Israel-Palestine: What next for Palestinians?

Dr Renad Mansour

Good afternoon, hello, and good evening, good morning, depending on where you’re joining us. Welcome to this Chatham House webinar. My name is Renad Mansour, and I am a Research Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, where I also direct the Iraq Initiative. But we are here today gathered to discuss a very important topic today, entitled Israel-Palestine – What Next for Palestinians? And we thought about this as the entire world, really, watches the United Nations struggle to find or to get a ceasefire in Gaza, with, you know, the death toll increasing every day to 18,000 killed so far from Israeli strikes, including 8,000 children.

But the violence we’ve seen for the last – over a month, you know, starting with the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and the violence since has really shattered a peace, especially a peace perceived by many in the West in particular, but of course, many Israelis who believed there was a peace. And the question then be – has become, what did – you know, what did that peace look like for other people? What did that peace look like for Palestinians and what does this mean now the current – you know, this new escalation of violence as part of a longer trajectory of violence that has been part of Israel and Palestine for many, many decades?

We thought to bring together experts to discuss some of the key questions, looking forward of what – how to get to peace, but also, how to get to a more sustainable peace, a peace that could perhaps be inclusive of all sides, to make sure that it could remain. And to do so, we have to interrogate some of the parameters of some of these concepts and terms that we’ve been discussing in terms of solutions.

Many people talk about a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, or maybe a one-state solution. Many people are also looking for who are the Palestinian leaders, and struggle to find them. These people I’m talking about are often in the West, but also, in pol – these policy debates that we’ve seen in the US, the UK, Europe and elsewhere.

So, we’re here today to try and answer some of these questions. Whether by default or design, what is, sort of, the perspective of Palestinians on statehood, on representation, on peace, and what will the implications be at getting something more sustainable that could improve lives and change the trajectory? So, very happy to be joined by three really distinguished speakers who have been very vocal and important on the current series of the conflict.

Amjad Iraqi is a Senior Editor at +972 Magazine. He’s also a policy member of the think tank Al-Shabaka and was previously in – an Advocacy Co-ordinator at The Legal Center – Abdula – Adalah, sorry. Dr Tahani Mustafa is a Senior Palestine Analyst at International Crisis Group, where she focuses on issues including security and sociopolitical and legal governance in the West Bank. And last, but certainly not la – not least, Dr Yezid Sayigh is a Senior Fellow at the Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the programme on Civil Military Relations in Arab States.

Welcome to all three of you and thank you for joining this important conversation. I wanted to begin first with Tahani. You’ve recently published an article where you’re trying to look at the “Day After,” what comes next? In particular, what comes next on Palestinian leadership? And we’ve heard all sorts of different ideas of what that could look like, who could actually govern in places like Gaza? So, perhaps maybe first to open with you and some of your thoughts on what, in default, will happen after a ceasefire.

Dr Tahani Mustafa

Thank you. I think that’s actually a really good question in terms of who can lead, and I think that has been an issue for Palestinians for the last decade, in the sense that it hasn’t been for a lack of initiatives or a lack of processes. It’s quite simply been a lack of having adequate leaders that Palestinians can unanimously agree on and recognise as legitimate.

So, even before the 7 October attack, you know, we saw Palestinians completely disenchanted with their own leadership, which is why we saw so many – so much over the last two years, especially with a new right-wing Israeli Government that has been pushing Palestinians further into a corner. We’ve seen these desperate nihilistic forms of disorganised resistance pop up in the occupied territories.

So, at the moment, what we’re having, or what we’re seeing, sorry, amongst the international community, are now – is now a, kind of, renewed discourse or discussion around renewing or reviving or revamping a Palestinian authority in the West Bank and then trying to find some kind of legitimate administration, oh, I’m sorry, adequate administration for Gaza. And the problem with that is, again, it strips Palestinian leadership of any kind of political substance, and it misses the entire point of why we ended up having 7 October to begin with. And that is unfortunate for the international community to wilfully take the wrong lesson from this, which is that Palestinians don’t have a recognised, unified leadership. They are more divided than they ever have been in history.

That division has effectively pushed even a faction like Hamas to a point of desperation, where it wanted to break a stalemate, where it was – where it found itself confined in Gaza, administering a strip that for a long time now it has tried to relinquish. But due to the lack of political will from Fatah, which governs the Palestinian Authority, it has not been able to do so through processes of reconciliation.

There has been no – absolutely no p0litical will to try and break out of this current stalemate in the occupied territories, and so, today, again, you’re having the international community look for an administration that can provide the technocratic levels of governance, like health, education, but misses the entire point of the fact that Palestinians want and need legitimate leaders. They want a leadership that can advocate for them, even if you’re talking about on a diplomatic stage here, or on a diplomatic level. And that is something that is completely missing in these discussions about the “Day After,” to the point, where now you’re having proposals of some kind of security administration popping up, a potential Palestinian strongman from the Security Forces, to govern Gaza to keep things quiet. Or revamping the PA, again, a PA that can barely contain the non-contiguous patches that it controls at – barely controls in the West Bank, where it’s not recognised as legitimate.

You’re having alternative proposals of bringing in a UN mission, which again, any kind of UN mission – which the UN itself has also – have been very reluctant to involve itself in because of the lessons it learnt in South Lebanon in the 80s, knowing that any kind of administration you now put into Gaza will be considered as a buffer to the occupation, as something abetting Israel’s occupation. And the PA has actually been very vocal about that. You know, for Fatah – for an organisation or a faction like Fatah, who are bitter rivals of Hamas, to recognise the need for some kind of political process and reconciliation with Hamas at this point, and to recognise that they cannot go in on the backs of Israeli tanks, that really is indicative of the kind of juncture we’ve hit at this point. Even with Israel’s military campaign, ongoing military campaign and statements we’re hearing from the Israeli military establishment.

