Palestinian American analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib lost 33 relatives in Gaza. He blames Hamas for his homeland's ruin, rejects accusations of genocide and has little patience for the Western left speaking in his name

A week before the event that would change his life, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, then 11, got into a heated argument with a group of friends. He argued that violence against Israeli civilians was unacceptable, regardless of what the Israeli army or government did to the Palestinians. His friends pointed out that Palestinian civilians were being hurt even when they had committed no violence themselves.

In early December 2001, Alkhatib was walking home from school in Gaza's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood with several classmates. His friends were walking slowly, so he went on ahead. Less than 10 minutes after they parted ways, an Israeli air force F-16 directly hit a nearby building housing Palestinian security forces. His friend Mohammed Abu Marsa was killed on the spot, and two other friends were seriously wounded.

Instead of running away, Alkhatib turned back toward the scene, where clouds of fire, smoke and dust rose from the shattered concrete. As he searched for his friends, another bomb struck the same target. He remembers barely being able to breathe as his small body began to shake. He ran as fast as he could from the blast site. As he fled, he had to jump over a wounded man lying on the sidewalk, feeling utterly helpless because he could do nothing for him. The explosion left him with post-traumatic stress disorder and damage to his left ear that has never fully healed.

'I'm sorry, but what is the Palestinian vision right now? What is Palestinian identity? Because it seems to me that Palestinian identity is defined only by opposition to Israel and Zionism.'

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Even after narrowly surviving the attack, Alkhatib remained firm in his belief that peace, forgiveness and compassion were preferable to revenge and violence. But he also realized that he had to learn English and leave Gaza.

He found a way out. In his first book, "Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages," Alkhatib recounts how, at 15, he was sent to the United States on a cultural exchange program designed to build bridges between the Arab world and the American public after the September 11 attacks. The book, part memoir and part manifesto, is published by Jewish Quarterly, a long-established British journal published from Australia since 2021 that focuses on Jewish issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Alkhatib's fierce opposition to Hamas, which many interpret as a pro-Israel stance, has made him a controversial figure. Britain's conservative Telegraph devoted extensive coverage to the book and lavished praise on it, while the liberal media ignored it. An article he recently published in The New York Times drew considerable attention and sparked a social media spat with British American journalist Mehdi Hasan.

'Hamas decided to ruin the opportunity we had with the withdrawal in 2005 to cultivate a model of Palestinian self-rule. Hamas turned Gaza into a citadel of tunnels, rockets, missiles and attacks that allowed Netanyahu to act as he did in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.'

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

During his exchange year, Alkhatib lived with an American family. He was supposed to return to Gaza after a year, but in June 2006, while he was in Egypt on his way home, Hamas abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The abduction prompted Operation Summer Rains, an Israeli military ground operation in Gaza that intensified the blockade and prevented Alkhatib from returning home. On June 14, 2007, the very day Hamas completed its violent coup and consolidated its takeover of the Strip, 17-year-old Alkhatib was granted political asylum in the United States.

Flying over Gaza

Alkhatib, 36, lives in Washington, D.C. A political commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he is also a blogger with tens of thousands of followers and a humanitarian activist. He is single and has no children; his work, he explains, leaves him almost no time for a personal life. He is a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan American think tank focused on international affairs.

In that role, he heads Realign for Palestine, a project at the Atlantic Council that aims to "amplify pragmatic and rational voices that courageously hold multiple truths, advocating for Palestinian statehood and self-determination, and asserting that the two-nation solution is the only credible, humane path forward for peace between the Palestinian and Israeli people," according to its website.

In 2015, he founded Project Unified Assistance, a nonprofit working to establish a humanitarian airport in Gaza. In recent years, he has written opinion pieces and political analysis for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Newsweek and Haaretz, and appeared on current affairs programs on CNN, the BBC and other networks.

In late summer 2025, Alkhatib flew over Gaza aboard a United Arab Emirates aircraft carrying humanitarian aid. It was his first glimpse of his devastated homeland in the 20 years since he had left for the United States.

The video he filmed during the flight went viral on social media. "It was terrible, it was devastating, it was heartbreaking. And I had to stay focused on the mission," he says. "I want Gaza to have an airport that will fly people and goods in and out of Gaza and ensure freedom of movement that is independent of the Israelis or Egyptians. Of course, considering Israel's security needs. My goal then was to bring aid and open the skies of Gaza.

