EP 29: The Myths That Define Israel-Palestine - Part 4: No Partner For Peace

For decades, we've been told Israel wants peace but has no partner to negotiate with. In Part 4 of the Israel-Palestine myth series, we show the opposite is true — tracing how Israel created Hamas, crushed every Palestinian protest movement, ignored every peace offer, and has kept imprisoned for 23 years the one Palestinian leader its own Mossad director said could negotiate. The "no partner" myth isn't just false. It's a policy. 

Check out my substack page where I tackle some of the episode topics in depth and write about other issues our country and the world are facing today. https://substack.com/@ktdpodcast 

Transcript

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On February 19th, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an announcement. Israel will not withdraw from the buffer zones it created in Lebanon and Syria. Let me give you some context for what that announcement actually means. On November 27th, 2024, Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire. Israeli forces were supposed to withdraw from Southern Lebanon by February 18th, 2025. They didn't withdraw. Instead, Israel retained five elevated positions inside southern Lebanon overlooking Lebanese border towns giving direct line of sight into civilian areas. Netanyahu's announcement made it official. Israel was staying. But here's what I want you to understand about what happened during that ceasefire.'Cause this is where the story gets buried. In the 15 months between the ceasefire taking effect and its collapse. The United Nations interim force in Lebanon, UNIFIL documented more than 7,500 Israeli airspace violations and nearly 2,500 ground violations. Israel conducted what the UN described as almost daily strikes in Lebanese territory, hitting homes, vehicles, civilian infrastructure, agricultural zones, and reconstruction equipment. In one strike alone, Israel destroyed more than 300 heavy construction machines that Lebanese families were using to build their homes. Israeli soldiers demolished villages, abducted at least 19 Lebanese civilians, in what the UN said may amount to enforced disappearances. Israeli soldiers desecrated a memorial to Lebanese civilians killed in 1948, spray painting in Hebrew."The only good Shia is a dead Shia". 331 Lebanese were killed at least 13 of them children. 945 injured, 64,000 people were displaced And Hezbollah? In those same 15 months, the UN documented four incidents of projectiles fired from Lebanon toward Israel. Yes, only four. None of which resulted in a single Israeli casualty. Then on February 28th, 2026, Israel, alongside the United States, launched a full scale war against Iran. They assassinated Iran's Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. They bombed Iranian cities. Hezbollah, watching all of this fired rockets into Northern Israel. And here's what made the headlines."Hezbollah breaks ceasefire". Not the 10,000 violations, demolished villages, abducted civilians, or desecrated memorial. Not the assassination of an ally and head of state. Hezbollah's response is what broke the ceasefire. And then on March 14th, Israel went further. Ground forces moved into Southern Lebanon. Strikes on Beirut. Evacuation orders issued across the south. More than 1 million people have been forced from their homes. According to Lebanon's Health Ministry since March 2nd, alone, at least 900 people have been killed. 111 of them children. The buffer zones weren't a boundary. They were a staging ground. This inversion aggressor becomes victim. Months of documented violence disappears, and only the response to that violence makes the news, is one of the most successful propaganda operations in modern history, and it has a name. There's no partner for peace. For decades, we've been told that Israel desperately wants peace, but has no one to negotiate with. That palestinians and their allies are so committed to violence, so driven by hatred that no agreement is possible. That if only they would put down their weapons. Renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist. There could be peace tomorrow. Across the last three episodes, we've already dismantled much of this myth. The peace offers that were actually subjugation with better branding. The self-defense that was offensive destruction with legal cover, the democracy that was really apartheid, dressed up in fine clothes. So today I'm going after something different. I'm going to focus on how Israel created the very groups it now says, makes peace impossible. How it crushed every movement that might have produced a genuine partner and how it imprisoned and eliminated every Palestinian leader capable of negotiating a real agreement. Rashid Khalidi author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, sums it up best. Israeli leaders since the creation of Israel have believed that only force and imposing what Israel wants to impose on the Palestinians will work with a few of exceptions. It's force and more force, and if that doesn't work, use more force. That is a, in my view, suicidal policy. You cannot, in the 21st century, treat a population in that manner. I would say the same thing about the war in Lebanon. Israel created Hezbollah. There was no such thing as Hezbollah and Israel invaded in 1982. It was a result of the war, and Hamas is a result of occupation, of humiliation, of dispossession. But you do this to people and you're gonna get this sooner or later a reaction. The truth about No Partner for Peace is this. It's the Palestinians who have never had a true partner in peace. Let's start with the foundation of the no partner argument. The reason Israel can't negotiate peace we're told are Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is a terrorist organization committed to Israel's destruction, ruling Gaza with an iron fist. Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy militia, armed to the teeth firing rockets into Northern Israel. As long as these groups exist, Israel has no partner. Any Palestinian leadership connected to them can't be trusted. Any negotiation is impossible. But there's a problem with this story, a very significant problem. Israel helped create both of them. This isn't the conspiracy theory, it isn't Palestinian propaganda. It comes directly from Israeli military and government officials, on the record, by name. Let's start with Hamas. Hamas didn't just magically appear. It grew out of a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. A religious charity called Mujama al-Islamiya, founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1973. In the late 1970s, as Israel sought to weaken the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, it made a calculated decision. Back the religious factions. Israeli authorities officially registered Yassin's organization as a charity. Allowed its members to spread their message. Helped it build a network of mosques, schools, and social institutions and stood back while the group battled its secular Palestinian rivals. Brig. General Yitzhak Segev was the Israeli military governor of Gaza in the early 1980s. He later told the New York Times The Israeli government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques". Avner Cohan was an Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. In 2009, he told the Wall Street Journal,"Hamas to my great regret is Israel's creation". Cohen had actually warned his superiors in writing in the mid 1980s, begging them not to play, divide and rule by backing religious factions against secular nationalists. He wrote, I suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face". They didn't listen. David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military based in Gaza in the 1980s, said-"when I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake, but at that time, nobody thought about the possible results". The goal was straightforward-as the Wall Street Journal put it."Israel's experience echoed that of the United States during the Cold War. Backing religiously oriented movements as a useful counterweight against secular leftists". The end result keep Palestinians divided, prevent a unified negotiating partner from ever emerging. It worked for a while. By the 1990s, Hamas had grown into a powerful force. Israel had helped build the very group who would spend the next three decades bombing. But here's where the story gets even more twisted. Israel didn't just accidentally create Hamas and then try to correct the mistake. Under Benjamin Netanyahu israel deliberately kept Hamas alive for decades as a political tool. In 2019 at a Likud party meeting, Netanyahu said this openly to his own colleagues."Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy. To isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank." Yes. You heard that right. The Israeli Prime Minister in 2019 told his own party that keeping Hamas strong was official strategy. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the same man who recently announced Israel would"kill the idea of a Palestinian state", explained the logic in 2015."The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset. It's a terrorist organization. No one will recognize it. No one will give its status at the International Criminal Court. No one will let it put forth the resolution at the UN Security Council." An Israeli major general Gershon Hacohen, a Netanyahu associate, said it plainly in a 2019 television interview."Netanyahu's strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he's turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly, hamas is an enemy, covertly. It's an ally". Openly an enemy, covertly an ally. But all we ever hear is that Hamas is the reason there's no partner for peace. This is what Haaretz, one of Israel's own newspapers described as Netanyahu's"destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian authority would be good for Israel". And this wasn't just Haaretz, which is left-leaning. The Times of Israel, which is far more conservative, published in op-ed after October 7th with this headline;"For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces". When your own conservative press is writing that. It's not criticism, it's a confession. Now, let's talk about Hezbollah. Because Hezbollah's story is even more straightforward and even harder to argue with. The seeds for the organization were planted in 1978 when Israel's first invasion of Lebanon killed over a thousand Shia civilians and displaced entire communities from their homes. But Hezbollah as an organization didn't exist until Israel invaded again in 1982. And that occupation is what brought it fully into being. Before 1982, the Shia community in Southern Lebanon was, as Al Jazeera documents,"traditionally a quiet demographic, politically marginalized, not a military force." But then in June, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. As I documented in episode 27, the real goal wasn't just expelling the PLO. Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon's objective was to break Palestinian resistance across the board, making the West Bank and Gaza easier to control, and ultimately annex. Israel occupied Southern Lebanon. It went all the way to West Beirut. It oversaw the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and then it stayed. For 18 years. Out of that occupation, out of that 18 year presence, Hezbollah emerged. A group of Lebanese Shia supported by Iran formed specifically to resist the Israeli occupation of their country. As Rashid Khalidi stated,"Israel created Hezbollah. There was no such thing as Hezbollah when Israel invaded in 1982. It was a result of the war". By 1985, Hezbollah had grown strong enough to force Israel back to a narrow security zone along the border. Israel stayed in that security zone until 2000. Eighteen Years of occupation, 18 years of resistance, and that resistance militia grew into one of the most heavily armed non-state actors in the world. Now, in 2026, Israel is back in Lebanon. Constructing new bases, announcing permanent buffer zones, launching a ground invasion, displacing millions, killing thousands. Khalidi's words are worth repeating here."You do this to people and you're gonna get this sooner or later a reaction." So let me be clear about the pattern here. Israel funded and built up Hamas in the 1980s to undermine the PLO. Then deliberately kept Hamas alive under Netanyahu to prevent a Palestinian state and weakened the Palestinian leadership that was willing to negotiate. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, creating the conditions that produced Hezbollah. They occupied Southern Lebanon for 18 years and are now back in Lebanon, creating the same conditions for a future resistance. In both cases, Israel created the threat. Then pointed at the threat and said, see no partner. In the next segment, I'm gonna show you what happened when Palestinians tried a different approach, a largely unarmed popular uprising, The First Intifada. and what Israel did in response. By 1987, Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, had endured 20 years of no civil rights, no political representation, no recourse. Something as simple as dressing in the colors of the Palestinian flag gets you beaten and jailed. 35 to 40% of the entire Palestinian workforce had been reduced to cheap exploited labor inside Israel. This was a condition of Palestinian life under occupation for two decades. Then on December 9th, 1987, in Israeli army truck crashed into a Palestinian vehicle at the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, killing four workers. Palestinians widely believed it was deliberate. Israel denied it. It didn't matter. The truck was the spark. The occupation was a powder keg. What followed was the first Intifada, an Arabic word meaning shaking off. And here is what is critical to understand about it because it gets distorted constantly in Western media. This was not a terrorist campaign, this was not organized by the PLO. PLO leadership was still in exile in Tunisia. As historian Rashid Khalidi documents in his book;"the First Intifada that erupted spontaneously all over the occupied territories. The uprising spread very quickly, the intifada generated extensive local organization in the villages, towns, cities, and refugee camps, and came to be led by secret unified national leadership. The flexible and clandestine grassroots networks formed during the intifada proved impossible for the military occupation authorities to suppress." Impossible to suppress because there's no single leader to arrest, no headquarters to bomb, no organization decapitate. Just an entire people exhausted, humiliated dispossessed who had finally had enough. The tactics were overwhelmingly nonviolent. Palestinians burned Israeli products, refused to pay taxes to the military Administration, organized popular committees as alternatives to Israeli civil control. Called for general strikes, held mass protests. Yes, stones were thrown. Even some Molotov cocktails. But this was primarily a popular civilian uprising, not an armed insurgency. How did Israel respond? Defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, the same rabin who would later be celebrated as Israel's greatest peacemaker, implemented what became known as the Iron Fist policy. His order to soldiers was explicit."Force, might and beatings" the phrase that became infamous worldwide"break their bones." And this wasn't just the slogan, human rights organizations and on the ground reporting documented Israeli soldiers beating Palestinian protestors, including teenagers with clubs and rifle butts, deliberately targeting arms and legs to cripple, to intimidate, to break. The numbers, tell the story of what followed. By the time the first Intifada ended in 1993, more than 1,100 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers, including 250 children. More than 100,000 Palestinians were injured. Mostly from gunshots, beatings, and tear gas. In the first two years alone, an estimated 50,000 to 63,000 Palestinian children required medical treatment for injuries including at least 6,500 who were shot by Israeli soldiers. 