“We Have to Start Thinking in Terms of Decolonization”

As the official death toll in Gaza passes 31,000 people, including more than 13,000 children, the Israeli state is continuing its mass-killing operations in the besieged strip. The U.N. secretary-general is warning that famine is spreading in Gaza, and Tel Aviv remains defiantly committed to its distinctly offensive war of collective punishment.

While the Biden administration is growing more vocal in its public calls for a pause in Israeli military actions, it has also made clear it has imposed no “red lines” over military action. The Netanyahu government maintains it will escalate its attacks in Rafah, even as the White House is calling for Israeli officials to consider a smaller-scale operation to target Hamas fighters and leadership.

This week on Intercepted, Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu discusses the disconnect between the rhetoric of Western leaders and the predictable results of their sustained military backing of Israel. Buttu also analyzes the political debates within Palestine and the role of Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, and the thousands of arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. She also discusses the significance of Palestinian resistance leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison but whose freedom Hamas says it is committed to winning in a future exchange of captives. Barghouti, who is often characterized as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela, was reportedly beaten in prison this week.

[Intercepted theme music.]

Jeremy Scahill: Welcome to Intercepted. I’m Jeremy Scahill.

The U.N. Secretary General António Guterres is warning that famine in the north of Gaza is imminent and he has called on the international community to immediately facilitate the delivery of aid to the besieged Palestinians. Now this comes as a major new U.N. report has issued a dire assessment of the humanitarian situation in the strip predicting that within months more than a million people could face the most severe level of hunger and the report predicted “alarmingly high acute malnutrition rates among children under 5, significant excess mortality and an imminent risk of starvation.”

Now, while the Biden administration has, in recent weeks, become more vocal in public in demanding Israel facilitate the delivery of aid, President Biden has refused to use any of the substantial leverage that the U.S. wields over Tel Aviv to back up his public rhetoric. In fact, the White House continues to operate a pipeline of weapons resupplying Israel’s forces as they continue the mass killing operations in Gaza.

This week, in the early morning hours of Monday, Israeli forces once again laid siege to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, surrounding the complex with tanks and engaging in heavy fire. The Israeli forces then raided the hospital and claimed to have taken some 80 people prisoner. Palestinian sources say the number is more than 150 people were snatched during the operations. The IDF claimed that it was conducting what it called a “high precision” operation alongside Shin Bet intelligence operatives, but Gaza health officials are saying that anyone who tried to move in the hospital was targeted by sniper bullets and quadcopter attacks. An estimated 30,000 people have taken shelter in the hospital complex and the surrounding area because they believed it to be a protected area.

Now, Israel justified this raid by saying its forces came under fire from inside the hospital. And Israeli media claimed the IDF had what they called “concrete evidence” that Hamas commanders had relocated there from the northern Gaza Strip and they were using it as a command center to manage their attacks against occupation forces. Al Jazeera reports that an estimated 20 people were killed during this raid. At least one Israeli soldier also died. The overarching official death toll from the past five-plus months in Gaza has now gone over 31,000 people, including 13,000 children. And for all the talk of it being the Hamas-run Health Ministry’s numbers, those numbers are probably very conservative. There are more than 8,000 people who are missing and many of those are believed to have been trapped or died under the rubble of their former homes or buildings in their community that were brought down by Israeli attacks.

Now over the five-plus months, Israel has made a series of unverified claims to justify its attacks against hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza. Remember in November it attacked Al-Shifa alleging that the hospital was a major Hamas facility and that it was on top of an underground command and control lair — sort of a Hamas Pentagon. Now those claims were co-signed by the Biden administration, actually more than co-signed. The Biden administration didn’t just say, oh we agree with Israel’s assessment. The White House said we have our own intelligence that indicates that Hamas is using that hospital as a command and control node. Well, when the IDF actually then went in and took control of the hospital and they brought journalists there, they failed to produce any credible evidence to back up these major sweeping claims that they had made about the hospital. Then they moved on to the next raid at the next hospital. 

As a result of these Israeli attacks, Gaza doesn’t have a single fully-functioning hospital anymore. Last week, a BBC News investigation documented how medical workers at Nasser Hospital were detained and tortured by Israeli forces following a February 15 raid at that hospital. And among the abuses that medical staff who were detained said that they endured were being stripped naked, being blindfolded and beaten. Muzzled dogs being used to menace the prisoners. Some staff reported being doused with cold water and held for hours in stress positions. As with the Al-Shifa raid that went down this week, the IDF claimed that that raid last month at Nasser hospital was “precise and focused.” And there they said they took 200 people captive. They characterized them as “terrorists” or “suspects of terrorist activity,” including some who were posing as medical teams. This is part of Israel’s constant narrative that basically that everyone in Gaza is Hamas, even the U.N. and doctors, et cetera.  

