"Now Netanyahu has failed. Iran was not broken. Arab countries now realise that relying on Israel is a death sentence."
In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sat down in studio with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and co-founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Barghouti argues that Israel's two strategic goals, imperial domination of the Middle East and normalisation with Arab states, have both collapsed, and that this marks the beginning of its decline.
Across the conversation he sets out the scale of the atrocity in Gaza, the slow strangulation of life in the West Bank, and the transformation of Israeli society towards what he describes as fascism. He explains why the regional war with Iran ended in strategic failure for Netanyahu, why Oslo and the 2005 Gaza disengagement were traps rather than concessions, and why he refuses to accept any framing that places oppressor and oppressed on equal footing.
Barghouti also turns to the question of survival and resistance, from the 90 midwives employed in the first weeks of the war to the clinics rebuilt multiple times under bombardment, and makes the case that Palestine has become the global measure of commitment to justice. Despite everything, he ends on a note of defiance and hope.
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.