"On a personal level, it was very difficult. All my family members are there," he adds. "Since I left Gaza, I feel that my relationship with it has only grown stronger and my perspective has changed and deepened because I am out of the immediate danger. I saw my family's destroyed homes from above, and my brother, who lives there, could recognize them on video. And I saw the Israeli army and the camps for displaced people. I also saw how green and blooming the Israeli side is, and how gray and lifeless Gaza is. It was very emotional and intense, but it just made me feel more committed to what I am doing, and it made me very angry."

What exactly made you angry?

"Seeing what Hamas caused and how they turned this beautiful place into ruins. It broke me to see this place that could have been a source of Palestinian pride and how Palestinian statehood can look like when free from occupation. Instead, we got this lifeless place, because of this shitty narrative of armed resistance that served Gaza and its people on a silver platter to the most right-wing government in Israel's history."

But some would say Hamas' actions, including the October 7 attack, were a response to years of Israeli aggression, the prolonged blockade and Gaza's transformation into what many describe as "the world's largest open-air prison."

"Yes, I am familiar with all this discourse. But why was this blockade imposed in the first place? Every country in the world with a terrorist organization taking over territory next door would do the same thing. When ISIS took control of large areas in Iraq and Syria, Jordan closed all its borders with Iraq and Syria. No one came and said, 'Look at oppressive Jordan.'

"A jihadist, fascist and violent terrorist organization took over Gaza and decided to invest all its money and energy in building tunnels and missiles to attack across the border, with an open declaration of its goal of annihilating Israel. That's what Hamas did. Now I'm not here to defend Israel and its actions. But any country in the world facing such a thing would have acted in the same way. Everyone is talking about the blockade of Gaza and not what preceded it. The Palestinian Authority also defined Gaza as rogue territory after the Hamas takeover."

The blockade narrative, Alkhatib says, misses the real story. "The blockade was also elastic. Sometimes it was more rigid and sometimes less so. During this blockade, luxury five-star hotels, restaurants on the beaches and shopping centers of international brands were built in Gaza. Did you know that? Gaza has received more humanitarian aid, per capita, than any other conflict zone in the world. And I'm not just talking about suitcases of money that Netanyahu transferred to them from Qatar, because Netanyahu and Hamas are allies, in some ways, but they also stole all the aid money given from around the world and imposed heavy taxes on the residents. The people of Gaza have certainly experienced the blockade, but not Hamas. Hamas has never cared about the people of Gaza. Every Gazan you ask will tell you that."

In late summer 2025, Alkhatib flew over Gaza. 'I saw my family's destroyed homes from above. I also saw how green and blooming the Israeli side is, and how gray and lifeless Gaza is. It was very emotional and intense, but it just made me feel more committed to what I am doing, and it made me very angry.'

Alkhatib was once close to progressive left-wing circles in the United States and Israel. He worked with the New Israel Fund and last year took part in a Haaretz conference in Toronto on the Gaza war, prospects for peace and Israeli democracy.

"It was hard to be anti-Hamas at the Haaretz conference," he says. "One of the people there, an American Jew, told me that he was very worried when he saw how many Israeli right-wingers were sharing my posts. I took my phone and showed him the Telegram channel of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and wrote in Arabic 'Haaretz,' and I told him to look at how many times Haaretz is quoted by Hamas. 'Israeli society is falling apart from within,' 'reservists don't show up,' 'there are no spare parts for the continuation of the fighting.' Hamas says, 'Look, we just need to continue fighting a little longer, and according to Haaretz, Israel is falling apart.'

"So here is Haaretz constantly quoted by neo-Nazi jihadists who have carried out the worst single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Does this mean that Haaretz should stop reporting what they report because Hamas is quoting their articles? Should I stop criticizing Hamas because some disgusting far-right person might share something I said to prove a point? Of course not."

Alkhatib has plenty of experience arguing with Israelis. Conversations with those on the left, he says, tend to leave him frustrated. "People in the center, even the center-right, are people that it's much easier for me to talk to even if we disagree on certain issues like the West Bank and its future. They don't come with the ideological purity that some leftists come with. I was part of these communities. And I'm a liberal. I'm a chilled guy. I'm not some kind of right-winger, damn it."

Which Israeli figures have you spoken to?

