Fathom editors Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor speak to Hussein Agha about the failure of the peace process in the 1990s, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian National Movement, the future of the two state solution, and relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October and the war in Gaza. Agha was a senior associate member of St Anthony’s College for 25 years, and participated on behalf of the Palestinians in backchannel negotiations that gave rise to the Stockholm process (also known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement), as well as in the Obama administration’s efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. He’s the co-author with Ahmed Khalidi of A framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine. His forthcoming book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, co-authored with Robert Malley, will be published in mid September.
Jack Omer-Jackaman: You were intimately involved in negotiations in the second half of the 1990s after the Oslo Accords were signed. Much of that was alongside Hirschfeld, to whom we’ve also spoken for this series, and we’ve also recently published his diaries from that period. We’d really like if you could reflect first on your thoughts and feelings at the time about where you felt the process was going, what it sought to achieve, and the extent to which you were either broadly optimistic or not at the time. And secondly, looking back now, almost 30 years later, what you feel the problems were with Oslo – structural, tactical, personality – that led to its failure.
Hussein Agha: When we started the Stockholm track, I was not taking it seriously. I thought if Israelis want to talk about issues of mutual interest, let’s talk about them. Little by little, by interacting with Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, I found out that there is the possibility of going further than just having a talking shop. But early on I reached the conclusion that this is disconnected from what is happening around us and maybe it could be a waste of time. I went to Arafat and Abu Mazen and I told them that I do not want to continue doing this. They were not pleased, and they said, ‘do not be silly, you have to continue. This is very important.’ So, if they think it is important, then, I was willing to give it a try.
Dealing with Yair and Ron was a pleasure; they became friends and we could talk openly, candidly about everything, including about leaders on both sides, without any inhibitions or trying to be diplomatic. You do not find that in most official tracks that are falsely respectful, because – as being officially mandated – they had to be. The informality with Ron and Yair helped us reach places that probably would have been much more difficult to reach, officially.
The whole operation was aborted by the terrible assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Four days before the assassinations, we had a meeting with the Swedes and Arafat and Abu Ala in Gaza. The Swedes wanted a green light from Arafat to proceed. We were with him the day before where we briefed him on where we have reached, and he said ‘continue’. When the Swedes asked him whether he gives his blessing, he gave his blessing without hesitation. Three or four days later, we were shocked by the assassination of Rabin and the whole exercise shifted gear because it was built to satisfy what the Israeli side thought were the political needs of Rabin, both in terms of language, and the formulation of content. After that, it had to move towards Shimon Peres. Peres was not interested. He wanted to pursue the Syrian track. When he read the Stockholm document, if I remember correctly, Yair and Ron said that he did not comment, but said, ‘leave it for me now, this is not the time to pursue this’. So, Peres did not go for it. We continued working on it because it was unfinished. Abu Mazen wanted us to continue. So, we continued. And, then there was the Israeli election in 1996.
‘Dividing’ Jerusalem?
After the elections I briefed Dore Gold [an advisor to Netanyahu]. He did not like me saying this, but when I briefed him, he said, ‘We won the elections on the slogan that Peres is going to divide Jerusalem. If this document would have come out before the elections, we might have lost because the Stockholm Talks do not talk about ‘dividing’ Jerusalem.’
What Dore did not know – because it was not explicitly in the document, and nor did I explain to him the circumstances of reaching that document – was that there was an implicit understanding with Ron and Yair, that maybe right now it is not wise to go for a clear cut division of Jerusalem. That for political expediency, avoiding that would be necessary for Rabin to stay in office. The understanding was that, in time, even though there will be a unified infrastructure in Jerusalem, there will be a very clear Arab-Palestinian side and a Jewish Israeli side. I cannot say it any clearer because it was not clearer than this, but it was understood that we can say confidently that not too long from the time after an agreement is reached, the Arab side will be Palestinian and the Jewish side will be Israeli.
This was not in the text. Unfortunately, Yossi Beilin highlighted the Abu Dis aspect [the official text talked about a Palestinian temporary capital in Abu Dis, a neighbourhood close to but not in the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, which is the same distance, just over a mile, from the Old City as is the Israeli Knesset] because we had to start the process of allocating different parts of Jerusalem to the different communities. So, we will start with Palestinian sovereignty over some villages and enclaves around historical Jerusalem, like Abu Dis and a few other neighbourhoods where could start operating from to reach the ultimate outcome of ‘separating’ Jerusalem. The infrastructure would be one, the municipal work would be one, the whole city will be one, there will be no borders, but there will be an Arab part and an Israeli part.
