Madeleine Cereghino:
Hello, everyone. I see people slowly beginning to join us as I officially open the webinar. So I'm just gonna
take a few minutes and let people in, really two seconds and then we'll get started. I am Madeleine, the Director
of Government Relations here at APN. I will be introducing our guest in a moment. I'm currently here in Chicago at
the DNC so forgive the background and hopefully reliable wifi. So this is going to be a recorded conversation. If
you want to ask questions, you can use the Q and A Chat down at the bottom, and I'll be able to read your questions
from there. The raise hand button is not going to work out, so don't use that, please. So yeah, I think we've got a
good number of folks who've been able to join so let's get started. Hello and welcome to another Americans for
Peace Now webinar. Our guest today is Dr Gershon Baskin. He is the Middle East Director of ICO, The international
Communities Organization Middle East. It's a British non governmental organization working in conflict zones with
failed peace processes. He's also the director of the Holy Land bond and Impact Investment Fund for building
reconciliation in Israel and Palestine; his weekly column in English now appears in The Times of Israel. Dr Baskin
holds a PhD in international affairs from the University of Greenwich, and he is an author of multiple books,
including in "In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine." So we are very lucky to have him at this incredibly
tense moment. Gershon, thank you for joining us. It's a loaded question, but how are you?
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
The standard answer I give, I don't know if we say online, but not- not good, which is how we all are feeling
today, because today we buried three of the bodies of hostages that were recovered yesterday in Gaza, and, yeah,
the situation here is definitely not good.
Madeleine Cereghino:
That is devastating. And our hearts go out to all of you, and we're obviously mourning and holding our breath
for a ceasefire deal. Our main focus today, of course, is this very same ceasefire and hostage release deal. It's
clear that people around the world and the mediators sent to the table in Doha want an agreement to stop the
violence in Gaza and to bring the Israeli hostages home. But in general, the understanding of how to get from point
A, calling for a deal to point B, getting the Government of Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal remains murky for a
lot of people. Can you lay out in simple terms what this process actually looks like? Who actually goes to the
negotiating table? Is this conversation happening between Israelis and Hamas officials or through intermediaries or
other, you know, back channels, things like that, and why Doha, as opposed to anywhere else?
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Well, a lot of questions. Israel and Hamas don't talk to each other. They've never talked to each other
directly. They've never sat in the same room together. I, as an Israeli citizen involved in back channel
negotiations, have directly negotiated with Hamas. In fact, I've even spoken to Hamas from sitting in the
headquarters of the department responsible for hostages and prisoners in enemy territories from within the Ministry
of Defense in Tel Aviv, where they asked me to call Hamas. And I called Hamas and then offered the phone to the
people I was sitting with in the room in the Ministry of Defense, and they turned red and refused to take the
phone, of course, so there is no direct contact, which is why there is a need for mediators. The two most natural
mediators to mediate between Israel and Hamas are Qatar and Egypt. Egypt is the long term traditional mediator that
has mediated multiple ceasefires between Israel and Hamas. They were the key negotiators in the Shalit
negotiations, and have been involved in the relationship between Israel and Hamas since Hamas took over Gaza in
2007. Qatar is hosting the Hamas leadership, the exiled Hamas leadership, and Qatar is also a state which is funded
by Hamas, and one could easily say that Qatar is a country that supports terrorism. They have hosted Taliban,
they've hosted al Qaeda, they have hosted Hamas, and they have funded Hamas as well. Yet, Qatar is an ally to the
United States. Those of you don't know, the largest US military base in the Middle East is in Qatar, and just this
past year, the US renewed its lease with Qatar for another 10 years for its military base there. So there are a lot
of interests. Qatar also flies one of the most popular airlines in the world, and sponsored the World Cup, and
basically wants to be accepted around the world and bends over backwards in order to have its image made rosy with
a lobbyist and PR firms hired in Washington and in most of the major capitals of the world. In the United States,
which has no relation with Hamas and no ability to pressure Hamas is the natural mediator involved in these talks,
because one, there are American hostages amongst the hostages taken. And two, the United States is Israel's backer,
and Israel cannot survive without the United States, and I must say that President Joe Biden has taken more of an
interest in the Israeli hostages than the Israeli government has. He's met with the hostage families more than the
Israeli government has. He's talked about it. He's given more time. It's on his agenda, much more frequently than
it is on the agenda of Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Negotiations have been going on for almost 10 months now.
