 First, we're going to hear from Dr. Zagwi to talk about the poll itself, and then we'll have a conversation about it with Laura Friedman and Yusuf Hunaya. Dr. Zagwi, thanks Peter. I was saying beforehand that if you like numbers, you will love this. There are numbers galore. You all have copies now of the poll itself, which was an interesting experience for us. This is a poll we wanted to do going back in the 90s, and I wish we'd been able to find someone to support it at that point, given the fact that we would then have an ability to track where numbers moved. We polled Israelis, two separate polls in Israeli Jewish and in Israeli Arab. We did it that way because we wanted a significant enough number of Israeli Arabs, as opposed to about the 20% we would have gotten, so we oversampled to 400. We also then polled Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, a total of 1200, and then we polled Palestinian refugees in Lebanon 500 and in Jordan 500, something that is almost always never done. People talk about the refugees but never talk to them, and then we polled American Jews to get a sense of where they stood on these issues. For the most part, with the exception of a few questions tailored to each of the individual constituencies, we asked identical questions of everyone. So if we were going to ask a question about how big a problem is Palestinian violence, we asked Palestinians that question. If we asked how big a problem to you are Israeli settlements, we asked Israeli Jews that question as well. We wanted to get a sense of the sliding scale of movement on different issues to see if any consensus, any way of moving the needle forward was possible. A poll like any poll is a snapshot in time, but the time in which it's taken is important. This was, and I hate the use of this word, a period of relative calm. There were no ground shaking events. There was no Gaza war. There was no prisoner exchange. There was no dramatic upheaval of any sort. And so given the fact that the poll was done in a period of this sort, with the ebbs and flows of attitudes on issues of current interest, like how do you feel about the leadership of this guy or how do you feel about this problem or that problem, you would get a more constant sort of the deeper level of attitude that would not be reflected if you polled in the midst of some great upheaval. And a third sort of introductory point I'd like to make is there's always a temptation with polling to play gotcha. Oh, look, Palestinians say this or Israelis say that. I would caution against that. The fact is is that there's enough gotcha that you can play on all sides of this. The reality here is that you look at the entire body of this and look at it for the purpose for which it was done, which was to see if it is possible to find some basis for consensus. Attitudes the end of the day do not create peace. Leaders create the movement toward peace. Attitudes simply reflect the receptivity of publics for peace or for the various sacrifices or concessions or positions that leadership will take. With that said, I'm not going to go through this very data heavy survey. Rather, what I want to do is walk you through a couple of observations that I thought were of interest and should be of interest to those who are actually involved in the job of making peace. The first is that in addition to looking at the importance of issues, there is the question of the demographics that we look at. To me, the most striking issue are the differences on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side, which indicate where problems have to be addressed and how we have to look at this. For there to be peace, we ask the question, for there to be peace, a Palestinian state must be independent, sovereign, and contiguous. Huge gaps appear on the Israeli side between the larger segment of the population, which calls itself secular, that largely agrees with that proposition. And orthodox, who overwhelmingly disagree. I'd also say that if you add in the group of those who are nationalist, more secular but nationalist, you'd also see they trend toward the orthodox position. Now where the larger demographic difference in attitude on the Israeli side is, of course, with the Israeli Arab community, 89% of them say for there to be peace of Palestinian state. And because I don't track them on these graphs as we go forward, let me just make a point about the Israeli Arabs as a demographic group to be considered. Most interesting thing for me is that when we ask the question, whose concerns are most important or whose voices are most important to be heard in the process of making peace, every group we polled put Israeli Arabs as the second most important group. They said that they were the most important and right after them was Israeli Arabs. Which was intriguing to me that Israeli Jews said that, that Palestinians said that, that the refugees said that, finding this community a very important voice, a voice that is unfortunately not usually heard. They certainly aren't even spoken to. In addition, you will find that their positions are, on the one hand, very supportive of the Palestinian position, but also much more moderate than the Palestinian position on a number of issues. For example, on the question of Israel as a Jewish state, they among all the Palestinians have the least objection to that, which is strange given the fact that Palestinians say that their objection to that is not wanting to undercut the position of the Israeli Arab community. So they are a moderate voice, a very, a voice that is very strongly attached to their refugee and brethren who are under occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and yet they're a voice also considered important, but never talked to. On the Palestinian side, we see obviously very important for them this issue of the Palestinian state being independent, sovereign, and contiguous, and no difference among Fattah and Hamas largely on that question. If you look at the next one, which represents your views, we should be willing to take risks to make sacrifices to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace. We shouldn't have to give up any of our demands to achieve it. Again, this enormous difference among different demographic groups in Israel, secular, very willing to take risks, orthodox, not willing at all, those living within the Green Line willing to, and those living in East Jerusalem in settlements or outside the Green Line, again, not willing to. But look at the Palestinian side, and this tracks almost every question we ask of this sort, and that is no difference. No difference among age groups, no difference among where they live, no difference among whether they support Fattah or Hamas. The interesting point being that the difference between Fattah and Hamas is not ideological. It's a question of loyalty to a group, but there is no difference in their overall perspective, which is to say that the Hamas leadership, if it were to take a more moderate line, would find their constituency as receptive as the Fattah constituency would be. How likely is it that an agreement can be reached in the next five years? Again, the difference secular, somewhat more believing that it is possible, orthodox not, but Fattah, Hamas, West Bank, Gaza residents, almost indistinguishable one from another. Let's look at the issue of the obstacles to achieving peace. If it's true that Palestinians are less willing to take risks, they're also more willing to blame themselves. Willingness of the other side to make peace, both equally blame the other side for being a problem, but Palestinians are willing to say that they bear some of the blame, in fact, significantly more so than the Israeli side. I also add that 43% of Palestinians when asked how big a problem is Palestinian violence, 43% say it is a major problem, as opposed to only 36% of Israelis who would agree that Israeli settlements are a big problem. So Palestinians seem to be, on the one hand, less willing to take risks or less willing to give up their demands, but at the same time, are more willing to blame themselves for part of the problem. And we'll see that sort of contradiction throughout the poll, which leads me to conclude at one point that about a third of Palestinians in the occupied territories have developed, after all of this ebb and flow of peace, no peace, occupation getting worse, settlements doubling and then quadrupling in size since Oslo, a bit of cynicism and a lack of confidence in the fact that we've given up everything, nothing comes back. And so who knows, who cares what can happen? A sort of resignation. Trust. Trust is a big problem. How serious an obstacle to achieving peace is our lack of trust in the intentions of the other side. For Israeli Jews, it's huge. For Palestinians, a plurality say it, but that 31% again, that's the number that comes up all the time about that number of folks who just there's this sense of, like I said, resignation and cynicism. What Palestinians most want from Israelis, the Israelis are least willing to give. And what Israelis most want from Palestinians, Palestinians are least willing to give. Would it make you more or less likely to believe peace could be reached if the Israeli government were to remove roadblocks, the blockade of Gaza and other restrictions? 56% of Palestinians say much more likely to believe that peace were possible. Only 25% of Israelis think it would be making peace more possible. On the other hand, we asked if Palestinian leadership were to unify their ranks, renounce violence, and pledge to repress elements that use violent means. 44% of Palestinians say they think that would make peace more likely. And 53% of Israelis do. This was the lowest number on the Palestinian side. That was the 25 was the lowest number on the Israeli side. But they were also among the highest numbers on each respective side for if those decisions were made by the other side. Similarly, when asked if the Israeli government were to recognize the right of Palestinian people to self-determination, the right to an independent state, only 36%, 38% of Israeli Jews say peace would be more likely. But Palestinians, on the other hand, 54%. But if the Palestinian leadership would unify their ranks and recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, you get 58% of Israeli Jews saying that would make peace more likely. But among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, only 35%. Again, the higher number there was among the Arabs in Israel. Now, the last demographic group I want to look at are the refugees themselves. And again, this is a group that everybody talks about, but nobody talks to. We asked the first question, is it important that you return to your hometown or village? The dark green are Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, more than half of whom are refugees. Many living in camps some not, but still considered refugees from their home villages in what is now Israel. The refugees in Lebanon, 88%, and the refugees in Jordan, 97%, very strong majority saying they want to go home to their homes and their villages. It is important if circumstances prevent or delay your return that you remain where you are as a citizen of the Palestinian state. 66% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, if they were not able to return, it is important to them that they remain citizens of the Palestinian state. Be given citizenship in Lebanon, very controversial in Lebanon, previously always rejected by Palestinians in Lebanon, but now 41% say that they would accept that. It's important to them to be able to accept it. And to retain or obtain Jordanian citizenship, 70% of Palestinians in Jordan say yes. How important is it if circumstances prevent or delay your return to your hometown or village, you'd be given the opportunity to emigrate and become a citizen of another country. Again, significant flexibility there. And how important is it that you'd be able to live in a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza, significant majorities across the board? Now I want you to consider this for just a minute. When we compare to the only other time we polled among refugees, which was 2005, we polled among refugees in Lebanon the same camps. How important to go back to your home and village? 83% then, today 88%. If not to return to a Palestinian state, 35% then and 68%. If not to receive Lebanese citizenship, only 13% then, now 41%, that there be a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital, 52% then, now 77%. In a sense, a significant number in the past saying they had no dog in the fight and today strongly identifying with this. This does not mean that one should just sort of remove this community from consideration and assume as a pawn on the chess board you just ignore them because they'll accept whatever you offer them. That would be the unacceptable solution. The notion is that if you talk to them, if you include them in the discourse, if you attempt to work with the refugee community and take their voices seriously, you will find them to be a flexible partner in the process. But to roll over them is when you get the rejection. And this leads me to a final point in the poll and that's the hole is more acceptable in the parts. If you look at the individual poll, individual pieces, look at borders, you will find no exception, no possibility is accepted by almost anybody. The 67 border, the border with land swaps, the no border at all, the one state solution is rejected by everybody across the board, that there be no border and that you go back to the status quo ante before the creation of the state. Just not accepted. People want separation of some sort. What they don't have an idea of is where the separation or how it should occur or under what terms. And that's where the negotiators obviously play a role. We offered, as for consideration, two separate plans. The Arab peace plan and we pulled it apart and the Clinton peace plan and we pulled it apart. I thought it was interesting to look at how this issue of the whole when spelled out becomes bigger and better and more acceptable than the parts, just this one example. We asked Israeli Jews when the Arab peace plan, how acceptable is it? And what we were told is 22% found it acceptable. But significant numbers of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza found it very acceptable. Then we asked their reaction to the plan itself, 22% found it acceptable. When we spelled out the pieces of the plan, first we said a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, the establishment of a state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, 17% acceptable. An agreed solution to the refugee problem not spelled out because that's the way it actually appears in the Arab peace plan is that an agreed solution. 38% then found it acceptable. The vague terminology, I guess, made it. But then we said in exchange for this withdrawal and the establishment of the state, the agreed solution to the refugee problem, the Arab states will consider the conflict over and sign a comprehensive peace agreement and establish normal relations. It goes up to 49% acceptable and not just acceptable, but support, only 27 opposed and the rest neutral. The point is, in other words, when you create the big vision and you provide what the trade-offs are and the benefits, you find it more accepting as you do with the refugees, as you do with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and as you do in this example here with the Israeli Jews. Now, I just want to comment about American Jews. We asked some separate questions of American Jews because what we were finding, what we find in the polls is that their views are more moderate on most issues than the Israeli Jewish community. First question is their attitude toward the Arab-Israeli, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When we asked the question, what are their attitudes, 28% said they support whatever policies are advocated by the state of Israel. 42% said they have their own views of what the Israeli government should do and they support policies that agree with their beliefs. 29% said, I don't believe my views should play a role in this. What organization do you support most? 23% said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 33% said American Jewish groups that side with Israel's peace camp. And 32% said it's not a matter of great concern to me. If the US government were to pressure Israel to free settlement construction, 32 would oppose it, 28 would be neutral, and 36 would support the move. And in election for public office, you agreed with the candidate on most issues but disagreed with his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 33% would not vote for the candidate, but 49 would still vote for the candidate. A community far more moderate than I think the myth about the monolithic Jewish community comes off as. And that is the end of the slide. And we'll step down and we'll take some questions and comments from our panelists. So when you guys come up, I'm going to move to B. So Dr. Zagby and I are joined by Yusuf Muneir of the Palestine Center here in Washington and Laura Friedman of Americans for Peace Now. So I'm going to ask some questions of everybody. And then once we get the conversations going a little bit, we'll open it up to all of you. Yusuf, why don't I start with you. What struck me about the questions of Palestinians was that although there was, as Dr. Zagby said, very little difference based on, in contrast to the Israeli Jews, not much difference based on age, not much difference based on education, not much difference based on Hamas, Shishfata. There was a kind of pattern you saw based on the difference between refugees, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and those in the West Bank and Gaza. And to put it crudely, I would say basically, in terms of openness to the Clinton parameters position or even the Arab peace initiative position, I would say you generally found Palestinian citizens of Israel most supportive, Palestinians in the occupied territories less, Palestinian refugees in Jordan less, and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon least of all. And so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about trying to help us understand the differences in perspective of those different Palestinian communities on the basic question of what it would take to get to a two state solution if that's even the desired result. Yeah, well, thank you. And thanks, Dr. Zagby, for the presentation. I don't think there's any surprise that those results correlate very clearly with the different experiences that those communities had. The refugees, particularly in Lebanon, have paid the highest price and are living through the worst conditions. Probably of any other Palestinians anywhere, except perhaps refugee camps in the Gaza Strip as well. And the other point that I would make, other than the fact that it correlates with experience, the different experience of the communities, particularly when it comes to Israeli Arabs, remember where mass public opinion comes from and how it changes. This is about media. This is about the cues driven by political elites. And the Palestinian citizens of Israel are largely Hebrew speaking, as well as Arabic speaking. So they are exposed to and influenced by not only Arabic speaking media, but also Israeli speaking media. So they have a perspective that is being shaped by different opinion shapers, different elites, which are giving the cues that form this public opinion. And I think that's an important part of the discussion here that should be filled in in a couple different areas. And of course, that moves along down the line as well. You look at the media within the refugee communities, the narratives there are different than those in the West Bank. And they are different than those that Israeli Arabs are exposed to. But because that language barrier does not exist among the Palestinian citizens of Israel, they hear different views. And I think that goes a very long way to explaining the differences in their perspectives. One thing I've seen before, which is also very interesting, is when you look at the subsections among Palestinian citizens of Israel, their opinions also vary significantly based on their historical experience as well. So people who are related to refugees or have relatives who are refugees tend to have much stronger feelings about the right of return than people who do not. So public opinion is really something that is based on one personal experience and two cues from media elites. The bigger question here, and this is something that I was hoping we could get into, is how productive is this discussion about public opinion in moving us forward towards policies that lead us closer to a solution. And I think that we've done this so often, and it's one of the things that have been handed down to us by the peace processes of the past, the Egyptian-Israeli peace process, where if you look at the literature on that, it is filled with questions about domestic constraints and public opinion and that sort of thing. But this is not the same situation. And the differences here have made this discussion different in a way that it doesn't necessarily contribute, I don't