In the following interview with Democracy Now! – an independent and not-for-profit American TV, radio, and Internet news program – Israeli historian and author Ilan Pappé discusses the post-genocidal prospects of Palestinian statehood.
He also considers the future of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is under investigation for corruption in Israel and subject to an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
Pappé argues that despite the newly implemented Gaza ceasefire, Israeli political leaders have not changed their policy aim of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their remaining territory.
“Nothing” he says, “has changed in the dehumanisation and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country.”
Below is an edited transcript of the interview with journalist Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! dated 14th October 2025.
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Amy Goodman – This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report.
As we’ve reported, the Gaza ceasefire deal is in effect. Phase 1 of the US backed 20 point plan is underway. Hamas has released all 20 living hostages. Israel will be releasing some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Ramallah and now in Khan Yunis and Gaza.
Today, President Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset and then plans to co-chair a so-called Peace Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be among the 27 or more world leaders who will be attending. He was invited but says he is not going.
For more, we’re joined by Ilan Pappé, Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and Chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation.
Among his books are The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine published almost 20 years ago and more recently Gaza in Crisis, co-authored with Noam Chomsky. His new book is entitled Israel on the Brink and the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.
In Khan Yunis and in the West Bank, we’re watching around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being released. In the West Bank their families were told by Israeli authorities that if they dare celebrate the release of their loved ones, they might be arrested.
And we saw the release of the 20 Israeli hostages and their return to Israel.
Hamas says they are also returning dead hostages and their remains over the next few days. Israel has not said they will return dead Palestinian prisoners. It is believed there are nearly 200 in Israeli prisons.
Professor Pappé, if you could respond to these recent developments as well as the summit in Egypt.
Ilan Pappé – First of all, there is some joy in knowing that the bombing of the people in Gaza has stopped for a while. And there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families. And similarly that Israeli hostages were reunited with their families.
But apart from that, I don’t think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand. We are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in for the last two years.
That chapter is an attempt by a particularly fanatic extreme right-wing Israeli government to try and use ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza to downsize the number of Palestinians in Palestine and impose Israel’s will in a way that they hope would be at least endorsed by some Arab governments and the world.
So far they have an alliance with Trump and some extreme right-wing parties in Europe. I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with the Palestinians.
What you told us about the way that the celebrations were dealt with in the West Bank and the incineration of the sanitation centre, shows you that nothing has changed in the demonisation of Palestinians and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country.
I hope the world will not stand by because up to now it did stand by when the genocide occurred in Palestine.
Amy Goodman – We have just heard President Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset. He followed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’m not sure, but in listening to Netanyahu, I don’t think he used the word Palestinian.
President Trump has just called on the Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu.
Your thoughts on this and also the possibility of why Netanyahu has not joined this summit that President Trump will be co-chairing.
Many have speculated that he didn’t want to anger the right that’s further to the right than he is. Others have referred to the possibility of his arrest, not on corruption charges, but for crimes against humanity related to the case before the International Criminal Court.
Ilan Pappé – It could be a mixture of these. But I think at the centre of it is the nature of the Israeli government that was elected in November 2022. The alliance between a very opportunistic politician who is only interested in surviving and keeping his position as a prime minister alongside messianic neo-Zionist politicians who really believe that God has given them the opportunity to create a ‘Greater Israel’ and maybe even beyond the borders of Palestine and in the process eliminate Palestinians.
I think that his considerations are always about his chances of survival. So whatever went on in his mind, he came to the conclusion that going to Cairo was not going to help his chances of being re-elected.
My great worry is not that he didn’t go to Cairo. My greatest worry is that he does believe that his only chance of being re-elected is still to have a war going on either in Gaza, or the West Bank, or against Iran, or in the north against Lebanon.
We are dealing here with a reckless, irresponsible politician who is even willing to drown his own state in order to save his neck. The victims from this adventurous policy will always be the Palestinians.
I hope the world understands – I’m talking about world leaders rather than societies, especially in the West – that their role now is not to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians.
Their role now is to protect the Palestinians from destruction, elimination, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
We have heard nothing about that duty in the speeches so far in preparation for the summit in Egypt. And I have a feeling that we won’t hear anything about it later on.
Compared to the solidarity expressed by our civil societies, we still have this irrelevant conversation by our political elites about a peace deal, a two-state solution and all of that.
That has nothing to do with what we are experiencing. The Israeli government thinks it has an historical moment to totally de-Arabise Palestine and eliminate and expunge the Palestinians from history and their land.
Notes
A video of the interview with Ilan Pappé can be viewed here.
Robert Tait, ‘What’s in Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza?’, The Guardian, Sep 30, 2025.
BBC, ‘Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan in full’, Oct 9, 2025.