AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Gaza, where Israel’s military has killed at least two Palestinians in separate attacks. Israel claimed the men had approached the so-called yellow line that leaves more than half of the Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Israel has now killed at least 241 Palestinians since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10th.

This comes as the Norwegian Refugee Council reports Israel is allowing just a hundred aid trucks a day to enter Gaza, far short of the 600 trucks per day Israel had pledged under the ceasefire deal.

This is Umm Amir Muqat, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza City.

UMM AMIR MUQAT: [translated] We have no life here. We’ve lost all hope. We returned to a pile of rubble. We have no water. We have no food. We came back to rubble. We hoped our house would still be there, but there’s no suitable place for us to live. We need a tent to live in, for us and for our children, and to have our lives back to the way it was before.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by the Palestinian analyst and writer Tareq Baconi. He’s author of a new memoir, Fire in Every Direction. He’s the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa, grew up between Amman, Jordan, and Beirut, Lebanon. He’s the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He’s also author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. His award-winning short film is titled One Like Him. It is a queer love story set in Jordan. He’s a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group on Israel-Palestine.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!

TAREQ BACONI: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Congratulations — 

TAREQ BACONI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — on the publication of your book, Fire in Every Direction. Before we get to that, though, the latest. You are also an expert on Hamas, looking at, I mean, not even one-sixth of the aid is getting through that was promised by Israel since the ceasefire, and the killings continue, both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

TAREQ BACONI: Listen, historically, every ceasefire that was negotiated between Hamas and Israel had adopted a phased approach. There would be the first phase, where there would be the ostensible cessation of hostilities. And then, after that, the idea was always that the negotiators would propel the parties to move into reconstruction, to move into lifting the blockade, to move into other aspects that would make life in Gaza livable. And the reality is that, historically, every ceasefire got stuck in the first phase. There was never a real push to get Israel to adopt or to respect the second and third phases of the ceasefire. The parties would get stuck in the first phase.

And so, when this was negotiated, that was, I think, on the Palestinian side, always the fear, that Hamas would release the captives, it would release the bodies of the captives, and then nothing would happen in terms of forcing Israel to respect the commitments that it had made under the ceasefire. And lo and behold, this is exactly where we’re at. When the ceasefire, or the so-called ceasefire, was negotiated, the idea was that the U.S. would act as a guarantor and that it would compel Israel to abide by its commitments. The reality is that the killing hasn’t stopped. This is not a ceasefire. The killing hasn’t stopped. The starvation continues. The aid that’s going in is nowhere near what is needed. There’s no ability to allow Palestinians to go back to any semblance of a dignified life. And so, the reality is that the narrative is of a ceasefire; the reality is of the continuation of the genocide.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do you think? I mean, even if they were to move on to the second phase of the ceasefire deal, I mean, your assessment of the deal overall?

TAREQ BACONI: Listen, the assessment of the deal overall is that it’s a horrific — it’s a horrific deal. It doesn’t give the Palestinians any space for actual self-governance. It also gets to — it brings Israel off the hook entirely. The Israeli regime has committed a genocide for two years, live-streamed for everyone to see. And the narrative of the ceasefire is that now we just go back into this language of reconstruction and peace. Where is accountability? Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal. The people around him are war criminals. How do we deal with the fact that this live-streamed genocide is now being normalized, and we just are expected to go back into a reality where we talk about peace and reconstruction? Before we do any of that, there has to be accountability. And Palestinians are the ones that have to govern Palestinian territory, not this international force that comes in, that takes any kind of sovereignty or agency away from the Palestinian people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you’ve also, of course, written a book, as we mentioned, on Hamas. What about the requirement, the provision, of Hamas having to disarm and relinquish political power in Gaza?

TAREQ BACONI: Hamas has always been consistent that it would be part of a Palestinian polity that would be inclusive, that brings other Palestinian factions in, that collectively are able to determine what future Palestinians might have. The requirement for disarmament has always been a tool that Israel has used and the U.S. has used to justify continued acts of oppression and violence against the Palestinian people. I’ve always said the same thing. If Hamas were to disappear tomorrow, if all of its weapons were to disappear tomorrow, the blockade will not end. The genocide will not end. This is not about Hamas. This is an Israeli war against the Palestinian people. It’s a demographic war aimed at exterminating as many Palestinians as possible.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, before we go to your book, of course, you’ve been in New York the last few days, and you’ve witnessed the victory of Zohran Mamdani. So, if you could — a couple of things — first, say, you know, what you think that indicates in terms of a possible change in the U.S. — I mean, not that New York City is necessarily representative — but a change in the position among people on Israel-Palestine, and also the response of his — in Israel-Palestine to his victory?

