Daniel Levy, President of the U.S./Middle East Project, discusses the long-lasting implications of Israel's 2005 Gaza withdrawal and its role in the current humanitarian crisis. He argues that Israel's approach has shifted from apartheid to outright genocidal policies. The conversation also touches on the political impact of recent Israeli actions in Qatar, the dynamics of U.S. support for Israel, and the internal divisions in Israeli politics. Levy emphasizes the resilience of Palestinians amid escalating violence and the changing landscape of American attitudes toward Israel.
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insights INSIGHT
Disengagement Paved A Path To Extreme Policies
Daniel Levy argues the 2005 Gaza disengagement shaped Israeli policy toward annihilation rather than separation.
He links Sharon's rhetoric and subsequent blockade to a political trajectory culminating in today's genocidal measures.
insights INSIGHT
Blockade Calculations Enabled Starvation
Israel documented the minimal caloric intake to keep Gazans barely above starvation during the blockade.
Levy says that knowledge made the step to inducing famine and mass starvation a short and deliberate one.
insights INSIGHT
Political Shift: Apartheid To Genocide Choice
Levy rejects determinism but says Israel shifted from apartheid toward choices between apartheid or genocide.
He blames the national religious right's narrative dominance and institutional placements for enabling that shift.
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In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Daniel Levy, President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP). They discuss Levy's argument that the way that Israel withdrew Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005 set the stage for today's genocide; as Levy put it in a recent +972 Magazine piece, the current Israeli paradigm is "not just separating from the Palestinians, relegated to shrinking Bantustans, but annihilating and erasing them." Moor and Levy also discuss the impact of Israel's attacks in Qatar this week both in the near and longterm, the need for Netanyahu to formally deny Israeli involvement in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and shifting political approaches to Israel/Palestine.
Daniel Levy is the President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), which emphasizes the Palestine-Israel issue alongside regional conflicts, trends and geopolitics. From 2012 to 2016, Levy was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that he was a senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s Middle East Taskforce in Washington D.C. and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation in New York. Levy was a Senior Advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and to Justice Minister Yossi Beilin during the Government of Ehud Barak (1999-2001). He was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Israel/Palestine peace talks at Taba under Barak and at Oslo B under Yitzhak Rabin (1994-95). Levy is a founder and Advisory Board member of Diaspora Alliance (combatting antisemitism and its conflation), a Council Member of the ECFR, and serves on the board of the European Middle East Project. He is a former Trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York and of the New Israel Fund, a co-founder of J Street, and a founding Editor of the Middle East Channel at foreignpolicy.com.
Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a 2025 Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University.
Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.
Occupied Thoughts 