In Brussels on Monday, the E.U.’s top foreign policy official Josep Borrell said that there’s no longer a question of Gaza being on the brink of famine. He said it is “in a state of famine.” He said that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Israelis of course pushed back against that. 

And now with this  possible large-scale ground invasion looming over the city of Rafah on the Egypt border, the White House is now making it clear that actually they don’t have any red lines for Israel, despite the fact that Biden had seemed to indicate that a full scale invasion of Rafah was a red line. The White House saying now no, no, Israel will make its own decisions. Instead the White House is inviting an Israeli team to come and discuss a way to do a lighter version of a targeted operation in Rafah. 

To discuss all of these developments as well as the fate of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian resistance figure who is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison. There have been reports this week that he has been beaten in prison. Some have said that he is akin to the Nelson Mandela of the Palestinian liberation cause. We go to Haifa and we’re joined by the human rights lawyer and political analyst Diana Buttu. 

Diana, thank you so much for being with us here on Intercepted.

Diana Buttu: Thank you very much. Jeremy. It’s nice to be with you.

JS: I want to begin by some of the most recent developments that we’ve seen. The World Food Program is now saying that there will be all-out starvation setting in in Gaza between now and May. Some people say, in parts of Gaza, that’s already the reality.

On Monday, the top E.U. foreign policy official Josep Borrell accused Israel of deliberately imposing a policy of starvation on Gaza. And then we had yet another raid on Al-Shifa hospital by Israeli forces, where dozens of people were detained.

Talk about these latest events, and what you think this says about where things are headed as Ramadan continues.

DB: This is genocide, and we’ve known this from the first day that Israel was intending to carry out genocide. It’s important to keep in mind that, from day one, the Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said that there would be no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel. And, alongside that, they also mean, no medicine. And that what they were dealing with is “human animals.” These were his words.

And so, it’s not at all surprising that now, as we’re approaching nearly six months in, that we’ve seen starvation deaths in the north, where most of the people who are dying are the most vulnerable: children and, in some cases, the elderly, who are also suffering from diseases.

So, it’s not at all surprising that we are seeing this, and it’s not at all surprising that we see the world’s inaction when it comes to everything from Israel’s attack on hospitals, to the attack on schools, to the attack on cultural centers, to every form of Palestinian life. Because, what the message is that Israel is sending to Palestinians is, if you want to have a normal life, it’s going to be outside of Gaza. If you want to get food? Outside of Gaza. If you want to get medical treatment? Outside of Gaza. You want to go to school? Outside of Gaza. Do you want to have any cultural preservation? Outside of Gaza. And this is what Israel has said that they are doing, and this is what they’re doing. This is what they’re doing.

The sad part is, is that Israel’s made it so clear, and yet nobody’s doing anything to stop Israel; quite the opposite. They’re providing excuse after excuse for Israel to continue this genocide.

JS: You know, the Biden administration for these past five-and-a-half months of sustained scorched earth attacks by the Israelis has continued the flow of weapons to Israel, has continued the political support for Israel, has prevented other nations of the world from demanding an immediate ceasefire using the veto power at the United Nations. And, in the past couple of months, we’ve seen this shift in some of the overt public rhetoric; you know, stories of Biden growing impatient with his great, great friend, Bibi Netanyahu. And then you add Kamala Harris, the American Vice President starting to use the word “ceasefire.”

And now, Joe Biden, as he stood with the leader of Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day saying, oh, we share common ground with Ireland, we need to get a ceasefire implemented as soon as possible. But the U.S. is very, very clear. There is no actual red line regarding Rafah. No one should read too deeply into the fact that the president actually said there was. No, the U.S. remains committed to providing Israel with weapons that Washington characterizes as being used in self-defense.

The Democrats appear now to put the full blame on Netanyahu, asserting that Biden has done whatever he could to rein him in. You have Chuck Schumer, a very open, public Zionist, a passionate supporter of Israel through all of its most horrifying policies. He’s now saying, oh, the Israelis need to choose a new leader, Netanyahu has to go. 

