Transcription
And now Trump is trying to replace, essentially like replace the UN with this Gaza Board of Peace, which we're about to talk about with our next guest. That's really just like him in charge of everything. Like, and it's a really, I mean, when it comes to Palestine, it's such a harbinger of what's to come because it doesn't stop there, right? Like, you dismantle these, like, this international institution through Palestine, but then it applies to the rest of the world. And with this Gaza Board of Peace, that's actually what's happening here, too, is it's this attempt to create this, like, Trump-administered board full of his cronies and then people who have to pay, like him and like Victor Orban, so far, are on board. Um, and it starts with Gaza, but it's like, where does it end?
>> No, absolutely. Well, you're the quarterback. Great handoff there, uh, to me to segue into our next story. And that is more on the Gaza Board of Peace and generally, where we at, we, where we are at on a number of these points in the, I don't know, you feel it's ridiculous to call it a ceasefire anymore, but just for the purposes of, you know, marking time, the so-called post-ceasefire reality. And to discuss more in this, we are very, very honored to be joined once again by Leah Kayali, who is an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. Leah, as always, thanks so much for being back with.
>> Hi, thanks so much for having me. Nice to see you, Eugene and Rana.
>> Well, great to have you with us. And I wanted to just start here with what Rana was talking about, which is the so-called Board of Peace, which was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Unelected, pay-to-play. There's no Palestinian mandate whatsoever. It just sort of created by Trump out of whole cloth. I want to just ask you, maybe for those who haven't been following it, what exactly is the Board of Peace and, you know, who's behind it? And why should people maybe see something more sinister here than just what it's presented as, is like a great diplomatic initiative?
>> Yeah. So, I mean, the Board of Peace couldn't be a more, um, ironic title for this enterprise that Trump has created. It is an entity that is sort of, um, morphed from some of the agreement, the so-called ceasefire agreements, um, that were, you know, reached between the Palestinian resistance and, uh, the Zionist entity. And instead, what we're seeing now is that Trump has sort of transformed this into his personal private enterprise for colonial domination of the world. It is, as you said, Eugene, a pay-to-play situation. He is the indefinite director of the board. Um, if, if any of the members that he's invited want a permanent seat, they have to pay a billion dollars to, uh, participate in this enterprise. And we see that it's run like a private company because, uh, Trump is trying to privatize, um, global imperialism essentially. I mean, the world order that has sort of collapsed over the last two years of the genocide, this neoliberal rules-based order that really wasn't working for the people of the Global South anyways. Um, but Trump is trying to wedge his, uh, billionaire agenda into that collapse. And so what we're seeing is, uh, Trump inviting a variety of heads of state, including heads of state that are, um, at war with each other actively, Ukraine and Russia, for example, uh, to participate in the Board of Peace. It was nominally supposed to be something, um, to, to determine the future of Gaza, but Gaza isn't mentioned once in the actual mandate of the Board of Peace. Palestinians are really not, um, given any significant role to determine their own future and freedom in this setup. Uh, and we see an executive board that Trump has created under him as the, the private director, who has the right to veto any decision, big or small, of the board. This executive board is really carrying out the mandate. And we see that it's, you know, the classic Trump cronies that are participating in this executive board. So, it's the Secretary of State, Mark Rubio, Trump envoy, Steve Witoff, uh, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, um, Apollo Global Management CEO is one of the executive board members, the World Bank president. So, I think that really tells you all you need to know about, um, what the real, you know, aim of this board is, which is to line the pockets of the billionaire class, uh, at the expense of the people of the Global South, namely the people of Gaza.
>> And I want to, I want to dig a little deeper into the lack of a Palestinian mandate on this. You know, this board, as you know, we mentioned, is being presented as this plan for, like, Gaza's future. I believe Trump even had, like, a slide, slides to show of the future Riviera he wants to create. You know, yet Palestinians themselves are once again completely excluded from shaping their own future here. And so I'm curious if you can maybe talk about how this fits into this longer colonial tradition of outsiders deciding Palestine's fate. And what does it say about, you know, the way that power still operates when it comes to Gaza? We saw a bit of this with the way the UN Security Council, uh, gave the thumbs up, uh, to Trump's plans for Gaza. And now with this peace board, you are going to have various countries joining, right?
