This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on November 14, 2023. Listen to the podcast here.
Jon Alterman: Khalil Sayegh is a Palestinian political analyst currently living in Washington D.C. He was born in Gaza and lived in Ramallah before coming to the United States for his graduate studies. Khalil, welcome to Babel.
Khalil Sayegh: Thank you, Jon, for having me.
Jon Alterman: What's your family's story?
Khalil Sayegh: Well, I was born to a normal Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip who happened to be refugees. My grandparents had been displaced in 1948 during the Nakba.
Jon Alterman: From where?
Khalil Sayegh: From a city called Majdal actually, located in the southern part of Israel. And my mother’s side actually interestingly came from Acre, from up in the north. Both ended up in Gaza. So born to a Palestinian family that are refugees means that, you know, you have to grow with a sense of grievances toward what happened in ‘48, and also, with a sense of hope that one day you'll return to what used to be your home in 1948.
Jon Alterman: You grew up in Gaza. What was it like growing up in Gaza?
Khalil Sayegh: This is a hard question because when someone asks me this question, I find myself going deep into my thoughts and emotions and imagining all sorts of paradoxes about the way I grew up in Gaza and the context there. On the one hand, I grew up in a really beautiful city on the beach. I lived just five minutes from the Mediterranean. I would walk, and I would enjoy the sun over there. And on the other hand, since my childhood, I've experienced the Israeli bombing of Gaza during the Second Intifada, and I also experienced the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006. I experienced the politicization of every aspect of life in Gaza after 2006.
My grandparents from my mother's side lived in Ramallah and up until I was 14 years old, I wasn't able to meet them because I couldn't travel from Gaza to Ramallah, which for context is about 40 miles or less, which you drive in like an hour here in the United States. But you couldn't even leave because you needed an Israeli permit.
Jon Alterman: And then you moved to Ramallah. How is it different from what you knew in Gaza? How is life in Ramallah different? How is society different? How are Palestinians different?
Khalil Sayegh: The first thing that any Palestinian who grew up in Gaza, especially after the total siege and isolation of Gaza, will tell you, it's geographically different. You can see mountains. You know, people in Gaza have grown up on the coast, they've never seen a mountain in their lives.
But on the other hand, there are certain cultural differences because of the regime type that we had, right? Since Hamas took over in 2006, especially during the first few years of Hamas's consolidation of power in Gaza between 2006 and 2009, there’s been a really harsh process of Islamization of society. By Islamization, I mean making it more Islamist, making it look more like what Hamas wants their regime to look like and the people to look like. And that's something that didn't happen in the West Bank due to the secular nature of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Fatah movement there. Life has remained a little bit more secular in the West Bank.
I'll give you one example. In Gaza after 2006, it wasn't allowed for people to consume alcohol anywhere in Gaza, not in a restaurant, not even in your private home. So, I was born to a Christian family. By virtue of being Christians, we have wine at home usually. But not only this, even the economy in the West Bank, after the siege obviously, was a little bit better. And you could feel it. You could feel that there was more opportunity, that you could go to school and have a higher chance of getting a job. And you know, I left Gaza at the age of 15 and although I was 15, unfortunately I was able to predict that the situation was going to get worse and worse. And that's why I decided to go there. I said, "At least there is a higher chance of getting a job and getting a life after university. And unfortunately, was right because the situation became worse and worse.
Jon Alterman: Have you been back to Gaza since you left?
Khalil Sayegh: I was not allowed, no.
Jon Alterman: Not allowed by Hamas? Or not allowed by the Israelis?
Khalil Sayegh: By the Israelis mostly. I think that Hamas would have issue with me going back to Gaza because they have issue with anyone who went to the West Bank because they associate them usually with the other party, with Fatah or with other groups, right? Just the fact that you went to Ramallah makes you suspicious. But no, it was more from the Israeli side. You know, for almost seven years living in the West Bank, the Israelis considered people like myself who moved there as “illegal.” So, at any point an Israeli soldier can stop you and send you back to Gaza without any warrant. So, I lived under this fear for almost seven years, running away from the army, having to figure out how to get my papers and then in 2017, for the first time, I got what's called “permit to stay in the West Bank.”
