Day 693 - Yossi Klein Halevi: Worse than Disengagement is a one-state 'dissolution'

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

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4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's newest podcast series, Friday Focus. Each Friday, join host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan for a deep dive into what's behind the news that spins the globe.

This Friday, we present a fourth and final installment of our August mini-series centering on the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza. We launched the series with a zoom-out conversation with public intellectual Dr. Micah Goodman, followed by a personal account of life in Gush Katif by former Nezer Hazani resident Anita Tucker and last week, we heard from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who shared the perspective of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip and the ripple effect felt after the Disengagement.

This week, we speak with author and thinker Yossi Klein Halevi from his Jerusalem home.

The Shalom Hartman Institute senior fellow begins by explaining why he and so many other Israelis supported Disengagement. He describes how the promises of security from the right and peace from the left failed, and so many Israelis were eager to try the "centrist" approach of unilateralism.

Klein Halevi describes the zeitgeist of the time and compares it with the renewed global interest in a Palestinian state -- despite the Hamas massacre of 1,200 on October 7, 2023, and the continued captivity of another 20 living hostages and 30 dead.

In the context of the ongoing war, when asked whether the two-state solution is dead, Klein Halevi's answer may surprise.

Friday Focus can be found on all podcast platforms. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Yossi Klein Halevi (courtesy)/ Former prime minister Ariel Sharon speaking to students on the first day of classes in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim, Sept. 1, 2004. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's Friday Focus.
0:04.4	I'm your host, Deputy Editor Amanda Borscheldan, here with Shalom Hartman's senior fellow and author, Yossi Klein-Alevi.
0:12.5	Yossi, thank you so much for letting me into your beautiful home.
0:15.2	Welcome, and it's great to have you.
0:17.7	You're the first interview I'm doing in my new home. What a privilege. I so appreciate
0:23.7	it. May there be many, many more between us and many other outlets as well. So Yossi, as regular
0:32.3	listeners will know, I've been conducting a little mini-series surrounding the disengagement of August 2005. And regular listeners
0:41.5	will know that we began with Mika Goodman, who gave a bit of a zoom out and talked mostly about
0:46.7	what happened on the right side of the political spectrum. Then we went on to Anita Tucker, a former
0:52.8	Gush Katif resident, who spoke about life there before,
0:57.1	during, and after the disengagement, what happened to the Gush Katif residents after the
1:02.1	disengagement. And then we moved on to hear a voice out of Gaza, Ahmed Fouad al-Khattib,
1:09.5	who talked about what it was like when Hamas rose to power and other issues.
1:15.6	So Yossi, are you up to the challenge to discuss, among other things,
1:20.6	what happened to the left side of the political spectrum and the idea of the two-state solution?
1:27.7	Well, yeah, yeah, let's dive in.
1:32.6	And the question is, what happens to the left as a result of the disengagement?
1:39.7	That is among the questions, but let's spool it back and let's set ourselves into the era.
1:45.8	August 2005, I personally was pregnant with twins, who are now both fighters serving in the IDF.
1:53.1	You, at that point, were you for or against the disengagement?
1:58.1	I was very much four in a pretty public way, writing, upeds, doing interviews, trying to
2:08.1	explain what I thought the disengagement was about, which is not what Prime Minister Sharon
	...

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