Judea and Samaria: The Conversation Israel Isn’t Having Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Daniel: Hi, I’m Daniel Goodman, producer of For Heaven’s Sake. We’re bringing you a special episode while Donniel and Yossi are away this week. It’s a conversation we live-streamed and recorded in our Beit Midrash in Jerusalem back in early July after some of our summer programming had to be cancelled due to the Israel-Iran War, including our community leadership program, our annual in-person week-long study seminar where leaders and learners from around the world convene in our campus in Jerusalem and tackle the most pressing challenges that face Jewish life today.

There, on July 2nd, Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi sat down with Ronit Heyd, Vice President and Director of the Center for Israeli and Jewish Identity at the Shalom Hartman Institute. They discussed the situation in Judea and Samaria, also referred to by some as the West Bank, and by others as the occupied territories. In conversation, they explore questions around national identity, historical connection, and what is happening there now and what it means for who we are as a nation and a Jewish people.

The audio from this live recording is a little rougher than usual. Our editor did a heroic job of cleaning up what he could. Nevertheless, we think this is a conversation that you won’t want to miss. Here’s Donniel Hartman, Yossi Klein Halevi, and Ronit Heyd from Jerusalem.

Ronit: Welcome everybody. I’m Ronit Heyd. I’m Vice President here at the Shalom Hartman Institute here in Jerusalem and Director of the Center for Israeli and Jewish Identity. Thank you for joining us for this session. It’s born out of unfortunate circumstances, but we’re happy you’re here.

Every summer in July, the Hartman Institute is buzzing with activity. We have hundreds of people from around the world who come to our Beit Midrash, who pass through these beautiful doors here and study with us, with our scholars experiencing Israel through the lens of ideas and values. And we also livestream many of these sessions here from Jerusalem so we can share a taste of what’s happening with people around the world.

And due to the recent war with Iran, we were forced to cancel most of our programs. Our community leadership program for lay leaders, which was sold out months ago, was supposed to happen over the last week. And so even though I was personally delighted to come back to the office after the 12 days of war with Iran, it was also kind of sad because I came back into a very quiet institute. And I want to say to all of you out there, we really miss you and we’re sad that you’re not here with us.

But even though hundreds of learners are not gathered here in our Beit Midrash today, I’m pleased and we’re pleased that many of you could join us for this session virtually. And I am pleased to be joined in our Beit Midrash with Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and with Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Hartman Institute. And I imagine that many of you are familiar with For Heaven’s Sake, which is Donniel and Yossi’s award-winning and number one podcast in the world, including, as Yossi just told me, Cape Verde, number one podcast for Judaism, and also very high ranking for religion and spiritualism, right, and spirituality in the podcast. So in that podcast, you converse with each other. So I’m delighted to be joining you today to pose some questions and join you in that conversation. And we will close the session with questions from participants that we collected in advance.

And this Beit Midrash is a place where we bring a plurality of voices along with Jewish tradition to hear and to think about the moral, religious, and political challenges of today. So it is just fitting that the subject that our conversation will look at today is the state of affairs in Judea and Samaria. And just by saying that name, this title of our session, I’m already making a political statement because the term Judea and Samaria is the Hebrew term used by some factions in Israeli society. Other factions use the term West Bank, as in the West Bank of the Jordan River. Some others use the occupied territories. So this statement already says something not just about the ownership of that piece of land, but also about our national identity, about who we are and how we define ourselves.

And I’m already saying that I will go between Judea and Samaria and the West Bank in our conversation. And it will be about these questions, both of the ownership, but also what it means, what is happening there in Judea and Samaria, what does it mean about us? What does it mean about our identity as a nation and as the Jewish people?

And I want to start by asking you why talk, dafka, about this topic? We’re after such huge difficult events. October 7th, the war with Hamas in Gaza, the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the war with Iran. And so why talk about Judea and Samaria today? Yossi, do you want to start?

Yossi: So, hi everyone. Ronit, Donniel, great to be with you both.

Well, first of all, Judea and Samaria, the territories, the West Bank, I will not use the fourth expression of occupied territories because I don’t believe that the Jewish people is an occupier in any part of this land, regardless of what the political outcome will be of the future of the territories—it’s not occupied. So that’s my own position.

But first of all, it’s always with us. It’s this kind of shadow reality. Sometimes it comes to the foreground, but it’s always there and it’s always nagging at us. It’s always this big question mark about our future and it’s been that way for 50 plus years.

And secondly, the question of the future of Judea and Samaria, the territories, has become especially urgent now, I’d say for two reasons. The first is because this is the first government in Israel’s history. And we’ve had right-wing governments before, but this is the first one that has placed annexation explicitly as its goal. We’ve never had that before and it’s doing everything it can on the ground to bring us closer to a binational state.

And the final reason is the growing violence among part of the settlers. And I used to say they’re a fringe and I don’t say that anymore because first of all, the rest of the settler movement seems to have nothing to say about this violence. And the violence is implicating all of us. It’s sullying the state of Israel and it’s dragging us into a moral abyss.

