Sara Abou Rashed:

Dear Ahmad, you’re a Palestinian in the United States, a dedicated law student, a creative as well as a critical writer who has written extensively on the Palestinian cause, international and humanitarian law, proposed political solutions and failures, and covered a range of topics relating to Palestine and beyond. What’s your sense of how Palestine is globally discussed and engaged with at the moment that might be different than how it was previously?

Ahmad Ibsais:

The difference is that now the world has run out of excuses. Before October 2023, Palestine could be treated as a “complicated political conflict requiring nuanced debate about competing narratives.” That fig leaf is gone. For two years, the world watched genocide broadcast in real time: children crushed under rubble, families burned alive in tents, doctors performing amputations without anesthesia, all livestreamed by Palestinians themselves because they knew no one would believe them otherwise. And still, it took Israeli human rights organizations issuing reports for Western institutions to suddenly discover their vocabulary for genocide. Still, Palestinian testimony required validation from the ‘right’ voices before it could be deemed credible. What’s different now is that the systems of dehumanization have been exposed. People see how the discourse was manipulated, how “40 beheaded babies” required no verification while 65,000 confirmed Palestinian corpses needed endless debate about intent. How the New York Times fact-checked a starving Palestinian child for having cerebral palsy but let their “Screams Without Words” propaganda run for 500 days. The difference is that millions of people, especially the young, now understand that ‘complexity’ was always a weapon deployed to make Palestinian death acceptable or normal. They see the pattern: occupation is rebranded as self-defense, ethnic cleansing as security concerns, genocide as a tragic but a necessary response. What terrifies power is that this awakening can’t be reversed. Once you see how easily international law is discarded when it protects Palestinians, you start questioning every other structure they told you was immutable.

SAR:

Returning to your studies and future career as a lawyer, what do you make of the failures of international law and (frankly, any law) to hold Israel accountable in the unspeakable crimes it has committed against Palestinians in the last two years but also in the seventy-seven years since its establishment? Unfortunately, we stand along many demanding justice such as Native Americans, Black Americans, and every community that’s been intentionally weakened, minoritized, genocided—yet, we had memorable moments of relief and solidarity. How are we to interpret the much-appreciated effort of South African lawyers who’ve put forth their expertise and struggle toward our own? 

AI:

International law hasn’t failed, it’s been deliberately abandoned when enforcing it would require confronting American and European complicity. The legal frameworks exist: the Geneva Conventions prohibit collective punishment and targeting civilians, the Genocide Convention obligates states to prevent and punish genocide, the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that Israel has no right to self-defense against people it occupies, UN Resolution 194 guarantees Palestinian Right of Return. The law is clear. What’s absent is the will to enforce it against a state protected by Western power. This is about selective application. When Russia invades Ukraine, sanctions materialize overnight and the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants within months. When Israel commits genocide, the United States vetoes ceasefire resolutions and bypasses Congress to rush more weapons, in fact, violating U.S. domestic law. The same institutions that prosecuted Yugoslav war criminals and established the principle of universal jurisdiction suddenly find infinite challenges when Israeli officials invoke Amalek and declare entire populations legitimate targets. South African lawyers saw it first: international law becomes meaningful only when coupled with political consequences. Their genocide case at the ICJ was legally sound, morally necessary, and practically toothless because the court has no enforcement mechanism against states that the West shields. The lesson isn’t that international law failed Palestine, it’s that law without power is just well-written fodder. What we need isn’t better legal frameworks but the political will to treat Israeli violations the way we treat violations by states that lack Western protection. Until then, international law remains what it’s always been for Palestinians: a promise the world makes and breaks simultaneously.  

SAR:

It is an unfair question to ask writers, but can and will writing change the world when little else does? As a fellow writer, I am also inclined to ask you, who is your intended audience, whether writing in English changes that especially as you often quote Arabic and translate it, and what state of mind and world affairs brings you fastest to the page? (You may also discuss pieces that were the hardest or most rewarding to write.)

AI:

I write for Palestinians first—those still breathing and those already buried. Everything else is secondary. My intended audience is anyone capable of recognizing genocide when it’s livestreamed into their living rooms, but I’m not naive about who actually listens. The people who need to hear this most are the ones most insulated from ever having to care. I write in English because that’s the colonizer’s language, and sometimes you have to speak their language to make them see what they’ve funded. The pieces that were hardest to write were the ones documenting the specific ways children died—the medical details of what a 2000-pound bomb does to a small body, how starvation consumes an infant from the inside out. I had to write them because the world kept asking for more proof, because Palestinian corpses were never enough. My piece on the Right of Return was the most rewarding because it forced me to articulate something I’ve always felt but struggled to name: that our return isn’t conditional on their permission, that our very existence is the exercise of that right. But, writing can’t stop bombs—only intervention can. All people writing on Palestine must focus on military deployment, comprehensive sanctions, and aid convoys backed by countries willing to break the siege by force if necessary. Anything less is a performance. If my writing changes anything, it’s because it refuses to let people pretend strongly worded statements or symbolic recognition matter while children starve.

SAR:

Lastly, what do you think of any effort to implement a “peace plan’’ or a “ceasefire” as circumstances continue to escalate and every agreement ends up violated? What might a liberated future for us and for all look like? 

AI:

Honestly, I am not sure how to answer this last part concisely in a way that will do it justice! Every “peace plan” and “ceasefire” Israel has ever agreed to has been a tactical pause to reload. Look at the pattern: 1949 armistice violated immediately with attacks on demilitarized zones, 1967 surprise attack despite Egypt posing no threat, 1982 ceasefire with the PLO in Lebanon violated to justify Sabra and Shatila, 2008 truce with Hamas broken to launch Cast Lead. The current ceasefire has already been violated over a hundred times in the first month, 200 Palestinians murdered, aid blocked, homes demolished, a ten-year-old executed in Al-Khalil (Hebron). Israel uses ceasefires to consolidate gains, expand settlements, and prepare the next assault while the world congratulates itself for brokering “peace.” Meanwhile, Palestinians are expected to be grateful for the brief pauses between massacres.