now talking about the West Bank and it's now shrunk because of the settlements, shrunk even further because of this security zone. Then they also wanted to have a security zone in between parts of the West Bank that cut across as well. So one that cuts across in the northern part of the West Bank and the one that cuts across in the southern part of the West Bank, effectively dividing the West Bank into three zones. That's on territory. Again, you're talking about larger prison cells but not getting us out of prison. Then on the issue of water, they wanted to have exclusive rights to the water, which means that they get to dole out as much or as little water as they want. Already Israeli settlers consume nine times more water. Already Palestinians consume way much less water than they should be consuming according to the World Health Organization standards. So they wanted that to continue. Then on the issue of security, Israel only has security, no security for Palestinians. A demilitarized Palestinian state, which is terrifying given that Israel has nuclear weapons. If they have nuclear weapons, not that I want to have a nuclear weapon, but why shouldn't I have the ability to protect myself? We've already seen what's been going on over the past few weeks and few years actually. And then lastly, on the last two issues of Jerusalem and refugees, refugees, absolutely no refugee return. Jerusalem and then on Jerusalem they had this crazy formula where they said what's Arab shall be Palestinian, what's Jewish shall be Israeli, which effectively means that all of the Israeli settlements that are in Jerusalem would remain and that there would be no way for Palestinians to be able to go from one part of Jerusalem to another part of Jerusalem without going through Israeli territory. and then also they continued holding on to the holy sites in Jerusalem. This means the Haram al-Sherif compound as well as the church of the church of the holy sepulcher. and so all of this meant that oh and then lastly on the electromagnetic spectrum which means everything from you know the ability to use your cell phone to what have you they were going to control it. so I try to get people to recognize that what the Israelis were doing was they wanted to expand the prison cells but not release us from prison. And so it's the and if you think about if you think about a prison I don't like to think about it but if you do think about a prison you can think about the ways in which the prisoners what they control and what they don't control you know they control the kitchen they control the library there's a lot of things that they control but the fact that they can't control that they're still in prison is what makes it a prison and that's what Israel wanted to do. So all of this to say was that they they never they didn't even recognize that Palestinians had a right to a state much less to liberation and that's where the negotiations broke down and so when when these internationals and when journalists would come and ask us and they'd say oh but they offered you 90 some odd percent which is not true by the way they didn't understand like you know in prisons 90% of the prison is run by the prisoners it's that 10% that makes it a prison and that's the part that the Israelis and the internationals and the media refuse to recognize I want to be free from prison I don't want to be in prison any longer yeah it's such a twisted application of law to have someone negotiating for the formalization of their own lack of rights exactly yeah it's it's hard to wrap my mind around so in 2011 there was this massive leak of confidential documents known as the Palestine Papers which exposed the inner workings of the Israeli Palestinian peace negotiations from 1999 all the way to 2010 so covered over a decade of this process and these documents which were published by Al Chassera revealed the extent of concessions that Palestinian negotiators were willing to make behind closed doors including I mean some of what you just summarized including on Jerusalem settlements the right of return and concessions that went far beyond what the Palestinian public either knew or would have accepted from their negotiators so when these papers were leaked you called for the resignation of the chief Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat saying that the documents showed how quote out of touch and unrepresentative the negotiators were what was it in the papers that was so egregious as concessions why were those even considered and do you believe that the Palestinian leadership has done enough to address the issues of accountability and representation in the peace process that you raised what was it in there I left remember I left in 2005 and and so from the step down from 2005 until 2011 just the ways in which you know in 2005 we were still holding firm and then by 2011 we see that they were willing to give up so much when it came to Jerusalem that they were willing to give up so much when it came to territory that even despite a decision by the International Court of Justice saying that the wall is illegal that they were kind of figuring out these workarounds around it so for me it was all of these things plus and this is a big issue the Palestinian leadership has never talked about the concessions that they're willing to make when it comes to refugee return and that's huge that is huge that is the essence of our cause is that we were ethnically cleansed from our homes we just want to go home that's all we want to do we just want to go home that's it and because they have never really talked about it in the open that for me was one of the big like how dare you how dare you so there were to be to be fair he's since passed to be fair there were no negotiations in that last year and a half like up until 2011 but it did definitely show how far they were willing to go have they addressed any of those issues absolutely not the what the main problem now is and I hate to say this but I have to they're so far this leadership is so far willing to go down the path of giving