The eruption of war between Israel and Hamas pushes the critical questions of sovereignty to the forefront. Scenarios for peace that have long been discarded—such as a two-state solution—are now being reconsidered. So are other scenarios, such as citizenship under one state, or a confederation of states under Israel, to name a few. How can citizens of Palestine and Israel live together safely, and what kind of governing structure could be viable in Gaza and the West Bank, or collectively? Our scholars discuss theoretical proposals for peaceful coexistence.
KRISTIN CAULFIELD: I now turn the event over to Professor Melani Cammett, Director of the Weatherhead Center.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much, Kristin. And thanks so much to our panelists for joining us here today and to the audience. I want to welcome you all to the Weatherhead Forum. I'm Melani Cammett, Director of the Weatherhead Center. I'm also a professor of government at Harvard University. And it's really my great pleasure to introduce this forum.
The Weatherhead Forum is our platform to address the pressing topics of the day and the path-breaking research being done in those areas. These special sessions are open to the public. And we thank you for joining us virtually during this event.
This forum is the second in our series on the war in Israel-Palestine. And our focus today is on scenarios that could, at least theoretically, bring about peaceful coexistence for both societies. As the war continues, there's no doubt that it's difficult to see a peace process emerging at this particular juncture.
But nonetheless, the scholars joining us today have been thinking about this question a lot and have been deliberating this question for most of their professional lives. Academics don't claim to have all the answers, but what we can offer is reasoned ideas and analysis of the proposals out there, past and present, for how Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace going forward. And I think we can all agree that this is a worthy goal.
To begin, each panelist will have about 10 minutes to present, then we're going to move on to the Q&A. And as Kristin said, attendees should feel free to write their questions into the Q&A function on Zoom. And I'll do my very best to read out as many of these questions as possible and to try to make them as representative as possible.
So let me first briefly introduce our speakers before I turn it over to them. And unfortunately, Diana Buttu is not able to join us today due to illness, which is not serious, thankfully. So we're going to proceed today with our three remaining panelists.
OK, so our first speaker today will be Professor Yuval Feinstein, who is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Haifa. And Yuval was previously a visiting scholar with the Weatherhead Scholars Program. He's now also, I should say, a non-resident faculty affiliate of the Weatherhead research cluster on identity politics.
His research addresses national belief systems on political emotions and attitudes in crises and settled times, inter-ethnic relations, and the development of nation states. His most recent book is "Rally 'round the Flag: The Search For Honor and Respect in Times of Crisis."
Our second speaker is Professor Leila Farsakh, who is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has published widely on the political economy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and alternatives to partition.
She's the editor of the book "Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition," which I believe is actually available for download on the web-- I've read several chapters out of it-- and author of "Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation."
And finally, we have Professor Shai Feldman, who is the Raymond Frankel Chair on Israeli Politics and Society at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies. He recently took a three-year leave from Brandeis to serve as President of Sapir College in Sha'ar HaNegev-- apologies for the pronunciation, you can correct me-- Israel.
Previously, he was Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. And in the early 2000s, served as a member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. His most recent co-authored book is titled "Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East." And I should say portions of that are assigned reading in my course, next week in my course on power and identity in the Middle East.
So I will turn it over to our esteemed speakers, starting with Yuval.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Melani. Can you hear me well? Yeah, I apologize. I'm experiencing some technical problems. That's why you see two of me here. And there's still an echo?
SARAH BANSE: The echo is-- it's better. Better.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: OK. Well, that's the least of our concern nowadays. OK, so let me-- let me open by-- thank you, Melani, for inviting me to participate in this, what I consider an essential discussion of theoretical and hopefully practical pathways to peaceful coexistence in Israel and Palestine. Let me mute myself on my own screen. Hold on. Oh, better.
SARAH BANSE: Yeah, that's better.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: OK. So I would like to begin by acknowledging the immense suffering of Israelis and Palestinians in the most brutal phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict has been ongoing for over a century and has brought so much pain to so many people.
I sincerely hope that the tragedy that unfolded on October 7 will soon be replaced by a lasting peace between two nations that deserve no less. Many people worldwide share this hope, but relatively few engage in constructive efforts to resolve the conflict. Therefore, I'm grateful to the Weatherhead Center for hosting this important event.
I was invited to participate in this panel because I published an op-ed in the Times of Israel with a plan for ending the conflict. I will not focus today on the details of my plan, which you are invited to read, but on its assumptions and principles. Just making sure that people can hear, because I cannot hear myself at all. OK. Better.
So let me begin by saying that any discussion about possible positive change in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should focus on two questions. First, precisely what is the desired and feasible outcome? What should a post-conflict reality look like? Then the second question is, what will it take to make the desired change?
We need to base our answers to this question on a solid understanding of the problem we aspire to solve and on a sober assessment of which solution plan will likely work and which will likely fail or fail again. The first step is to characterize the conflict without adopting uncritically the characterizations proposed in the political discourse about the conflict. Here are the main characteristics of the conflict as I see it.
Fundamentally, it is a protracted national conflict with a dominant territorial dispute. But note, this is not just a disagreement about where to mark an inter-state border but it is a conflict between two nations, each believing in being indigenous and the only legitimate owner of the entire territory and in being a long-time victim of the other side's contrasting ambitions.
The sense of exclusive ownership and antagonism for the other nation also has religious component on both sides, which has become increasingly influential in the political and military leaderships of both Israel and the Palestinians, at least in Gaza, and which is fueled by political religion in the region and globally. Finally, there is a geopolitical context that impacts the conflict, and we should not ignore that.
We can hold a healthy debate about how much weight each of these multiple characteristics carries. Unfortunately, parts of the academic discussion about the recent horrific developments have created complex and robust analysis for simplistic analogies and slogans that pretend to be theories. Many speakers have compared the current war to epic battles of the 20th century.
For instance, pro-Palestinian speakers compared the situation to anti-colonialism struggles or to the efforts to end the apartheid regime in South Africa. Some pro-Israel speakers compared the war to the battle against Nazi Germany. For reasons that I'm happy to discuss later, I believe that all these analogies conceal more than they reveal about the conflict. Therefore, when used as political weapons, they tend to backfire.
Problematic analogies limit our capacity to imagine and create a network of effective alliances and take the necessary actions to end the conflict. Moreover, these analogies play to the hands of extremists. Both Israelis and Palestinians often feel that the world does not understand them, and the reactions by foreign governments and publics add insult to injury. No one is better at propagating and capitalizing on these feelings than the nationalistic and religious extremists in both societies.
To counter these trends, we need to develop a solid pragmatic theory of peace based on recognition that both Palestinians and Israelis have legitimate security concerns and both people deserve to have much better security, that both Palestinians and Israelis carry traumas that should not be downplayed, that over the years, Israeli and Palestinians have fed each other spoons full of humiliation and they deserve dignity and respect, and that both peoples genuinely love the travel piece of land between the river and the sea and none of them is going anywhere.
