The following is a transcript of Episode 95 of the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Donniel: Hi, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is For Heaven’s Sake — Israel at War — Day 44. And our theme for today is the mood, the mood in the country. Now, I don’t know how you feel, Yossi, but moods change on an hourly basis. And it’s really hard to talk about the mood.

And part of the challenge of this war, it’s not a six-day war, even the Yom Kippur War was a three-week war. We’re now in day 44 and we know we’re going to be in day 88 and day 100. And in the midst of a lengthy war and engagement, moods shift and change. 

But I want to talk about today. And every one of us, you know, our moods change on an ongoing basis. Just this morning I heard that the brother of one of the graduates of our girls’ school was one of the six soldiers who were killed on Shabbat, Shahar Friedman, Zichronah L’bracha. And you just walk, everybody knows everybody, so things change on an just on an ongoing basis. It’s just this emotional roller coaster.

But I want us to talk today about a larger mood, not about my mood and not about your mood, but about the country’s mood. And there was a very interesting survey that is dominating the news, which goes as follows. What do you want to be in Gaza the day after? Which is interesting, because in a long war, people have the luxury or are forced to think not only about today, but also about tomorrow. 32% said that they want Israel to stay in Gaza and renew the Jewish settlements in Gaza. Just listen to that for a moment. We’ll analyze that.

At the same time, 30% want Israel completely out of Gaza and an international military control force. Statistically, the same. 14% want Israeli military control. 10% want to turn Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. 

Now, just to frame our conversation for a moment, we got used to a new consensus, a new unity in Israeli society. Not the whole society, but from a country that was deeply bifurcated around the issue of the reform, a center emerged. 70%, who were against the reform and were committed to issues of liberal democracy and liberal Judaism. Huge percentages at the time were for changing the government. Now if there’s any consensus also in the 70-80%, we need new elections, we don’t want this government to continue, certainly not Netanyahu. So there is a consensus.

There’s also a unity around the purpose of the war. Everybody believes in the justice of the war and in pursuing it and removing Hamas from our borders and the danger that it implies and that it contains. And now all of a sudden we’re split again. 50-50.

I want us to talk about the split. I also want to talk about what does this mean? What is 32% of the country wanting to renew settlements in Gaza? Is that real? Where is it coming from? Yossi, how do you read this moment?

Yossi: The only way to try to unpack that poll is by looking at the emotional context, which is what October 7th did to the Israeli psyche. October 7th upended the foundational ethos of Israel, which is that the Jewish people would be able to defend itself and its land, that Israelis could move to border areas, whether in the north or the south, and the government, the army would protect them. That was the assumption from the very beginning of Zionism, for that matter. 

And October 7th destroyed the most basic trust that we have in the contract with the government, with ourselves. And so there’s tremendous fear, first of all. And Israelis are desperate. And when I hear this poll, maybe we’ll renew our security by rebuilding settlements in Gaza. It’s not serious. People forget. They think it was the left that withdrew from Gaza. They don’t remember that it was Ariel Sharon, who was the head of the Likud, who built the settlements in Gaza, and who came to the conclusion that they were actually impeding Israeli security.

And Netanyahu himself, who now claims to be retroactively opposed to the withdrawal, and even at one point claimed that he didn’t vote for it, he voted four or five times for every stage of the withdrawal from Gaza. So this is a fantasy. 

I think there’s also something at play here, Donniel, which is a tremendous anger at the world for not giving Israel the credit for having left Gaza. What are we hearing now? We’re hearing, oh, Israel, you’re reoccupying Gaza. Israelis say, well, wait a minute, all these years when we left Gaza, you were saying we were still occupying, and now we’re occupying what we’ve already occupied?

And so there’s this tremendous sense of hurt and outrage at how Israel was never given credit for the enormous sacrifices that we’ve made, dragging 8,000 Israelis out of their homes, creating this profound bitterness in Israeli society. And now here we are back again in Gaza. So I think that these are the two, for me, these are the two emotional frames for understanding this poll and more broadly, understanding where the Israeli mood is at.