How are you reading this refinement of the narrative coming out of the centers of power in Washington, D.C.?

DB: This is the kind of stuff that they talk about in the belt, but it’s not the stuff that actually changes policy for Palestinians.

But, more importantly, it’s important to note that this isn’t just Netanyahu. We’ve seen for the past five-and-a-half months, video after video of soldier after soldier, carrying out war crimes and proudly doing so. Those soldiers are not Netanyahu. Those soldiers are part of the Israeli society. And, inside Israeli society today, you see an appetite. You see that there is nobody willing to stop this genocide.

To the contrary; they make fun of Palestinians for the fact that there is no water, they’ve made fun of Palestinians for not having food, they’ve made fun of Palestinians for not having medicine. Most recently, they made fun of Palestinians who were killed as these food baskets were being dropped from the sky, and they were poking fun at Palestinians.

So, this isn’t just one individual. This is Israel, this is Israeli society. And the reason that it is like this is because, for all of these years, for 75 years, nobody has reigned in Israeli leaders. It’s been to the contrary. We get these little hints that they’re not happy.

But what the U.S. is effectively saying now is that it has no leverage over Israel. That’s the message that they’re saying to Palestinians. We have no leverage over Netanyahu. And, as much as people are saying that this is some row or some showdown, the person who’s going to come out on top is going to be Benjamin Netanyahu, because he knows that Israel can do whatever it wants, and he knows that Biden is not going to do a thing to stop him.

JS: That is true, of course. At the same time, the White House pretends that it has no leverage over Netanyahu but, actually, there were media reports over the weekend, including from ABC News, that indicate that the Israelis are telling the White House that they’re short on tank munitions, even with one senior Israeli official saying, oh, this could mean that we don’t end up winning the war. And they’re accusing Washington of slow-walking some of the recent weapons shipments.

The U.S. was quick to come forward and say, we haven’t done that yet. But anyone who knows history knows that Joe Biden, even just recent history under Biden: In 2021, Biden was able to bring the intense siege against Gaza to a very swift halt with a phone call to Netanyahu. He basically said, you have no more runway, this is done. And, within 48 hours, Netanyahu was in talks with the Egyptian regime, and the thing was brought to a close. So, it’s a ridiculous notion to imply that that the U.S. has no leverage.

The question becomes, why Biden won’t use any of that leverage. And there’s one school of thought that Biden has been the most tenacious defender of Israel when it’s at its most violent throughout the course of his half-century in politics. But then, there’s another part of this, which is that Israel has a tremendous amount of influence in U.S. politics. AIPAC inside of the United States pours money into the campaign coffers of politicians, or into efforts to try to defeat politicians that it believes are not sufficiently quote-unquote “pro-Israel enough.”

So, I want to ask you, because you’re a lawyer, because you’ve worked on these human rights issues, and because you follow the politics: what is behind the U.S. policy? What is driving this right now?

DB: It’s hard to say. I agree with you. I do think that Biden has leverage, but the message that he’s sending is that he doesn’t have leverage. And so, the question becomes, as you put it, why isn’t he using that leverage?

I think, in part, is that he has taken the position that every other American leader has taken, which is to kick this issue, kick this issue, kick it down the can to the next presidency. And he has never really wanted to confront Israel, to deal with Israel, because, at this point in time, this isn’t just the question of a phone call. It’s going to be a question of a phone call followed by some action. For Netanyahu, this is an end-of-career move.

We know that the minute that Israel’s attack on Gaza is over, the minute after that, Netanyahu is going to be out of office. Why? The Israeli public does not like him. Whether you’re on the left wing — or what’s left of the left wing — or you’re on the right wing, all of them are blaming Netanyahu. And the only reasons that he’s prolonging this is, first, because he can, and second, because he knows that, by ending this, it’ll be the end of his political career.

If you’re on the right, you are blaming Netanyahu for not hitting Palestinians enough over the course of his term in office. And if you’re on the so-called left, you’re blaming Netanyahu for not keeping Israelis quote-unquote “safe” while an occupation rages on.

So, when it comes to Biden, I think that he’s just wanted to take this position of kicking it down to the next presidency, to the next term, to the next term. And, unfortunately, to pick up the phone and to force Netanyahu to stop means more than just picking up the phone. It actually means some concrete action, and I just don’t think he’s willing to go there.