Now crucially, we need to accept that fear, hatred, and mistrust will remain high in the foreseeable future. All these assumptions must inform our theory of change and our search for helpful analogies. Let me state up front that a two-state solution remains the only way to achieve security for Palestinians and Israelis and realize the right for-- of course, right of both people to self-determination, which will also increase stability in the region.
However, I should remind you that other solutions are on the table. On one end of the spectrum of solutions, there are zero sum game or winner-takes-it-all, if you will, solutions that ultimately involve ethnic cleansing. That is the official goal of Hamas, but it is also the aspiration of the most radical members of the current Israeli government. We should acknowledge that. I find this type of solution morally-reprehensible. Unfortunately, these are realistic future development of the conflict. We should add to the sense of urgency of our quest for a morally-acceptable solution.
On the other end of the spectrum of solution, there are one-state or confederate solutions that are part of the Israeli and global left agenda. These are lovely ideas, but they cannot succeed in the near future and lack of success, we know, means more violence and despair.
So really, the only reasonable solution is a two-state solution, which in the distant future should allow Israelis and Palestinians to open up for more resource-sharing and maybe, maybe one day also reconciliation. Unfortunately, the complex reality of the conflict makes achieving stable two-state solution a formidable task.
Now, let me clarify that in addition to the multilayered competing claims of the two nations, which I mentioned earlier, there are two sets of factors that make it especially difficult to realize the two-state solution. First, even before October 7, the situation in Israel-Palestine has been volatile. The endless cycle of attacks and retaliation has nurtured mutual demonization, so any act of aggression has been interpreted as evidence of the other side's evil intentions. We are all too familiar with that.
Unfortunately, it is easy to predict that even after diplomatic negotiation resumes, there will be incidents of violence that might nurture mistrust and skepticism about peace. Put simply, the passage of time is a structural enemy of peacemaking. Many people who propose resuming the diplomatic negotiation do not consider this critical factor.
Second and relatedly, there are actors, both Israeli and Palestinians, who oppose the two-state solution-- this is not news to you-- because they want the entire territory from the river to the sea for themselves. They seek every opportunity to say, we told you that the other side should not be trusted and trusting them was a suicide.
Further, as you all know too well, for decades, some of these actors have been engaged in sabotage efforts, including acts of terrorism. Violence has served their purpose in the past, so they will seek to repeat their success in the future. We should all be prepared for that.
These are unfavorable conditions for peacemaking. However, it is also essential to remember that mutual fear, hatred, and mistrust characterized many historical conflicts just before they were successfully resolved. It will take a long time for the wounds of-- the wounds Palestinians and Israelis have inflicted on each other for decades to heal.
However, there are plenty of examples of protracted violent conflicts that ended even though wounds remained open. Think of post World War II Europe. It took France and Germany several decades to overcome their hatreds and fear, even open their borders. Take also the Balkan states after the 1990s. Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and Albanians are still working on their relationships, but they no longer kill each other.
In all these cases, national sovereignty, security, and dignity were guaranteed when agreements ended mutual bloodshed. Offering independence, security, and dignity to both Palestinians and Israelis is crucial for ending the conflict.
Now, I believe that the tragic developments of the past four months opened a window of opportunity for Israel, Palestine, countries in the region, and the international community to reach a breakthrough in the effort to end the conflict. It will require different leaderships for sure. I don't want to discuss this issue now. We can discuss it in the Q&A. But let me say that most Palestinians and most Israelis yearn for better leadership.
I also want to be clear that while I see the current moment as an opportunity to end the conflict, I do not mean to glorify the despicable attack by Hamas on innocent civilians nor do I seek to legitimize the magnitude of the IDF's retaliation and the unbearable cost in human lives and destruction in Gaza.
However, as I mentioned in the opening passage of my op-ed, it is precisely the feeling of being devastated, deeply devastated by the tragic events of the past several months that made clear to me that we have to seize the moment and push as hard as we can for a peaceful solution to the conflict. Easier said than done, right?
So my plan ambitiously marks the path for a relatively smooth and safe split of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two. And this is crucial to non-hostile nation states. The plan consists of 20 sets of actions, most of which should be taken simultaneously by a determined coalition of local, regional, and global actors. I will not get into the details now but only highlight that my plan differs from past peace initiatives in three critical aspects.
First, instead of a long, gradual peace-building process, the plan comprises multiple coordinated actions that will be taken swiftly to end hostilities between Israel and Palestine, provide security to both people, and increase their economic integration into the region and beyond. Second, an independent Palestinian state will be founded early in the process as opposed to being the expected outcome in the past peace-building attempts. This is critical.
Third, solving all the conflict core issues will not be a precondition for creating a two-state reality and ending hostilities. Instead, the core issues, including the permanent borders of the Palestinian state, the status of East Jerusalem, reparations for the 1948 refugees, and resource-sharing between Israel and Palestine, all these will be negotiated by two independent Israeli and Palestinian states mutually committed to maintaining security and stability.
I want to conclude by saying-- before we turn on to our next discussion and then to Q&A, I want to say that I believe that many of-- in our large audience decided to attend this webinar not only because they are interested. You are interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are concerned about the current war, but also because you are eager to see the war and the entire conflict end.
My plea to you is that when a plan like the one I have proposed is put on the table-- and I'm cautiously optimistic about the possibility that that will happen very soon-- please think about what you can do to support it and increase its chance of succeeding. We need your dedicated and well-informed help. Thank you for now.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you, Yuval. So next, I'll turn it to Leila.
LEILA FARSAKH: Thank you very much, Melani, for having me and for the Weatherhead Center for organizing this talk. And thank you very much, Yuval, for your intervention and also for starting off by talking about the incredible suffering that both sides are enduring right now and that there is hope in the midst of despair. It's very difficult for me as a Palestinian to say that. But when we have 30,000 Palestinians being killed and two million people being displaced, living another Nakba, the Nakba of my generation, something I never thought I would see. But I remain optimistic because I know in the midst of despair, something comes out.
Like you, I do agree that this conflict is definitely about two national groups competing over the same land. But also, as you said, depicting the problem is essential to know how to resolve it. This conflict is not just about two people fighting over-- two national groups fighting over this land. It is also a settler colonial conflict. It's not only a settler colonial conflict, but it is, in its essence, a settler colonial conflict, something that Herzl clearly stated, something that Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion had no qualms about-- saying.
So we know that Israel-- and we're not going to go into the history, but it is important to recenter the settler colonial framework not to accuse Israel. I think this is very-- something very important. This is not an attempt to attack or accuse. It's an attempt to understand why precisely a two-state solution failed.
The two-state solution was the aspiration of the Oslo peace process. We had 30 years of Oslo peace process. We are all in the beginning of the peace process. I really thought that two states will be achieved, although also did not mention any statehood.
20 years ago, in 2002, the Bush administration gave the famous Rose Garden speech, in which the US said the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional border and the establishment of such a state is central to ending the conflict. This led to the roadmap to peace in 2003 that also said we need to have a Palestinian state.