There was a negotiated agreement made between Israel and Hamas that brought home 110 hostages back in November.
That deal could have continued beyond the seven days in which it was implemented, the agreement was that every day
Hamas would issue a list of hostages that they were willing to release, including a women and children. And on the
last day, Hamas issued to Israel a list that included, apparently, some names of people were believed to be dead,
Israel looked at that as a violation, a breach of the agreement, when I say Israel, I mean Netanyahu, his
government and the army at that point where were eager to get back to the war, and rather than carrying out the
agreement for more days, bringing home whatever hostages, Hamas was willing to release Israel went back to war.
Blamed Hamas for breaching the agreement, went back to war. What's important to note is that from the very
beginning of the war, from at least the first month of the war, Hamas was willing to make a deal to release all the
civilian hostage that that it was holding all the women, the children, even wounded and elderly, they were willing
to release. They were mostly interested in holding those who were defined as soldiers, both young women soldiers
and young men soldiers. Those were the people they wanted to hold. The price that they were demanding was
determined by Israel to be too much at that point. They were not talking about a permanent end to the war in the
first two months of the war, but they were talking about a large release of Palestinian prisoners. And the
Israelis, the government reviewed that as a form of surrender, and they didn't want to make the deal. They believed
that the military pressure would free the hostages. Everyone was dreaming of antibi like missions that the special
forces would go in, find the hostages and sweep them into freedom. So far, seven hostages have been released
through military missions. One of them, the first one was actually because the young woman who was abducted not by
a Hamas person, but by a civilian in Gaza who took her as as a sex slave, actually left her to go shopping for some
food stuff, and she convinced him to leave her phone, saying she was going to play games. And she then called the
Israeli army, and they came and found her. She was the first hostage who was brought home. The military pressure
has not released the hostages, and it's not advanced the negotiations on the hostages. In fact, what people don't
know is that the deal that was done in November was actually delayed for more than two weeks as a result of the
military pressure. Because the deal was being worked out through the Egyptians. They were about to receive a list
of names that Hamas was willing to release, and then when Israel started surrounding the city of Gaza and entered
toward the Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Hamas froze the process for two and a half weeks. So military pressure has not
worked here, and we know now, more than 10 months into the war, that the military pressure has in fact, also killed
hostages. The six hostages who just recovered their bodies were taken alive into Gaza. They were very likely killed
by Israeli bombs. That's what's believed. I don't know if we'll ever know for real, for sure, what happened to
them. They may have been killed by Hamas, but the talk around town here is that they were in fact, killed by
Israeli bombs.