It's, you know, renewed on a yearly basis. And I had the freedom to travel freely in the West Bank, and then the freedom for the first time to go out of Palestine, to Amman, Jordan. And when I came to pursue my academic degree here in the United States, I was shocked that I'm not allowed back to the West Bank. They just revoked the permit. So, now I'm kind of stuck here. It's a good place to be stuck, but...
Jon Alterman: What citizenship do you have?
Khalil Sayegh: I have only a Palestinian Authority citizenship. So, I have a passport that some would say is recognized by every state, but others would say it's only a travel document. But it's a Palestinian Authority passport. That's the only one I have.
Jon Alterman: And so you only have Palestinian citizenship, but you can't go back to any place?
Khalil Sayegh: No. Because I can't go to the West Bank because they revoked this permit, although that's the place I’ve known for the last 14 years. I lived in Ramallah and did my undergraduate studies at Bethlehem, so that's the place I knew, right? Gaza, to me, is where my family is. I mean, my siblings are there. My father and mother are still there. But to me, going there means losing every economic opportunity. I mean, I've seen my siblings suffering there, not being able to get a job. Even my dad’s business was destroyed. Everything is being destroyed.
And on the other hand, too, living under an Islamist authoritarian regime, to me, is not my thing. I can't live there. I can't live and not be able to criticize the government freely. I can't live there and not be able to just wear whatever I want to wear, or hang out with female friends, or whatever. I mean, all these sort of restrictions by the Hamas regime in Gaza. So that's why I decided not to go back to Gaza.
Jon Alterman: You know, you've seen a lot of people in the United States talking about Gaza for the last month, especially. What do you think Americans get most wrong about Gaza? What do people just not understand?
Khalil Sayegh: I think people misunderstand the diversity of Gaza. I think Gaza is much more diverse, especially Gaza City. It's an actual cosmopolitan city. I mean, actually it's the most populated city in the Palestinian Territories. Compared to other cities, it has a serious middle class that was destroyed obviously after the siege, but the culture is still there. Education rate is very high. Even for women, it's above 90 percent.
But the other thing that they get wrong is that they assume that everyone in Gaza elected Hamas in 2007, and thus, you know, I hear a lot of people argue that, “They have to pay the consequences of what happened, the horrible thing that happened on October 7th,” right? And this cannot be further from the truth because not only that like 50 percent of the Gaza population today are children, and even people like myself did not elect Hamas because we weren't eligible for election in 2006. I was like, what? I was like, 12 or 13 at the time. But even on a factual basis, people did not really elect Hamas by a majority in Gaza. What happened is about 45 percent of the people voted for Hamas. And even within the 45 percent who voted for Hamas, I would argue that a lot of them do not support the sort of the “resistance program” with Hamas. I mean, the data shows clearly that after the election, the majority of people who voted for Hamas were actually also supportive of two state solution and negotiation with the government.
So, there is a paradox there to struggle with and deal with. I think people like to look at Gaza without really realizing the complexity of it. On the other hand, also, I am to be honest, frustrated by certain people on the far left who tend to just think of Hamas as only a resistance movement and not to understand that this is a movement that has controlled Gaza for the last 15 years and made the lives of the Palestinians miserable. People like myself and others weren't able to express our political opinions and even like, basic liberty of issues. People weren't allowed at some point to even on a date without a marriage certificate, etc. So, there are all sorts of problems with this understanding of Gaza and what's happening there.
Jon Alterman: When did you first meet an Israeli who wasn’t a soldier, and what was that experience like?
Khalil Sayegh: That's a good question. I have an interesting journey on that, actually. In Gaza, I did not even meet a soldier, actually. The only time I met an Israeli was with the Israeli F-16s coming to the skies of Gaza and bombing. So, the first interaction with Israelis is terrifying. You know all the stories about what happened in '48. They're bombing you, and you don't see them.