Donniel: I appreciate the two emotional pulls of anger and hurt. But if you have, if I think there is anger, I think the anger which is revealed in this poll is anger towards the Palestinians or at least anger towards Gazans. How much of a spread it has we have to, you know, and an impact it has, on all Palestinians, we’re gonna have to see. 

But there is this basic sense that after October 7th, your needs, your interests just don’t count anymore. And when we say we’re going to 32% want we want to move back to Gaza, nobody wants to really move back. Even the right, no right-wing politician of credibility. By that I mean outside of the right-wing section of the religious Zionist community, even Bennett.

Yossi: Yeah, that’s… yeah, right. But there is a constituency, you know, Smotrich and Ben Gvir represent that constituency.

Donniel: Right, so that small constituency, which is maybe 5%, who look at the separation which of from Gaza in 2005 as a great original sin of Israeli society. But the vast majority we want to move back, they’re not there. It’s, you lost your claim on us in any way.

And when we look at that mood and we look at the need to heal and as we move forward, how does Israeli society begin to see Palestinians again, it’s a major question. The 30% who want international control are also, we just don’t want anything to do with you anymore. 

It’s just, one says we don’t see you and therefore, we’re going to reclaim, like you don’t make any moral claims on us. And the other is the old separation fantasy that we don’t have to take responsibility for Gaza. The international community, we’re going to get rid of Hamas, but it’s not on us. And both of them are mirror images of each other, and they both present a serious challenge to Israeli society as we move forward.

Yossi: Yeah, I think that you touched on something really important here, Donniel, which is the return of the longing, or as you put it, the fantasy, of separation. And this really brings us back to the 1990s, to the debate within the left, about what is the purpose of the Oslo process? Why are we negotiating with the Palestinians? 

Shimon Peres had one vision, which was peace, a new Middle East. And Yitzhak Rabin had a very different vision, which was, we’re not making peace with the Palestinians. There’s not going to be peace with them. We are separating. And his vision of a peace process was a non-peace separation. And what I think might be coming back and what we’re seeing reflected in that poll, I think you’re right, is the return of the longing for separation. 

Now that can play out in all kinds of ways. It might be the one way to get Israelis to start thinking about the possibility after this war of some movement in the West Bank. And again, I don’t wanna call it a peace process, it’s not going to be that. Some separation process. 

There are several problems with separation. One is that October 7th has made clear to almost every Israeli Jew that there is no way that we can entirely separate from the West Bank in terms of security. What the Palestinians lost on October 7th was any chance of a sovereign state without massive Israeli security presence. That’s not going to happen anymore. That’s finished. And I don’t think Palestinians understand the historic loss, the consequences of October 7th. 

But I do think there really is a possibility of renewing, and again, we’re really talking about post-post-war, but renewing the Rabin approach to the West Bank, which could bring us to a different place which seems inconceivable now, but I think that the Shimon Peres dream is dead, and Rabin’s moment might be coming. 

Donniel: You know, it’s really interesting because I find myself in a completely different place. And I find myself very alone because in Israel there’s almost nobody I could talk to about this. When I speak to North American Jews or when I listen to Biden and other political leaders, I hear echoes of what I’m feeling, but here in Israel, post-October 7th, I think you’re absolutely right. 

See, because for me, if October 7th proved anything, it’s that separation doesn’t work. The notion that you could just separate and let a people live in a non-viable reality, or viable but barely viable. Not dealing with them, their educational systems, their hatred, their animosity, their desire to destroy you. Separation basically says, Palestinians, you take care of yourself and we’re going to take care of ourselves. The Peres Dream said that if this space is too small, we have to see each other, we have to take account for each other.