up things and the only thing that's oddly not happening is that there's no buyer meaning that the Israelis are even at this point demanding more right and that's the real shame in all of this is that we've never had a referendum about Oslo we've never had a public discussion about it as Palestinians like in but with this leadership acknowledging the mistakes so much so that so little so I guess is the proper way of putting it that now in November at the end of November we're slated to have the first set of parliamentary elections since the year 2006 and now one of the conditions to be a candidate to be a member of parliament is that you have to accept Oslo we should be having a referendum about Oslo and a reckoning with Oslo and saying this has been the greatest thing that has ruined us and instead they're so entrenched in it that it's now become a condition for a person to become a member of parliament is that they have to accept Oslo so no there's been no accountability for it there's been absolutely no accountability and I wish there would be and I have to be clear you know that when I express regret I don't regret the I regret being I didn't make the decisions so I didn't make any decisions that were were like taking us away from our positions the regret that I have so I wasn't the decision maker I didn't decide to be a part of to be Oslo the regret that I have is that I feel like I spent years in a process that I wasn't saying that it was the greatest thing at all but my mere presence legitimated it and that's the part where I have I didn't do anything to do it but I feel like my mere presence was wrong which is such a difficult and painful place to be especially like we all know that hindsight is 20 20 right when you look back on something you were involved in at the time you might have a very very different perspective but it certainly sounds like at the time you were working very very hard to pressure the folks involved in this peace and liberation movement to center Palestinian need to center Palestinian humanity to center Palestinian rights to clarify that Palestinian rights are human rights and negotiating for one's own lack of rights is a perversion of what politics are meant to do so I do want to hold space for and honor that that is part of your legacy like when we talk about the work that you've contributed to the Palestinian cause we hold that very centrally that you were centering Palestinian humanity and I think this highlights too a central tension in any liberation movement that there's this gap inevitably between leadership and between the people that they purport to represent and it's a reminder to all of us that true legitimacy in any liberation movement has to be earned not just declared by the people with the most power or the most visibility and that Palestinians have already lost so much and lost is a loose term so much has been stolen from Palestine arrested from Palestine raped from Palestine especially recently in Gaza and the West Bank since 10-7 and Palestinians really can't afford to lose anymore on the path to peace the violence and brutality has been a cultural theft for so many decades and generations at this point that the concessions themselves are violent yes yes and the whole process was violent I have to say the whole process where it's the gaslighting ignoring the like oh just forget about what happened in 1948 forget about you don't have trauma you don't have a right to trauma you don't have a right to even now even now I don't know if anybody ever really survives genocide I really don't even now the language that's used is so violent it's as though we just have to oh just move on you know just move on yeah the viciousness of the parallel truths that they've created the story of Zionism and its moral superiority over anything that it caused and it resulted in for happening it's terrifying it's violent and it's terrifying that you cannot see right through that into what happened it's like us sitting in America here and like not seeing that you know Native Americans were massacred for us to have America it's like it's like it's not even like we're in we're in a time today where we don't even want to say happy Thanksgiving right because we want to recognize this truth and we want to teach it to our kids and it's terrifying if I was living in a country today in the US where it's like no nothing happened to the Native Americans yay America wave the flag right like it would be so much even more terrifying than what it is right now because on some level that is happening but on another level in Palestine that doesn't happen at all there's absolutely no recognition and the level of confidence that Israelis have in the narrative that was fed to them is really chilling and it's so important to remind our listeners that surrender was not even ever enough like I was watching All That's Left of You a couple of months ago I watched All That's Left of You by Shireen Debbis and I would highly recommend everybody to watch that and it's so sad for me because my family was from Yaffa you know Tel Aviv today and and it's like you watch what happened to them in that film which is really really sad and you see that even surrender was not enough for people to stay in their homes for people to live side by side by this incoming wave of this new country it was never enough and it still isn't enough like like how much more concessions were have to be made and how much more concessions are being made right now and no matter what the amount of concessions have been or is there's never a buyer and when we say like you know we hear the Zionist narrative of there's no partner to peace it's so important for our listeners to understand that there was always on some level a partner to peace that just wanted a basic package of recognition and humanity and right of return and borders and what any human needs in their life and that never happened and here we are today in Gaza and this quote unquote ceasefire and when we had first like written this interview the ceasefire had just been announced and you