Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
In this week’s Middle East Forum podcast, Lauri Regan hosts Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib for an unflinching look at whether Gaza’s ceasefire can last – or if war is destined to return. Alkhatib, a Gaza-born analyst and Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, draws on his own family’s experience under bombardment and displacement, as well as his on-the-ground network, to explain how Hamas has quietly re-established control over much of the Strip despite the devastating war.
He describes how Hamas has turned major hospitals into de-facto headquarters, rebuilt its security and economic ministries inside medical facilities, and revived its taxation and protection rackets on aid and commercial goods. Alkhatib walks through the daily intimidation facing activists and NGOs, and why so many ordinary Gazans—though radicalized by years of conflict—still bitterly oppose Hamas’s rule and blame it for their current catastrophe.
The discussion then turns to the collapsed vision of an International Stabilization Force, Arab and Muslim states’ refusal to fight Hamas, and Alkhatib’s controversial proposal for a limited strike force of private military contractors to break Hamas’s military grip before any peacekeeping mission or local security force can succeed. He also assesses the roles of Qatar and Turkey, the sidelining of Tony Blair’s Gaza transition plan, and the funding vacuum that keeps Hamas entrenched.
A candid and sobering conversation with a Gaza native who argues that unless policymakers exploit the current resentment toward Hamas and create a real alternative, the ceasefire will merely be an intermission before the next, even more dangerous round of war.
In this week’s Middle East Forum podcast, Lauri Regan hosts Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib for an unflinching look at whether Gaza’s ceasefire can last – or if war is destined to return. Alkhatib, a Gaza-born analyst and Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, draws on his own family’s experience under bombardment and displacement, as well as his on-the-ground network, to explain how Hamas has quietly re-established control over much of the Strip despite the devastating war.
He describes how Hamas has turned major hospitals into de-facto headquarters, rebuilt its security and economic ministries inside medical facilities, and revived its taxation and protection rackets on aid and commercial goods. Alkhatib walks through the daily intimidation facing activists and NGOs, and why so many ordinary Gazans—though radicalized by years of conflict—still bitterly oppose Hamas’s rule and blame it for their current catastrophe.
The discussion then turns to the collapsed vision of an International Stabilization Force, Arab and Muslim states’ refusal to fight Hamas, and Alkhatib’s controversial proposal for a limited strike force of private military contractors to break Hamas’s military grip before any peacekeeping mission or local security force can succeed. He also assesses the roles of Qatar and Turkey, the sidelining of Tony Blair’s Gaza transition plan, and the funding vacuum that keeps Hamas entrenched.
A candid and sobering conversation with a Gaza native who argues that unless policymakers exploit the current resentment toward Hamas and create a real alternative, the ceasefire will merely be an intermission before the next, even more dangerous round of war.