Ronit: So before I move to Donniel, because you said you don’t think it’s fringe anymore, can you expand on that?

Yossi: First of all, they’re…

Ronit: It’s not just bad apples.

Yossi: They’re political patrons are sitting in government. And this past week, something extraordinary happened where a group of these violent young settlers attacked soldiers. It’s not the first time, but this really triggered a visceral revulsion among Israelis and even within this government.

And our defense minister, Yisrael Katz, convened an emergency meeting and he said, we are going to deal with the problem of the hilltop youth, as the radicals are called in the territories, the problem of the hilltop youth attacking soldiers. Now that’s great, but what was not said was the problem of hilltop youth burning Palestinian villages. It wasn’t mentioned. And a reporter asked Katz and there was no comment. So this government is complicit in crimes that are now being committed in the name of all of us.

Ronit: Donniel?

Donniel: So first of all, as usual, amen to your answers. I want to offer two other reasons why I believe it’s critical for us to talk about this. The first is that I believe that as the war in Gaza is going to come to a conclusion, conversations are going to be unleashed about the whole region. And peace, larger, Abraham Accords are going to be… people are going to talk not just about the rebuilding of Gaza. They’re going to ask, what are the conflicts that need to be resolved? And where is there in fact a war still going on? And there’s going to be a direct connection between Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and some progress on the Palestinian front.

And it’s critical that we begin to talk about it because I believe a very large segment of the Jewish community has stopped talking about it, especially in Israel. You stop talking about it. When you say people give to it different names, most people call it Judea and Samaria. In those, it’s ours. And I’ll come back to that in a moment. Very few people, if you say in Hebrew, Gadah Ma’aravit, maybe 5% of Israelis would even understand what you’re talking about.

Ronit: And many people will shut down if I say that word.

Donniel: If you say that word. So it’s not like when you said, many different terms, it’s not. The dominant term is that, and from the perspective of the world, this is not Judea and Samaria. This is the West Bank. This is the framework for a two-state solution, which, for the vast majority of the world is—still, whether it’s achievable or not—is the desired outcome. And we have to talk. We have to understand as a people what is going on here.

And I think we’re going to find that October 7th in the war with all of its horrors is going to activate a move towards resolving conflicts to the best of our ability, not perfect peace, but moving us forward. So we have to start talking about it. And we have to understand where Israelis are and where the Jewish people are on this issue, if we’re going to have any progress, because otherwise we’re going to be pushed and pulled by forces outside. And it’s going to be something that we inside are not prepared for.

But there’s another very important reason for many years when it came to the West Bank or Judea and Samaria, the way we resolved the conversation and in many ways silenced it in many, many Jewish circles is by calling it complicated. That was the magic term. We offered peace. They said no. Maybe we offered, maybe we didn’t. It’s complicated. Palestinian Authority, it’s complicated. And it’s true, it is complicated.

But the complication of the finding a political solution has been used to mask what I believe is a profound moral failure. We might not be occupying the land, but we are occupying another people. There is a people here who don’t have access to sovereignty and freedom the way we do. Now it’s true. I can’t have a Palestinian state that wants to kill me. I can’t build a Palestinian state which would mirror Gaza. All of that is true. But the fact is, is that there’s a moral disparity between who we ought to be and the world that we’re living in. And I believe some of it is our fault and some of it is not our fault, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a problem here.

I think part of what Gaza, the war in Gaza, a war which was just, a war which much of it was fought justly. But I believe not an insignificant amount of it has been fought unjustly or from the perspective of the world, it’s clear that Israel has been perpetrating significant moral lapses in the war. They use other terms for it. I have decided to use the term.

Yossi: It was very delicate.

Donniel: I know, that was delicate because, Yossi, I learned from you. It’s like, I don’t want to use other people’s language against us. But Israel’s morality is now on the table, as it should be. Because our job is to make sure that we fight just wars justly and that justice and morality are integral, not just for public relations, but for our soul and who we want to be as a people. What does it mean?

And I think for decades, the morality of Israel was put aside. We said we’re moral, other people said we’re not moral. A fringe called us apartheid, genocide, whatever terms. Complicated was like a, what do you say, a p’kak. It was like a cork keeping the genie. It’s out. And we’re going to be challenged. What are you doing in Judea and Samaria? What are you doing with Palestinians? You’ve mentioned hilltop youth. That’s not just hilltop youth. There’s a fundamental question. What are we doing? What are the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank? What are the rights of people who aren’t citizens of Israel? Are we even aspiring for peace? What are we doing?

All of these issues, Gaza, is forcing a new conversation between Israel and the world and between Israel and the Jewish people. And the war is horrific unto itself. But the moral conversation that has started to emerge is not going to stop with Gaza. It’s going to go to Judea and Samaria and the West Bank. And we have to be prepared and we need to have an honest conversation beyond complicated.

