A Different Path Israel Could Have Taken — and Maybe Still Can

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before Oct. 7, Israel appeared to many to be sliding into a “one-state reality,” where it had functional control over Gaza and the West Bank, but the Palestinians who lived there were denied full rights. In 2021, a group of hundreds of former senior defense and diplomatic officials in Israel published a report warning that this was a catastrophe — for Israel’s security, its democratic values, its international standing, and its very soul. And they argued that there was another way, that even without a Palestinian “partner for peace,” there was a huge amount Israel could do on its own to create the conditions for a two-state solution to emerge in the future. Nimrod Novik is a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum and a member of the executive committee of Commanders for Israel’s Security, the group behind the report. He was a senior policy adviser to Shimon Peres when he was prime minister, and was involved in all forms of negotiations with Palestinians and the Arab world. I wanted to talk to Novik about the plan proposed in the Commanders for Israel’s Security report, and how they might have changed in light of Oct. 7 and the war. We also talk through what the “day after” might look like in Gaza, the immense anger of the Israeli public over the intelligence failure that led up to the attacks, the alternative coalitions building against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and much more. Mentioned: “Initiative 2025” by Commanders for Israel’s Security Book Recommendations: The Back Channel by William J. Burns Master of the Game by Martin Indyk Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Efim Shapiro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. Well before 10-7, the dominant narrative in Israel was that there's no hope of a two-state
0:29.0	solution, not any time soon, because there isn't a partner for peace. I think there are ways in
0:34.8	which that's been true. I think there are times in which that has been true and I
0:38.8	think it's also a bit of a dodge. It absolves Israel of responsibility for what it has done to make sure there's not a partner for peace.
0:46.0	And it has taken too much pressure off of Israeli policy towards Palestine in the present. It allowed a lot of people to
0:56.0	become comfortable with the kind of stasis and the ones who weren't comfortable,
1:00.0	the ones who still had the power and the energy to act were settlers in the West Bank,
1:07.0	was the radical right in Israel, who have done everything in their power, explicitly.
1:12.0	They've said this explicitly, to try to make
1:14.4	any kind of two-state reality impossible. And so Israel has been moving towards what people call
1:20.4	a one-state reality, not the one- state that the left sometimes imagines where you have equal rights across all of Israel and Palestine,
1:27.0	and it becomes one multi-ethnic nation.
1:30.0	But the one-state reality of apartheid, the one one state reality in which Israel does have functional control over Gaza, over the West Bank,
1:38.0	but the people in it do not have anything like real rights.
1:46.9	I would say, and I think this is a very common view, that was a reality before 10-7. And in that reality, for years now, a group of hundreds of former senior defense and diplomatic officials in Israel
1:55.6	have been saying this is a catastrophe. That it is a catastrophe for Israeli security,
2:01.8	a catastrophe for Israeli democracy, a catastrophe for Israeli democracy, a catastrophe for
2:05.1	Israeli's international standing, and a catastrophe for Israel's soul. Their
2:10.3	warnings seem quite prescient now.
2:13.4	And they've argued there was another way.
2:17.0	There was a huge amount Israel could do on its own and should have been doing,
2:20.9	that if Israel is not going to tip into a kind of single state that it
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