Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Hamas triggered the Iran war. Now it may outlast the Islamic Republic
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, the head of Realign for Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse.
This week, the Board of Peace’s top Gaza envoy Nickolay Mladenov revealed the principles of the disarmament proposal submitted to Hamas earlier this month. He urged the international community to pressure the Palestinian terror group to accept the offer in order to prevent another cycle of violence in the Gaza Strip.
But before diving into what these principles entail, we place Hamas and the Gaza Strip into the context of the current US-Israel war on Iran.
Hamas, argues Alkhatib, triggered this war -- and potentially the downfall of the Islamic Republic -- through its murderous onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Will it now be the last terror proxy standing?
And so this week, we ask Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, what matters now.
What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.
IMAGE: Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters now. I'm your host, Amanda Borshald Dan, here with our special |
| 0:09.4 | monthly guest, Ahmed Fuad al-Khattib. He's the head of Realign for Palestine, which is a project of the |
| 0:17.4 | Atlantic Council. So, Ahmed, thank you as usual for joining me today. |
| 0:22.2 | Delighted to be with you. It's been a hectic few weeks, I can imagine. |
| 0:26.8 | It's been a hectic few weeks. When we last left off, we were just on the brink of Ramadan, |
| 0:32.1 | and I wished you a Ramadan-Karim. So what does one wish one after Ramadan? |
| 0:58.8 | Well, it starts with Eid al-Fitter. So you say Eid Mubarak. But yeah, it's been coming up on a week since Eid almost. Time flies. But so do the events. My goodness, it's hard to believe that when we last spoke, we were on the precipice of a really, I think, history-altering course of events. |
| 1:01.5 | And we didn't even know at that time. |
| 1:04.6 | So definitely it's been an eventful several weeks. But we are here to discuss Gaza in the context of all of this. |
| 1:10.4 | And of course, yesterday we had a report of five principles |
| 1:14.2 | to demilitarize Gaza and Hamas and the pullout of the IDF. But nobody, I think, is really |
| 1:21.2 | paying attention at this point. So let's zoom out. And as usual, I want to hear a report from you about how things are on the ground from the people of Gaza. |
| 1:33.1 | Certainly. And you're right to point out that it seems that Gaza is a distant memory, really, when in reality it's actually ground zero for everything that's ultimately unfolding. |
| 1:47.2 | I've been saying repeatedly since the war began that Senoar and Dave of Hamas, |
| 1:53.4 | the now deceased military commanders of Hamas, intended for Gaza to be ground zero for the annihilation of Israel. |
| 2:03.8 | And ultimately, it actually made Gaza ground zero for the destruction of the so-called |
| 2:09.0 | access of resistance, starting with Hamas and Gaza, working its way to Hezbollah, to Assad |
| 2:16.2 | in Syria, weakening and restricting and constricting the |
| 2:20.8 | Houthis in Yemen, all the way now to the head of the snake in Tehran, the Islamic Republic |
| 2:26.7 | of Iran. And so on one level, Gaza has continued to experience the usual challenges of services being a |
| 2:39.9 | fraction of what they need to be to ultimately sustain the population. You have a dead economy |
| 2:47.8 | that has actually suffered from right after the war with Iran began, the IDF restricted |
... |
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