Madeleine Cereghino:
That is incredibly devastating, and makes such a case for this, you know, diplomatic negotiations, not to
mention, of course, that these successful Entebbe style missions that you mentioned have netted significantly high
civilian casualties as well. You've been doing peace, building work, and researching peace and its obstacles for a
long time. Obviously, every case is different, but I'm curious what makes this conflict and these negotiations
different from the ones that have come before and so challenging.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Yeah. Well, the obvious level is that we are experiencing we, I mean, Israelis and Palestinians, are
experiencing the biggest trauma that we have experienced in 76 years. For Israelis, and I think this is for Jews
around the world, or Jews who identify as Jews around the world. October 7th, more Jews were killed at one place at
one time than at any time since the Holocaust. And to be honest, we in Israel have not left October 7th. We're
still there. The stories are still being told every day. We're reliving it every day in the media, on the
television, in our newspapers, on the radio, the victims of October 7th, having their stories told and new
discoveries made every day. So we haven't moved to October 8th. We're still living that trauma. And Palestinians,
with now over 40,000 people killed in Gaza, the numbers are probably more likely above 50,000 because there are
thousands unaccounted for people underneath the rubble of buildings that have been demolished. 2 million people are
homeless in Gaza, with no places to go back to. Gaza has been destroyed. Has been flattened. Its civilian
infrastructure demolished. Schools, universities. There were seven working universities in Gaza before the war. Now
there are none. They've all been flattened, governmental institutions, buildings, you name it, streets, roads,
water infrastructure, sewage infrastructure. Gaza is a humanitarian disaster, and Palestinians, whether they be in
Gaza, inside of Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or in the Palestinian diaspora, are reliving the Nakba of
1948 for them, it's revisiting the catastrophe that happened to them 76 years ago, and they are reliving it every
day. The pictures that they see both in their telegram accounts and in Whatsapp on Instagram and in other places on
Arabic television stations, is much more graphic than anything you will ever see on an American television network
or in Israel. In Israel, we don't see the humanitarian disaster of Gaza whatsoever. We see the physical damage
that's been done to Gaza, but we don't see the human suffering. And now people are dying there from disease. There
are hundreds of 1000s of people there with dysentery, with diarrhea and other skin ailments that are spreading. And
there's hepatitis spreading there. It's now given the first cases of polio in Gaza disease that was eradicated from
the world. So this is a total disaster, and that's the prism through which we in Israel and in Palestine are
viewing the world. Now, what that means, essentially, in terms of looking at each other, is that Israelis and
Palestinians are incapable of thinking coherently about it tomorrow, in which peace might be an option, yet there
are two big surprises that's come out of this war so far. One of them is the rebirth of the two state solution.
I've been a supporter of the two state solution since 1975 when I was starting university, and yet I thought in the
last years that it was no longer alive, that it was dead, it was no longer a viable option, and all of a sudden
it's back in front of us. And there are now, I think, 153 countries around the world that have recognized the state
of Palestine, and more are coming down the road, and the two state solution is what's being talked about in the
international community, again, is the only option for bringing about Israeli and Palestinian peace, that doesn't
mean that it's around the corner. But if there's one thing that should be clear to anyone who's coherent and
rational is that this has to be the last Israeli Palestinian war. We can't keep doing this. This has to end, and
there needs to be a solution. And the second surprise of this war happened on April 13, April 14, when Iran sent
340 rockets, missiles and drones to Israel, and the regional defense of alliance was born without negotiations and
without agreements, and the countries surrounding Israel, including Saudi Arabia, with the help of the United
States and Great Britain, defended Israel against the Iranian attack, that should be a telling sign for us about
the future place where negotiations on Israel-Palestine need to take place, because the solution can be found
within the region, not another Pax Americana, an American led peace process. We need the United States, perhaps, to