So, it’s still very unclear, things are very, very unclear at the moment as to who can lead. You know, again, these were discussions that Palestinians were trying to have for the last decade, especially back in 2021. I think that was a real inflection point in the occupied territories, where you had the announcement of elections and le – and for the first time, you had, you know, cautious optimism, but there was a lot of fervour around that. There was a lot of mobilisation around that, and I think a lot of people really missed the point of that. It wasn’t about elections per se, but what those elections represented, which was the revitalisation of very dormant Palestinian leadership. But unfortunately, that process was not supported by the international community, who are co – who are far more concerned about Palestinians electing leaders that they did – that Israeli and its Western allies would not be able to accept. So, there was absolutely no support for that process.

And what was made worse was after Abbas called off those elections, the European Union had him inaugurate the opening of the Elections Commission six months later. So, again, you know, it really has affected Palestinians’ own trust in the international community and in any kind of political process that is being proposed, especially for the “Day After,” which is really just almost a proposal of an Oslo 2.0, which is a denial of Palestinian political rights, denying the fact that they are a people that have legitimate national rights or demands. And it simply is about just installing a, kind of, subcontractor to the occupation that can maintain quiet.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you. A lot of issues to think about there, Tahani. If I could maybe pose the second question to Yezid. Tahani talked about even this idea of Oslo 2.0, but also, I think more generally, a lot of what you’re hearing in terms of solutions, whether it’s the US or others devising a plan, seemed to be taking off from the plans and solutions that have been tried and haven’t worked over the years, over the decades. Why is there this? Is this – is there a design, is there a logic to this? Why is there this, sort of, lack of imaginative thinking of what could actually work when it comes to leadership? What is the design and logic to that and then, how can that be overcome, looking forward?

Dr Yezid Sayigh

That’s a pretty challenging question, and I’m going to need to, I guess, subvert, sort of, the assumptions made here. I mean, one is that, of course, this isn’t about imagination, about every possible permutation of what an Israeli-Palestinian peace could look like from a one-state to a bilateral state, to a two-state, three-state, whatever, you name it. And one-state, whether it’s, you know, one-state in which all citizens are equal or a one-state of apartheid, in which Israel dominates the entire territory, from the river to the sea, which is the reality today. In all these cases, you know, it’s not as if we don’t know what the building blocks of any of these different kinds of scenarios are.

The issue is to look at any of these proposals in their context. What didn’t work 20 years ago might work today, or vice versa. But I think more critically, where I want to challenge your question, is that there’s a lot of talk in Western Government circles, media circles, among Diplomats, etc., you know, “Who could be the next Palestinian leader? Who could take over Gaza? Could it be the Palestinian Authority? Might it be Hamas [inaudible – 22:35] the guns, could it be Mohammed Dahlan, the Former Security Chief, Arab International trusteeship?” And even for those in some cases who called for finally getting the two-state solution back on track, which means specifically establishing a Palestinian State, tends to be an approach that says well, let’s work out how we can get Palestinian institutions reformed and rehabilitated, how we can find leaders who are accountable and non-corrupt and democratic and so on. And so, you know, in other words, lining up all the ducks in a row first, before we finally get to what should’ve been done 25 or 30, or even 70 years ago, which is to establish a Palestinian State alongside the State of Israel.

So, I get suspicious when I hear discussions and proposals start from, you know, “Let’s start on finding the right leaders, starting the right process,” you know, “managing somehow, providing governance, in the hope that, finally, that will lead to something we can tur – then turn into a Palestinian State.” But this was after all what Ariel Sharon, as Prime Minister in Israel, claimed to seek back around 2005, when he ordered the Israeli pullout of Gaza. And his Advisor at the time, I forget his name for the moment, said that, basically, the – “Sharon’s proposal is the Palestinians will get a state when they’re,” you know, what was it, something like, “as Finnish as the Finns in Finland,” i.e., in terms of squeaky-clean government.

And it was – you – and so, we’re going back to that, sort of, nonsense of the Palestinians have to, sort of, demonstrate their technocratic capability, their ability to construct corr – you know, non-corrupt institutions, etc., many of which actually existed and functioned at a higher level of integrity and non-corruption and so on in the 1990s than many member states of the United Nations [audio cuts out – 24:37] to statehood.

So, what we have is, really, I think that we’re all paying the price for multiple failures on the part of Israel, of course, of the of the unceasing colonisation of the occupied territories prior to the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, prior to the Oslo Accords, after the Oslo Accords, since 2000, under Labour Party Governments, as well as under Likud Party or other far-right coalitions. The Palestinian leadership, which under Arafat, failed to mobilise and organise its people in the 1990s to confront the colonisation process without guns in peaceful ways, this is something that was acted, and I think criminally so.

And then, resorting to guns in 2000 in ways fundamentally misunderstood Israeli politics and the Israeli public and how the dynamic worked, but also, approached military means in ways that were fundamentally dysfunctional, as well as counterproductive, and ultimately, paved the way for Hamas to come in as the more militant, the more radical user of violence, with the relaunch of suicide bombings in early 2001.

And then, we have the Europeans and the American administration. I’ll remind you that in 1998 and 1999, just before the so-called “final status negotiations” were due to start between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Government of Israel, the European Council issued a declaration, saying that it endorsed Palestinian statehood unconditionally. That this should, you know, be – build on the existing framework for negotiations, but would not be, and could not be, subject to veto. In other words, it – Pale – the right of Palestinians to national self-determination in the form of a state was not subject to Israeli approval. That was the European position.

