Beware the Industrial-Peace Complex: Inside the Well-Funded Performance of Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue w/ Hamze Awawde

For years, Palestinian activist Hamze Awawde worked inside the world of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue organizations, NGOs, international conferences, donor networks, and what he now calls the “industrial-peace complex.”

Hamze Awawde Substack

I Was The Good Palestinian - Hamze's Essay

Hamze on Instagram

In this conversation, Hamze offers an insider’s critique of a well-funded system that he argues often substitutes the appearance of dialogue and managing audiences comfort levels for confronting the realities of occupation, dispossession, genocide, and Palestinian political agency.

He describes the subtle—and often explicit—pressure placed on Palestinians to moderate their language, accommodate Western/Israeli sensitivities, condemn Hamas before speaking about their own people, and remain within the boundaries of what Western donors and institutions consider acceptable. He also recounts watching Palestinian voices excluded, managed, or replaced when they challenged those boundaries.

Hamze also reflects on his own journey from an idealistic teenager growing up amidst the violence of the Second Palestinian Intifada drawn to dialogue and reconciliation, to becoming deeply disillusioned with the institutions in which he spent years working. He speaks about his grandfather, a Palestinian resistance fighter killed before Hamze was born; his family’s experience of occupation and home demolitions; the meaning of resistance; and why he no longer believes human beings are “entitled to hope.”

We also discuss what justice might actually look like, the difference between peace and pacification, the limits of “shared grief” without an analysis of power, and what meaningful solidarity with Palestinians asks of people in the West.

⭐️PLEASE LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW OF THE SHOW

❤️ SUPPORT THE SHOW

LEAVE A ONE-OFF TIP ON KO-FI

BECOME A REGULAR SUPPORTER ON PATREON