initiate this. But the solutions for us are all in the region, creating a new architecture of stability, security,
economic development, cross boundary cooperation, dealing with climate change and all the other things that the
rest of the world deals with. That's where this, the Israeli, Palestinian solution, will be found eventually. So
that's the good side of it. The bad side is, of course, that Israel and Hamas don't have a willingness right now to
make an agreement to end the war, there are great gaps between the Israeli side and the Hamas side and what they
want. And again, when I say the Israeli side, I mean Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet, because the Israeli
military and intelligence believe that the deal that's on the table should be accepted, but the government of
Israel refuses to end the war, refuses to withdraw the IDF from Gaza, demands to have a physical presence along the
Gaza Sinai border, which is called the Philadelphia corridor, 14 kilometers of road where there were smuggling
tunnels and where Hamas armed itself. And that border must be secured, but it doesn't have to be secured on the
Gaza side of the border; it can be secured on the Egyptian side of the border with American finance, technology and
personnel supervising and monitoring that the border is, in fact, sealed. There are other solutions that need to be
reached. And the other big gap between Israel and Hamas is on the issue of Palestinian prisoner releases. Hamas
wants 1000s of prisoners released. Mostly they want the 600 Palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences
for murdering Israelis released. Israel is willing to release some of them. It wants a veto on the names, and it
demands that all the life sentences serving prisoners would be deported forever. And Hamas does not agree to that,
so the gaps remain far apart, in my view. And with this, I'll end and we can take more questions. The deal that's
on the table is not a good deal, the deal that the mediators negotiated is not good, not good for Israel, not good
for Hamas, because it is a six week deal in the first phase, during which time 33 hostages will be released, what
they call the humanitarian release. I don't know what that means, because after 10 months in captivity, they're all
humanitarian cases, but 33 hostages would be released. Negotiations would continue on expanding the ceasefire and
the redeployment of Israeli forces, and negotiations would further take place on the release of Palestinian
prisoners and medicinal hostages. And I don't know why this has to be drawn out over months, and why the mediators
aren't putting down on the table a deal which talks about all 109 hostages in one in one pulse with the end of the
war in four to six weeks and a redeployment of Israel out of Gaza. This is what needs to happen. That's the deal
that needs to be on the table. We have reached the point where the mediators can no longer negotiate, and if they
have integrity, they will stand up and publicize what they've been trying to do, and tell the world that they are
ceasing their efforts to mediate until the Israelis and Hamas are ready and the three heads of the Israeli
negotiating team, the head of the Mossad Dadi Barnea the head of the Shabak Ronen Baland the Israeli army general
in charge Nitzan Alon, should all also, if they believe that a deal could be taken and Netanyahu is blocking
it, they should notify Netanyahu that they are not willing to negotiate anymore if they have integrity, unless
Netanyahu gives them a mandate. One last sentence here, when David Meidan from Mossad was given the job by
Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas for freeing Gilad Shalit, David asked Netanyahu, what's my mandate? And
Netanyahu said to him, bring him home. The negotiators on the Israeli side have not heard from Netanyahu in the
last 10 and a half months to bring them home. That has not been the primary directive of Israel in this war.
Madeleine Cereghino:
That is, I mean, exactly what it appears on the surface, but it never gets easier to hear. I want to turn to
some of the dissonance between Netanyahu and the negotiators, and also some reports that we're hearing out of the
Biden administration, because I think there's, you know, different reporting coming from different parties. You
know, several times now you've heard from the Biden administration that Netanyahu has agreed to, oh, you know,
working framework, or something like that, and that they're, they're ready to go only for Bibi to then turn around
and say, "No, I didn't." One you know what is actually true? But also you know,What is the philosophy behind this?
Some people think it's, you know, the US trying to force his hands. Other people think it's more that the US and
negotiators have figured it out, and then Netanyahu, you know, disagrees. Um, but is this something that is
damaging to you as credibility as a mediator in this process?