And the Europeans, moreover, said in the 1999 declaration, that the EU would “reconsider its position with – if a state had not emerged within a year of the start of the negotiations.” This was, you know, a clarion call, a war cry, saying all of Europe, which at the time, still included the United Kingdom, among others, were – had signed on to bri – helping to bring about a Palestinian State and to push this forward, even if Israel didn’t agree. So, what we saw after that, of course, was nothing to match that political position, nor even that of President George W Bush, who was the first American President to take the whole issue to the Security Council and get a resolution in 2002 specifically endorsing Palestinian statehood. None of these key global powers have acted on that ever since.

And I will wrap up by saying that unless there’s a radical bold break with the pattern over the last 25 years on the part of Western powers, and by that, I mean, to say something like we – we’re convening a peace conference in 2024 with the specific and exclusive goal of establishing the Palestinian State, with all the diplomatic, juridical and other implications that has, and therefore, that the Government of Israel, whoever it is, duly elected, has to deal with that international fact. We need that sort of bold action to break out of the current violence, and otherwise, I feel that if we simply see a continuation of what fundamentally is a, sort of, waffling abdication covered by rhetoric about, you know, good governance and whatever else, then we’ll know that there’s no intention, in fact, of changing the trajectory. And we’ll, hopefully, come back to that later on.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you, Yezid, and I definitely want to come back to that, as well as this question of violence on both sides, and how – you know, the language of violence and how that works in the conflict today and in the future. I also want to encourage everyone joining online to submit their questions via the Q&A function, and we will be starting to get to those questions. But I’d like to – it’d be great to bring in Amjad on this point. You know, Yezid outlined some of the assumptions held in Western capitals, some of the terms and ways in which they’ve continued to problematically view Palestinian statehood or its – how it could come to fruition. How do – you know, what do Palestinians envision for the future in terms of their statehood? Often something missing in a lot of analysis, but it’d be great to get your, sort of, analysis on that question, how do Palestinians view or envision their statehood?

Amjad Iraqi

Thank you, everyone, and thank you Tahani and Yezid for, I mean, these really important inputs. I mean, I guess in this question, kind of, bridging off from them and adding my own, I would have, sort of, three points that I want to highlight for the moment. I think as Tahani and Yezid were, you know, were pointing to, the first thing we have to do is really break out of this strange parameter which still exists in Western policymaking circles and discussions, that the entire paradigm is around one-state or two-states and so on.

The first reason for this is, and I’m going to be a little blunt, and I apologise, but a lot of Western policy circles don’t really have the credibility to even discuss and contemplate the two-state solution. They have had years and diplomatic power and economic abilities and all these, you know, discussions and webinars, etc., to be able to engage with this and implement it. And even the fact that the Palestinian Authority, even when it seem – even sometimes to the discontent of its own people, was actually chasing after recognition of Palestinian statehood, but would – in the end, as Yezid and Tahani were saying, the reality was that Western policymaking is always going through the lens and the filters of Israeli decision-making. And that, in the end, that power asymmetry between what Israel wanted versus what the Palestinian wanted, or the rest of Palestinians wanted, was always on a massive gap, and that Western policy circles inevitably sided with the Israeli one. And this is why, despite all the space to be able to do so, it has not been implemented. So, there’s just really no – unless you can really see forces putting that into effect, there’s really no space to be able to, yeah, have to discuss that, just as one element why it shouldn’t be engaged.

The second, and this connects a bit more to the question, but it – the discussions that where a lot of us are observing in Western circles, are really so detached from what Palestinians and Israelis on the ground are speaking about. When you go to Israel, when you go to Palestine and when you’re hearing most of the media discourse from the Politicians and just the general public and speaking, also, on the Israeli side, no-one is actually talking about one-state or two-states. They’re accepting a very dominant – not accepting, but they are recognising a very dominant reality of a single regime that operates between the river and the sea, which is very complex in its design and very varying, but that everyone understands who the master is and who is the overarching state authority.

And so, when you come to London or Washington or Brussels, etc., and we’re hearing Western policymakers speak about this paradigm, no-one back home is saying so, neither on the Israeli side or the Palestinian side. And the basics, 101 of policymaking, is that it needs to reflect the situation that you’re trying to address. And if that – if these are operating on two opposite worlds, regardless of the reasons, then already, the premises of this entire discussions are – need to be thrown out.

And this comes again – it’s, like, just on the Palestinian side, for example, most Palestinians – and this has actually been the case for a very long time, where the discourse around statehood is sometimes strategically taken by Palestinians, especially by, for example, the Palestinian Authority, but that is not the paradigm that most Palestinians conceive of their future. When you talk to Palestinians, you’re talking about “my right to equality, my right of return, my right of liberty to be – to not have the Israeli Military’s boots on my neck.” These are the kind of ideas that is much more rights based.

It is the Israelis, who often are – who can only see this paradigm as statehood about the Jewish state, about the state maintaining its military dominance. And like I said, even though there is Palestinian acquiescence to this, and that international discourse is primarily thinking about freedom in statehood, that is not how much of the society is perceiving it. And that divergence really needs to be addressed, because in many ways, statehood and the paradigm of statehood is also tyrannical. It has actually been one of the core – now, even when Palestinians are demanding their own state, how that can still be used against them and that what much of the Oslo framework and ever since then has been offering to Palestinians, is not even full statehood. It’s a sub-statehood, it’s a quasi-statehood, which is always contingent upon Israeli dominance in some form or another, in the very explicit and – both explicit and not expli – and implicit ways.

And so, the real question is not about jumping ahead to solutions, because the space for that has long passed at the moment. We need to rethink. The real fundamental question is about the recalibration of power, the recalibration of power both in how we’re discussing how to advance Palestinian rights, that that is not to be filtered through how Israelis think Palestinians should be living and existing, but asking Palestinians generally what do they see as their path to freedom? What do they see as their visioning of self-determination?