And the only, to me, rational and logical conclusion I could reach is that they want to kill us all. They want to get rid of us all. So, I've seen them as some form of monsters. Then going to the West Bank, ended up having to run from the soldiers from place to place because I'm “illegal” under the Israeli occupation law.
The first time I met an Israeli who was not a soldier, actually it was an Israeli settler who is obviously radical in his views of what Israel should look like, etc., but he had certain level of "humanism.” And he just wanted to meet a Palestinian for the first time, so I did. And at that time, I wanted to just meet an Israeli. I was going through a journey where for the first time, I started thinking, "What if they have a story too? And what if I hear their story?" And I wasn't allowed to go into Israel, so I figured that the only place I could meet Israelis is settlements. So, I ended up meeting someone at the junction between Bethlehem and Hebron called Gush Etzion Junction at a café for settlers actually where Palestinians could access at that time.
I met this Israeli, and it was fascinating because on the one hand, I disagree with him on almost everything, like it's insane to me what he's talking about, right? On the other hand, I've seen just a human who wants to raise his children, who really sincerely does not want to kill all Palestinians, as I imagined or whatever. And it was really a moving experience.
After this, I met a bunch of other Israelis from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem who I aligned with more in terms of my basic view of the world, right? And now, even my business partner in this new organization that we started is an Israeli himself, and we both see the world a little bit closer to each other than the rest of Palestinians and Israelis.
Jon Alterman: Can you describe the pro-peace Palestinian community? Who's in it? How diverse is it? What is it like?
Khalil Sayegh: Yeah. Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by pro-peace, right? If you mean people who support a two-state solution, I would say historically, within the last 10 years, the majority of Palestinians are in this camp for different reasons, right? The numbers used to be between 50 to 65, right? It depends on what’s happening and the context, people swing back and forth.
Right now, given the context that the Israeli government continues its occupation, expansion of settlements, etc., this camp is getting weaker and weaker. So, we know numbers that people who support two-state solution are less than 40 percent.
But if we mean by “peace camp” what some Westerners refer to as people who have worked in grassroots between Israelis and Palestinians like myself, I would say that these groups are still quite weak, and I don't think they are up to the challenge of what's up ahead of us. And I think that's due to the really huge inequality between both sides, Palestinians and Israelis, and the institutional problem that the occupation has created.
So that's complicated. I wish I had a simpler answer to that, but I had to learn this the hard way after really working for years to try to get more of my friends to participate in meeting Israelis. And I did succeed sometimes. I failed many more times.
Jon Alterman: How large is that community, in your mind? Is this a community of dozens, hundreds, thousands?
Khalil Sayegh: I think the maximum would be 10,000. Yeah, that would be the maximum if I combined all the organizations. But obviously, I mean this includes some Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is a different equation because Palestinian citizens of Israel, by the very virtue of being Israelis, have to deal with their neighbors, right? And also, there is a certain level of equality there where you could meet with each other.
The Palestinians find it very humiliating and hard that we are going to meet with the Israelis and at the same time, having to go through checkpoints where we are humiliated, having to require a permit, etc. And then when you sit there, they come, and they assume that you guys are equal.
And I always had to point out to my partner and say this, "While we are equal in this room, if something happens and the police come here, under the law, we're not equal." And that makes it almost impossible for any grassroots peace initiative to succeed.
That's why I kind of stepped back from this work and am now building this organization with my Israeli partner where we're trying to get people together, but we no longer talk about peace and love or whatever. We are talking about ending the occupation. We're talking about the political settlement. After this, we'll start talking about talking to each other more.
But now, the conversation has to be about everything that we want to talk about, about our identity, etc., but it has to be all directed as the goal of ending the occupation, establishing some form of solution where Palestinians have rights and dignity and no longer feel that they are under what many Palestinians would describe the boots of the Israeli soldiers.
Jon Alterman: What has the current war done to those kinds of efforts? Is anything going on? Can anything go on? Under what circumstances can anything go on? If so, what?
Khalil Sayegh: I mean, obviously, I'm here in the United States. I'm not there on the ground, so this gives me a lot of disadvantages. But I think it also gives me an advantage because I'm able to see the bigger picture. And at the same time, I'm here in Washington but my phone, from the day to the night, I'm talking to people in Gaza, talking to people on the West Bank, and also in Egypt and Jordan as well.