think, in a helpful way towards policies that lead us towards a better outcome. And I think that's something that needs to be part of the discussion as well. Laura, let me ask you a question about the numbers amongst Israelis. And I'll ask you a specific question, but if you have other thoughts that strike you as interesting. One thing that came across that really struck me was the extraordinarily high emphasis on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Some people have, Benjamin Netanyahu who has obviously elevated this in a way that some of his predecessors is not. But, and there's a lot of ambiguity, I think, in some ways, people struggle to understand what exactly this means in practical terms to people. Why does it matter that the Palestinians not only recognize Israel, but recognize Israel as a Jewish state? But what this polling suggests, I think, is that he's, politically, he's onto something, that this formulation is extremely important to Israeli Jews. And so I wonder if you could think a little bit about why you think that is, because it's one thing that really struck me about the Israeli Jewish numbers, although I'd also invite you to comment on other things that struck you about the on the Israeli Jewish side. Sure, thank you, Peter. And thank you, Jim, for having this and for doing this polling. I first wanna say, I often disagree with Yusuf on things. I actually agreed with pretty much everything he just said, and I hope we can have a discussion about some of this, including sort of what this polling means or doesn't mean in terms of policy. On the Jewish state issue, this is something I've been thinking about and writing about for a number of years. And I started writing about it when Netanyahu was first elected. I wrote a piece about what I called the Recognition Plus Demand, because in the, you know, I've been doing Israeli, Palestinian, Israeli, Arab stuff since the early 90s. And this idea of recognizing Israel, recognizing Israel's right to exist, that's always been there. But the recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, that particular formula sort of came up in a very tangible way with the election of Netanyahu for a second term in office. And I have to say, for me, this has been a learning process. And I don't think it's so much that Netanyahu is onto something that was already there. I do think a new fact has been created. This is now part of the Israeli consciousness. And when I talk to my Arab friends about this, if you'd asked me this question six years ago, five years ago, I would have said this is an artificial issue that's been created to erect a new obstacle to Israeli, Palestinian peace. And I do think that for many people it was raised as a cynical issue. I think it has now entered the Israeli psyche and the American Jewish psyche in a way that is very, very real. And not to be trite, but you have to meet people where they are. And for Israelis, this has now become a question of not can we sign a peace agreement that may or may not address everybody's needs or make everybody happy, but it's whether or not we as the Jewish people are accepted in the region. And it goes to a core insecurity, a core existential question for Israeli Jews and I think for American Jews. It is now a fact of the debate that cannot be ignored. So, and I think that's very much reflected in the polling and I think it's reflected when you talk to American Jews and Israeli Jews. This is now seen as a test of the sincerity behind any future peace agreement. And it is very much a new, a relatively new demand and a new fact of the debate, but it is there. In terms of sort of the broader comments, looking at the polling and I actually, I wanna associate myself with something that Jim said, which is that it's not the attitudes that make peace. It's gonna be the leaders that make peace. I think attitudes are an interesting snapshot, but it's not, if you did polling in 1993 and 1994, I think you would have found that most Israelis and Palestinians would have said there's no possibility of a breakthrough and American Jews would have said nobody should talk to Arafat and blah, blah, blah. I don't think that's the key point. I think it's an interesting snapshot, but as you look at the snapshot of Israeli Jewish opinion, and it's very much what Yusuf said, it's looking at the things that form that opinion. And I actually jotted down some notes on a couple of those things. And I'd be interested to look at the cross tabs on the age. There's been some polling in Israel in the past few days showing that the constituency of American Jews that is moving furthest to the right are the youth. Israeli Jews, are Israeli youth. And again, that goes to where does that opinion come from? It comes from a generation whose opinions were not formed by the pre-67 realities of fairly reasonable relations and spending time and actually meeting Palestinians face to face regularly. It's a generation that's opinions are formed post-second and de fada, Gaza, Lebanon, the whole issue of a sense of Israeli victimization, which really is cresting. It's reaching a point that certainly wasn't the sense 20 years ago. It's a very different feeling. So you have a deep sense of victimization. You have a deep sense of cynicism. You have what we in the Jewish community call the friar complex. Nobody wants to be a sucker. So you're gonna take a very hard opinion and not look like you're the one who's gonna be first to compromise. And then the last piece, which I think is so important, is this is not just this generation, this current group that's being polled in Israel has seen now two decades, more than two decades, of there being no cost for failure to move forward on peace, for a failure to make the hard decisions. And I agree very much. I mean, what Jim showed in the polling that when you pull the totality of a peace agreement versus the parts, you always get a better result. That's always been the case. And it speaks to human psychology. But even there, if the sense is, well, we don't need to do any of that because there's really no cost to us. And in the past four years under Netanyahu, it's not just there's no cost. Netanyahu has gotten stronger and stronger and stronger by standing up to the world and saying, no, I'm gonna do whatever I want. I would remind people when Israel, quote unquote, disengaged, pulled out of Gaza, Israelis did not go out in the streets to protest. When Israel pulled out of outposts, when it evacuated outposts, Israelis did not start a civil disobedience campaign to take down their government. And when the so-called moratorium, which I know was not a real settlement freeze, but if you were to ask most Israelis, they would say it was a settlement freeze. And Israelis did not go out in the street to protest. So the polling will show people saying, I'm not gonna be a sucker, I'm cynical, I don't believe it's possible, hold on. Are they ready to take down their government? If their government comes one day and says, this is the decision we're making because we have vision for the future, we're showing leadership, we're gonna make peace, we're gonna do something like what Rabin did. I don't believe this sort of attitude polling is predictive in that sense. But I think it's a really important snapshot of what happens when you have, very much like what you've had, all of these years of disappointments, all of these messages coming at you that things are bad, that you're the victim, this is from the Israeli side, or that you don't need to do anything. The status quo is sustainable and we should use this period to do more and more and more for our benefit because there's no cost to us. So I think that's where it takes you. I wanna go to Dr. Zagreb, but Yusuf wanted to just jump in quickly on this question about the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Yeah, and I think when I was looking at this polling data, this is one of the first things that I highlighted that kind of underscores why this approach is so problematic. Public opinion does not only shape what leaders can do, but leaders shape public opinion to also send messages internationally about what they're able to do. They tie their hands and use that as bargaining chips and international bargaining. With the Jewish state issue, Lars, right, not only you wouldn't see these numbers reflected this way a few years ago, this was a question that was not asked in polls a few years ago. The goalposts have moved. The Israelis have effectively moved the goalpost. The question we need to be asking is, why are they able to move goalposts in directions that enable them to leverage their bargaining position? Whereas the Palestinians are not. And I think that comes back to the approach that we take towards Israelis and Palestinians. And this is the discussion that we need to be having in a room in Washington DC here. It's about US policy. And the way the United States views the Israeli government is as a sovereign government that they have to deal with, regardless to who that government is. With the Palestinians, they don't view them that way because the Palestinians do not have a state. They do not have that kind of relationship with the Palestinians. And so domestic constraints as bargaining chips from the Israelis are viewed much more persuasively in the United States than they are from the Palestinians. What this leads to is a US policy that says, with the Israelis, we have to deal with what we get because this is the sovereign elected government of the state of Israel. And with the Palestinians, if we don't like public opinion and where the public is, then we can create policies to mold and shape the Palestinian partner into an entity that better reflects the contours of Israeli public opinion. And where that becomes extremely problematic is in the fact that the legitimacy of Palestinian leadership is based on their ability to represent national aspirations and create achievements towards national goals. And so what you have is this Catch-22 where you are delegitimizing the very Palestinian partner that you need to have any sort of just and lasting agreement. And so I think this entire framework of public opinion when seen through the filter of disparity that is the imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians only leads us in the direction where the Israelis are able to constantly leverage their position by moving the goalposts and the Palestinians are not. And that I don't think is really helpful towards moving us towards a solution. Quickly, because Jim has been, this is his baby and he's been waiting. Sorry, just very quickly. I find myself again in agreement with Yusuf on