 So you want to, yeah, you guys always remember that. I always forget the microphone. All right, we're going to get started. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, why don't you go ahead? We're very casual. It's casual Friday here at New America. I think it goes up to the 11th floor. So from the 8th to the 11th. OK, great. Thank you all. And welcome to New America. Today's program is Ultimate Deal or Ultimate Demise. It's really Palestinian peace under Trump. My name is Zaha Hassan. I'm a Middle East fellow here at New America. And I'll be moderating the conversation today. A few housekeeping items. We are live streaming today. So when we get to the question and answer period, please wait for a mic to be handed to you before asking your question. If you'd like to tweet out about the program, the hashtag is deal or demise. And please silence your cell phones during the program. So our guests are two gentlemen with many years of experience between them on Palestine-Israel peace talks and also on unofficial peace talks known as second track efforts. Amjad Attola is CEO of Vortex International LLC, a consultancy providing campaign support, strategic communications, planning, and research to companies and leaders engaged in noble causes. Previously, Amjad has held senior editorial and management positions at Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera America and has been an editor at forumpolicy.com's Middle East Channel. Amjad has led international advocacy efforts for Save the Darfur Coalition, advised the Palestinian negotiating team between 2000 and 2004, supported civil society efforts on Palestinian-Israeli peace and promoted women's rights in conflict zones through his work with Women for Women International. Daniel Levy is the president of US-Middle East Project. From 2012 to 2016, he was director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He's been a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and an analyst for the International Crisis Group's Middle East program. From 1999 to 2001, Daniel was a senior advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister's office during the government of Ahud Barak and to Justice Minister Yossi Balan. He was also a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Israel-Palestine peace talks at Taba and during negotiations between the parties under Prime Minister Yitzhak Ravine in 1994 and 95. Daniel was a leading figure behind the Israeli-Palestinian track-two peace effort known as the Geneva Accord. He also helped found the DC-based pro-peace, pro-Israel advocacy group known as J Street. Both Daniel and Mjid were past co-chairs of the Middle East Project here at New America. Welcome, Daniel and Mjid. So before starting the conversation with our guests, it might be helpful to take a bit of inventory about all that has transpired in the last 90 days or so. If you're feeling a bit of whiplash, I don't blame you. You're not alone. It seems like there have been new developments on the Israel-Palestine front and on the US role in all of this by the day and by the news cycle. Things began to unravel, if you all recall, back in November when Palestinians were caught off guard by an announcement that their waiver, this waiver that has to be renewed every six months to maintain a PLO office, a Palestinian representative office in Washington DC was not going to be renewed. The decision came at the same time as reports that the Palestinian president had rejected parameters for a peace deal that the US had shared with Saudi Arabia. After a lot of confusion, ultimately the waiver was signed and the office remains open today. Then on December 6, with only days noticed, President Trump announced that the US was recognizing a boundaryless, amorphous Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Though the status quo would be maintained with regard to the holy sites, the president directed the State Department to begin plans to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem without identifying a location, whether in Arab East Jerusalem or in West Jerusalem for this new embassy. As for the two-state solution, the president remained indifferent. He was leaving it up to the parties. The Palestinians' reaction was fast and furious, as expected, in a speech before the PLO Central Council, President Abbas declared both the end of the Oslo framework and the role that the US had played as the sole mediator. In rare form, virtually the entire international community has come out against the US announcement, which contradicted numerous Security Council resolutions and international consensus. But still committed to the two-state solution, the Palestinians have initiated diplomatic efforts and are now traveling across Europe to Moscow as well in China to explore the possibility of a multilateral alternative to US-led talks. Since Trump's initial declaration, he's tweeted and announced at Davos that he successfully took Jerusalem off the negotiating table, and there will be an article coming out in the Hebrew press, I forget which publication, in which he says that his decision to recognize Jerusalem was the high point of his first year in office. He says, the US gives hundreds of millions to Palestinians, but gets no respect. So the temperature is still running high between the US and Palestine. President Mahmoud Abbas refused to invite the Vice President Pence to Ramallah during Pence's four-day Middle East tour, and Pence was not welcome to visit the Christian and Muslim holy sites and occupied Palestinian territory, though he did make a personal visit unaccompanied by Israeli officials to the Western Wall, perhaps indicating that the US did not mean to recognize East Jerusalem as part of Israel's capital. And now the US has drastically cut 350 million voluntary contribution to the UN agency that deals with schooling, food aid, and healthcare to Palestinian refugees, five million of them registered, leaving many wondering whether now the Palestinian refugee file is being removed from the negotiating table too. So, let's start with you, Dan. We could have your thoughts on all that has happened and where we are going at this point in Israel-Palestine peace. Well, thank you, and thanks for hosting us here, and it's nice to, well, not back in New America because we weren't in this building when we were here. A new New America. A new New America, and it's nice to be back sitting alongside Amjad. Yeah, I don't think we're going towards an ultimate deal, but what is less obvious, but I also think worth saying that the outset is, I also don't think we're going to an ultimate demise, and I think it's important to acknowledge that America is not omnipotent when it comes to developments over there, and I think as long as the Palestinians are still on the ground, physically present, this does not go away, and so there will be a moment when one has to circle back and say, how does one deal with this situation? I think it's important to position the administration in terms of what is the continuity and what is the change vis-a-vis past America administrations, and I think it is both, and I think it's clearly you have not had an America that has been able to deliver on an end of occupation, an end of settlements, and to the extent to which there was a ballpark of a sense of what the two-state outcome might have to look like, America did not have, did not summon up the political will to use the political leverage, even when the finishing line may have been in sight to carry, especially the Israeli side, because I think there is a clear power asymmetry here, and one is an occupying power, one is an occupied people, to carry them across the finishing line, so there's nothing new in that inability to do so, but I think there is change, and you've just outlined some of the ways in which we're seeing change, because I think there was a sense of a direction of travel over decades and across administrations, and there was a sense that, where American national interests and Israeli maximalism did not coincide, one had to spell that out, sometimes in more forceful ways, more often in far less forceful ways, but that had to be spelled out, and in terms of this end destination of a two-state that the parameters of which became clearer and clearer over time, and I think were most clearly explained by Secretary Kerry, right at the lame duck end of the Obama administration in a speech in December of 2016, but