And yet, after 20 years of that, 22 years of the Rose Garden speech, to date, actually-- he said it in December-- and the roadmap, we don't have a two-state solution. What we've seen-- and that's the tragedy-- we've seen that Israel used the Oslo peace process not to remove its colonial domination in the West Bank and Gaza but to deepen it.
And I would like to share with the public who is there just a few maps to make this visible. Again, and not in the spirit of attacking, anyway, but in the spirit of understanding what had happened, and also understanding what we have today on the ground in order, as you say, to be able-- we will we be able to really establish a two-state solution, which is what the international consensus is about.
And it is, as you said, what many, most people, I would say in the West Bank Gaza, including in Israel, not the far right, even Hamas endorsed the idea of a two-state solution with the hudna in 2017. It is the solution we have on the table. And yet, what has happened over the past 30 years has been the systematic destruction of such an option. And how do we see that?
Allow me to share with you a few maps, not much. Don't worry about it. This is a map of the West Bank and Gaza and Israel in 1999. And I separated the West Bank and Gaza, these dark orange brown. And the dots that you see all over there are the Israeli settlements. As you know, in Gaza Strip, there were 17 settlements. They were removed in 2005.
But in the West Bank, what has happened, the settlements, which are illegal according to international law, have expanded Israel. The black dots are all the settlements built before 1993 before Oslo. And the red dots are all those new ones built after 1993.
Israel, over the past 30 years, have tripled the settler population in the West Bank. If you look at this map-- and this is all Israeli data. This is coming from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics-- settlement construction in the West, the number of settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when the peace process started in 1993 was under 250,000. It was 220,000 settlers.
During the peace process, what has happened, even up to 2000, which is just when the Camp David negotiations were taking place, they reached nearly 4,000 settlers. And today, in other words, in the past, in the 30 years of the peace process, we reached a total number of 710,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Building settlements and expanding the settler population has made it impossible to have any attempt to create a two-state solution. If you believe in a two-state solution in which the West Bank and Gaza is one state and Israel is another, having settlers in the middle of it and expanding the number of settlers to this extent indicates that there is an Israeli policy not to create a Palestinian state but to kill any possibility for a Palestinian state. We see that also with what Oslo calls in terms of territorial fragmentation of the West Bank.
This map shows you all these blue dots are the dots that show where the settlements are. The red line is the separation barrier, which Israel started building in 2002, and which upon completion would have absorbed 10% of the West Bank into Israel. This in itself is not just a problem but also a problem of how the settlements are connected to inside Israel and how they created a bypass, a system of bypass roads that fragmented further the West Bank and Gaza, which were already also separated into area A, B, and C. Area C being the area under full Israeli control, which constituted 56% of the West Bank.
This is exactly-- everything which is gray is under full Israeli control. This includes also the border with Jordan, where the majority of settlements are. And what you ended up having is that you see all these Palestine areas, areas where the Palestinian Authority has functional jurisdiction but also specifically said it cannot have more territorial jurisdiction over more than 20% of the West Bank, which is area A. In area B, which is included in this orange part, the Palestinian Authority has some security control and is responsible for population but not for the land. And in area C, as I explained, Israel has full control.
Now, as if this was not enough, Israel further, during these years, and because the argument was terrorism, but it's not only terrorism that emerged in the '90s and the 2000s against the Oslo peace process, Israel built a whole system of bypass roads. The red lines here that you see are roads that connect the Palestinian cities to one another. But completely, these Palestine areas are cut from one another by these blue lines, which are the bypass roads, and these green-- these yellow dots which are the checkpoints.
So basically, they cut the West Bank into what I call Bantustans. Again, something Israel did not necessarily want to create, but the fact to create it by creating population enclaves, by Palestinian population enclaves. Cut from one another by bypass roads and checkpoints, out of which Palestinians cannot exit without permission from the Israelis. And these, you could say, major population enclave, there are around six in the West Bank, completely cut from Jerusalem.
This, in a sense, fragmented further the Palestinian reality, made it clear that there is no Palestinian territorial contiguity for a state, excluded East Jerusalem, which according to international law, is occupied land. And also cut it from the West, from Gaza. As you know, Israel retreated from Gaza in 2005, but put it under a hermetic siege for 17 years, where it controls the air, the sea, and the land access to the Gaza Strip.
Between 2006 and 2023, before October 7, Israel launched four wars against the Gaza Strip and led to the killing of 6,300 Palestinians. And the wars, these four wars led also to the killing of 306 Israelis between 2008, 2021. The Gaza Strip already before the October 7 attacks, horrendous attacks, Palestinians were experiencing unemployment of 47%, 60% poverty rate, and 90% lived without potable water.
So this territorial fragmentation has meant, and this development of settlements has meant that, for all intended purposes, the two-state solution has been killed, or any real Palestinian sovereignty, territorial sovereignty has been emptied of any content, which led to what many people argue that what we have right now today is actually a one-state reality. This is a one-state reality because from the river to the sea, there is only one state which is sovereign, which is Israel.
The state of Israel controls 14 million people, 7 million of those are Israeli Jews who have political rights and can move freely. And 7 million are Palestinians controlled under four legal regimes. They are the two million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, who have rights, but are considered by some to be second-rate citizens. You have the Palestinians of East Jerusalem who have been completely cut from the West Bank, have residence rights but do not have citizenship rights.
Then you have the Palestinians of the West Bank who are under military control and Palestinian functional administration. But this administration, the Palestinian Authority, needs to be in full security cooperation with Israel on every matter, and it has complied. The Palestinian Authority has complied with every Israeli condition to establish a Palestinian state.
And yet, what has happened over the past 20 years is Israel further encroaching on Palestinian land, further expanding its settlements, and further weakening the Palestinian Authority that we reach now a point where the Palestinian Authority has no legitimacy whatsoever, or very little. I mean, it's going to be beefed up. And we have the Palestinians of Gaza who have been under siege for 2.3 million, under siege for 17 years, and then right now being in the process facing the extermination.
So in this one-state reality, this is-- and people call it apartheid reality not to insult Israel or not to be useless in their metaphor of the apartheid analogy, but just to emphasize that we have different legal systems being applied and to emphasize that Israeli Jews benefit from full equal rights. Although, as we saw after October 7, are living in incredible insecurity and incredible trauma, something I acknowledge. And at the same time, you have Palestinians whose life is still being determined by the sovereign, the state of Israel.
Now, can we turn this one-state reality into a two-state solution? I would love that. I think this is the best solution, as you said. It is the best solution because it allows both national groups to have their state, to have their entity. But Israel demonstrated it does not want the solution. It wants the Palestinian to vanish or it wants the Palestinian to just have some local autonomy.
Now, I'm all for the idea that we can rehabilitate the two-state solution. Your proposal you have is commendable, and I think that's-- realistically speaking, people are going to push both local actors, regional actors, international actors because all of them are in support of the two-state solution. The challenge I see is how you're going to translate what I just described, what Israel created into a two-state solution.