this. I would like to note, I mean there is another way to think about this in terms of the Jewish state requirement, for example. What yes, Israel has moved the goalposts on this. By the same token, we now have something else that only the Palestinians can give Israel. Only the Palestinians can give Israelis the recognition they feel they need to feel safe in an existential way. For years, my colleague, Danny Seidman, has talked about if the Israelis want more than anything else to have Jerusalem recognized as their capital, the only people who can grant them that recognition are the Palestinians through a peace agreement. That is a tremendous, not only has it moved the goalpost, but it is also a tremendous card now that is on the table that can be played. So there is a positive, or at least it can be viewed in a constructive way. I wanna pick up on where you left off, which is Jerusalem, because I found the answers on Jerusalem amongst the most confusing and also perhaps the most depressing in that basically everybody rejects every possible solution for Jerusalem. I mean, except the Israeli Jews like the idea that Israel will have all of it. But basically when you talk about any division along the 67 lines, along the kind of, the idea that Israel will get the Jewish neighborhoods, including in East Jerusalem and the Palestinians who get the Palestinian neighborhoods, or the idea that it'll be international city, everybody says no to all of that. And so again, I guess from the Israeli Jewish perspective, it's easier to understand because we know what their first preference is. They want Israel to have sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem. But I guess I want to try to explain how you understand the Palestinian answer to this. I mean, from the Jewish right, you look at this and you say, aha, they've rejected every solution so the only possible answer they could actually have is they want all of Jerusalem, East and West, for themselves. I don't know if you think that's the interpretation or how you make sense of these particularly Palestinian answers on Jerusalem. Well, let me just say, I think the most interesting thing about the Jerusalem question are the questions that preceded the discussion of borders. And I have to thank Laura for that. It was an interesting exercise in asking both Israelis and Palestinians how important different locales were to them and to find that Israelis who wanted the whole thing either found unimportant or had no clue where Ras Alamud was or where Silwan was or where other Palestinian villages called neighborhoods in Jerusalem are. And so it kind of intriguing to me that they wanted all but they haven't got a clue and they've never been there. It is a deeply divided city. On the Palestinian side, I think that they know what the game is. I mean, they have to go around Ma'alei Ademim all the time. They have to deal with checkpoints and can't go into the city all the time. I can remember even in the 90s when we were in the height of the peace process, Ron Brown coming to Jerusalem and having a meeting when it was still allowed in 94 with Palestinian businessmen. And partway through the meeting, they got up and walked out and Ron turned over to me and he said, he was Secretary of Commerce for those of you too young. And I guess there were people who are there. He turned around to me and said, did I say something wrong? And I said, let me go check and see what the reason for this mass exodus was. It was that they had gotten permits from the military governor to enter but had to be back at the checkpoint at six o'clock to go back home to Ramallah or else be in violation of the military order. And so they had to leave and go. We were, that was the last meeting we had in Jerusalem from that point on. Even after the Amman summit, which was opening the door to Israel to economic engagement with the Arab world, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem were not allowed by Israel to go across the border to attend the summit. So the door was open, everybody went in but the Palestinians. And then when we came back, the embassy decided to host a meeting in Jerusalem with Palestinian and Israeli businessmen to talk about business opportunities and how we can engage. And the Palestinians didn't show up. And I remember sitting next to an unnamed, I won't mention his name, not very, very smart American official at the thing who passes me a note saying, Palestinians aren't here, God damn Arafat probably won't let them come. And then we get, and then we get a message from the Palestinians that they were stopped at the checkpoint and could not come in because the Israelis wouldn't let them in to the city. And so they know what this issue of Jerusalem means to them and it is infuriating. It is not just the holy city. It is the metropole. It's as if you said to people from Rockville, you can't come into Washington, DC. It's the cultural hub. It's the educational hub. It's the medical center. It was the place where their jobs were. It is the place where literally their lives were tied up in the biggest city in their territory and they're cut off from it. And this artificial growth and Ramallah and other places around, which has had to compensate for that is a huge hurt at this point that has distorted the whole daily life and viability of their community. And people are trapped inside. People are trapped outside. So it's kind of tough to talk to Palestinians about where you divide the line and where you draw it and stuff like that, especially when, I remember when we went with Builders for Peace in the 90s and brought Palestinian Americans to Jerusalem for the first time to some of these meetings. First thing that these guys wanted to do was go find their houses, some of them from West Jerusalem. And I'll never forget the look on this one young man. So as we were driving by in a cabin, I rolled down the window and I said, Brheem, Brheem, what are you doing? He was standing on a corner looking rather wistfully. He said, I found it. This is where my father's house was. It was in West Jerusalem. So these are big issues. And I think that the point is that like the refugee question, Peter, the issue is there has to be a discussion about it. But if you ask the Israelis about the refugee question, there's no conversation at all. Palestinians on the issue of the Jewish state, they don't wanna talk about it. Israelis don't wanna talk about the refugee issue at all, at all. They don't wanna talk to refugees. They have no business in this equation at all. Jerusalem off the table, we won't talk about it. But that's not the way to begin this discussion. Is there Palestinian movement possible in Jerusalem? I think absolutely. But I think it has to be an engaged conversation. This is an issue where maybe I differ from the panelists because I think that the poll is important for this reason. You have had, as we saw from those Al Jazeera tapes played, we've had these conversations among leaders making decisions for people who were never part of the conversation. If Netanyahu's done anything, it's that he's engaged his public in a conversation about the painful sacrifices we'd make, but also about our demands. I don't think Palestinians have done the same thing and there's a fault in that. If you're gonna talk about the refugees, talk to the refugees. If you're gonna talk about Jerusalem, engage the entire Palestinian community on what is possible. I remember Arafat shortly before he passed away, had an op-ed in the New York Times where he talked about the refugee issue and he said, the right of the refugees is sacred to us. It can never be one that we put away. How we negotiate a solution to the refugee problem is different than recognizing the right. The right is ours. How you resolve that right is something we can talk together. And that's the same with Jerusalem, I think, is that what I learned from this is deeply held views and rejectionism on both sides. People's rights can never be ignored. How you negotiate those rights is what this is all about. And I think that that's where the tough stuff begins. You want it all, I want it all. How do we then begin to separate and pull it apart and make some sense out of this? And I think one of the things I've learned from this exercise is that when we talk about trade-offs and confidence building, we start at the wrong point. I would not start at the existential. I'd not say that the first trade-off is you recognize the right of the refugees to return and I'll recognize your right to a Jewish state. That's a non-starter. But if we make the trade-offs behavioral, you stop violence and I'll stop the checkpoints. I'll free Gaza and you stop doing this. I mean, in other words, if it's behavioral issues, you can modify those. But to ask people to start at the beginning recognizing that we're a Jewish state or that recognize the fact that our refugees all have the right to return, those are non-starters. And so I think that those are the things we have to talk about. The behavioral stuff is the stuff we have to do and that's an entirely different set of issues. Let me just make a point, I wanted to just say this poll was on the issue of leadership was done for the Serbanias Forum in the UAE back in November. It was to have been discussed by Salem Fayyad and Ehud Barak. And I was kind of pleased that both of them were going to engage in the conversation and then the Gaza war started and Barak pulled out and the Palestinians actually at that point said they don't want an Israeli substitute, they just didn't feel it was coming. So it both sets the importance of the data but also of the limits of dealing with the data without leadership who can engage the data. So I just thought that was an interesting observation to Ann. Yusuf, I wanted to ask you a little bit about this question which gets discussed more and more obviously about the idea of one state versus two states and especially about shifts in Palestinian perspective on this question. I also found this data which is kind of encapsulated on page 29, really hard to understand hard to understand. So for instance, you find that the Israeli Arab see more pro both. I mean, the Israeli Arab say 74% of them support the 67 border but then they're almost 50% of them also support the creation of a single state in which equal citizens have equal rights. The other Palestinian group, the people in the West Bank and Gaza are considerably more pro two states than they are one state and the refugees again from a kind of a naked reading of it are actually kind of hostile to both. So again, obviously when one's looking in these numbers there's lots of noise and trying to kind of tell a story that really allows you to understand it. Again, especially given that obviously these are all very abstract propositions for people now when you're talking about secular by national state versus two state solution. But I wonder how you make sense of it. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that question because that's one of the things that I found so interesting was that section that was included on page 29 about the different options. One thing that immediately stood out to me is that if you look at the one state question, if you look at the people who are in support and also not opposed, that's actually a majority of almost a majority of all different categories, which I think is fascinating. Palestinian categories, not Jewish categories. Well, if you look at the neutral and supportive among Israeli Jews, it gets a 34%. Which I think even among Israeli Jews, that's pretty significant. And so what I think we need to do on this question is contextualize it in the discourse. Remember, we already kind of touched on what shapes public opinion. The discourse on this issue in all of these communities over the past however many years has been dominated by the two state framework. So I think look at it in comparison is really to compare apples and oranges. You can't make this comparison given the context that it's in. And I think that's one of the reasons why if you look at the numbers, the numbers in the neutral category on the one state issue are higher than in any other category for similar questions. Because people simply cannot imagine how a one state framework can work. Because there has been so little discussion about how that could work. When we talk about a two state outcome, we've had shelves that you could fill with policy papers and discussions and analysis about where lines would go and settlement swaps and how to divide cities and all this kind of stuff. Where is the discussion, the analysis, the writing about constitutionalism, power sharing, equality within a single state framework that people can have these discussions around? They don't exist. So when you talk about how people feel about these different issues, well what do they know about them to base this on? And there's such a difference between these two that I don't look at it as something that is that effective in judging how people would feel about something that they would understand if they don't understand it. And that now is changing, by the way. Because we're starting to have more of a discussion of this. In part because the discourse is diversifying, but also because realities on the ground have made this a discussion that we have to have. Okay, you've made me a happy man because I feel like we may have a point of disagreement here now. Because, and I wanna go to Jim and then I wanna go to Laura. Because Jim, and you were right up of this at the very beginning, point number two is two states still the only viable option. The first and most telling point of consensus is that a two-state solution remains the only viable option that is acceptable, albeit with differences to both sides. The one-state solution is rejected by all parties, including Palestinian refugees. So do you disagree with what you said just now? When you pull apart every one of the individual issues, borders, refugees, Jerusalem, et cetera. And you look at each piece separately, you get rejection, almost always. But where do you find acceptance? You find acceptance in how important is an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, even among refugees, very important. On the Israeli side, what intrigued me was that the issue that they're least opposed to is the separation. It says the current location of the separation barrier should become the final border. Now, that's totally unacceptable to Palestinians, only 4% of Israeli Arabs accept it, 14% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza accept it, refugees in Lebanon, only five, et cetera. Can you massage that? And I think that the answer is, what is the operative term in that sentence? Is the operative term the border? Is the operative term the separation barrier? And if the Palestinians do not object in the past to the separation barrier being on the 67 border, it's like you're gonna build a damn wall, build it on your own property, don't build it on mine thing. It's said to me that Israelis accept separation, they certainly don't want, only 12% of them want a unified state in which all citizens have equal rights. Palestinians clearly give very strong majority support to the importance of an independent state, West Bank, and Gaza, and maybe the most intriguing issue for me was on page nine on the importance of issues for there to be peace Palestinians must be in control of their borders so they're able to trade with the outside world. 62% of Israeli Jews say they agree with that and majorities of all Palestinians agree, 73% in the West Bank and Gaza, 58% in Lebanon, and 70% in Jordan. So interesting that the issue of an open Palestinians controlling their own borders so they can trade with the outside world, accepted by everybody. I want to go lower, but you have just asked to jump in quickly. Yeah, the point about separation, I think to an extent, that's the right way to read into it. But what is that about? The primary thing that shapes Israeli opinions towards Palestinians and this issue in general, and I don't think there would be disagreement about this, is security and their own personal security. That is what the discussion about. Israelis have been conditioned by the discourse set by their leaders that the only way to security for Israelis within the region is through separation. So it's impossible for them to imagine a secure existence without separation. And this is one of the reasons why perpetual occupation is a viable policy option in Israel, because security through separation, which is what you have in this occupation regime, is the most important thing because it's the most primary interest among Israelis is security. But if you can have a conversation where you can talk about security in a way that is not mutually exclusive with interaction with Palestinians, then I think the discussion changes. But we haven't had that discussion. Laura, I wanna ask you about the two-state thing and I wanna ask you an additional question too, because I wanna be the last column before we go to question. So in addition to the two-state question, here's what I'd like you to add, one specific thing I'd like you to answer. I think one thing people might be slightly surprised about is that Palestinians are adamantly opposed to a non-militarized, demilitarized, whatever you wanna call it, Palestinian state. There's even arguably more flexibility on the refugee question than there is on that. And yet in conventional, let's say, Washington discourse, certainly American Jewish discourse, the idea that this Palestinian state will have no army is simply taken for granted. And so for those people like you and I who are on the dovish side, the natural response to this would be, you see, you see, you see, you can claim it's gonna be demilitarized up to the wazoo. The Palestinians are adamantly opposed to that. And in fact, this is gonna be a state which wants to have a military presence, presumably from the Jewish point of view, to threaten Israel. So I wanted you to talk about that question in particular. Let me take that one first, because that's simpler. I'm gonna point at Camp David. Camp David, which was an agreement between two sovereign states, led to, is an agreement under which the Egyptians accepted severe limitations, tremendous constraints on their military presence in the Sinai. That is something that I suspect if you had polled at the time of Camp David, Egyptians, as a point of pride, they would not have been happy about. It is something that worked in the context of the peace agreement that offered both sides and ends a conflict, a stable border, and all that goes with that. So to the extent, I don't know what Palestinian leadership in, if there were, if we ever get to real negotiations that hold out the prospect of an agreement that allows Israelis and Palestinians to have normal lives and hopes for the futures of their children that don't involve constant conflict, I think this can be resolved. I don't think any of these questions are gonna be resolved by public opinion polling coming together to negotiate the details and then hand them off to the leadership. I don't think it works that way. I think these are hard choices and they've gotta come as a package with leadership. And I don't think that is a block to an agreement. We'll see, we'll see, but we don't know because we haven't tried. On the one state, two state thing, and I wanna focus on this. People can choose to read polling however they want. This is one of the dangers of polling. And Yusuf has every right to read the polling of neutral the way he wants, which is if people understood what's possible, they would be in favor of a one state option. I read the polling very differently. The largest numbers on all categories are against a one state option. I believe, from my experience, that reflects two things. One, a one state option does not meet the basic aspirations of both people to have their own state. A Palestinian state and a Jewish state, not a secular, binational state. I think the opposed and the neutral together reflect or the supporting and the neutral together reflect the despair that this is not possible, a cynicism which says screw it, I'm not even gonna pretend I care anymore. But it also reflects certainly the large numbers of neutral I believe reflect the fact that people are not stupid. One state, and I'm sorry, and I am a little defensive. Yusuf wrote recently that those of us who still support the two state solution do so because we wanna keep our jobs. I have a problem with this. I have been talking to my friends on the Jewish left and I've been dealing with settlers for 20 years on these issues. One state means one of three things. It either means, and now we're in a zero sum solution. So you have either a Jewish state where the Palestinians are thrown out or they're second class citizens, or it means a Palestinian state where Jews are thrown out of their second class citizens. Those two options are options for eternal conflict. Neither side is going to get that easily or probably at all. The other option which is the why can't we all just get along a secular, binational, some form of we can come to a creative constitution is I mean for me, yeah, I'm an American. That sounds awesome. It also sounds like a fantasy. If we could get