When Beilin kept on highlighting Abu Dis, that was very embarrassing for Abu Mazen because, according to Beilin, and according to the coverage of what Beilin was saying, it gave the impression that the Palestinians were happy to call Abu Dis ‘Jerusalem’ and give up on the other parts of Jerusalem, such as Sheikh Jarrah and the Haram. That effectively put an end to Beilin-Abu Mazen.
Later, in Camp David, Barak did not want to have anything to do with it. The Americans were trying to convince him that maybe there is something there, but according to the Americans, when they felt that they were not getting anywhere, Barak reportedly said ‘I do not understand the Palestinians because, look, they have already accepted this in Beilin-Abu Mazen’. The Americans were surprised because they had already asked Barak about the document. And he said, no.
The first discreet meeting I had with the representative of Barak in charge of the negotiation was with Gilead Sher in London in October 1999 – a meeting organised by Dennis Ross. It was clear that he was not yet very familiar with issues of final status, but he had a clear message to us. He said, likely at the instigation of Prime Minister Barak ‘do not ever dream that you are going to get what you had in Beilin-Abu Mazen’. On Sher’s return to Jerusalem, the meeting was leaked to Haaretz, probably by Barak’s office, and Abu Mazen instructed us to stop the whole process because “the Israeli side is not serious.”
‘We spent 35 years along the same methodology that did not have that much to do with the feelings, emotions, aspirations, and the real and authentic agendas of the two people.’
Calev Ben-Dor: You have said that the mistake in Oslo was that it basically sought to trade 1967 against 1948. 1967 revolves around the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, while 1948 revolves around dispossession, dispersal and refugees. And then at a certain stage you said, it’s going to be messy, much as reality is messy. What Oslo did, by providing a neat model, was to distort the untidy and chaotic reality. Can you explain what you mean by this idea?
Oslo was signed in September 1993. In October, I had lunch in Oslo with Holst, the Norwegian architect of the Oslo Accords. I told him I did not think it was going to work, that it would not lead to a resolution of the conflict. I explained that they had to realise that the conflict did not start in 1967, because there was no occupation before ‘67 and there was still a conflict. And that the genesis and origins of the conflict and what gave the PLO its power and legitimacy were the refugees. The PLO was essentially a refugee phenomenon. There was nothing in Oslo that addresses that, which is at the core of the conflict and was postponed until later. But, for the Palestinians, that was what the conflict was about. What the Palestinians were fighting for, for a long time, was to return. I do not deal here in rights; it was the reality. The Palestinians were fighting to return to what they considered to be their homes and villages. Holst, who looked very tired, paused for a while and he said, ‘you are right, but we have to start somewhere.’ For Holst, the Oslo Accords were the most convenient way to go forward, and he thought that maybe later we will try to address the core issues in final status talks.
I think he misunderstood me because I was not referring to the refugees, as an element in the negotiations for final status [within the Oslo Accords itself], but the actual definition of what the conflict is all about and how to deal with it. I think for diplomats, they look at the conflict very much in territorial terms, in terms of drawing lines on maps. Once you draw that line – which is neat – one side will be here and the other side there… I talked to many British and American White House officials who were supposed to be dealing with this conflict. They all had the same attitude: ‘why is it so difficult? This is for the Arabs. This is for the Israelis. Let us have peace. Let us have security arrangements. And it is done.’ But it is not. We spent 35 years usingg the same methodology that did not have that much to do with the feelings, emotions, aspirations, and the real and authentic agendas of the two people.
When the conflict crystalized, it was about freedom, liberation, founding a Jewish state. It was not about maps or territory. Territory was an important part, but it was not the central issue. People wanted territory to achieve other things. It was not a territorial dispute in the way Oslo and the diplomatic process since has made it to be.
It is about many other things. It is about loss, betrayal, dispersal, history, religion. It is about all these things that are “messy;” that are not easy to deal with, which negotiators do not usually address. They recognise them (they are not stupid). They say, ‘yes, of course, these are important matters’, but they sweep them under the carpet, and focus instead on where the line should be along the Jordan River, whether there should be land swaps and at what percentage. It is not about that.
I noticed that in Israel with the right-wing, there is a better appreciation of the true nature of the conflict than with the left wing. I had a meeting with a former Lehi member and a Likud MK, he told me ‘you have to understand that for me, Hebron is much more important than Tel Aviv. Hebron for a Jew is where it all started, while Tel Aviv does not have that significance. However, the people you guys (meaning the PLO) are talking to, the governing left, think mostly in terms of Tel Aviv; they do not represent the true Jewish feeling about this land. We, the right wing, represent that feeling.’ I think he was probably right. The Palestinian people, on the other hand, do not think in territorial terms but in terms of the emotional attachment they have to their homes that are no longer there. That is it. It is about feelings that will not be resolved by drawing maps.