were already warning at that time Diana that Trump's inner circle quote wants to ethnically cleanse Palestine and they're going to do whatever it takes so supposedly now we're nine months into a ceasefire under Trump's 20 point peace plan and reconstruction hasn't started monitors count over a thousand Palestinians killed since it began and just this week the board of peace approved its first real project which is actually a funced pilot zone of portable cabins near Rafah for civilians vetted by Israel which people are calling essentially a modernization of a concentration camp in January you described Israel's strategy as death by a thousand cuts which it sounds like it just continues as their MO so tell us what you see when you look at Gaza right now and is this a peace process or is this the very thing that you've been warning us about it's definitely the very thing I was warning about look the reason that the everybody wanted a ceasefire I hate that term by the way but the reason that they people wanted a ceasefire was because people wanted the bloodletting to stop right they wanted to stop these massive bombs and and there was nobody happier than Palestinians that these that this bombing campaign was coming to an end and at the same time I knew others knew and warned that this isn't like this doesn't mean that it's over it just means that your eyes are going to look the other way and for Israel they wanted to have a ceasefire because the momentum was building up against them we had the the flotillas coming we had Canada and other countries Canada Spain Ireland and others talking about arms embargoes Israel is deeply unpopular around the world you know genocide is not a cool thing to do and so hence it is unpopular and and so they wanted to have that easing of pressure and the best way to do it is to label it a quote unquote ceasefire and the reason I hate it is because it's a massive misnomer ceasefire means that literally cease fire and it means there's two armies there aren't two armies these are people that are sitting ducks the other thing that this is exactly what they wanted is because I know having especially I've lived in Gaza for for a year and a half and having worked with the Israelis I know that it's it's so easy to gloss over the headlines and where the the problems are is the details it's always in the devil's always in the details and with the Israelis they they control the crossing points they now control 98 percent of the the fertile land has either been either bombed or is on the other side of the green light there's only two percent within that space that Palestinians are living in that 30 percent the Palestinian almost 40 percent the Palestinians are living in Gaza it's less than two percent of it is is agricultural land that means having every morsel of food that a person that a person from Gaza is eating Israel controls because it's being shipped in from from elsewhere so I knew that the devil was going to be like is Israel opening up the the the crossing point is are they pushing for reconstruction equipment for medical supplies for for medicines you know like not just like for actual are they pushing for food for for the ability to live is that happening and I knew that the answer would be no because none of these countries have the stamina to deal with Israel and to confront Israel and so it's just been it's just been this violent process of killing one child a day at least every day since the so called ceasefire was declared um and you know when when I it's not only death by a thousand cuts but it's like it's the slow ethnic cleansing process now it and it's the same by the way in the West Bank the the other day I was in two um towns in the West Bank one and I'm glad you're working with wide um it's the meat what the settlers are doing and of course aided by the Israeli government is they're taking away all means of livelihood all mechanisms to stay alive whether it's cutting fuel cutting water cutting food supplies in one of these towns that I went to just last week a place called Emel Kher the Israelis have now declared one family's um livestock like their barn as being in a closed military zone they give them one they give them 10 minutes every three days to feed their livestock it livestock doesn't live being fed once every three days and and get this their own bathroom is in a closed military zone oh my god which means they can't go to their bathroom okay so you think about um what it means on a daily basis micro ways of them carrying out ethnic cleansing processes it's these micro ways of taking away food taking away water taking away fuel taking away their livestock taking away land taking away jobs taking away their bathroom so that they so that they don't feel comfortable in their own homes and go elsewhere this is what Israel's doing now and multiply that by a factor of I don't know a thousand when it comes to Gaza because add to that the the process of bombing bombing kids and denying medicine and um denying that we we have a very high rate of cancer in Gaza and they don't allow any radiation equipment they don't allow chemotherapy drugs into into Gaza like all of this is a is an ethnic cleansing process that we are watching live and nobody's doing anything about it yeah I just keep having this like sentence running through my head of like colonization is carnivorous there's something so bloodthirsty about this process and it will never be sated like it is so consumptive it is a process of I mean drip genocide prolonged ethnic cleansing but also resource theft resource allocation it's not just the indignity of the violence against the Palestinian people that is so despicable like I'm I'm getting hives thinking about it like it's so despicable to consider but it's the fact that this indignity is being done for the benefit of a colonizing state like it is meat for the beast that I find so disgusting and we all know that it won't stop in Palestine it won't stop in Gaza and the West Bank already it is eating into literally eating into Lebanon when you talk about taking