Ronit: So it’s interesting because you said it’s complicated because of the Palestinian Authority, because we’re controlling other people. And both of you said it’s not about the land. You said it’s about the people. And Yossi, you said it’s not occupied territories, but the people who are there very much see it about the land.

And I was thinking a lot about the fact that there are these three different types of elsewhere that are happening currently in our conversation. There is the elsewhere of Iran, which is really elsewhere. It was, you spoke about it in the podcast about being this mythical place that we never thought we will be in a situation where our pilots, where the air force is controlling the sky of Tehran. It’s this very, very far away elsewhere. There is Gaza, which is destruction and war and evil that came from Gaza. And that’s a very different elsewhere.

And I have to say for me personally, Judea and Samaria or the West Bank, for me personally, it is elsewhere. And there are people here at the Machon, here at the Institute, that for them it’s home. And I think another reason why it’s so complicated is because also we know that for many people within us, I can say at least for many people that I speak with, knowing that for them it’s home and for me it’s elsewhere as a Jewish Israeli makes this conversation very, very difficult.

And for example, just to give you a small anecdote, my running team was supposed to meet last Friday for the final run of the year. And the invitation was to come to Derech Haavot, this road in Gush Etzion. I will go to Gush Etzion for a simcha, for a wedding or God forbid, to pay Shiva visit. I won’t go running there because it’s not my backyard. I don’t feel that it’s right for me to go there. But I really recognize that there are people here at the Institute who run there on a regular basis and again, for them it’s home.

And so that kind of conversation of the combination between a historical, deep historical connection, and personal connection, and people who very much believe that this is not a place for us to be. How do we navigate that? How do we navigate internally that kind of conversation?

Donniel: I think your comments are putting your finger on the essential problem. And it goes back to the name of this space. See, if it’s ours, then what is the status of the Palestinians? It’s not theirs. What are they? You’re in somebody else’s home. When we call it Judea and Samaria, we basically tell the Palestinians, “You are transparent. You’re in my biblical historical land. It’s mine because it was mine 3,000 years ago.” Now that itself is a problematic argument in realpolitik, but let’s say it’s an essential aspect of the Jewish people because we have a home that for 2,000 years we weren’t a part of, but you’re transporting yourself to another time, and now there’s a people who live here.

So like what category do you even have for their ownership? Not for only their rights. That this is their home. Now my politics in Judea and Samaria start from the fact that I feel it’s their home. Now you know why I use the term Judea and Samaria? Just to be effective with Israelis. For me, it’s the West Bank. It’s not my home. It was the Jewish people’s home. I don’t feel… or I’m not moved by the fact that I have a right to all the land of Israel, which Yossi is going to disagree with me on. And I might argue and it might be legitimate to argue that you have to claim it’s all yours and the other side has to claim it’s all yours for you to be able to compromise. That I could understand.

But there are, what is it, three million people living in the West Bank? This is their home. They’ve lived here for decades, if not centuries. I need a category for their homeness, for their belongingness, for me to be able to start having a conversation, a compromise. The problem is that we are so filled with our notion of it’s all ours. We have this or that the other side doesn’t even have a voice. And in our own consciousness, they don’t claim us. They don’t claim us. And unless Palestinian homeness claims us, we’re not going to be able to compromise.

Now, so we have a category for Israeli-Arab-Palestinian homeness, and they become citizens. But here, they’re not citizens of the land, so what are they? They’re not on the land, they’re not citizens in our state, and then they become individuals who have no claim on us. And that’s why this issue needs to change an Israeli conversation, if we’re going to be able to come up with political compromises, or just feel that we actually have to come up with a compromise, because there’s somebody else who has a claim as well.

Ronit: So I don’t know if you know that there is a legislation now that is about to pass that will demand that every state entity uses only the term, Judea and Samaria. We’ve been talking about terminology. Simcha Rotman, Limor Son Har-Melech, are passing a law, and I think part of what it wants to say is exactly this, that—

Donniel: And that’s, by the way, what the hilltop youth do. When they go in any place where they want to be, if there’s a Palestinian doing it in their space, if they have an olive grove, if they’re somewhere, it’s not just violence, their presence is impinging on my inalienable right to my Judea and Samaria, if that doesn’t change, there’s going to be no future.

Yossi: So—

Donniel: Be nice.

Yossi: The right—

Donniel: I’m just teasing.

Yossi: —especially this government, believes that everything needs to be legislated. And language is something organic. It emerges from people’s daily experience. It emerges from life. And you said it, here in the Institute, this is a liberal institution, we have a growing number of fellows who live in settlements.

And, Donniel, you said it. How many Israelis today, never mind the West Bank, occupied territories, the younger generation in Israel, this is already the third generation, we’re getting close to the fourth generation, that’s grown up with the reality of there is no green line. So there’s a bit of a time warp when we have this conversation. And there’s nothing abstract anymore about Judea and Samaria. This is the great victory of the settlement movement.