that journey began, whether it's the Carter administration, whether it's the Ford reassessment, but certainly when in the lame duck period of the Reagan administration, you have the beginning of an American PLO dialogue, Bush Madrid through Clinton, et cetera, that sense of an end destination point, which may or may not have been sustainable, but the idea that there would be a Palestine alongside Israel, Israel would then have to deal with its own question of what kind of a state it wanted to be within its own borders, and there's a Jewish and demographic tension also within Israel, but that is what is fundamentally different, and yes, there is an ideological alignment, clearly between this administration and the increasingly rightward drift of Israeli politics exemplified by the coalition of Prime Minister Netanyahu. The paper that you were referring to running that headline and running yet another interview with President Trump is Israel Hayyom and nothing more exemplifies that ideological alignment than Sheldon Adelson and the role he plays politically here and politically in Israel. That alignment, by the way, throws up new political opportunities here in the United States, but we may discuss later on, but I'll scape pass that right now, and so I think what you see in this administration is a coming together, and it's all rowing in the same direction, a coming together of some for whom you can kind of beat the Palestinians into submission into accepting a deal that falls well, well short of offering a state, of offering a future, of offering sovereignty, well short of the previous parameters, some who feel that that can be achieved, perhaps with threats with economic inducements, I think others for whom that is an irrelevance, but for whom there is an ideological and even religious emotional commitment to not only Israel, but the project of Greater Israel. I think we saw that on display in the Vice President's speech at the Israeli Parliament just last month, and I would really emphasize this, but the role that the Ambassador to Israel appointed by this administration, David Friedman plays, who is, has a lifetime of ideological alignment with even the outer reaches of the Israeli settlement, national religious, Greater Israel community, and the extent to which he is driving policy should not be underestimated, and I think what's important to note is, and this is kind of where the ultimate demise may be attempted to come into play, there are certain folks who are in a hurry right now, who are looking at this period of the Trump administration to say, how can we make as much as possible, as irreversible as possible? And I think that's where the, I think it's not incorrect to say that you don't have an American policy. You have a Netanyahu Friedman settler policy on Israel, Palestine right now, and that's about making Jerusalem irreversible, making the refugee issue irreversible with the unrefunding that you described, making the territory issue irreversible, and perhaps undermining the prospect of any kind of Palestinian national movement. Now, what does that mean in terms of the reality on the ground? And here I think it raises some questions that are more interesting. What is the direction of travel of this conflict? And I think it raises questions that are more interesting than what might be the minutiae of a plan that this administration puts out, or what might be the address of the Jerusalem embassy, or what might they be discussing with Gulf leaders? Because I think this administration is acting in many respects as an accelerant putting their foot on the accelerator of trends that were playing out kind of in slow motion. This sense of, well, is that the two-state solution? Is it gone yet? They put their foot on the accelerator of that, and I think that's the headline. And I think several threads flow from that. One thread is the trends in Israel. If you can now get away with anything, if you can, even as an Israeli prime minister, in arguing with your own right-wing coalition, you can no longer hide behind, well, we can't annex because the Americans won't let us, even though it was an open question, the extent to which the Americans wouldn't let you. If you can no longer hide behind that, what does that do to the trends inside Israel? What does the increasingly palpable sense of permanent Israeli entrenchment, disenfranchisement of Palestinians do to the notion of how will Palestinians achieve their freedom and their rights? It plays out on the Palestinian front. Where does the Palestinian national movement go next? To what extent is it conceivable to adhere to the kind of process of an American-driven two-state option that has been essentially the modus operandi for a quarter of a century plus? And of course it plays out in the region. To what extent can you create a new Pax Americana regional dynamic that is partly predicated on being against the Palestinians? It's partly predicated on the negation of the Palestinians. I would argue there's only so far you can go with that, by the way, and we're beginning to see that there's only so far you can go with that. So to circle back and draw this to a close, you can't, I don't think it was a realistic expectation that whoever came into office, given the conditions in January of 2017, was going to make two states come about in short order. Personally, I think that if the reasonable deal that has been discussed in the past were given, were concretized, then there is still a Palestinian leadership there for that deal. I don't think that's true on the Israeli side. I don't think it's been true for some time. It's clearly not true of Netanyahu's coalition. There are things you could have done as an administration to help eventually circle back to a meaningful process, to a meaningful negotiations. You could have put an emphasis on seeing through the process of internal Palestinian reconciliation, of improving conditions in Gaza. You could have put an emphasis on how do you challenge Israeli impunity? Because the more you indulge the unreasonable significant portions of Israeli policy, the more you're encouraging those policies. So how could you, and this would be unlikely to be an American-led thing, but it could be an American-encouraged thing as we saw in the UN Security Council right at the death of the Obama administration. That's clearly not what's happening. What I think is happening is what can best be described as a win-win, an attempt at a win-win for the Israeli government and for the freedman policy. And that win-win is as follows. Either by threatening the withdrawal of financial aid, by withdrawing the financial aid, by threatening the office here, by threatening repercussions on the Palestinians, and by offering inducements. There'll be lots of money, perhaps, from the Gulf if you do X, Y, Z. If that succeeds, then what you are asking the Palestinians to do is to become partners in the, I think the right word is apartheid, in the apartheid system that one is trying to impose on them, which I think is very unlikely to happen and very ill-advised from their perspective. Or you blame the Palestinians. You say, we were trying to do a peace deal. The Palestinians don't wanna come to the table. They're walking away, they're to blame. And then Israel can get on and do the things that were gonna be part of the plan anyway, in terms of entrenching and formalizing apartheid. So that's why I call it a win-win. Where I think this is not so simple, as I said, is because as long as the Palestinians are there on the ground, what this actually does is it acts as, as I've suggested, an accelerant in bringing to a head. One could call it one state versus two states, but I think it's right now at least more sensible to think in terms of it brings to a head the question of where do Palestinians realize their rights and their freedom and their enfranchisement. And it brings to a head the question of how do you address the power dynamics in this conflict? Because the great failure of the peace process was the embedded assumption that with this kind of a power asymmetry and with nothing closing that power asymmetry, you would actually get the powerful party to disengage from occupation in a way that would be a give to the disempowered party. And the disempowered party thought America would deliver the closing of this gap, and that's not happening and America won't deliver the closing of that gap. And inevitably you therefore