someone's livestock there's something just carnivorous about it to me and like I I don't want to contribute to like generalized dehumanizing language but to me Zionism as a political project is fundamentally a carnivorous political project and it makes me sick to my stomach and I know this is not about my feelings but hopefully as we give people language to discuss the particularities of the violence that's being committed not only in the human rights abuses but that it's to benefit a very powerful entity that disgust will be socially contagious I mean we need consciousness raising before we experience mobilization and my god I don't know what it will take in terms of transnational mobilization to be more protective of the people of Gaza and the West Bank to to legitimize that their struggle over the past several generations generations has been a necessary struggle not a violent struggle I just I feel like the third the third espresso shot is is hitting me right now and I feel I feel your pain too as you discuss this like I can see the pain on your face and it's a righteous pain yeah I I feel it too you know I'm sitting here listening to Diana and of course like feeling everything you're feeling and knowing everything that's happening right now you know it's I'm sure our listeners are feeling this as well as they listen to us it's like a sense of defeat and a sense of hopelessness and when we talk about like the the carn the carnivorous Zionist regime and all that's happening I want to go back to like I want to go back to hear about your perspective on Trump's peace plan because I think you will have a different perspective to share with us than the average you know listener but before we go there people don't understand how carnivorous Zionism and the occupation is and when we're talking about the people that we're negotiating with now versus the people we were negotiating with in the 2000s and beyond it feels like those people are even more carnivorous today and in December you profiled heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu and Zeteo the man you called the dangerous minister nobody has heard of who is using archaeology and heritage to seize Palestinian land there's so many that people haven't heard of but you highlighted this guy can you tell us about him and what sebastian tells us about the west bank right now yes he's one of many members of the Israeli government who needs to be entitled for war crimes really but he's one of many who is a fascist but not only fascist but they're but they are people who they're they're followers of a rabbi named mayor kahana and mayor kahana was uh he had a political party um he was so extreme that even the Israelis banned him from running for for election and now so many of the ministers within this government are his like they were his pupils right they're his disciples they're people who follow him um and so who is he so he's what they call the heritage minister and it since he's been in office he's been a person who's trying to figure out ways to steal Palestinian land and in particular he's going after this area of sebastia why sebastia um sebastia is the site of where's saint john the baptist saint john the baptist is and it's a place in which there have been it's been it's been it's a heritage site for all people right it's not um this is the problem with with zionism that is that they it it becomes only heritage site if it's if it's if there's something that's jewish there and so then they discount everybody else who was who was there palestines don't we we believe that there are lots of people who have been on this land and and there there have been the canaanites the jebusites so they're just lots of people and so for them they the israelis are always about this particular minister is always about like it's it must be jewish um and only jewish and so what what he has done is he's now ordered through archaeology the largest takeover of palestinian land under the guise of archaeology since 1967 wow this is a man who has they've issued uh demolition orders to to confiscation orders excuse me to land in sebastia there are houses that are within that area of the confiscation orders which means that there will be land that will be uh houses that will be destroyed they're going to turn the place into a place that's off limits to palestinians because that's what happens when a site is declared a heritage site is that the the place becomes only accessible for people who are israeli or for tourists but completely inaccessible for palestinians and um and so this is going to be this is the largest takeover of west bank land you under the guise of archaeology uh we've seen this time and again but that's not the only thing that he's been doing he's a man who very early on in the genocide made a couple of statements that really should put people like you people should be aware of this one of the first things he said was that we need to find a punishment that is worse than death for palestinians so he's a man who's been in favor of the torture in favor of the rape of palestinians he's somebody who's just like pushing it even further even further and further and nobody bats an eye when he says we need to find a punishment that is worse than death the second thing he said was that nuking gaza is quote an option right now these are this is a this is an actual person who's in the israeli government this isn't some fringe dude that's like walking around in the street yeah these are this is a person who's been elected and who's saying who's making these statements so we need to be very worried about these individuals because they have the power to do what they what they're saying that they want to do and it's him it's the finance minister smotrich it's um the minister of public security benigvir these are all people whose views have been completely normalized in israel and who can who are able to travel freely go wherever it is that they want to go and who are who are enacting policies that are not only harmful but that are genocidal these are genocidal policies yeah