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Who’s Afraid of a Palestinian State? Transcript
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Donniel: Who’s afraid of a Palestinian state? You know, one of the obvious answers is most Israeli Jews. A lot of Israelis are frightened.
Yossi: I have two deep fears about a Palestinian state. The first is that there will be a Palestinian state and the second is that there won’t be. The first opens up the possibility of insoluble security dilemmas. And I know that the absence of a Palestinian state will be disastrous in other ways.
Donniel: Hi friends, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein-Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast For Heaven’s Sake, a collaboration of the Hartman Institute and Ark Media.
But before we get into today’s topic, a commercial regarding a new podcast from the Hartman Institute entitled Thoughts & Prayers, which can be found on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thoughts & Prayers weaves together personal stories, ancient texts, and conversations with scholars, rabbis, and thinkers, and really tries to understand issues of spirituality, community, and what prayer means today. And I recommend that you check it out. And especially this week, it’s Yossi.
Yossi: It was a beautiful experience Donniel.
Donniel: You’re the scholar. What were the categories?
Yossi: You know, I was listening to those categories.
Donniel: They were telling me the categories. Scholars, rabbis, and thinkers.
Yossi: I’m not a scholar. I’m not a rabbi. I guess I’m a thinker.
Donniel: You’re a writer.
Yossi: We’re all thinkers.
Donniel: Hopefully, yeah, you know, I think therefore I am.
Yossi: So yeah, so I am, and so I’m a thinker.
Donniel: So you’re there.
Yossi: And it was a beautiful experience, actually. And surprising. I really shared all kinds of details about my inner life that I didn’t expect to. Jessica Fisher is a terrific interviewer and it was a beautiful experience.
Donniel: Lovely. So check it out, people. And let’s now go into our theme for today. And we called it “Who’s Afraid of a Palestinian State?”
Yossi: Little bit of a different experience than talking about prayer.
Donniel: Yes. “Who’s Afraid of a Palestinian State?” You know, one of the obvious answers is most Israeli Jews. With the exception of me, we’ll get into that later on. There’s a few of us, but a lot of Israelis are frightened. Who’s afraid? A lot of Israelis. But last night, the Security Council voted to back the Trump-Gaza peace plan, the Gaza Accord, on all of its stages, including the forming and the placing there of an international force and the creation of the Peace Cabinet, which will run Gaza for at least two years.
And including in that is what’s known as the 20th Clause, that this process is supposed to enable a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination. One of the things that Israel has fought for decades or for years is that the Security Council shouldn’t advocate for a particular resolution of the conflict or Palestinian statehood and leave it up to negotiations, even though Israel itself constantly says we’re against Palestinian statehood.
But Israel has always been frightened of the international community dictating the resolution to the Palestinian conflict. And here, I know, it’s credible pathways, it’s a complicated term, a convoluted term, and we fought against Obama and we fought against any… Just keep the Security Council outside of this conflict.
And here, it’s not Russia or China. It’s not France, Germany, England. It’s not Canada. It’s not liberal progressive United States. It’s Republican United States, which is now advocating the exact same language and putting forth a reality that most Israelis basically haven’t thought about for a generation. A generation. It just got removed. There is no partner and therefore we’re not thinking about it. And we’ve stopped thinking about it.
And now we’re on the wrong page, it seems, with most of the world. We’re used to being on a different page with some of the world. Now we’re on the wrong page with everybody in the world. And we’re not even prepared. It’s not just like we disagree. It’s as if we’re not even in the discussion. None of Israeli political parties talk about it. And so you and I decided that today…
Yossi: Even on the left.
Donniel: Even on the left. It’s like no one talks about it. It’s not a way to make friends and influence people to talk about Palestinian statehood. You talk about it, you’re afraid that you’re going to lose voters. And as we said on the podcast of Call Me Back, it’s not that the critical dividing line between the left and the right in Israel, it’s just not talked about. But the world is putting it in front of us and we have to talk about who’s afraid of it, what’s going on in Israeli society, where are we? That’s our mandate for today. And to try to understand what’s happening in Israeli society.
