Jaser Abu Mousa, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza returned to The Debrief to discuss a new report he published through the Middle East Institute, where he is a fellow. The title of the paper is “The Strategic Cost of Palestinian Powerlessness: Why Restoring Palestinian Political Agency Is an Arab and International Security Imperative.” It’s a tour de force. If policy papers are your jam, check it out!
What if you’re not a connoisseur of think-tank reports? Never fear! You’ll get the key points (and some extras that aren’t in the paper) in this podcast.
The topics Jaser and I spoke about included:
Palestinian powerlessness: Israel’s “systematic removal of the tools of politics" from Palestinians and the impossibility of developing effective leadership under territorial and political fragmentation as well as the imposition of a “financial chokehold” on the Palestinian Authority
Failed Palestinian leadership: Hamas’ adoption of armed resistance as an end in itself, without a strategy for achieving Palestinian self-determination; the Palestinian Authority’s corruption and subcontracting for the Israeli occupation via security coordination
The role of Iran: How the Islamic Republic has exploited the vacuum of Palestinian powerlessness by co-opting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad into its regional proxy network and making Palestine the “ideological centerpiece” of its Axis of Resistance
The chain reaction between Palestinian powerlessness, the October 7 attack, Israel’s destruction of Gaza, and the wars against Iran and Lebanon: a manifestation of how Palestinian dispossession fuels regional destruction (including Iranian attacks against the Gulf states) and global disruption
The case for an Arab Strategic Initiative: Why — and how — Gulf countries and other Arab states should act collectively and expeditiously to restore Palestinian political agency
Palestinian elections: Legislative elections have been announced for November and presidential elections will purportedly be held in 2027 — but Jaser argues it is folly to hold votes while Gaza is in ruins and roughly 70 percent of it is under direct Israeli military occupation
If you’d like to see more of Jaser on The Debrief, his first podcast with us was very moving. He shared his personal experience of losing his wife, two of his children, and additional close relatives in an Israeli missile strike on his home in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip shortly after October 7th, 2023.
If you appreciated the opportunity to hear/learn from Jaser, I hope you’ll subscribe to his Substack. He’s doing fantastic work.
As always, I look forward to your comments.
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Coming Up!
Thursday, July 30, at 12:30pm Eastern: Trump’s Saudi Nuclear Deal
Donald Trump took the United States to war against Iran, purportedly to ensure that Tehran could never have a nuclear weapon. Then last week, Trump announced a new agreement that would permit Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium, the two ingredients used in nuclear bombs. While the text of the agreement has not been revealed, Saudi Arabia has pushed the US to waive stringent controls on fuel-cycle technologies and intrusive inspections.
A day after the deal was announced, Trump added a new condition: Saudi Arabia’s normalization of its relationship with Israel. If Trump is serious, this would present a significant obstacle, since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been clear that Saudi Arabia will only join the Abraham Accords once Israel has agreed to a pathway to Palestinian statehood. Meanwhile, Trump’s family stands to benefit, Israelis are worried, nuclear proliferation experts are concerned, and the deal requires congressional review.
To discuss the deal and its consequences for the Middle East and global nonproliferation efforts, I’m delighted to welcome Deb Amos and Joe Cirincione to The Debrief. Many of you will know Deb from her award-winning career as an international correspondent at NPR. She is now a Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence at Princeton University. A Debrief veteran, Joe is a national security analyst and author who served most recently as president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear nonproliferation. You can read Joe’s piece on Trump’s Saudi nuclear agreement — the “worse nuclear deal in history” — here.
Hope to see many of you on Thursday.
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Debra
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