have to, as has been needed for some time, have to look elsewhere for how to address that power dynamic. And I would close with one thought, which is look at the power, at least the latent power in someone like an Ahed Tamili. Look at what that does. People not familiar with the story of a young woman who turned 17, I believe, just now, currently under arrest, currently awaiting sentencing, I believe, or trial and sentencing, young woman herself and her family deeply involved in the nonviolent popular civil resistance in their town of Navisale. That notion, whether it's popular civil resistance, whether it's other forms that are gonna challenge that power dynamic, those and many other things will come to the fore, I think, over this next period. But I don't expect either the attempt to have Palestinians embrace the terms of their own permanent second-class status or the attempt to successfully convince people that Palestinians are to blame, I don't think either of those are going to succeed. So I wanna pick up where you left off on where do Palestinians go from here. I wanna quote from someone you know, Henry Siegman, who is the former head of the American Jewish Congress. He wrote that the rise of fascism in Israel is a direct byproduct of Israel's 50-year military occupation over Palestinian, and he, Palestinians, and he argues that the Palestinian struggle for a state of their own is one Palestinians cannot win. While a struggle to maintain an apartheid regime is one Israel cannot win. So Amjad, where do you think? Where do you think Palestinians go from here? Well, first of all, thank you Zahab for having me here. I'm very happy to be with you, I'm very happy to be with Daniel, and also happy to be at New America. It's great to be here on the cusp of a historic peace agreement to describe it, we're almost there to have a look at it just before the train wreck. I want it to concentrate I think on, you asked where do the Palestinians go from here, and I think the Palestinians need to actually internalize that there have been three transformative changes. There's a fourth one that Daniels talked extensively about which is what happened here in the United States with effectively the settler ideology of Israel being transplanted into the United States. And in a sense, all the checks and balances that might exist inside Israel to actually hold that back haven't actually worked here. And so in many ways you may actually have people that are further to the right. And I'm including the evangelical, part of the evangelical community that has been a stalwart supporter of Israeli antagonistic actions against Palestinians as part of a eschatological end of times perception. And so I want it to concentrate on three other elements and that I think are getting underplayed. One is, and it's easy to get underplayed because in a sense none of these are new. It's just been the frog in the boiling pot. The water's getting warmer, the water's getting warmer, the water's getting warmer. All of a sudden, oh my God, it's boiling and I'm dead. And I think that on each of these elements we've seen the elements leading up to it, but it's gotten to such an extreme now that in fact I think it could be a transformative moment. So the first one is the change in Arab relations vis-a-vis the Palestinian struggle. It's not, the Arab world has always been in a way the ultimate prize for a two state solution for Israel, right? It's been the other side of that balance. It hasn't been that Palestinians would be at peace with Israel. It's been that the entire Arab world and even by larger extension the entire Muslim majority world would be at peace with Israel and would have normalized relations with Israel which would provide Israel with an inducement to have a two state solution. The first break in that was actually Camp David where you could, with Egypt where you could actually have, well no, we can take the strongest Arab country and we can have a peace agreement with the strongest Arab country and not provide the Palestinians with their peace of it. And in fact, you remember William Quant's famous who worked with Jimmy Carter on the agreement who's his famous comment to Jimmy Carter while they were negotiating because Jimmy Carter was desperately trying to get a Palestinian component to Camp David included and at one point he told him, Mr. President, you can't be more pro-Palestinian than the Egyptian president. And that, and then a few years later once Egypt was removed from that perspective Israel was able to invade Lebanon and attempt to destroy the Palestinian national movement through the PLO in Lebanon. To see how far things have come now, a number of years ago when I was still advising the Palestinians I was in a meeting with senior Saudi, a senior Saudi government official and the senior Palestinian official and the purpose of the meeting and the conversation was about the Palestinian constitution and whether it was going to be a Republican form of government or a parliamentary form of government and the Saudi government was very concerned that the Palestinians weren't being aspirational enough in promoting a constitution that could be a model for the future change that the Arab world was in desperate need of and this was the words from the Saudi government official to the Palestinian. The Palestinian made a joke about, we've been thinking about all kinds of models including the Saudi model and the Saudi government official responded very seriously, this is not a joking matter. The form of government you pick and the constitution you pick will be the most important decision you make as a national movement. Now, go from there to this current Saudi leadership instructing the Palestinian president and the head of the Palestinian national movement that he's going to have to accept the deal that effectively codifies the existing situation on the ground as some kind of a peace agreement in order for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel and that if he doesn't do it they're gonna find somebody else who can accept that deal. That's a sea change. I mean, in between 1978 when the Egypt deal with Israel and now 2018 and you have actually something that is on the order of magnitude as great which is now you have Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates prepared to normalize relations with Israel on terms completely unacceptable to Palestinians, completely unacceptable to what was the consensus Arab position that Saudi Arabia itself helped define with the agreement, with the Arab League decision that they put forward. Now, so I think this is causing a fundamental shift in alliances in the region, not a shift based on affirmative interests where we all share the same values, we have the same interests, let's work together, but more as in oh my God, this is going to be a disaster for us, how do we defend ourselves? So Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, you have a kind of strange assortment of countries now that are outside of this picture that see actually chaos and catastrophe coming down the pike and they're trying to figure out desperately how they can actually stop that from happening and so the Palestinian national movement has always sort of worked in this weird skating space where it's got to ride the razor's edge where it's got to have good relations with all the Arab governments and it's got to rely on them for financial support but at the same time it wants to maintain its independent decision making and that was Yasser Arafat's genius, was to be able to maintain a certain level of Palestinian independent decision making and that doesn't exist right now. So the way the Palestinians respond to that I think is actually going to be critical. The second element is, and Daniel alluded to this, is this question of partition and non-partition. We've worked for so long on the idea that there was going to be a partition that we've forgotten that, so Palestinians for the longest time as the Israelis often say, the Palestinians didn't accept the two state solution, it's true. The PLO's position was to demand a secular democratic state in all of historic Palestine with equal rights for all of its citizens. Now, at a certain point in time, the national movement decided to become pragmatic and say, well, this is not a practice, we won't be able to lead a successful anti-apartheid struggle and so we're going to make a practical, pragmatic decision that instead, we will agree to a partition but the original partition was a roughly 50-50 split, 51-49 split, this time we'll accept the 78-22 split and then of course it was the Israelis who were in the dominant position and didn't need to accept the partition plan. And so the Israelis didn't accept the 78-22 partition but they talked about it and they negotiated about it but they never accepted it. And so now we're at a position where the partition plan seems to be 100-0. 