Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who lived in the Gaza Strip from the age of 10-15, describes himself as an advocate for the Palestinian people. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, 33 of Alkhatib’s immediate and extended family members have been killed. But in his latest book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, Alkhatib argues that Hamas — rather than Israel — bears primary responsibility for the suffering and political stagnation of the people of Gaza.

Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he directs Realign for Palestine, a project focused on pragmatic, nonviolent Palestinian advocacy. There, he denounces Hamas and advocates for Palestinian statehood alongside a secure Jewish state. 

On Friday, Alkhatib spoke with Jewish Insider about his new book, his experiences growing up in Gaza and his outspoken criticism of Hamas. He also discussed the backlash he has faced from within his own community and why he believes that, ultimately, the terrorist group will have no role in the enclave’s future.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jewish Insider: What inspired you to write Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, and what does your book add to public debate on this issue that isn’t already out there?

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: I wanted to weave in elements of my personal story with Gaza’s contemporary history, and add a human dimension to what I felt was Hamas’ devastating impact on the Palestinian people, their destructive role in setting back the Palestinian national project and the radicalization of the society.

I felt that there’s a consistent gap in the discourse from a Palestinian self-interested point of view. Even though many Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims will tell you privately how devastating Hamas is, there’s a disconnect in the discourse outside of Gaza versus inside Gaza — where you’ll find a ton more willingness to speak out, not just because of the consequences of Oct. 7, but because of the totality of the last 20 years of their rule.

One of the things that’s really frustrating is how there is this persistent narrative that Gazans are all Hamas, Gazans support Hamas. It’s very difficult for the other side, for the Israelis and the pro-Israel folks, to see the humanity of Palestinians because they so fundamentally believe that Gaza is inseparable from Hamas. Nevertheless, I argue and maintain that directly and indirectly, Hamas has taken Gaza captive and is holding 2 million people as hostages.

For the pro-Palestine folks, the goal is to burst the bubble of Hamas, which has been getting normalized since Oct. 7, getting called “resistance” or at best receiving token critique. It’s like a check the box: “Oh, I’m not with Hamas, but let’s keep going on Israel, and Israel this and everything is Israel’s fault.” At its worst, it’s actually been lionizing Hamas — refusing to call for the release of hostages, refusing to acknowledge the pain and suffering they’ve caused for the Palestinian people … Hamas has been a disaster. It has destroyed the seams of the Palestinian society and the fabric, and it’s been part of this devolution.

I also made it a short book deliberately for the average casual reader … I wanted to target a lot of younger audiences … because with the avalanche of new entrants to the scene since [Oct. 7], you have people that quite simply don’t know about Hamas, about the Palestinian people or about Gaza. I believe the theme of this book is that within the imbalance of power dynamics between Israel up here and the Palestinians down here, believe it or not, there is plenty of space for Palestinian agency, responsibility and accountability. That’s not blaming the victims or self-hatred — that’s actually the first step to empowering the Palestinians.

JI: You reflect in the book on your own experiences and those of your family in Gaza. How did these experiences shape the way you approach this book, and how did they shape your understanding of Hamas? Did you find that other Gazans shared your sentiments?

AFA: Well, in some ways, my lived experiences are very central to where I’ve arrived. My family are very devout Muslims and committed Palestinians. My family grew up in a Gaza context, and they were not immune to some of the broader trends. So on one hand the family context was helpful and relevant, and on the other hand it was not necessarily responsible for where I’m at right now because my family was kind of an average lower middle class that engaged in this topic. Very educated, but also not the most politically engaged. Very independent, very willing to stay clear and interested in staying clear from Fatah, from Hamas, from all the other different factions, and I think that was very key.

I remember the hope and optimism of the tail end of the Oslo [Accords] years in the ’90s — flying into Gaza’s airport, these shiny new Palestinian passports, the Palestinian airlines, the cell phones, the industrial zone, the kind of renaissance and the sense of hope and optimism and the march toward statehood. In the midst of all of that, Hamas’ counter-narrative was, “Oh no, the Palestinian Authority and the [Palestine Liberation Organization] sold out, they gave up 78% of historic Palestine, and we are going to bring you something better.”

And I just remember being like, “What’s there that’s better than the opportunity to travel freely, an airport, an incoming seaport, the beginning of the symbol of sovereignty and statehood?” On top of all of that, Hamas said, “We’re going to bring you the whole of Palestine from the river to the sea,” but then said, “Oh, by the way, we need to take this detour so let’s go burn a bar that has liquor, let’s control how women dress, let’s make the society more Islamist.” I distinctly remember [saying to] my parents and my uncles, “This is a detour that has nothing to do with negotiating a better outcome or achieving better results for the Palestinians.”

I tell the story of one time going to a summer camp that turned out to be a Hamas summer camp, and neither my family nor I knew that. I must have been 11, and I just remember being like,
“What is any of this?”

There was a very robust pushback against Hamas and against this trend, but parts of the society ultimately either acquiesced or essentially had no option but to go along because Hamas moved the Overton window — including for the moderate and secular Palestinian Authority and [former PLO and PA leader Yasser] Arafat, who had to accommodate Hamas and incorporate elements of Islamism and resistance culture. That is the theme I try to convey: Hamas slowly and gradually shifted the Overton window of what’s acceptable discourse, not just for itself, but for the entirety of Palestinian society, its national project and its political atmosphere.

JI: You talked to CNN earlier this week about what you described as the “troubling persistence of support” for Hamas among some Palestinian activists and diaspora communities, noting that 44% of American Muslims told Pew Research that they support Hamas. Why does support for Hamas persist in these activist circles, and how do you reverse that trend?