But before we get into who’s afraid of Palestinian statehood, as the vote was coming, the press was talking about it, the debates, how is this full right-right-right-wing government going to respond? Netanyahu’s failures, what should we do? What shouldn’t we do? The vote came last night at 12 o’clock at night. How did you feel about the Security Council itself? And then we’ll go into Palestinian statehood.
Yossi: So one thing, Donniel, that occurred to me is that we had this discussion about a year ago. You raised it. And you were saying, sooner or later, this is coming, they’re going to put this on the agenda. You know the Hebrew expression “zeh oleh li labriyuti,” it hurts my health to say it, but I have to admit that you really put this out there at least a year ago. And so, that’s an aside.
Donniel: That’s not such an aside. Could I bask in my prophetic glory?
Yossi: Bask, bask, because it won’t last.
Donniel: I know that. But what you learn is that when you have that moment, just take it. It’s wrong with it for as long as it goes.
Yossi: That’s right. And really, credit where credit is due. Where it hit me when I first heard the news was probably where it hit most Israelis. We shrugged. So they say another vote. But as you laid out in your introduction, this wasn’t just another vote because it was initiated by the man whom the Israeli right has embraced as the most pro-Israel president in American history, the man whom they put all of their hopes in. And now he has—
Donniel: The messianic hopes, by the way, as well. They even spoke about Trump in messianic terms.
Yossi: Very much. And I remember when he was elected, the right-wing TV station, Channel 14, the panelists in the studio live started to sing and dance.
Donniel: Oh, wow.
Yossi: And it was this moment of ecstasy and vindication. So, well, we’ve come a long way, and things are looking very different. And we’ve noted on the program in the past that Trump is really playing a role now of reigning in the far right. He’s the one who is stopping for all practical effect. He’s stopping the settlements from being rebuilt in Gaza. And so Trump is turning into the great adversary of the Israeli right.
So my first instinctive reaction was, meh, the Israeli shrug. Thinking more about it, it hit me in the solar plexus. It hit me in a very sensitive area, which is this protectiveness for Israeli sovereignty. And, you know, for the last couple of weeks, maybe more now, since the end of the war, we’ve witnessed something astonishing, something we’ve never seen before in Israel, which is America has established for all practical purposes a base inside Israel, a command center where we are guests. And also for the first time in Israeli history, the IDF, if Hamas violates the ceasefire, we need the okay from the Americans. We’ve never been in a situation like this. And all of the fears for our national sovereignty have come up here.
And these are very ancient fears. And if you go back to the last time we lost our sovereignty in this land, it’s a complicated story because Rome didn’t invade. Rome was invited in. Rome was invited in by the monarchy, the Judean monarchy. They were the allies. And justifiably or not, the historical trauma that was triggered by the creation of this base and then reinforced by this vote, Trump is now going over our heads to the international community, joining in the international community’s consensus. Now that’s the paranoid version. And it’s not entirely paranoid. It’s partly the positive version of that.
And I felt this as well is maybe this is bringing us closer to expanding the Abraham Accords. And we all know that the Saudis and the Gulf States don’t want a Palestinian state anytime soon. They are as afraid of a Palestinian state as most of us are. But they do want a shift.
Donniel: A pathway.
Yossi: A pathway is a great word. And look, what I want is a shift away from the momentum toward a bi-national state, toward annexation, which is where this government is taking us. So my most hopeful spin on this is that the Trump administration is preventing us from making an historic disaster and saving us from annexation. And whatever grand or grandiose hopes it has for creating a two-state solution, you know, as we say in the Middle East, God is great.
Donniel: You know, my feelings were I wasn’t overjoyed. That’s a little too much because you’re right. It’s still just the United Nations. There’s a very big gap between a resolution, resolving things and reality. So I wasn’t overjoyed, but there was a deep-seated joy, happiness that I felt.
Because as many of our audience knows, I am a religious advocate of the two-state solution. I’m an advocate as a result of my Jewish faith and as a result of my Zionism. And a Jewish faith, which teaches me that what’s hateful unto you don’t do unto others, and a Zionism which claims the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty, when they’re put together, I don’t want to come home and ignore someone else’s rights to sovereignty as well. And I yearn religiously as a Jew and as a Zionist for a Palestinian state side by side.