100% for Israel, 0% for the Palestinians, 0% sovereignty for the Palestinians. Palestinians would be confined to their cities whereas Israelis are always reminding 90%, Dennis Ross wrote a piece recently, I think reminding everybody again that 90% of all Palestinians are in these seven Palestinian cities and so if Palestinians can be confined to a very, very small area that constitutes 10 to 13% of historic Palestine and then the rest can be Israel and you can pour Saudi and Emirati money into them to build up those areas and to build businesses, et cetera, it's presented as a very realistic, very possible scenario. Now from a Palestinian perspective, of course, that's the culmination, that would be the end of the Palestinian national movement. And so the question for Palestinians then is, all right, do we even still believe that you can split this on the 78-22% split? Is that even realistic anymore? Do we believe it's possible? I remember a conversation when I was leaving Palestine, I had with a number of Palestinian negotiators and I said, do you really think that you're going to be able to get a state on the 67 borders? And a lot of them said to me, probably not. And I said, but why are we still fighting for it then? Why are we still advocating for it? And they said, well, I mean, what else are we going to advocate for? And I said, well, why wouldn't you advocate for equal rights or why wouldn't you advocate for Confederacy or why wouldn't you advocate for binationalism? Or, I mean, there are like 10 different countries in the world that have multiple models of integration. Why don't you argue for that? I said, the Israelis, most people respond that the Israelis are too racist. They will not accept to live with Palestinians and with us inequality in some way. And then I went back to, so you think they're going to give you state on 22%? And they said, no. So that's the dilemma then, right? From a pragmatic, practical perspective, the Israelis are not going to allow a state to be created on 22% of historic Palestine. If the Israelis are not going to allow that to happen, what are Palestinians actually, what should they spend their time advocating for? What should the Palestinian national movement advocate for that would capture the heart and the soul and the imagination of the worldwide Palestinian community as well as the international support network that Palestine historically had. It was very easy when Palestine was an iconic national movement on par with apartheid South Africa, right? For Palestine to generate diplomatic support from all over the world outside of, you know, a handful of United States and Northern European countries. It was much harder when it became a technocratic argument about whether there were going to be four checkpoints around Ramallah or two checkpoints around Ramallah or whether there's going to be a road between Gaza and Hebron. That, the transformation of the conflict from an iconic national one to a question of, you know, should the road be under the ground or over the ground, we lost the audience. And we spent too much time. That's one thing if you already decided on the big picture and then you're deciding whether the road goes underground or over ground, but we never agreed on the big picture. So the third one draws from this is that the Palestinian community used to be a community. There used to be a national, and this was again the genius of the PLO and the genius of Yasser Arafat was that it created a national movement that constituted all Palestinians. So there were Palestinian representative bodies in the United States and Canada and Europe everywhere. They were all sort of linked somehow to the PLO. There was a national council that represented Palestinians from all, you know, we had intellectual giants like Ibrahim Abul-Lughad and Edward Said and, you know, people who were their own icons in their own right, Waleed Khalidi. And these people, in a sense, created the Palestinian national identity that still we have a memory of. But the actual body that created it now has been fragmented. So now when we think about Palestine and when we think about Palestinian rights in D.C., for example, we're actually talking about Ramallah. We're actually talking about the PLO and the Palestinian Authority system that's based in Ramallah. And if we were in different parts of the Middle East, we'd be talking about Gaza. And we'd be talking about the Hamas government that's based in Gaza. And if we were in an activist group in somewhere in Europe or the United States, we might be talking about right of return. We might be talking about BDS. We might be talking about, but it's not all connected into a national movement anymore. And the one part that's been completely missing from our, it doesn't mean it didn't exist. It's just that we haven't been focused on it. Has been the Palestinians or citizens of Israel, which constitute about a fifth of Israel's population. They're citizens of Israel. They don't have full equal rights, but they have more political rights than Palestinians do in other countries in the Middle East. And they speak Hebrew fluently. They speak Arabic fluently. Many of them speak English fluently. They're well versed in the civil rights movements around the world, they're well versed in the anti-apartheid movement. And in many ways they've taken a back seat and quietly been watching and advocating for two states, but quietly waiting and watching and waiting for this peace agreement to happen so that they could concentrate after that on improving the rights of Palestinians inside Israel. And now they're not waiting anymore. So the third largest block in the Israeli Knesset is actually the joint list, which is composed primarily of Palestinian-sourced citizens of Israel. And that joint list now is working on proposing legislation in the Knesset to transform Israel into a egalitarian citizen state with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion and regardless of ethnicity. Now this is actually, I think, a pivotal moment in Israel. Not because I think that legislation will pass, of course, but because I believe that this is the beginning of a public civil rights movement. It's the beginning of a discourse a hundred elements preceded it. A thousand things were done by groups like Adallah, like others, to help seed the ground to get to this point. And now you're actually having the most sophisticated response to Israel's oppression coming from Palestinians who are inside Israel. So I think, again, the challenge for Palestinians is how do we link all this together? How does all of this come back into forming a nationalistic argument? How do we form a national movement out of all of these disparate parts? And I think, so right now, if this were the stock market, this would be a crash. Like we're in the middle of a stock market crash. Everything is, everybody's selling, selling, selling. It's gonna be a disaster. That means that there are opportunities to buy. There are opportunities to find ways to actually start rebuilding the Palestinian national movement and gaining leverage over Israel outside of the dominant paradigm that exists. Do we just wait until the United States, the US government changes its mind? I mean, okay, let's say that this particular government has taken a particularly disastrous attitude towards two states as the Palestinians understood it. But the previous governments that have worked for this, whether it was Obama's administration, whether it was Bush's administration, et cetera, also couldn't get themselves, as Daniel said, also couldn't get themselves to bridge that gap, right? Bill Clinton couldn't bridge that gap and he was desperate for an agreement, right? Bush couldn't bridge that gap and he actually wanted to, I was in the meeting when Zinni was sent as the envoy to resolve, to stop the Intifada and to have a peace agreement. And we were in the first meeting with him and all the Palestinians were sitting on one side and Zinni