>> So, I mean, this is essentially another attempt to define the future of Palestine without Palestinians at the helm of that, um, holding a gun, effectively, to the head of the Palestinian resistance, uh, to try to approve some of these plans. But ultimately, they have no say. I mean, the board will oversee basically a technocratic Palestinian committee. Um, it's literally called the National Committee for Gaza Management. Uh, the head of that right now is looking like Ali Sha, who's a, um, a member of the Fatah Party, uh, which is the same party that runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Sort of a, um, a comprador class or subcontractor of the com, the the occupation in the West Bank. Ali Sha, I think his positionality is, is yet to be seen. Um, but even well-intentioned as he may be, it's hard to imagine, uh, any power that he would have to really dictate the future of Gaza as a Palestinian, um, or any of the technocrats as part of that board, because ultimately, all of those names had to be approved by Israel. Um, anything that goes in or out of Gaza for the actual rebuilding will have to be approved by our occupiers. Um, and so we're seeing that it is, like you said, Rana, continuing this colonial legacy of Western forces trying to dictate the future of Palestine. I mean, this goes back all the way to the British Mandate of Palestine, before even the establishment of the Zionist entity, before even, you know, Israel, quote unquote, Israel was created. Um, there was a British Mandate that attempted to privatize Palestinian land, dispossess Palestinian farmers. Uh, and there was concerted uprising against that. Um, throughout Palestinian history, there have been attempts to, quote unquote, develop our lands at the expense of our people and our relationship with the land. Uh, a similar initiative took place, um, in the Galilee, in, in Palestine, that, uh, sort of the northern territories that are part of what we call '48 Palestine. And in an attempt to disappropriate that land, Palestinians, um, took, you know, enormous amounts of grassroots resistance in what became the Great March of Return. Similarly, in 2021, attempts to dispossess Palestinians, uh, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, led to, um, tremendous concerted resistance. So, we have seen throughout our century-long history as Palestinians experiencing, um, the boot of colonization, uh, attempts to, to claim that these initiatives are, are to develop the land or to support our people, that really have nothing to do with Palestinian self-determination, um, or liberation. And our people will continue to resist those attempts.
>> You know, I think it's an important question because it raises sort of what a lot of these peace plans are really for. And I think you're already speaking to it, but I mean, it feels like it has an element of pacification to it in the sense of, you know, we're destroying you, ethnic cleansing you, we're launching genocides, but like, here's this other way that will be good for Palestine. And it has almost a very imperial colonial divide and conquer reality to it.
>> Yeah, I think that that resonates for sure, Eugene. I think, um, ultimately, I mean, we see a lot of attempts to, uh, create some sort of veneer of, I mean, it's literally called the Board of Peace. Uh, Trump has claimed that this could potentially have a global scale of, um, more or less replacing the UN. He walked back some of those comments a little bit in his speech today, but it's really clear, I think, to anyone who's been following this, that Trump is attempting to use this to really, you know, commandeer global diplomacy for his personal benefit. Um, and so Palestinians, you know, if you see interviews of people on the ground, we know that, um, this is not an any sort of initiative that has Palestinians' well-being in mind. I mean, Trump claimed on stage in Davos today that he had created peace in the Middle East. And, you know, the people of Palestine, especially the people of Gaza, are asking, where is that peace? Uh, the bombs might not be falling quite as frequently as they were before the so-called ceasefire, but they, they still are. Um, you know, just yesterday, Israel killed 11 Palestinians, including three journalists, Muhammad Kaisha, Abdul Alashad, and Anasim. So, when Palestinians are experiencing the lived reality every day of more bombs falling, uh, still difficulty accessing basic necessities of life, 95% of infrastructure, you know, home infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. You know, Palestinians are not going to have the wool pulled over our eyes. We know that this is, uh, just another initiative to try to profit off of our suffering.
