In Conversation: One-On-One With A Palestinian From Gaza Working For Peace
Plus, Israel and Hamas agree on a deal to release 50 hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up!
Good morning,
It’s been a rough few weeks, but ahead of Thanksgiving we wanted to take a moment to remember there’s still a lot to be thankful for.
For one, we’d like to say THANK YOU to everyone who’s a part of our Mo News community. Yes, that’s you…
Wishing you and your loved ones a safe and happy holiday.
❤️
Mosheh, Jill, & Lauren
BTW: The daily newsletter and podcast will be dark on Thursday and Friday. We are back on Monday.
🗞 ISRAEL, HAMAS AGREE TO TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE DEAL THAT WILL FREE 50 HOSTAGES
🚨 A HOSTAGE DEAL REACHED
Late Tuesday night, the Israeli Cabinet agreed on a Qatar-US mediated deal to free up to 50 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th and declare a multi-day pause in fighting. Here are some of the details:
Hamas will release 50 hostages—mostly women and children— who were abducted into Gaza.
They’ll likely be released in groups of 12-13 people per day starting on Thursday.
In exchange, Israel has agreed to a ceasefire for at least four days.
Israel also agreed to allow additional fuel into Gaza as well as significant amounts of humanitarian aid, which has not entered the Strip in large quantities due to the ongoing war.
Israel also agreed to release approximately 150 Palestinian women and minors (3 prisoners per 1 hostage) from jail and let them return to their homes.
Israeli troops will remain in their positions in Gaza.
The release of hostages and prisoners in the first phase of the deal would take place over four days of ceasefire in Gaza.
In a second phase, Hamas could release dozens more women, children and elderly people in return for Israel extending the ceasefire by several more days.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war will continue after the hostage deal pause "until Hamas is destroyed, all the hostages are released and there is nobody in Gaza who can threaten Israel."
__________________
INTERVIEW WITH PALESTINIAN GRASSROOTS ACTIVIST KHALIL SAYEGH ON GAZA, HAMAS, PEACE
Now to Mosheh’s interview with Khalil Sayegh. He was born and raised in Gaza, then lived in the West Bank, and is now in the US, where he recently got his master's degree from American University. The 28 year old recently founded a grassroots organization, the Agora Initiative, partnering with an Israeli to focus on long-term solutions to the conflict.
It's the 47th day of the war, and Sayegh’s story provides insight on what life is like inside Gaza for Palestinians, life under Hamas and the Israeli blockade.
A full version of our interview will be available later today as a podcast. Here is an edited version of our interview for time and clarity:
__________________
Mosh: Who in your family is currently in Gaza, and how are they doing?
Sayegh: All my family is there. My parents, siblings, and extended family. They're alive and I'm thankful for that. To be alive in Gaza right now is something to be thankful for. But, on the other hand, the situation is very dire. At the beginning of the war, we lost our home. My family is staying at a church in Gaza.
We are west of the Gaza City center. There are no stores and no hospitals that work in northern Gaza. People bake their bread at home, but without fuel and gas, you have to do it on wood. About 500 people live as a community in the church, making food. They try to find water. It is really difficult. It's not something that anyone should be living through.
Mosh: How do you feel about being in the US during this war?
Sayegh: Since day one, I've been feeling the survivor’s guilt. I've been feeling guilty for not being in Gaza. I've been feeling guilty that I'm apart from my family and that I can't feel what they're feeling in a physical, literal sense.
But, I feel like if I'm there, also their story wouldn't be told to the world because I couldn't be telling their story to the world. If I was there, there is no way we can make up financially for what happened to us—losing our home and business.
Mosh: What is the small Christian community like in Gaza?
Sayegh: The Christian community in Palestine goes back 2,000 years. Gaza has the third oldest church in the world, the Church of St. Porphyrius, where I worshiped.
Christians in 1948 were also displaced from their homes and lost their property, etc. When Hamas came to power in 2006, the Christians found themselves at a crossroads. All of a sudden you had to deal with an illiberal Islamist regime that emphasizes their own understanding of Islam. We used to be about 4,000 people back in 2000. Right now we are talking about less than 1,000 Christians.
It's hard to know the cause. On the one hand, Hamas and their Islamism and authoritarian nature has pushed anyone who's not Muslim to feel threatened and want to leave. But on the other hand, it was also the Israeli siege or blockade that destroyed businesses and made it impossible for everyone to live normally, including Christians.
Mosh: What was growing up like in Gaza? You were born in the mid-90s.
Sayegh: The only relatively peaceful time we've had in Gaza was between 1994-1999, the post-Oslo agreement. I was five or six years-old, but I remember it. There was a sense of hope that we're building our state. There was freedom.