I don't see anybody moving settlers from their place. Nobody will move 700,000. Nobody even will move-- even if we forget Jerusalem, I don't see how we're going to move 500,000 settlers out of the West Bank. You could argue they can stay where they are, perfect, but then you are talking-- will you start drawing boundaries, and the boundaries, you cannot draw along the boundaries that I showed in the map, which is completely fragmented, and even worse where the Bantustans are.
I see that actually the solution will continuously be proposed as a two-state solution. But concretely, you are really talking about a federal state or a confederal state but one which is very unequal, like the United States in the 1950s and '30s. This, of course, shocks many people. But I think the challenge we're facing today is, what are the mechanisms to make a two-state solution possible, and I don't see them.
And I think it is about time to start saying we need to manage-- to try to propose a solution that turns this one-state reality that Israel consolidated, the settler colonial reality that Israel consolidated in the name of security and which proved to be catastrophic for the security of Israelis. How do we decolonize it? Not by eliminating or negating the right of the Israelis.
Because, as you said, today there are 14 million people living between the river or the sea, 7 million Palestinians, and 7 million Israelis, and they're not going anywhere. This is their home. This is going to remain their home, but some have rights and some do not have rights. The only way we can move forward is to guarantee the equality, and the dignity, and the humanity of both sides, not to prioritize one group over the other.
So I'd love to see-- I do think that what we're going to be-- especially as you said it, like when you said that the independent state has to be declared on, but its borders are still going to be negotiated. We still have to-- you propose multi-action to secure this integration, OK, this is even more time. You need to have the will. You need to have an Israeli will to actually give a part of the land, and I think this has been bypassed. We will have more of the same.
We need to talk about how can we have a confederal or federal system that guarantees for these two entities-- one is called Israel and one is called Palestine-- to have a shared sovereignty, but above all, freedom of movement, freedom of life, equal citizenship, and equality for all. I'll stop here and look forward to what Shai has to say. Thank you very much.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much, Leila. And I will turn it over to Shai. And after Shai, I will pose-- we're already getting a bunch of questions in the Q&A, so I will turn to those after Shai. Thank you. I think you have to unmute. We always do this despite years of Zooming. [LAUGHS]
SHAI FELDMAN: Can you hear me now? Good. So first of all, Melani, thanks for having me. And I also join what you all said about the terrible suffering on both sides. And it's all clear to us, and I won't elaborate on that.
I also won't challenge-- I will challenge the idea that Leila presented, but I won't challenge her particular portrait of the realities. The book that Melani mentioned is unique because it's, first of all, the first book on the conflict co-authored by an Israeli, a Palestinian, and an Egyptian.
But what's really unique and relevant to what Leila said is that the second third of every one of the 13 chapters put side-by-side an Israeli narrative, a Palestinian narrative, and Arab narratives, about the important developments in the history of the conflict, including the points that Leila mentioned. So it can be easily read. I won't get into that.
But clearly, you could deduce from what I said is that at least in some part, my understanding of the conflict is a bit different from the conflict that Leila presented. I share with her that Israelis have responsibility for where we've gotten in this to 2024. But I didn't hear a word from Leila about the extent to which the Palestinians have contributed, at least something to where we are in 2024. So again, I'm not going to go into these details, just to make clear.
I'm going to make four points. The first point that I want to make and that will somewhat explain why I won't get into also the details of Yuval's proposal, which is a very nice proposal, is that I just don't think that the problem with this conflict is ideas about how to solve it. Arabs and Israelis have been in conversation for the last 40 years.
I've taken part myself in so many, so many tracks two conversations between Israelis and Palestinians. And Israelis and Palestinians have both come up with lots of suggestions. Some of these suggestions even found themselves in the hands of, let's say, at least track one participants, both on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side.
And so what I want to say is the problem has not being the shortage of ideas. If I had to-- within the time limit of the CNN style, I will say that there is really one problem. And the one problem overwhelming problem is essentially how bad the Palestinian and Israeli domestic politics are, and especially the lack of leadership.
The lack of leadership is the number one problem that both Israelis have and Palestinians have. Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas have been leading the Palestinians and Israelis now for at least 15 years, an average between the two. They're not part of the solution. They're part of the problem, and they're a big part of the problem.
They've been there for a long, long, long time. And frankly, they have to go. There is no capacity on either the part of Mahmoud Abbas, who contributed to this failure, and Netanyahu, who contributed, to some extent, even more purposefully for this failure. Both of them have to go.
And I will only add my own optimism, I think that this war that we've been at now for 110 days or something like that is going to result on the Israeli side. I am convinced. I wish I would have-- I wish I could be with that same kind of confidence on the Palestinian side that this is going to lead to a major, major, major reckoning.
What we've seen in the 10 months before October 6, the protests against the efforts of the Israeli government to change the balance of power between the branches of government at the expense of the judiciary, which brought a quarter of a million Israelis to the streets Saturday after Saturday. And the equivalent in the US is 8.4 million Americans if you take the proportionate to the population. That's 8.4 million people who went out Saturday after Saturday.
And my prediction is that once the Israeli public decides that it's time that Israel can afford to go out-- Israelis can afford to go out to the streets despite the fact that our young women and men are in the battlefield, a quarter of a million would be a very, very low point. I think a million people will be in the street.
So I think that the whole strata of politicians that we see on the Israeli side, which, as I said, I think a big part of the problem, they're going to go away. They will be irrelevant to the post-war reality. Whether it took eight months, as was the case after '73, or slightly later, after the failed, in my view, although the consequences weren't that bad for the second Lebanon war, and that also led to a sacking of an entire strata of people, that all of these are promos for what I see coming on the Israeli side.
I'm not sure that with the domestic politics on the Palestinian side that I see a reckoning like this, but who knows? I can only remain optimistic. So that's my point.
My point is it's all about political. It's all about domestic politics. And it's all about leadership. And I don't think that you would have-- anybody who knows me would have predicted that I would express some nostalgia for Yasser Arafat. But definitely, Arafat and Rabin together showed the leadership, what leadership needed.
And, by the way, individuals like myself worked for five years on the ideas that made Oslo. We published a book and a short book at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies which was called "The West Bank and Gaza: Israel's options for Peace." And you will find all of the most important components of Oslo there. And that was published in 1988.
The prime minister at the time was Shamir. He was definitely against that. He made an immediate statement that he will never read the report. And then the phones didn't stop ringing because everybody wanted to read the report that Shamir said he wouldn't read. But five years later, all of these were in the Oslo.
So my point about this is it's not a problem of ideas, the problem is leadership. And both sides have essentially have a leadership poverty right now. So that's point number one, or whatever.
Point number two, Leila, my problem with one state is that the one state is-- I understand all your comments about the two-state solution and how bad things have gone and how difficult it would be to implement it. But I would say a one-state solution is-- essentially, it's the end of Zionism.