AFA: There are many Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, Muslim Americans and Arab Americans who, when you speak to [them] privately, will tell you that Hamas is a gift to the far right in Israel, that Hamas is gross, that Hamas is disgusting. They don’t want to live under a regime that resembles Hamas — they want to live a normal life. But when you step back in a communal dynamic — whether it be the clergy, elements of the community in academia or parents who are guilt-ridden — you have sociological factors and identity crises that contribute to this trend.

Then there is a much more sinister element: elements of academia, journalism and the “social justice” far left who are not Palestinian or Arab or Muslim, who have concocted a variety of frameworks for how you see these conflicts. They want to map out Israel and Palestine to existing frameworks in domestic discourse around immigration, abortion rights, LGBT issues and Black Lives Matter.

You have modern-day anti-Zionism regularly devolving into antisemitism, and a departure from the broad framework of two peoples, two states. Right now, it is very much so a “river-to-the-sea” eliminationist discourse. Israel is seen as an extension of the United States — whether due to the presence of Ashkenazi Jews that are white-presenting, even though half of Israel are Mizrahi Jews of essentially brown origin and darker origin from Arab lands and from the Middle East, whether it be Israel’s founding being considered a purely European Zionist-led colonial project and not something that has anything to do with Jewish peoplehood and heritage and connection to the land, and so there are just these overly simplistic narratives that are not conducive to productive dialogue. 

Part of this support for Hamas is an overcorrection to what people felt was an effort by parts of the pro-Israel community to suppress legitimate critique of Israeli actions. But when the pendulum swung, it didn’t swing toward narrow, targeted advocacy for Palestinian freedom and self-determination next to a safe, secure, recognized Jewish Israel. It swung to, “No, actually, we need resistance to eliminate the Zionist entity.”

Hamas very much so cared about the public relations war and narrative warfare because it thought this level of activism would not only delegitimize Israel, but also coerce Israel into stopping the war. Neither happened. Palestinian suffering was irrelevant to a lot of these communities, because they didn’t react when I and many others in Gaza were saying what was necessary for this suffering to end: closing the page on Hamas taking 2 million people as hostages in its suicidal jihadi nihilism.

JI: Have you faced criticism from within your community for placing so much attention on Hamas in your book rather than Israel, and how are you navigating that?

AFA: It is very frequently that I face critique. People say that I’m obsessed with Hamas, that I’m a nutjob, I’m a Zionist, I’m paid by Israel. Now they’ve shifted to saying that I’m a traitor and a sellout.

I see no shortage of people talking about what Israel has done and what Israel is doing right now in Gaza — including Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, whom I acknowledge potentially worsened this situation through direct support for Hamas via Qatari funding. I have no illusions about the fact that Israel bears responsibility in worsening multiple aspects of the discourse, whether it be not empowering the Palestinian Authority, the aggressive expansion of settlements or the recent activities under the current coalition.

My goal is not to simply repeat what people who are even smarter than I am are out there talking about, often speaking in circles to their own choirs. I want to address a gap — and a significant one at that. That gap is that my family and tens of thousands of Palestinians would still be alive had Hamas simply kept its terrorists at home on Oct. 7.

Hamas is treated as an extra on a movie set when it needs to be one of the main antagonists in this whole film. Hamas is a central player in this whole devastation that has befallen Gaza. I see the rightward shift in Israeli society that everybody talks about all the time as inseparable from Hamas and what it did in Gaza and the suicide bombings and what it did to radicalize the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank. 

JI: What do you believe Hamas will look like in the years ahead? Do you believe it is possible for Gaza to have a future without Hamas — and one that is different for both sides of this conflict?

AFA: I don’t believe there can be any coexistence with Hamas. I think they need to be effectively banned from the scene. When people say Hamas can’t be defeated, it absolutely can be defeated. I don’t care about Hamas’ ideology per se. The Nazi ideology lives on all these years. Al-Qaida is alive and well after [Osama] bin Laden. ISIS is alive and well, even though they don’t theoretically control mass territories like they once did. 

What I care about is three metrics through which you can judge and assess Hamas’ ability to remain relevant and be defeated: Do they control territory? Do they have an executive force on the ground that can have a monopoly on violence and force and act as an administrative body? And do they control resources — financial, taxation, access to aid and incoming resources, or smuggling? In those three metrics, Hamas has been significantly rolled back.

More likely than not, it is my belief that Hamas is going to be largely irrelevant in Gaza. Hamas is not going to govern like it once did. The days of Hamas reigning supreme and controlling Gaza are over. Hamas may try to remanufacture itself as a political body, as a political entity, but in terms of controlling Gaza like it once did, I see that as incredibly unlikely. Their inventory of weapons and arsenal is very finite. They’re not smuggling weapons like they once did, and a lot of their supplies, workshops and spaces have been destroyed and rolled back. Whether it be through disarmament, Israeli elimination or decay — I think Hamas’ arsenal is going to recede to where it not only no longer constitutes a threat to Israel, but it no longer is adequate to entirely rule the Gaza Strip.

My concern is that Hamas is moving to Turkey. The Turks might be trying to help them reinvent themselves as a political organization. If they enter Palestinian elections, will they then further ruin democratic life? Will they evolve their so-called armed resistance narrative into something that can introduce political stalemate? 

