A project at the Atlantic Council is working to change the narrative around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was started in February 2025 by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gazan-American and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the director of the project, Realign for Palestine.
Alkhatib was in Springfield this week to speak on the project at Missouri State University at the invitation of the political science department.
The Gaza City native came to the United States in 2005 at age 15 as an exchange student through the U.S. State Department. He spent a year with a host family in California, attending high school and learning about America, with the goal of helping to build cultural bridges once he returned home. But when he tried to return to the Gaza Strip where he and his family lived, he ran into obstacles.
"In 2006, I was at the age of 16. Hamas, the organization that was in control of Gaza then, had risen to power through elections, and there was a mini brewing civil war," he said. "They also abducted Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier, in June of 2006. And so, I was about to cross into Gaza, the Egyptian borders. But when that happened, I couldn't, unfortunately, because of a mini war that erupted after Hamas's attack on the Israeli side of the border. And so, I was stuck in Egypt for several months."
With the help of his host family as well as other friends and allies in the United States, he was able to return here three months later, finish high school and pursue political asylum status. The day of his interview, June 14, 2007, was the day that Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip. He’s since become an American citizen.
Alkhatib has been impacted in a few ways by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When he was only 11, he lost the ability to hear in his left ear during an Israeli attack, which killed two of his friends.
"I was walking home from school, and my friends and I took a very common route, and they just happened to be walking slow," he said. "And so, I started walking faster, and just a few minutes later, there was an airstrike targeting a Palestinian Authority police center. I went back knowing that they had just been there and then there was a follow-on airstrike, and the concussive wave from the blast hit me in a particular angle that caused what you would call nowadays — it's a traumatic brain injury, if you will."
He also lost more than 34 immediate and extended family members to Israeli airstrikes during the recent war. Both of his childhood homes were destroyed.
He said there are many challenges ahead for the people of Gaza.
"You have challenges Israeli decision-making, from Hamas, which is a violent terrorist organization that is also harming the Palestinian people, that is also undermining the prospects for recovery, for healing, for aid distribution in an equitable fashion," he said. "And so, beyond just aid, beyond — which is inadequate — beyond just the devastation, which is everywhere in terms of the housing stock, in terms of the infrastructure and the roads, in terms of the basic services like the water and sewage and sanitation and electricity. You also have just the psychological toll that two years of war have had on people."
Alkhatib hopes his project, Realign for Palestine, will eventually lead to real change for the region. It’s aimed at “challenging violent extremism, divisive narratives, and hatred by elevating common-sense approaches through policy and action,” according to the project’s website.
He said, while the project calls for advocacy, it needs to be done in certain ways for change to happen.
"Unfortunately, we've seen the rise of what I believe are deeply unhelpful voices that think they're being helpful, think they're advocating for the Palestinian people under the banner of being pro-Palestine," said Alkhatib. "But some of those voices have pushed away prospective allies, including Jewish-Israeli allies, including just random allies. You know, messages that are anti-American and anti-Western are not helpful. That is not what this is about. This is about the Palestinian people's right to freedom, independence, safety, self-determination. This is not about attacking Israel or Israelis. This is not about eliminating the Jewish people's right to live in safety and security in Israel. I think the Palestinian people and Israelis have an interconnected future and trajectory, and any attempt to distract from that is going to be deeply unhelpful. So, there's another angle where people can participate in advocacy and activism that brings people together around a common stated goal, which is two nations, two peoples living in safety and dignity."
Alkhatib is calling for radical pragmatism, which is the philosophy of Realign for Palestine. He said he’s advocating for a realignment of our actions, our speech, our thoughts and our words "to adopt radical pragmatism as a framework that pursues what is possible, what is feasible, what is achievable, that rejects violence," he said. "Violence not only is immoral, but it has been stunningly ineffective for the Palestinian people over the past 77 years."
He said he embraces the two-state solution where there are nations — one for Palestinians and one for Jewish Israelis — where each can express its unique national identity, the ethos of Realign Palestine. But first he feels that there needs to be normalization of "the idea that neither Palestinians nor Jewish-Israelis are going anywhere." Re-shaping the narrative along with radically pragmatic policy, he believes, can achieve that.
Alkhatib said most Gazans reject Hamas and are ready for a different future.
Melanie Robbins, deputy director at Realign Palestine, said it's important not to forget the voices of the people who are living under oppressive, violent regimes, such as those in Gaza and in Iran.
"We have to kind of realign our own thinking here in the West to be sure that we're really amplifying and centering these voices that are experiencing these actual experiences," she said, "and then to really help build policy and advocacy and a narrative that...effectuates these people's needs into policy as the United States."
The U.S. needs to look at how it can support Gazans "being able to move out of the resistance narrative towards a nation building narrative so that we can get to that place of co-existence," said Robbins.
Alkhatib said that when he began work on Realign Palestine, he wanted to build a space that could attract like-minded Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as well as allies from the Jewish and Israeli community. But he said he’s especially focusing on Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims whose voices have been drowned out by radicals who support Hamas and violence against the Jewish people.
"This is a serious push to normalize a new discourse that can actually achieve something on the policy and on the narrative side."