Now, if you want to just say, well, Zionism is colonialism, so that's great, let's just end the Zionism as colonialism, and so fine. Again, this is narratives. I won't get into it. Zionism basically was a response to global anti-Semitism, not actually anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Because anti-Semitism in the Arab world was kindergarten compared to what Jews suffered in Europe and other places.
And the response, yes, by Herzl who, yes, lived in the 18th century, or the 19th century, rather, and lived in an empire. So it's not really surprising that he was thinking empire terms, colonial terms. He was the author of political Zionism, which meant he tried to negotiate with the empires for a Jewish state.
But the point about this is it all started with the Dreyfus trial as an example of what happens when Jews try to battle anti-Semitism by assimilation. It didn't work. It didn't work in France. It didn't work in Germany.
So Herzl's idea, which led to a hundred years later, the establishment of the state of Israel-- slightly less than 100-- was the idea that the problem of anti-Semitism, the problem of the Jews is that they're a minority everywhere. And that therefore, in some corner of the earth-- at some point it was considered to be in Uganda-- Jews should have an absolute majority.
And so one state to Israelis, number one, looks like the end of Zionism. Number two, it's essentially-- as I said, it's not Israel. It's not the idea. Now, you could very, very justifiably say, so what has Israel done to undermine the idea of Zionism the way I see it, and that would be very, very valid criticism. And by the way, that's criticism which I think is shared by at least half of the population in Israel, and you will see this after the reckoning.
But for many problem-- for many Israelis, the one-state solution also looks like a strategy. And the strategy basically is to undermine the basic idea of Zionism and to create a situation where the demographic trends-- we know what will happen with the demographic trends. There is no chance that a one state that includes the Palestinians and Israelis would-- that in that state, Jews will be a majority, and therefore it undermines the idea. So that's point number two.
Point number three I want to say is that actually, in my view, the correlation of forces in the Middle East has never, ever, ever, ever been as positive for working towards a two-state solution, despite all the problems that Leila mentioned. Because first of all, we have experienced for decades in peace with two of Israel's neighbors, Egypt and Jordan. We now have the Abraham Accords, which brings into the story the UAE, and Bahrain, and Morocco. We have conversations on the normalization with Saudi Arabia.
And we know, no matter how the original conversations with the Saudis began, now there is no question that the idea of trying to resurrect the two-state solution is at the heart of the conversations about normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There is a reason why the Biden administration is invested in this. And when you tally it all, Egypt, Jordan, at least three out of the Abraham Accords countries, and now Saudi Arabia pro a two-state solution. I think that's a very formidable note.
Point number four and the last one, which explains why I'm also, to some extent, optimistic. I'm optimistic about the reckoning. I'm optimistic about a Middle East regional coalition for a two-state solution. And here is something that came out yesterday. Yesterday, it came out that actually, the UAE has completely reformed its textbooks in elementary and high school.
And all the anti-Zionist and anti-- all the slogans that we know have been used for the last 100 years in this battle of the narratives have been taken out and replaced by, say, more neutral language, which basically radiates or projects not hatred but, yes, a conflict. There is a conflict. And nobody is going to deny there is a conflict.
But there is a difference between language of conflict and language of hatred. And I think that-- and since this conflict has essentially settled-- settlements, colonialism-- it settled in the minds and hearts of people. I think this is an amazing step to take the hatred out of people's hearts in the region. And if the UAE could do it, and that's what I call leadership, then others can do it. Then maybe the Egyptians, who are now more than 110 million people, can also consider and look at their textbooks and think, is that appropriate?
So I think for all these-- that's the four points I wanted to make. And I have to say, I'm not-- as you can see, I'm-- some would call me hopelessly optimistic, but at least I'm not entirely pessimistic.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much, Shai. And I'm sure the panelists want to have a conversation with each other. In the interest of also trying to get through some of these questions, I thought what I'd do is cluster them together, throw them out there. And I think in the course of responding, you'll also be able to respond to each other's comments.
So I'm just going to summarize some of the big themes. There is absolutely no way we're going to get through all these questions. And I'm really grateful to our audience for being so engaged. I also want to say that I'm heartened by the fact that there seems to be a diversity of opinions in the audience. So we're getting a wide range of perspectives here.
OK, so some of these questions, I would cluster under the larger theme of feasibility. So I'll start with that cluster in a moment. Some I would say cluster under the theme of who's responsible for the failure of the two-state solution. Some of them cluster under wanting more information about the humanitarian situation.
And also the legal status of some of these territories, our participants contest some of the depictions of the legal status. And then there's a number of questions about peace initiatives at the micro level and at the broader level, and what is the value and record of those kinds of things. And then some other questions related to the nature of anti-Semitism and Zionism.
So let's start with this cluster of questions about feasibility, which I think collectively address some of the points you've made and will give you an opportunity to respond to each other as well. And I'll just throw out a bunch of them, and you can pick and choose how you respond here.
One person asked whether before we even talk about a solution do we need a ceasefire first, should that be the first step? And then others have asked whether given that we have Hamas and Netanyahu in power in Gaza and in Israel respectively, is it feasible to progress towards any of the ideas that have been proposed on the table? Some of these questions are focused on more specific solutions that have been articulated here.
One is, what about the possibility of a confederation? For those of you in the audience who haven't read deeply in what these institutional scenarios look like, we can think of a confederation as one permutation of, say, a one-state solution but which itself has multiple permutations. And this is laid out in some of the chapters in Leila's edited book, recent edited book.
Another person poses another solution, this three-state solution with Jerusalem, Israel, Palestine. Is that on the table? Where does that fit into these scenarios? Then another question under this theme of feasibility, what about the unequal control over resources? How does this affect the prospect for solutions?
And is there any role that the region can play? We have also to pay attention to Iran. What is the role of Iran here? Is there anything more that the United States can do? And finally, can Israelis be convinced to move out of the West Bank and allow for a contiguous Palestine?
So these are a flavor of the questions we received that address different permutations of solutions and the larger theme of feasibility. So why don't we go in the order in which you presented to respond to anything here that you'd like to dig into. So, Yuval.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: Great. So just quickly about the confederation, or what we call power-sharing solution, which, I mean, theoretically, this should be the most stable or lasting solution based on research and conflict. The problem is that it's impossible for two reasons.
One, there is no will to share power. And the other, which is related to the first, is this option presents itself, at least to Israelis, and I think Shai mentioned that as a threat. So I just don't see it happening, at least not anytime soon. Maybe in the future.
And then the feasibility aspects are at the heart of what I'm proposing. And I won't get into the resources element, which is critical, but it's the most straightforward, one of the most straightforward aspects that can be solved. Read my plan or reach out to me. There is a new version of the plan. Deterring Iran and other enemies of peace such as Hezbollah is also discussed.
