Gidi Grinstein
The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Thirty Years and Counting
Gidi Grinstein - The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Thirty Years and Counting
- Okay, we’re going to get started. Gidi, it’s great to have you back on a different topic. I think this is your third or fourth visit to Lockdown now. So Gidi Grinstein served the secretary of the Israeli delegation for the Camp David negotiations with the Palestinians, and was involved in multiple peace initiatives. He is an Israeli serial societal entrepreneur and leader who founded the Reut Institute, known for its work on the delegitimization of Israel, social and economic development, and on Israel world jury relations. He likes to pick really easy topics to tackle. Gidi is also founder of Tikkun Olam Makers, a global humanitarian and social impact venture that has operated in 35 countries and won multiple accolades. Gidi is the author of “ Sight: Peacemaking in the Oslo Process Thirty Years and Counting Facing Israel”, and has published more than 100 articles. He is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Telaviv University Schools of Law and Economics. Gidi lives in New York City. I’m not sure that’s strictly true, given your travel schedule, but Gidi lives in New York City, is married to Betty with five children, and enjoys long distance running, having completed nine marathons, and particularly liking to run in the Middle East in 90% humidity at four o'clock in the morning. And I can tell you, ‘cause from time to time he has tried to trick me into coming with him. I have held out so far. So Gidi, it’s great to be back together again.
Thank you for having me.
That I think people may feel is both particularly timely, but also somewhat despairing. So let’s see if we can convince them otherwise. So we’re 30 years, in fact, last week, since the the Oslo Accords, and you know, the kind of famous Clinton-Barak Arafat images that people will remember. So I wanted to start with how did you find yourself, as the Americans would say, in the room where it happens, and just walk our audience through a little bit Oslo 30 years ago, and how we got there.
So just first of all, thank you very much. It’s great to be here. I think we started the first time during COVID, and since then, it’s grown so much. I see the numbers of people joining in, incredible. So actually, last week was was the 30-years mark, 30 years to the Oslo Process on September 13, three years to the Abraham Accords on September 15, and 45 years to the Camp David Accords of 1978 between Israel and Egypt, which happened on September 17. And my argument is, in the book, is that all these events are one long continuum of diplomacy in the Middle East that basically began following the Yom Kippur War of 1973. But to go back to your question, how did I get into the room? Very early on, when I was 14, I knew I wanted to be involved in game, in efforts, projects, people, teams that would have an effect on the long-term future of my country, our society, Israel, the Jewish world. And I was always interested in statecraft, in the work of states men, most of them men in our case except Golda Meir, who made a huge difference for our people, whether it was Herzl, who was an incredible diplomatic entrepreneur. Then we had the Balfour Declaration, the Peel Commission, the partition decision of 1947, and so on so forth all the way until more recent leaders like Shalom, Barak, and also Netanyahu. So that was the legacy that really inspired me. I thought about joining the foreign ministry as a cadet, as a diplomat, but then realised that you know, I may be all over the world where things are happening in Israel, which then turned me my attention to a group of people who was then, I’m talking about 1995, I was still in military service, toward the end of my military service, the people who were orchestrating the Oslo process.
And that’s how I met a person by the name of Dr. Yayehyirad. Yayu was one of two people together with Dr. Ron Pundak, who passed away, who initiated the Oslo process. So when I meet them in 1995, it, they’re already 18 months into the process and I’m expecting to meet someone who will tell me how amazing these agreements are. But in our first meeting for about an hour and a half, Yayu proceeds to tell me how, how many shortcomings and shortfalls and how many problems are in these agreements. But he also said that making peace is a little bit like riding a bicycle; if you don’t move forward, you’ll fall. So he had a bunch of ideas of what could be done to sustain the Oslo process and effectively at the end of that dinner, sometime in the spring of 1995, and he offered me to join their team and that was my sort of initiation into the peace process. July 11th, 1995 is both my last day of service in the Navy and also my first day of working on the peace process, I gave myself five years and then July 11th, 2000, exactly five years later is when we entered Kim David. So now I’m beginning to work on the, on the peace process and initially on a marginal issue you could say, which is economic development among Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians. That’s how I get my feet wet. But about a year and a half later, Netanyahu becomes a prime minister and I write a policy paper to my bosses basically saying that if Netanyahu would advance and implement the Oslo courts, he ended up signing two Oslo courts. Two of the 11 Oslo courts were signed by Netanyahu, then everybody will support him, but if he doesn’t do that, then what will happen is that the next prime minister will have to go for a comprehensive agreement with the Palestinians within 16 months of being elected.
I also said that the government doesn’t have the capacity to support such a political process and therefore, so I said to our bosses, working in a non-governmental nonprofit organisation, I said, this is our opportunity, but also our obligation and responsibility to prepare for the negotiations. And eventually they gave me the mandate and I coordinated multiple working groups that looked at all aspects of Israeli-Palestinian relations ahead of a political process that at the time we never knew whether it was going to happen or not. Fast forward 1999, Elba gets elected, I’m sitting at home and then I see him give a speech and he said, “Within 14 months we will know.” Now three years before I said, “Within 16 months we will know.” So that kind of convergence of analysis was, it was clear that it came from the same set of working assumptions and I knew I had to move into government a few weeks later I was there and since then, although I came from the outside, I was a professional appointee. I wasn’t part of the political system, I didn’t come from government. But what brought me into camp David, Carly, to your question, is I was in fact indispensable for my bosses and they brought me along to all these amazing experiences beginning in the back channel that happened in Sweden, in May 2000, Camp David, the negotiations before the outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian war, during the war, the Clinton ideas and so on.