But, in 2000, the second Intifada started and violence erupted again. It was the first interaction I had with the Israelis. The Israeli Air Force bombed Gaza.
We lived through the intifada, then we lived through the withdrawal, then we lived through Hamas's 2007 takeover of Gaza. It seemed to me, as a kid growing up in Gaza, that there is consistent violence.
Mosh: As you grew up, what did you learn about Israel? What was your experience and your interactions, if at all, with Israelis?
Sayegh: I didn't really have an interaction with Israelis whatsoever. The interactions I had were the Air Force, the bombing, the Israeli army killing people, the pictures I saw of atrocities. I also heard stories from my grandpa. Before 1948, he owned two jewelry shops in present day Israel. He lost his land, he lost his home.
As a kid, you hear these stories, you experience the bombing and you come to one rational conclusion: that they hate us, they want to kill us. There is no other way to think about it.
Mosh: Would you say that is the typical interaction for most kids in Gaza?
Sayegh: I would be surprised if anyone thinks something else. Because you put two million people in this, almost like an open air prison, and you are not allowed to get in and out. At that time we needed a permit to go to Ramallah in the West Bank to visit my grandparents. We never got one until 2006. It’s a 45 minute drive, but you have to go through Israel and you can’t do that.
❝
“Only now am I processing the amount of trauma, of pain, of grievances that people in Gaza must have felt and still feel. It makes sense what I felt about the Israelis. Although later on in my life, I would correct that. I would interact with Israelis for the first time…and put myself in the shoe of an Israeli for the first time.”
Khalil Sayegh
Mosh: What is education like in Gaza? How did Hamas change things?
Sayegh: Hamas replaced the teachers in government schools with Hamas members.
Their core message is, come back to Allah, to religion. And then following, the message of jihad. That message made people like myself, not Muslims, at school feel isolated.
They replaced the national anthem in the morning at my school. We sang the national anthem of Palestine — it always made me proud. And all of a sudden Hamas replaced it with a song more Islamist. Instead of singing for Palestine and liberation, we are singing about Jerusalem and about Islam versus Judaism.
Mosh: There are nearly 2.5 million people in Gaza. Break down how people feel about Hamas and a two state solution?
Sayegh: If you say political party affiliation, I think Hamas is way less than 20% or 15%. But then when an election happened in 2006, Hamas got closer to 60%. Hamas ran under the name of ‘change and reform’….and even had a Christian on their list.
Many of those who voted for Hamas back then even believed in a two-state solution. Prior to the war, 70% didn’t think highly of Hamas's government, and 70% supported the continuation of a ceasefire with Israel.
Mosh: How will this war impact opinion about Hamas in Gaza?
Sayegh: So, people didn’t really support Hamas. Now, after the incredible war crimes Israel has committed in Gaza, one would think, ‘what would this do to the public opinion in Gaza?’ This has the potential of completely radicalizing the Palestinian street to wanting revenge.
On the other hand, it could be that people will become more and more disillusioned with Hamas and what they did on October 7 and these horrific attacks. People could come to realize that, well, ‘yes, Israel is committing war crimes, but Hamas is so stupid for triggering these war crimes against us.’ And I think that what I am seeing is more of the second.
But it's very important to understand that there is an incredible campaign run not only by Hamas, but also by their regional coalition, to suppress these voices.
Mosh: Are you getting criticism from the pro-Palestinian side? Is it difficult to be a voice of nuance at a time of black and white, when everyone is told to choose sides?
Sayegh: People who are in Gaza and are afraid to speak up because of what they think the consequences are, are saying, ‘go for it Khalil…you're doing God's work and you should continue to do it.’
I am getting attacked by people who live outside of Palestine. But I choose to be intellectually honest and look at things as they are. Like, do I want to make my people look bad? No, of course, not. But do I want to compromise my own conscience and my own morals to justify the actions of Hamas, who clearly gives no crap about Palestinian rights and their safety? It's horrific and I think it's unjust.
Regarding the discourse in the diaspora in general, whether they're the Jewish diaspora or the Palestinian diaspora….it has become so tribalist. ‘There is no way on earth my side could be the wrong side and vice versa.’
It's actually funny and insane to me to see, on the one side, the Jewish Zionists in the diaspora who were just protesting against this (Netanyahu) government a few months ago, now saying that this government can do no wrong against the Palestinians. And on the other hand, you have the Palestinian diaspora in the West, who don't like right-wing movements, being okay with a right-wing movement, like Hamas, who are extremists and who you can't live under for one day.
❝
Hamas and the Israeli blockade in Gaza have made it very hard for people (around the world) to actually access information on what's happening there, and thus made the PR campaign of Hamas and their supporters much more powerful.