But I want to say something about leadership. And I definitely agree with Shai that leadership is key and it's maybe the main obstacle nowadays on both sides. But the goal, or at least my goal, and I work hard to try to realize, make it happen is you may call it to place-- intentionally place the cart before the horses. We need to create the local, regional, and international leadership to build it around a common purpose, a common plan. And I see signs that it happens which I do not attribute to myself but because this ideas are shared by others.
Now, I have to disagree with a critical thing that Shai said which is about the shortage of ideas. There is no shortage of ideas about how a better reality should look like. There is a clear shortage, a shortage of idea of about how to get there.
So after I published my piece at the Times of Israel, I got several phone calls and emails, and some of them, interestingly, were both by people who were directly involved in Oslo and in subsequent peace talks. And they told me that I got something right that they didn't get right and they were wrong about it. And I'll tell you what it is in a second.
And interestingly enough, also people who advocate for a confederation, they also called me, at least one or two of them, and told me our ideas are better in terms of the outcome but we have no idea how to get there. So maybe your ideas kind of create the first stage for getting some day to what we are proposing.
So let me relate to something that Leila said and complete it. The peace process, the Oslo process failed, and as Shai also alluded, because there were actors that were powerful enough that wanted to destroy it. It was assassinated. And here, the blame is both on the settlement movements, which you mentioned, Leila, and which took actions on the ground and then became influential in the government but also on the suicide bombing by Hamas. So these two actors dance a deadly-- kind of dance this tango that I wrote about.
So I take this thing very seriously. So two critical elements of my plan are tackling this. One is providing security not to Palestinians and to Israel, and then territorial integrity. Yes, a large number of settlements should be removed, must be removed.
Sure, the two or three large clusters will remain on the ground for a while, maybe forever, and then we'll need to correct the boundaries, the border. I'm well aware of how the map looks like. I actually did fieldwork there when I was a master's student, so I studied the separation barrier, the wall.
So, yes, part of the plan is to remove military installations and most of the settlements. There is no way around that because there are obstacles for-- the easiest part, actually, is connecting Gaza to the West Bank. There is a solution for that which is pretty straightforward.
So I'll stop here. We need to really pursue something that can work. And I do see leadership builds around the similar ideas. I see the UK is making a-- I hear the UK is making sounds along these lines, the US, other actors. Not just the Emirates, but also Riyadh is mentioning these kind of ideas. So anyway, I'll stop here.
LEILA FARSAKH: Thank you. Yeah, these are very important ideas. And thank you for sharing all that. So I'm a little bit short of time because I need to leave in 10 minutes, so I'm going to try my best to answer, if that's OK, Melani, the feasibility question.
MELANI CAMMETT: Yeah, please.
LEILA FARSAKH: And answer also Shai. So with regard to feasibility, you're totally right, Yuval. There is a question of power sharing. You said that power sharing in a confederation is difficult. But power sharing also for a two-state solution is necessary.
The big problem about the two-state solution, why it did not work, is that Israel did not want to share power, did not want to demarcate boundaries, wanted the Palestinian Authority to just ensure security of Israelis and wanted to continue to control land in the name of security while giving the Palestinian effective sovereignty.
So will this change? Because power sharing will have to happen. Whether it is a two-state, one-state, no state, 10,000, whatever you want, you have to have power sharing. On what terms are you going to have power sharing? Are you having the power sharing on terms that these are two equal parties? Or, are you having this that the priority of Israeli security are much more important than Palestinian security, that settlers have more rights than Palestinians who own their land and want to live in peace?
That's the challenge. And I know it's very difficult in Israel because the right has taken over, but it's not only just the right. I mean, look, since Rabin's was killed. I mean, Rabin said that also it was the biggest successes, Israel creation since 1948.
Shai mentioned the issue of leadership. Yeah, Arafat and Rabin understood the power configuration on the ground, understood the regional, local, international configuration and thought, this is the best deal we can get. The problem happened when? What torpedoed the peace process? When Goldstein went into the Ibrahimi Mosque and killed 28 people in February 1994, and what did Rabin do?
He did not-- it was an opportunity to take out the settlers out of Hebron. He did not because he did not want to cause-- my reading of it, and maybe I'm wrong-- a division in the Israeli society. He paid it with his life because he was killed also by a settler, which means that the Israeli society was not yet prepared to make peace with the Palestinians. Because, maybe as I just said, because of their fear, because they think that if Zionism vanishes, they don't exist.
I believe any one-state solution today doesn't mean the elimination of Israelis. Zionism, you interpret it whichever way you want, but if Zionism is the establishment of a Jewish state just for the Jewish people on the land which has also Palestinians, it's a problem. Unless you believe we can both live together on this land as equal, it cannot be resolved. This is not--
I mean, Hamas's role, OK, Hamas and why did the Hamas and Jihad Islami torpedo'd the Oslo post or did the suicide bombing? Their argument was, OK, Arafat made peace with the Israelis. What did he get out of it? He got more settlements, less territorial control, more fragmentation, and then he was kicked out.
To put Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Abbas-- you're right, I totally agree with you. The problem is leadership-- not only leadership. The problem is leadership but also unequal power relationship.
If one is dominant and the other one is made all the time to be subservient, it will not work. You either believe in the equality of the one facing you or you don't. Palestinians have said they believe in the equality and the right of Israelis to live in peace, but they also want to live in peace.
And things have changed. There are some who don't, I agree with you, but the Palestinian Authority under Arafat, under Mahmoud Abbas, the elections themselves in 2006 which were rejected by Israel and led to the ousting of Hamas. Hamas was saying, I'm willing to accept the two-state solution. Yeah, the argument was, Abbas, you have to recognize Israel. Hamas said, well, why would I recognize Israel? PA, Palestinian Authority, recognized Israel. What did they get out of it?
So I understand that Israelis want to feel security, I understand. And also Palestinians want to feel security, want to feel safe. The question is, what are the power dynamics that are going to force a viable power sharing, not one on top of the other? And as you know and I know, it's a function of who has more leverage.
But to the question, do the Palestinians want to live with Israelis in peace, I have no doubt about it. One of the things that shocked me, to tell you the truth, as a Palestinian, seeing the incredible grace of the people of Gaza, going through what they're going and they're not talking of vengeance. It's hell what they're going through. They just want to live.
And what is being done to them is unbearable. What is done to us as Palestinians is unfathomable, especially from a country that lived and knows what trauma is, knows what genocide is. It comes out of fear, I totally understand. But the answer to fear is not more violence, it's that we need to sit down and talk rationally.
An one-state solution that is based on the domination of one over the other is not a solution. One-state solution is not about replacing Palestinian on top of Israelis. This is not a one-state solution. A one-state solution-- it comes back to one question, you need to create a state that guarantees the collective and individual rights of everybody living there, that's the definition of one-state. Any other one-state solution is-- that's my definition of a one-state solution.
You need a state that is de-ethnicized, that guarantees collective rights but guarantees-- [INAUDIBLE] Magnus talked about it. Brit Shalom talked about it. Ehud talked about it. Hannah Arendt talked about it. All important Zionist thinkers who were not more cultural Zionists. So again, it's not the lack of ideas. It's the question of, how are we going to translate the power dynamic into equal power sharing?