And you know, for our audience, some will be very familiar intimately with what the Oslo accords were and what they effectively meant and what they hoped to deliver. We’ll come to later what they actually delivered. But perhaps you can walk through on a high level, you know, what were the Oslo agreements and what was the initial hopes and opportunities?
Okay, so basically it’s very important to remember that the Oslo accords is basically a dot, a dot in a process. The Oslo process is a chapter in a long story. And that story be began in 1936. 1936, David Ben-Gurion, is actually dealing for the first time with what we now call the national security outlook of the Zionist project, the national security outlook of the Hebrew community in mandatory Palestine. Remember it’s 12 years before the state of Israel comes into existence and he’s already thinking about what would be required to create and to sustain a state. And he concludes that in order to have what we now call a Jewish and Democratic state, there has to be a Jewish majority within the area that is under the control of the, would be state of Israel. And that’s why he concludes that there will have to be a territorial compromise and therefore he agrees in 1937 to what was was then known as the Peel Commission. This is a commission that was created by the British government in order to try to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And it is the first commission that offers a partition of the land. Ben-Gurion agrees the Palestinians don’t. And that’s the beginning of our kind of political struggle with the Palestinians. Fast forward, we’re moving now to 1947, the partition decision in the UN. Again, the Jews say yes, the Arabs say no, and at that point we’re going into war. So the partition decision of 1947, what is called also the UN General Assembly Resolution 1 8 1 suggested that the Jews will have 52% of mandatory Palestine and the Arabs will have 48% of mandatory Palestine. Fast forward and we’re moving to 1967. In 1967, there is a war and Israel takes over all of mandatory Palestine at that point after the war, there is UN Security Council resolution 2 4 2, which suggest again that Israel will withdraw from the areas in the West Bank and Gaza.
Again, there is a nuance here between the French version and the English version of the of 2 4 2, but the bottom line is the same. Israel agreed that the West Bank and Gaza are disputed territories that will be resolved, whose status will be resolved through negotiations. Israel never annexed the West Bank and Gaza because everybody understood that we have to preserve that Jewish majority in the areas under the sovereignty of the state of Israel. Comes 1973, actually 1971 president Abdel Nasser becomes the president of Egypt and he wants to basically resolve the conflict between Israel and the Egyptians. So initially he sends out a peace offer to Israel, an offer to negotiate peace, Israel ignores his offers. This is 1971, 1972, we go to war in 1973. In 1974 we signed a first agreement with Egypt. In 1977 it comes to Jerusalem and in 1978 we signed the Camp David Accords. The Camp David Accords are really a historic agreement. We say accords in plural because there are two agreements there, one agreement is about Israel Egypt peacemaking. The other agreement is called a framework agreement for peace in the Middle East, signed in 1978 between Menachem Begin who is Prime Minister of Israel, head of the Likud Party, and Sadat. And that agreement basically transitions Egypt from being the military leader of the Palestinian cause to being the diplomatic leader of the Palestinian cause.
And that framework agreement in 1978, listen to this, speaks about establishing an interim self-government, Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza over the Palestinians in order to prepare them for self-government and ahead of resolving the outstanding issues, this is Israel Egypt, 1978. So those of you who now follow or move forward 15 years to the Oslo Accords of 1993, you will know the difference, the resemblance. So effectively, Oslo Accords of 1993 implement the Israeli Egyptian agreement regarding the Palestinians that was signed 15 years before. So the logic of establishing a territory where the Palestinians are self-governing, building the Palestinian authority ahead of a permanent status agreement, that logic was introduced in 1978. But what is important to observe is that there is a very, very strong Zionist logic to having a Palestinian authority and Palestinian self-government because since 1936 until the current Netanyahu government beginning on November 1, 2022, so for a period of 87 years, if I’m not mistaken with the math, we have the same logic for, is for Zionism and for Israel. And that is a Jewish majority in the area under the control of the state of Israel. What changed, set 10 months ago, is that the government of Israel wants to apply Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank without equal rights. And that’s a huge change in our national security. But the logic of Oslo is very firm and very solid. And that is why since Oslo was signed, the first Oslo Accord was signed 30 years ago, for most of the time Israel was led by right-wing governments and all of them reserve the Palestinian authority and stuck with Oslo agreements because the rationale of Oslo, the logic of Oslo is very strong, very dominant, and therefore still with us.
So can you give some practical examples of what changed on the ground after Oslo that we may see today and not realise is actually a marker of the, of the Oslo Accord?
First of all, we have the Palestinian authority. So we have Palestinian self-government, we have Mahmoud Abbas who’s being, who’s being referred to as the president. They have a government, they have representatives overseas. They control 40% of the West Bank. In addition, Israel is out of Gaza. So we have 2 million Palestinians in Gaza who are effectively outside the control of the state of Israel and are governed, they’re basically self-governed by a Hamas regime, a brutal regime. We declared war in Israel, but still they are self-governed. So we have one portion of the Palestinian territory, of the Palestinian space already independent out of the control of the state of Israel. And then within the West Bank we have 40% of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian authority. Another thing that happened, very significant is that Israel has expanded its presence in the West Bank, primarily in the settlements, the Israeli communities that are in scattered around the West Bank. For many years the Israeli settlement, Israeli communities were concentrated in some areas that we refer to as blocks. And in the negotiation with the Palestinians, it was sort of agreed that all these blocks will be part of Israel in permanent status, but in recent years, Israel has really expanded its presence in the West Bank, also in the areas that are essential for Palestinian continuity. So on the one hand we have solid legacy, 30 years of Palestinian self-government, we have Gaza totally controlled by the Palestinians, by Hamas.