>> You know, despite genocide and displacement and, you know, international attempts to impose these solutions from above, um, Palestinian resistance, I want to remind everybody and then ask you about this, Palestinian resistance and global solidarity have not disappeared. Um, we're in a moment right now where, you know, plans like this peace board being rolled out, you know, probably have a lot of people feeling like, oh, like, basically the Israelis have won. So, I guess I want to ask you, where does the struggle for Palestinian liberation stand today? Um, given everything that we're seeing and what should people around the world be doing to challenge these sort of imposed colonial projects?
>> Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, Palestinian resistance has always met, uh, the continued colonial attempts to subjugate our people and exploit our, our lands with resistance. And that is, has not changed and it will not change. The people of our homeland are not going anywhere and will continue to resist this, just as we have for generations. All of those instances I mentioned from the, the Great Peasant Revolt of 1936, um, through resistance against the genocide over the last two years. So that certainly is going to continue. When it comes to the global solidarity scene, I think we've also seen an absolute, um, sort of bottom-up ballooning of support for the Palestinian cause. Uh, global solidarity. I mean, we saw a really remarkable, um, uh, hunger strike by prisoners in Britain, um, that were demanding not just their own freedom and due process, but demanding that Britain cut all of its contracts with the Israeli, you know, weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. So, these, these sort of, um, historical moments of global solidarity at great expense, uh, to people of conscience around the world, I think are, are important to track. And, um, I think another thing that we should be paying attention to is the fracturing within, sort of, the imperial cohort. Uh, the Board of Peace had, for example, the, the go-ahead of most of these European players, um, when it was seemingly limited in scope, scope to Gaza. They were perfectly fine playing along with this, uh, private colonial enterprise, when it was just our peoples at stake. And now that Trump is threatening to invade Greenland and so on and so forth, we're seeing some fractures within the NATO bloc. So, I think it's really important for people of conscience to be, um, to be really widening those, those cracks in empire, um, and exposing and and holding to account any of our, uh, local, you know, governments from your city council up to the, the state government and and country policy that are, you know, talking out of one side of their mouth but doing something else out of the other. So I think, um, you know, these fractures in the imperial bloc are showing, uh, the Board of Peace is sort of exposing a lot of that. Um, and the reality is that we are in a world where, um, the, the order that existed prior to the genocide doesn't exist anymore. Um, we have Netanyahu being invited to a Board of Peace when there's arrest warrants out for him. He can't even attend the opening ceremony. So these contradictions are only going to become, uh, heavier with time. And it's up to people of conscience around the world to, um, to exploit that and build something better than this, you know, billionaire hellscape that Trump has envisioned for us. Uh, in Palestine, in, in Palestinian, sort of, resistance tradition, we use often this phrase from Ghassan Kanafani, a famous Palestinian poet. He said, translates roughly to, "You have something in this world, so stand for it." So the Palestinian people will continue to stand for it, and people of conscience around the world, I think, will continue to rise with them.
>> And on that note, before we let you go, Leah, for those who don't know or want to know more about the Palestinian Youth Movement and how they can support the efforts you all are doing to, to build the solidarity movement around the globe, where can they go?
>> Yeah, so please, um, go ahead and follow us on Instagram if you don't already. You can check us out. We have a newly launched website that is too far long in the making that, um, go ahead and check that out online. Uh, you can also look at some of the, uh, campaigns and initiatives that we support, such as the AP PAC Out campaign, that's trying to confront the Zionist, uh, influence on US politics, and the People's Embargo for Palestine, which is an attempt to, to really, uh, put forth a vision for how we can confront Zionism materially in our own backyards. How people of conscience can continue to organize to support our people in Palestine. So, um, definitely follow us, uh, and stay tuned.
>> Right on. Leah Kayali, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Freedom Side.
>> Thanks for having me.