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Yeah, when President Biden presented what he called the Netanyahu plan back in May, it seemed to me that
President Biden went beyond what Netanyahu had, in fact, agreed to. The main point on which President Biden went
beyond what Netanyahu agreed to was when he said that once the six week ceasefire begins and negotiations are
ongoing, even if they don't reach an agreement on phase two, the ceasefire would stay in place. That, to the best
of my knowledge, is not what Netanyahu agreed to or what Netanyahu said, and I think that Biden was trying to force
Netanyahu's hand, but it soon became very clear, because in the negotiations themselves, the Israeli team put all
these red lines and conditions on the table that they were told by Netanyahu to deliver to the Egyptians and the
Qataris. And then Hamas simply issued statements saying that what Biden said is not what Israel agrees to, that
Israel doesn't agree to ending the war and Hamas was demanding an obligation that the war would end. In fact, what
I believe, and pretty much know for sure, is that the United States assured the Qataris and the Egyptians that once
the ceasefire began, it would continue. It would become what Biden called the sustainable ceasefire. That's what
the Qataris and the Egyptians told Hamas. And then when the Israeli negotiators came up and said, No, if the
negotiations don't reach a conclusion by the end of the first six weeks, Israel will resume the war. And it was
very clear that Netanyahu had no intention to end the war. Now it's very clear that even though Secretary
Blinken and President Biden both said that Israel agreed to the American bridging proposals, which we don't have
all the details of, Netanyahu spoke yesterday to two different groups of families of soldiers who were killed in
Gaza, who were on the right wing of the Israeli maps, Netanyahu supporters. And in those meetings, Netanyahu was
quoted as saying that we will not end the war. We will not withdraw from Gaza, and Israel will remain on the
Philadelphi corridor. This, I imagine, is not in full accord with what was painted as the American bridging
proposals, and of course, Hamas immediately rejected it. Hamas, today, in the telegram account of Izz al-Din
al-Qassam Brigades,the military wing of Hamas, put out a call to Egypt and Qatar to stop mediating until Israel
gets serious about the negotiations, as they wrote, that's the state of the negotiations right now. The gaps are
still very far apart, and I remind everyone that 109 Israeli hostages are still in Gaza, and the war continues
every day, with more and more people getting killed. One thing is absolutely sure to me and clear, is that the
longer Israel stays in Gaza, the more I can guarantee that there will be armed insurgency against Israeli soldiers,
and Israeli soldiers will come back dead from Gaza, and the easier it is for Hamas to recruit new recruits, because
they recruit their young people from bereaved families and people have lost their homes, which is almost every
single person in Gaza. And while the hatred and anger against Hamas is reaching a boiling point amongst residents
of Gaza, as long as the Israeli army remains in Gaza, they will have new recruits. There is no total victory over
an ideology, over an idea, and Hamas is more than a government and more than a military. It is an idea, and is it
an ideology and it grew out of an opposition to the occupation, out of opposition to what people believed was a
peace process that was doomed to fail, and it remains that way, the only way to effectively fight an ideology like
Hamas, which promises its people the glory of death for Palestine is to promise the Palestinian people that they
can live for Palestine, that there is a Palestine they can live for, that there is a political horizon, there is a
hope. There is something to live for. I mentioned earlier. There were seven working universities in Gaza, with 10s
of 1000s of students every year studying everything from computers to law to medicine to everything, and when they
completed their studies, they had no jobs and no future. And that was why there was nearly 70% youth unemployment
of Gaza people under the age of 30 unemployed nearly 70% before the war. So this war didn't happen in a vacuum.
There's history here that led up to where we got to.
Madeleine Cereghino:
So, you mentioned how you know Hamas has said we don't want to talk anymore until you're serious and you're
ready to have your negotiator actually represent what you know, the government of Israel is willing to concede. I
want to talk about some of the other carrots and sticks, as one might phrase it. What can the United States do here
or other intermediaries to kind of urge the parties or push the parties into it. You know, I had a question, a chat
from someone who wanted to ask about the use of US military assistance, and whether you know some of the arms
transfers we're seeing, or, you know, the National Security memorandum which the Biden administration issued
earlier, much earlier, this year and later certified that Israel was in compliance with international and US
humanitarian law, which one might argue is not accurate, and certainly members of Congress have pushed back against
that assessment. So I wanted to ask you what kinds of tools do you think would actually get Bibi to the
table?
