An interview with Mohammad Zraiy on Z Network
Alain Alameddine interviews Mohammad Zraiy, the Gaza coordinator for the One Democratic State Initiative and English teacher, about the situation in Gaza, the legitimacy of the armed resistance, the ICJ as a colonial tool and the establishment of a secular state as the solution.
AA: How are things in Gaza? We know a genocide is happening, we don’t know how that actually reflects in real life. What is the situation on the ground?
MZ: The situation in Gaza is disastrous. We can see the genocide in almost all aspects of our lives. Direct killings, deliberate starvation and mass displacement and dispopulation. The Salaheddine Road is a few hundred meters away from our house, it’s the main road between Gaza and Khan Younes, and it goes through refugee camps [of the natives ethnically cleansed during the 1948 occupation of Palestine] in the middle of the Strip. The terrorist cells occupied it for two weeks. I recorded the destruction that happened there. They destroyed everything between the Al-Maghazi refugee camp and the Breij refugee camp. I don’t mean they targeted everything, or hit everything, or destroyed a lot of things, I literally mean “they destroyed everything“. The schools, the houses, the streets (literally, the streets’ concrete so cars, like ambulances, can no longer use them), the water pipelines, the sanitation pipelines, the electricity station, the UN supply depot. I walked there to record the flattening, and I could smell the stench of the martyrs under the rubble. The Palestinian defense forces succeeded at neutralizing a number of terrorists so the cells did not manage to remain, but they made sure the place would be inhabitable before they withdrew. I’ve known the word “genocide” all of my life but only now do I really grasp what it means.
AA: This is… there are no words. You said you could see the genocide in all aspects of your life and you mentioned starvation. Does this include the closure of the Rafah crossing? Also, Israel and Egypt have been trading barbs, each accusing the other of being responsible for the siege. Who do you think is the one enforcing the siege?
MZ: The siege has obviously made things worse. It is the only way we breathe, since the colony forbids anything from reaching us by land or sea. Of course, starvation is one of the genocide’s essential weapons. 90% of Gazans depend on the UN as their main and sole provider of foodstuff. Not only meat and sugar but also rice, flour, fruits and most vegetables. And instead of offering humanitarian help, or even just allowing others to offer humanitarian help, the imperialist powers are now defunding the UNRWA. This is less graphic than bombs but it’s just as lethal, just as criminal.
And this brings us to your question about Egypt. Yes, the Egyptian regime is closing the crossing. It blames Israel’s threat to bomb convoys that refuse to be searched. But we in Gaza know that it is complicit. I think the question “Is Egypt or Israel responsible?” implies that they’re two fully separate and sovereign entities. So I think framing the question this way obfuscates reality, which is that there is a global capitalist and colonial project. Israel is one manifestation of it (its most extreme one), and the Egyptian regime is another. Those defunding the UNRWA, many Palestinian and Arab leaders, armament industries, multinational corporations, a large number of the media (including Meta algorithms) are also part of this global project. The Zionist enterprise was launched within the frame of this global project, of which Israel is merely an advanced military colony. This whole structure is enforcing the siege, and all of its actors are guilty of genocide. Israel and the Egyptian regime are both guilty of genocide.
AA: You mention a global colonial project—do you think the ICJ’s decision can stop the genocide?
MZ: No. The Court saw that a genocide was happening but failed to call for an immediate cessation of the aggression. And, by design, it has no power to enforce its decisions. Of course, we value the efforts of South Africa, as well as the decisions of most judges on the Court. And we know the Court’s admitting this was a genocide is a helpful tool to use in challenging Israel’s alleged legitimacy. But at the same time, we understand that the ICJ and other international institutions like the UN are colonial tools. How could they achieve justice for Palestine while they are the same institutions that caused its partition and recognized the legitimacy of the settler colony in 1947-48? These international institutions legitimize all the horrors that precede 1967 such as the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and the seizure of Palestinian houses and properties. Today they stand idle as our right to return is denied and as Israel practices apartheid and settles the land. Even rare decisions in favor of Palestine have not been applied. These institutions belong to a colonial world order that we all need to be freed from, not through.
AA: Alright. Back to Gaza: Israel first said it wanted to eliminate Hamas. Then it said it wanted to dismantle its fighting capacities. What is happening with the armed resistance? And how do Gazans feel about it, particularly those who do not support Hamas?
MZ: Let me first correct something that the media often doesn’t mention: Hamas is not the only one fighting terrorism today. All Palestinian factions, whether they’re Islamic, nationalist or leftist, are fighting together. Despite ideological differences, they are united in the field, and they launch joint military operations on a daily basis.
Now, regarding Hamas in particular, since you asked me about them: I have deep disagreements with them and with Islamists in general. I am secular and I am convinced that the establishment of a secular state in Palestine is the fundamental antithesis, and solution, to the existence of the settler colonial state that defines itself as “exclusive to Jews”. This said, Hamas is not the terrorist faction as Israel and its allies claim it to be, neither do Palestinians view it as such. It is a national liberation movement. Its program explicitly states that its fight is not against Judaism but against Zionism. A number of its leaders have actually endorsed the establishment of a state for all of its citizens as the only solution. Hamas also represents a large section of Palestinian society, and its formidable resistance has increased its popularity. Israel can kill Hamas members (which it is doing as part of its campaign to kill everything that moves in Gaza), but as even the US, the UK and France have admitted, there is no way Israel can eliminate Hamas. We Palestinians know that Hamas is a response to the occupation and persecution, not its cause. On the contrary, we know that the resistance is what is protecting us.
Israel knows this very well, and makes it a point to respond to our counterterrorist operations by killing civilians. Sometimes, when the Internet is cut, we know the resistance dealt the occupation a blow because of the enemy’s increased bombing of civilians. As if Israel was saying, “for each of our soldiers that die, dozens of your children will pay the price”. For example, a short while ago, the bombing became madder than ever. We didn’t know why because there was no Internet, but we knew that something major had happened. We eagerly waited for the Internet to be back so we could learn about what had happened. It turned out that our defense forces had succeeded at neutralizing a cell of 21 terrorists by booby traping a house they had led them to.
How do we feel about it? We are proud, defiant, and hopeful. No colonized people were ever freed from their colonizers without force. Force is the only language that Israel in particular understands. The resistance is what made it withdraw from Lebanese and Palestinian lands. And the resistance’s continued existence against all ods shows that Zionism’s plan to achieve peace by eradicating the natives has failed. At the same time, resistance is a tool, not an objective in itself. For it to achieve anything lasting and substantial, it needs to be attached to a political project that proposes an actual solution.
AA: A political project that proposes an actual solution—How so?
MZ: Well, the immediate need is obviously for this aggression to stop. But then what? The past 75 years have shown that creating a state exclusive to Jews has been a nightmare for all, succeeding at killing Palestinians and failing to keep the Jews it has used to settle our land safe. I want the Zionist nightmare to end so that both its primary victims (Palestinians) and its secondary victims (Jews) can finally be safe. We need to discuss the day after Zionism: The day where we can finally replace it with a secular Palestine. The world today is still talking about the “two-state solution”, which is just a euphemism for “the occupation of 80% of Palestine and the exclusion of 60% of Palestinians”. I hope this genocide can at least help our allies stop talking about the two-state non-solution and start talking about the historical Palestinian vision for liberation: One inclusive, secular, democratic Palestinian state, from the river to the sea. And me and my comrades at the One Democratic State Initiative are working for this to happen.