Right now, largely speaking, Hamas, Israel, the Board of Peace, the Trump administration and regional and international partners are in agreement over the next steps as far as disarmament, which is a prerequisite to get any kind of withdrawal or reconstruction happening in Gaza. However, now we’re in a space where the disarmament issue is actually logistical in nature. Logistics can make or break a war, a campaign or an effort, and right now, logistically, the disarmament plan is just — it’s not there. It’s not there. That’s what concerns me.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Jerusalem “does not accept the 15-point document” agreed to last month by the U.S.-led Board of Peace and Hamas that would see the eventual disarmament of the terror group and withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip — a rare public break with the White House, which has touted the plan since it was announced.

In comments to his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel “would not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.”

The White House and Jerusalem have largely been in lockstep on issues related to Gaza. The rupture over Hamas’ disarmament is one of the more significant policy breaks between President Donald Trump and Netanyahu.

Trump announced in late July what he described on his Truth Social site as a “HISTORIC” agreement, saying that the parties, through mediation by Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, had achieved a “critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people.”

Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesperson who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the mediating countries benefit from Hamas’ continued rule in the Gaza Strip and have no urgency to press for the terror group’s disarmament. 

That lack of seriousness, he added, makes it unlikely that Hamas will take the necessary steps to disarm. “It’s all a show, it’s a charade, a spectacle,” Conricus said. “The only way that Hamas really ceases to control the Gaza Strip is if all of their weapons are handed in — not stored, not temporarily safeguarded somewhere else, but actually handed in, and if that is verified. As long as we won’t see that happening, I don’t think that Israel is going to agree with any charade.”

The agreement released by the Board of Peace states that none of Hamas’ weapons “shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties” and they will instead “be decommissioned and stored” by the Palestinian technocratic government in Gaza.

Conricus described the dynamic as “a very unfortunate diplomatic situation” in which Israel is being “presented as the side that is turning down the 15-point deal, [at the same time as] Hamas appears to be getting away with not implementing the deal.”

But Netanyahu’s response, Conricus said, “reeks of petty Israeli politics” and was “much more political posturing for local politics than anything else.”

Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told JI that the break between Trump and Netanyahu was “inevitable” — and that Jerusalem and Washington have differing approaches to the future of the Gaza Strip.

“U.S. policy in the region is a circus, with grifters, diplomats, terrorists and a few well-intentioned bit players all making occasional appearances,” she said. “At the end of the day, the Board of Peace is a game for Washington, and life or death to Israel.” 

Similarly to Iran, Pletka continued, “Israel is in it to win it. The Trump administration’s intentions are less clear. As a result, there are going to be public breaks, reconciliations and more breaks. Each country will pursue its interests as it sees them. That’s the way it has always been, and it isn’t going to change.” 

Netanyahu is also running up against the deadline of the Oct. 27 election in Israel, walking a political tightrope as he aims to preserve his close public ties with the White House while running a reelection campaign.

The Israeli leader, Israel Policy Forum senior analyst Dan Rothem told JI, “is carefully maneuvering between Trump and the constraints of Israeli politics. 

“The sequencing in the 15-point roadmap on withdrawal and disarmament does not directly contradict the 20-point plan [Netanyahu] endorsed in October 2025, and Israel was briefed throughout the negotiations,” Rothem said. “Yet three years of a ‘total victory’ narrative, combined with the political pride taken in the IDF’s control of roughly 60% of Gaza, has sharply narrowed his room to maneuver. Publicly rejecting the document lets him signal toughness to his base ahead of elections while still keeping channels open with Washington.”

Rothem added that the on-the-ground reality will matter more than election-season rhetoric. “The public rejection [by Netanyahu] serves clear electoral needs,” he said, noting that Israel had scaled back its attacks in Gaza in recent days following a meeting between Netanyahu and Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov, and that the Israeli Cabinet signed off on the framework for the Board of Peace’s International Stabilization Force.

The Israeli military killed Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the most senior remaining Hamas commander in the enclave, in a strike on Friday, according to a joint statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz. 

Al-Haddad was the leader of Hamas’ military wing and was “one of the architects of the October 7 massacre,” according to the statement.

The strike, carried out by the Israeli Air Force, had been approved about a week and a half earlier, during which time Israeli forces kept Al-Haddad under constant surveillance, an Israeli official told reporters. The official said the operation was carried out after an “operational opportunity” emerged.

Al-Haddad “held our hostages in brutal captivity, directed terrorist operations against our forces, and refused to implement the agreement led by U.S. President Donald Trump aimed at dismantling Hamas and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu and Katz’s statement said. “The IDF and the Shin Bet are effectively implementing the government’s policy of not tolerating threats and preemptively thwarting our enemies.”

The strike comes amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was first implemented in October 2025, under which Israeli forces withdrew to a “yellow line” encompassing roughly 53% of the Gaza Strip. Hamas has yet to comply with the next phase of Trump’s plan, which calls for the group’s disarmament.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s lead envoy for Gaza, wrote in a recent letter obtained by The Times of Israel to the technocratic committee governing Gaza that the board would not expect Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire if Hamas continues to refuse to disarm. 

“What has emerged from all my conversations is that the yearning for peace is very intense,” former South African President Nelson Mandela, visiting Israel in 1999 as part of a broader Middle East trip, said as he reflected on his meetings with leaders across the region. The trip came four months after Mandela, who built his legacy working to dismantle South Africa’s decades-long apartheid system and begin a process of national reconciliation, retired from politics.