And there are many, many discussions around this that transcend even the green line, which has been erased by the Israelis for a very long time. But try to understand and conceive, how can we rethink political institutions that actually reflect what Palestinians are asking for, providing Palestinian agency from the grassroots to the civil society, to the political leadership? As Tahani and Yezid have been discussing, that our own Palestinian political agency needs to be heard as equals to deciding the fate of the conflict, not as subsidiaries or as afterthoughts to it, which is unfortunately, how much of Western policymaking has been done.

So, there’s a lot to unpack on this and Palestinian society, as I said, is very diverse in these envisionings, but it has to begin with that recalibration of power to bring down the way that Israel has dominated that policymaking discourse and elevating Palestinians to be able to reshape how we’ve been discussing these in these circles.

Dr Renad Mansour

Yeah, it’s a really important note, Amjad, to make, which is before we talk about policy solutions and get ahead of ourselves in terms of what comes next, you know, what are we actually talking about, and who are we talking about and what is their perspectives? And looking back and looking at recalibrating, as you say, these structures, are important and changing every day, as well.

And so, before we get to the Q&A, Tahani, I had a question that I wanted to ask to you. You know, we’re living in this and Palestinians are living in this war and Gaza and other parts. What will the impacts be? What are the im – what will the impacts of this war be on Palestinian society and their perceptions, moving forward, as well?

Dr Tahani Mustafa

I mean, I think Palestinian society right now is incredibly traumatised. You know, it’s completely, you know, unfathomable what has been allowed to unfold in both Gaza and the West Bank now. The West Bank tends to be somewhat the forgotten element, given all the attention on Gaza, but equally, you are seeing an increase in trends that we saw prior to this with settler and Israeli security establishment violence against Palestinians there.

So, I think, you know, ultimately, the impact has been one of complete disenchantment. You know, Palestinians were desperate before 7 October. You know, things were incredibly dire. You had Palestinians going through some of the worst political and economic crisis in their respective history and those trends have only just – have simply accelerated. I mean, in Gaza we’re seeing a human catastrophe unfold in unimaginable scales and the same thing almost in the West Bank, in terms of the level of violence and desperation.

So, I think right now, Palestinians are not only traumatised, but more importantly, have completely lost their faith in the political process in the international community, and I think Western hypocrisy has not been – has probably been more stark this time round than at any point in history. And I think they’ve also now come to the real cold realisation that the recognition of their rights, the recognition of Palestinians as a people with agency, will not – is not something that can simply come through conciliatory politics with either Israel or its Western allies. I think, unfortunately, that is the point that Palestinians have been driven to.

And again, you know, bringing back, sorry, to the point that Amjad raised, you know, of Palestinians continue to be considered as a problem to be managed. You know, that is how they are being spoken about today when we talk about “Day After,” when we talk about solutions to the current war that we’re seeing unfold. And, you know, that has simply, again, increased the loss of faith in the international community and its institutions.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you, Tahani, and Yezid, there is a few questions from the audience looking at the role of, let’s say, regional internationals, I think based on some of the comments you gave. Wolfgang Heinrich asks how – asks, “How likely is it that all the international powers that have determined the trajectory of politics concerning Israel and Palestine will play a similar role this time? Will other regional powers not want to have far more say?” And Dina Mufti asks, “The American Government’s lip service is for a two-state solution. However, its actions indicate otherwise, such as vetoing to allow Israel to continue building settlements and vetoing to allow Israel to continue bombing Gaza. What does the American Government’s actions show us?”

Dr Yezid Sayigh

Well, fair questions. The – I mean, I will tackle them in a slightly random order. I don’t think any regional governments, outside maybe of Iran, really want to have anything to do with Gaza if they can help it. And of course, here we’re talking about a few specific governments: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, The Emirates, for very different reasons in each case. And probably in the case, say, of the Jordanians and possibly the Egyptians, what they’d rather do is not have to deal with this at all, it’s being forced upon them. Maybe the Saudis see an opportunity to pro – to move forward on normalisation with Israel, precisely if they can, you know, offer themselves as mediators and as part of – you know, say, as guarantors for some kind of Arab or internationally guaranteed outcome in Gaza.

I still think that the chances of all that – any of that happening, they’re oh – Arab Governments have other priorities. They’ve got huge challenges and when you think of Egypt and Gujarat, they’re most threatened by the kind of talk they hear coming out of Israeli, and not just on the far, far-right, but from government circles and parliamentary circles in Israel, of transferring, whether voluntarily, supposedly or not, huge numbers of Palestinians onto their national territory. Clearly, the Egyptians and Jordanians are spooked by this and will want to resist this. But these are very different kind of motivations from the kind that would be needed to proactively push for the kind of outcome which I’m talking about, which is to go forward radically quickly to Palestinian statehood, rather than the traditional approach of endlessly putting this off, precisely because we need a break in the current political dynamic.

I think one thing about the Oslo Accords, which, of course, produced a lot of disagreement and division among Palestinians, the most important part of the Accords, for me, was that the act of mutual recognition between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Government of Israel. The creation of a new political opportunity for the national movement of the Palestinians to return inside, to its own territory, to be based among its own people and to engage directly with the Israeli public at all levels, and that was a transformation. It was lost, squandered in various ways by the acts of both sides, I believe, in very – you know, over the next six or seven years.

My point is that right now, unless there’s a dramatic political opening that needs this, kind of, proactive behaviour by Arab and Western, as well as Palestinian and Israeli parties, then I think we’re stuck on a trajectory that’s going to become increasingly violent, ugly, miserable, for Palestinians, certainly, but ultimately, also, for the Jewish population of Israel. Because if the far-right in Israel has its way, there will come a time, if it’s not already there, where Israeli – Jewish Israelis who dissent, become self-hating Jews or traitors and are also subject to violence. This kind of ideology leads to those kinds of outcomes.