TAREQ BACONI: Listen, I think it’s an incredible — it’s an incredible moment, and I think it really shows the potential for real politics that is representing what people — what people, the general population, feels around these key issues. I think in the past few years we’ve seen institutions of media, we’ve seen institutions of government being complicit in genocide, manufacturing consent for genocide. And people are — feel deceived. They feel like they’ve been lied to.

And here we have a politician who is speaking to people’s politics, who’s speaking to people’s desires, not just on Palestine, of course, but cost of living, on economic issues, real leftist values. And he’s coming in and saying, “Actually, we understand what this is. This is all a narrative that’s fabricated. It’s a facade. We really have to deal with this reality, and we have to push forward the politics that represents our people.”

And actually, I think Palestine is central to this, and he understands that Palestine is central to this. And I don’t think that if the Gaza genocide hadn’t happened in the past two years, it wouldn’t have mobilized the base in such a way here that would have propelled his victory. I really think Palestine is central to Mamdani’s election victory.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to your book, Fire in Every Direction, a memoir, and your comments about putting out a memoir at this time, and yet the power of this magnificent book, talking about your life, your family’s life, from Amman to London to Palestine. Fire in Every Direction, why the title?

TAREQ BACONI: Well, the title is actually a phrase that I use to describe my mom in the book. My mom is an incredible activist and incredible woman and had, in her university years in Lebanon, been active on Palestine. This is before the Lebanese Civil War. My grandparents had been expelled in the Nakba in 1948 to Lebanon. And not a lot of people know this, but between ’48 and a few years after ’48, to ’51, I believe, Christian Palestinian refugees were getting naturalized, because the Lebanese government was playing with the demographics of the country. And so, my grandparents were naturalized. They were not in refugee camps. They got citizenship, and they became Lebanese citizens.

So my parents were born and raised in Lebanon as Lebanese citizens. And my mom was very active on Palestine, and during the Civil War fled to Jordan, where I was born. And she carried a lot of rage. I think it was rage that moved down to her from her own parents, from the Nakba, from the inability to achieve justice. And so, I describe her rage in the book as fire burning in every direction. And so, that’s really the — where the title comes from.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Tareq, I mean, talk about the decision to write a memoir. When did you start writing it? And did you always know you would write a memoir? You’ve said, in another context, that it’s, quote, “either the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve done.”

TAREQ BACONI: Yes, I mean, listen, I always knew that — well, I always knew that I had an impulse to write this book. Even when I was writing Hamas Contained, I knew that that wasn’t the book that I really wanted to be writing. And I started writing this book properly — I feel like I’ve been writing it my entire life, in some ways, but I started writing it properly in 2017. And I just could not have imagined it coming out at a moment of genocide. It was a really — it was a really difficult reality to sit with, understanding that, you know, there would be this memoir at a moment of genocide, when I feel like our collective gaze should be on Gaza. Every effort is trying to move us to look away from Gaza, and we should keep talking about Gaza.

And the more I sat with this, the more I realized that, actually, this is a book about the Nakba. This is a book about — you know, the genocide is the continuation of the Nakba in other ways. And this book is about the Nakba, about my grandparents, about my parents, about these structures of violence that have dispossessed and continue to dispossess Palestinians. And so, in some ways, I think that this is just one facet of our collective story as Palestinians.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I think one of the things that’s extraordinary about the book, though, because it’s true there is — the whole story is told in the context of the politics of Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. But what you do — and I’ll just read the comments of the acclaimed Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad, commenting on your book. She said, in the memoir, you refuse, quote, “to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing [model] a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones.” So, if you could elaborate on that, the many decisions you took in the writing of the book, what was included, what was excluded, and how you came to, don’t know, bring the two together so, political — the political and the personal?

TAREQ BACONI: Absolutely. I mean, listen, when I started writing this book, for me, this book, at its core, is a love story between two boys in Amman. That’s what this book is, and that’s what it had always been. When I wanted to write it, that’s what the initial impetus for the writing, the creative impulse, was to write a love story that I felt couldn’t be narrated when I was growing up. And I didn’t even consciously think that Palestine, or even the story of my grandparents or the Nakba, would be a part of it. And the more I wrote, the more I realized that there’s no story to be told here without telling the story of who I am as a person, and that’s the story of my grandparents, and that’s the story of my parents. And so, obviously, that became a very political book. And in some ways, I can understand that now, in retrospect, but I can’t say that it was a conscious decision at the time.