And what I can tell you is that a lot of organizations that has had Palestinians and Israelis working together in grassroots has completely collapsed. People no longer trust each other. I've even seen people having completely different versions of what happened on October 7. The Israelis were like, "There are horrific, terrible massacres happening," and some Palestinians were like, "No. Nothing really is happening. Only soldiers were killed. Whatever.”
I've seen also Israelis saying that “While we still believe in peace, we think the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) should have complete freedom in Gaza. They should just massacre people. It's all collateral damage. No problem.”
And I had a conversation with different groups that I was working with, and I said, "The problem is not that you're doing something wrong. The problem is that you're operating within a very hard context, and this is an institutional problem that unless it ends and both sides are closer to each other in terms of equality, this will keep happening. So, in a way, maybe the entire premise or foundation of the grassroots work is wrong in a way.
Jon Alterman: You talked about how you're monitoring this war from afar. Can you describe what it's like to watch a war affecting a place you know well from afar? How much of what you get is off social media? And how do you think about social media in that context?
Khalil Sayegh: I think to start with, how does it feel on a personal level? It's painful, it’s draining, and it's triggering because you see, you know, just two days ago, I saw a face of this young, handsome doctor who was killed with an Israeli airstrike in Gaza: Maisara Alrayyes.
I even retweeted his story. I thought, "Wow. What's up with the handsome guy? Really seems brilliant." He had his master's in King's in London. And I was like, "Where do I know this guy from? Like, I've seen him." And just two minutes after, I remembered he was my classmate, and I just found myself crying all of a sudden. Just my memories of playing with Maisara, doing homework together, etc., start coming back. And relatives of mine were killed. My family home was bombed. They're at a church right now, but even the church was bombed. It's really, really painful.
But social media, to be honest, has been great in the sense that it provides a lot of information, and there is no longer a monopoly over the narrative.
But on the other hand, the amount of misinformation is beyond description. It's really insane on both sides. The Israelis are spreading really well-done misinformation, and so is not necessarily only Hamas, but many different pro-Palestine groups are also providing misinformation.
There were a bunch of videos of Hamas bombing tanks that were actually not from the Hamas war, but they were from Syria. Especially in Arabic social media, this has been circulating in order for the Islamist movement in the region to show how the way of “resistance” is succeeding, right? And even pictures and videos from Ukraine are being circulated as Hamas fighting in Gaza.
On the Israeli side, there were some recordings. After the infamous hospital bombing, there were a lot of rumors on who did it or who didn't do it, etc. The recording that Israel has published the day after, to me, it took me two minutes, as someone from Gaza who knows the accent, who knows the people, how they talk there, to just figure out this is clearly fabricated. It wasn't serious. It wasn't a Hamas operative. Not only the accent, not only the way that they talk is awkward, but also that Hamas operatives in Gaza don't talk on cell phones these days. They have their own internal systems. So, there is all sorts of misinformation like that.
Pro-Israel groups were publishing pictures of someone who's supposed to be dead, and he's in the coffin, and he's looking in his phone. And they're writing, "Oh, this is Bollywood, right? This is the Palestinians playing dead." And these pictures weren't even from Palestine.
Or, I mean, actually some serious people even published pictures of people who pretend to be dead, but they're not dead. And it turned out it's a picture from Paris or Belgium of people who were protesting. So, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation there.
Jon Alterman: Do you feel that in general, people have a good sense of the reality? Or do you feel that as somebody who really knows Gaza, you don't understand? Or do you feel that this is just being constructed by each side, neither one of which has a grip on reality?
Khalil Sayegh: I would say that anyone whose take on it is “either, or” is missing the point, and I'll give you an example. One of the famous Israeli claims is “Hamas is using the Palestinian people in Gaza as human shields,” right? That Hamas is building tunnels under people's home, and Hamas is responsible for every killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
On the other side, on the pro-Palestinian side, the argument is just simple, “This just simply does not happen. Hamas never builds tunnels under the people's houses in Gaza.”