The messy issues were less important for diplomats than the neat issues; and the neat issues, because they are neat and because they are conducive to policies and texts that are clear, they took over from the real, messy issues. This is why until now, the whole diplomatic process has not been successful, and it cannot be successful.
What we have here is a biblical conflict. Biblical conflict needs prophets. It does not need diplomats. Diplomats cannot deal with it because for them it is anathema to think along the line of prophets and sentiments. ‘Oh, feelings, of course, of course, but let us decide on how many Israeli soldiers will be stationed along the hills by the Jordan River to protect Israeli security.’ So, there is a kind of misplacement of the focus of the conflict that led to wrong ways of dealing with it.
‘Arafat is a state of mind’
CBD: You first met Yasser Arafat in 1969, I think, and you spent decades in his orbit. For many Israelis, Arafat was this kind of great long term strategist [Agha bursts out laughing!] who sought to use violence as a way of achieving his aims, which was a Palestinian state in the West Bank Gaza and East Jerusalem, and to get hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to sovereign Israel, which would kind of weaken it from the inside. They also do not really believe that he gave up the option of terrorism. You once said that on the one hand, people overestimated him – they saw him as some deep thinker who misled the whole world. But on the other hand, they underestimated him, by believing he was not really capable of delivering on his word, and you add ‘neither is true.’ You have another fantastic line that you reportedly said to Shlomo Ben Ami: that it takes a Talmudic scholar to really analyse the behaviour of Arafat and fully understand it. Can you channel your inner Talmudic scholar and tell us what many people not understand about Arafat and his persona.
HA: Arafat was not a strategist. Arafat did not think along the logic that me and you use in our interaction – Aristotelian logic. He did not subscribe to that. You have to understand that Arafat was a state of mind. He was not a precise calculator, but he reflected the aspirations and turbulence of his people. Arafat had one thing going for him: a masterful political nose. He knew which way the wind was blowing, and he knew how to adjust to go along with the wind to achieve matters that were possible, and to postpone others that were not possible at the time for a better climate in the future.
I am sure Arafat never read the text of Oslo. He used to look down at pen-pushers. He had no time for that. He had time for generals, and affluent, successful persons. A bit like Trump. There is something that connects, Arafat, Berlusconi, and Trump; they have their own idiosyncratic way of dealing with their people and with the rest of the world that most intellectuals and those used to rational thinking find baffling and sometimes quite disturbing.
But on the whole, it works.
In the case of Arafat, he had no resources, no base, no true allies, or true organisation. He had no serious arms and ammunitions. He did not even have a well-defined unity of his people. Despite that, he ended up being the leader of a people who became a central focus of the international agenda.
How did he do that? Not through acting rationally, or analysing logically. Forget it. Arafat had his way of dealing with things. He reflected the deep feelings of his people in ways that more articulate, more logical, more rational people, like the leaders of the Palestinian left, George Habash [first general-secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and Nayef Hawatmeh [head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine] could not.
Arafat, would jump from one issue to another. For him, it is not the meaning of words that matter; it is the impact the words have. He uses words in his own peculiar way, as long as they have the right impact; thus he would have achieved his objective. I am simplifying. A Talmudic scholar would understand how things are messy and complicated and everything and its opposite could exist concurrently.
‘The 7 October massacre took the conflict back to its true nature.’
JOJ: Back in 2017, you wrote an article with Ahmed Khalidi called ‘The End of the Road: The Decline of the Palestinian National Movement’. In it you wrote that, ‘the contemporary Palestinian national movement founded and led by Yasser Arafat and embodied by the PA Fatah and the PLO over the past half century, is reaching its end.’ You added that ‘while Israel’s willingness to offer an acceptable deal is increasingly open to question, with nothing to suggest its terms are likely to soften with time, the Palestinians are sliding toward the unknown.’ That was in 2017. Obviously, much has changed since then, especially in these past 19 months, since October 2023. Can you share with us some of your thoughts and feelings since October 2023 and, on the assumption that the Palestinian national movement has not strengthened in the past eight years, how would you describe its current status and situation?
I think if you want to be positive about the October 7 massacre, you can say that it took the conflict back to its true nature. Almost all the Palestinians – whether they admit it or not – were not displeased with it. At the same time, most Israelis– whether they admit it or not – were backing the IDF in the war on Gaza. There were no significant Jewish voices in Israel critical of the IDF operation. There was great concern about the hostages, but there was scant attention to the fate of the Palestinians and the death and destruction in Gaza.
This, I think, is the true nature of the conflict. It is a conflict between two societies, between two people. On 7 October, it was exposed for what it is, which is Biblical. It is not a matter of leadership.