On the US administration, the question from, I think, Dina, you said? I mean, there’s no doubt that for 70 years, if not, at least the last 30, since the Oslo Accords, the United States administration has played a pretty negative role on balance. And I’ll give you another example that pulls in the Europeans. I don’t intend to let them off the hook in any way, and again, this is at a time when the UK was still European in that sense, part of the EU. Back in 2003, after the Israeli Army had re-occupied almost the entirety of the West Bank, in response to Palestinian violence, suicide bomb [audio cuts out – 43:09].

Dr Renad Mansour

I think we lost – we’ve lost Yezid. I’m not sure if – okay, maybe we will – okay, let’s – maybe we can continue and come back to Yezid when he comes back. Amjad, a few questions directed to you, based on your interventions, that it would be good to get into. Geoff Freund asks, “What entity would have the agency to hear what Palestinians want in the way of a reorganisation of power?” And Salma Muza asks, “Are there any serious political actors in Israel that try to reimagine Zionism with equal rights for Jews and non-Jews in historic Palestine?” Over to you.

Amjad Iraqi

I’ll answer those in reverse. So, the quick answer to the second question is no, there isn’t really a force. I mean, Zionism is rather historically diverse ideology in many spectrums, but a lot of those debates are not really happening in the way that certainly Palestinians would want to. And the confrontation of what Zionism has done to Palestinians, as, you know, as it is a national movement for, you know, for many Jews, not all Jews, but many Jews, but it is a settler colonial project and a set of institutions and ideologies that rules over Palestinian and possesses them.

There was no real interrogation of this in Israel and really, what is – you know, what are really – what’s really defining the political and ideological debates inside Israel as we speak is not between, sort of, like, a Zionist left and a Zionist right. It is actually almost entirely within a revisionist Zionist right. That is where your political battles are happening, both in the public and in the political echelons. This is – you know, we’ve heard many times before about the Israel right moving more and more towards that right and it couldn’t be more evident than now. And not just in terms of how people support this, kind of, a almost aggressive ideological rightism, but also the indifference with which much of the Israeli society has, to almost give the – you know, like, allow these, kind of, far right figures to even steer the ship, in many respects. And so, these are the real, kind of, battles.

I think more of these discussions are happening abroad, especially in the Jewish diaspora, as they’re, kind of, confronting more and more the massive divergences between the values that they hold. Especially in the United States, where belief in equality, the liberation for all, only to see that Israel, especially – you know, for decades, but even more so in recent years, how much it has really veered against that and is really openly embracing the idea of apartheid in its most blatant, blatant forms. But inside Israel itself, that is not really a force to be – it has no political force whatsoever, unfortunately.

And regarding the earlier question about the, kind of, like, situations where agencies might be able to do this, this is also a bit – a major debate, and Tahani was mentioning this, you know, even around the debates around elections for the Palestinian Authority about two and a half years ago. Most Palestinians don’t have illusions about the PA as, you know, what they often regard as an authoritarian government, a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation and its entire, you know, security and economic institutions are entirely wrapped up around Oslo, around the Israeli State and Israeli Army. But as Tahani was saying, like, the – it wasn’t so much what the elections were in practice as what it represented for an avenue to be able to express political discontent and to have political debates and to reins – to install some kind of fresh leadership that actually reflects the will of the people in many respects. And there’s still a lot of arguments if that – if this is the right way to go.

Another dimension of this is the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, you know, since 1990s, has really been subsumed by the PA almost deliberately and consciously, and – but even though the PLO still holds many diplomatic cards and still is recog – officially recognised as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. And for a long time, one of the big strategic goals of Hamas was, you know – one of its cyclical goals was to actually be included in the PLO, which Fatah has always tried to shut the door on. And so, any path forward, you know, if it’s not through the PA, then the hope is that even with the discontent against these major political parties, like Fatah and Hamas, that the PLO could be in some way revived. How feasible that is, is a hard question, and the PLO itself is not a entirely democratic institution, but it does try to create the, sort of, diversity among different, kind of, factions. So, at least, could this potentially be a stage that does not – that is not beholden to the same chokeholds that are placed on the Palestinian Authority?

And like Tahani said, this is also reflective that, you know, Palestinians are not looking for another administration and the PA is, in essence, an administration to try to manage and control the conflict, primarily on behalf of Israelis, and for the international community to say that they’ve got a hold on the Palestinians. The PLO, for all its flaws and limitations and weaknesses, is still seen by many Palestinians as the engine to try to restore a different kind of leadership, to at least begin the process of a different kind of representation that explores and that includes all major spectrums of Palestinian politics.

But as both Tahani and Yezid were mentioning, though, the foot that’s been placed on Palestinians about how they can conduct those politics and to just have the space to be able to do so is absolutely vital. And unfortunately, a lot of Western states and policymakers have been very complicit in the Israeli State’s, you know, almost natural strategic priority to kill any attempted Palestinian unity and to undermine it in all sorts of ways. And if international policymakers are serious about allowing Palestinians to have that political agency, they need to take that step back. They need to ensure that the Israeli State does not interfere and obstruct these kind of – you know, and with its reconciliation attempts or elections of some kind among – even talking about local elections, you know, outside of the PA, there is all sorts of levels where you have this constant interference.

So, that needs to be stepped back and needs to be understood as a space, in order to begin to restore that, and through that, and through whether it’s the PLO or the PA, they can then use these international mechanisms that they have accumulated for years and that Yezid was mentioning, in order to begin advancing this in serious ways.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thanks, Amjad. Yezid, you were cut off, so I wanted to come back to, a) because it’s rude that you – we cut you – you were cut off and it’s nice to continue to hear what you have to say, but also because off the back of your comments, there have been many other, you know, questions on – related to what you were saying. You were answering Dina’s questions, but also, Michael Harvey is asking, “the US and the UK” to include the Europeans in this, but, you know, “if they are supportive of two-state solutions, why have they, effectively condoned the building of line and settlements in the West Bank by not applying sanctions against Israel? Is this failure to act likely to change in the future?” So, there are a few questions out to you on what is, exactly what you were saying, the position of the US and whether they can – and the European countries, and what that means for any talk of settlement or plans?