And you know when I felt it? I was at a funeral in Kfar Etzion, Kfar Etzion was the first settlement in the Etzion block. And I walked around and looked at the tombstones. And I saw, it’s already the second generation. And that’s it. That’s reclaiming the land in the most tangible way to say nothing of the fact that you have native Judea ands and Samarian for the first time in 2000 years. And, although Jews have lived in Hevron straight through, but there’s this identity that we’re still arguing about, it’s already a reality.

And so when we speak about home and homeland, when you get to the point where you have, when it’s not an abstract homeland anymore, it’s not a debate over history. It’s home. It’s literal home. And for me, that only confirms the abstract historic reality, which is that, to coin a phrase, between the river and the sea, you have two conceptual homelands. There’s the land of Palestine and the land of Israel. And the tragedy, of course, is that these two abstract conceptual homelands occupy the same physical territory. But this land contains two homelands, and now it contains two homes, literally two homes.

And I’m for a two-state solution, not because I want one. This is another disagreement between us. I do not want a Palestinian state. First, on the most visceral level, I’m terrified of a Palestinian state. I’m terrified of Judea and Samaria turning into Gaza. And I look at the map and I say, “Well, Gaza happens to be on the wrong side of the map.” We were talking about this the other day in our podcast, that the state of Israel is stuck between these two pieces of what may be a future Palestinian state.

So I don’t want a Palestinian state, but three million people in what is for them the West Bank, and I don’t argue their terminology. I insist on my terminology and respect their terminology. I won’t use their terminology any more than I expect Palestinians to speak about Judea and Samaria. And it bothers me to no end when Israelis, when Jews can’t say the words Judea and Samaria. I feel it as an affront, not because I disagree politically with you. In the end, we probably have more or less the same political vision, maybe, or broadly. But I feel that for the dignity of the Jewish people, for the sake of the historical record, and for the sake of the reality, it is Judea and Samaria.

Ronit: But Yossi, you are saying that you don’t want it because of the fear that it will become Gaza.

Yossi: And because it’s mine.

Ronnit: That’s exactly what I wanted to ask, because it’s yours. But I want to go back to what you said at the beginning with the hilltop youth and what is happening to us. What is happening to us as a society? What is happening to our ability to hold this internal conversation? Especially, you know, you said it’s not abstract anymore. And I feel at most when on the news, it’s not just about Judea and Samaria, but about Binyamin, or Gush Etzion, or the Hebron Hills. And the different sections within Judea and Samaria also have names or locations. In the same way for many that when you talk about Hashfela, or Haifa area, or Galil. But I think internally, we don’t yet understand what it’s doing to us. And the question is, is the fear of a Palestinian state greater than the fear of what will happen to us as a people who don’t enable another people to fulfill their right for self-determination?

Yossi: Ronit, that’s exactly the question that haunts me. And two things have become real with Judea and Samaria, that’s taken it out of the abstract realm of debate. The first is that it has become, once again, literal home. And the second thing is that it’s become a threat.

And all of those who warned us, going back 50 years, going back to the summer of 1967, read Amos Oz, read his essay in Davar in the summer of 1967, listen to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the curmudgeon philosopher who warned for decades, this is going to destroy us morally. So these are the elements we have to struggle with. And I don’t have an answer to this. And it’s driving me crazy because I don’t know. And I’ve been thinking about this for 50 years.

I recently came across an essay that I wrote for my high school, Yeshiva newspaper, 1971, about, and I called it the West Bank, about the West Bank. And I’m reading it and saying, my ideas haven’t changed since then. And what I wrote there is, we can’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They want to destroy us. But what do we do with, at that time, it was a million Palestinians? How do we absorb them into Israeli society? And so it really depressed me to find this essay because I realized I’ve been saying the same thing for 50 years without, basically with very little new ideas. And so I feel like I’m going in circles. And meanwhile, those who know the answer, those who have the answer, are pushing us very strongly in the direction of a binational state.

Ronit: So, Donniel, if we manage to handle the threat of Iran with such precision, and we don’t know how much of a threat is left there, but we can definitely say that Israel managed to handle something like Iran in a way that is impressive. Why aren’t we managing to deal with the West Bank and Judea and Samaria?

Donniel: I’d like to offer two initial thoughts. One which relates to what Yossi said, and another one which is a little broader. I understand and respect very much when Yossi says it’s mine, but Yossi says very clearly, there’s two homes. Yossi has a soul in which he could claim the totality of something without feeling that that delegitimizes somebody else’s claim to a totality of something. And he could contain them in his soul. It’s Judea and Samaria, and I want a two-state solution. And Yossi has the rule for that.

Now, I would say that the first part, it’s Judea and Samaria, has become commonplace in Israel. Yossi says they’re not even settlers anymore. There’s no settlers. They’re Israeli citizens. It’s not even an ideological move. Very often it’s an economic move. The whole…

Ronit: There’s a difference between the word “mityashvim” and “mitnachalim” which is “settler” in English. There’s no difference.