More than a quarter century later — despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the degradation of Iran and its proxy network and numerous wars between Israel and its neighbors — that peace remains elusive. It was against that backdrop that two of Mandela’s granddaughters, Zamaswazi (Swati) Dlamini-Mandela and Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, traveled to Israel and the Gaza Strip earlier this month.

Their trip came amid strained relations between Pretoria and Jerusalem, whose leaders and senior officials have been increasingly at odds in recent years. The country’s Jewish community has raised concerns over South Africa’s deepening relations with Iran and aggressive posture toward Israel, which it accused of genocide in a December 2023 International Court of Justice filing.

Dlamini-Manaway and Dlamini-Mandela’s trip to Israel, organized by the National Black Empowerment Council, included meetings with Israeli hostage families and survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, visits to Israel’s holy sites and a day on the ground in Gaza where Mandela’s granddaughters assisted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in its efforts to distribute aid in the enclave. They left the region days before a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced and the remaining 20 living hostages were released.

The Mandela granddaughters “thought that this could be a unique opportunity to bring necessary attention to what’s being done, while at the same time, as mothers, being able to say that they did something that was in the humanitarian tradition of their grandparents,” Darius Jones, the founder and executive director of the NBEC, told JI.

During the women’s trip, a flotilla, led by anti-Israel activists including Greta Thunberg, made its way through the Mediterranean Sea in an effort to reach the Gaza Strip. Aboard one of the ships was their cousin Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela, another grandchild of Nelson Mandela. The ships attempting to illegally reach Gaza were intercepted by Israel, and participants were deported to their countries of origin.

The approach taken by Dlamini-Manaway and Dlamini-Mandela was, Jones explained, to “really be a part of something that can have meaningful impact, rather than just try to do a performative stunt, which is not about the people, but more about self-aggrandizement.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jewish Insider: What made you come to Israel now, in this moment? It’s obviously a very interesting point in time, and not necessarily one that would invite a lot of visitors.

Zamaswazi (Swati) Dlamini-Mandela: Coming to Israel has always been a lifelong dream. Both of our grandparents, Nelson and Winnie, visited Israel. And my grandmother, I remember when she came back, she was like, it’s a trip that we have to take whenever we can, in our own time. 

I would have never imagined that I would be going in the middle of a war. When we were telling our families, they were literally shocked. Our kids were horrified, because they have this picture painted in their mind that there’s literally going to be missiles flying over our heads and all kinds of stuff. So it was scary for our family, but I think for us, we were like, what an opportune time to go.

For us, it’s important to actually go and actually experience the story for yourself. Coming from a high-profile family like ours, and also living in the media for years, all our lives have been pretty much lived in public, it’s very interesting what type of bias or viewpoints the news can take. So we always felt like, ‘Let’s go and see for ourselves. Let’s experience for ourselves, and let’s actually go on humanitarian missions to try and understand and really get to know what’s going on.’ For me, there’s no better way than actually physically being in a place to actually experience it. We’ve lived through wars here in South Africa, so that didn’t even scare me. It really wasn’t a thing that deterred me at all.

Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway: I just knew that if my grandmother was alive, she would have said, ‘You definitely have to go, and make it as balanced as possible, and learn and don’t always take one side, because there’s always different sides to a story.’ So for me, I wanted it to be an experience where I could get both sides — the Israeli side and the Palestinian side. The first thing that I said when this trip came up was, ‘We have to go to Gaza.’ It was instinctive to me. It’s like, I have to go to Gaza, because that’s all we see in South Africa. We only see Gaza. We only see women and children. We only see Gaza flattened. So that was very important for me to see and witness for myself. Our grandmother and our family [have] been ridiculed in the media. So we are very, very cognizant of what we hear and what we take in, because we’ve lived it, and we know that the media can distort things tremendously.

JI: What did you know about Israel and about the region before this trip? 

SDM: There’s the obvious history and the long-term conflict between Israel and Palestinians. I think for the most part, for me, I’ve consumed the history on a very high level. I didn’t have the same experiences that my grandparents had, because we were so much younger then, when my grandfather visited. At the time, you know, [Palestinian Authority President] Yasser Arafat was still alive. We were so much younger then. I know it as much as I think the average person knows it. But certainly this was a  deep dive into a layered, complicated, complex, difficult history between a few nations. 

So I would say before this, I almost didn’t know enough, but I certainly learned a lot, and I’ve come away so much more enriched by my time there. There’s words that you hear, like checkpoints, right? ‘Controlled movements,’ ‘apartheid states,’ those are the things that you always heard and because it’s similar to our history. So in a sense, I was like, ‘Oh, OK, this resonates with our history because of what we went through in apartheid.’ So I think those are the things that you always heard and you always knew about, and you always obviously read about, but when it comes to the actual details of the history, I can’t say I really knew it, but I certainly have come away way more enriched. 

ZDM: It was a war. Our kids were terrified for us to go there. It’s a totally different country when you’re actually on the ground. Completely. It’s not what is perceived to us at home, I would say.

JI: You came at a time when we in Israel were approaching, now it’s past, the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. 

ZDM: [On Oct. 7, 2023,] I remember all I heard on the news was there was an attack in Israel, and there were hundreds of people killed. But I didn’t actually understand the magnitude and the gravity of what actually happened on Oct. 7. We went to a kibbutz that was literally at arm’s length … to Gaza. It was a complete massacre, a complete massacre of innocent children, parents, people who survived the Holocaust. That was completely horrifying to me, I couldn’t even imagine … the [Nova music] festival. I think Swati cried the whole day at the site. 