And I’ve done so since childhood, really very early on since making Aliyah in the 70s. And it was, I know kids’ consistency is not a great virtue, but on this, this passion has been very deep in my soul. Anything that’s changed has been my understanding that the resolution of this might be much more complicated than I want. That I might yearn for something, but because I yearn for it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
But when I see this move, any move, in the international arena, which moves us closer to taking seriously something, to bringing an issue back on the table, an issue that Israelis just, when we’re going to analyze now, just, it’s not even that they’re against it, have stopped thinking about it. And I think one of the jobs of an international community, one of the jobs of press, one of the jobs of friends, is to expand the horizons of what an individual sees. You could only see what you see in light of your experiences. And that’s your job. And they’re putting in front of us, and just like President Trump put in front of us the possibility of ending the war, now with Jared et al., they’re putting forth and saying, there’s another mountain.
So I know it’s just pathways towards a possible future. And Netanyahu is saying, this is the most moderate type of state.
Yossi: It’s a pathway to an avenue.
Donniel: To an avenue. And the Russians were against it because they wanted explicit, and even the French, everybody wanted it more explicit. But a pathway to an avenue to a direction forwards, under condition that—
And the classic Israeli response has been, yours was shrugging. And the other one on the right was, don’t worry. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s not going to happen. And I think we’re better than that. I think we could have actually more complicated answers. And the world is moving. And every time it moves, because it’s Donald Trump, not just the United Nations, because it’s the United States, and not just the United Nations, I’m hopeful that maybe this conversation will return to Israeli society.
Yossi: All right. But aren’t you concerned, Donniel, that this is happening, at least at this stage, under the umbrella of the UN, which in terms of our interests is antithetical to?
Donniel: I have no concern about that whatsoever. And here, let me just say very clearly, I’m not claiming that I’m right. I’m just saying that I have no concern. Because at least, as I understand, the United Nations is just a framework under which the United States, who’s running the show, together with other Sunni states.
It’s not just the United States, the Sunni states, the partnership between the United States and the Sunni states is very, very deep to the extent that even Russia and China could not veto it because of the broad support in the Arab world for this move. We’re leaving Hamas aside, which is a minor little detail, but they’re not, for some reason, the deal that they agreed to now, they’re saying they don’t agree to.
But it’s because we understand that it’s moving above the Palestinian head. You’re right. I appreciate your concern that it’s also moving above our head. But as I’m saying, let’s get on board. I saw it like as a nudge. The United Nations is not a significant player here. They’re just a, what is the term?
Yossi: Okay. So let’s look at the significant players. You’ve got Turkey, Qatar, and the Saudis are now back in the picture, which is very good news. And we’ve talked about this the last few weeks, that it isn’t, it’s not only being supervised by Turkey and Qatar, who are, for all practical purposes, enemies of Israel.
The bad news about the Saudis is twofold. One is there’s not going to be normalization anytime soon. And I understand that there is no possibility for normalization with this Israeli government, but more worrying in the immediate sense is that they are apparently going to be sold F-35s, which will erase our air superiority. Now, I’m not worried about the Saudis, but I’m worried about the F-35s falling into other hands. And the Israeli security establishment is very worried.
Donniel: Fair enough. But I think we’re moving a little bit off of our agenda. I want to now pull us back. You know, as like, there’s plenty to be worried about. I appreciate that.
Yossi: I’m just getting going.
Donniel: You’re just getting going. But that’s, you know, whether F-35s could be falling in someone else’s hands and they have the ability to fly, all of the above. We’ll leave that aside.
Yossi: So let me just say about the Saudis in a Palestinian state, because this, I think, is on the positive side of the ledger.
The only framework in which I could see actually making progress toward a Palestinian state is within the context of the Abraham Accords. And bringing in the Saudis, bringing in other Arab states, having a regional peace agreement with Israel, in that context, I could see beginning to try to have some kind of a…
Donniel: Fair enough. So let me… I hear you. So let me now take…
Yossi: …an arrangement with the Palestinian… But I won’t even say a solution. Some kind of arrangement.
Donniel: Let me take you a step earlier then. Before you get to in what context you might be willing to, who’s afraid of a Palestinian state? Why are Israelis afraid of a Palestinian state? I don’t know where you are personally.