120,000 Palestinians were imprisoned. And here's what makes what happened inside those prisons Different from every other allegation in this conflict. It isn't a claim made by Palestinian activists. It isn't a report from a human rights organization that Israel can dismiss. It's an official Israeli government report. The Ben-Porat report written by Israel's own State Comptroller submitted to the Israeli parliament and kept classified for five years before being made public. Confirmed that the shin bet systematically tortured Palestinian prisoners during the first Intifada, and that the entire leadership knew about it and did nothing to stop it. The report's own words, most of the violations were not caused by lack of knowledge of the line between what was permitted and what was forbidden, but were committed knowingly". The methods, severe beatings, violent shaking, stress positions held for hours, sleep deprivation, hoods, soaked in filth, placed over a prisoner's head. Some detainees died in custody. Others were left permanently disabled. This was Israel's response to stone throwing and tax strikes. This is what crushing a nonviolent popular uprising looks like. The first Intifada didn't just produce repression, it also produced something extraordinary. In 1988, while the Intifada was still ongoing, the PLO formally recognized the state of Israel. A people ethnically cleansed from 78% of their historic homeland, recognizing the state built on that homeland. From prison cells, from refugee camps, from exile Tunisia, unilaterally without receiving anything in return. Because Israel's response? They refused to acknowledge the PLO. Rejected Peace Talks. US Secretary of State. James Baker was so frustrated by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's, refusal to engage that he famously read out the White House telephone number during a congressional testimony and said,"when you're serious about peace, call us." It took years and intense pressure from the US for Israel to finally come to the table, but still we're told it's the Palestinians who were never a partner for peace. There is one more thing worth noting about the first Intifada because it directly sets up what came next. The uprising created immense international sympathy for Palestinians. It put the occupation on the world's conscience in a way it hadn't before. It showed that Palestinians were not violent thugs. They were an organized, resilient people, demanding their rights. And it showed Israel something too. That popular nonviolent resistance, decentralized, grassroots, impossible to decapitate was a genuine threat. Not to Israeli security, but to their narrative. You can't call stone throwing children, terrorists forever. Eventually, the world starts asking questions. So when the second Intifada started seven years later, Israel had learned a lesson. Don't let it stay nonviolent, militarize it fast. By September, 2000 7 years had passed since the Oslo Accords, seven years of a peace process that had delivered no peace and no state. The settler population doubled from 200,000 to 400,000. More checkpoints, more permanent requirements, more fragmentation, more economic strangulation. Palestinians had been told, trust the process, wait, negotiate. They had waited, they had negotiated. And with every passing year, the facts on the ground move further against them. In July, 2000, there was supposed to be a breakthrough. President Clinton brought PLO Leader Yasser Arafat. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak together at Camp David. A final status agreement. The end of the conflict. I documented what actually happened in episode 26. The short version; what Barak put on the table wasn't a state, it was a fragmented Bantustan, with Israel retaining control of borders, airspace, and water. Palestinians were supposed to be grateful for it. They weren't. Diana Buttu, a former advisor to the Oslo negotiators, described the mood."Everybody, including the Americans, were warning the Israelis that the Palestinians are reaching a boiling point. Instead, they turned up the fire even more". Then came the spark. On September 28th, 2000, Ariel Sharon, the Likud opposition leader, known to Palestinians as the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, walked through the plaza of the Haram al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem, escorted by more than 1000 heavily armed police and soldiers. If you listened to episode 27, you know exactly who this man is. Let me give you a quick picture of this site. The geography matters. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, the location of the first and second temples. The Western wall. Below it is where Jews traditionally pray today. The plateau above it, the Haram al-Sharif or noble sanctuary is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the dome of the Rock. The place where Muslims believed the prophet Muhammad prayed and ascended to heaven making it Islam's third holiest site. Two faiths. One plateau. Most Jewish religious authorities, including Israel's own chief Rabbinate, have long discouraged Jewish from sending it to the plateau itself out of religious deference, and most Israeli prime ministers had honored that norm. But Sharon's visit wasn't religious. It was political. He went up there to make a point about Israeli sovereignty over the site, and he made it. The Temple Mount is in our hands and will remain in our hands." To Palestinians this wasn't a political visit. This was a man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese civilians. Arriving at one of the holiest sites on earth, surrounded by soldiers, announcing ownership. The next day, mass rallies erupted across Jerusalem and the occupied territories. Israeli forces responded with live ammunition. Seven Palestinians were killed. Now, some have claimed that Arafat