Our Wednesday News Analysis | ‘Not That Game Anymore’: Ramzy Baroud Calls for Liberation, Not ‘Solutionism’

Palestinian author and journalist Ramzy Baroud. (Illustration: Thinking Palestine)

For Baroud, the representative Palestinian is not found in diplomatic halls or elite institutions, but in the lived struggle of the people.

He named Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as one such figure.

And then he offered another image:
“A small child right now, somewhere in Gaza in the displacement camps, carrying twice,
if not three times, his weight in barely drinkable water to help his family survive in a tent.”

“That child,” Baroud said, “also represents me.”

At the Second Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress in Dublin, Palestinian author and journalist Ramzy Baroud delivered one of the most forceful interventions of the gathering, warning that debates over future political formulas for Palestine must not eclipse the immediate reality of genocide, displacement and resistance.

“It is very important for Palestinians—especially those from Gaza, but all Palestinians—to tell you what we think our priorities are right now,” he said.

For Baroud, the question was not whether visions such as decolonization, a single democratic state or restorative justice matter. Rather, it was whether such discussions can remain meaningful while Palestinians are being killed, starved and erased in real time.

“There is a quite painful irony,” he said, “in designing the zoning laws of a house while its foundations are actively being pulled apart, and while our families are being buried beneath the rubble.”

Against ‘Solutionism’

Baroud warned against what he called the long history of “solutionism” in Palestine — the repeated production of diplomatic plans, political frameworks and intellectual blueprints that have failed to halt Palestinian dispossession.

“They’ve been talking about it for a very, very long time,” he said. “We keep talking, and we keep being pushed out; we keep talking, and we keep losing.”

From the British Mandate to the Nakba, from 1967 to Oslo, Baroud argued that every major diplomatic process presented as a path to peace ultimately left Palestinians in a worse position.

“This is not a new phenomenon where we just need to give the Palestinians a break because they are starving in Gaza,” he said. “No, this is the story of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism, and we are not going to play that game anymore.”

Read more: ‘Not That Game Anymore’: Ramzy Baroud Calls for Liberation, Not ‘Solutionism’

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ARAB ISRAELIS AREN'T LOOKING FOR TOKEN MKS. THEY'RE LOOKING FOR GENUINE CHANGE

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-07-06/ty-article-opinion/.premium/arab-israelis-arent-looking-for-token-mks-theyre-looking-for-genuine-change/0000019f-3159-ddc7-a99f-39dbd8700000

By Jack Khoury
Published July 6, 2026

Zionist parties have a history of Arab tokens that appeal mainly to Jews. But Arab voters want real change, not political theater

Meretz campaign poster aimed at Arab voters, 2022. Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters

Parties will get excited about an Arab candidate – especially if she's a
woman –who looks good in media, speaks the right language, and sometimes has religious or cultural traits that look exotic to a Jewish audience.
Only after the election do they realize their blunder.

As the election gets closer, a familiar scene is coming back: Zionist parties are once again courting the "Arab vote." Suddenly, there's talk of partnership, representation, integration. Yes, there's no problem benefiting from the votes of Arab citizens; the Arab vote is desirable.

The problem is the Arab representative – they're far less desirable. The moment the question becomes one of influence on a coalition, on a government, people begin to have reservations. There's talk of a "Zionist government," "security and nationalist considerations," "the post-October 7 reality."

In this situation, the old method used by Zionist parties to acquire Arab candidates also comes back. They choose a "correct" figure. One who looks good, speaks well, or has something different that appeals to Jews. And if that figure knows how to publicly criticize the Arab community or its representatives in Arab parties, all the better.

In practice, though, this doesn't actually deliver results. The Arab public isn't buying symbols, decorations or social media or movie stars. It also knows how to tell the difference between genuine representation and political decoration – a token.

No significant Arab leadership has emerged from within Zionist parties in decades. This won't happen, for a simple reason: leadership can't be imported, or assigned by another. It's not created by closed lists (party candidates chosen by the party, not primaries). It's not created by funded election campaigns, or by appearances on mainstream Israeli TV. Leadership is built from within the community itself.

Ask Knesset veterans – they'll tell you that, in substantive moments of decision, prime ministers and senior ministers don't involve the party or coalition's Arab MK in the decision-making process...

Read more: Arab Israelis Aren't Looking for Token MKs. They're Looking for Genuine Change

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GAZA IS WHERE ISRAEL'S STORY OF POWER BREAKS DOWN

Source: Jaser Abu Mousa on Substack
https://substack.com/home/post/p-202325615

By Jaser Abu Mousa
Published June 16, 2026

When Israeli intellectuals sit down to debate “security,” “force,” or “the future of Gaza,” I do not hear an abstraction. I hear people discussing the fate of streets I walked, institutions I helped build, neighbors whose names I knew, and a family I will not see again. For someone from Gaza, these conversations are never theoretical. There are arguments about whether the place that shaped me is allowed to exist as an ordinary society or only as a problem to be managed by other means.

...here is what Levy sees clearly, and what most Israelis refuse to see: Gaza is not Hamas.
After October 7th, he says, it became axiomatic in Israel that “they are all terrorists, they are all Hamas”, and the Israeli media simply stopped showing Gazans as people at all.
The whole society of teachers, nurses, engineers, students, fishermen, clerks, and children was collapsed into a single enemy,
so that whatever was done to it required no further thought.

Levy goes further, and I think he is right: the war stopped being only about Hamas.
He describes it as a war to crush Palestinian society in Gaza itself, to oppose every arrangement that might let Gaza function,
whether Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or an international force, because a functioning Gaza is exactly what the current Israeli story cannot tolerate.

So when I watch Yuval Noah Harari speak with Ezra Klein, and Gideon Levy speak with Tucker Carlson about Gaza, I listen as someone the conversation is about, not only as someone interested in it. Both men are honest in ways most of their society is not. Both expose real cracks in the Israeli story. And both, finally, reach the edge of what they can see, the edge where Gaza begins, and where my voice has to take over.

I want to use what they say, and then say what they cannot...

Read more: Gaza Is Where Israel's Story of Power Breaks Down