Yossi: Yeah. Oh, I very much share that consensus with one caveat. The way that I framed it for myself all these years is that I have two deep fears about a Palestinian state. The first is that there will be a Palestinian state, and the second is that there won’t be.
And the first opens up the possibility of insoluble security dilemmas. For example, three terrorists on a Sumerian hilltop overlooking the coastal plain, and every couple days firing a rocket into Ben-Gurion airport. It’s not us, it’s not the Palestinian government, it’s rogue terrorists. And the intimacy of geography makes it almost impossible to defend against that kind of threat. You can defend yourself from a conventional threat.
And what we learned on October 7th, I think, two takeaways and their opposite takeaways. The first is that you really can’t defend yourself long-term from terrorists who are determined to cross into your border, or at the very least firing rockets. Now, all these years when terrorists were firing into Sderot and into the Kibbutzim, it was far away. I mean, nothing is far away in this country. It was an hour from, 50 minutes from Tel Aviv. But still, for the most part, they didn’t hit the heartland. It was the periphery, what we call in a very demeaning way, the periphery.
But if you create a Palestinian state and it turns into another Gaza, the impact of rockets being fired from there into Israel will be qualitatively different. It could shut down daily life in downtown Israel. So that’s the first takeaway of October 7th. And most Israelis stop there.
I have a second takeaway, though, and that goes back to my fear of the absence of a Palestinian state. And my second takeaway of October 7th is Ariel Sharon was right to pull us out of Gaza, because what October 7th proved is that Palestinians and Israelis cannot share one political entity between the river and the sea. We will internalize October 7th. We will be in a condition of permanent October 7th within the country. And so these two peoples have to be separated. That is a security takeaway. And that’s before we get into the moral issues and the demographic, the serious questions of how do we preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
So what I guess I’m really trying to say is that all these years I have felt a deep ambivalence about a Palestinian state. And by ambivalence, I don’t mean confused. I mean, I feel two opposing certainties. I know a Palestinian state will be disastrous for Israeli security. And I know that the absence of a Palestinian state will be disastrous in other ways. But what October 7th has done for me is intensify the ambivalence.
Donniel: So the question is, Yossi, where do we go from here? Because I hear you. And I don’t think there’s any Israeli, any Israeli Jew, in any part of the political map, which doesn’t share your first anxiety.
Yossi: How does that play out for you?
Donniel: I don’t know what to do with it, but I recognize it.
Yossi: You do feel that.
Donniel: Certainly. Because there’s no difference in the Israeli left or in the peace camp or the non-peace, whatever name you want to call us, in our security analysis and our security concerns. I hear you. I think part of what’s mature in Israel is that we’re not debating this issue anymore. We’re not saying, don’t worry if we just stop building a few more settlements. If we’re just nice, the Palestinians will be wonderful. That factual debate is gone.
Yossi: I think that’s a big difference between where the Israeli left is at or what’s left of the left, and, say, the American Jewish left.
Donniel: Correct.
Yossi: It’s a big gap in perception.
Donniel: But it’s also a part of the whole world because it’s nice to make political moves from six to 10,000 miles away. It’s like there’s a difference between someone who’s playing chess in a correspondence game and someone who has to live with the board. You can play your correspondence game however you want. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever the story is, we’re here.
And you’re right, October 7th, just emphasized it. The dangers of what it means are acute. The one thing is that I do believe that long-term we can control terror. We just can’t control it all the time. There was such a complete total breakdown on October 7th. And I think for another generation we could avoid that total breakdown.
Yossi: But I want to pause there for a moment because you’re right. We can mostly control it. The consequences of mostly controlling it on the Gaza border are different, are way different than on the West Bank border.
Donniel: Here too. I grant you that.
Yossi: I think objectively. I don’t know how someone could argue with you. Could you compare somebody sitting in Ramallah or Nablus and the distance they are to Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv? What are we talking about? And it’s not like the life in Tel Aviv is more important. There is an economic center, a cultural center, an international center, a travel center. It just has different consequences.
See, nobody in Israel debates that. The question is, and this is where I struggle, but the one thing I’m doing which is different is I’m holding on to the aspiration. But I accept completely the security concern and analysis.