to that, we could get to a two state solution because a two state solution requires less sacrifice than that option. And it allows both sides to meet the aspirations for self-determination in a state of their own which the secular, binational state does not. I believe when you get to that neutral, you are simultaneously reflecting the despair and the reality check. So people are saying, I throw out my hands, screw it. I do not believe it means that if people had a better understanding of what it would mean to live together, they would do it. I wish that that might be what it meant, but I don't think it does. And I don't think, and I've written this before, those of us in the peace camp who still talk two state solution, and I'm very clear, I think the two state solution is immediately threatened by the Netanyahu government. I think that's happening in Jerusalem today. I fear that people do not understand how devastating the approval of more settlement construction in East Jerusalem today, a settlement called Givat Hamatois, which will make a future division of Jerusalem nearly impossible. I believe these are devastating. If the two state solution, though, is declared dead, all we do is reset the clock and start fighting to revive it because we're gonna come back here. The end of the two state solution does not create a new option. It leaves us with the three. Two of them are zero sum, which just mean perpetual fighting, and one of them is fantasy. And there hasn't been any serious look at the fact that there is no alternative. If there were, for the love of God, yes, there have been shelves of books written on how to resolve this conflict. You'd think that one of us people who's so desperate to keep our job would have come up with another idea. It's not that we're stupid and it's not that we're not creative. If you get frustrated that your parents don't give you what you want, it doesn't mean you can decide, I'm adopted, I'll go look for my real parents. You still have to deal with the reality. Things are getting very interesting. But I think, I wanna... Do I get a chance to respond to all that? Let's go to questions, but I'm sure in the course of questions that you're a smart guy, you'll work it in. Please go ahead. All right, hi. I'm my name is Crystal Blackman. I'm from Palestine Note. So I wanted to ask all the panelists. You talked about leaders and the need for leaders to make the decisions. Are there any leaders out there today that you would point to that could make the decisions that would lead to your ideal goal? You said? Well, I think this issue is not just about individuals, but really about representation. And this is just one of the areas where I would push back on Laura's perspective. Obviously we disagree on this and we've written extensively about our perspective. So I'm sure I'm not gonna get a chance to respond to all of that. But I think the idea of aspirations on both sides is something we fundamentally misunderstand. And I think that the two state discussion mischaracterizes Palestinian aspirations. I, as a Palestinian, also as an Israeli citizen by the way, feel that I have something of an understanding of both perspectives. And the Palestinian aspirations are not about a Palestinian state. They're about Palestine. They're about the land of Palestine. They're about the connection to the land of Palestine. Not 22% of it, but all of it. Now this doesn't mean exclusivist nationalism over all of it, but their aspirations are tied to a connection to all of Palestine. This means the refugees, and this means the people in the diaspora, and this means the people in the West Bank and Gaza. It's not about a state. And I think for Israeli Jews, it's also not about a state. It's about security living in a homeland in Israel. And so the idea that you can't find a balance to accommodate both of those in a different framework, I don't understand why we shut down the discussion about that. Getting back to your question about leadership, again, it's not simply about individuals, but it's about representation. And when we talk about on the Palestinian side, for me, it's not about who the individual is, but does the individual on the Palestinian and represent the interests of all the stakeholders involved? And if they don't, then frankly, they're not going to be conducive towards getting to any sort of agreement, whether in a one state framework or another. And I think the direction that we've set ourselves on with this two state principle has only worked to undercut the legitimacy of the Palestinian actor. Jim, do you want to jump in on this? The Palestinian bench is lacking right now. I mean, I think that that's clearly a problem. There were those who had hopes in Khaled Mishal. And I think he's shown himself to be a touch tone deaf. And that is a problem. There is this hope in Mr. Barghouti, but the Israelis don't seem to want to let them out anytime soon, and there seems to be some debate there too. I think that back to what you said on the Palestinian leadership side, the generation of Arafat that was able to speak to the broader aspirations, I thought Mahmoud Abbas's best moment as president was his speech last year to the UN, where he captured that sense of the vision of Palestine and the aspirations of Palestinians. And you and I were talking before about the refugee issue. I mean, we polled them deliberately because they are ignored in the discourse. And they are the majority of the Palestinian community and they are critical. You go to Nazareth today in the center of town, there's Hagar's tent, this statue built to commemorate Hagar and her dispossessed children. It's the statue of the woman. She's looking north to the border and her skirts are in the form of a tent open at the bottom with the refugees being housed underneath. That is something that in Nazareth is deeply felt. How do you write that off? How do you take Bobby Friedman from Brooklyn and say your rights are more significant than the old lady I stayed with in Ain al-Helwi who still has the key around her neck and pictures of her home from when it was her home. And Mahmoud Abbas captured that. I think in a crude way Khaled Mishail was speaking in that voice of that broader set of aspirations. The Israelis have wanted to reduce this to the village league approach of people administering the territories for them like refugee, like what do you call it, like Indian reservations. And for the Palestinians to have a leader, it's got to be somebody who speaks to that broader vision, that broader sense of the Palestinian community inside, outside, everywhere. On the Israeli side, I think there's also a problem with the bench. We're looking at the poll numbers, all of us are in Israel and it doesn't look like the configuration. The only way, if you add all the Israeli peace camp and I use that with quotes because it's not all peace camp, it's like those who aren't with the Netanyahu camp, you have trouble getting over 40. And then add to that the 11 members of the Knesset who will be Arab, but you can't form a majority coalition in Israel. That is a problem in the state. You form a majority coalition with Arabs and you are delegitimized from the get go. It's interesting, Israelis respect the views of the voices of Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. They say that they do, but they will not give legitimacy to a government that needs the Arabs to become its majority. So I don't know, we therefore as the fallback position look to leadership here. And I'm not quite sure that leadership here is ready to take it on either. In other words, to do what Clinton did in 98, which is go over the heads of both leaders and speak directly to the people and move opinion in an effort to change the political dynamic on the ground as he did. I mean, he unelected Netanyahu is what he did. And that was really quite significant. I don't see that coming from the US and I don't see the individual leaders on the West Bank in the Palestinians under occupation. Certainly don't see them in exile. The PLO is for all intents and purposes a neutered organization. And so on Israel, it looks pretty bad to me too. I mean, I think we're not in good days right now. Mark. Well, a couple of things. I actually, I want to associate myself with something Yusuf said. The two state solution paradigm has proven to be a paradigm in which the legitimacy of Palestinian leaders is sucked out. It's been very depressing to watch. You know, what Jim is talking about, this ability to speak to the broader aspirations and really call beyond just the West Bank and Gaza, that certainly pre Oslo, the way it worked. Arafat represented in the man, the aspirations and the hopes and the dignity of the Palestinian people. What's happened now that we're in the multiple decades of peace processing is that the legitimacy of a Palestinian leader is judged by what he can deliver. And unfortunately, the way it's worked is that really is in the hands of Israel what a Palestinian leader can deliver. And Israel has in fits and starts pretty much not let a Palestinian leader deliver much. And when Jim talks about, well, you know, maybe Barghouti, they let him out. I always say to my Israeli friends when they talk about Barghouti being the future leader, I said, you can only let him out of jail once. You better be prepared to deliver. Cause if you don't deliver to him, he's going to be another leader that you've wrecked. And either he will become de-legitimate as they're de-legitimized, or he will go to the other way, which is armed struggle, which is the other way you can be legitimate, legitimated, what are legitimized, these words. And in the Palestinian context, because you've got to be able to deliver to your people. And this process has not allowed that to happen. And for those of us who know the terrain on the ground, not just with settlements, it has been a gradual process of things getting worse and worse and worse. And I say that as someone who was serving in Jerusalem on the ground from 92 to 94. It is so much worse now than it was at the beginning of the Oslo process. People do not understand. It is so much worse and Palestinians feel that and they looked at their leadership. And when you try to say, well, we want the Palestinians to elect a leader who wants to make peace. Okay, it gets harder and harder. I think for any Palestinian leader to stand up and run the way Abu Mazen did on a platform that I will negotiate peace. In the same way that the Israelis have historically said there's no partner, I think the Palestinians can very clearly say, I can't stand up there and say that to my people. On the Israeli side, all of us, I think who want