One week after a ceasefire paused two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas, there are signs of fracture, and a Muslim scholar on education and Middle Eastern identity worries the long-term commitment needed to help Palestinians rebuild may never come.
Hannah Mesouani is a member of the Bloomington Not in Our Town chapter and the Racial Equity Collective. She also described herself as a Muslim-American, having been born and raised in Morocco.
Mesouani said she shared the cautious optimism of fellow Not in Our Town member Rabbi Rebecca Dubowe. She was glad to see the increasing number of hostages decrease after the deal started to progress.
“Before Oct. 7, 2023, there were 5,000 Palestinians who were being held in what is called administrative detention, so with no formal charges against them, no chance of a jury. So, also to many people in the world, hostages,” she said in an interview on WGLT's Sound Ideas. “Since Oct. 7, there are now 10,000 Palestinians who are being held with no fair trial, and so seeing hostages from both sides be released is very heartening.”
Mesouani said this deal felt like a significant first step, mainly because there was more inclusion of Palestinian voices in the deal, according to her.
Mesouani said she is unsure whether the deal will bring long-term peace.
"We can’t forget that 90% of Palestinians are displaced and that Palestine and Gaza have been absolutely leveled, so what I’d love to being seeing is more of the reparations we saw after World War II happened where it was about $25 billion worth of reinvestment in Jewish folks,” she said.
She said her biggest point of hesitation comes from the irreparable harm each country has done to the other.
“There has been a lot of in poor taste humor from some Israeli pundits about Palestinians starving, so I think there needs to be a lot more robust support to get to a place of repaired relationships,” Mesouani said. “I think that takes a lot of investment globally as well as locally.”
Here at home, Mesouani said she is also concerned about rising antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred seen in America.
“We are all people of the book … we are shared in so many of our struggles and yet the story that’s told is very, very different,” Mesouani said. “A lot of the violence is not only misguided but misinformed. And for me, hate anywhere is what needs to be stopped, and that takes a lot more patience than I think social discourse is allowing.”
Hopes for a Palestinian state
Mesouani noted 151 out of the 193 member states of the United Nations recognize Palestine as an independent state. It is a movement which she said has faced setbacks since before the war and will most likely face more in the future.
“A lot of it depends on the global continued conversation and that continued conversation relies on acknowledging the hostages on both sides … acknowledging the harm of the past seven decades and the harm of Oct. 7 as well,” she said. “So, my hope is that there’s more nuance in the conversation."
Two of the holdups to Palestinian statehood could be the resistance of Israel and the United States to commit to its recognition.
“I think there is a global shame that is rightfully earned after World War II, the antisemitism that has pervaded before since continued is very real, and I think a lot of countries and leaders of countries are frozen into inaction because this binary has been created of, ‘You’re with us or against us," she said.
Mesouani said she works to have conversations about why both Israel and a Palestinian state deserve to exist.
United States
As the U.S. and President Donald Trump continue negotiations on the ceasefire, the country is also deciding how involved it will be moving forward in the region. Mesouani said she is unsure if the U.S. will have the resolve to see long-lasting change in the region.
“As a country, we have enough things going on here that polls have indicated folks want to see more change happening here, and I think because we only ever get the headlines, it’s hard to see the persistent daily struggle…it was once a thriving community, it’s hard to appreciate that nuance and why this is not a sprint but it’s the marathon,” Mesouani said.
She said proper investment in the region would be in rebuilding the Palestinian homeland.
“Since the 90s there has been an eradication of Palestinian farmland. We want to see that stop first and foremost, but then allowing for agency, self-sufficiency, rebuilding the architecture,” she said. “All of the hospitals have been bombed, most of them destroyed. All of the universities, 200 schools, where do those kids go?”
Education should be reformed at home, not just abroad, Mesouani said. She said after decades of education in the U.S. perpetuating negative stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, countries should be framed “with the nuance they deserve.”
In the ceasefire deal, Gaza will be governed temporarily by a committee of international experts and supervised by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump. The deal does not discuss long-term governance.
Mesouani said neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Hamas should be involved in that new government, because they are too prone to violence.
“The Jewish folks in Israel and beyond who have been anti-war have been phenomenal voices for peace. I think we need investment from folks like that, we need to give them space,” she said. “I think we have seen so many doctors, some of whom unfortunately are still hostages in Israel, step up and take the lead in terms of protecting life.”
Another matter held up by both the U.S. and Israel is the denouncement of Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide, or the systematic killing or persecution of a group of people. Mesouani said the conflict is the “textbook definition” of a genocide.
“In terms of the absolute starvation, the cultural annihilation, the destruction of all infrastructure and what I find heartening is that folks on both sides of the aisle have differing opinion,” she said. “So, whether it’s [Democratic U.S. Senator] Corey Booker who does not call it a genocide or whether it’s [Republican U.S Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene who does, I’m heartened seeing that we can have conversations in group, let alone between groups about it.”
“When it comes to why I call it genocide, if you think of the most haunting images from World War II, they’re almost photocopy replicas of children who have been quite literally blown in half, who are been starved to death,” she said. “Still at this moment, every kid under five is at risk of malnutrition there.”
The counterargument is Israel is defending itself, against Hamas, a terrorist group which does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state. Mesouani said litigation could continue between who is deserving of a state, but the right to self-determination cannot simply be discussed on one side.