The question that I ask, and this goes back to your statement about extending the Abraham Accords, is it possible to imagine something that changes the security equation, and something that changes the whole environment? I’ll give you an example, if I can.
The Saudi general was interviewed on Israeli television yesterday, and that itself is an interesting moment, because he wouldn’t do it unless he was given permission. The Crown Prince Bin Salman, he says his visit to the United States is potentially—MBS, he’s called in the West—that this is a game changer. And he says Israel has an opportunity to, in his words, join the new European Union. We’re creating a new Europe here in the Middle East of free trade. Basically, so—
Yossi: Not sure the old Europe has worked out so well, but let’s hope for the best.
Donniel: There’s a— Fair enough. But he’s talking about a whole new something, it’s like a Peres-type utopia transformation. And the question is whether such an environment, if we start in Gaza and win in Gaza, I wouldn’t start in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria. But if this plan starts and wins in Gaza, that means there is a credible international force, which is willing to work to disarm Hamas.
And Hamas now says they don’t want to do it. And many of the countries who signed on said, but we just want to work on the borders, we don’t want to actually disarm them. So there are actually some details which make all the difference, which make all the difference. But, that said, and this is the difference, Yossi, when you have a dream or when you have a hope that you’re not giving up on. It’s not like I have two fears. I have a fear and I have a hope.
And so the question is, can I imagine, in theory, if this plays itself out and if Hamas is completely marginalized from the money rebuilding and the reconstruction of Gaza and something begins to happen, and it’s not going to happen the minute stage two starts, it might take a year or two or three. And then you begin to see educational systems changing, not that overnight you change a curriculum. Anybody who read yesterday’s curriculum is not there. It’s not what it’s about.
You’re talking about a cultural shift in the Middle East. And that’s why it does require, it can’t happen between Israel and Palestine. It won’t happen. The animosity, the fear, it’s very deep.
Yossi: But that model ended with the second Intifada.
Donniel: With the second Intifada. But there too. I always am uncomfortable with this moment because it failed once. We can’t start again. And I think we’ve let ourselves off the hook for too long.
But I’m wondering whether there can be a process. So with all of my fears, can Gaza serve—and Gaza is the worst—can Gaza serve as a template to see whether that process could start? And when you see it starting, then like, the pathway to an avenue to a pathway, you could begin to see, yes, what would it look like to have a serious Palestinian Authority committed to bringing Palestinians into this new culture of the Middle East?
Yossi: Okay, I’m with you, Donniel. The problem that I have is that what we’re doing in effect is giving this whole process, we’re putting it into Hamas’s hands and giving Hamas effective veto power. Hamas can stop the new Middle East. If Gaza is the template and Hamas is not being disarmed.
Donniel: No, unless we just, no, I’m saying the opposite.
Yossi: Okay. Yes.
Donniel: I’m saying the opposite. Hamas, I’m taking it out of Hamas’s hands. Because if we can take it out of Hamas’s hands in Gaza.
Yossi: There’s only one way to do that. To let the IDF finish destroying Hamas. Because they’re not going to do it. The Arab countries will not do it.
Donniel: No, you see. You don’t know. This is where you and I disagree. I don’t believe Israel has any ability whatsoever.
Yossi: And I don’t believe the Arab world has any will to do it.
Donniel: That we’re going to see. At least I, my opinion, has been verified by two years in which we did some things, but the level of disarming Hamas, we didn’t even come close. Now another plan is put in place.
Yossi: What’s plan B, Donniel? What if that doesn’t happen? Hamas is not disarmed. Gaza fails as the template.
Donniel: Right now there’s another stage that I’m coming to. Let’s play it out.
Yossi: Fair enough.
Donniel: Why do I have to be the prophet of doom now? Why can’t I be a prophet of hope? And I think this leads to the second, your security concerns, you know, and we could even expand on them, cause the nightmare has many, many sides to it. Many, many sides. It’s not just a missile. It’s Second Intifada on steroids with constant penetration into Israeli settlements and holding hostages. It could take October 7th and make it seem like a moderate day. We could, if you want to talk nightmares, we can really go in and it’s very serious.
Yossi: How about you and I do little roleplay? You go with the nightmares and I’ll go with the view.