and Aaron, I think Aaron was with him, Aaron Miller and a team of Americans on the other side. And Zinni said, I've been sent here by the president to stop the violence and to create a Palestinian state. And I've been told not to come back until I create a Palestinian state. And then he said, and I don't expect to be away from my wife for that long. And he meant it. Zinni was actually absolutely 100% sincere. He meant it. He thought that he was actually going to end the conflict and he was going to quickly get to a Palestinian state. And the challenge that they all came up against was, oh, but the Israelis weren't actually prepared for the partition. And this administration is the first that's recognized that seems and internalized that Israel doesn't want the partition. But might we not be one administration away from a significant change in US policy towards Israel-Palestine? I mean, we've had some really interesting polling come out and I want to focus our attention on that, the Pew Research poll that shows that Palestine and Israel are becoming more of a partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats than ever before. So that now we see sympathies for Israel among Republicans at 79%, increasing. The trends are increasing. And yet, among Democrats, it's around 27%, sympathy towards Israel. And among Democrats, it's about even between sympathizing with Palestinians and sympathizing with Israelis. Liberal Democrats, two times as much support or sympathize with Palestinians. So we're seeing some kind of change happening in the US. And I think also the Tel-Hami poll that was done that talked about the increasing sense among Americans that they'd like to see the US take serious action or economic sanctions against Israel for continuing settlement construction shows that Americans are starting to view this conflict differently. We're starting to see some change happening among the way Americans think about the conflict. And that has to bubble up. And we've seen sort of during the last presidential campaigns with Bernie Sanders' campaign that it's not a negative to talk about Palestinian human rights or humanitarian issues. It's not gonna hurt you. In fact, it could help you among your constituency. And I'm noticing in DC also among members of Congress an increasing interest and willingness to stand up for Palestinian rights and to stand up against this administration's position on Palestinian matters with Israel. So might we be just one administration away from seeing some real change in the way we conduct ourselves with Israel? I think that we're always one administration away, whether here or in Israel, from seeing significant change. The question is how to translate those very real changes that are happening into currency? How to actually translate that into actual policy? And I think that there is probably no more important country than the United States in terms of focusing besides Israel in terms of focusing and getting that change to happen. That civil rights movement that's starting in Israel, that civil rights movement has to be an extension here in the United States as well. Because there is no country on earth that is more instrumental in allowing Israel to be the kind of country that it is right now and to maintain the occupation that it maintains than the United States. And so, yes, I mean, I agree 100% with you. The challenge is now, as you see these demographic trends, as you see these changes in people's attitude to continue that process, but to transform that into actual political currency. Let's open it up and hear from the rest of you what questions you might have. Is this on? Hi, my name is Dimitri. Thank you very much. Very interesting. Two questions. The first one is about Russia's stance on what's going on in Israel, Palestine. I know they recognize West and East Jerusalem or in their statement. Just curious what their interests are. And the second one is about what the Palestinians are doing at the United Nations, if that has any significance, or if you could see the UN somehow bridging the gap. The power gap that you're talking about. Thank you. On Russia, I think Russia has different interests in this. Russia has had a position that wants to stick to UN resolutions and international legality on Israel-Palestine questions, and so that determines a part of the Russian line. There's a close relationship with Netanyahu. There's a million plus Israelis from the former Soviet Union, and there's relations with that community. That drives part of it. Russia has played a role in trying to facilitate Palestinian reconciliation talks. They've hosted different meetings. But I think Russia will continue to stand with a traditional approach that is different to the Trump administration approach that is closer to UN resolutions. Russia, this is also not the Middle East arena in which Russia wants to take ownership. Russia does not want to take ownership of being the alternative mediator, broker, lead actor. They'll swan in and out on this. And they'll play a role, but it's not like a serious situation. Where this could be driven by a Russian move, as far as I see it. I don't know if you wanna take the UN question or say anything more of Russia. No, I mean, well, also, I mean, a significant part of the Israeli population of Israeli citizens are Russian. Yeah, are 20%. 20% are Russian immigrants. And so I think Russian is the second, is it the third most spoken language, or it's now the third most spoken language in Israel? So, I mean, that's an interesting dynamic. As far as the UN, I think, well, I think that there's a lot that can be done there. I mean, the Palestinians can do a lot in terms of codifying international positions and reasserting them, which is important at a time when international norms are being thrown out the window or being ignored by some of the, well, only by the United States, primarily in Israel, but the, so it's important, but I think it has to be part of a sustained, obviously, strategy. I don't think one offs work. It'd be like, pretend it's a political campaign. If you're having a political campaign and you just did one press conference, you know, it's not going to actually transform anything, but if you've got a campaign, and as part of that campaign, you've got 50 different elements, and they include getting Europeans to recognize the state of Palestine on 67 borders or they get to, they get, or they manage to get greater international recognition of Palestinian rights. They get, they manage to introduce Palestine into greater bodies, and the United States can pull out of every one that they want, they can pull out of UNESCO, they can pull out of all of the different bodies that they want, and that actually doesn't hurt Palestine. It's just self-defeating to the United States. And so, yes, I think there's something there that can, I think there is something there that can be done. I think the Palestinian ambassador at the UN has helped orchestrate a number of very interesting and clever approaches to trying to keep that highlighted, but it's not the silver bullet. Just to add on the UN, I think Israel understands that that is a space, a format where sanctioning of illegal Israeli action could come into play in ways that do impact that, do impact that power dynamic, which is a reason that over so many years, so much time, effort, and resources have been invested in trying to make the argument that the UN is an illegitimate place in which to have the Israel-Palestine debate, which is nonsense, but there's an awful lot invested in trying to convince American people, the Jewish American community, the American body politic, that whatever else we do, we can't allow stuff to happen at the UN. That's not fair. Because, for instance, something like what's happening in the UN Human Rights Council right now, which is mandated to produce a database of companies involved in a whole list of practices that go against UN charters and conventions in the settlements, I think that's important. It's important that that report happens. It's important that a list of those companies is made public, and that is a big fight that's taking place right now, and that is an example of somewhere by you can actually have tangible things with tangible consequences that facilitate tangible campaigning and mobilizations. You also have a phenomenon right now at the UN which I think is unprecedented. You've had former American ambassadors to the