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
So it's not only Bibi and the United States has serious diplomatic tools, carrots and sticks in your
diplomatic toolbox. Vis a vis Israel, the Egyptians and the Qataris have significant carrots and sticks that they
could use against or with Hamas. For the United States there's the doomsday leverage. The Doomsday leverage is the
political cover that the United States provides for Israel in the international arena, mostly the Security Council
with the US veto. That is very significant. And the other doomsday point of leverage is also you mentioned, is the
shipment of bombs to Israel to drop on Gaza and the United States could say to Israel, we're not going to fuel the
war in Gaza anymore. We have your back if you're attacked by Iran, if you're attacked by Hezbollah, there are US
warships right now in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea and in the Persian Arab Gulf, there to protect Israel, and
that's really important. But there is absolutely no reason why the United States should be fueling the war in Gaza
at this point. And it should have been stopped, in my view, a long time ago. But this is certainly something that
the US can hold over Israel and say, No more. This war has to end. You're going to end it. We're not going to
provide you with those bombs anymore. And that's a blow to Israel. I don't know how much of a blow it is to the
Israeli arsenal. I think that Israel has a lot of weapons stockpiled, but for Israel to be hit in that way by
almost it's only ally left in the world today is devastating, and it's the kind of devastation that could actually
lead to bringing down Netanyahu, if we remember back to the days of Yitzhak Shamir, when we have the massive
immigration from the former Soviet Union and over policy on the Israeli Arab track in the US threatened Israel not
to issue loan guarantees for Israel to have money to build housing for the million Russians who are coming. That
led to the downfall of Yitzhak Shamir in the and the election of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 that had a direct impact on
the Israeli electorate. So this is very important. It could be done. The Egyptians have leverage on Hamas, because
Egypt is the lifeline of Gaza. There are also 160,000 Gazans who escaped Gaza and are now living illegally in
Cairo. And amongst them are Hamas people, not just civilians who ran away, you at the financial means to run away,
but they're also Hamas people there. And Egypt hosts Hamas people. There's a Hamas office in Cairo. It facilitates
the movement of Hamas people around the region. So there's a lot of leverage there. And the Qataris, of course, are
hosting a Hamas leadership. The Qataris could say to the Hamas leadership. Your families have to pack their bags
tomorrow. They're no longer welcome here. And if you don't bring agreements in the day after tomorrow, you all have
to leave as well. And of course, Qatar funds their stay in Qatar, and has funded billions to Gaza over the years,
so they have leverage that can be used. And I don't think it's being used. I don't think these doomsday weapons
have been taken out of the diplomatic toolbox and they need to be.
Madeleine Cereghino:
We agree with you on that. We very strongly feel that US military assistance should reflect our values and
our policy priorities. I want to talk a little bit about some of the other potential motivations in here, and you
know, external forces urging Netanyahu. There's news recently, I'm sure you saw or reports, I should say, not,
confirmed that former President Trump and Netanyahu had a conversation recently where Trump may have urged
Netanyahu to delay the agreement, as it's obviously been hurting Democrats in the campaign. Do you see any
relationship between negotiations and American politics? Obviously, negotiations and more are impacting us. But is
that? Does that go two ways?
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
No, I think it's playing here. And I think that the fact that the Biden administration and the Kamala Harris
campaign want this issue removed from the campaign agenda is very significant. I hope it reflects itself in the
policies of President Biden. I think we've seen some pretty firm statements from Kamala Harris about the need to
end the war. Ironically, we've seen similar statements from Donald Trump. Perhaps the only issue on which there is
agreement between Democrats and Republicans right now is, as Trump said, to end the war quickly. Of course, Trump
believes probably that there is an ultimate victory, and if Israel just bombs the hell out of Gaza, more than
they've already done, that would lead to ending the war. I don't know what that man thinks. He's the most dangerous
person in the world, and he's unpredictable, so we really don't know what he thinks, but I think this is part of
the issue. There were rumors about the Trump Netanyahu conversation. It was denied by the prime minister's office
that such a conversation took place. That doesn't mean that it didn't. There is no doubt that Netanyahu was a
Republican, and Netanyahu wants Trump to win those elections. There's no doubt that when he was planning to make
his speech in Congress, had President Biden not stepped out of the race, he would have been speaking in the US
Congress to Donald Trump, and his message would have been, I'm your man. I'm not weak. I don't surrender. I'm going
to beat them. It would have been the pumped up testosterone message that Donald Trump likes to hear. He was a
little thrown off base when Kamala Harris stepped in and started rising quickly in the polls, and then had to
confront the possibility that she actually might be the next President of the United States, and he had to modify
his speech. But we know where Netanyahu stands, and it's entirely possible that Trump and Netanyahu agreed not to
end the war, which wouldn't take very much convincing, because Netanyahu doesn't want to end the war. When this war
ends, there will be an overwhelming majority for new elections in Israel. There already is, but there's an argument
of, should it happen before the war ends or not? Netanyahu has lost his popularity in Israeli society. He's been
gaining the polls recently, but there's still no way, if elections were held today, that he could make a coalition.