That’s on the “upside” of moving toward a two-state solution. On the other hand, we have realities on the ground that make it much more difficult. The third element that has changed dramatically is political. The Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 and there was, we agreed that there would be a five-year interim period beginning in May, 1994 until May, 1999. In that period there will be, there would’ve been a Palestinian authority that is self-governing. And we would prepare toward what we call permanent status, meaning the peace accord with the Palestinians. And in these peace accords with the Palestinians, we should have re negotiated what we call the outstanding issues: refugees, borders, Jerusalem security, Palestinian statehood, et cetera. These negotiations, which began in 1999 and continued until 2001, these are the negotiations that I was the secretary of. This is the biggest historical drama that I was part of. And my book basically looks at the issues and the dynamics that we faced 23 years ago, but focusing on those that are likely to return the recurring issues and the recurring dynamics that will come back again whenever we are resuming negotiations with, with the Palestinians. But then in 2000, when we started to negotiate on permanent status, there are few things that we did not have and anybody who would negotiate now would have. The first is the Clinton ideas. The Clinton ideas about how peace, what peace would look like were published in December, 2000. And there are very, very important reference point for anybody who wants to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The second thing is the President Bush, together with Prime Minister Sharon introduced what we call the roadmap, the quartet roadmap.
And Oslo was assumed on was based on the, on the idea that first we conclude a comprehensive agreement which brings into being a Palestinian state, the roadmap which was introduced in 2003, okay? So 10 years after Oslo speaks about bringing into being a Palestinian state, which then works out with Israel permanent status. So Oslo speaks about an agreement that leads to a state. The roadmap speaks about a state that leads to permanent status. And I believe that the structure of the roadmap is much better, much more conducive to peacemaking than Oslo. Third thing that we have now that we didn’t have before is the Trump plan. And the Trump plan is extremely important because the Trump plan between, presented by President Trump was effectively negotiated only with Netanyahu. So all the concessions that Israel makes in the Trump plan are effectively made irrespective of Palestinian parallel concessions. So there they become President Trump effectively created the next starting point of any future negotiations. And those of you who will read the details, you will see that the positions of President Trump in 2020, January, 2020 and the positions of Ehud Barak upon entering Camp David in July, 2000 are almost identical, which means that President Trump is roughly where Ehud Barak was 20 years before. So we see that there is sort of a convergence around the understanding of what permanent status could look like. Again, this convergence is more within the Israel’s centre right, centre left, the far right in Israel are not, are not on the, with the programme. But basically all these things have changed. So in some aspects we’re closer to an agreement. In other aspects it’s more difficult now to get any agreement.
So, you know, one of the things that is often said now, and I think arguably people would’ve said at the time is whether or not there is a partner for peace on the Palestinian side and you know, I think a lot of people would’ve said that Arafat was not one, and perhaps, you know, would’ve continued to say regardless of the Oslo accords he wasn’t, but certainly it is something now that is often raised by Israelis, not just those on the right about what it, who would you really be talking to and what would you really hope to accomplish. The West Bank and Gaza are under different control. You know, they are, they are themselves between the Palestinian and authority and Hamas, you know, not in the same page on what they may or may not be negotiating for. So, you know, how do you, how do you answer that question about a partner for peace and what maybe was learned through the Oslo Accords process?
I think that, well first of all, let’s acknowledge that the Palestinians are very, very difficult interlocutor. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that their political system is really discombobulated and it’s not centralised. And therefore it’s very hard to sort of understand whether they can deliver on their promises and whether they can even make these concessions and ratify the concessions and then deliver on them. So there are a lot of questions mark here. I also want to acknowledge that when they look at us, they attribute to us the same dynamics. For example, they say why, some of them say, “Why should we have signed an agreement with Barak at the tail end of his government when we couldn’t be sure that he would able to, he would ratify the agreement in parliament?” And then they say, “Olmert, Olmert was basically a very weak prime minister by the time that he offered us a comprehensive agreement?” And so and so. I just want to kind of a caveat is that the Palestinians have similar reservation about whether Israel is a partner, but let’s put that aside now, a partner, as I think everybody understands here, the full 736 people on the call is not a scientific question, there is no mathematical equation on whether one, the people on the other side, they’re a partner or not. And a lot of it depends on us, it depends on our actions and our intentions. But most importantly in our case, I believe it depends on our interests. So I just want to start with a very radical assumption. Let’s assume that there is no partner on the Palestinian side and there was never a partner on the Palestinian side. The question is, should Israel have continued to control 5 million Palestinians indefinitely? And can we sustain a state of Israel, a democratic and Jewish state of Israel controlling 5 million Palestinians? I think most of the people on the call would say the answer is no, and therefore ending the control over the Palestinian population is first and foremost an Israeli interest.
