The Amazing Ahmed's Error

An extraordinary Palestinian from Gaza

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is an amazing person.

His grandparents were expelled from Palestine in the War of Independence. His parents were raised in a refugee camp in Rafah. Ahmed himself grew up in Gaza (he now lives in San Francisco). He was nearly killed and suffered a permanent partial loss of hearing during an IDF bombardment. Many of his relatives, who are not part of Hamas, have suffered severely or have been killed during the war, through no fault of their own.

You’d expect someone like Ahmed to hate Israel and the Jewish People.

Yet while he certainly has his criticisms of Israel, Ahmed seeks for Palestinians to recognize not just the fact of Israel’s existence, but also Israel’s right to exist. He is wholly opposed to any kind of violence. He wants Palestinians to renounce the “right of return” to pre-67 Israel. On his Facebook and Twitter page, he has been tirelessly and courageously campaigning against Hamas and those who support them, despite facing terrible hatred as a result, spelling out exactly how cynically Hamas seeks to maximize suffering to Palestinians in Gaza. He has shown more genuine empathy for the hostages and their families than have some people in the Israeli government, and has formed relationships with many of them. Ahmed has a Big Heart and is an extraordinary beacon of love and compassion and understanding and hope.

Ahmed is truly an amazing human being, especially given what he’s been through. But he makes one error.

In his hope, humility, and optimism, Ahmed doesn’t take into account how truly special he is. And when I say “special,” I mean “unique.”

If most Palestinians would have been like Ahmed, perhaps peace would have been reached long ago. But the fact is that there are precious few Palestinians who are like Ahmed. He receives endless hate from other Palestinians and from their supporters. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians do not believe that Israel has a right to exist - they believe that the Jews are European invaders who stole their homeland.

The majority of Palestinians believe that early 20th century Palestinians had every right to violently resist Jews moving en masse to Palestine in order to flee persecution. And following from that, they believe that all the tragedies that the Palestinians have suffered since then, from the Naqba and onward, are the fault of the Jews. The majority of Palestinians also believe that armed resistance is legitimate in order to reverse what they see as a historic wrongdoing that was done to them. And the majority of Palestinians also subscribe to the Islamic sentiment that Jewish sovereignty in land that was formerly under Muslim rule is inherently problematic.

Ahmed surely knows all this, but in his optimism, he minimizes it and/or hopes and presumes that this can significantly change - which seems extraordinarily unlikely.

But recognizing the painful reality of the historic and contemporary mainstream Palestinian narrative is crucial. Because it has had, and continues to have, consequences.

The consequences of Arab rejectionism in the 1920s through to 1947 was the War of Independence/ Naqba. The consequences of Arab rejectionism since then were the various confrontations and wars that followed, leading to the 1967 takeover of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The further consequences of this rejectionism, including the infamous Three No’s at Khartoum, were that Israel did not believe that it would be safe to return Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and settled them. And when a desperate Israel nevertheless swung towards a peaceful resolution in the 1990s, the consequence of the Second Intifada was that most Israelis came to feel that true peace would never be achieved. And then the consequences of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the rockets that resulted, and the international condemnation leveled upon Israel for trying to eliminate the rocket threat, were that Israelis realized that any withdrawal would likely result in the evacuated territory being ultimately taken over by Islamists, with Israel’s hands being internationally tied in being able to neutralize the attackers as long as the attackers hide among civilians (which they are happy to do).

Actions have consequences. Mistakes have consequences. At this point, it is unrealistic to expect that a State of Palestine would peacefully coexist with Israel and would not end up in conflict. And it is certainly unrealistic to think that Israelis would believe in this utopian scenario and risk their lives and national security on it. Which means that people need to start thinking in different directions.