I did not understand the magnitude of what actually happened on that day. It wasn’t portrayed to me. I was completely horrified by what happened. It was a massacre, it was deliberate, it was calculated. It was a complete obliteration of innocent women and children on one day. It pains me to think that this happened. 

But the people that I met — the mothers, the survivors — are still so hopeful, are still so resilient. It’s really something to look up to, because even through so much pain and agony and anguish, they are still hopeful that there could be a place where they can both — both nations, both people, Jewish and Palestinians — can live in a place peacefully, even in their differences. But Oct. 7, for me, was horrific. It was horrific, and it wasn’t told to us South Africans, I can safely say.

SDM: Hearing firsthand accounts of people who actually survived that day and what they experienced and their loss of loved ones, families whose loved ones were kidnapped, dead and alive, children who were kidnapped, and how children were used as pawns to negotiate with the government. 

Going into Gaza on that specific day [with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] was also incredible, because you heard so many stories about aid not being delivered, aid not getting to the people and malnutrition. And it’s not perfect, right? In any war, nothing is going to be perfect. Aid delivery is never going to be perfect. What we were a part of, what we experienced, was an organization that certainly is trying to make their impact. There were 10,000 or so women and children that we saw that were able to be fed, that, if [they] needed medical care, there was medical care that was available to them. 

On the flip side of that, you have [Israeli] families that are still grieving the loss of loved ones who have not even returned, the hostages that still have not returned. The sheer devastation on both sides was very apparent that day. I think that was my biggest takeaway, that there’s suffering on both sides. Like Zaziwe said, to talk to and hear the stories of people who survived and who still have so much hope for the country and who still want peace. They’re desperate for peace. 

And I think the fact that we were also there on the day when [President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu met to talk about a peace deal and a peace agreement, to us, was a turning point, the fact that there can be peace, and there’s a potential peace that can come to the region. But the healing still needs to come. So we pray for peace. We really pray for peace. We’ve seen what the devastation is firsthand with our own eyes, we’ve seen it, and so we pray that the peace deal will come through, and it will hold.

JI: I saw that you met with Rachel Goldberg-Polin. Swati, before you got on the call, Zaziwe was telling me about her son, and she said he was 25 — he was basically the same age as Rachel’s son, Hersh. What was that meeting like?

ZDM: First of all, this woman is so strong. She is such a strong, strong lady. And what she went through with her only son, I can’t even imagine. She held on for over 300 days knowing that her son was alive, and then literally, right before the IDF was going to rescue him, [Hamas] killed him. Hearing her story was so profound, and really was a moment that I’ll never forget in my life. She literally took me into the day of what happened on Oct. 7. She had a smile on her face the whole time. When she was telling us a story, she was sad, but she had a smile on her face. She was so hopeful, and she was the perfect example of resilience, the perfect example of a person who wants peace, the perfect example of someone who said, ‘I really hope there’s an Israel where Palestinians and Israelis and Jews can live side by side.’ And she even said, ‘I really hope that one day we can have a TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] like you guys.’ She’s like, ‘That’s my wish. I want us to have a TRC in Israel.’ 

I was in awe of this woman. My son is 25 in two weeks, so I completely resonated with her. I completely connected with her, and she was so loving, and just wanted peace for her country that she loves, and I will never forget that experience. She literally described that day to me, from morning to end, from the moment when she found out that her son was actually held captive, and the message that he sent to her was, ‘Mommy. I’m sorry.’ Can you imagine? I mean, can you imagine knowing that your son has been injured, has been taken captive? Living in agony that your son is in captivity and is injured over 300 days? I can’t even imagine. I can’t even imagine. She is resilience to me, she really is. 

SDM: She was so strong, she was so kind, she was so determined to still ensure that the rest of the hostages get home. She gave us so much hope, because she’s like, ‘I want peace.’ It’s not something that you would expect. She’s an advocate for the families who probably don’t have the strength to be able to tell the story or to be able to push and fight. We were just in awe of her. She has hope, and she wants healing for the nations. She really wants healing for the nations. And she spoke about the women and children of Gaza. She spoke about what that means to her and the impact of that. So she spoke about everything. It wasn’t just a one-sided view for her. The human spirit’s ability to be able to live through such trauma and tragedy and still come out and still be so hopeful, for me, she was the epitome of that. 

JI: You went to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site. What was that experience like? What did you do? What were your interactions like?

ZDM: It was a very hot day, very, very hot. And I think they said that they had about, I think about 4,000-5,000 people before? So on that day they were expecting the biggest crowd. It was about 10,000 people that they were expecting. So, I mean, TV doesn’t do justice. It really doesn’t. When you’re actually on the ground and you actually see people running, literally running for food, it’s something that you can’t even explain. 

The men arrive first, they get their supplies, which is pretty chaotic for about 15, 20 minutes, because they’re literally fighting for their aid. So it’s very, very chaotic. And then after that, the women are so organized. The women and children are so organized. They stand in a line, unprovoked, very simple. They just know the order of things. So Swati and I and our team literally spent the whole day giving food, potatoes and eggs to the women, and there were lots of children as well. And I must say, everyone was just so grateful. They were so grateful. They were happy that we were there. There was no interruption. There was nothing untoward. All they came to do was to get food, nourishment and go home. And this happens every single day for these people. You saw the repercussions of what a war entails. Women and children are the biggest casualties, literally, because there were more women and children there. 

JI: What was their physical condition?