United Nations who have gone on to become president, actually, but it's never been a direct step. You've never run... I don't think anyone has ever run their campaign potentially for the presidency from Foggy Bottom, from the UN, from being UN ambassador. That is happening right now, I think it's fair to say. An ambassador Haley has, and I think it makes absolute political sense for her within her party, within her constituency, within her potential donor base. It makes absolute sense for her to be running that campaign off the back of the Palestinians being a whipping boy, off the back of beating on Palestinians, and I think we're seeing that in no uncertain terms. Can I just, you know, ask you about... You know, to me, this whole, you know, backlash against UNRWA was more than just about Palestinian refugees. It was about making sure that the UN and the international community realized there's a price to pay if you stand with Palestinians. So it was to make the address for Palestinians... It was to destroy any address for Palestinians and to scare the UN and its agencies from actually taking a more proactive role. Do you agree with that? Do you see that as... I do. I think... Especially if Palestinians go around the world and look for... I think something... I agree. I think something important is going on there. And again, I think the Palestinians are the unfortunate people on the receiving end of this. I think the president saw that... You know, going too far head-to-head with the North Koreans is complicated. The Pentagon has all kinds of things to say about whether it's such a good idea and our equities in South Korea, et cetera. Going like this with Iran is complicated. These aren't... These are places with a certain deterrent capacity. Beating up the Palestinians is actually really easy. And I think, in a way, the president's found his match. I mean, there just seemed to be... I think the president was tickled by the idea of doing the deal that no former president has done, and I don't want to go too far into the speculation about what's in this space between the two is. But there seemed to be a comfort level in his Davos press conference with Netanyahu for President Trump of beating up on the Palestinians and that this, as you say, there is a price to pay. And it's easiest to demonstrate that price with the Palestinians than with anyone else. It's about narrowing the options for Palestinians, so there is no other address. It's either the U.S. as mediator or nothing. Or you get what you get. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think you're right on the first point. I don't know if... I think the U.S. is the only... I don't think anybody's rising up to say, we'll take over or we're happy to take ownership over this issue. I think even... But I think where the limitations of what the United States are doing, is right about the punishing part. But where the limitations are, is that the United States gets a Security Council resolution where every one of its historic core allies votes against it immediately, like within 24 hours. The Pope criticizes the Jerusalem statement. Like, actually, I think he did it an hour before the statement came out. Fighting international law. Right? So, yeah. You're seeing also the limitations of U.S. bullying. Right? So, the General Assembly vote. Then after the Security Council goes to the General Assembly, the United States threatens, tells people in advance, sends letters, tells them, we're going to punish you if you vote against us. And a great majority of countries still vote, including his core U.S. allies. I mean... And largest recipients of U.S. assistance. And the largest recipients of U.S. assistance still go ahead and vote for it. And so, in a sense, if anybody was going to be doing this to help the settler enterprise, it's best for the Palestinians that it's the Trump administration. Because the Trump administration has developed so many enemies on so many fronts, on so many issues international consensus on that taking a stand on Palestine is actually a lot... If Obama had wanted to do some of this, the countries wouldn't have been able to stand up against him. But with Trump, they would be able to. With one... If I can just add... With one caveat, which is I think there's also a phenomenon where where is Israel Palestine in your order of priorities close to America that has issues with this administration, where is Israel Palestine in your order of priorities of what you challenge the administration on? So here, for instance, I think the expectation that Europe might play a greater role should be very modest and limited because Iran nuclear deal, Paris climate change treaty, those things are going to be understandably North Korea are going to be higher in the region. One thing just to do justice to your Russia question, don't underestimate also the significance of the, in terms of the Israel-Russia relationship of the position Israel has taken on Ukraine where Israel has never voted with the Americans against Russia on Ukraine. Israel has not been part of sanctions and that is noticed in Moscow. There's another piece of this equation that I'd like you to address. You talked about the right word, drift in Israel and the alignment with evangelicals and other forces in the US. What about the rest of the space in Israel, the center and the rest? We could have seen quite a different outcome in the last Israeli elections. In fact, many of us thought until the last moment we were going toward that. How is that playing out right now in particular, how is also that playing out with the role of the growing number of Israeli Arabs and their role in Israeli politics? I'm not sure where that stands anymore. Can we take a couple more up here at the front and then we'll have you guide them. Yes, I heard, I'm trying to refer to Bernie Abhichai's piece in terms of the concentration of Palestinians in cities and the lack of agriculture and so on. I wonder if you would have your views about Confederation, especially as he spelled it out in that piece. Hello, I'm Katherine Hughes Freitech and I've been involved in this issue now 30 plus years, so it was great to hear a really good, I think, overview and analysis on what's going on in historical. Also good to hear the focus on grassroots movements and we know the strength of the first Sintifada and how that helped with the power imbalance, kind of move it as well as what's happening now with the importance of unity, which is a big issue with Palestine. My two questions are one, could you do a little bit of analysis on the security alliances that Israel's been building up around the world. Jeff Halper had a good book that talked about this, but the fact that they're training police, security, the drones, the military all over the world, including with India, Asia, et cetera, and how that's impacting kind of the balance of power as we go forward. And then also, I'm just a little bit more I thought it was so important, the Israeli-Palestinian key role in moving forward and how whether it's a confederation or just in general how you see them playing a key role and then trying to again unify and use them as a key player if it becomes a civil rights movement, which may be the only option as you've talked about. So it's true that if one now really looks at the parties on the right and the Israeli internal political picture, the parties of the right and the orthodox and ultra-orthodox, it's a 65, 66, 67 center right included 50, 53, 55 split and at one point before the last election the poll suggested it might be a lot closer and tighter to 60. Where that math goes astray and is not particularly illuminating in understanding Israeli politics is no Jewish Zionist party is willing to go into coalition with non-Zionists. So the joint list, which is the third largest party in the Israeli Knesset is not actually part of that map because the so-called left in Israel do not consider them legitimate coalition partners which is just remarkable in narrow political self-interest terms if nothing else but it's remarkable in much, much, much deeper ways than that. So it's hard to see how there's an alternative coalition and so even when the numbers get tighter the right is always at a massive advantage when it comes to putting a government together. Number one. Number two you do not have a robust opposition on any of the issues we've been discussing. It's true that you could the right could lose