Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The traditional peace-building playbook says, start with empathy, build dialogue, find common ground. But after four decades spent living and working inside conflict zones, mediator and political strategist Hiba Kassas thinks we're getting it wrong.
So why does peace break down when we do everything we think we're supposed to do? The answer I kept coming back to was not ideology. It was power, politics and incentives. And for the broader public, it was legitimacy and trust. Without these, a peace agreement becomes a lid on a boiling pot. It looks calm until the pressure finds the weakest point, then it erupts.
Chapter 2: What traditional methods of peacebuilding are often used?
In this talk, Hiba, who is the founder of the Principles for Peace Foundation, makes the case that the traditional playbook mistakes process for progress, building elaborate systems that look good on paper but lack the legitimacy to actually hold. She introduces a framework for peacemaking that starts where most people wouldn't expect, self-interest.
It's an approach that has brought hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian leaders into an active coalition, working together even in the midst of war. And stick around after her talk.
I sat down with Hibba to go beyond the ideas she shared on stage, including what finally pulled her back to her own conflict, why she believes war has become a reflex rather than a last resort, and what the rest of us can actually do about it.
And I think we've seen a trend where war and violence is becoming more and more the choice. We're living in one of the least peaceful moments in modern history. We have the largest number of conflicts since World War II.
Chapter 3: Why does Hiba Qasas believe peacebuilding efforts often fail?
Her talk and our conversation are coming up right after a short break. And now, our TED Talk and conversation of the day.
I have spent the last four decades in the reality of conflict. As a child, as a mother, and as a professional. And I'm not the exception. One in four people today are living the reality of conflict. We are living in an era where war and violence are becoming the reflex, the choice, not the last resort.
What we've been witnessing with Iran is just the most visible example, because it's been sending shockwaves well beyond its borders in energy prices, in trade routes disruption, and in political polarization. And sadly, even when wars end and when agreements are signed, violence often returns within five years. Over the course of my international career with the United Nations,
I noticed something that should not be controversial, but still is. We have overly bureaucratized peace. We've built an entire industry around it, with a familiar Western liberal model and a familiar toolbox. Bring in the peace builders and mediators, launch dialogues, push for elections, train the police, launch stabilization programs.
add grassroots women, maybe sprinkle some youth so you can take an inclusion box, write reports, and repeat. And don't get me wrong, this work is important. But too often, we mistake process for progress.
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Chapter 4: What role do power and politics play in peace negotiations?
And too often, we do not build enough political legitimacy, enough aligned self-interest, enough public backing to make peace hold. We have seen the limitations of this. In the Middle East, tens of millions of people are living the unfinished business of wars, of failed political settlements, of occupation. Or take Afghanistan.
Twenty years of vast intervention and investment, and the story ended exactly where it began. Taliban to Taliban. So why does peace break down when we do everything we think we're supposed to do? The answer I kept coming back to was not ideology. It was power, politics and incentives. And for the broader public, it was legitimacy and trust.
And legitimacy is a felt experience in good governance, whether you trust your police force, whether your children can walk to school safely, whether your dignity is preserved. Without these, a peace agreement becomes a lid on a boiling pot. It looks calm until the pressure finds the weakest point, then it erupts.
I kept seeing this again and again and again, so I got fed up with the bureaucracy, with the system, with its toolbox. And I founded Principles for Peace Foundation. to help those in the hot seat, to help peacemakers build more legitimate and durable peace.
We drew on lessons from dozens of countries to understand what lies beneath the success and failure of peace processes and develop principles and tools and methodologies and data and simulations and AI support and political dialogue infrastructures to help those who are trying to make peace hold. Because this is the challenge of our time.
How do you build peace, how do you cultivate legitimacy in a world where might is right again, where power politics is back and transactionalism is in fashion? My answer is not by countering power with idealism, but with principled pragmatism, because principled pragmatism is self-interest with a spine. I recently became a proud Swiss, but I was born and raised a proud Palestinian.
So people often expect me to start with victimhood, to start with moral argument, to start with pain. My pain, their pain, everybody's pain. But I learned something early that I wish was not true. When identities are shaped by loss, by violence, by victimhood, othering becomes normal. Dehumanizing the other side becomes reflex. Groupthink becomes shelter. And violence becomes currency.
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Chapter 5: How can self-interest be a starting point for peace?
Empathy for the other side is rarely the entry point. When I was 19, I was invited to the kind of dialogue program the world loves to celebrate. It's a perfect grassroots project.
You bring in a few young Israeli and Palestinians, you put them somewhere nice, maybe in a retreat location in Europe, you encourage us to pour our hearts out, you encourage sharing, you encourage empathy, you encourage hugs, and you bring out that hummus. And I hated it. Not because I do not believe in empathy, and by the way, I love hummus.
But because when I went home, the reality stayed hard, complicated, unsafe, and I couldn't do anything about it. And a few months later, the second intifada started, and those we were sharing with were back in uniforms, fighting in our own towns. I lost friends. My house was destroyed. And I lost hope. And for nearly two decades, I dedicated my career to working with people affected by conflict
but I avoided working on my own. It was just too painful. Then October 7th happened, and the war in Gaza expanded, and I realized if I truly believe in my work, I have to bring in Israelis and Palestinians to the hardest room in my life. So that's what I did. Come into that room with me. It's weeks after October 7th. The war is raging, Loss and trauma are overwhelming.
The door closes and 76 people sit down, carrying decades of grievances and recent loss. No one trusts anyone. Not the room, not the process, not each other, not me. They're Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but they're not the usual suspects. They're security leaders, business leaders, investors, political figures, journalists, serious operators.
And outside that room, the public narrative is collapsing so fast, it's so hard, it's so polarized. In a room like that, if you start with the word peace, you get laughed out of the building. So I named the tension plainly because anything softer would be dishonest. We are here out of urgency and responsibility for our own people.
because the status quo neither delivered security to the Israelis nor dignity or an end to the occupation to the Palestinians. And we are at an inflection point. We either break the cycle or condemn both our people to a perpetual state of loss, of trauma, of insecurity, of occupation. We agreed not to dwell on our national and historical narrative.
There is no common ground to be found in the past. Instead, we focus on what you cannot afford to lose. Security, dignity, the future you want for your children. Because you see, common ground does not begin with moral agreement. It begins with self-interest. Everything else comes later.
So let me tell you what we've done differently, because this is where the old peacemaking toolbox often misfires. We did not organize this around the grassroots but the grass tops, not the convinced but the persuadable, people with influence on power, on politics, on the economy. People who know that the status quo is not sustainable, but they can do something about it.
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