JS: I want to ask you about the political dynamics in Gaza prior to October 7th, and what, maybe, we can expect going forward. There are some reports in the Israeli media that, in this current round of negotiations between David Barnea — the head of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency — and other mediators that Hamas is going to put forward Yahya Sinwar as the direct negotiator.

Now, these are not confirmed reports, but it wouldn’t be necessarily surprising; Sinwar was a couple of decades in Israeli prisons, he speaks fluent Hebrew. But it does seem that there is a lot more discussion right now about who may govern a future Gaza, if there are, in fact, Palestinians left in Gaza after the Israelis are done with this campaign, this massive attack on the civilian life and institutions in Gaza.

But my sense is that Hamas did not have extreme popularity in Gaza prior to this, but even among many factions that are critical of Hamas or anti-Hamas, that there does seem to be a broad consensus that Hamas needs to be part of any future discussions on the existence of Gaza and how it how it would govern.

Walk us through your understanding of what things were like politically in Gaza prior to October 7, and how the tapestry of organizations across occupied Palestine view Hamas going forward.

DB: Let me preface this by talking about what it means to “rule over Gaza,” or to “rule over the West Bank,” and I’m using that term in air quotes. And the reason I’m using air quotes is because there’s no such thing as ruling over it.

What I mean by this is that the West Bank is not a sovereign state, neither is the Gaza Strip. Everything is linked to Israel. And there isn’t a separate currency, there isn’t a separate economic system. I used to joke around and say that the Palestinian Authority Minister of Transportation has probably as much authority over the transportation system as a child does over the little train that they have. And that’s it.

It’s a system in which this is a government that is the subcontractor to Israel. In some cases in the West Bank, it’s the security subcontractor to Israel. But, in the case of the Gaza Strip, it’s not necessarily the security subcontractor, but a subcontractor nonetheless. And it’s because Gaza is not an independent state, because the West Bank is not an independent state, because Palestine is not free. And so, because these entities are not free, they operate effectively with their hands tied behind their backs, and they can’t really do much.

So, if you look at a normal government or places around the world, what is it that citizens want from a government? They want to have some sort of economic policy, some healthcare policy, some education policy. They want to have some policies when it comes to retirement. And, of course, people want to be free. None of this can be delivered by any shape of the Palestinian authority in the West Bank, or by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, because of the control that is exerted by Israel. And because of not only the control that’s exerted by Israel, but by the conditions that are placed on Palestinians, and by these authorities, by the international community.

And so, as a result, if you look at public opinion polling in the West Bank on October the 6th, Fatah was — which is the ruling party in the West Bank — Fatah was at a low. Not only was Fatah at a low, but the president himself, we had somewhere in the — I think it’s 80 percent of Palestinians said that he should resign. This isn’t: please don’t run in the next election. It is: resign, we’re not happy with you.

The same idea was present in Gaza. Not with the same numbers but, again, a lot of discontent. And you have to ask, why, and it’s because they don’t have the ability to properly lead, to properly function, to properly govern, because it’s not a state.

So, that was the state of affairs in the Gaza Strip. Hamas was not entirely popular on October the 6th for the reasons I mentioned. And, in the West Bank, Fatah was not popular on October the 6th, for the reasons I mentioned.

Today, I can’t really speak to Gaza, because I’m not there, but I can speak to the West Bank. Today, support for Hamas has risen a lot. Why? Because people see that the only political movement that’s standing between them — between us as Palestinians — and Israel’s extermination of us, is Hamas. That there is a political body that is resisting, and that isn’t just going to lay down and allow Israel to walk all over us.

The question becomes, what does it mean for the future? And here’s where it becomes very important for Palestinians to be able to decide their own future. I’ve heard time and again from Israeli leader after Israeli leader, from international leader after international leader, saying that there’s no future for Hamas in Gaza. I’m sorry, it’s not for them to decide. This is entirely for Palestinians to decide. And it may be that Hamas decides that they don’t want to be in the political side of things any longer. I don’t know. But whatever decision is taken has to be a Palestinian one, And this idea of pandering to what the West wants, that has got to come to an end.

You know, Jeremy, I want to share just an anecdote with you, if I may, of something that happened in 2005 when I was part of the team that was involved in the Israeli disengagement.