Moreover, if there was a viable Palestinian state on the eve of October 7, I very much suspect that 7 October would have taken place anyway. And if you had such a state and something like 7 October took place, the Israeli public on the whole would have approved the crushing of Gaza and the death and destruction that was visited upon people there. So, what are we talking about? Even if we were to have had a diplomatic resolution, it would not have addressed the deep feelings on both sides that will lead to this kind of unacceptable, catastrophic behaviour, that really defines the relations between the two people.
I did not see any big demonstrations in Israel opposing the death and destruction in Gaza. I saw big demonstrations about the legal reforms, the return of hostages, about Bibi being a liar and not conducting the war properly. I saw many reasonable Israeli figures, who are not right-wing lunatics, like Gadi Eisenkot, and Benny Gantz, and in the opposition like Yair Lapid and Labor, who supported what the IDF was doing.
On the Palestinian side, there was nothing from Fatah critical of 7 October. Afterwards, for domestic political reasons and rivalries, for trying to appear to be civilised and to score points against Hamas, some came out in a shy way against October 7 – not saying that the tragedy is what happened to the Israelis in the Gaza envelope, but the tragedy was that it exposed the Palestinian people to death and destruction. Even then they could not get themselves to say something that belongs to the world of reconciliation, which is totally understandable and not shocking because it accurately reflects the nature of the conflict with its accompanying passions. Even Abu Mazen, truly a man of peace, might criticise Hamas, but it is rare to find convincing statements by him on October 7 , except in the context of it bringing a second Nakba to the Palestinians. It was looked upon from the Palestinian vantage point of what happened to them – not as a tragedy that reflects the nature of the conflict. Again that was to be expected.
For me what October 7 did was to clarify. After all what happened, to talk about two states, no wonder there is no resonance on either side. I do not see many Palestinians going out to demonstrate for two states. I find Palestinians demonstrating against occupation, and fighting the Israelis. The whole diplomatic toolbox of previous years has proven to be really hollow. It is not relevant anymore – it was never relevant, but with October 7, it became obvious that it is not relevant.
So, this is a new starting point that we have to internalise. People say the war in Gaza is Bibi Netanyahu’s war. I disagree. The war in Gaza is Israel’s war. Israel wanted to take revenge for October 7. This is the truth. Israel wanted to teach the Palestinians a lesson. On the Palestinian side, the Palestinians wanted to tell the Israelis, ‘look, you have been doing this to us for decades. It is our turn to give you a taste of your own medicine.’
This is the reality of the situation. It is not a matter of a diplomatic tiff that created this problem. It is much deeper.
‘Ask any Palestinian their preference – A state with no return to historical Palestine, or a return with no state? The answer is obvious.’
CBD: In that same piece, you wrote that what used to be called ‘the Palestine problem’ might now be better redefined and restructured as a series of challenges, each requiring its own form of redress. Number one, the disappearing prospects for the original national project of self-determination statehood and return; number two, the people’s alienation from their former representatives; number three, the realities of the Gaza West Bank split; number four, the continuing trials and tribulations of the diaspora; and lastly, the daily struggle for freedom from occupation and equal rights in Israel.
Looking at the current situation, would you define the components of ‘the Palestine problem’ the same way? What, if anything, has changed? Where do you see the Palestinian national movement in the current moment?
I do not see a viable Palestinian national movement now. Whatever is referred to as the national movement is really the last ripples of something that Arafat created in his own image. With his disappearance it lost its way because it was very fragile – he put it together in a masterly way that could not have been sustained afterwards. For what was the ideology of Fatah? It had only one component, that of armed struggle as a way to liberate Palestine. If you take that out, what is left of Fatah? very little. When you look at Hamas, which has the more internally consistent ideology, it is not about national liberation, although they started talking about national liberation in the past 20 years. It is about Islam. It is about creating an Islamic society, reversing current realities and processes and going back to the tenets of Islam. But in both Fatah and Hamas, there is no denying the existence of a distinct Palestinian identity which is the engine of their struggle.
The whole notion of national self-determination is something we inherited from the 19th century that came through half-baked ideas used to justify the rise of states. The rise of states happened because of historical reasons. Before the rise of national states, you had city-states; before that separate provinces, as in before Italian reunification. You had states but they were not national states, they were the result of a historical process that finally crystallised in the nation state, and the notion of a modern state. There was no blueprint to follow; it happened naturally.
On the Palestinian side, when you talk about national self-determination, what does it mean? What is more powerful – to be Kosovo or Amazon or Google? Amazon and Google are not national entities, but they are more powerful than Kosovo and most little improvised states. So, the whole thing has lost its resonance. People only talk about it out of the inertia of the past. This is essentially a Leninist concept that is no longer relevant. National self- determination does not mean much anymore.