Donniel: Right. So Yossi is able to contain two sides, and where the moral obligation counts and ways in which he… and I could give up my home. Now, I believe that one of the reasons why we can’t resolve it is that because most Israelis aren’t like Yossi. Once you claim it’s your home, how do you give it up? Yossi says, “I’m willing with all the pain to divide my home, to give up parts of my home.” That is one of the most unnatural and difficult things to do.

And, you know, you’re my friend, but it’s the testimony to your soul and your spirit and the type of world you want to live in and the complexity with which you live. But I believe once we make it unequivocally our home, no one gives up their home. So once it’s become home, compromise becomes impossible.

The second reason is that I believe that we really have never come to terms with what we want to do there. It’s connected to the first, but we’ve never really talked about what we want to do. We’ve never talked about Palestinian rights, but we haven’t articulated it. And what I mean, never, Oslo we began to, but that’s a generation ago. Like, you know, for us, we’re, you know, we’re alter kakers already, so it’s part of our life. But for most… that’s a generation ago. The vast majority of Israelis have grown up with, “We offered and they said no.” And now we went home, conversation over, “We offered, they said no.” But what do you want to be and what do you want to do?

And I think Iran, we knew what we wanted to do. Even in Gaza, paradoxically, I believe, the beginning of the war, we also knew what we wanted to do. I think we wanted revenge. We wanted to defeat Hamas. We want to bring back the hostages. Now the challenge of Gaza is what happens when what you want to do and what you can do aren’t the same.

But if you’d ask the average Israeli, “What do you want to do in Judea and Samari?”—they couldn’t even tell you. What do you want to do? We haven’t had a leadership who have articulated any direction. And that’s why one of the things that I believe is that I don’t think it’s going to come from Israelis. I think right now Israelis, both because of the language and because of a lack of vision, are not going to be able to offer a vision of Judea and Samaria.

And if you look at the political parties, with the exception of Democrats, nobody has a platform on Judea and Samaria. Oh, they say, “I believe in a two-state solution.” But it’s mostly separation. It’s not an articulated, it’s not something they speak about, it’s not something they’re educating Israelis on, and Israelis are completely unprepared. I believe it’s going to require forces from the outside, larger moves, beyond our pay grade, and ones in which serious compromises in Judea and Samaria are going to be offset by promises of a Shimon Peres-type Middle East.

And part of our reason for doing this, and this is part of also what we’re going to be doing in the instant, I want to talk to people. I don’t care if you disagree, let’s talk. Because if you don’t have a plan—now on the other hand, as you said, there is one group that has a plan. A very clear plan. And their plan is to settle wherever we can.

Ronit: It’s not just a plan, they’re implementing it.

Donniel: They’re implementing, it’s correct. It’s our home, and I want to make it impossible for us to ever be disconnected from our home. And the rest of Israel is just walking along, lulled on the conceptia that we offered. They said no, and therefore there’s nothing that we could do. And therefore, what is our plan for Judea and Samaria? Status quo. Hold the status quo, we’ve already learned in Gaza that you can’t hold the status quo. And I don’t believe the world morally is going to let us maintain the status quo of West Bank or Judea and Samaria. But Israelis, we just have no idea.

Ronit: And I was thinking about it, and I don’t know if this is a good analogy. I don’t like it, because it kind of turns my stomach, but I’m going to say it anyway. And I’m curious about what you think about it, especially after incidents of settler violence. That I look at it and I ask myself, is this an equivalent of domestic violence? That we’re seeing something horrific that is happening. We know that it’s happening, and we’re not doing anything. We as Israeli citizens, we are aware that something’s happening, but we feel helpless.

And the reason I don’t like this analogy is because it comes from very different motivations. But the minute you said, it won’t come from the inside, it will have to come from the outside. That was like a moment that I thought, maybe, again, it fits into this very violent image.

Donniel: But I will make one distinction. I think there is a broad consensus that domestic violence is an abomination and that every effort has to be made to eradicate it. I’m not sure that Israelis, there is a consensus anymore that there’s even a concern.

Ronit: That the settler’s violence towards what Yossi mentioned, olive groves?

Donniel: Take a look. When Huwara, that was like the first act which was identified in Israeli opinion as a pogrom, and it was edgy because is pogrom only our term? Could we apply it? Could we do a, could Jews perpetrator pogrom? It was in all the newspapers.

The fact is, as we all know, that many Huwaras or Huwaras have been happening on a weekly, bi-weekly basis now for years. The Israeli press doesn’t even report it anymore. And as Yossi said exactly, it’s only when these settler youth attacked soldiers that it became a conversation and the minister wants to fight against that. And Betzalel Smotrich speaks about how it is forbidden for the Israeli army to use live fire against citizens. But you can use it against Palestinians and we know what happens. This is the protocol.