I also know that, intellectually, a lot of my work has come to understand Palestine through queer theory, as well, understanding how, you know, queerness is demonized, and certainly where I was coming from, and in many ways, Palestine is demonized here. And this is not a story of East-West. This is a story of silences, of how, you know, these structures of oppression or these structures of violence allow certain things to be said and not to be said. And so, the way that I came into my queer identity unraveled this whole idea of normative discourse that we have to accept and abide by, and pushed me to think about, you know, “What can you challenge. What are — what’s not being said? What are the silences that we’re comfortable with?” and to poke.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your, what you’ve described as a complicated and unresolved relationship with the word “gay.” At one point, you even call it “revulsion.”

TAREQ BACONI: Yeah, I mean, I think this is a complicated history. I think many people have written on this. You know, the most famous book on this is obviously Joseph Massad’s Desiring Arabs, this idea that the LGBTQ+ labels have also been used by the West as part of empire, that this is — they go into these uncivilized, barbaric spaces, and they civilize. You know, they bring — they have a savior complex that they’re bringing in to save women or to save minorities or to save LGBT folk. Meanwhile, this is all a recipe for empire and for violence. And Israel does that exceedingly well, you know, this Tel Aviv is the capital of gay life, this pinkwashing, where, you know, if you’re gay or if you’re not gay, if you’re Palestinian, you’re living under apartheid. It doesn’t matter. But this is a civilizational discourse that’s embedded in these terms.

And so, being someone who grew up in Amman, you can’t really adopt this language without falling into the trap of then being seen as part of empire or part of this foreign invasion into one’s lands. And I think there’s a beautiful effort and movement among queer communities in the region to reclaim that language, to not accept it as part of that liberal discourse of the West, which is often a very violent discourse of empire, and to bring it back to a discourse of democracy and decolonization and freedom. So, I identify as a queer man today as part of a political project. It’s not just a sexual identity. It expands beyond that and rejects Zionism and rejects authoritarianism, and that’s part of my queerness.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, you said earlier that the book, it’s about silences, you know, at both — I mean, East and West, not exclusively one or the other, about Palestinian-ness in the West and about queerness in Jordan and the broader Middle East. I mean, in a way, your decision to write this as a memoir, rather than fiction, is another way in which you subvert that silence by fully assuming your voice.

TAREQ BACONI: Yes, and it was a difficult decision. That’s why I said it was either the stupidest or the bravest thing I’ve done, because it was — it was a difficult decision. I think there is literature coming out of the Middle East, certainly, fictional, but also some nonfiction, that’s engaging with questions of queerness. But for me, I always felt that I could write this as fiction. I could also write it as a pseudonym. And I think that would be a very important contribution. But I just knew that this wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to — whatever — whatever it means for me socially and politically, it was important for me to say there is space for these narratives. We’re not a monolith, and there is space for these stories. And we need to be able to hold this. If we’re talking about liberation and we’re talking about emancipation and Palestine, what is that? That’s inclusive of everything. Obviously, it’s dismantling Zionism, but it’s also dismantling the patriarchy and homophobia and other forms of social oppression. And so, it felt to me that this was something that I needed to own.

AMY GOODMAN: And before we end, toward the end of your book, you talk about your decision to go to Palestine. Describe that journey.

TAREQ BACONI: So, I grew up in Jordan, and I was never allowed to go to Palestine, because there — for Jordanian men specifically, it’s very difficult to get visas to go to Palestine. And so, I had worked on Hamas Contained as part of my doctoral thesis for years before I had ever visited Palestine. And then, when I naturalized as a U.K. citizen in 2014, that was my opportunity to go back. You know, as I joke in the book, the colonial masters of my grandparents giving me permission to go into Palestine, which is, you know, now under the settler colony of Israel. And so, it was a — that was the first trip that I did with my — that I made with my U.K. passport.

And it was incredibly powerful, because it felt like I had grown up there. I had never been, but it felt like I had grown up there, the stories of my grandparents, my parents. And it was really important for me to go to Gaza, too. I didn’t spend enough time in Gaza. I wish I had been given more permission to do that.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tell us what years, when you were there.

TAREQ BACONI: This was in 2015, 2015, so a few years after the Israeli military assault in the 2014 war. The devastation was extreme. I mean, now it seems relatively not as extreme as what we’re seeing today, but even then, it was shocking to see how the Israeli military assault sort of devastates neighborhoods in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Tareq Baconi, Palestinian analyst and writer. His memoir is just out. It’s called Fire in Every Direction, the president of the board of past — the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, author also of the book Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.

That does it for our show. Happy birthday to Emily Anderson and John Hamilton! I’ll be in St. Louis Friday night with Q&As in two movie theaters following Steal This Story, Please! Check out our website at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks for joining us.