And this is what Prime Minister Rabin said, Barak, Sharon, and also Netanyahu for many years. Now, let’s now focus on the whole issue of the personality versus the institution. Arafat was a very problematic personality, but we signed the agreements with the PLO. So here’s what happened with the PLO. The PLO beginning in the 1960s wanted to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. And we fought it tooth and nail up until August, 1993, on August 20th, 1993, Israel and the PLO sign an agreement in Oslo, August 20. The secret agreement the world doesn’t know that is effectively, as I explained earlier, applying the Camp David Accord of 1978, which was agreed between Israel and Egypt, applies the logic of creating a five-year interim period and a Palestinian authority in order to have a Palestinian self-government to prepare for the resolution of the conflict. This happens in secrecy again, August 20th, 1993. Now they want to sign the agreement formally three weeks later, four weeks later at the White House, September 13th, 1993. As Carly said at the introduction Oslo court 30 years ago. At that point, the Rabin government is basically saying, “Wait a minute, we’re making all these concessions to a group of people that may not represent all Palestinians, and we may be in a situation where another group of Palestinians come up and says, you know, we don’t accept the concessions, we don’t accept the Palestinian, you know, the Palestinian side recognising Israel. And therefore, at that point, late August, early September, 1993, the Israel’s interest basically invert 180 degrees. And the Rabin government says, "We want the PLO to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. We want to make sure that the concessions that are being made by the Palestinians are committing all Palestinians, wherever they are.” So suddenly Israel wanted to upgrade the stature of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative because Israel understood that the agreement that is being signed is not with Abuala or Arafat, it’s with the institution that represents the Palestinian side.
So moving forward, I think we are in a situation where a lot on whether of, whether we have a Palestinian partner or not, depends on us. Take for example Gaza. Gaza was taken over by Hamas June, 2007. The Almer government, Almer Livni government basically apply a blockade on, on Gaza in order to bring down the Hamas regime that took over Gaza. But the issue is, and a lot of people present, company included, ask them, what’s the alternative? If there’s no Hamas in Gaza, who will be the address in Gaza? The Palestinian authority clearly cannot control Gaza. So the alternative to Hamas in Gaza is not the Palestinian authority that we like better. It’s actually chaos. And slowly but surely, Israel’s national security thinking evolved to understand that his inner interest to have an address in Gaza, which is Hamas. And in the last few years, the Israeli government has built extensive and elaborate relationship with Hamas in Gaza to the point that we have tens of thousands of Gazans crossing into Israel every week, thousands of people coming to treatment in Israel, business people from Gaza moving into Israel, movement of goods and services and trade, and obviously a huge prisoner exchange for Gaza elite, 1027 Palestinians were released in a deal between Netanyahu and Hamas. Effectively, no leader in Israel has dealt with Hamas more extensively than Netanyahu. So what we’re seeing is that national security, the takeaway from this part of the conversation is the diff that we have to always remember the difference between politics and national security. In politics, everybody can have their own opinion, of course, and they can be for something or against something, but national security is a totally different ballgame. National security is about alternative. So sometimes we have, we have an interlocutor on the other side that is far from being an ideal interlocutor, but the alternative to them is chaos. So we end up dealing with them.
So I want to push you on that because as we will have seen last week, you know, there was a disagreement inside the cabinet in Israel about the transfer of 10 armoured vehicles to the Palestinian authority. You know, that’s an agreement that exists under Oslo. And you know, arguably to the point you’ve just made about national security, it’s necessary. In today’s political situation in Israel, are the standards that were set during the Oslo Accords being followed?
So I think this is actually, Carly a fantastic example. The Israeli military and all security services are in favour of transferring weapons to the Palestinian authority because the Palestinian authority is the lead enforcer of anti-terrorist and anti-violence activities in the West Bank, meaning they are the ones who carry most of the responsibility within the Palestinian cities. If you take the logic of the current Israeli cabinet to its limit, over time, all the weapons will become redundant. All the cars and armoured vehicles will stop working, and then what? We expect the Palestinian authority to go chase the terrorist with sticks and stones, it’s not going to work. So it’s clearly one of these positions where Israeli politicians score points with their base, but the national security consideration is totally different and I promise you or everybody here on the call, mark my words, weapons will be transferred and money will be transferred to the Palestinian authority because if we don’t give the Palestinian authority the tools to govern, we will end up governing these areas ourselves. And it’s much more expensive and much more complicated.
So there are people inside the current cabinet, but also people who’ve previously led in positions in Israel who’ve argued for annexation or a change of status of some of the areas and the governance that was set up under the Oslo Accords. Can you explain a little bit about what that changes they’re advocating for and how it would be different to where we are now?
So basically in terms of annexation, there is partial and full annexation. This government, according to its platform, wants full annexation. They don’t even call it annexation, they call it applying of sovereignty over the West Bank. This basically means about 3 million Palestinians, two millions, three millions, we’re not sure about the numbers there will be, integrated into the Israeli society. Note that they don’t speak about equal rights. Okay, so just to understand the scale of the project, of the national project, this would be the equivalent, if you compare demography numbers of people and you compare territory, this would be the equivalent of the United States of America trying to digest Mexico. Okay? Israel taking in the West Bank is a bigger project than the US taking over Mexico. Now, what the US is doing, as we know, is building a wall to fend out for Mexico. Just think about the opposite alternative. Now, we have already taken over the West Bank, we applied sovereignty, and I’m now quoting a conversation with a minister in the current government. I asked him, “Okay, you guys are against Oslo.” He said, “Oh yes, we’re surely against Oslo.” “You want to cancel the Palestinian authority?” “Yes, we want to cancel the Palestinian authority.” I said, “Okay, now we’re in Sharon.” There is two kids, Jewish kid and then Palestinian, Muslim, Arab kid. Will those kids have same equal rights under the Israeli healthcare law, will it be or not be? And do you know what’s so amazing about his answer? They never thought about it.