So, in 2005, Israel pulled out of the settlements from the Gaza Strip, and it pulled out all of the settlers as well, but it didn’t end the occupation. So, it took down the settlements for sure, and the settlers left, but it didn’t end its control over the Gaza Strip. And, at that time in 2005, there was a lot of fanfare, and Israel was rewarded quite handsomely for doing this withdrawal, this disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

At the time, the members of the international community kept asking the Palestinian team — I was part of it — what is needed to make the Gaza Strip viable? And, actually President Bush had even asked this question. And the answer was simple: allow Palestinians to live freely. An airport, a seaport, a connection to the West Bank, a connection to the world. To be able to control our own economy and our own future.

Now, at the time, the Israelis said, no, no, we can’t do that, because they’re obsessed with control. They’re obsessed with this idea of constantly controlling Palestinian lives. And so, in the process of discussing things, the Israelis insisted that, for goods to be able to get in and out of the Gaza Strip, that they needed to be scanned.

And I’ll never forget the conversation that I had with somebody from the Israeli side who indicated to me the following. He said, yes, goods need to be scanned going in, and goods that are coming out need to be scanned. And the level of scanner that we require is so high that it actually doesn’t exist.

You hear this, and you should, like, scoff, or say, this is absolutely absurd. And yet when we told this to the heads of international organizations, to heads of state, their response was, oh, but you need to work with Israel, you need to appease Israel.

And I’m telling you this anecdote because those days of appeasing Israel have got to come to an end. And had they actually listened to Palestinians back in 2005, I don’t think we’d be in this place today.

JS: I wanted to ask you also about Marwan Barghouti. We recently were interviewing Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, and asked him a bit about his potential future aspirations. But also, he was describing the importance of Marwan Barghouti to the broader Palestinian liberation cause.

And, of course, for people that aren’t familiar: Marwan Barghouti has spent two decades in prison in Israel. He’s sentenced to multiple life sentences, in a broader kind of mainstream sense. He’s been compared on some levels to a Nelson Mandela-type figure for Palestinians. But I think there’s a broad consensus that he would be one of the figures that could successfully preside over a free and independent Palestine.

And Hamas has said that — now, Barghouti is not a member of Hamas — but Hamas has said that they are prioritizing his liberation in negotiations with the Israeli government.

Talk a bit about Marwan Barghouti, your knowledge of his background, his importance, and whether you think that that is an apt comparison, to say that he is a Mandela-like figure in the context of contemporary Palestinian resistance politics.

DB: He is very much a Nelson Mandela-like figure, but there’s a big difference between the two. And the big difference is that the ANC at every opportunity was making sure to put forward Nelson Mandela’s name. In our case, we have a Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has spent the past 19 years in office never really uttering his name, or pushing for Marwan’s freedom. And the reason that he doesn’t do that is because he sees him as a rival.

So, who is Marwan Barghouti? Marwan Barghouti was a leader of the second Palestinian uprising, the Intifada. He’s a member of Fatah. He’s a member of Fatah in the grassroots sense. He’s an activist who has worked in a number of different communities. But not only did he work in a number of different communities, he was also imprisoned by Israel a number of times, [he] speaks Hebrew. And, at the start of Oslo, like many others, he very much believed in this idea that there could be a two-state settlement, that there could be a Palestinian state.

And he actually went to the Knesset, spoke before the Knesset, and talked to them about this idea of having a Palestinian state, but he also recognizes that the issue of negotiations is only going to get Palestinians so far. And, very early on during the Second Intifada, he came out and said, this process of negotiations is a sham, we’ve gotten nothing out of it except increased settlements. And he very much believed in and continues to believe in garnering power, and garnering political support, and in trying to create an opposition to the Israeli occupation.

And this is primarily why he’s been thrown in prison. The Israelis didn’t like the fact that he was involved with the Fatah organizations that were involved during the Second Intifada and, instead, arrested him and threw him in jail. And he’s now serving, I don’t even know how many life sentences that he’s serving, without ever the possibility of ever being released.

Can he be a uniting figure? Yes. What’s so fascinating is that people still talk about him, even though he’s been in prison now since 2002, it’s 22 years. In April, it will be 22 years that he’s been in prison. And yet, as I mentioned, we’ve had a Palestinian leadership that hasn’t even uttered his name over the course of the past 19 years.

So, yes, he does have that ability to be a leader, to unite people. But, ultimately, it remains up to Palestinians to decide. I think the bigger issue is that we must be pushing for his release, as we must be pushing for the release of all Palestinian political prisoners. Because there is no way for us to build, to move forward, without having these individuals in our midst.