Dr Yezid Sayigh

Thanks, Renad, and no need to apologise. The rudeness came from the Lebanese Electricity Authority, which went for the normal 6 o’clock your time, 4:00pm, cutout. So, I don’t know – I’m in a friend’s house and so, I don’t know what the electricity is coming from now.

So, I – yeah, I – luckily, I know exactly where I was cut off, and I’ll finish off that point just because where I was getting to is that in April 2003, the so-called quartet, composed of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN, issued the so-called “roadmap to peace.” And this was, sort of, supposedly a response to Palestinian violence, an attempt to get the two-state solution and negotiation back on track.

Now, what’s really interesting here and goes to the heart of the – several of the questions, you know, you’ve had, is that the Palestinians insisted that there be a so-called monitoring mechanism which would be independent third party and would monitor both Israeli, as well as Palestinian, performance of agreed benchmarks. The Israelis were adamantly opposed to this and although the final draft of the plan, the roadmap, contained text on this mechanism, when it was published, miracally [means miraculously] or mysteriously, magically, the monitoring mechanism had disappeared.

Now, I was convening an international conference in Cambridge, Cambridge University, at the time, and I forget if this was right before the publication of the roadmap or right after, but – well, it would’ve been right before. Because we had a significant number of European Desk Officers, the people specifically in their Foreign Ministries who dealt with Israel-Palestine and the negotiations, and we had their American counterpart, although he was there in his personal capacity. And it was right there and then, in front of me, in my hearing and direct sight, that all these European Desk Officers discovered from their American counterpart that the roadmap was about to be published minus the monitoring mechanism. So, not only had the Americans gone behind everyone’s back and published the draft minus a crucial part of it, but they hadn’t even bothered to inform their European counterparts. And from that day on, the Europeans have done nothing but, basically, roll over belly up and left everything to the Americans.

Now that, sort of, in a way, tells us the whole story, because the European Union, for structural reasons, anyone who works on Europe and, of course, your Chatham House membership, will know this better than most, that when it comes to foreign policy as well as defence policy, the European Union has been almost completely unable to agree on anything but the most obvious issues. And even on Ukraine, there’s a very fragile unity there, and certainly no longer on Palestine and not ever since 2003, if not before.

So, that’s part of the problem here, the structural problem is that the European Union foreign policymaking is such that you can’t get an effective European – a collective European role ever. I think that we’ve also seen instances where individual member states of the European Union can, you know – among the major European powers, there’s nothing to prevent a coalition of the willing emerging, that says, you know, we’re not speaking the name of the European Union, but we, France, or we, Germany, ha, ha, or we, Italy, or whoever, along with, hopefully, the United Kingdom, will be proactive and take a lead here. So, it’s not beyond the realm of the impossible.

The reason why I think none of this will happen, and this comes to the important question someone put to you about, sort of, where things go and why – and what happens if all this doesn’t come together, we’re in a moment in history where, for at least the last two decades, Western societies have been undergoing increasing social polarisation linked to, you know, economic neoliberal – neoliberal economic policies. The constitution of wealth in the top 1% of the population. There is a reason why Neo-Nazi parties are re-emerging in Germany and specifically in East Germany, the people who felt they were left out by unification, you know, and so on and so forth.

So, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and his antisemitism, which is somehow okay and acceptable with someone like maybe Netanyahu, is no longer the outlier. Austria, too, maybe next year France, as well, under Marine Le Pen and others, as well. There’s a right-wing trend, we’re in a moment of history of deep social economic and institutional malaise in the international liberal order and in the liberal politics of Western democracies, including the United States. And we may have Donald Trump back in office next year in the US, as well.

So, who exactly among these potential right-wing governments do we think is going to suddenly get all serious about Palestinian statehood when it comes to issues of immigration, race relations and so on in their own countries, they’re not willing to confront those frontally? And in this context, it’s sad and tragic that the fight against antisemitism, which is hugely important and crucial, as part of facing both specifically anti-Jewish racism and racism more generally, but this is being paraded in ways in European capitals, in ways that someone like Marine Le Pen suddenly becomes onboard. And, you know, Giorgia Meloni, Giorgina Meloni, whatever her name is, in Italy, is onboard. These are people who come from the antisemitic heritage and suddenly, they’re all onboard as long as it’s okay to be Islamophobic, anti-Black, anti-Brown, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian.

And the sort of behaviour we see in Germany today I find astonishing, because it’s not what comes from the right-wing in Germany, it’s what comes from supposedly liberal Politicians and cultural institutions that are [audio cuts out – 56:50] by the centre of the need to uphold its own liberal values and the international liberal system. The kind of position that Keir Starmer has taken in the UK, for instance, on the Gaza conflict, is one where he could barely bring himself to speak about international law for weeks.

So, what I look forward – this is what I see coming. There is – as I said, the only possible hope is the 1% chance of key governments, the US in particular, the United Kingdom for some of the heft it still carries here and there, and a few leading Europeans, to come together and say, “We want to put Palestinian statehood on the table before it’s really too late.” But if they don’t do this, then, I think what’s coming in Israel is something that looks to me like fascism, and what’s coming in a large part of Europe and possibly the United States, is what, you know, once upon a time was called [audio cuts out – 57:49]. It could be – it’ll be more moderate here, be parliamentary and electoral-based there. It might not be, you know, physical, in the absolute sense, although the obsession with, you know, crucifixes and guns among the Neo-Nazis in Germany, or among Norwegian far-right people, the kind who slaughtered 85 young Socialist Party members ten or 11/12 years ago. This is part of where we’re going if, you know, if bold action isn’t taken by our Politicians, and I, frankly, don’t think that’s coming.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you, Yezid, especially for situating and contextualising what’s happening in Palestine and Israel today within the bigger, sort of, international system. And, sort of, transformations international system as being explicitly linked to the conflict and any discussions of what could come next in terms of sustainable solutions, is really important to use as a contextual tool.

