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 Security is not a precondition for the creation of a Palestinian state, but an outcome, a Palestinian diplomat argued Thursday at a Harvard Kennedy School event. Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the U.K. and former Palestinian representative to the United Nations, joined Tarek Masoud, the director of the at ����vlog����’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at a webinar on Thursday. 

The event was the second in this year’s Middle East Dialogues series, which Masoud, the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance, describes as conversations with “individuals who hold vital and varied perspectives on the conflict that is currently underway in the [Middle East] and the paths towards a more peaceful and prosperous future for the long-suffering people of that region.” 

Zomlot is a senior member of Fatah, the largest Palestinian political party, which recognized Israel in 1988. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Belfer Center in the 2000s, and Masoud prefaced the talk by acknowledging their longstanding friendship. Still, as he has in previous ME Dialogues, Masoud pressed his guest on tough questions.

 One was the role and legitimacy of Hamas, whose attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed more than 1,200 and sparked the Israeli assault on Gaza that has now left more than 43,000 dead. Noting that Hamas had forcefully expelled Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, Masoud suggested that listeners might ask, “Why is this clearly very eloquent, humane, highly educated, and urbane representative of the Palestinian people, whose own group suffered at the hands of Hamas, not willing to come out and say: ‘Hamas is a terrorist group. What Hamas did was wrong’?”

Zomlot said that talking of eradicating Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and numerous countries, “is not a conversation that will lead us anywhere.”

“This will just take us backward and we should be absolutely, adamantly clear that we should not look backward. Because if we look backward, it’s all about Israel’s atrocities, crimes, crimes against humanity,” Zomlot said. “I advise the Israelis not to be obsessed about security only because this is the wrong way to go. Security is an outcome. It is not a precondition—it’s an outcome of resolution.”

“But you ask why an individual like me would not focus on Hamas. Because a person like me would want to focus on the root cause that created all this. I don’t believe that Hamas is the cause of the conflict. I believe Hamas is an outcome of the conflict and we need to resolve the root cause. Because the superstructure that is creating all this is Israel as an occupying power,” Zomlot said. “So yes indeed, I want to focus on it because I know there will not be resolution, there will not be the real democracy for the Palestinian people, without liberty, without liberation, without freedom, without sovereignty.”

Zomlot was the top Palestinian diplomat in the United States when the Trump administration shuttered the Palestinian mission in 2018. The Trump administration also moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. Masoud asked Zomlot what he thought a new Trump administration’s approach to the region might be. Zomlot said that, during the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would “stop the killings” and bring peace to the Middle East. “However, this is an opportunity to say that peace in the Middle East must be based on international consensus, on international legality, and cannot be dealt with from the angle of persons and individuals,” he said.

Zomlot insisted on the creation of a Palestinian state as the only feasible foundation for a lasting peace in the region. But he said Israel, who he accused of depopulating Gaza and of “creeping annexation” in the West Bank, was showing itself to be uninterested in that solution.

He also rejected the argument that the Palestinians are not equipped to manage a state that could live peaceably alongside Israel. While acknowledging certain shortcomings—including the fact that the Palestinians have not held presidential elections for almost two decades—Zomlot said that Palestinians have legitimate leadership and that “if [Israelis] want partners for peace, they know the address.”

Zomlot described the difficult circumstances that his family, like so many others, have been facing since the Israeli assault on Gaza began. He described the loss of homes and livelihoods, and most tragically, the deaths of members of his family, including, recently, a five-year-old who died in an Israeli airstrike.

“We’re following, watching, trying to do what we can. Feeling despair, feeling anger, feeling hurt, feeling trauma really,” he said.

But he also sounded an optimistic note, describing Palestinians’ high levels of literacy and entrepreneurship, and what they might be able to accomplish under the right circumstances.

“We have almost zero illiteracy rate. We have one of the highest PhD per capita rates. We have the youngest population,” Zomlot said of Palestinians. “Can you imagine? Can you begin to imagine the potential for prosperity, for growth, for collaboration and cooperation for the nation of Palestine and the state of Palestine?”

The next Middle East Dialogues conversation will feature former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who will join Masoud  in December. Past speakers have included Jared Kushner, the former senior advisor to President Trump; Salam Fayyad, the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, and former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal. 

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Banner image: Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom Husam Zomlot. Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images