What means a lot is freedom. Freedom is very, very important. It is the only value that supersedes all other values; you cannot degrade it in terms of the feeling of people. People want to be free, and with freedom comes many other things. But national self-determination? Do we need another corrupt, totalitarian Arab state – is that what we want? Do you want to have another police or authoritarian state? Do we want to have another “democratic state” – show me a truly Arab democratic state. They do not exist. The only states that survived the Arab Spring were the non-modern, ancient, tribal states of the Gulf. You know why? Because the notion of the state for them was not taken up from the west playbook; like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq adopted the idea of a state. The Gulf entities are indigenous and authentic, which is why they did not experience the turbulence of the others. There is no legitimacy for the state as such. The Palestinians wanted the state at a certain stage because, they asked themselves ‘why are we different from the rest of the world that have a state – we want to have a state of our own as well. Why do all my cousins have this electronic game and I do not have it. I want to have one as well?’ Ask any Palestinian, of whatever political hue, their preference – a state with no return to historical Palestine, or a return with no state? The answer is obvious. The tragedy of the Palestinians lies in the fact that neither option is available to them today, so they have to do with living in a twilight zone and fight, often brutally, to change their reality. It is that simple.
The notion of a truly independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state is not too well thought out. It is partly a reaction to the Jewish state. Throughout their recent history, there were Palestinians who entertained having their own state, but never managed to say what it really means.
But even the Jewish state: you have the state of Tel Aviv; you have the state of the Haredim who follow the laws of the Torah rather than the laws of the secular state; you have the state of the settlers who have their own kind of system of values, and attachments that are different from the attachments of the Israelis of Tel Aviv; you have the state of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who although they are Israelis and carry Israeli passports, their identity is dissimilar. They are a distinct group that is different. People say they all want to become Israelis – they want to become Israelis in a very superficial way. They want to have all the benefits of being an Israeli, but that does not mean giving up on the fact that they are Palestinians.
You only really have four states in the region that have developed, naturally and historically, that can meaningfully be called states. Egypt, Turkey, Iran. And in the past 77 years, the Jewish state Israel. As I explained before, the Jewish state is a loose connection of so many different things. For some time they did not even speak the same language. You had the Moroccans speaking Arabic, which the Iraqis cannot understand. You had the Yemenites speaking a dialect that nobody understands even today. You had the people from Eastern Europe speaking Yiddish, and you had the Russians. Then they managed to create Hebrew – but even today there are many who find it difficult to communicate. Abu Mazen talks a lot about the Mizrachim or Sephardim. He says, ‘you know, they speak like us’. Abu Mazen watch videos of their marriages, feasts and food, and says, ‘look, if I did not tell you, these are Israeli Jews from Arab states you would think they were Arabs’. And you know what? He’s right. Abu Mazen used to say that two injustices visited the region when Israel was created: the great injustice against the Palestinian people who were made to leave their homes, and the Arab Jews who were made to leave their properties in the Arab countries and immigrate to Israel. Of course he does not equate between the two as Arab Jews, ostensibly, left for a more fulfilled life, while Palestinians had to contend with tents in refugee camps.
What is a Palestinian state that excludes the majority of the Palestinians, those in the diaspora, and those in the in Jordan and Syria and Lebanon? How can it be? The notion of a state is very dodgy when it comes to the Arab world, because it has no legitimacy in their world. If you pay your taxes, you are a sucker. You are an idiot because you are paying the money to people who are stealing it from you. In normal states taxes are justified because they pay for the services you get in return. But not in the Arab world.
The Middle East and the Modern Nation State: ‘The region cannot live with hard borders’
CBD: So far we have been talking about different years that represent different issues. 1967 represents the beginning of the occupation, while 1947 represents the idea of partition and the Arab rejection of that. But in some ways, what you’re going back to is another year, 1917, which is the collapse of a multi-ethnic, polyglot empire that has ruled the region for 400 years, that had in it Jews and Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds and Druze and Yazidis and Assyrians etc. And in some ways, what you’re saying is that those countries that emerged from that empire all have structural difficulties (including the Jewish state, which I think partially due to Ben-Gurion’s genius managed to glue these groups together, and now many people would argue we are seeing the retribalisation of Israel.) In some ways, it is not that the core of the conflict was ‘47 or ‘67, but rather that there is an even greater structural challenge, which is how do you create stability in the aftermath of the collapse of an empire that ruled a multi-ethnic area for 400 years?
