Every year, thousands of tourists travel to Tel Aviv in mid-June to take part in the annual Pride Week festivities.

For LGBTQ Palestinians living in Israel, however, the celebrations are far more complicated. Israel likes to celebrate how liberal and pluralistic it is while covering up — or “pinkwashing” — its human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, says our guest on this episode, journalist Zizo Abul Hawa.

Caught between wanting to celebrate their gender identities and stand up for Palestinian rights, Pride Week brings into focus the balancing act that queer Palestinians often face.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Every year for over two decades, thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel have marked Nakba Day by marching to the site of a different village that was depopulated and destroyed during the Nakba.

While the story of Palestinian refugees — 700,000 of whom were driven out or fled in 1948 — is relatively well known, we rarely speak of those who were internally displaced during the war. They remained in what became Israel but were never allowed to return to their homes.

This year, the Return March marking Nakba Day was held in one such village, Khubbeiza. +972 Magazine's Henriette Chacar went to the march to hear from participants of various ages what it means to them.

See photos from this year's return march.

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The theme music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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In early April, Sudanese armed forces deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity after nearly three decades of rule.

The Sudanese refugee community in Israel celebrated al-Bashir’s fall, which came after months of protests across Sudan. Along with the excitement of regime change, however, there’s concern that those who deposed al-Bashir are the same generals who committed genocide in his name.

In this episode, our guest Mutasim Ali, a refugee from Darfur and one of the leaders of the Sudanese refugee community in Israel, talks about witnessing a revolution in exile, being a refugee in Israel, and his dreams of returning home.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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A week after Netanyahu easily won another election, things don’t look all that different in Israel-Palestine. But one thing has changed: Everyone who told themselves Israel was seeking a two-state solution all this time now has some difficult and painful questions to face.

Our guest this week, +972 Magazine co-founder and contributing editor Lisa Goldman, doesn’t think most people have the courage to look that reality in the eyes.

“They're going to come up against a pretty thick wall pretty soon. How can we be a democracy if half the people living permanently under Israeli control can't vote? That's going to be pretty difficult to explain to the outside world.”

In this week’s episode, we debrief after the elections and discuss both their short and long-term consequences.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Israeli elections are right around the corner. But for a country that controls millions of non-citizens, the concept of democracy becomes muddled.

In this episode, +972 Magazine writer Noam Sheizaf explains why, as opposed to the one- or two-state paradigm most of the world thinks in, Israelis consistently vote for a third option: maintaining the occupation just as it is.

"Netanyahu and the right have been saying to Israelis that, not only is the status quo is significantly better than the one-state or two-state solution, but some of the things that people said you can only achieve through a peace deal, can [actually] be achieved within the status quo."

In the second half, former +972 writer Omar Rahman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, talks about what it means for Palestinians to have no say in elections that in many ways could determine their national fate, in addition to their daily lives.

"When we're looking at Israeli elections, whether it's the left or the center or the right or the far-right that's elected, that has a tremendous impact on the daily lives of Palestinians and they don't have any say over that. So there's a deep uneasiness over what's coming, which you have no control over."

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Two rockets fired toward Tel Aviv from Gaza were described, by both Israel and Hamas, as "mistakes" in recent weeks. Tareq Baconi, of the International Crisis Group, joins The +972 Podcast to talk about why that's probably not the whole truth (14:00), how the Great March of Return (8:40) and Israeli elections come into play (15:30), and the consequences we're starting to see from the Trump administration's change in approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (24:50).

"I personally don't believe the story that the two rockets were fired by mistake. This narrative allows both Hamas to claim that it is still is abiding by its policy of not firing rockets, and giving Israel the leeway to not respond in force or through a major escalation. It's basically a fig leaf that allows both parties to to pretend that they're still interested in averting an escalation, but also reminding the other that they could if the cease fire doesn't hold."

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Decades after the first Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel, the community still suffers from high poverty, discrimination, and recent police shootings have brought on mass protests. Mazal Bisawer, a prominent activist, says Israelis can't seem to admit that anti-black racism exists in their society.

Later in the episode, editor-in-chief Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man discusses the Supreme Court's recent decision to disqualify a Jewish supremacist candidate from running in Israeli elections, and why nobody should be celebrating quite yet.

• Read Edo Konrad's full article: 'To be Ethiopian in Israel is to be constantly struggling for something'
• Read Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man's article: These elections are a choice between resignation and despair

The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli rule don't get to vote in the upcoming Israeli elections — but some other Palestinians can. Rejecting calls to boycott the elections, Palestinian Member of Knesset Aida Touma-Sliman says that when things get hard you're supposed to fight harder, not run away.

In the first episode of The +972 Podcast, we speak with MK Touma-Sliman about the Palestinian struggle for equality as an oppressed and persecuted minority in Israel.

Later in the episode, +972 co-founder Noam Sheizaf discusses the political re-alignment taking place in Israel, the anyone-but-Netanyahu platform of his sole challengers, and why Kahanists in the Knesset is such a scary proposition.

The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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