Now, my view is both of these takes are completely wrong because I know for certainty that Hamas is building tunnels under people's houses without their permission. Why? Because I have friends who were targeted because of that, and after their houses were targeted, Hamas rebuilt the tunnels.
And to just simply dismiss these actual people who are suffering because of Hamas's system of tunnel is completely wrong. On the other hand, to just say that Israel has the right of do whatever they want because just Hamas build the tunnel, killing civilians, killing children—more than 4,000 children were killed in Gaza—is just completely terrible and wrong. And it completely disregards all the rules of war and international law, humanitarian law as well. So that's an example of how people misunderstand Gaza and what's happening there.
Jon Alterman: Is there a role for others? Is there a role for other Arab states? Is there a role for Western states? How does that compare? Because you've done a lot of things between Palestinians and Israelis. What do you wish there were from outsiders?
Khalil Sayegh: I think that obviously, the U.S. role is the biggest role, right? The Oslo Agreement wasn't really a U.S. initiative by itself, but the U.S. role played a part. The fact that the Americans were pushing for it, the fact that Americans weren't willing to give a blind eye to the occupation completely played a role of pushing the Israelis.
The Israelis depend on the United States with their weaponry. We've seen Mr. Biden visiting Israel right away, providing them with weapons, support internationally, even vetoes at the United Nations, etc. The Israelis need to feel the pressure from the United States in order to go forward, and the Palestinians need to feel that there is someone pushing for something in order for them to sit at the table. So that's where I think the Western part is very important.
On the Arab part, I think that although they are doing their part of trying to push for a solution, I think much more work is needed there. I think that after the Abraham Accords, there has been some misunderstanding of how much the issue can be inflamed in one minute. Like, they just thought the status quo can continue, we could wait to talk about two states. Even the Saudis were kind of willing to move forward with just a few steps without two states.
I think for the first time, everything is just going back to the Arabs, and the Arabs just understand at this moment that this is in our interest to push for a Palestinian state because that's the only way not only to ensure Palestinians have rights but to ensure that Egypt and Jordan are more stable.
And I would argue that the status of even democratization in the region lays in Israel and Palestine. That when you really solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you will have much more room even to move toward a better status of human rights and democratization in the region. And this is a whole other conversation, but I do believe that.
Jon Alterman: You've devoted a lot of your efforts to trying to pursue some sort of Palestinian-Israeli peace. As you look at the situation now, what drives you to despair? And what gives you hope?
Khalil Sayegh: What drives me to despair, obviously, is the fact that we are killing each other in a vicious way. I mean, Palestinians and Israelis have been killing each other for the last 75 years.
I obviously would emphasize that Palestinians have been disproportionately targeted and killed due to the imbalance of power within the conflict. We are living under occupation, humiliation, etc. It did not all start on October 7. It was much, much longer before that this whole thing was going on.
But this episode of violence that we are experiencing right now is not something that we’ve had in a sort of proportionality, and it does drive me to despair, the fact that more than a million people in Gaza are displaced. The fact that I lost friends and kids of my friends that were martyred does lead me to despair. It's painful.
My fear is that we are yet again raising a new generation that is deeply traumatized and that is in deep, deep pain, and that the only way they would find ahead of them is that the way of revenge and that is a terrifying situation.
On the other hand, what gives me hope at this moment is that, paradoxically as it is, after all that is happening right now, finally the war is yet again looking at Gaza and looking at the West Bank, looking at Palestine saying, "Guess what? There is a problem there. There is a conflict that has been going on for 75 years." And that gives me hope, although it's annoying and although it makes me feel like I've been speaking up in the air and no one was listening for the last few years. But this gives me a certain level of hope that the world is paying attention again to it. And I hope that the Palestinians and Israelis would come to the conclusion that the peaceful means is better than violence. That's my hope.
Jon Alterman: Khalil Sayegh, thank you very much for joining us on Babel.
Khalil Sayegh: Thank you, Jon. I really appreciate it.
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