HA: In our first meeting in Stockholm with Yair and Ron after Oslo, each of us presented his view of what is a desirable, viable, structure for the future. Mine was in the nature of the Ottoman Empire, where you do not have states, but an association of communities. It was not perfect. But each community ran its own affairs, had its own cultural characteristics and values, is left alone, and all they have to do is give money to the central authority in taxes, and make sure that they do not have any separate, compromising foreign policy. Of course, I am simplifying. But even then, you had the Lebanese Maronites looking to the French; the Shiites to Iran and southern Iraq; the Sunnis to the wider Arab nation; the Greek Orthodox to Russia; the Druze to England. But these were associations, not well defined kinds of structures.
This region cannot live with hard borders, with hard entities that live in total separation from each other. There have to be associations, where you are free to be what you want to be. Nobody is going to interfere in your life, to threaten you, to stop you doing what you believe in, and the same for everybody else. That went on for four hundred years of relative peace. That formula worked. I do not particularly like the Ottoman legacy, but this model of running the region was successful for a long period of time. Let me put it this way: it has been more successful than any other model, including that of a modern western-type state, because what did the modern western imitation states finally become? Military dictatorships – Iraq, Syria, to some extent Egypt, Libya, Algeria – or dysfunctional, like Lebanon. They tried to impose on Lebanon the confines of a modern state; it did not work. Up until today, Lebanon is not a state. People keep on talking about rebuilding the state and everything should be in the hands of the state, but Lebanon is a complex network of communities. When you have a problem, you do not go to the state, you go to your community. First you go to your family, then you go to your village. Then you go to your province, then you go to the leader of your confessional community. These are the modes of behaviour, whether we like them or not that have existed for centuries, and cannot transmute into the behaviours of modern states. People tried to change them, it did not work. The same way Ovadia Yosef was the most powerful person in his community, more powerful than any President of Israel, in Lebanon, Musa Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Shiites, was more powerful than the president of the country. The head of the Coptic Church in Egypt is the final resort for the Copts, not the head of state.
But in the West, we do not understand because it does not correspond to the models and the structures of western thinking and the western experience.
Even in the West, look at the nature of states, at the nature of democracy. What is this democracy that produces somebody like Trump or Boris Johnson or Viktor Orban? How is that democracy different from the Russian democracy that produces Putin? At the end of the day, they are variations on the same theme. So, the whole notion of a state, I’d like to suggest, as Marx did a long time ago, is withering away. There are new structures taking its place that are not yet well-defined, that have not crystallised. But we have a suspicion of where things are going. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Tik Tok, Microsoft – these are the shape of things that are becoming prominent and are on the rise. It is not the trade unions, political parties, or the old ways of running a state. We do not have a Georges Marchais or a big Communist party in France or Berlinger in Italy to play the role of a viable opposition. What is the difference between the British Labour party and the Conservative Party? The difference is tiny, on the edges. They talk as if there have deep differences, but they do not.
To actually start a new state, thinking that that would resolve people’s frustrations and address their aspirations? It’s delusional. Even in the West, with its long tradition of statehood, that is eroding. This is not the crisis of democracy. It is the evolution of history. People change.
It is not like Fukuyama and his End of History. What end of history? History does not end. Liberalism and classical democracy will never be the end of history. It will not rule forever. Everything is in flux. The only rule is that things change. The trick is to know in what direction it is changing.
Do you want to take the Palestinians back to the 19th century and give them a state in the West Bank that is truncated from Gaza, and then give Gaza another state? You had a quasi besieged state in Gaza – Hamas was a state for all practical purposes. The West Bank more or less has all the trappings of a state, albeit under occupation; it does not function, it is not productive. You have to wait till the end of the month to receive aid money from abroad to pay the people to keep their mouths shut, or else you cannot survive. What kind of state is that? How would that change by declaring a new state and providing even more funds to finance non-productive activities? We will be promoting further a culture of dependence that ultimately will rob you of your dignity, integrity, pride, and ultimately your freedom. It is a form of insidious slavery. Things will not change because there is no supportive culture. There is a great deal of discourse about an independent state and sovereignty. But it does not make sense; it is absurd.
The British bases in Cyprus are British territories; the American bases in the UK are American territory. Is that an infringement of sovereignty? Of course not. Because sovereignty does not mean what people think it means. When Israelis say they want to have a certain number of troops along the Jordan River, the Palestinians say you are threatening our sovereignty. Why is that a threat to their sovereignty, when the Brits in Cyprus and the Americans in Germany and Japan and the UK are not a threat to those countries’ sovereignty? It’s all a matter of language; word games.
