“We could be the best neighbors. We could be a superpower together.”
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum was born 50 years ago in London on Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year. About a week later, on October 6, Egypt and Syria joined forces to lead a surprise attack on Israel in what became known as the Yom Kippur War. By the time the war ended almost three weeks later, more than 2,600 Israelis had died, almost all soldiers, with many more casualties on the other side.
Hassan-Nahoum reflected on the conflict in an opinion piece for The Jerusalem Post last month, noting how far Israel-Arab relations had come. Now Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, and the first Israeli official to visit the United Arab Emirates after the Abraham Accords Declaration was signed in 2020, Hassan-Nahoum predicted the “dawn of a new era of Muslim-Jewish relations.”
Less than two weeks later, Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israelis that killed more than 1,300 Israeli citizens, leading to a full-scale war in which some 1,800 people in Gaza have also died, according to authorities.
“Now, we’re facing something worse than the Yom Kippur war,” says Hassan-Nahoum. Along with being “the worst-ever attack on civilians in the history of the state of Israel,” she argues that fundamentalist extremist groups like Hamas have created a “civilizational clash” that puts other countries at risk.
“This is bigger than us so you have to bear with us until we actually get the job done and stop pressurizing Israel to stop and leave the job halfway because it’s going to come back.”
What gives her hope, she says, is a new generation of Palestinian peace activists who “understand that we are not their enemy.”
As she puts it: “We could be the best neighbors. We could be a superpower together.”
But first, she says, Israel needs to “take a much more holistic approach to the Palestinian problem and not keep putting a Band-Aid on the wound.”
For more on Hassan-Nahoum’s views on that and other issues, from the impact of Donald Trump’s comments to the prospects for further regional ties, click on the interview above.
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