ZDM: I don’t know what they looked like before. I mean, obviously you could see the desperation. You could definitely see the desperation in them. They definitely do need aid and food, they definitely do. But I’ve seen what the hostages look like when they leave [Gaza], when they’ve been released, and they literally are people who are starving. They’re people who haven’t had anything for months on end. So for me, I compared what I’ve seen to the people, the women and children of Gaza. It’s a totally different image, for me, from what I saw. Obviously they want nourishment. Obviously they would like three meals a day. Obviously. But for me, there’s a difference between what I’ve seen between the hostages who were released and what I saw firsthand in Gaza, I’ll leave it at that.

SDM: It was nice to see that the organization works with Palestinians to facilitate the aid to the community. It’s obviously going to grow over time, which is what was explained to us, because 750,000 people had moved down to that area. GHF is building a bigger facility to actually give more aid, medical care in a way in which it’s safe for the people, as safe as it can be, for the Palestinians who need the aid, as well as the people who are working on the ground. I think from what you heard and what you saw, they’re really doing their best to try and see that they can bring aid to as many people as they can as an organization. I kept saying, ‘Is the food going to run out?’ But they kept bringing trucks. They just kept bringing trucks with potatoes and food packs for the families and nutritional snacks. 

And I think seeing firsthand what, like Zaziwe just said, women and children are always the biggest casualties of war, children that are not in school. It was incredibly insightful for us to be able to at least be there and participate and see it and be able to help GHF on that day, because they do so much. 

JI: So talking about being in Gaza distributing aid, the irony of the both of you being there distributing aid last week, was that at the same time that was happening, a cousin of yours was on a flotilla headed to Gaza. It’s the irony of ironies that there was a grandchild of Nelson Mandela delivering aid — actually, there were two — and it wasn’t the one who was making splashy headlines.

SDM: We’re a big family, first and foremost. Our grandparents have always, always taught us to carve out our own paths and walk our own journeys. My grandfather, he went to Israel and he went to Gaza. My grandmother didn’t have the opportunity to do the same. So for me, at the end of the day, we’re grateful that he’s back home and he’s safe, he’s fine. We were on a humanitarian mission for ourselves. We are a family that has different ways in which we want to contribute to society and to humanity, and we allow each other room to do that in ways which are befitting to the individual. 

So we were on our own mission, and we respect his mission and what he was doing. Ultimately, at the end of the day, the goal is about the people, right? That’s what the goal is, and that’s what the goal should always be. It should be about the people.

ZDM: I think that Swati said it perfectly. We’re a big family, and we all have our own ways of doing things, but the ultimate goal is peace to the region, and we want this war to end. We want all the hostages to come home, and we want the innocent people of Gaza and the Palestinians to also get the aid and food that they need. And we just want this war to end so we all have different ways of doing it, and we’re thankful that he’s home, but for us, we were there as granddaughters of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

JI: People like to take your grandfather’s words and legacy to shape specific narratives around current events, and this has been going on for many, many years all around the world. When it comes to Israel, the term apartheid gets thrown around a lot. You’ve now been on the ground. You have experienced Israel for yourselves. How do you feel about the politicization of your grandfather’s words when it comes to Israel?

SDM: I’m not a politician. I have been asked many times in my life if I’m going to follow in their footsteps, and I always say, given my personal experience, I don’t really have the desire to. I think that we have a great example to follow in a leader like my grandfather. I’m not here to be a global activist like our grandparents were. I’m just here to make my little, little, little impact in whichever small way that I can, and I think just to be educated. The world has changed so much. Like Zaziwe said, if my grandmother was alive, my grandmother would have come to the region, without a shadow of a doubt, she would have been there because she was — both our grandparents were — those people. But I’m my own person, and I’m here to walk my own path. And people, I think it’s time for us to just walk our own paths. 

ZDM: I would say, I think our grandfather’s legacy quotes, what is lived up to is so powerful and so profound, and people can distort it and make it their own. Educate yourself, really educate yourself and really listen, really listen to the words that he spoke, maybe listen to what he said and just do your homework. I just don’t think that you should take and hear everything that you hear from the media, or take what somebody says on a stage and take it for what it really, really is. 

This trip was so important to us now, because I thought we have to go there ourselves and see it. And I know most people won’t have the opportunity, but it’s really important to invest time into what you actually believe in, what your conviction tells you about yourself. You need to actually invest. I mean, just not take it at face value, because it can be so distorted, and you can be so deceived, completely deceived, about a situation or about a person. 

What I took away was, for me, I literally, if I’m passionate about something, and I can sit there and say, I believe in this, or A, B, C or D, I need to actually put in the time to actually understand what I actually am investing my time and what I’m putting my name behind. Grandad’s name is used and said all over the world, but I find that people don’t really, don’t listen to what he actually really said, both him and my grandmother. You just have to put in time and really invest and educate yourself about what you believe in. 

Twenty years ago this month, Israel dismantled 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, forcing 8,000 Israelis to evacuate and demolishing their homes, in what was known as the disengagement. That process was met with mass protests on the streets and the splintering of the Likud party, whose leader, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, initiated and oversaw the disengagement.

While Sharon did not promise peace as a result of the disengagement, the plan was presented as a move to make Israel more secure, while fewer soldiers would have to die protecting a small number of residents in the Gaza Strip. The prime minister and his supporters said that if even one rocket was shot from Gaza after the pull-out, Israel would respond militarily. They also promised that the disengagement would ensure that “this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, [would be] removed indefinitely from our agenda … all with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress,” as Sharon’s senior advisor, Dov “Dubi” Weisglass, put it at the time. 