yeah i want to say that these people that we're having to quote unquote negotiate with today are some of the most extreme people we've ever seen in the israeli government and they are used to be fringe now they're like a regular fixture in the israeli government and if you trace it back most of them have grown up in settlements which you know decades ago there was some form of taboo even from within israelis you know within israel itself um that that saw that being a settler is taboo and now it's you becoming just like so mainstream and so okay that there's these extremist settlers that have become members of parliament with with a lot of power from the heritage you know minister to the security you know to to benigvir you know giving out guns to settlers you know like as a security minister and so there's there's so much um that now is being conceded not just in like the the conversation around palestine but also in the humanity of the people that we're having to negotiate with like these this is like almost like asking you know the jews to negotiate with the hitler regime you know like it's just it's so extreme these people were having to negotiate with and nobody used bats an eye like you said about you know the quotes that you mentioned about him which is which is truly terrifying so what do you think of the trump peace plan proposal or whatever you want to call it well where do i begin so first the idea of peace is just a joke like he thinks um when he went around and was saying his 3 000 years resolved some sort of what where where are what are you on um this isn't about peace obviously the second thing is that what what this plan is really about is a few things one is about normalizing genocide it's about normalizing ethnic cleansing it's about making sure that israel's not held to account and it's about separating gaza from the rest of palestine and the reason i say this is because this plan is is based on this model of of of if we just stop the bombing and allow reconstruction to happen then everything's going to get wonderful but even even if you follow this plan to a t which no which israel is definitely not going to do even if you assume the best um and coming at it with the best of intentions it doesn't end israel's military control over gaza it doesn't free palestinians it doesn't lead to liberation it doesn't lead to return you know in all of this as and and i'm talking about not return to gaza i'm talking about refugee return 80 percent of the population of gaza are descendants of are refugees more than 50 percent of the population are children so we're looking at a place that is you know it's tiny tiny it's it's about the size of washington dc um that has been it's a refugee population a child population that has been bombed to smithereens it's the most disabling event that we've seen in our lifetimes because the israelis have been have deliberately targeted children um they've targeted limbs they've made sure that people are lose their hearing lose their sight are infected with all sorts of diseases and and what this plan does is it doesn't hold israel to account for any of it and it doesn't it doesn't give any future to to to gaza either these children even in the best case scenario these children are still going to be living in a prison where israel can attack them at any moment's time because it doesn't it doesn't guarantee any form of liberation the word liberation isn't even in there as you're speaking diana i keep thinking about the american security philosophy of we don't negotiate with terrorists and that ben gvir and smotrich and netanyahu have been terrorizing palestine for years it it is so nonsensical to expect palestinians to be able to negotiate with their own terrorists it's just an inversion of of international law and any of the power dynamics that are necessary for the liberation of a marginalized group and and people will bring up often and i've brought up often the peace and reconciliation process in south africa and how that is a a potential model for for application should that be the direction that palestinians themselves choose to go and the further down this line of the normalization of international terrorism and the normalization of an ongoing genocide using more and more violent tactics in order to frighten this population it just it seems like that is no longer a feasible path forward and that brings me to our final question for you and i thank you so so much for giving us additional time to to learn from you um you've been a vocal critic of the two-state solution arguing that it's no longer a viable option especially because of the ongoing expansion of settlements and you've also been critical of the palestinian authority and its leadership calling for reforms and greater accountability and if all these old models have failed and if we don't necessarily have the best models even from international history for for an application to the palestinian context what is the path forward oh this is it's so painful for me to say this because i i can't believe we've been reduced to this but we right now katie are struggling to survive in 1948 we were on the brink of national extinction and we are now as well and why do i um say this because this genocide has been normalized it's no longer the front page of the news um when it is in the news there's always qualifiers journalists are going to one day hang their heads in utter shame at least i hope they do for the coverage of this genocide the world is one day going to hold its head in shame for doing nothing to stop israel so for me as a palestinian i feel that our path right now or our what we have to be doing is surviving and the rest of the world needs to start holding israel to account because i really fear that they're just going to get away with it this has become the new model gaza is the new model um holocaust scholar omar baratov wrote about this in in the times and others have been saying this for a while now that when you let a country get away with genocide and ethnic cleansing all the things that this becomes the