and the PLO didn't just react to Sharon's visit. They planned the uprising. The evidence cited- quotes from Palestinian officials saying they knew an explosion was coming after camp David failed. A statement from Arafat's Widow claiming that he told her he was going to start an Intifada. testimony from Hamas leaders and Fatah commanders describing preparations made before September. The most credible investigation of these claims was a Mitchell report commissioned by the United States government. Its conclusion was unambiguous."We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence." On Sharon's visit specifically the same report found- the Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada, but it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen. Indeed, it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited." In other words, people warned Israel, Israel not to do this, but they did it anyway. And here's what's worth saying. Even if you set the Mitchel report aside entirely. Even if Palestinian leaders anticipated another uprising. They had witnessed the first Intifada while in exile. They knew what popular resistance looked like, strikes, stone throwing, civil disobedience. That was the model that had worked. What happened next was something else entirely. And then September 30th, just two days into the uprising, a Palestinian cameraman named Talal Abu Rahma, Freelancing for the French Television Channel France 2, filmed something that would become the defining early image of the Second Intifada. At the Netzarim Junction in Gaza, a 12-year-old boy named Muhammad al-Durrah and his father Jamal, were caught in crossfire. They crouched behind a concrete cylinder. Mohammad pressed against his father, visibly terrified, crying. His father wrapped his arms around him. Waving desperately trying to signal to Israeli soldiers that they were civilians, that they were not a threat, that they were just a father and his son. The soldiers kept firing. Muhammad was hit first in the leg, then a burst, a gunfire and dust, and he slumped across his father's lap, shot in the abdomen. He died shortly after. His father. Jamal was seriously wounded, losing consciousness. He survived. France two broadcast, 59 seconds of the footage that same evening. Protests erupted across Europe and the Arab world. And then Israel's disinformation machine went to work. Pro-Israel commentators immediately claimed the footage was staged. That Mohammad wasn't really dead, that Palestinian gunfire, not Israeli was responsible, that the cameraman had fabricated the whole thing. It took 13 years and a French court ruling to vindicate France two and the cameraman. In 2013, the commentator who accused them of staging the footage was fined, but by then, western audiences weren't mourning a dead child. They were blaming Palestinians for Intifada and the chaos that had ensued. That pattern. Documented atrocity, immediate disinformation campaign, public confusion as exoneration should sound familiar. It's the same playbook used after every massacre, every bombing of a hospital, every killing of a journalist or a medic since October 7th. Document it. Contest it. Flood the zone. Move on. Muhammad al-Durrah was killed two days into the second Intifada. Before the suicide bombings began. The sequence matters. In the first five days of the uprising. 47 Palestinians were killed. Five Israelis were killed. Amnesty International documented that 80% of Palestinians killed in the first month posed no life-threatening danger to Israeli forces. And then there is this number confirmed by Amos Malka, the director of Israeli military intelligence himself. In the first few days of the second Intifada Israeli soldiers fired approximately 1.3 million rounds of ammunition before significant Palestinian armed resistance had even emerged. Palestinian analyst, Hani al-Masri described what Israel was doing deliberately:"the level of Israeli aggression and losses on the Palestinian side didn't allow the nonviolent nature of the Palestinian the father to be maintained." Abu Yusuf, a senior PLO official was more direct."The fact that Israel shot over a million bullets caused great losses to Palestinian lives, all shows that Israel wanted to militarize Intifada. The excessive use of force was intended to drag the Palestinians into a military confrontation". As expected Palestinian armed resistance escalated. Now let's talk about those suicide bombings. The large numbers of Israelis killed. The disruption to their lives. The constant fear they lived with. It happened. It was terrible. I'm not trying to minimize that in any way, but context matters. As one Jewish opinion writer wrote in Haaretz about October 7th."If nothing can justify what was done to us on October 7th. How can it be that what we have been doing to them for more than a year and a half actions that have cost tens of thousands of people their lives and destroyed their lands, seems justified to us." I'd apply that same logic to the second Intifada. If nothing can justify the deaths of approximately 1000 Israelis. Then what do we say with the deaths of nearly 5,000 Palestinians in that same period? These are numbers verified by Israel's own human rights organization. B'Tselem. Israeli military escalation preceded Palestinian armed resistance. And when that armed resistance emerged, Israel used it to justify everything that followed; reoccupying, Palestinian cities, demolishing homes, building the separation wall, deepening the blockade of Gaza. And