A settler group of youth come and attack and burn and fire and terrorize. The army is never there early enough. They come after the fact. When they come, they see local Palestinians responding. They arrest Palestinians. They don’t even arrest—how many hilltop youth have been put in jail for the last three years because of violence? None. There’s none. They’re not even there anymore. So I wish it was a sense of helplessness. It’s disregard. And that’s what the world is seeing. In theory, we could be stuck in a conflict which we can’t resolve, which doesn’t undermine your moral status. But this is an example where we are morally failing, even in a context whose resolution is complicated.

Ronit: So I want to hear from both of you what you think that Jews from outside of Israel should be doing. But I feel that I can’t leave this conversation without hearing from you what Jews inside of Israel have to do. I really feel that we must find things that we need to do.

Yossi: I’m ready for the first time to demonstrate against policies in Judea and Samaria. And that’s something that I never crossed that line. I don’t come from the left. I’m not part of the left. I support a two-state solution, again, because of the coercion of circumstance, not because I embrace a two-state solution.

But on this issue, I feel a red line has been crossed and there needs to be a strong response from the Israeli public. So that’s where I’m at now. And you know, a couple years ago when there was the Sheikh Jarrah episode where a group of Palestinians who live right near French Hill, where I lived until last week, so this was happening right in my backyard, and I felt I should demonstrate because Palestinians who had lived in these homes were ordered by the court to move and Jews moved in their place. And then I started looking into two things.

One is the protests that were happening against Sheikh Jarrah. I said, I can’t stand with those people. It’s the anti-Zionist left that’s out there. And the second thing was I looked into the actual legal issues. And this is our friend, Tal Becker really helped me through with this. He said, wow, this is much more complicated than the media’s reporting and it’s often the case. And I won’t go into the whole explanation now, but it really, it was complicated enough and sorry for the word complicated, but this really was. This was complicated. It was. And it deterred me. The complication deterred me.

What’s happening today in Judea and Samaria is not complicated. And we need to have a response in the Israeli public. We’re too exhausted, traumatized. That’s an excuse. It’s not a justification, but that is what’s happening, including to liberal Israelis.

Ronit: Donniel, what should we in Israel and Jews outside of Israel do?

Donniel: I’m an educator, I’m a teacher, and I believe that ideas shape the identity and will shape policies. But I also know that we need politicians to carry those policies. There’s two things we need to do. One is we have to talk about what’s acceptable and unacceptable. We have to ask ourselves, not just how do we attack violence of settler youth. Is there a fair judicial system for Palestinians in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria? Do they have an opportunity to build? Do they have an opportunity for economic development? What do we have? Like those issues, too. We have to talk. What does justice require? Even if I have to stay there.

But also to ask, is it in our interest to keep on building settlements everywhere? Building settlements in settlement blocks that everybody knows, this is where 80% of the settlers live, either in Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Jerusalem area, or Ariel. Those four areas, we know they’re going to stay within Israel. Building there, fine. Why should we continue? Why should we continue building roads and settlements, making any future resolution impossible? These are the conversations that we have to have. We have to have them internally. We have to have them with people who are also might be frightened, but ask, what does it mean to implement policies and to embrace values that lock you into a certain status quo that is undermining the essence of who you are?

And the second thing we have to do is we have to vote and we have to encourage the emergence of politicians who have the courage, not just to tell us that everything is going to be okay, not to tell us it’s going to be fine, or who are just going to respond when Donald Trump is going to push. But politicians will have the courage to get up and to speak to Israelis and say, let’s talk about our future. Talk honestly. Now that’s going to require courage. And those are types of things we need to do.

What do North America or Jews or Jews around the world need to do? Same thing. Talk about. See, I think when North American Jews or Jews around the world get into principally critical mode, Israelis shut down. World Jewry is our partner in building Israel. So you too, talk. Talk about the Israel you want. It’s not about from the outside saying what we’re doing wrong or saying, oh, the settlers, the settlers. That doesn’t make you effective.

Talk about, contribute to, not only to the Hartman Institute, but the political parties. Advocate for a vision for Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, which is a part of your love for the future of Israel. Even amongst yourselves, articulate what it is that you want and what is it that you aspire for and why. How do you deal with it when you have an intelligent, coherent policy? Support those in Israel who advocate and just listen. The settler movement today is funded by Jews around the world. The greatest funders of right-wing settlements are not from the government. It’s Jews around the world who are supporting it. But if World Jewry wants to have a different body, how could you get involved? So we have to get rid of that duplicity.

Listen, the future of this country belongs to the Jewish people. You get involved, not just through criticism, even though there’s nothing wrong with criticism. You get involved by being part and shaping a vision. Be a part of it.

Ronit: Yeah. And I want to add to that also, ask us the questions. I think in the way that we were asking ourselves these questions here in this conversation, we don’t have the answers necessarily, but by asking the questions, we can encourage this kind of conversation that is very much needed.

