The feeling that we really are on the cusp of another phase of the Nakhbe, of the catastrophe,

I think has really pushed a lot of Palestinians to the edge that any attempts to even try to use alternative tactics,

to try to think of more positive, you know, sort of political avenues vis-a-vis Israelis or the Israeli state,

or even the international community, or especially the Western world, they feel that all that was in vain. And they feel that more than any other time,

they're really on their own.

Over the course of just four weeks, over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's

assault on Gaza, with thousands more

injured and displaced, a staggering level of casualties in such a short period of time.

More than 4,000 of those killed are children, and for weeks aid agencies, human rights

organizations and the UN Secretary General have been demanding a ceasefire, a position blocked

by the United States

and other Western governments. Meanwhile, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in the

occupied West Bank, where Israel's project of ethnically cleansing the territory continues.

In today's episode, I spoke with Amjad Iraqi, a Palestinian writer and editor at Plus 972 magazine, whose

title is taken from the International Dialing Code for both Israel and the Occupied Territories.

We talked about Israel's professed goal to wipe out Hamas in the Gaza Strip and what Israel

intends to do with the territory and its population after the end of Operation Iron Sword.

We also discussed how seriously to take the statements of Western governments

who profess to support a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel,

and we spoke about how liberal Zionism is a phenomenon that exists more in the minds

of Western policymakers and liberal journalists than it does in Israel itself,

where internal political divisions are between various right-wing Zionist factions,

...