Tahani, to go back to the questions, there has been several questions on leadership. People are still wondering what comes next? There are a few questions around Hamas. Reda Mosa, for example, asks, “Do y0u think it is possible in the future to neglect Hamas in any negotiations, either concerning the reformation of the Palestinian Authority or from negotiations over the Palestinian State?” And then, there’s also a question from – looking at the, kind of, internal Palestinian leadership debates and contestations. Arusa Fatima asks, “To what extent and how have rivalries between Fatah and Hamas is affecting the cause?” So, I’ll leave those two questions to you.

Dr Tahani Mustafa

Thank you. So, to start with the first one, is it possible to neglect Hamas? I mean, I think, as I said previously, we’re at a juncture now where it’s pretty indicative that it is not going to be possible to ignore Hamas. Hamas isn’t going anywhere. Hamas isn’t an armed wing. It’s a political movement. It has its, you know, bases, also, in the West Bank, it’s got its external leadership. So, it – and again, if Fatah is able to come to that conclusion that any thinking in the “Day After” has to involve some kind of process that includes Hamas, then, again, that’s indicative. Hamas isn’t going anywhere.

So, yes, I mean, you – whether the international community likes it or not, I mean, this is a – you know, they have openly proclaimed that engaging with Hamas is a non-starter in terms of any kind of political process moving forward, which is fantasy, it’s complete fantasy. And Hamas can either be facilitators or spoilers to any process that comes after this, and whether they like it or not, they’re going to come to the realisation that they’re going to have to deal with Hamas in one way or another. And we’re starting to, sort of, see the signs of that now. You know, just recently, we had the Doha Forum, we had, you know, members of Hamas’s external leadership and members of Fatah, like Dahlan, Nasser al-Qudwa. You had some of the, like, the coteries, for instance, meeting with these officials, coming to some – trying to figure out some kind of post-war arrangement.

So, it’s still unclear how those alliances are forming. They’re still, you know, in the process of formation. Alliances are still shifting, but that is all very indicative that Hamas is an actor that cannot be ignored, even if we’re thinking “Day After.” And again, you know, as long as we continue to have the context that breeds an organisation like Hamas, you will need to engage with these radical elements and unfortunately, that seems to be where Palestinians are being almost forced into. You know, we’re seeing younger generations who have become so disillusioned and desperate by the current context, they don’t see conciliatory politics as offering a way forward. They’ve seen that, they’ve seen that – what conciliation can offer them for the last three and a half decades, and in that time, if anything, they’ve lost more land and more rights.

So, you know, it is very – you know, again, it is very indicative in terms of Israel and its Western allies having to really try and get to grips with the reality that is being created on the ground, and these radical elements are not going anywhere. Even if you don’t have Hamas, you will still have some kind of vestige of Hamas, and like I said, they can either be facilitators or spoilers to any process, and that is something that they’re going to have to get to grips with.

With regards to the second question, with regard – sorry, regarding Hamas and Fatah rivalries, you know, of course, yes, it’s been a detriment to Palestinian democracy. It’s been a detriment to the national movement and to Palestinian national leadership. But this goes well beyond just Hamas and Fatah. It, kind of, misses the point as to what has happened to Pal – or what Palestinian institutions post-Oslo were intended towards, right? So, the assumption with Oslo is that it was some sort of peace process. It was not a peace process. In retrospect, it was actually a process of capitulation, and what it ended up doing, I think that was really the start of where we saw these divisions start to, sort of, sow themselves within the Palestinian leadership. You know, it started to offer them spoils to fight over and in the process, you saw Palestinian leaders become far more conciliatory and far more willing to cede over a lot of Palesti – sorry, Palestinian rights and national demands.

We don’t have a leadership at the moment that thinks in nationalistic terms. We have a very self-interested leadership that thinks in very individualistic terms, and that, you know, that has been very – incredibly detrimental to Palestinian national institutions, including the PLO. Whereby you now have Fatah, that is absolutely unwilling to relinquish its hegemony over that one institution that it continue – that – sorry, that it retains any kind of control over, having lost the PLC, or the Palestinian Legislative Council or the PA institutional body to Hamas in 2006.

But yes, absolutely, those rivalries have really done nothing to help consolidate or to help ease Palestinian divisions. If anything, you now have a self-interested leadership in Fatah that again, is willing to cede over pretty much any kind of national demand in order to maintain their hegemony and their spoils in the West Bank. And then, equally, those accusations were thrown at Hamas prior to the 7 October, where, for many Palestinians, again, Hamas’s – never mind Hamas’s abysmal governing record, but the fact that, you know, Hamas wasn’t, you know, very conducive to allowing, just as Fatah wasn’t in the West Bank, to any kind of Palestinian pluralism within Gaza. So, they really have, you know, driven us to this current juncture that we’re at now.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you, thanks, Tahani. Amjad, there’s a question again – there are a few questions, but I’ll ask the one from Roger Bowden, who put simply, asks, “Why not focus on the one-state reality and try to influence what that looks like?” And maybe in a few minutes – you know, there seems to be this very difficult clash between a state that, you know, could be a state under the rule of law, with citizens all being equal and accountability and these types of mechanisms, but also, this, sort of, ethnonationalism and the identity politics that does govern a state like Israel. So, if, you know, if we discuss something like one-state or what would that even look like? What could, potentially, help people think through some of these big challenges?