"I tried to talk to Naftali Bennett, but he wouldn't talk to me because I'm from Gaza. No matter how anti-Hamas I am, I'm still Gazan, and it's synonymous with an incurable disease in contemporary Israeli politics. On the other hand, I did talk to Netanyahu's advisers, even though they knew that on a number of occasions I had referred to him as a war criminal. I also met Ayelet Shaked. She told me, 'Huh, you're from Gaza. Everyone's Hamas there, aren't they?' and I said no, that it doesn't work that way and that my father was a doctor in charge of the Jabalya refugee camp. So she asked if he was Hamas and I said no. It was like talking to a child in kindergarten."

'And then everything mixes'

Alkhatib grew up in a middle-class family. During the 1990s, the family moved between Gaza and Saudi Arabia for his father's work as a physician, returning to the Strip toward the end of the decade. Since leaving for the United States, he has not returned to the places where he was born and raised. His closest encounters have been that flight over Gaza and a visit to the Egyptian side of the border. He has lost 33 relatives in the Gaza war, and both his childhood homes were bombed and destroyed. Yet few things anger him more than accusations that Israel has committed genocide.

"I believe that there was incitement to genocide by certain people in the Israeli public sphere, and I'm sure there are people in Israel who would be happy to commit genocide against Palestinians. But I don't believe that what happened in Gaza is genocide," he says emphatically. "Does that mean that my family members are less dead? No. Does that mean that Gaza wasn't destroyed? No.

"Genocide doesn't happen because everyone says it was a genocide. Who even cares what Amnesty or Human Rights Watch say? They're not genocide researchers. True, there are genocide historians like Omer Bartov who argue that there was a genocide, but they're also not legal experts, and it's the job of legal experts to decide whether it's genocide or not. There are those who openly want to expand the definition of genocide so that what happened in Gaza fits this definition. The international courts in The Hague have not yet found conclusive proof or ruled that there was genocide."

Israel killed people and caused destruction in Gaza on an enormous scale, even if you don't call it genocide. Do you understand those who feel you don't talk about that enough?

"The whole world is talking about this carnage. I have nothing to add to what has already been talked about ad nauseam. What I want to talk about is what precipitated that carnage. Some will tell you that 'Israel has always wanted to commit genocide against Palestinians blah blah blah.' But I say that there was a ceasefire that Hamas broke on October 7. And no one in the world talks about how a neo-Nazi jihadist terrorist organization carried out the worst single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust and triggered the worst catastrophe in modern Palestinian history. When you look at the suffering of the Iraqi people in the 1990s, don't you also look at Saddam Hussein's preceding actions, such as the war with Iran or the invasion of Kuwait?

"There is something about the suspension of agency and accountability and responsibility for the Palestinians, such as Arafat's refusal to say 'yes' in 2000 [at the Camp David talks] or when the Palestinians launched the second intifada or when Hamas decided to sabotage the newly emerging Palestinian political life, instead of building a democratic tradition with elections every four years and a culture of civil society and a free press.

'A jihadist, fascist and violent terrorist organization took over Gaza, with an open declaration of its goal of annihilating Israel. That's what Hamas did. Now I'm not here to defend Israel and its actions. But any country in the world facing such a thing would have acted in the same way.'

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

"Hamas decided to ruin the opportunity we had with the withdrawal in 2005 to cultivate a model of Palestinian self-rule. Hamas turned Gaza into a citadel of tunnels, rockets, missiles and attacks that allowed Netanyahu to act as he did in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Why is there this persistent dismissal of Palestinian decisions that contributed directly to Israeli aggression? All this happened alongside repeated wars that cost tens of thousands of Palestinian lives and led to the destruction of Gaza, the expansion of the settlements and the rightward shift in Israeli society."

Are you aware that Israeli society has moved to the far right?

"Yes, I see the rightward shift and the empowerment of the far right. I see the rise of convicted criminals, fascist Kahanists like Ben-Gvir. That is directly enabled by Palestinian mistakes and dumbfuckery by Hamas and by an entire network of their supporters in academia, journalism, various NGOs, the UN, the Arabs, the Europeans – all running cover for the Palestinian mistakes and saying, 'No, they are victims, they are occupied.' And then everything mixes: Black Lives Matter, the right to abortion, transgender identity, post-colonialism, settler colonialism, Edward Said, apartheid, genocide. To me, all these narratives are part of a multi-layered effort to rob Palestinians of responsibility for their lives."