power based on corruption, bad governance, what may happen to Netanyahu. There's a fight in the an emerging fight in the right right now as to whether it is better to cling to Netanyahu or abandon him because of the corruption allegations and the likelihood of a police recommendation that criminal charges be filed next week actually because the right could lose power not because of its ideological position on any of these issues but because now perhaps it makes electoral sense for the center and center left to be saying let's not fight this election on any of the Palestinian peace related issues, occupation, human rights, democracy, etc. Let's just fight it on corruption. Maybe that makes electoral sense. The problem is they've drifted so far in that direction and they won't have a mandate for doing anything different on the territories. So this can change. I want to acknowledge that. It can change. Politics is, electoral politics is fluid everywhere I think but you have not for a generation had an Israeli opposition leader who has tried to offer an alternative, way forward an alternative narrative to the Israeli public on any of this. And it really does where Umjad's point about the civil rights movement and the role of the Palestinian citizens of Israel I really think you can only probably only build political change off the back of that off the back of the non-right camp in Israel revisiting the nature of what kind of an Israel they're talking about and then that is about the relationship with their fellow non-Zionist, non-Jewish citizens inside their own borders which I then think would carry over to how does one view Palestinians across the green line and perhaps perhaps if that challenge comes out of the Palestinian community inside Israel and really places a mirror in front of of the more liberal Jewish camp inside Israel maybe that's where you begin to generate change I think that is interesting and if the attempt by the joint list is it's not going to be successful but if it's adhered to this really if this theme you just stick with it these things don't change overnight this is a multiple year push that's a very big deal I think I think that's exactly right and I think that it's got to be part it has to become part of a movement and part of the identity of a wing of Israeli politics that actually is almost post Zionist it's looking forward to a future in Israel where everybody has equality no more than the system with tiered rights for different religious communities and tiered rights for different groups and lack of participation for some groups etc now what role that can play in the larger Palestinian national movement is also an interesting question to get to your point and how can that happen I think at some point there has to be a conscious effort the conscious effort and maybe unconscious effort on the Palestinian national movement side has been to increasingly get smaller take the Hamas leadership which at one point aspired to take over the whole Palestinian national movement but now whenever you talk when you listen to Hamas discourse it's about it's exactly the same as the people that they attack and they make fun of they're talking about Gaza they're talking about the checkpoints they're talking about the borders of Gaza they're talking about the agreement can they cut a separate agreement with Egypt they're talking about cutting etc it's prison politics Palestinians I think I forget the percentage of Palestinians who've served in Israeli prisons or who've been detained and it's remarkably high and in those prisons Palestinians end up you join a group I mean you're either with Fatah or you're with Hamas or you're with the DFLP a faction, a gang and then they provide you with protection they indoctrinate, there's indoctrination and you work together to and then you can cooperate together and you can come up different groups will work together to have strikes to demand better visitation rights etc but that's what's happened to the Palestinian national movement it's actually fragmented into prison politics and so it's like how many cigarettes are we going to get why aren't you allowing us enough visitors to come in which are all remarkably valuable important things for Palestinian prisoners in jails to be arguing for but not necessarily the kinds of things that the Palestinian national leadership should be focusing the national attention on and so I think now there has to be a conscious decision to get out of the little pond and go back into the international pond and that international pond of Palestinians everywhere, there are more Palestinians from Bethlehem and Chile than there are in Bethlehem I think there are more Palestinians from Ramallah and Elbira and the United States and maybe Elbira so the it's a very, you know this community would be a very power, the diaspora community was the driving engine of the Palestinian national movement for a very long time the Palestinians inside Israel now can also be I think part of that driving movement and then I was coming on the Abishai, I wasn't referring to the Abishai, I was referring to a piece that Dennis Ross had written but I've read the Abishai piece I think in the New York Review of Books and I mean I don't have an opinion on it, I'll just say this though, I think what's happening is that you're beginning to see a debate, it's interesting in the United States at least in the West which is fascinating that it's coming here because it's not as if Palestinians haven't been discussing these issues for 20 years but now you're seeing it among Zionists and so you're seeing a conversation take place and it starts with the Roger Cohen throwaway paragraph in his argument about attacking Abu Mazen and saying well Abu Mazen should resign and then he has a paragraph where he throws in and of course a one state solution is impossible, you know it's just like a throwaway it's just, you know it's just not forget it, don't even think about equality equality is not possible so it's just a throwaway paragraph there and then you start moving to well if you think Palestinians are going to argue for equality in a US style or in a South Africa style citizen state then what's your response to it and then the response is look, look, I know you want the quality but maybe what if it's a negotiation right so now a negotiation is better than confederation would be less problematic than a full state but it's a conversation and that's a conversation that needs to happen it's a conversation that needs to happen among Zionists but it's also a conversation that needs to happen among Palestinians as well in terms of, you know what is that range but the negotiations are going to start and the fear I have as somebody who cares about the Palestinian side getting their just, you know this is that if the Palestinians are too slow to engage in this conversation this will become a conversation among liberal Zionists as to you know no offense none taken it will become a conversation among liberal Zionists as to how Israel can best moderate and how Israel can best, you know, maintain as much privilege as possible while allowing equality that's still good it's a good conversation to have but I'd like Palestinians to also be at that table having that conversation on their own terms okay you use the word national movements I'd like to change that narrative and call it a civil rights movement if we look at the United States what happened here in Selma, Alabama and sometimes I dream that we have Calandia for those who don't know Calandia is a very famous checkpoint in Palestine if we turn this whole thing the civil rights movement Martin Luther King and so on was a national movement but was a local domestic movement and if we think of a civil rights movement this is where I think the younger generation in Palestine and all over the world will understand it much much better than a national movement considering the domestic local domestic dynamics of the what happens here in the elections and who supports election who donates etc I think that what's happening now is that young people care more about civil rights necessarily but equal rights so I'm trying to think of a do we have a Martin Luther King in Palestine today maybe yes maybe Abbas should be a Martin Luther King and and look at it from a civil rights aspect where is I think the only hope to get international support all the rest the big politics there's too many too complicated Iran