And a couple of questions I want to turn for the last 15 minutes that we have for questions that we have from participants. It’s a bit of a zoom out from the topic we’ve been discussing. And the first question that we have is very much related to the fact that we’re about to enter a, what will probably be an election year. The elections are supposed to take place in October, 2026, if the government completes its term. We don’t know if that will happen. Just before the war with Iran, it almost fell. So what are your predications when it comes to Israeli politics in the coming year? Maybe year and years.

And I do want to connect it to the topic we’ve been discussing because, Donniel, you referred to how avoiding the issue of Judea and Samaria and the West Bank has been shaping our politics in a certain way that we just don’t talk about it and the parties don’t talk about it. So what do you think about which parties will lead who will govern and how will they engage with Palestinians both in territories and also internally? So it’s a very big question. You can choose whatever part of it you want to take.

Yossi: A year in Israel at this moment seems like an eternity. I could not answer that question if it were asked about next week. Really, what’s going to happen here next week politically? Maybe the government will succeed in passing the law that it has been trying and failing to do for the last year, granting mass exemption to the ultra-Orthodox. Maybe it’ll fall over that law. Maybe the government will accept the Trump-inspired ceasefire, in which case the far-right might pull out, in which case the government may fall, unless Benny Gantz from the opposition decides once again in his inimitable way to step in and save Netanyahu.

Ronit: There are hints that he’s about to do that.

Yossi: And so how do you predict? This is the most fluid reality. I don’t know of another country, maybe Ukraine.

Ronit: Fluid seems nice. I feel like we’re being rolled to one place or another.

Yossi: It’s the Israeli roller coaster, but it’s really been speeding up. So politically, if there are elections, and you hear some people in the opposition warn that the government is already laying the ground to delay elections. And so who knows? If the government may say, look, we’re still in war, how do you have elections during war? So there are so many wild cards.

If you look at the polls, it shows clearly that the opposition will win, not by a landslide, but 61, according to most of the polls, 61 out of 120 seats. It’s not great, but what the polls also clearly show is that under no circumstances can the government reconstitute itself after the next election. So that’s, you know, in Hebrew we say, “chatzi nechama,” that’s a little bit of comfort. And the polls show that in all likelihood, Naftali Bennett, who was the prime minister before this government, and led the most diverse coalition in Israel’s history, which then gave way to the least diverse government in Israel’s history, that Naftali Bennett will return. And that seems to be the case.

Now, Eisenkot, one of the former commanders and chief of the IDF, left Ganz’s, but I mean, this is Israel, this is Israeli politics, it’s all over the place. And if he runs, if he sets up his own party, he’ll get seven to nine seats. What does seem to be clear is that this government, under no circumstances, can return to power. And for me at this point, that’s really, you know, dayenu.

Ronit: Donniel?

Donniel: So first of all, you’re right. I would just add though that there’s two trends that are going to be in conflict. One is that there’s a predominant center-right-leaning Israeli society, who, not for reasons of the holiness of the land, but as a result of a profound suspicion of the possibility for us to have a two-state solution, living side by side in peace and security, are very slim, they’re very suspicious. Even this new coalition, when you put them together, Gantz, I don’t even know where he stands, Lapid wants a two-state maybe.

Ronit: That’s part of Gantz, no knowing where he stands.

Donniel: But part of the coalition includes Lieberman, who’s more to the right. Naftali Bennett can’t even mention the words “Palestinian state” in one sentence, he’s more to the right. So you have a very strong political move in which territorial compromise for reasons of security are going to be very, very difficult.

The other one is that this coalition is going to be a coalition built around much of the conversation of judicial reform and that—Israel as a liberal democracy. And you saw in the demonstrations themselves over time, Palestinian rights began to enter into it because when you speak about human rights, they don’t stop. It’s also contagious.

So these two moves, to what extent, how does political Israeli rightness, which comes from what they would call realism, not messianic ideology, realism, meet the values of Israel as a Jewish democracy, and how do they meet with each other, is going to determine what possibilities are put forth. And those possibilities are going to be put forth, as I said, not by Israel. It’s going to be put forth by circumstances from the outside. And the question will be how we respond. And the one good news is that the ideologues for whom this is a cause to die for aren’t going to be in the coalition in any event. How those two will play out, those are the two factors. And with time, we’ll tell.

Ronit: And we have a related question about Netanyahu. And when I read that question, I wasn’t sure I was, I’m not sure I want to go into the question of Netanyahu for many reasons, but one is because—

Yossi: I can’t bear it anymore.

Ronit: I know. But I think for people who are listening to us from outside of Israel, first of all, understanding what happened in Israel just in the last three weeks of the war with Iran after the war with Iran and the questions of people who are very much against Netanyahu, had to say suddenly Netanyahu did the right thing, the decision to attack Iran.