And in my view, unless-- and I really hope-- the Palestinian side-- the blame on the Palestinian side's lack of leadership is also because they were put in a corner, that your role is to be subservient to Israeli priorities. The concession that Abbas gave over and over again in 2008 during the negotiation with Barak, with Ehud Olmert. Over and over again, and the answer was no. Netanyahu said it clearly, the settlers said it clearly, no Palestinian state.
But the international consensus is a Palestinian state. So how are we going to translate that into concrete is-- but I do think it cannot be translated by, again, step by step. Usually when occupation ends, the occupier retreats. Hamas put a wall on the 1967 border if that's what you want and go, but you did not. The Israelis did not put the border.
What the Israelis wants to do is it wants the Palestinians to vanish. I think but by now, after 75 years, we understood nobody's going away. These 14 million people are here to stay, and this is their home, so we need to find a way to live together on the basis of equality, not on the basis of fear. And how do we guarantee that? Institutions, monitoring, supervision from a third party that guarantees that.
Do we have that? No. So where are we going? I hope we are going to go-- either way, I see it is a version of a confederate until we make it really an equitable state for everybody. And I hope--
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: Leila, just one thing.
LEILA FARSAKH: Yeah.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: The process I'm proposing begins-- it doesn't end with the Palestinian state, it begins with the Palestinian state. It's not like the Oslo and the other negotiations where there was a power balance. The negotiation will be between two sovereign nation states. It's critical.
And why the Oslo and other processes fail? Both because of that-- and I promised to mention that-- and because they took-- the process was too long and gradual. So there were too many opportunities to kill the process in the midst of it.
LEILA FARSAKH: Thank you. Oops.
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, so I'll turn it over to Shai. Leila, I'm aware that you have to go teach, so we're really appreciative of you sharing your time with us. I'm sorry we can't keep you for another 10 minutes. But if you have to drop off, we understand. And thank you for sharing your insights.
LEILA FARSAKH: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you both for engaging with us in this conversation. It's very important and for all your audience. I'm sorry that I just have to leave in five minutes.
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, great. So, Shai, I'll turn it over to you.
SHAI FELDMAN: OK. I think I'm going to be surprisingly brief. First of all, Leila, I'm not here in a position to give advice. Although, I would be very happy if you have some advice for me. But I would have a slight advice for you.
Since we were already told that this is recorded, my advice for you is that you play the recording. Because you started by saying that you're not engaged in a blame game, but you find-- and I have to give you a compliment, a very strong compliment. You found a very elegant way to very much be, play the blame game.
Because if you-- what you'll discover when you hear yourself is that Israelis have a role in blaming the failure of the process, and then the Israelis have a double blame because they also are to be blamed for the Palestinian contribution to the failure. Every time that you slightly slid towards giving the Palestinians--
LEILA FARSAKH: Shai, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, but I am-- I'm not blaming the Israeli. I'm talking about what are the power dynamics. There's an Israeli government that behaves in a certain way. I'm not blaming the Israelis.
SHAI FELDMAN: Yes, but you--
LEILA FARSAKH: I am talking about a political system and a political--
SHAI FELDMAN: Leila, I didn't interrupt you. I didn't interrupt you. I'm just saying-- I didn't interrupt you. All I'm saying is that you're twisting things so that everything is on the Israeli side. I'm sorry, it's just not the case. That's number one.
Number two is-- and this is a good-- this is a good example. There was Oslo, Rabin and Arafat did something great, and then what ruined everything? The single terrorist act by Mr. Goldstein, which was despicable and so on and so forth. I agree also that Rabin should have taken a stronger stance on the settlement in Hebron in reaction to that, and so on and so forth.
But I want to tell you something that this is where the picture is only partial. And there is another part of the picture that-- to give a complete portrait of what happened those days, those months, those years, you have to take into account Israelis, as I said, were in conversation with their Palestinian colleagues who have been there since the late '80s, and that includes track two. And sometimes it even involves track one.
And we Israelis had a series of conversations with Yasser Arafat before-- after Oslo and before the PA, or before Fatah, or before the PLO came back physically first to Gaza and to Gaza and Jericho. And here is what Israelis told Arafat; you have very strong opponents to what you've miraculously done in Oslo, and they are called primarily Hamas, and let us share with you, just share with you the equivalent period in the Zionist history, which is the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
We had our own version. I don't want to-- I don't want to stretch the comparisons too badly, but we-- but there is one thing that the Irgun, Etzel, and Lehi (?) share with Hamas, and that is that they were opponents of the process. And Ben-Gurion understood this. And he said, we cannot have a state. It's a principle called unity of command. He said, we cannot have a state if we don't have one army and one police force, and so on and so forth.
And we share this piece of history with Arafat. We said to him, this is going to derail the process, we understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to-- you're avoiding the internal fight. You're trying to be-- you're trying to, let's say, not get into this that everything is involved because, by the way, the fight with the Irgun was deadly.
I mean, there was a ship called Altalena that was full of weapons and ammunition that the Jewish community needed to stand against the Arab forces. And because they refused to accept the idea that these weapons should be turned over to the new army, because there is only one army, and insisted that these weapons would go to them, to that particular faction. And Ben-Gurion said, no way. He ordered the sinking of the ship, and people died also, Jewish side.
And of course, in the history of the right wing in Israel, this remained, let's say, an open wound for decades. But Israelis told Arafat, if you don't make that second decision to deal with the opponents of the process, it will blow up in your face.
And the thing is that because terrorism started very quickly, Hamas very, very quickly, before Rabin was assassinated, every public opinion poll also showed that he was already in trouble. Because the grand bargain in Oslo was, we deliver territory, you end violence. And Israelis saw violence continuing. And of course, then there was violence on the Israeli side in the sense that Rabin was assassinated and Peres replaced him.
And then there was a huge, huge wave of violence, of Hamas suicide bombing in February and March of 1996. And guess what? Who benefited? Netanyahu. He defeated Peres and became prime minister. So this is just a small example to demonstrate that if you're going to talk history, you have to talk history in its entirety, and so I go back to the idea of reading the book.
One point about a confederation. I actually don't think that the confederation is some kind of a version of one state. No, it's a version of two states. And by the way, the same Arafat, I couldn't believe how many times I would quote Arafat in this conversation.
Arafat was asked about a confederation. And Arafat's answer was beautiful. He said, first we have to have an independent state, and the independent state can decide, it will be sovereign to decide to enter into a confederation relationship with Israel. And by the way, most of the time, it was discussed as a three-way confederation because we know what the demographics of Jordan are.
