The West Bank Is Reaching Breaking Point

Hamza Abu Howidy returns for another Conflicted Conversation. Last time he appeared, he told us his personal story of growing up in Hamas-ruled Gaza, how he was imprisoned and tortured by Hamas for speaking out against their oppression, and how he entered into exile in Germany just before the 7 October attacks changed everything.

This time he switches from Gaza to the West Bank, telling Thomas all about the other side of Palestine — a side which goes overlooked, but which is increasingly becoming a zone of almost unbearable conflict.

Hamza and Thomas discuss:

• Settler violence as settler terrorism
• How Israeli settlements undermine the Oslo process
• Settlement expansion as a strategy to prevent a Palestinian state
• The shift from a two-state ideal to a one-state reality
• The Hardal movement and Smotrich’s political world
• The Hilltop Youth: origins, ideology and violence
• The dual legal system in the West Bank
• The Yehuda Shmuel Sherman incident and the revenge attacks that followed
• E1 and the threat to a viable Palestinian state
• The West Bank economy after 7 October
• Palestinian municipal and national elections
• Israeli elections and the lack of hope for political change
• Israel’s post-7 October security doctrine
• The Board of Peace and the problem of Hamas disarmament
• Arab disillusionment with resistance ideology

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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