JS: I want to ask you about the situation — you referenced other prisoners — the situation in the West Bank. It often doesn’t get as much attention as the horrifying realities occurring in Gaza, but there has been an intense Israeli campaign that has multiple prongs.

On the one hand you have Israeli state-backed and -armed settlers that are going in and seizing, snatching Palestinian’s homes by force. And some Palestinians have been killed in those operations, and many of them many have been displaced. But you also have had the official Israeli forces going in and rounding up thousands of people that they’re taking into custody as political prisoners, and some of them are being disappeared into the military justice system, others are being held in administrative limbo, where they are denied the most basic fundamental rights of prisoners around the world.

And there are minors, there are children that are continuing to be snatched by Israel, and held in conditions where they are denied access to their families, where they are certainly initially denied any access to lawyers, and then they’re being prosecuted and held in a military court system.

But describe — because you work on these cases as well, Diana — describe what people may not be familiar with of the intensity of the situation right now in the West Bank, what Palestinians are facing right now.

DB: Right now, actually, even before, I think you’d be hard pressed to find one Palestinian family that didn’t have either a family member or a friend who has been inside an Israeli prison. If you look at the statistics, I believe the number is something like 20 percent of all Palestinians have been incarcerated; all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, let me be clear. Which means probably 40 percent of all Palestinian men have been thrown into an Israeli prison.

What’s happened since October the 7th has been even worse. There’s a few things that have happened. The first is that, in addition to the usual violence of abducting people in the middle of the night, the campaign has been now increasing against children. And we’ve seen more and more children being abducted in the middle of the night since October the 7th, thrown into prison. And many of them thrown into prison, again, without charge or without trial.

What’s important to note when it comes to children is, because the rules differ when it comes to Palestinian children versus Israeli children, the system is designed to extract a confession, or to extract a guilty plea from you. Because if you plead guilty to a charge, then you end up going to prison for less time than you do if you actually simply await trial.

That’s the way the system has been rigged, is that they’ve dragged it out in such a way that children can be thrown in prison without charge, without trial. Eventually, if they do get charged with something, that they are held in prison pending trial for quite a long period of time. And, if you’re the parent of one of these children and you’re faced with a plea, then you’re more likely going to urge your child to accept a plea, even though they haven’t done anything, just in order to be able to secure their release.

But, since October the 7th, not only has that increased, but the conditions inside the prisons have become that much worse. Of all of the children who were released during the first ceasefire back in November, each and every one of them — and I interviewed a large number of them — had indicated that they were beaten.

Some of them were tortured. All of them were denied adequate food. They were put, in some cases, ten young boys in one room, one cell. They were given enough food for three, and they were only given food once or twice a day. They were only allowed to take a bath once or twice a week. And, in addition to being thrown into the cells with so many people, overcrowding, they were often beaten for everything from asking for water, asking to be able to take a shower, asking for food, asking to be able to see a lawyer, asking to be able to see their family. These are children that we’re talking about. 

The same is true when it has come to women who are being held in Israeli prisons as well. Many of the women who have been released have talked about the violence — and often sexual violence — that has been meted out against them. Many of them talked about torture. And, again, the same system of not giving them access to food, no access to water, no access to their lawyers, no access to families.

Currently, there are approximately 9,077 Palestinians who are being held in Israeli prisons, including some 700 children. And it’s about-two thirds, around 6,200, who have not been charged with a crime in that system of administrative detention. And there’s really no way to challenge the system, because the Israelis are in the throes of giving the state carte blanche.

This is why we don’t even see proper reporting about the conditions under which people are being held. We don’t see that the judges are demanding that children have access to legal representation, that they have access to their families. Everything has been swept under the rug.

But it’s not just that. In some cases, the detentions are sometimes two and three and four days where we don’t even know where the individual is held. And I’ve met with some political prisoners who have told me that they had everything from dogs attacking them and mauling them, to being forced to crawl around on all fours and call the prison guard their master, to denounce Hamas, to denounce any Palestinian leadership. I’ve heard from prisoners where they’ve said that they were held and forced to stand around for days without any clothing on, with their hands shackled high up in the air.

And, again, any complaints, even— One of them said that whenever he complained about how tight the shackles were on his hands and on his legs, that he was then beaten as well. It’s very violent, it’s very violent. And the Red Cross has been denied access to these prisons, so we really don’t know what is happening in these prisons at this point in time.