Two decades later, Israel is fighting its longest war in Gaza, after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres and attacks perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization that has controlled Gaza since 2006. In the interim years, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza shot hundreds and sometimes thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers each year, prompting five major Israeli military operations in Gaza.

As to Weisglass’ 2004 promise that international pressure to reach a two-state solution would be put in “formaldehyde,” Sharon’s political protege and the Israeli prime minister immediately following him, Ehud Olmert, offered the Palestinians a state in 2008. Last week, 11 countries announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state.

Key figures from that period told Jewish Insider that the Israeli government’s failure to formulate a day-after plan for Gaza — a criticism that has been leveled at Jerusalem in the current war — is in part to blame for the unfulfilled promises of the disengagement.

Gilad Erdan, a former senior Israeli cabinet minister and ambassador to the U.S., was a freshman Likud lawmaker when the disengagement was announced, and became a leading figure in the party’s rebellion against Sharon, which then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who voted in favor of the disengagement plan in early key votes — joined at a later stage.

Erdan noted to JI that Sharon not only claimed the disengagement would improve Israel’s security, he said that “if Israel doesn’t take this step, there will be other diplomatic plans [that the world will] try to force on Israel, and this step will free us of pressure from the international community. It’s clear that it didn’t reduce pressure, it increased it.” 

“What happened then, and is still the case now, is that Israel didn’t have an alternative plan on the table, whether for the coming few years or the short term,” Erdan said. “This is something to consider as a lesson of the disengagement.”

“I think a Palestinian state is now off of the agenda for many years … Something we can consider a lesson of the disengagement is that we should say no withdrawals, no unilateralism, no to a Palestinian state. I think those lessons were learned over the years at a great cost in blood,” said Gilad Erdan, who was a freshman Likud lawmaker when the disengagement was announced, and became a leading figure in the party’s rebellion against Sharon.

Israel now has “an opportunity to present a plan … that puts Israel’s security and our right to the land at the forefront, but we are not presenting any diplomatic plan for the world to discuss. Even if the international community doesn’t accept it — so what? What looks crazy today could look different in 20 years. It’s not like we’ll have peace with the Palestinians in five minutes,” the former ambassador stated. 

Erdan said that the aftermath of the disengagement underscored for Israelis the danger of a potential Palestinian state.

“I think a Palestinian state is now off of the agenda for many years … Something we can consider a lesson of the disengagement is that we should say no withdrawals, no unilateralism, no to a Palestinian state. I think those lessons were learned over the years at a great cost in blood,” he said.

Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security advisor to the George W. Bush administration at the time of the disengagement, told JI that Sharon did have a larger overarching idea behind the move, but subsequent prime ministers did not follow through with it.

“Sharon said at the time that Israel needs to establish its borders, and I think he would have done something … with the West Bank. Whatever the future of Israel is, it doesn’t include Gaza, which has no use economically and no significance religiously,” was the logic, Abrams said. 

“Establish a border, build a wall, and maybe something will change in 100 years, but for now, try to have a border for Israel,” Abrams said. “It was a larger plan and then Sharon had his stroke” in December 2005, followed by another in January 2006 that left him in a vegetative state until his death in 2014.

“Sharon refused for domestic reasons to work with the Palestinian Authority at all on Gaza, because it would make it look like a reward,” following the years-long wave of Palestinian terrorism called the Second Intifada, Abrams recalled.

“Sharon wasn’t going to have anything to do with [the PA]; he was just going to leave Gaza,” Abrams said. “It’s a question whether it would have been possible to avoid a Hamas takeover in June 2006, followed by the complete collapse of the PA [in Gaza]. It’s a question worth asking. It is a fact that there was zero coordination.”

Though Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died after Sharon announced the disengagement, the Israeli prime minister did not reconsider his plan in light of the election of new leader Mahmoud Abbas — who remains PA president 20 years later.

Abrams argued that international pressure was not a major contributing factor to the disengagement, noting that the plan was entirely Sharon’s and not something Bush sought for him to do.

Still, Abrams said that “international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians is Israel’s predicament. That is simply a fact … I don’t think this is a problem that has a solution. I think it’s a condition.” 

“Israelis have to decide when they’re going to say ‘drop dead,’ when they’re going to say politely ‘no, we can’t do that,’ when to take half measures and when they’re going to agree,” he added. “Those questions have not changed much. They get worse for a while sometimes, and then better and then worse again, depending on how successful Arab propaganda campaigns are and how unsuccessful Israel’s campaigns are. It also depends on how strong the support is from the U.S. in resisting the other pressure.”

Erdan similarly said that “Sharon sent Dubi Weisglass to convince [Bush], one of the most supportive presidents ever, to support the disengagement. Bush didn’t want to support it at first … there wasn’t such significant international pressure.”

Rather, Erdan, who was Sharon’s political advisor a decade before the disengagement, said the debate was more of a domestic Israeli one, after Sharon “changed 180 degrees from all of the ideas he had presented to us about security and ideology, Judea and Samaria,” the Biblical term for the West Bank.

The disengagement came after “Israel was under pressure from terrorism,” Erdan said.

“The disengagement was a terrible, historic mistake that inspired the Oct. 7 massacre,” Erdan argued. “It not only gave [Hamas] the opportunity to dig tunnels and arm itself, it gave them the motivation, the desire and the belief that they could do it. That the strong Israel, led by the decorated General Ariel Sharon, retreated unilaterally when facing terrorism strengthened the extremists in Palestinian society and led to the loss of deterrence we experienced two years ago.”