Mosh: The larger Israeli goal is to eliminate Hamas. Is that possible?
Sayegh: Netanyahu is so committed to the original idea of preventing a Palestinian state that he says, ‘we will remove Hamas, but we're not going to restore the Palestinian Authority there.’ What are you going to end up with? A full occupation of Gaza? An attempt to ethnically cleanse (move Gazans to Egypt), which wouldn't succeed because Egyptians are against it? So what are you going to do with the people there? I really don't know what the Israelis are thinking right now and where it would lead.
I think ultimately Hamas is an obstacle for peace. There is no question about that. The question is how do you co-opt this or jump over this obstacle for peace? Israel believes it's literally. We don't think it works. I think that there was a lost 15 years of an opportunity.
Hamas's only way of recruiting people to even join Hamas is by pointing to the Palestinian Authority and pointing to the other solution. And they say, ‘Look, they tried being peaceful for 30 years. Did it work?’
Mosh: Your argument is if the Israelis engaged in diplomacy recently with the Palestinian Authority, then ultimately that would have been a more effective argument against Hamas.
Sayegh: Yeah, for sure, because if you did that, and then you run an election, the Palestinian Authority will win the election. There is no way Hamas would win an election if diplomacy is really working, and Israel is really making concessions to the Palestinian Authority, and made them look like they are effective.
All you need to do is read Netanyahu’s last book and you see it there. It's like he's proud to have destroyed the two-state solution and the hope for Palestinian state. And I'm afraid that if he's honest with himself…he will regret that.
Mosh: What is your experience with Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure?
Sayegh: I know for a fact from friends and people who lived through experiences in Gaza that Hamas does build its tunnels under homes. Sometimes you don't even realize they're doing it because it’s under your home.
I had a friend, and they built a tunnel under his home. He gets a call from the Israelis in 2014 to leave his home. On the way of leaving his home, it’s bombed.
After he rebuilt his home, he realizes that Hamas rebuilt the tunnel under his home. He goes to his cousin, who is actually the leader of Hamas in that area and says ‘are you out of your mind? They bombed my house.’ Their response: ‘None of your business. That's resistance.’
So many on our side abroad don't want to talk about it because it makes our side look bad. (Hamas) is not our side. Our side is my friend.
Mosh: Let’s talk about the Agora Initiative. What are the goals? What do you want to do with Agora?
Sayegh: We're focused on solutions, long-term solutions. I believe that fixing Israel and Palestine in a way that respects everyone's rights and genuinely brings about constitutional democracy will be an opening for democratization in the region, including Jordan, Egypt, et cetera. What we're doing right now, we're speaking on campuses, we're speaking in different places, trying to present our ideas. Hopefully soon…we'll do more research, policy papers.
Mosh: One of the things that you do is you make people feel uncomfortable on both sides.
Sayegh: That is what we have to do. I'm glad people feel uncomfortable, because I think feeling uncomfortable is what will lead you to truth. Usually, if you are always feeling uncomfortable, I'm afraid you're not really seeking truth.
⏳ SPEED READ
🚨NATION
📌 IRS delaying $600 payment reporting rule for PayPal, Venmo and more — again (CBS NEWS)
📌 More than 100 guns stolen in Michigan after store manager is forced to reveal alarm code (AP)
📌 Wisconsin Supreme Court hears arguments in redistricting case that could have widespread implications (NBC NEWS)
📌 Coast Guard estimates more than 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled off coast of Louisiana (FOX NEWS)
🌎 AROUND THE WORLD
📌 Germany freezes new spending commitments as budget woes deepen (REUTERS)
📌 New video shows trapped laborers alive in Himalayan tunnel but rescue still no closer (CNN)
📌 North Korea launches suspected spy satellite, its neighbors say (NBC NEWS)
📌 US retaliates against Iran-backed militants after ballistic missile strike, officials say (ABC NEWS)
📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH
📌 High mortgage rates push home sales decline closer to Great Recession levels (USA TODAY)
📌 Microsoft exec says OpenAI employees can join with same compensation (CNBC)
📌 NFL committed to X partnership as Elon Musk’s social platform gets heat for hate speech (NBC SPORTS)
📌 Study reveals first mammal known to mate without using penetration (CNN)
🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT
📌 The Rolling Stones announce tour dates for 2024 across North America (NBC NEWS)
📌 Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan to kick off another chapter of ‘The Karate Kid’ franchise (CNN)
📌 A$AP Rocky will stand trial in January after being accused of firing gun at A$AP Relli (PEOPLE)
📌 Snoop Dogg said he quit smoking, but it was a ruse. Here's why some experts aren't laughing (USA TODAY)