JS: I want to ask you about another line that, obviously, Netanyahu and people from his side of the spectrum in Israel promote this notion, that there should be one state, the state of Israel, and that Arabs and Palestinians who live in Israel and have accepted Israeli citizenship and society, that they’re able to live really fruitful and productive and peaceful lives.

I’m speaking to you right now, you’re in Haifa. I’m wondering your analysis of that portrayal, that if Palestinians would just accept coexistence under the Israeli state, that life would actually be fine, and tranquil, and give them the best chance at living a fruitful, positive existence.

DB: The problem, of course, is that that’s not the reality. So, 20 percent of Israel’s population is Palestinian. And that 20 percent are those who did not flee in 1948, and their descendants. So, in 1948, about 150,000 Palestinians remained in Palestine, and that number is now close to 2 million.

The problem, of course, is that we still live in the aftermath of the nakba. And there has never been either a reckoning of the nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine — nor has there been an attempt to do anything other than to erect a system of Jewish supremacy and Jewish superiority. So, what Israel is effectively saying is, if you accept your status as a defeated, second-class, inferior citizen, who is not entitled to the same rights as everybody else, even though you’re in your homeland, then you’ll be OK. But the problem is that they’re never really willing to challenge this idea of Jewish supremacy.

And so, what does it look like? First is that there are laws that are on the books that either directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian who hold Israeli citizenship. There’s about 60 of them; there’s more if you take into account some of the other regulations. And these laws affect practically every aspect of your life.

So, for example, there is a law that says that communities that are of a certain size have the ability to determine whether somebody who wants to move into that community, whether they’re considered suitable for the community. Now that should be sending alarm bells ringing for people, but in the Israeli system, not only is it normal, but it’s been upheld as being legit by the Israeli Supreme Court.

If you try to raise anything in relation to the nakba — and, you know, the nakba wasn’t that long ago, 75 years ago — it’s immediately shot down. If you try to demand equal rights, and there have been attempts to push forward bills in the Knesset to demand that Israel be a state of its citizens, that has also been struck down. So, there’s nothing in this system that ever allows you to be a full equal. It’s always going to be a system that’s based on Jewish supremacy, Jewish superiority, and never one of equality, and this became much more apparent in the aftermath of October the 7th.

I’m going to give you a couple of examples. So, one was, there was a Palestinian singer who, on October the 7th, posted in Arabic on Facebook, “wala ghaliba illa Allah,” “there is no victor but god,” and she used a little Palestinian flag emoji. She was thrown in prison for that post. And then, after being released from prison, for every day since she’s been released from prison, since the end of October until the current day, there’s been a campaign of demanding her expulsion from her city, a campaign to demand that her husband — who’s a doctor and the deputy director of a hospital — that he’d be expelled from his job.

Now, I want you to contrast that with the most popular song that exists now inside Israel. It’s a song that openly calls for genocide, which has had 20 million views on YouTube alone. The top five songs in the country are songs that call for genocide. We openly hear Israeli leaders talking about genocide. We see people, ordinary people, post about this day in and day out, and yet nothing happens to them.

JS: Picking up on that question, then, what do you see as a viable and just resolution to the entire situation? I mean, obviously, it seems that Joe Biden and European officials are now trying to talk up [a] two-state solution. There are others who say there should be a one-state solution, and that state is Palestine. And then, of course, the Israeli government position — certainly under Netanyahu, but probably under other governments as well — is that there isn’t going to be a Palestinian state, and the world’s just going to have to accept that.

But given your decades working on this issue as a lawyer, as a spokesperson for the PLO, as an activist, an advocate, what in your personal view is the most just resolution that could come about, after the nakba, after these 75 years of constant attacks against Palestinian people, after the events of October 7th and the subsequent genocidal war by Israel? What does a just future look like?

DB: First, I think it’s important for us to focus on ending the genocide first. It’s hard to talk about the aftermath without understanding what it is that we’re going through right now. And I don’t want any future or idea to be only thought of based on what we’re presently going through. That’s what happened with Oslo in the first place.

But I want to step back and look at the bigger picture in terms of where things are. I want to contrast and compare a few things.

So, if you look at apartheid South Africa, and the end of apartheid South Africa, that was a very important moment in history. But, because apartheid ended in South Africa in the way that it ended without ever really addressing the root causes of it, we see that, today, that South Africa is still one of these places where there’s such an unjust distribution of resources.