Erdan also argued that the disengagement did not reduce Israeli deaths, saying that the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians killed in attacks emanating from Gaza in 1967-2005, when Israel controlled the territory, was smaller than in the ensuing years 18 years before the latest war.

Abrams pointed out that Sharon and Olmert did not fulfill their promise of striking back if any attacks came from Gaza.

“The problem began very quickly,” Abrams recalled, “because Sharon in the first few months, and then after he had a stroke it was Olmert, never enforced their own statements about Gaza.”

Two Qassam rockets were shot from Gaza into Israel while the disengagement was still taking place, and another 33 during the remainder of that year. From 2005 to 2006, the number of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on Israel rose 42% to 1,777. Hamas also began building tunnels into Israel at that time.

Abrams recalled that when Sharon initiated the disengagement and presented it to Bush and then the public, Sharon argued that “if Israel got out of Gaza, there would be no excuse for any attack from Gaza on Israel, and if there were attacks, they would be met with the strongest, most forceful military reaction. It never happened.” 

“Don’t let your enemies get into a position where they can do you great harm. That was learned, and that explains the attacks on Hezbollah and Iran. That is the right lesson. That is the lesson Israel did not seem to learn when it got out of Gaza,” said Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security advisor to the George W. Bush administration at the time of the disengagement. 

Israel at the time, he said, “had an opportunity to respond very strongly to Hamas right away, and it would have had considerable American and international support … It was an opportunity that was missed … by Sharon, Olmert and later [since 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. It was a continuing problem.”

Abrams said that after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel learned at least one lesson it had failed to internalize after the disengagement: “Don’t let your enemies get into a position where they can do you great harm. That was learned, and that explains the attacks on Hezbollah and Iran. That is the right lesson. That is the lesson Israel did not seem to learn when it got out of Gaza.” 

“Israel is a democracy and the whole Jewish people debate about everything nonstop,” Erdan said, but “the lessons of the disengagement are growing over the years. It didn’t happen overnight.”

“In the early years after the disengagement, we realized the Palestinians had the ability and desire to launch missiles and rockets, so we can’t live in the delusion that [Gaza would be] the Singapore of the Middle East,” he said. “Only on Oct. 7 did many more people in Israel believe that not only unilateral but any withdrawal is bad. Israelis totally lost trust in the Palestinians and realized that Jewish settlements have a great and significant security value … We cannot only rely on technology and smart cameras; physical presence is essential … I think a lot of us woke up from our delusions on Oct. 7 that withdrawals will lead the Palestinians to reconcile with us.”

Still, Erdan said, “there are people who continue to claim that the price of staying in Gaza would be even higher, so I can’t say all the lessons were learned. With time, more are learned.” 

“Having settlers in Gaza [would be] insane. It was a tremendous strain on the IDF. Do we really want to add that strain? It seems insane to me,” said Abrams.

It appears likely from Israeli leaders’ statements and positions in ceasefire negotiations that, at the end of the war, Israel will retain some of Gaza as a buffer zone between Israelis and Palestinians.

Beyond that, many on the Israeli right have called for Israel to retake part or all of Gaza. Some called for annexation as a military tactic to pressure Hamas, which was discussed in recent Israeli Security Cabinet meetings, and others have been calling from the beginning of the war to reverse the disengagement and for Israelis to be allowed to settle in Gaza again.

Abrams said that “having settlers in Gaza [would be] insane. It was a tremendous strain on the IDF. Do we really want to add that strain? It seems insane to me.”

Despite the lack of follow-through to reap the possible security benefits of the disengagement, Abrams said “Sharon was right.”

“First, we need to win the war,” Erdan said. “We are in a different situation today. Israel, unfortunately, already uprooted the [Israeli] towns and we are in a war with consequences for our future. I don’t think bringing the issue of settlements into it now contributes to our effort to win the campaign … We don’t have to give the international community more tools to make the matter of total victory in the war more complex … Israel should look at its interests and its priorities.”

“I personally do not believe that maintaining 7,000 [Israeli] settlers in the middle of 2 million hostile Arabs in Gaza, and using a substantial part of the IDF to protect them, was a sensible plan for Israel,” he said. 

Abrams also took issue with the idea of annexing parts of Gaza to pressure Hamas: “It strikes me that that’s not going to move the remaining Hamas leadership living in tunnels in Gaza to agree to let the hostages out. They don’t seem to care about anything. It is truly a death cult … It doesn’t seem to me — putting aside the legality or illegality — that it would work.”

Erdan said that, in principle, he believes “Jews have the right to live anywhere in the Land of Israel, and a solution to a conflict must include the moral principle that every population can choose where to live and the other side must accept it.”

However, he said that Israeli resettlement of Gaza is “not the most urgent or central thing.”

“First, we need to win the war,” Erdan said. “We are in a different situation today. Israel, unfortunately, already uprooted the [Israeli] towns and we are in a war with consequences for our future. I don’t think bringing the issue of settlements into it now contributes to our effort to win the campaign … We don’t have to give the international community more tools to make the matter of total victory in the war more complex … Israel should look at its interests and its priorities.”

Abrams called the idea of maintaining a buffer zone “very sensible to protect Israelis in Israel.”

Erdan also favored Israel retaining a buffer zone in Gaza, because “even if Hamas isn’t there anymore, we don’t know who will be.” 

“I don’t think the end lines of the war need to be the Sharon disengagement lines,” he said. “We don’t need to leave the Philadelphi Corridor [along the border with Egypt] and we don’t need the people of Gaza to return to live so close [to Israelis], almost up to my parents’ house in Ashkelon.”