new model and that is what we're seeing right now so i want to see israel held to account it has to be it has to be and and you know as a as a as a lawyer you spend so much time learning about um genocides and learning about the holocaust is a lot of time because the whole foundation of the international legal system as we know it is because the world failed during the period of the holocaust and so all of this stuff is like remedial is is in order to make sure that another holocaust doesn't happen and to make sure that never again actually means never again and and so if we haven't learned we as as people uh legal scholars like education if all of that if we haven't learned from this yeah then we're just going to see it again and we're going to see it again um you know the the nuremberg trial all of this this international legal system that i studied and that i believed in if if we don't make sure that it applies to israel as well yeah who who does it apply to then who like what's to say it's not gonna be the next model and the next model the next model and that's the part for me that's so terrifying you know when it comes to the palestinian authority even a a i don't even know what you call it a leadership that is so consumed with propping itself up and staying and it's staying alive and not at all focused on what's happening to the people that it supposedly represents yeah and and so palestinians are the you know the strongest people but i'm so tired of being so strong like i'm i'm tired of it i'm tired of being forced to be strong all the time we we said at the beginning you asked me the question of joy and i said to you palestinian joy is what makes me happy we just want to have our joy we just want to have our joy what's it wow this conversation you know has been probably one of the most profound that we've had on our podcast and i don't you know i don't have to go into the details of why but it's really important for us to hear you say everything you said today and for us to reflect on what happened in the past and what's happening today and and it's sad that since 1946 and until today we're still feeling as defeated and the focus remains on survival but i also appreciate your reminder that we also have to focus on equality and international law and and really political negotiations at this point are moot i guess um and the the focus has to be on if if it's fair and human for this group and it's also fair and human for this other group and you've commented also diana on pinkwashing when probed about you know condemning hamas as the resistance saying if you want me to renounce hamas because they're anti-woman anti-everything then i'm also going to sit and renounce israel which is also anti-woman anti-free speech anti-gay anti-everything which is certainly the truth and that's the reminder for the international community you know you talked about the triple whammy the reminder for the international community and the international media is that it is our role in safeguarding what makes us live in peace and prosperity where we live and that's what's at stake right now that's what's being threatened right now by what's happening in israel and palestine because certainly that can become the blueprint uh for for what can happen to anyone anywhere so thank you for that thank you yeah thank you thank you very much so we've reached the end of our questions and i know that earlier we spoke about um the potential of a heart share so we always end our interviews with a chance for you to share something that's on your heart something you want our listeners to really sit with um could be a story a message a piece of writing a practice um anything that might be useful in navigating this this turbulence and really stark emotional difficulty i mean sitting with the heaviness of what is facing palestinians right now so what would you like to share with us so there's two things um one is there's a a saying um from uh it's actually from the quran which translates into after hardship comes ease um um and uh and i hold to that you know i i the and the reason i i think of that often is because i i think that if you don't live knowing that we we know you know katie we live in a day now where i know that tomorrow is going to be worse than today i do know that but i have to believe that there that it's going to turn around at one point and that um and that tomorrow is going to be better than today so i i and that's the only thing that you can when you live in palestine as i do the only way that you can survive is if you focus on focus on these survivals you know on these on these um on these mechanisms on on thinking that tomorrow is going to be better than today even though we know that tomorrow is going to be worse than today it's the only way you can survive otherwise you you leave otherwise you leave yeah it's that tension between the realism that you've been taught is i mean safer that's like the way that you survive and the optimism or this hope of like something there must be a breaking point something has to improve because what is happening now is simply not sustainable and then the last thing i wanted to do is just read uh just a small um part of a poem and it's by a poet who's also a political figure who also happened to be the former mayor of nazareth so his name is uh Tawfiq Zayyad. Tawfiq Zayyad was the mayor of nazareth he was a member of Knesset um but he was also a very profound you know he was it was a poet and he he died in a car accident unfortunately in 1994 um as a palestinian who was he he went through the nakba he survived the nakba but he also he also represented the palestinians who ended up remaining including my parents right so his voice was the the voice of the palestinians who remained um and so this poem is called here we will stay and remember there were 150,000 Palestinians who remained including two of my parents both of them were were two of the 150 000 um and so this part is is this poem is is one of my favorites um because it speaks a lot of who i am and here goes here we will stay in Lydda