Now we’re very quickly, totally back in the usual conversation. But if we’re looking at politics and also because of the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, how do you see this relationship influencing our politics and the reality here? And I think this will—maybe won’t be our last question because I know you don’t want to end with Netanyahu. So we’ll do it brief and then have time for another question.

Yossi: In one way, Netanyahu is the right man to be in relation to Trump. They seem to have a rapport. In another way, I think he’s disastrous for the integrity of Israeli sovereignty because Netanyahu doesn’t know how to say no to Trump. And I think another prime minister might. And I can think of any number of people in the opposition. Not only Lieberman and Bennett, for sure, would say no to Trump if they felt it impinged on Israeli sovereignty, but I also think of the certain circumstances Yair Lapid and Yair Golan would say no. And certainly in interfering in Israel’s internal judicial matters, which Trump is now doing.

And so I think that when you weigh the pros and the cons, and there are pros, again, in their personal rapport, but in the long term, I think that relationship will harm Israeli independence.

Ronit: And I want to connect the last question also to the topic that we discussed. Many Israelis feel tremendously scarred by the events of October 7th and the war. And it seems truly impossible to be able to even start thinking about our relationship with the Palestinians, not just because of the territories and the Judea and Samaria, but just seeing the Palestinian as the other. And I want to finish by asking you, what can we do in order to be able to see Palestinians and to re-examine our relationship with Palestinians?

Ronniel: I think I want to switch the question. If 70 or 80 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria feel that October 7th was a great day, not only do we have to ask ourselves, what do we have to do, I think Palestinian society has to ask what it wants to do. And they’re going to be connected.

I know what we have to do. I know we have to recognize that all human beings are created in the image of God, that we have to recognize that Palestinians are home, that we have to ask what human rights and what do we, not just for our own safety, what does it mean to live with somebody for whom this is their home and how does that obligate? I got that list. Whether Israelis are ready or not, I have the curriculum.

Palestinian society doesn’t just have to simply change its government. There is a real moral corruption and decay. Is it inherent? Is it Islamic? Is it the result of occupation? It doesn’t matter. At this point, is Palestinian society willing to engage in a serious peace conversation? Are they willing to say, as my father of blessed memory used to always say, are you willing to accept that I’m at home also? You remember that was his line all the time, are you willing to say, and I think October 7th has shown, as distinct from Israeli-Arab-Palestinians who condemned October 7th across the board unequivocally; then they also started to condemn how Israel was conducting the war, but that’s something else. But in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, the differences weren’t great.

And at some point, the world is also going to have to start having that same conversation with what is the moral fiber. The fact that you’re a victim doesn’t enable you to be the moral person of the year because you’re a victim. At some point, you’re going to have to ask, what do you want to build? How do you look at Israel? And I think it’s not just a change in government. It is also, and this is a long term, it’s change in education, it’s a change in public relations, it’s a change in their press. It’s about developing core leaders in Palestinian society who are going to get up and say, is terrorism our direction? Okay, Israelis, you’re guilty, you’ve done, you’ve done, you’ve done. But it’s that yes, but that has to stop.

So we have to change, but this conversation would be incomplete without our understanding that major change has to happen in Palestinian society and it’s not going to happen in overnight. It’s going to take time. Now, I do believe in tipping points. I believe a process starts and then it accelerates. It’s not generational, but there’s real work because there is real hatred, not of Israel, hatred of Jews, which is promulgated and which is advocated for. And we saw it on October 7th and Israelis are right to be frightened. And if they move a little bit, then our ability to change Israeli society will also change.

Ronit: Yossi, literally we have one minute, so please give us a bit of positivity as well.

Yossi: So I’ve been involved for many years in conversations with Palestinians and what changed for me after October 7th was not my commitment to those conversations and my belief in the urgency of those conversations, but the way in which I personally can conduct the dialogue. And in the past, I felt the need to begin with the Palestinian narrative, begin by creating space for the Palestinians, listening to the Palestinian narrative. Today, I begin with my narrative. And the reason for that is, first of all, because of what you said, the denial of our story has become so overwhelming. And celebrating October 7th, there’s a level of barbarism there that goes beyond just stories and narratives.

And the second reason is that our narrative is now under assault around the world, systematically. And there is no lack of space for the Palestinian narrative anymore. It’s our narrative that’s increasingly being suppressed. And so I will engage in conversation with just about any Palestinian, whatever you believe, we’re enemies, that’s… okay, I’m engaging. If you’re willing to listen to me, I’ll listen to you, but you have to hear my narrative. And I have to speak from the place of my wound, my history, my fears, and then, you know, Ahlan wa Sahlan, I’m willing to listen.

Ronit: So I think this really sums up very beautifully our conversation because we need to connect to our wounds and also to our aspirations. And these conversations are very, very important. So I want to thank you. And I want to thank everyone for joining us. We look forward to welcoming you here, hopefully very soon in our beautiful Beit Midrash. Thank you very much.