Donniel: No. But I think the other dimension of what Israelis are afraid of, like why are we afraid of a Palestinian state? I think we’re afraid to hope anymore. We lost the ability to live in reality and have hope at the same time. Cause if you have to choose, if you want to choose some messianic hope or reality, you’re going to choose reality. The Middle East is too dangerous.
But they’re not the same. I could be firmly embedded in reality, maintain my hope, and then ask, what are the processes that I’m willing to try? We have stopped trying for a generation. We are doing the opposite. We’ve handed this over completely to messianic advocates of holding onto all the land of Israel, who, whether they’re announcing it or not, are in fact changing facts on the ground every day, completely making any two state solution almost impossible outside of some version of the Trump peace plan.
But I think Israelis have just, I think we’re afraid to hope and to be disappointed again.
Yossi: I would put it in a different way. I think we’re afraid of lapsing back into wishful thinking. And that’s certainly the takeaway of the post Oslo generation. You know, there is this song by the 1960s band, The Who, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
And that really struck me as in some ways the model of our generation of Israelis who invested, at least part of the generation, invested great hope in the Oslo process. And it literally blew up in our faces. So there is a direct line connecting the Second Intifada and October 7th. And this creates a formidable wall.
Donniel: Can I ask you a question?
Yossi: Wait, wait. And you hear this a lot, Donniel, you know, when you talk to Israelis about October 7th, one of the things that they’ll say over and over again is the kibbutzniks who were slaughtered? These were people who believed in peace. They had all kinds of programs to ferry Gaza children to Israeli hospitals. And it’s actually true. What was left of the Israeli peace camp was largely focused there on the Gaza border.
And so that reinforces this deep sense of I’m not going to be played for a fool anymore. And you know, in the Israeli psyche, not to be a sucker, to be a friar, you know, that’s the word.
Donniel: Fair enough. But there’s a conflation of two terms that you made that I think is actually very indicative of Israeli society. And it’s precisely that that I think is getting us stuck. There’s a difference between hope and wishful thinking. When you say wishful thinking, you’re already saying wishful thinking has no hope. Has no, it’s like it’s in your mind alone.
That’s not what hope is. Hope is grounded on your vision for reality. It’s not just wishing. It could be associated with a plan. But I think you’re right. Who’s afraid of a Palestinian state? I think a society which sees hope and wishful thinking as synonymous.
Yossi: That’s a great insight.
Donniel: And I think you’re right. That’s why it was so important for me to say to you, I’m all in. I’m concerned. I don’t know what to do with it, but I want to see if we can bring back to Israeli society a conversation about hope, not a conversation about wishful thinking.
Yossi: So I’ll tell you where my hope comes from.
Donniel: Fair enough.
Yossi: And we’ve talked about this in the probably the distant past on this program.
50 years ago, the most dangerous enemy that Israel faced with the oil producing Arab countries, the Saudis, the Gulf States, they were the ones after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 who led the oil boycott. They were the ones who turned Israel into a pariah state. And fast forward half a century. And they are the ones who are offering us tantalizingly appearing on Israeli TV and saying, join us. We’re offering you a new Middle East.
Now, when Shimon Peres spoke about a new Middle East, I didn’t buy it.
Donniel: Nobody did. I did, actually, the truth is, truth be told.
Yossi: Here we go. That was a great moment, Donniel.
Donniel: I was, I’ve been a Shimon Peres my whole life. It was like he spoke my language.
Yossi: Well, there we go. So look, we can disagree on Peres, but agree about the Saudis. That if the Saudis are speaking about a new Middle East, we have an obligation to take that seriously.
Donniel: So that’s, we’re coming now to a point in our podcast that comes towards the end, but I’ve been getting a lot of aggravation and criticism about this, and I got to set the record straight. We’re now coming to the point where we’re saying, final thoughts. There’s a, it’s a plural, ladies and gentlemen thoughts. It’s not Yossi, could you have your final thought? And then Donniel says goodbye. No, no, no. It’s final thoughts means closing our, both of us.
Yossi: That’s it, together. Back and forth.
Donniel: We, we, we work out. So ladies and gentlemen, just give me a break. Just give me a break. Let’s reverse the order a little bit. I have two final thoughts. I’ll say one first, and then you could have it, but it’s towards the end. It’s like, we’re sort of alerting our audience to start peddling quicker or jogging or whatever it is that they’re coming to.