and Ramle in the galilee we shall remain like a wall upon your chest and in your throat like a shard of glass a cactus thorn and the reason that i love this poem is because as much as as the israelis in the world are going to try to erase us and ignore us we're always going to be sitting there we're always going to be sitting there and zionists will forever be sitting knowing that they're living in somebody else's house that there are ghosts there they're always going to know that there's this shard of glasses stuck in that they can't eject that they have to deal with and that's who we are we're the we're the cactus thorn we are that wall we are we're the we're the as much as they try to not see us we're there and we're going to be there yes amen to that i mean absolutely honey do you have a heart share i do um so i grew up in lebanon and i grew up going to the south of lebanon which right now is being wiped away by lebanon by by israel and recently there was somebody who um unfortunately we lost as lebanese people who was an icon for us as a profound human she was a turtle conservationist and she was also a huge lgbtq icon for us in the arab world in general but especially in lebanon her name was mona khalil she died on june 19th 2026 after suffering severe injuries from an israeli airstrike that hit her home and she was 76 years old and what people have to understand is that her home was located on a patch of beach where her family house had been for generations and one day she woke up and realized that these turtles these uh green sea turtles that come from all over the the mediterranean sea come to lay their eggs at this patch of beach which ends up actually um maintaining the population of green sea turtles for a large proportion of the mediterranean sea they come to this little patch of beach in south of lebanon uh in naura where where her house was and they lay eggs and when she realized that she fell in love with the turtles and she turned that whole beach into a protected area and her home became a tourist hub for people to come and wake up with the turtles help them with their eggs you know take the little turtles down to the water and it just became this beautiful experience you can have you wake up in her house she feeds you fresh food that she picked from her garden or from the local farms and you have this beautiful experience of what south lebanon is and what the mediterranean sea of south lebanon is and what the heritage and the natural heritage of this place is and this hero who was protecting it was killed by israel on june 19th 2026 so my heart share is to just recognize this uh profound human that we've lost and everything she represents and to just remember her in our memories and so people for people to know about her and so if you can if you're listening to us just google her name mona chadi look at her face see her turtles and see that this essentially is what was lost today and what has been our loss uh since 1946 and and beyond so thank you for for listening to us and for hearing us and katie what is your heart share my dear um well something that's been on my heart is the idea of ecocide and the fact that genocide does not just impact people it impacts the land and it has this reach that is just astronomical um and we've been seeing after you know years and years and years of this israeli bombing campaign against palestine in particular as a a huge uptick these past two years of forest fires across the entire globe and wildfires that um we're having a lot of difficulty containing and that are disproportionately impacting indigenous communities that live with and on the land and this process of violation of a land and a people doesn't stop at the borders of historic palestine khaza or the west bank or even lebanon and south lebanon it has these far-reaching implications for indigeneity and eco-safety across the entire globe and i think when we talk about israelian zionist violence and the violence that is being done by this ethnic cleansing and this nation state the threads of the violence are so far-reaching and obviously the focus should still be on you know regional suffering and palestinian liberation and also bringing the violence to people's homes i think helps expand their awareness of the impact of israel's campaign of violence um and so i just wanted to name like you can't separate a bombing campaign that is dropping tons and tons and tons of of fire and pollutants and really impacting the the atmosphere and the chemicals that are being released into the world you can't separate that from the global impacts and and climate change um and so as we witness the worsening and the exacerbation of the suffering of our planet we can tie at least a proportion of that suffering to the zionist entity in this this political project that is so brutal so that has been on my heart in particular the indigenous populations right now of canada as well and there is such solidarity between their communities and the communities of palestine um and that solidarity is a beautiful thing okay well diana thank you so so much for being with us today and for sharing your absolutely intrinsically valuable and stunning insights we really appreciate it thank you thank you both for having me thank you it was our honor and gift seriously this conversation has been a master class and a history lesson into the complexities of the israeli palestinian tragedy and diana's voice is so essential for anyone who wants to understand why the peace process has failed and what a real path to justice might look like so please follow her and her work on social media and beyond um to our listeners as well thank you for joining us for another episode of superhumanizer if this conversation moved you please share it it it greatly helps the message reach other folks who might need to hear it and until next time keep working to make our world more human we will end with our closing prayer may all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity and may we see true peace in the middle east for all in our lifetime amen amen