while all of this was happening, while people were dying on both sides. Palestinians made multiple peace overtures. In 2002, in the middle of the Intifada, the Arab Peace Initiative was launched by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by Palestinian leadership. The offer full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world. In exchange for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a just solution for Palestinian refugees. Israel and the US ignored it. In February, 2003, the Palestinian Authority submitted a formal proposal, a complete cessation of all attacks against Israel. In exchange for gradual Israeli withdrawal to pre-Intifada positions. Israel ignored that too. And then there was the Gaza withdrawal. In 2005, Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza. This gets held up constantly as proof of Israeli sacrifice for peace. Israel gave up Gaza and got rockets. See no partner. But here is what Sharon's own top aid, Dov Weisglass said about it explicitly, on the record. The significance of the disengagement plan is a freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state". He went further."The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary, so there will be no political process with the Palestinians". Then and what may be one of the most honest things any Israeli official has ever said about the peace process,"the result will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into fins". What does he mean? Fins, as in people from Finland. A small, peaceful, non-threatening people with no historical grievances. No refugees, demanding return. No memory of dispossession. Weisglass wasn't threatening Palestinians. He was saying Palestinian identity itself is the obstacle. We'll negotiate when Palestinians stop being Palestinians. Until then, formaldehyde. And if you had any doubt that Israel never wanted a functioning Palestinian partner, look at what happened when Palestinians tried democracy. In January, 2006, Palestinians held legislative elections. International observers, including Jimmy Carter, certified them as free and fair. Hamas won. The response wasn't engagement. It was a covert armed coup. The US sent Lieutenant General Keith Dayton to meet with Fatah's Mohammed Dahlan, who the president of the United States called"our guy" and told him directly. Build up your forces to take on Hamas.$86 million in military assistance. Egypt and Jordan provided the training. The goal, reverse a democratic election by force. It didn't work. Hamas crushed the coup attempt and consolidated control of Gaza. So now Israel had exactly what it needed. A divided Palestinian people, a besieged Gaza, and a permanent excuse. So let's take stock of what we've established so far. Israel created Hamas to undermine the secular PLO, the organization it claimed it couldn't negotiate with. It crushed the first Intifada, a largely nonviolent popular uprising with mass arrests, torture, and Rabin's break their bones policy. The PLO responded by recognizing Israel. Israel refused to reciprocate. They provoked the second Intifada militarized they before Palestinian armed resistance had even emerged. Then used the resulting violence to deepen occupation, build a wall, and tighten the blockade. Hamas won elections in 2006, but Israel and the US immediately moved the strangle the results. Each time Palestinians resisted, however they resisted. Israel crushed the resistance and pointed at it as proof there was no partner for peace. So by 2018, what options of Palestinians have left? They organized something different. Just people, families walking to a fence. Carrying flags demanding their rights. The protest started on March 30th, Land Day. A date Palestinians commemorate annually marking the killing of six Arab Israeli citizens who were protesting land confiscation in 1976. On that date, in 2018, thousands of Gazan's began gathering near the fence, separating Gaza from Israel. Nearly every Friday for almost two years. They called it the great march of return. Their demand was straightforward. Recognition of the Palestinian right of return, the right of refugees and their descendants to return to the homes they were expelled from in 1948. And an end to the blockade that it turned Gaza into what many called the world's largest open air prison. Let me give you a picture of what life in Gaza looked like back then. The conditions these protestors endured on a daily basis. Unemployment 52%, electricity, 6.6 hours per day on average. Tap water almost entirely undrinkable, contaminated with sewage or salt water. GDP per capita collapsing. Medical supplies more than half of essential drugs at zero stock levels. And movement in or out, almost entirely controlled by Israel. This is what they were marching against, and here is what Israel did. Israeli snipers positioned themselves at the fence. And they opened fire. Not warning shots, not rubber bullets. Primarily live ammunition. Aimed at people who were, as United Nations documented, posing no imminent threat to Israeli forces. The targeting was specific and deliberate. Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders documented the nature of the wounds. Bullets entering through legs, pulverizing bone, the kind of wounds that require months, sometimes years of surgery and rehabilitation. Designed not to kill. To permanently disabled. Within four daysof the first demonstration MSF facilities admitted 102 patients suffering from gunshot wounds their lower limbs. MSF, tripled its surgical capacity in Gaza and was still overwhelmed. Over the course of the protest, more than 35,600 demonstrators were injured. Nearly 8,000 were shot with live ammunition. More than 190 were killed. In the first year alone. Women and children made up more than one in four of those killed and injured. Many patients developed bone infections because Gaza's health system already decimated by the blockade, couldn't keep up with the volume of complex wounds. Wounds couldn't heal, amputations increased. Israel's response to peaceful protests was creating a generation of amputees. And medical workers trying to treat the wounded shot. Journalists, documenting what was happening. Shot. The UN documented that children, journalists, and medics were killed even when standing far back from the fence. Nowhere near any confrontation. Now I want to be precise here. Because I've read the Anti-Defamation League's response to the great march of return. They argue that some of the protesters came armed, that some attempted to breach the fence, that some flew incendiary kites over the borders, that Hamas organized and mobilized demonstrations. Some of that is true. Some protestors did attempt to damage the fence. Some did throw rocks and Molotov cocktails. Hamas did encourage participation, but here's what's notable. Even the ADL acknowledged that many protestors were peaceful and that there were reports and video clips of Gazen being shot while not visibly engaged in efforts to breach defense." What the report doesn't mention at all is what MSF documented, what the UN Human Rights Council concluded after a formal investigation. That the use of live ammunition against unarmed protestors was not justified under any standard of international law. Or the number that settles the proportionality argument definitively. Four Israeli soldiers were injured during that time. One killed. Compare that to nearly 36,000 Palestinians shot or wounded, including children, medics and journalists far from the fence. Peter Beinart, author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, puts it plainly."We demand that Palestinians produce Gandhis, and when they do American Jewish organizations work to criminalize their boycotts and Israeli soldiers shoot them in the knees. No matter what strategy Palestinians employ in their fight for freedom, the Israeli government and its American Jewish allies work to ensure it fails." While suppressing every protest movement. Israel has also systematically removed every Palestinian who could negotiate. Back in episode 27, I documented what happened when the US tried to talk directly to the PLO. Israeli Intelligence assassinated the Palestinian they were meeting with Ali Hassan Salameh. An Israeli officer later admitted the killing was designed to"give Americans a hint". The hint didn't take. Ambassador John Gunther Dean continued the talks, so Israel tried to kill him too. An assassination attempt later confirmed to be an Israeli controlled operation. That pattern never stopped, and the most important example of all is still alive. He's 66 years old and has been in an Israeli prison cell for 23 years. His name is Marwan Barghouti. I wrote about Barghouti at length in my Substack series. The prisoners Trump abandoned. Three parts published back in the fall of 2025, covering the so-called Trump ceasefire, the mass prisoner release, and the political architecture beyond keeping him locked up. If you want the deep dive, that's where to go. I'm going to give you the version that makes the argument for this episode. Marwan Barghouti was born in 1959 in a small West Bank village. He was seven years old when Israel occupied his territory In 1967. By 15, he had joined Fatah. By 18, he was in prison, beaten unconscious during interrogation. He earned his high school diploma behind bars. He taught himself fluent Hebrew, a detail that matters. He organized student movements. He was deported during the first Intifada. After Oslo, he came back, became Fatah's Secretary General in the West Bank, and was elected to the Palestinian Legisl Council. And here's what Marwan Barghouti wrote in the Washington Post before his arrest in 2002. I have been a tireless advocate of a peace based on fairness and equality. I still seek peaceful coexistence between equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine. I do not seek to destroy Israel, but only to end its occupation of my country". And yet Israel arrested him in 2002 and convicted him in 2004 on five counts of murder. Barghouti refused to recognize the court's legitimacy, refused to enter a plea and denied any involvement in attacks. The inter parliamentary union later found his trial fundamentally flawed. Prolonged incommunicado detention, disregard of torture allegations, even prejudicial statements by the judges themselves. Most damning of all. 21. Witnesses were called to testify about his role in specific attacks. Not one accused him. 12 explicitly testified he had no involvement. No document, no communication bearing his name was ever produced linking him to violence. This wasn't justice, it was removal. And here's how you know that's true. In 2011, Israel conducted a massive prisoner exchange to secure the release of one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.. In that deal, israel released 1027 Palestinian prisoners. Among them was Yahya Sinwar, the man who would go on to lead Hamas in Gaza and help mastermind the October 7th attacks. In that same 2011 negotiation, Hamas demanded the release of