So when the Palestinian Authority, to this very day, 44 days after, still doesn’t condemn October 7th, when they’re still funding and giving a huge financial bonanza to anybody who kills a Jew, when their educational systems are still demonizing Jews, that’s separation. That’s the product not just of moral depravity, it’s the product of a psyche of separation because they’re separating in the same way. It’s like here, I’m saying, I don’t care about it. Here it is, I have my own inner conversation. October 7th is telling us that that’s just doesn’t work. 

Now the problem is, is October 7th also gives you very little confidence to believe that something new could happen because you’re encountering this evil. You see it in a way that you didn’t want to see beforehand, because separation doesn’t require of you to see it carefully. It’s just, I don’t need to worry about your psyche. I don’t have to think about you. October 7th, all of us, hi, me, Donniel Hartman on the center-left, just shut up, Donniel, about the possibilities of rapprochement. What are you talking about? Talk about it. Talk about curriculum. Yes, you can’t ignore anything anymore saying it doesn’t matter. 

But at the same time, we have to now try to create a different conversation because it’s the separation, Yossi, the Rabin separation is not going to work. October 7th has proven that if the other side is festering in evil and we just think we’re going to stay behind some wall or now it won’t even be a wall, it’ll be some international force. Really? That’s going to give you security?

Yossi: The only hope that I have of a different scenario is, and I have no hope whatsoever of reaching a rapprochement with this generation of the Palestinian National Movement in any of its factions. All the Palestinian factions tacitly or openly supported, celebrated October 7th. And there has never been an acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy, of the indigenousness of the Jewish people, of our right to part of this land on any part of the Palestinian national movement. 

But what does give me a sliver of hope is the renewal of the regional peace agreement that began with the Abraham Accords and that has been drawing in the Saudis. And I’m not speaking about a rapprochement with the Saudis in a past tense, because if you’re paying attention to what the Saudis are saying, and the Saudi crown prince said the other day that he called for a ceasefire and he also called for a release of the hostages. He was the only Arab leader, as far as I’ve heard, who did that. Now he’s signaling to us that the Saudis are still in the game. Why is this important for the future?

The only way we can try to solve the Palestinian tragedy is within the larger context of a regional agreement. This is a conflict, Donniel, that’s not, it’s not Israel against Hamas. It isn’t even Israel and the Palestinians. It’s Israel and the region. And when we Israelis experience this conflict, we have a kind of a split screen in our head.

One side of the screen is Israel and the Palestinians, and we are Goliath and they’re David. The other side of the screen is Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds. And the balance of power looks very different on that side of the screen. And so in order to get Israelis to begin to feel that we have a stake in the kind of peace you’re talking about, you have to address this profound insecurity, which comes out of 75 years of being alone in a hostile region. 

And that, and so the hope that I have is the resumption of the Abraham Accords dynamic and eventually bringing some form of Palestinian representation into that process. It’s not going to happen right away. 

But you know, I was listening to the Biden plan for Gaza, and he wants an international force there. And I thought, no, I want a joint Israeli-Arab force in Gaza. I want the Gulf states and Egypt and Jordan and the Saudis with the IDF in Gaza. And I want a joint plan involving Israel and the Arab countries for rebuilding Gaza. That would mean taking shared responsibility for Gaza, for the Palestinian future, and acknowledging that none of us are going away. You know, the morning after, we’re all going to wake up into the same ruins. And this, for me, is the way forward.

Donniel: You know, I’ve said this many times, I always look for the hope. I always look for what’s potentially possible. And there is no doubt that in the past, the game changer was the Saudis. But today the game changer is also October 7th, not just October 7th. It’s now 44 days and 88 and soon to be 88 days of war.

The Palestinians, if Hamas was successful in any way, it was bringing the plight of Palestinians to the center of world attention. And recognizing that just as Israelis didn’t think about the Palestinians, nobody thought about the Palestinians. That’s the truth. Nobody thought about them. 