They don’t have an answer. What I’ve just said is tens and tens of billions of dollars just applying healthcare in the West Bank, being responsible for healthcare. Remember that when we apply sovereignty, immediately the Europeans are pulling out, the Americans are pulling out, all the international agencies are pulling out. It’s up to us to now manage the municipal issues, the healthcare, the welfare, the, you know, cleaning the garbage, this is all now Israeli taxpayers money. So there’s one version which is we apply sovereignty and we integrate the Palestinians into Israel. We try, so they say, we will create a constitutional structure where effectively they have some civil rights, but they don’t have political rights at the top. Now Jewish family, South Africa, it may sound the same for a reason. This is a scenario that will severely compromise the international standing of Israel and the fundamental legitimacy of the state of Israel, not just within the world, also within the Jewish world. A lot of Jews will not accept that and they will distance themselves from Israel almost inevitably. The second idea is to incorporate, to annex a part of the West Bank. Naftali Bennett represented that idea, it’s called area C. Meaning the West Bank today, according to the Oslo process, are, is divided into three areas, area A, area B, and area C. Area A, fully controlled by the Palestinians, area C, fully controlled by Israel. And area B has civil controlled by the Palestinians and security controlled by Israel. So the logic is, let’s annex area C and therefore what it means is that areas A and B will not be annexed. It means that Israel has no claim for sovereignty in areas A and B, which basically means that even those from the right wing who want to annex just area C, are effectively accepting that the Gaza Strip and areas A and B, meaning 40% of the West bank will not be Israel, meaning they are implicitly accepting the idea of the two state solution, or two states for two people. Now they want to annex area C without negotiations, meaning these borders will not be permanent. And therefore what they’re saying is the starting point of permanent status negotiations will be the Palestinians having Gaza and the West Bank, 40% of the West Bank.
And we’ll start to negotiate from there. So what I’m saying is, at the end of the day, until now, nobody has been able to present a compelling alternative logic to the logic of partition of the land and therefore to the logic of Oslo. So Oslo in terms of the rationale is still dominant and therefore still driving the political conversation. Look at what’s going on now with Saudi. Netanyahu wants a normalisation agreement with the Saudis. He’s unlikely to get it unless he repledges for the two states solution. Today, the Saudis organised in New York a conference with 22 countries about how to advance the two states solution, today in New York. So the logic of the two-state solution, the logic of Oslo is still there, very dominant and driving the conversation.
So, you know, you’ve talked a lot about why you believe Oslo is still relevant. I think a lot of people though would say it didn’t deliver on a lot of the promises or the hopes that were made. What, what are you disappointed about when it comes to Oslo 30 years on, but what are you also hopeful about?
So I, again, I want to just remind us that we’re not talking about the logic of Oslo. We’re not talking about the logic of The Camp David Accords of 1978. We’re talking about the logic of partition of the land. We’re logic talking about the fundamental logic of Zionism since 1936. And that is to have a Jewish and democratic state, there has to be a significant Jewish majority in the areas under the control of Israel, this is the logic. That’s what we’re talking about. Oslo is just one manifestation, one way of effectuating that logic. But the overarching idea is majority under the Jewish majority under the area controlled by Israel. So obviously Oslo did not deliver on the full hopes of its of the people who initiated the process because it didn’t bring peace. There’s no peace between us and the Palestinians. There’s no peaceful coexistence between us and the Palestinians, but from the perspective of Israel, Oslo delivered on a huge amount of achievements. First and foremost, it legitimised Israel around the world. Remember that Carly also, you and I have worked a lot on dealing with the delegitimization of Israel. So the attack on Israel’s legitimacy creates a legitimacy deficit, it decreases the legitimacy of Israel. But the question is, what builds the legitimacy of Israel? And the most important thing that builds the legitimacy of Israel is if we can have internationally recognised and bilaterally agreed borders around the space that is the space of the Jewish people, where we exercise our right for self-determination. Okay? So that’s why the agreement with Egypt was so important because in the agreement with Egypt in 1978 and 1979, the southern border of the space of the Jewish people was determined and then in 1994, the eastern border with Jordan was determined. And then in 2000 Barak redrew to the international border with Lebanon, and large section of it were determined. And the Lapid government in October, 2020 added another section that was determined. So this is step-by-step over 140 years, we are creating the space within which Jews have the right to self-determination.
Now that logic also applies, by the way, Sharon redrew from Gaza to the June 4th, 1967 lines. Note that Sharon did not withdrew from part of Gaza and so on. He went all the way to the 1967 lines because of that logic. So now we have to kind of do the final act. I’m not talking about the little bit in Syria up in the north, which is with the Palestinians. So when we signed Oslo in 1993, most of the countries in the world did not recognise Israel. Arab countries, the non-aligned countries and so on. The explosion in Israel’s diplomatic presence around the world is directly correlated to Oslo. The second thing is the Abraham Accords correlated to Oslo. There would not have been the Abraham Accords without the Oslo process. Remember that just before the Abraham Accords in 2020, Netanyahu threatened to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank, basically break with the path of Oslo, which is the path of Camp David 1978. And what was the deal of the Abraham Accords? Yusuf Al Otaiba, the ambassador of the UAD to Washington, suggested that Israel withdraws from annexation in exchange for normalisation agreements with Bahrain, UAD, and Morocco. This basically means that as late as September, 2020, Netanyahu declared that he will not change the status of the West Bank unilaterally only in agreement. And there is again, a direct correlation. So the number one thing I’ll say about the achievements of Oslo is the diplomatic explosion of Israel’s presence around the world, related to that is the economic boom. I don’t think that we would’ve seen the kind of economic boom that we saw up until 2020 without the agreements with the Palestinians. Remember that there is a reason, again, South Africa is connected here.
