Hello, you're listening to the LRB podcast, and I'm your host, Adam Shats.

This week, we're featuring three conversations

marking the anniversary of the 7th of October 2003 and the outbreak of Israel's war in Gaza.

In the first of these conversations, I spoke with Amjad Iraqi and Mairav Zanzin,

about how Israeli citizens, both Jewish and Palestinian, have experienced the last year.

In this episode, I will be speaking about the impact of October 7 and the destruction of Gaza,

with one of the most thoughtful observers of Palestinian politics, Yazid Saya, a senior fellow,

at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Malcolm H. Kerr,

Middle East Center in Beirut. This conversation was recorded a few hours before the announcement

by Israel of the reported death of Hamas leader Yaya Sinwar in Gaza. Yazid is joining us from London.

Yazid, I wanted to have you on this podcast for some time, so thanks for making yourself

available.

Well, it's a pleasure, and looking forward to the discussion.

Now, you're a historian, the author of a classic study of the Palestinian National Movement,

Arms Struggle and the Search for a State.

Shortly after October 7, we talked, and you described Al-Ax a flood, as Hamas refers to the attacks of that day, as a historical inflection point.

Do you still feel this way?

And if so, how do you appraise that event's significance

and the events that followed it in historical terms?

Well, I looked at and still look at the Hamas attack on 7th October as an inflection point in that

it marked two inflections at least. One was that it came at a moment in world history

where the world has been heading for a while in certain directions politically

...