And, looking at Palestine, I think that we have to start thinking in terms of decolonization. Now, it’s, a big word, whatever. But the idea is that I don’t think we should be basing our vision of the future based on the current reality.

Just 75 years ago, Israel destroyed, depopulated more than 500 villages. Those descendants are still alive, those people are still alive. Much of that land has not been used. It’s possible for us to really be thinking of a future that is much more visionary, much more inclusive, and not one that is confined to this idea of, is it going to be two-state, is it going to be one state?

Right now, I think much of this talk of solutions is a way of trying to absolve the world of stopping this genocide. Like, let’s just talk about a two-state solution, because then we don’t have to really focus on holding Israel accountable for committing genocide. And I think that we have to think much bigger and much broader than that.

And when I think about bigger and broader than that, I do think that we have to recognize that the nakba happened not very long ago, that there has to be a process of decolonizing the place. That Palestinians must be given their rights, that Palestinians do have the right to return, and that anybody who wants to see this place prosper should be demanding that Palestinians be able to return. This is your capital, this is where your investment is.

And, instead, I think that there isn’t really a future any longer for Zionism. And I think that the Israelis have to soon come to this realization. They’ve been given the message that they can build a state on the ruins of another country, that they can continue to, as the British had done, beat the natives over the head, and hope that they will somehow beat them into submission.

I think they have to now recognize that that’s just not going to be a formula for future prosperity. And instead we have to think about going to a place where Palestinians are given their proper rights, no longer as secondary or as second-class citizens, or under this carpet of Jewish supremacy.

JS: On that note, though, I wanted to ask you about public opinion in Israel about the war in Gaza. The most recent public opinion polls that were taken were in late January, and found that a large majority of the Jewish public thinks that the IDF is using adequate or too little force in Gaza. And an absolute majority of the Jewish public in Israel — 88 percent — believes that the scope of casualties suffered among Palestinians in Gaza are justified.

DB: Yes.

JS: A lot of my Palestinian friends say, how do you coexist with a population that holds those opinions? And, I mean, Israel [often says] well, we have a right to exist, we have a right to self-defense. And then you have the White House sort of now saying, well, this is a Netanyahu/extremist thing. But I think the reality is that you have a very solid majority of the Jewish Israeli public that believes this is perfectly acceptable to do to the people of Gaza.

DB: Absolutely. That’s the part that’s so terrifying, is that when we talk about genocide, this isn’t just one statement coming from one individual, it’s not just one soldier that’s in Gaza. This is an entire system that is taking their orders from the top down.

We’ve heard the president say that there are no innocents in Gaza, we’ve heard the prime minister refer to this as the children of light versus the children of darkness. We’ve heard the minister of defense. I mean, it just goes down and down and down.

If you turn on the TV on any given day, you’ll hear one Israeli commentator after another saying things like, we need to get rid of them, there should have been a hundred thousand dead at this point in time. And you can see, as you drive throughout the country, signs that read, “finish them,” signs that read, “together we will succeed.”

And when I probe people and ask them, what does that mean? What does “together” mean? What does “succeed” mean? They have no way of defining it, except to say that the more destroyed that Gaza is, the better it is. Because they’ve been, again, fed this line, that if you just beat Palestinians more, and beat them more, and beat them more, and beat them even more, that somehow they will submit, that somehow they will become subservient and obedient. And they haven’t quite figured that out yet.

This is why I say that, when going through this idea of de-Zionizing this place, they have to be made aware that what Israel’s doing is not normal, that this is not the actions of a normal state. Just in the same way that you see now the aftermath in countries around the world that carried out genocides, that they have an education process. That education process has never happened in Israel.  The only education process that they have been fed is that Palestinians are deserving of more and more and more violence meted out by the Israelis. And that is something that really must be addressed.

JS: Diana, thank you so much for taking time with us during Ramadan to have this conversation. I really appreciate it.

DB: My pleasure.

JS: That was Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney and political analyst.

And that does it for this episode of Intercepted.

Intercepted is a production of The Intercept. Laura Flynn produced this episode. Rick Kwan mixed our show. Legal Review was done by Sean Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the size, makes a real difference. And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to Intercepted, and check out our other podcast hosted by my colleague, Ryan Grim, it’s called Deconstructed. Also, leave us a rating and a review wherever you find our podcasts. It helps other people to find us as well.

If you want to give us feedback, you can email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Thank you so much for joining us until next time. I’m Jeremy Scahill.