There is a reason why the BDS movement began to emerge in the year 2000 in Durban, South Africa, because they understood that Israel was getting closer and closer to signing an agreement with the Palestinians. And that agreement will give the final stamp of legitimacy to Zionist project, and that’s why they mobilised around Durban to create the counterforce to what they thought would be Israel’s huge achievement with the Palestinians. So the fact, in many ways we learn about the positive from the negative, meaning the fact that they came together in 2000 to block the Oslo Accord only shows you what could have been the benefit for Israel if it would’ve signed the agreement. Third is today we are out of Gaza, 2 million Palestinians. We no longer control them. Yes, we have conflict around Gaza, we have rockets flying into Gaza, but we don’t control 2 million Palestinians, which is a huge national security benefit for Israel. Now, we all know that there are a lot of people who are critical about the withdrawal from Gaza, but just pay attention to this. No government ever wanted to go back to Gaza. This Netanyahu government, the sixth Netanyahu government, very right-wing government, if you read the platform, they speak about the West Bank. They don’t say a word about Gaza. So Sharon withdrew for Gaza in 2005, Olmert, Netanyahu, Bennett, Lapid, Netanyahu, you know, four Netanyahu governments, and none of them wanted to go back to Gaza. And I think that proves that sometimes national security transcends political debates. So when you take all these things together, I think Israel today is much better off than it was in 1993. And a lot of it has to do with the diplomacy, the bold diplomacy of Oslo until 1999, Elba until 2001, and Ariel Sharon most importantly in 2003 to 2005.
So you’ve just touched on some of the discussions that led us to the Abraham Accords today, you know, as we know there’s been noises in the last few months about potential normalisation ties between Saudi and Israel. What do you think are the lessons from, you know, Camp David process into Oslo looking ahead now for the potential growth of the Abraham Accords, either for the additions of other countries or the expansion to Saudi Arabia?
So other countries to me are only two major import countries, is Oman and Indonesia. These are the two countries that really make a big difference other than Saudi. So Oman and Indonesia are, are countries. Indonesia obviously a huge country, but it has no aspiration of leading the art world. So the expansion of Abraham Accords to Oman or Indonesia would’ve been, I think, easier. Let’s, I just about a year ago, the State Department, the US State Department actually declared that Indonesia would be the next country to expand the Abraham Accords. And I was expecting that they would go there because this is really the lower hanging fruits. I don’t understand why this suddenly went into Saudi, because Saudi is so much more complicated. But I have, hopefully I’ve established for everybody here on the call that there would not have been in Abraham Accords without the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords are the platform on which the Abraham Accords stand and not only that, the Abraham Accords were assigned only because Netanyahu repledged to the Oslo process, to the idea that the future of the West Bank will be negotiated with the Palestinians. Now let’s focus on Saudi. The issue with Saudi is complicated on multiple levels. First of all, what’s driving the, the Israeli, American, Saudi negotiations are Iran and China, let’s just put that aside, but you know, there are very, very big national security interest for the United States and for Israel and for Iran related to China and to Iran. But the Palestinian issue is there, and this is just another proof point that Israel cannot ignore the Palestinian condition.
The Palestinian condition will continue to follow Israel until it has some sort of a resolution. Now, it turns out that it may be that the Palestinian issue is the stumbling block to getting an normalisation agreement with Saudi. So I’d like to double click on that and so everybody here understands what’s at stake. First of all, Netanyahu wants to have an agreement without the Compromises Coalition. The current coalition that he has prevents him from doing even small things in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, in favour an agreement with Saudi. So Netanyahu is basically saying to the Americans and saying to the Saudis, “Listen, the Palestinian thing is not important, let’s move on.” The more normalisation agreements are far more important than anything we can do with the, anything we can and we should do with the Palestinians. But the Saudis have a different perspective. First of all, they want to lead the Arab world. And when they want to lead the Arab world, they’re looking at number one on Egypt. So they’re looking at Sadat and how Sadat got so much for the Palestinians in 1978, including the Camp David Accord, in the Camp David Accords, which led to the Oslo accords. So the Saudis will have a very hard time doing anything less than Sadat and when we’re talking about Sadat, it’s basically three topics, Palestinian statehood, borders, and Jerusalem. When it comes to borders, the minimum that the Saudis will require, I believe is UN Security Council Resolution 2 4 2, which speaks about Israeli withdrawal within the West Bank or from the West Bank. That’s the bare minimum that the Saudis will require regarding territory, which is very hard for Netanyahu to deliver. The second legacy that the Saudis have are their own peace plan that they presented biking fight, and then in the Arab League of 2002, and then 2007, et cetera, and literally today in the UN you can, I’m seeing, I’m probably going to be headline news tonight. So they have that legacy, which limits what they can do with Israel without a Palestinian component. Let’s not speak about Biden.
Netanyahu gave Trump in the Trump plan, Netanyahu acknowledged that in permanent status, there’ll be two states for two people. The Palestinian state will have the equivalent of, I’m sorry, 86% of the West Bank, okay, that there will be a Palestinian capital in the area of Jerusalem, all of this is not in some left wing accord, you know, between Clinton and Barak. This is Netanyahu and Trump in an official document that Netanyahu then called the deal of the century. So I think that Biden’s challenges, Biden cannot do less for the two state solution than Trump did three years ago. Biden will need to do at least what Trump did three years ago, so, but Netanyahu wants to do less, wants to give Biden less than he gave Trump. Trump, the Biden needs to do more than Trump did. So that gap between Israel and the US will be very difficult to bridge, the Saudi, the legacies that the Saudis are coming forward with will be hard to bridge. So I think it’s a much more complicated deal than, you know, some people think.