Now, not because of some great moral enlightenment, but because this conflict is bringing us on the verge of a global conflict, people realize that you can’t ignore this anymore. And global interests, not moral enlightenment, are going to be at play. And that’s going to push people to say, listen, you can’t keep the status quo. The status quo of October 6th is dead. 

The question is, to what extent Israelis are going to be able to hear, we’re not just doing world politics here, how are Israelis going to be able to hear that the world has shifted? And our old language of separation, it’s not on me. I’m not invested, doesn’t matter. Or the idea that you could separate Gaza from Judea and Samaria? That’s just not going to play anymore. And how are, forget Israeli politicians, Israeli society, going to get over the trauma of October 7th to be able to even engage in this conversation?

I think the Saudis will help Israelis. Help us feel, to use your language, less alone. But I think we’re going to have to start psychologically for Israelis with some measure of separation. But it can’t be a complete separation. It’s going to have to be a separation with an investment in a different future. And it’s going to be a long and difficult process. 

But this poll is, for us educators, has to be a warning light, because it’s very easy to go back to October 6th. What’s even scarier is that some people are going back to 2005. You know, this, you know, they speak about the Messianic era is always, idealizes some mythic moment in the past. Your dream of the future is to go back to some Garden of Eden where everything was fine. 

Yes, let’s go back to Gaza and Jewish settlements, and then we were secure. No one was massacring us. But we left because we didn’t want our soldiers dying there. The reality of…

Yossi: And because it was unsustainable to hold 8,000 Israelis in the middle of nearly 2 million Palestinians. It was a fantasy.

Donniel: The whole thing. But in many ways, our approach to Judea and Samaria is also a fantasy. You know, even our language, you know, now in Israel you have to use the word Judea and Samaria. Like, we’re using our own language. The world calls it the West Bank. We’re speaking our own private language, which is also, you know, okay, that’s our biblical terms. Knock yourself out. 

But in realpolitik, yeah, okay, so I’ll use the words. But it’s not, they’re not nothing. They symbolize something in which we are talking to ourselves and I think afterwards we’re not gonna be able to talk to ourselves. But the bigger, deeper hurt, anger, saying, I wanna go back to live in Gaza, we’re gonna have to as educators within Israeli society, deal with that no less than we have to deal with the fact that some Israelis just want to go on with their lives and separate.

Last thoughts, Yossi?

Yossi: I think the mood here is even more complicated than we’ve laid out, because if you look at the polls, what you see is that we’re simultaneously turning right and moving toward the center. Emotionally, we’re turning toward the right, but there’s this longing in Israeli society after this terrible year of divisiveness and then culminating in the massacre and now the war, we’re longing for some stability for some internal healing. 

Now, I don’t know how that’s going to play out in terms of our relationship to the Palestinians because the instinct for healing is entirely inward-directed. But at some point, it could be creating the ground for a more reasoned Israeli conversation to reopen some of what we’ve neglected until now. 

And so, look, right now, truthfully, Donniel, we’re both pulling at straws. And that’s the real mood in this country, is that even people like us who are committed to Israel’s place in the region, to reconciliation with the Palestinians, really don’t know what to think anymore. But one can see possibilities even if it’s really vague and feels so elusive that it’s almost embarrassing to speak about it today, in light of October 7th. That’s the truth.

Donniel: You know, if this poll means anything, when I see 32% saying they want to renew settlements, or 30% saying, just give it over to international force, we don’t want to be involved, if it says anything, it says that Israelis really aren’t ready for tomorrow. They really aren’t. And that, they’re grasping, you said, at straws. We all are. They’re confused, they’re angry, they’re frightened. The mood is very volatile and this poll will change. But at this moment, it’s an important window into the effect of October 7th, the after-effect.

This is For Heaven’s Sake — Israel at War — Day 44. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what’s unfolding right now, sign up to our newsletter in the show notes or visit shalomhartman.org/israelatwar.