Amjad Iraqi

And this connects a little bit to some things I was saying earlier, that the massive distance between how people on the ground understand the reality and how, oftentimes, it feels like we’re being gaslit by people abroad about what is actually operating on the ground, is quite wild. Like, I mean, I, myself, have been many – and I’m sure – and my colleagues here, I’m sure, been in many, sort of, you know, in capitals, in government offices and other think tanks, etc., where they’re insisting to us that there is no one-state reality and that what we’re saying is nonsensical or ideological or even racist, by even saying it.

But I mean, just speaking on a personal level, I’m a Palestinian citizen of Israel with a blue ID card and the old licence plate, and all I’ve ever known is one state, that up until the blockade of Gaza, I was act – I’m – to this day, I’m still able to go into the West Bank any time. An Israeli citizen, Jewish Israeli, is living – can easily live in settlements and if you’re in Jerusalem you would never know that you were crossing the green line to casually go to your home or for shopping or etc. And as – you know, a lot of Diplomats on the ground often knows this, but for some reason, it’s just never translating, because there’s this in-built denialism when it comes to how centres of power are trying to discuss this, which is very infuriating.

And so, even when Palestinians do try to emphasise that and even try to make people realise how much it’s – that even the concept of a one-state or apartheid or whatever you want to call it, is not something that’s happening on the horizon. It has been a reality, and not just over the past few years. The one-state reality occurred the moment Israeli Soldiers set foot on the Jordan Valley and on the Gaza coast in June 1967. And ever since then, there’s been a consolidation and had ebbs and flows and recalibrations, in the way that Tahani was describing what Oslo did. And the Palestinian leadership may have seen Oslo, potentially, as a strategic move, but it was im – ended up being very clearly a strategic miscalculation of epic proportions, to which Palestinians, to this day, are, unfortunately, suffering.

And this is – and so, in terms of how to, kind of, grapple with that, I mean, I think Palestinians on the ground are certainly trying to do so. Like I said, there’s actually a whole almost shared political identity and social reality and economic relations that exist beyond the green line, with Gaza being in severe blockade. But even Gaza, and the past two months has been so emblematic of this, that it’s – that despite attempts to, kind of, separate it from this one-state reality, Gaza’s actually the epitome of where that one-state reality can be heading. And that the idea of forced expulsion or what Palestinians describe as [inaudible – 67:57], is not far off. This is what the one-state reality is currently offering us because of that massive power asymmetry.

And so, this is really the conversation that has to be had. It’s that it’s not the threat of one-state. If we recognise that it is, and Western policymakers and policy circles really need to catch up to this very basic understanding, which even Jewish Israelis know, that partition is very real and violent, in many ways, partition of the lands has been real and violent in many ways, but it’s also a lie. And if that’s a lie, then what we’re really entrenching is that power asymmetry that Jewish Israelis have power first and Palestinians get what’s left over. And if that’s where, you know, if that’s where the outside world has, kind of, pitted its sta – you know, that we prefer that, kind of, status quo, then that’s a fundamental problem.

What Palestinians are demanding is that you change that, you enable our power, you open up the space for us to recognise our rights. And you understand that the Israeli State is not interested in a two-state solution. I mean, it’s telling, even, for example, the way that – as Tahani was saying, like, the way that Hamas, that because of the violence of 7 October, which should be investigated, held to account, as a matter of national law, but somehow, Hamas is now beyond the realm of acceptable politics in Israel-Palestine. Yet, a party like the Likud, which has a – you know, for the past century has bee – almost single-handedly been pushing Israeli politics to the right, entrenching greater Israel, really usurping the land in material and ideological realities in very profound ways, that that is somehow not outside the realm of politics.

I’m not saying this as a question of whataboutism, but it’s, again, where are these fundamental blind spots of what is acceptable in this one-state reality? That certain kinds of Jewish-Israeli political parties, as long as it’s not maybe Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, but that other mainstream ones were entrenching that one-state reality, are acceptable, yet looked like Hamas, which officially, in its own revised charter, talked about the 1967 borders as for Palestinian statehood. And as I think was being mentioned before, like – that it’s problematic that all attempts to either participate in elections or engage in reconciliation or bring about a change of public discourse, that all these avenues, even with something as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, that all these avenues are closed off. Forcing Palestinian groups like Hamas or other militias, to think that the only way to get the world’s attention and for the world to take it seriously is violence.

And this is not about justification, but it is about what is it – what are the strategic conditions that have been created to make this happen? And this is outrageous, that because Palestinians aren’t interested in a forever conflict, they’re interested in achieving their rights in a way that does not harm their societies and harm their communities. But if they are now feeling it’s as – such existential dread, it won’t just be Hamas. This is something shared across Palestinian society that our cause and our people are under an existential threat because of indifference, because of complicity and because of a acceptance that Palestinians can be constant collateral damage as long as Israel and Israelis feel safe. And that needs to be completely switched over, including in the current reality that we have now.

Dr Renad Mansour

Thank you. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time and I feel like we haven’t even begin to scratch the surface some of these big questions, but it’s been really great. Thank you so much to the speakers, Amjad, Tahani and Yezid, for giving us the context, for giving us the analysis and really forcing us to think through, in different and more important ways, some of these big questions that are being asked.

And thank you to the audience. Apologies that we couldn’t get through all the questions. This is one of the biggest, sort of, events we’ve had as a webinar, which I think speaks to how important this is as a topic and certainly, a conversation that we will continue with the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Programme as part of our Israel and Palestine series. Thank you to everyone for joining and once again, thanks to Yezid, Amjad and Tahani for your brilliant insights. Take care.

Amjad Iraqi

Thank you for having us.