So how much of Netanyahu’s desire to deliver less than he did for Trump has to do with the changing domestic political situation in Israel and what Netanyahu may feel he could get through his coalition?
So I think it has everything to do with his coalition. His coalition, parts of his coalition are adamant against any concession to the Palestinians in the context of the Saudi deal. And that’s where Netanyahu is kind of trapped between a rock and a hard place in the current coalition, he cannot go with South for Saudi, you know, I’m sorry, in order to go for an agreement with Saudi, he needs a different coalition. In order to have a different coalition, he needs to dramatically soften his constitutional reform, perhaps even tabling it for a while and changing the coalition, so I think that the more Netanyahu pushes for a Saudi deal the more his conundrum gets pronounced.
Yeah, although there are many who I think Netanyahu himself said about an hour ago in his conversation with Elon Musk that the judicial reform was never his priority. You know, it’s what he’s found himself in. But presumably it’s more about changing coalition partners and less about stepping back from the judicial reform.
I agree with you that the judicial reform, again, I’m speaking from the perspective of national security is such an inexplicable, kind of incredible, self-destructive move. You know, Netanyahu said that is number one priority is Iran, so why would you do a judicial reform that distracts everybody, compromises the capacities of the military, strains your relationship with the United States. Why would you even do that if your number one priority is Iran? And when Netanyahu came in, his top four priorities had nothing to do with judicial reform and then he finds himself in his situation, he doesn’t put the brakes on it, and it continues to escalate to a point where Netanyahu arrives at the UN and the biggest demonstrations against Netanyahu today in America is not by the, by Arabs or anti-Israel forces, it’s by Israelis. And that’s incredible and it’s his own creation. It’s just in, it’s very hard to understand the political calculations that led him to this point. And I always say in all of my presentations when I’m asked about this, I hope that the pragmatic Netanyahu is still there, capable to strike a deal that ejects the state of Israel, the Jewish people from the conundrum that we are in, meaning from the, through a combination of a softer and even forward-looking constitutional reform, a different coalition, and hopefully a deal with Saudi. Just to be clear, I believe that a deal with Saudi is a major milestone on almost a centennial level in terms of the relations with our world and the recognition in Zionist project. But I also think that in the current government, any deal with Saudi will be immediately undermined by the far right members of the coalition. Remember that the Saudis see themselves responsible for the holy sites in Jerusalem, and you have a minister in the Israeli government who likes to take morning walks on Temple Mount. So there’ll be a lot of tensions and around that, around sustaining the deal with the Saudi, even if that deal is reached. So I hope that Netanyahu will find a way to eject himself and all of us out of the crisis that we’re in right now and turn it into a big opportunity.
Let’s hope. So, obviously a lot has been said about, you know, the various stages of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, you know, lessons learned, partners for peace, et cetera. What for you are the key lessons from the Camp David era onwards that you think can be taken away from the processes you were involved with?
So let’s speak about the content of the process and then on how to manage it. In terms of the content of the process, I explained earlier the difference between Oslo and the roadmap. Oslo spoke about the comprehensive agreement that solves all of the outstanding issues brings into being a Palestinian state, and at the same time provides for the future relations between that state and Israel. It’s a monumental political project, unlikely to succeed in the best of days. The roadmap introduced in 2003 spoke about a Palestinian state provisional borders. And through its relations with Israel, that state basically shapes permanent status. If I need to choose Oslo or roadmap, I choose roadmap. Now let’s focus on the roadmap scenario. Within the roadmap we can either negotiate the Palestinian state provisional borders or unilaterally recognise the Palestinian state in provisional borders for a variety of reasons, I’m not sure we have time, I go unilateral, meaning if it was up to me, the opening move of Israel would be recognition of the Palestinian authority as a state. And obviously a Gaza is its own separate entity. I believe it is in our interest to keep Gaza and the West Bank separate as much as possible. So these are kind of the three parameters for the content of the process, meaning state before permanent status, unilaterally recognising the Palestinian authority as a state and working with the Palestinian authority on state to state, on the Palestinian state, on state to state basis to shape permanent status.
This is sort of how we kick off the political process. I will say that most Israeli politicians and the public and negotiators believe that we should negotiate first. If we fail, we go unilateral. The problem is that our political system is so unstable that rarely do you can you do two moves. So effectively if you fail in the negotiations, you’re unlikely to be able to unilaterally disengage. This was Sharon’s logic, Sharon understood it very, very lucidly and that’s why he refused any offer to negotiate around Gaza and he withdrew from Gaza unilaterally. So I, as I said, Palestine state provisional borders first, unilateral recognition, then shape permanent status moving forward. In terms of the, in terms of how to manage the negotiations, A I believe in back channels as opposed to kind of front big negotiations of, you know, talented, knowledgeable people, small group that actually shapes the agreement, which then allows the principles to deliver the package to the public as opposed to extended the negotiations that really wear down the public and mobilised the radical forces to derail the process. This is what happened to us. The reason we got into a war with the Palestinians in 2000 is because the radical people had eight weeks between Camp David, July, 2000 and September, 2000, when the war breaks, they understood that we’re negotiating Jerusalem and everybody mobilised in order to derail that train. So these are my thoughts about moving forward. I think that with talented negotiators and bold leaders, there could be an agreement.
So what made you choose to write the book and why now? I mean obviously it’s 30 years, but you know, if you step back and look at the situation we’re in now and how optimistic most people feel, they might be surprised that you thought this was the moment to kind of reflect on the Oslo Accords.