JOJ: I want to return to your earlier answer about October 7th and the war in Gaza. I have to say it was sobering enough that I’m still recovering from it, as someone like me who, from the outside, has given a career to the idea of Israeli Palestinian coexistence. When someone like you, who has forgotten more than I will ever know, is so stark about this stuff, I have to listen. My question is: if you feel, as you seem to indicate, that the appalling violence of the last 18 months is not a terrible aberration, but is in some ways the conflict at its most elemental, its most fundamental; then how do peace-seeking Palestinians and Israelis, and peace-seeking outsiders like me, need to change our thinking without surrendering that ideal?
Let me take you back a bit about it not being an aberration. The difference between October 7 and all the ‘operations’ carried out by Fatah over a period of 30-40 years is that Hamas was ‘successful’ and Fatah was not. Many do not remember the Savoy Hotel Operation, the Dalal Mughrabi beach landing operation, the Munich operation, Ma’alot. All these, and hundreds of thwarted operations, were carried out by Fatah and Fatah fronts when Hamas did not even exist. They were not successful because Israeli security was alert and vigilant. In 7 October, Israeli security was caught asleep. That’s why; that is the only difference.
Even after 7 October, Israeli security claim that there were tens of similar plans for an October 7 from the West Bank – not by Hamas – that were foiled because of the vigilance of Israeli security. So, this is nothing new. The only thing new about 7 October is even the people who planned it did not expect it to go this way.
‘Sinwar was not messianic: he was not thinking in terms of mobilising the region to rise and come to fight Israel’
Most of those who entered the Gaza envelope and started indiscriminately killing and maiming civilians were not card-carrying Hamas members. Sinwar was not messianic: he was not thinking of mobilising the region to rise and come to fight Israel as some claim. He was not stupid or ignorant of power realities. He wanted a very simple thing. When he left prison, he promised his fellow inmates that he would work hard to liberate them. Through the Shalit process, he discovered that the way to get Palestinian prisoners out is to kidnap Israelis and exchange them for prisoners.
I know people who know Sinwar very, very well. His plan did not go beyond that – he also wanted to tell the Israelis ‘do not underestimate us, we can do bad things as well’ – but releasing prisoners was number one. Take a few Israelis, take them back to Gaza and exchange them for prisoners. Sinwar could have been a man of peace. Israelis and Palestinians who had access to him worked for five years on a formula to stabilise Gaza. Sinwar was the only person in this group who was serious and wanted to do it. He was saying, ‘if you take these steps, there is no reason for us to attack Israel. We are not dumb. We know that the balance of power is not, in our favour. But if you do not allow normal life for Gazans, we will do anything we can – even if there are 10,000, 20,000 Palestinians killed, just to show you that you cannot go on the way you are going’. That was the mindset of Sinwar. When Sinwar was released, I was sitting with an ex-chief of staff of the Israeli army. He said Sinwar is different from the rest of Hamas that Israel had experience with, because he does not think like a Muslim fundamentalist, he thinks like an Israeli prisoner. He has acquired certain characteristics that we are familiar with. We can talk with him, and do business with him. And Sinwar was willing to do business with them, but he was not willing to be trampled over in an undignified manner and see around him that his people could not have clean water or freedom of movement; could not have the basic essentials. They wanted to be normal people like everybody else. As a result his old revolutionary spirit was awoken and he embarked on what he did.
But it was not inevitable – neither that he had to do it, nor that it would have been successful, because if Israel seriously considered civil stability steps for Gaza, and Israeli security was vigilant, it would not have happened.
Co-existence is possible
If we do not waste time on grand unworkable political schemes, giving up this and taking that, the two communities definitely can coexist.
We tend to highlight the years of conflict, and we completely dismiss the years of harmony when there was no conflict. Nobody looks at the years of harmony as being the focus of looking at this conflict. We only look at the years of discord and struggle as being representative of whether the communities can live together or not.
People say that we negotiated for 35 years and we got nothing. Let us analyse how many days we actually and seriously negotiated in the past 35 years. Altogether it is a few weeks at most because all the rest was blah blah, as Rabin used to say. It was not serious. Look at Oslo. You had a Palestinian delegation negotiating the future of the historical conflict with two Palestinians. One of them neither speaks Hebrew nor English, while the other speaks limited English. And they are going to negotiate the end of a complex historical conflict?! How is that possible? The Israelis had a whole legal team advising them. What did the Palestinians have? They did not have a legal opinion on Oslo. As a matter of fact, Palestinian legal figures were very strongly against Oslo, they were not rejectionists and they were not antisemites; they wanted peace and coexistence, but they wanted to have something that has validity.
And Oslo did not have that validity.
Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel-Palestine.
JOJ: You have a book coming out in September with Robert Malley called Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel-Palestine. You’ve written several essays together before. What motivated you to write this book? And what do you feel are the main insights of it.