to see Israel safe, secure with recognized international borders and a neighbor that it has the right to defend itself against that no one will question if we have rockets coming in from Gaza across an internationally recognized border. Despair a little bit at the current politics. I do note that Yitzhak Rabin was not elected as a peacemaker. Yitzhak Rabin was a tough military guy. And I think if you had asked most Israelis if they expected him to come into office and surprise them with secret agreement made with Yasser Arafat and shake Yasser Arafat's hand, they would have said, what are you smoking? And I think if you'd asked most Palestinians, is this a man we can make peace with? They would have said, this is the man who gave the order to break our bones in the first Intifada. So I do, if I find any solace, it's in the fact that one can be surprised. That does come back though to the question of broader leadership and vision. I do think that Yitzhak Rabin had vision. I think that Arafat in that period had vision. And I think we had a U.S. government that was far more engaged and prepared to play a different role. Going back to something I said earlier, Israelis certainly have now been trained to believe there is no cost to the Israeli people, to Israel as a country in refusing to make progress towards peace and refusing to make compromises and really just in defying world opinion on everything. And so long as that is the case, I think you're gonna see leaders like Netanyahu and not Lieberman right now, because he's indicted, but probably Lieberman again in the future continuing to gain strength. And that cycle has to be broken if there's gonna be any breakthrough here. Another question. Why don't we take the lady in the glasses? I am Kate Gould of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and I really appreciate this discussion. I wanted to go back to something Jim pointed out about how different populations have perceived the Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Israelis as so central to the two-state solution. And I was interested to hear from all the panelists about your thoughts on if there is a two-state solution, then how would that change things for Palestinian Israelis, Israeli Arabs? So in Israel, would that mean that there would be greater chances for political empowerment for them being part of a coalition government? Is it even in the realm of possibility to imagine many decades down the road in a Israeli state that an Israeli Arab would be, could be a prime minister of Israel or in a self-identified Jewish state. So just interested in your thoughts about Palestinian Israelis. Okay, let's try to limit the responses to one or at most two people, because I wanna make sure we have time for questions. Who wants to take this one? I found that the contradiction in behavior is really behavior toward the Israeli Arab citizens and their attitude toward the importance of their voices to be striking. And I might also add on the Palestinian attitude toward them versus their behavior toward them. I mean, I remember when I did my dissertation use of I did it on the Arabs in Israel and I spoke in an AAUG with back then the Association of Arab American University graduates and the reaction I got was exactly the one that Hossan Kenefani told me I'd get. You write about them, he said in the Arabs we'll call you a traitor for writing about these guys. They don't wanna acknowledge their role and their leadership and their identity as Palestinian. How could they have maintained that identity under Israeli, with Israeli citizenship? Their demand, their aspirations for full citizenship rights, they have formed themselves into civil rights organizations demanding rights, not demanding separation. They don't want to go back to a Palestinian state when asked, they say they want full citizenship rights in Israel, their identity as Palestinians is secure, they feel strongly that way, but they wanna have full civil rights as recognized citizens of the state. So I think it's interesting that as you note their views are very pro-Palestinian and yet very much more moderate than their counterparts living in the occupied lands or in exile and I think that if it were possible to see them as a bridging, to play a bridging role, which the numbers seem to indicate yes, that they could play that bridging role, sort of not a mediator so much as an interlocutor between different communities. I'm just not sure that either Israel, while majority of Israelis say yes to their voice, I'm not sure that they recognize or respect them. Like I said, when Israeli governments in the past have relied on Arabs to form a majority, it has been very controversial and has weakened their ability to operate. So I think that that is, aside from the issue of Jewish state, whatever, the issue of not viewing Arabs as full citizens of the state and the racism implied in some of that is a difficult hurdle to overcome. I'm not sure Israel is ready for it now or will be ready for it in the future, which is why I think Laura's concern about one state and the difficulties down the road of how many decades it will take us to get to that kind of acceptance, separation at least creates a different arena in which the Israeli Arab community then can operate more securely in the struggle to secure their rights. But as long as they're viewed as a potential fifth column, which is how they're viewed at times, I think it's a difficult road to home and it's an issue that Israel itself, it's their original sins staring them in the face and they don't deal with it well. Not unlike the way we deal with African-American or Native Americans when Native Americans were threatening to us. Yusuf wants to respond quickly and then we'll. I mean, you asked about the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the event that there is a two state solution. Even from the perspective of the peace camp in Israel, the two state solution is a fix to a problem that Israel has, which is that it cannot continue to occupy all these people and continue to be a Jewish majoritarian democracy. And it can't because in the present circumstances, it is not. Half the people under its control are either second class citizens or can't vote for the state that governs them. Even if you have a two state solution, I just want to give you a very simple example. I happen to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel. My wife is from Nablus. She is a citizen of the Palestinian Authority, if you will. She can't live with me in Israel. We can't live together because of something that Israeli leaders refer to as the threat of demographic spillover. Does that change in a two state outcome? Does that paranoia about demographics go away if you have a two state solution? No, I don't think so. Do you think a Palestinian citizens of Israel are going to be allowed to unify with families without that same kind of treatment of a demographic threat? No, because the principle of Jewish majoritarianism within that state is going to continue. So that tension is never going to go away. And that is why leaders within the Israeli political system, like Avigdor Lieberman, have risen to such prominence because many people who support him support the notions of transferring Israeli Arabs out of what is today Israel. So that discussion does not end with a two state solution. It remains there because these populations are still very much intertwined within a system that will not treat them equally. By definition, will not treat them equally. We're running out of time. So what I want to do is maybe take three questions, three last questions and give everyone a chance to respond to them. So the gentleman with the tie will go first. Ray, in the second row. Thank you, Benjamin, to a retired Foreign Service officer. To what extent is the U.S. becoming irrelevant or significantly less relevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict? And I am talking about the U.S. government rather than the American people. Okay, second question. Go ahead, sir, in the front row. My name's Jonathan Morgenstein and last summer, not this past summer, the previous summer, we saw major protests in Israel. I think I tried to do an equivalent. I think it would be the equivalent of 17 million Americans were protesting and they were protesting, as I understood it, over economic issues. And those protests seem to have died off significantly, if not entirely. But my question is, is that, how does that play into the prospect of political change within Israel that is not specifically directed towards this issue but what would be the secondary effects on this issue, on the Israeli-Palestinian issue of that economic protest? Okay, and then the gentleman at the back had a third question. And then I'm gonna turn over to the panel. You with the glasses in the back, yes. I've just got a straightforward, my name's Victor Miller. I just have a straightforward comment, in a sense. Because I've heard... Really, it should be a question. All right, fine, okay. I've been involved in two generations of these discussions and why can we not accept the fact that these two peoples can never live side by side, except when separated by neutral military forces? I think that's the ultimate reality. Okay, so we've got three questions. The first is the US becoming irrelevant. The second is what about the impact of the social protests of last summer? And the third is don't these two peoples need to be separated by a neutral military? So what I'll do is I'll start from left to right and you can answer any one of those or combination of questions you'd like. Jim? I think given the gaps that occur in the polling, it is clear that the issues are not bridgeable between the parties themselves. And therefore an external source of both vision, plan, pressure becomes absolutely critical to move this agenda. If we wanna see it move forward and we don't wanna surrender to what Laura I think accurately describes as a complacency that's set in on the Israeli side, which is we got a wall, we got an army, we got checkpoints and we're doing just fine. Thank you. We can wait this out for another 20 years and build a little bit more and consolidate. And the unfortunate reality here is that the US, despite its internal weaknesses and its inability, the president got slammed down a year or so ago and has had trouble picking himself back up. Cause nothing's really changed in Congress on that front. The US remains the only available source to move the Israelis forward if the Americans are willing to do it and they don't appear to be willing to do it. They don't appear to have the political will to put that one