Marwan Barghouti. Israel refused. They freed the architect of October 7th, but kept in Prison, the man who recognized Israel and wanted peace. And lest you think I'm reading too much into this, let me give you the Israeli officials who said it plainly. Meir Sheetrit former member of the Conservative Likud Party, said about Barghouti:, he supported peace, totally. Real peace with Israel". Efraim Halevy, former director of the Mossad, Israel's Intelligence Agency. Barghouti is popular with his people. He has a clear position. He speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate". Even inside the Israeli security and political establishment, there were figures who acknowledged what Barghouti represented; a legitimate counterpart, someone to actually negotiate with. And that is precisely why Netanyahu kept him in prison. As Barghouti's son told NPR in January of this year,"you're dealing with an Israeli government that doesn't want peace". Even from prison, Barghouti has shaped Palestinian politics. In 2006 while incarcerated, he co-authored the prisoner's document drafted with senior Palestinian leadership from across the political spectrum, writing together from Israeli prison cells. It called for a Palestinian state on the 1967 Borders. Recognized the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people and urged limiting armed resistance to military targets and occupied territory. These are the people Israel calls ungovernable. Despite his ongoing imprisonment, he has continued to shape Palestinian politics, organizing hunger strikes. Calling for Fatah Hamas reconciliation. Insisting Palestinian division serves no one except Israel. So when in October, 2025, Trump announced ceasefire deal and a prisoner exchange that included nearly 2000 Palestinians. Hamas demanded Barghouti's release. Egypt and Qatar pressed for it. The elders. A group of former world leaders, including former UN Secretary, general Ban Ki Moon, and former Irish president, Mary Robinson publicly called for his release. Even Ron Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, longtime Netanyahu Ally, and one of Donald Trump's largest donors personally lobbied for Barghouti's release. And according to reporting from Middle East Eye, US Envoy, Steve Whitcoff signed off on a prisoner list that included Barghouti's name, Netanyahu's office, removed him at the last minute. Barghouti hasn't been seen in months. The last public image of him was back in August, 2025 when far right. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, walked into his cell, filming himself, and told Barghouti on camera,"whoever messes with the people of Israel, whoever murders our children, whoever murders our women, we will obliterate them". One month later, Barghouti was beaten unconscious by eight prison guards during a transfer. They broke four of his ribs. And as of January, 2026, his son told NPR."No family member has been able to visit him in over three years". This is how Israel negotiates. The logic of this episode now closes in on itself. Israel created Hamas to weaken the PLO, the secular nationalist leadership. It claimed it couldn't negotiate with. It crushed the first Intifada, which produced the Palestinian leadership ready to recognize Israel. It provoked and exploited the second Intifada, destroyed Oslo and build walls. It shot peaceful protestors in the legs to eliminate nonviolent resistance as an option. And it has kept in prison for 23 years the one Palestinian leader that even its own Mossad director acknowledged could negotiate. This is not a conflict where Israel has desperately starts for a partner and came up empty. This is a conflict where every time a partner has emerged, Israel, remove them. Over four episodes, we have stripped away every justification the United States and Israel have offered for why peace has been impossible. The myth of Palestinian rejectionism dismantled. The myth of Israeli self-defense dismantled. The myth of Israeli democracy. Dismantled. The myth of no partner for peace, dismantled. But here's the question that has been sitting underneath all of it. If Israel never wanted a partner, if it created the opposition, crushed the uprisings and prisoned the negotiators and shot the protestors, what was it protecting? It was protecting the framework, the two state solution. The endless process, the negotiations that were never meant to conclude. The formula that let Israel keep building settlements, while the world kept saying the answer was just around the corner. The two state solution was never a path to Palestinian freedom. It was a management strategy for Palestinian dispossession just with better branding. The reality is that there's already only one state between the river and the sea. Israel controls all of it. The borders, the water, the airspace, the movement of people. The only question that remains is whether every person living under that control will have equal rights. And that is what I'm gonna tackle. In the season one finale, the two state solution, it's not just dead. It was never alive. The will has never existed. The settlements have made it physically impossible, but there is a model, a real one, a tested one for what can come next. One person, one vote, one state. Not as a slogan as a solution. Episode 30, the season finale. I'll see you there. Thanks for listening to Connecting the Dots. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, leave a review and share. Until next time, stay curious, stay critical, and stay connected.