Another thought about this process, about who’s afraid is it’s incomplete unless we don’t put on the table that there is a segment of Israeli society with deep and profound power. And that is that group which sees the land of Israel or that the security risk to Israel from a Palestinian state is not the security risk of a missile or of terrorist infiltration. That’s not what their fear is.
Their fear is, is that a Palestinian state will undermine the redemption of Israel. Redemption is connected to the land of Israel. It’s connected to the land and holding on to the land. And they have an inordinate amount of power, not just because of the coalition government. Deep in Zionism, an essential part of Judaism for Zionism is the land of Israel.
And this language, this messianic, political, they are petrified. And that’s why they don’t know what to do now with Trump because he moved from Messiah to heretic overnight. Like overnight, this is, you are altering the course of Jewish history. Now this group, you know, they’re a third of the religious Zionists, can be 5% of the society, but they sit deeply. The whole religious Zionist community, even if they don’t believe it, they hear it. Major parts of the Likud party hear it. And it’s almost as if touching the land has become taboo.
Like Mary Douglas speaks about how religion is about purity and danger, and about how just don’t, don’t touch something, just stay away. So they have it motivated by their messianic ideology, but they’ve succeeded in creating a culture. Just don’t talk about it.
Yossi: Theology with very serious political consequences,
Donniel: Very serious political consequences. And the second thought was very helpful for me too, this conversation. And then you will in this case have the last word, but I will say goodbye to everybody unless you aggravate me and then I have to say something.
But, and that is, I want to reiterate, you know, when we talk about security, the assumption is that now security is great. The assumption is that the status quo is safer and we’re all experts in knowing what could go wrong as if what’s happening now is sustainable. Part of what we’ve also learned is that what’s happening now is not sustainable. And Israel becoming a pariah state is a security issue. Israel ignoring Palestinian national aspirations is not tenable now anywhere else in the world. This has very dramatic security implications.
It doesn’t mean that I take for granted the other security concerns. It just means that we have to now begin a delicate balance. You were frightened of having a state, not having the two fears. There are multiple security concerns. When you have multiple security concerns, it’s not so black and white and you have to balance them.
And I don’t believe right now that where we are is sustainable for Israel’s security, let alone for Israel’s Jewish moral identity. And when you add that to the equation, it doesn’t resolve them, it maybe mitigates them. It makes you more open to taking chances slowly, slowly, but those chances, I believe, have to be guided just to quote myself again, not by some fantasy, but by deep-seated hope of who we want to be in this world and what type of life we want for our children.
And now the last word to my dear friend, Yossi Klein-Halevi.
Yossi: So, you know, when I say that I’m often stalemated against myself between the fear of creating a Palestinian state and the fear of not creating a Palestinian state, what has changed in that balance is the introduction of the possibility of a regional solution.
And this conflict was always regional. You know, the world is focused on the Israeli-Palestinian piece of it, but this was always the Arab-Israeli conflict. And more, it was the Sunni world against the Jewish state. If the Saudis come into the Abraham Accords, we are seeing the effective end of an 80-year Sunni war against Israel. Now, that changes the security balance. That makes it possible to conceive of a scenario in which Israel, together with its Arab allies, and think of that term, Israel’s Arab allies.
Donniel: Europe.
Yossi: It’s surreal. It’s surreal.
Donniel: Germany and France. Think of Germany and France. And their history. Think about it.
Yossi: Europe is a problematic frame of reference for me, personally.
Donniel: Canada and the United States, have they ever been…there was some little pishy war. There was a little pishy war somewhere like…
Yossi: There was. What they called the French and Indian War in the 18th century.
So, there’s the possibility of trying to figure out how to contain the threat of a radical Palestinian state together with our Arab allies opens up all kinds of possibilities in terms of our security that were inconceivable. And so, when I hope, when I allow myself to hope, I look toward Riyadh and the Gulf states, I think, you know, something really might be changing.
Donniel: Right. Maybe, to quote myself again, Gaza is the first step. But we’ll leave that. Yossi, it was really a pleasure being with you. Thank you.
Yossi: It’s great to be with you.