ahead of everything from entitlement reform and taxes and other critical issues that face us today. And so I think that there's a resignation on the US part. We render ourselves irrelevant in that regard. And the region is reacting to that, taking matters into their own hands. I think what the Palestinians did was demonstrate both the strength of the international consensus that they could get a recognition from that many countries, also demonstrates the weakness of that international consensus because it doesn't change anything on the ground. And so there is a role in waiting for the US, but the question is the US unwilling, unable, having neutered itself, not wanting to step into that role. And that is part of why I have the sense of pessimism that I do, and I'll stop there. Laura, US becoming irrelevant, Israeli protests separation by neutral military. Well, I'll take Jonathan's first. On the social protest, all of us watched what was happening in Israel two summers ago with a lot of interest. I heard someone say one in, I think one in 14 or one in 12 Israelis was in the street. I mean, it was extraordinary. It did not bleed over into a national discussion about peace or about the Israeli Palestinian issue. And if you talk to leaders in the social protest movement, they will argue that that was the right decision to not conflate these things or combine them because within the Israeli body politic, it is these issues, the issues that I deal with every day are seen as so much more complicated in some ways radioactive that it would take what was a very popular movement and make it much more controversial and make it and splinter it. Which I found very depressing, but and they may have been right, I'm not an Israeli social activist on the ground. What we see now almost two years later or a year and a half later is that the social protest movement has dissipated, the politics, the current election campaign is not dominated by the issues that those social protest movements were about and the Israeli Palestinian issue is not even on the agenda. So that's where it is. And again, I'm gonna go back to the costs. For the average Israeli, there's no reason to think about Israel-Palestine unless you're thinking about rockets coming in from Gaza or terrorists crossing in and trying to blow up a bus in Tel Aviv. That's it. So in that context, why should it be on the agenda? And it's a very problematic framing. You don't have any Israeli leaders who today in the way a Yitzhak Rabin would have looked at this who say this isn't about being nice to the Palestinians, this isn't about trying to get the world to love us, this is about the vital interests of Israel to be a secure state. We have to have recognized borders. We must end this conflict for our own interests. We don't see any discussion of that and it's not through the social protest movement or not otherwise. On the U.S. Irrelevancy question, I'll associate myself with Jim's comments. So long as we have an administration and we have yet to see what a second Obama administration will do, although we have a hint of it based on the reaction to the U.N. vote, to the extent that we have an administration that like Yusuf said, sees this as we have to work within the confines of what an Israeli government can do, then we are self-limiting. To the extent that we actually continue to give lip service to these memes of we can't want it more than the parties. There should be no daylight. I don't know, I mean, it's really, if that's our starting point, I mean, I was on Jim's show a few years ago now and he asked me the question about should Obama have started with asking for the settlement freeze? That was too much, was that too much to ask? And my answer was, were Israel's best ally, greatest supporter, best friend in the world, there should not be a question that is too hard to ask. Anything an American president asked should be possible. And this administration hasn't thus far worked this way. As we look ahead, I mean, if you look at the polling, it's pretty clear that none of the sides, none of the groups poll take America that seriously. That doesn't mean necessarily that they think we're not important. I think it recognizes that to the degree that we are relevant in moving and changing the political forces that work right now, we are seen as having taken ourselves out of the game. That is going to be decisive in the next few years. I wrote recently the arc of history for President Obama and has been particularly unkind. So in his second term of office, he will face two possible legacies on this conflict. He will be the president who either fights and saves the possibility of a two-state solution and maybe achieves it, or he'll be the president on his watch we lose it for the foreseeable future. That's where we're going in the next four years, whether he likes it or not, whether we're relevant will be a function of whether or not we see leadership that makes us relevant. I want to just frame this slightly different on the last question for you, because then it's something you care very strongly about, and I think it's, on the last question about separation, you clearly are a believer that there is a possibility beyond separation, maybe even in the shorter term than some other people do. And so I guess the question is, as someone who, myself, who lives in a Jewish community, speaks in a Jewish community in which it is absolutely assumed that if there is no border and no Sahal, no Israeli defense forces, that the reality that Jews face in the land of Israel is extermination, or at the very least, a very least a prospect of living in an Arab state in which they would be very, very much second-class citizens. I wonder, and conversely, to those Palestinians who say, what evidence do you possibly see on the Jewish side that these people would be willing to live with us as equals? I wonder how you answer both of those. Well, that's a completely different direction than the questions that we were going in, and I'm happy to talk about that at length, obviously. As we've had. Impotence is a third question, sure. Well, let me just touch on the other two questions, and because I think that's important. One of the greatest myths is that the U.S. is not involved in this issue right now. And Peter, you wrote something recently where you characterized sort of the Obama administration's approach and what we're likely to see in the future as, I think, benign neglect was the language you used, and I take exception to that. The reality is the United States has created every incentive for feeding Israel's addiction to colonial expansion with consistent military support, diplomatic support, and economic support. So pretending that they are not engaged in this issue simply because they're not involved in a diplomatic process, I think is, I would certainly not characterize it as benign neglect, perhaps malignant ignorance, but it's not that they are detached in any way. They're very much feeding into this issue in an unhelpful way to use those terms. In terms of the social protest movement, that was organized around social justice issues that excluded Palestinians. It was mostly economic, and I think one thing that we saw that was quite interesting back in 2006 in the Israeli elections is that an important party that was involved as a keystone in the coalition that ended up governing, that made that governing coalition stick, was a party of pensioners that had about seven seats. That's the last time that we saw any sort of effective translation of social economic issues in a Israeli political party that can have an effect within a government coalition that could help it stick. If you look at the Israeli political spectrum today, you have 30 plus parties. The people who are going to be the kingmakers in this election are no longer just Israel Bethenu because we know they've merged on with Likud, but now they're probably going to be the even more nationalist Habayyat Hayyadi, which is the party led by Naftali Bennett. That's the direction that Israeli politics is going, and the social movements, while they have shown that they can be a force in the street, they have not shown any cohesion and translating to an effective political movement within the Israeli political spectrum that's still defined by their relationship with the Palestinians through the prism of security. Last on your question, Peter, I don't know, maybe there's something wrong with me, but I have a problem with believing that two people cannot find ways to coexist as people all over the world find ways to coexist simply because they are who they are. I think there's something almost racist in that. To say that because Israelis and Palestinians are Israelis and Palestinians, they are incapable of being like anyone else. There are plenty of precedents for systems where you have protections of different groups, where you have power sharing, where you have constitutional compromises. We need to have this discussion before we can rule it out as a possibility. So if it's so clear that that's where the discussion is going to go, why not have it and see where it actually goes? But to shut it out as a possibility, I don't think is helpful. Great, well, let me just conclude by saying, I should say in brief defense of my piece in this week, I did actually acknowledge pretty clearly the exactly the point that you said made about the fact that the US is involved in ways to protect Israel, even if it's not involved diplomatically. I just would conclude by it because I was so struck and really moved by something you said, Jim, about the statue of Hagar built in Nazareth looking over the refugees. And I really believe, we haven't talked very much about American Jews and probably that's right because American Jews are not as important as the parties, but there will be progress in the United States when Bobby Friedman from Brooklyn goes to that, goes to Nazareth to understand and see that statue, not only to understand what that statue means for Palestinians, but for what it means for us. Because after all, we read about that story too. It's in our foundational text. We read about the story of Hagar and Nishmal on Rosh Hashanah because we read about Hagar's prayer as the inspiration for how Jews should pray. So it's when we understand and take ownership of the fact that that is also our story, the story of Jewish power, not only the story of Jewish victimhood and our history and our struggle against the abuse of that power and own that too, not only as a Palestinian story, then I think we'll be able to meaningfully contribute to this. Thank you very, very much. Really, grateful you all for coming. Thank you.