Many of the insights I have already shared with you. The motivation was our realisation that this whole way of dealing with the conflict is not working, and our fear is that people are going to go back to it. Macron is having a big shindig about the two state solution because he wants to appease the Saudis, and claim an international diplomatic role for France, Biden used to talk about the two state solution as being the only solution, and under his breath, he would say ‘it will not happen; the chances of it happening is the same as the chances of the Messiah coming down to Bethlehem’.
The whole thing is built on an edifice of lies, delusions, illusions, not being serious; lack of clarity about the nature of the beast you are dealing with, because nobody is interested in that. Diplomats will be there for four years, and then they move on to cushier positions. There are exceptions – peaceniks, who genuinely believe in coexistence and a Jewish state at the same time; they want to end this conflict. But they are diplomats, and their tools are diplomatic tools that are not fit for this conflict.
Do not misunderstand me. I think after 7 October and after the war of Gaza, if matters are dealt with properly, the chances of coexistence are much more than ever. Before, people were pushing down the throats of both communities this notion of peace, when people did not relate with what was being talked about.
Who is against peace? 70 per cent of Israelis after Camp David were for a negotiated peace. And then 70 per cent of Israelis voted for Ariel Sharon. Explain that – is Sharon the father of the two state solution? Of course not. It means nothing. As I said in my first interview with Fathom, we have to liberate our minds from the Oslo straitjacket.
‘Human emotions are not classified by lines on maps’
CBD: One of your wonderful framings is about Kosovo or Amazon and what is more powerful. Let us try and translate that analogy – what does a Palestinian Amazon look like?
Nobody knows, but we have to give it a chance. I did not predict Amazon, and even when it started, I was very sceptical. Even the internet, I used to think it is a joke! This is how thick I am! You know, there are certain processes that cannot always be predicted, let alone be predicted accurately. We have to wait and see how things develop.
But you have to allow it to breathe. Occupation does not help, but is the end of occupation the salvation of the Palestinians? No, but it ends one obstacle to well-being: the availability of serious education, of mobility, of feeling normal, of going and coming the way you like. All these are important elements. That is why freedom is the highest value. You have to be free to be able to create. Otherwise, you are constrained all the time – you do not know where your next loaf of bread is going to come from, or whether you are safe going out of your residence.
I do not have a blueprint. I am not a prophet. I cannot predict how things will turn out. But I have convictions. Do I think that Israelis and Palestinians can live together with peace? Yes, sir. Do I think that 7 October and the war in Gaza showed that they cannot. No. What it did was to clarify and crystallise the nature of the conflict; a first step that has been often ignored.
When you define the conflict for what it is, then you can move to how you can effectively deal with it. And the nature of the conflict is so deep that the 7 October events were possible: the destruction of Gaza and the killing of women and children are possible.
I was in contact with an Israeli after 7 October whose good friend was Oded Lifshitz, a peacenik, one of the hostages. Oded was a great guy. He worked all his life for coexistence and helping Gazans. I corresponded with his friend, and I was trying to help them get information about Oded. I was upset when Oded was unfortunately, tragically, no longer with us. He was a fighter for peace. I think if you did not have the war between Gaza and the IDF, Oded and Sinwar could have drunk coffee together and agreed on many things. And then what happens? Oded becomes a hostage of Sinwar, and dies in captivity, and Sinwar is killed by Oded’s rulers.
In Lebanon, during the civil war there were two areas – one Shia, one Maronite Christian. During day time they used to meet play backgammon, grill meats, eat together, conclude small business deals, and drink coffee. Then at night time, each used to go back to his community and start shooting at the other. What does that tell you? It tells you things are complicated, that human emotions are not classified by lines on maps. I lived this. My house in Beirut, which was destroyed later by the IDF, was near the border between these two communities. It was a big joke. ‘Look at them. They are sitting playing backgammon all day and drinking Turkish coffee and laughing and all that. And then nightfall comes; they start shooting at each other’. I am not exaggerating.
Oded and Yayha could have been good friends. They would have spent hours talking. Oded was a man of peace. He tried hard to promote policies and ways to help the Gazans and look at what happened to them.
CBD: In conclusion, in some ways what you are saying is we need to know where we stand with one another, without pretending that this can be tied up in a nice little bow, and that everyone can live as utopian best friends. I think what you are saying is that 7 October pulls back the curtain as to what this is and is not about. And if we admit that to one another, then actually we can move forward.
HA: That’s exactly what I am saying. I am saying more than that. If you resort to the ways of the past, you will have another 7 October. So, what you are saying is spot on. You have to recognise what the case is and move on from there and see what tools are suitable to deal with this conflict. What arrangements work? Because to keep on doing the same thing; and expect a brighter outcome is insane.