So the conversation was, let's do an Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian confederation, and that means that, yes, there is a certain degree of-- every relationship like that involves a certain degree, essentially, of yielding some of the sovereignty. I have to tell you, I could not believe that the Germans would leave-- would agree to relinquish control over the Deutsche mark, and, yes, they did. And they accepted the idea of a euro currency for Europe, which I never believed would happen, but this is what happens when you enter a confederation. That
Doesn't mean that Germany is not Germany, and France is not France. And I think the English made a mistake in voting themselves out of the European Union, but that's a different debate. But these are all sovereign countries. And we can have sovereign countries between countries.
So I just go back to one point, again, now somebody is going to hang me on the Israeli side for quoting Arafat the fourth or fifth time. Arafat said-- maybe I can even imitate his accent, especially in English. He said, where there is a will, there is a way, when there is a will, there is a way. And my answer is, if there will be a Palestinian leadership and an Israeli leadership that has the will, they will find a way.
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, well, we are getting close to the end here. And there's obviously no way we can go through this massive list of questions. And unfortunately, Leila had to leave us to go teach. So maybe I'll just turn it over to Yuval, if you wanted to make any closing remarks, Shai, if you had any additional things.
One thing that might be interesting to address is some of these questions about peace-building initiatives. So we've been talking, I think, rightly so at the level of meta or macro politics, what will institutions look like at the level of states and so forth. But some of the participants in our audience have raised questions about more micro-level peace-building activities.
How do you build trust because at the foundation of these kinds of arrangements, you need to have a critical mass of Israelis and a critical mass of Palestinians buying on to them and trusting, reaching some minimum degree of trust. I don't think we're all assuming that everyone is going to sing Kumbaya tomorrow. But some minimum level of trust in order to even move towards these institutional options. So in your closing remarks, if you'd like to say something about feasibility from a sort of bottom-up perspective as well, that would be helpful.
SHAI FELDMAN: So who goes first?
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: Yes.
MELANI CAMMETT: Yuval, why don't you go since we just heard from Shai, and then, Shai, a few closing comments.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: I lost you. Are you muted?
SHAI FELDMAN: No, we're hearing you. We can hear you.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: OK, so just quickly, it's an interesting observation that I have that the two Israelis in the room seem to be pushing harder than the Palestinians for a sovereign Palestinian state. But anyways, yeah, see, in my mind, it's clearly-- as I said, a two-state solution is the only viable one. The problem is that one needs to know how to divorce. And what I'm offering is really a recipe for the two sides and other actors that have vested interests in that, including the regional powers to lead a process of getting divorced.
And I agree with Shai that a confederation is based, first and foremost, on achieving national sovereignty. There is no way around that. And the two nations should feel safe and secure in their nation states before, and hopefully one day, they will be able to share more power. So this is one thing that I wanted to clarify.
Then about the micro level trust. See, this is unfortunate, I guess, but this is reality. And I've been studying-- and I am studying right now Jewish-Arab relations within Israel and attitudes of Israeli stories, Palestinians in the occupied territories, and Gaza, and all that stuff.
But to be realistic, I have to say that activists who hope to build a significant amount of trust in the general Israeli or Palestinian population, trusting the other side, they have to be patient. It won't happen tomorrow. It's just a reality of the conflict.
What we need to have and build is trust among leaders. And this is where I think diplomats taking the right actions to build trust among leaders who will be willing to take the risks, including the risk of criticism and maybe violence, to be honest, by their own people, to feel that they are doing the right thing, and they can trust the leaders on the other side of the table that are trying to achieve the same thing.
The process, as many other conflict resolutions have been in the past, will not-- cannot be based on building trust. The Oslo process is one. One of the main mistakes was that we had-- we called it in Hebrew, [SPEAKING HEBREW], trust building steps. So the idea was every period of time, each side had to show that-- to the people that they are committed to peace.
We cannot build a process that is long, that is gradual, that depends on having trust. Trust will come after violence ends. The goal should be to end violence to achieve a separation to divorce, and then to build more trust, at least that that's my intuition and my understanding of the situation.
MELANI CAMMETT: Shai.
SHAI FELDMAN: So I just want to make really one point, maybe it's two. And it has to do, Melani, with the question that you asked. I think the sequence is there has to be a political solution. It's politics. And people to people will follow politics. We have a different leadership on both sides who will have the will and will have the courage. And we have to remember that there's a lot of courage needed here.
Don't forget the two veterans of this peace process were both assassinated, both Rabin and before that, Anwar Sadat. So whether in Sadat's case, it was only-- it was related directly to the peace process or not, but these were two soldiers of peace that were assassinated. So it's natural for people to be slightly worried about the impact of brave decisions.
But I do think that the people to people-- and we also have to remember, it's more complicated even than mistrust because we are still far apart in terms of our narratives. And there is no common narrative, and there can't be a common narrative until the politics resolve the problem.
So it took courage for Mandela, but even more so for de Klerk because de Klerk was the one who had to give up power. The whites had to give up power. And de Klerk and Mandela reached a political agreement to end apartheid.
And the narrowing of the narrative of the gap came after the political agreement. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa resulted from the political agreement, writing a common history, or an acceptable history, or some kind of history that both sides would say, yeah, that's the history.
So I think that first it's politics. There has to be a political agreement. And then the political agreement will lead to trying to narrow the narratives gap and to build trust.
And I'm still optimistic because what I-- because I think we have a recent example from the Middle East, and that's the example I gave. First, you had a political agreement called the Abraham Accords, and now we have the UAE changing its textbooks. So it means that if you have courageous leaders and definitely the leadership of the UAE to make the decision to join the Abraham Accords was a courageous one , now it's going to be reflected in textbooks.
So I think that there is-- put it this way, it's not all bleak. What we've experienced in the last 110 days makes it very, very difficult for both sides to see any light at the end of this tunnel, except that tunnel in this case has many meanings in the Gaza Strip. So it's hard, it's hard. But I think that at the same time, there are things that are happening in the Middle East which gives some hope, and that's what has to be grasped. And so I remain hopeful.
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, well, I want to thank our panelists. I'm very sorry that Leila had to drop off 15 minutes ago and that Diana Buttu was unable to join us at the last minute. I appreciate the insights all of you shared. We'll see where things can move from here.
Many of our attendees have raised the question of whether a ceasefire is anywhere near in the works. And I want to call attention to the fact that right now, we have more than 25,000 Palestinians dead. We had 1,200 Israelis, is the number I've heard from, from the October 7. And course, this is not new. This has been going on for 75-plus years.
So really, the ultimate issue right now is the humanitarian tragedy that continues to unfold. And I don't want to lose sight of that which is the most pressing issue. Hopefully we will get to a one day where we can actually put some of these ideas into practice.
And I appreciate the comments that you've made at the end about, forget the micro level trust building. You don't need to wait for that to happen. We'll be waiting for who knows how long, if ever, start the political process from the top, and the rest can follow.
OK, so thank you so much for participating in this. Thanks to our attendees. And we hope that people will join us for the next in this series, which will come in later this month. Thank you. Or later next month. Thank you.
SHAI FELDMAN: Thank you, Melani.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you.
YUVAL FEINSTEIN: Thank you.