At times, your conclusions seem to overlook the fundamental inequality between Israel and the Palestinians.

"To be clear, I'm not putting the Palestinians on equal footing with Israel, but within this imbalance there still exists plenty of space for Palestinian agency and responsibility to optimize for better outcomes. And for some reason, the Palestinians and their supporters have been persistently saying that everything is only Israel's fault. Not only is this unhelpful for the Palestinian people, but I see that as the core of the devastation of the Palestinian national project. It is the degradation of Palestinian identity and the erasure of a cohesive Palestinian vision. I'm sorry, but what is the Palestinian vision right now? What is Palestinian identity? Because it seems to me that Palestinian identity is defined only by opposition to Israel and Zionism. How are we different from the Jordanians or any other Arab? Do we have an economic vision beyond life on international welfare? What is our vision for ourselves, about who we are?"

Statements like these have earned Alkhatib a reputation as pro-Israel. His most hostile critics go further, calling him a genocide supporter. He insists his views are not rooted in self-hatred. As he sees it, Palestinian development has stalled only because Palestinians have been told over and over that they are victims.

"Do you know what the good news is? There are thousands more like me, specifically in Gaza. A lot of Palestinians know that Hamas and all this shit of armed struggle and this support from the global left is not our salvation. The Gazans are mocking Israeli leftists. Even if everyone is now anti-Zionist, that's not what will save us. The Gazans know that Israel exists. They know that Sadat was right and that he understood the limits of power. Our progress depends to a large extent on cooperation with Israel. None of this erases the injustices done to the Palestinians. That doesn't mean that what Israel did in Gaza is less criminal, destructive and terrible."

Can you blame Hamas when you see army-backed settler violence in the West Bank?

"Yes and no. These things are also the result of Hamas' actions, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Hamas are the useful idiots of the Israeli right, which wanted to expand the settlements in what they now call 'Judea and Samaria.' It is Hamas' actions that caused the Israeli public to shift to the right, something that will take a generation or two to correct. Do I justify Jewish terror in the West Bank? Absolutely not. Am I justifying the deliberate improper conduct of the Israeli government? Absolutely not. After all, the Israeli left keeps saying that Netanyahu strengthened Hamas in Gaza so that he could weaken the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and expand the occupation. I agree. And then we see the results of this and we are all surprised. We recognize the intentions of Netanyahu and the Israeli far right, but then we don't see the results of it, don't see how October 7 served as Viagra for this madness of settler violence and the Israeli army. Hamas did exactly what they wanted it to do. So why are we so surprised when we know that this is the function that Hamas played in Netanyahu's strategy?"

So what is your vision?

"Gaza first. In my opinion, it is easier to resolve the situation in Gaza before the West Bank, because there aren't 600,000 Israeli settlers there. Gaza can be an autonomous area that is connected to the outside Palestinian world, but we need to compensate Gaza for 20 wasted years. Gaza can become a model for Palestinian independence culturally, economically and socially. We need to get rid of this narrative that two-thirds of Gaza's population are refugees. All this dichotomy between civilians and refugees must stop. UNRWA and the demand for the right of return have only contributed to this segregation in Gaza. We also need to stop the rule of the clans and build a law-abiding civil society. I believe that all of this is possible."

What do you think will happen in Gaza in the near future?

"At the moment, and it doesn't matter who will be the next Israeli prime minister, Israeli forces can't withdraw from Gaza completely. Israel isn't going to give up its gains in Gaza. Israel is not going to just withdraw and say 'bye' one day. So what was it all for? For human sacrifice of Gazans for nothing, so we can have a bunch of Westerners hate Israel and delegitimize it, even though Israel is not going anywhere?

"To me, that is so criminal. That is anti-Palestinian, and it is the epitome of the bigotry of low expectations. That is such a misguided understanding of how one can be pro-Palestinian. No one is articulating this, and that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. That's why I wrote this book."

"That's why I'm deeply misunderstood by many Arabs and Muslims, by leftist Jews and Israelis, by the deranged students on U.S. campuses and parts of the Democratic Party. People who think they can out-Palestinian an actual Palestinian from Gaza who lost his hearing from an Israeli bombing, who lost half of his family and both his childhood homes. So I am the Zionist? I am the Yoseph Haddad? I am the Mossad agent, but they are the real pro-Palestinians?"