Saudi Arabia Israel all of this but I think the only movement people understand especially the young people who are the whole day on their telephones smartphones and so on could make a difference thank you there's a question in the back I'm going to comment because I think most eloquently I think argued something similar was a hood all in an article was an interview with Thomas Friedman I think in New Yorker many years ago when the hood all were still prime minister and he argued that the reason they had to he was arguing for why they needed to divest the Palestinians and have a two state solution he said because Palestinians at some point will demand equal rights he said Israel can't win a civil rights movement Israel can't win it's not because we're not powerful enough he said it's because we'll lose the Jewish community in the diaspora and we'll lose the Jewish community in the United States in particular and he said if when that happens and we lose them we won't be able to stand and so he said that's why it was his argument to American Jews basically he was trying to make an argument to American Jews why he needed to quickly find a way to divest from Palestinians yes yes I want to come back on this but perhaps after we've heard that I am Amal David use your microphone please I would like Amal David from Arab American media and I like to know as an American of Palestinian background I like to know as the single most effective act Palestinians can do to change American policy towards Palestine can I while you're thinking about that let me pick up on what Zahi said because well let me put it like this I think as long as the Palestinian position continues to be predicated around the old two state paradigm it's easy to drag this into a conversation about percentages of territory of which you can get nickled and dimed indefinitely in perpetuity I think the moment this becomes about rights it's a whole different conversation and as you said it's a conversation where it is very hard if you are not an ethno-nationalist and there's no shortage of those today in America or in Israel or elsewhere but that's not the majority and it's very hard to hold you out it's a very difficult struggle now the upshot of that struggle and also it means you unlike I would argue the old PLO position on the sect dem state the PLO position on the secular democratic state didn't really have a message for the Israeli Jewish national collective and the equal rights struggle does have to do that by the way it probably requires a rethink on anti-normalization in Palestinian society you have to think long and hard what is the correct type of engagement and cooperation you can't just kind of blanket do anti-normalization but I think that struggle if effective if pursued over a long period of time if non-violent generates one of two if successful one of two Israeli responses either mmm dust off those old files about two states what will we what might they be willing to accept and then it's up to the Palestinians to decide whether a genuine end of occupation genuine Palestinian independent states whether that's now something that is worth going for or not the other thing that I think is really important in what you said Zahi is you know it's 2018 even the term hashtag national liberation movement it doesn't resonate I think there was a moment of the kind of classic national liberation movement struggle and I think that was the moment of potential success of the PLO in the 1990s and that moment may have simply passed from the global scene and I think the longer the the PLO itself in those terms the more likely it is to end up like Polisario and who remembers what Polisario is it's the fight for western Saharan independence from Morocco but you know it's pretty obscure these days there are not many struggles that still frame themselves in those terms and I think the Palestinian thinking has to go into a post retro school framed national liberation struggle there's a gentleman standing at the back Mark Perry who tells a story of sitting with Arafat watching the opening of the Atlanta Olympics Salt Lake City Salt Lake City Winter Olympics very topical you might or might not tell us that story of how not all national movements have their moments and you also have to set that against what is the logic of the journey that the Israeli right which is dominant in Israeli politics and carries Israeli politics what is the logic of the journey they're going on the logic of their journey is somewhere in the zone of manageable apartheid or expulsion there's no other logic to what they're trying to do and so you set the equal right struggle against that and I would simply put to you that when I think about post-67 the first quarter of a century from 67 until the beginning of Oslo so we're talking quarter of a century Israel managed those territories via direct military and civil administration and I think the Palestinian population was still in a degree of discombobulation from what happened in 67 rediscovering because there weren't the closures that we have today rediscovering the links back into 48 Palestinian Arab communities that's the first quarter of a century then we had Oslo and for the next quarter of a century Oslo became the management vehicle for Israel in the territories and the subcontracting of Ooptation etc and I feel that is coming to its end it's coming to the end of another 25-year cycle and I think it's really behooves people to think about how one frames the next period and either Israel will put in place the management model for dispossession over the next 25 years or the Palestinian side will come up with a proactive alternative strategy and framing for that but I think that we're on the cusp of that moment and now you can do it in a very limited time or overtime I think the answer to the question is the other one what's the single most useful thing and where is the Palestinian Gandhi that was your other partner I think that question I've never liked that framing or that question oh if only the Palestinians had a Mandela oh if only had the Palestinians there are so many Palestinian Mandela, so many Palestinian Martin Luther Kings and they get killed or they get arrested or they get detained or they get you've got to have that winning moment in history where somebody can survive and somebody can survive long enough and outside of an oppressive system that's why I think there are limitations that's why I think it has to be an international movement even if it's a localized effort in Colombia and a localized effort in every city and localized effort in every city in Israel to demand equality even if you went in that direction it still has to be an international movement and I think as you say as Daniel says exactly you can't get there was a Mandoweis headline, a sub headline the other day that said what's so bad about equality right I think it's virtually impossible for people to argue against equality if the goal is dispossession of somebody else's rights that's a different issue, if the goal is dispossession of Israeli Jews that's a different issue, then people will stand up against you if the goal is equality with that's a really hard argument and since people are fighting for equality all over the world in multiple formats in multiple ways the ability to form alliances and coalitions across nations across communities with Palestine on these issues is far greater than it would be under the old fashion national liberation struggle but if that hashtag doesn't work I'm sure we can come up with a better one can I add one word on that because the ability to translate sympathy, latent empathy into people actually mobilizing to do something about it looks totally different when you're asking people in this country, in Europe in the Arab world, anywhere when you're asking people to come together to act politically to mobilize politically in response to the Palestinian plight versus in response to the attractive Palestinian non-violent struggle for rights, freedom, whatever it looks totally different including not insignificantly inside Israel and inside the Jewish world not least when one sees the attitudinal trends of American Jewels we are well over time but I really want to thank Dan and I'm Jed for coming and all of your questions please if you didn't get something to eat coming in feel free to hang out a little bit we have the room for a little while longer thank you so much for coming thank you