So first of all, the two, and you know, my wife, Wendy knows my wife. I don’t know if Wendy hears me or not. My wife thought I should write the book. So the book would have been written one way or another. This is one explanation. The other explanation is that I believe that Israelis and Palestinians don’t want to live together, and they’re very powerful forces who are pushing us to live together. You know, primarily the far right, if you look at Smodrich, Begin, and the far right parties in Israel, they at best represent 14% of the population. The vast majority of the Israeli population does not want to share society with the Palestinians. And a dramatic majority among the Jewish people doesn’t want Israel to share a society with the Palestinians. So what we’re seeing is that a small minority in Israel, less than 20% is trying to superimpose on the rest of the Israelis and all Jews, a political structure of a shared society within us and the Palestinians. The paradox is the more that they’re pushing to the right, we see counter forces moving to the left, moving to the centre. So the last time that we had serious permanent status negotiations was in 2014 between Netanyahu and Abbu Mazen, almost nine years, no serious negotiations. And now the the right is pushing the far is pushing the system to the right wing. They’re creating counter forces to restabilize the, you know, Israeli-Palestinian relations around the negotiated process. And because of that, I think that paradoxically they’re accelerating the resumptions of political negotiations.
And perhaps it’s going to happen because of the Saudis and the, what we discussed earlier is about the Saudis. It’s just a manifestation of that, the whole dynamics. And I realised together with my co-author, professor Aja Firo, we realised that all books that were written about the political process were sequential. How one thing led to another, one person said one thing and then someone else responded. But the specific set of circumstances of 20 years ago is not coming back. Reality has changed, people have retired, some died and passed away, and therefore it makes sense to bring together all the wisdom or as much of the wisdom as we could so that it is available to anybody who decides to negotiate in the future. When we wrote the book, Ali and I, we had two people in mind, the National Security Advisor of the United States and the future Chief negotiator of Israel. And the book is organised according to the key topics of the negotiations, so chapter three, you know, chapter four of our book deals with Palestinian statehood chapter five with security, chapter six with territory and borders, chapter seven with Jerusalem refugees, et cetera, et cetera. So effectively we are organising that wisdom around the key themes that are outstanding.
Gidi you’re a bad promotional artist at this point. You’re supposed to wave the book around so that.
Yeah, sorry, yeah. So I just want to show, okay, hold on.
That way a bit. Yeah, there you go.
Okay. So for those of you who are looking at the cover of the book, you’re seeing 10 photos. Can you see Carly?
Yeah, but they’re the wrong way round. Turn it upwards, there you go. Thank you. No, no, just yeah, up there.
Okay, so you can see 10 photos. The top photos is Sadat, Kauta and Begin. And then you see Rabin, Clinton and Arafat. And here at the bottom, the bottom picture here is the Abraham Accords. And the message is, it’s a process. The Oslo Accords are a chapter in the process. And for those of you who look at the back, for every picture in the front of a formal, a formal picture, there’s a picture of the back, in the back of the intimate situations between the leaders. And the message of my book is peacemaking is about front stage and backstage. It’s about governmental work and non-governmental work. All of these things are part of the mix that eventually gets you to the point where you may be able to reach a peace accord, you know, a peace treaty with a peace, any peace treaty, but also between us and the Palestinians specifically, which is what I’m talking about.
So I would assume the book is available on Amazon.
The book is available on Amazon. The name of the book is Insights. Maybe we should put the link on in the Q and A. The name of the book is Insights, as you can see here, insights in brackets, because I was inside there and it’s about the wisdom. And I got terrific blurbs. I’m proud of a lot of them, I’ll just mention a few. First Dennis Ross was the chief negotiator for the Americans said, “It’s the single best book about the topic because of the way it’s organised.” I got a, a very, blurb that is very important for me from my counterpart on the Palestinian side was the Secretary of the Palestinian delegation who said, “This is a fair account of the Palestinian positions.” And that was very important for me because, you know, every, a lot of people generalise about the Palestinians, but the Palestinians are a diverse society. And the people who dealt with us believed in the peace process, they are the Palestinian Peace Camp, and they were devastated by the war. And I hope that my book respectfully represents their approach and their efforts and the risks that they took, including I write in the book about people from their side who were assassinated because of their commitment to peace with Israel, guys like Isam Zitaui and others. The third thing is Jason Greenblatt, who was special aid for Trump and I shared with him the, you know, the text of the book. He said that he was surprised in spite of a very different outlooks of the government, how much commonality there was between their efforts under the Trump administration and previous efforts of peacemaking. And then of course, you know, Barak and Ehud Barak is Prime Minister and Olmer and also Ron Lauder, Jewish leaders, et cetera. Because for me, at the basic, you know, at the core of it, the peacemaking with the Palestinians is an endeavour of the Jewish people we reestablished sovereignty in the land of Israel 75 years ago, and we have to always be in a position we’re striving for peace, and that is essential for our ability of the Jewish communities around the world to defend Israel and to stand and to have good standing within their own societies. The fact that we’re incredibly seeking peace much and I hope this book an example for that.
Thank you very much. I suspect over the next couple of months of coverage about the Abraham Accords, the potential discussions with the Saudis who, you know, in the last 48 hours have said they, you know, are stepping back until the Israelis are clear that they, are looking to come to the table as well. You know, obviously these are all good negotiating tactics, but this book is even more relevant over the next couple of months. So I look forward to reading it and I’m sure many of our audience will too. And thank you very much for joining us again at Lockdown.
Thank you very much for having me.