No way. And an overwhelming majority of Israelis, 80 more than 80% of Israelis want a national investigation into
what happened on October 7th and what led up to October 7th and what happened after October 7th, and that's a
national commission headed by a Supreme Court judge with the ability to meet subpoena witnesses, including The
prime minister and documents, and to issue in penalties and punishments, or indicate that they should be issued and
Netanyahu doesn't want that. Netanyahu is going to try to avoid that by trying to create a governmental commission
of inquiry in which the government sets the mandate and appoints the people, and basically it's a commission with
no teeth, and would be meant to cover up Netanyahu's responsibility. So all these issues are very important to
American relations with Israel. Israel is more dependent on the United States today than it has ever been, and
that's very clear to every single Israeli.
Madeleine Cereghino:
I'm going to ask a question that will hopefully inject some positivity into this conversation. Obviously,
it's a really, really challenging topic, and I'm sure we're still going to go back to some of the difficult
elements of it. But this question comes from Ori Nir, our now retired but very beloved Vice President of
Communications. No longer at APN, of course. So Ori, Hi, glad to have you on. He writes, asking about an article
you wrote in January in the Jerusalem Post predicting that the trauma from October 7 will help the Israeli left
gain power. Do you still believe that? And can you walk us through your thinking there.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Yeah, I had a piece published today in The Times of Israel called "RE-rebuilding Hope." So it's also a
hopeful piece. And I have a very close Palestinian friend named Samer Sinjalawi, someone that you should definitely
host. Samer is a member of the Fatah leadership in opposition to Mahmoud Abbas. He's amongst the young generation
who want democracy and accountability and is against corruption and believes that the major task of the Palestinian
leadership has to be to make peace with Israel. Samer visited Kfar Aza two weeks after the war, and was filmed in a
documentary, I think, made by the American by the ADL. I think the film was made in which he stood up and said, I'm
sorry. I'm here to voice my disgust and remorse by what happened in my name. I didn't do it, but it was done in my
name, and we have crossed moral red lines that should never be crossed. And it was quite a remarkable statement,
and I've spoken a lot with Samer at universities and to Israeli audiences and Jewish audiences and and other
international meetings, and even Palestinian audiences, and I rediscovered something that I knew a long time ago,
which is the power of remorse. If there is going to be a renewed peace process out of the trauma that we're living,
it will be when Israelis and Palestinians of courage stand up and say, this was done in my name, and I'm sorry, we
should never cross these moral red lines again, what we've done to each other, we should never do again. This is
very powerful when I talk about rebuilding hope. It's about recognizing that even when this war is over, there will
remain 7 million Palestinian Arabs and 7 million Israeli Jews living on the land between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. We're not going anywhere. When I made that recognition back in 1975 after spending a year in
Israel on Young Judaea Year Course, I came back and tried to understand what this intensive Zionist experience was
that I lived over the course of the year, and I had already known that Israel was going to be my home. One of the
first conclusions I came to was that if Israel truly wants to be as it defines itself, the democratic nation state
of the Jewish people. We cannot rule over another people and deny them their right to self determination that we
claim for ourselves. Nor can we deny equal rights to the 2 million Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. It
simply doesn't work. We are neither the democratic nation state nor the democratic nation state, or the Jewish
people, when between the Jordan River and the and the Mediterranean Sea, there is no longer a Jewish, a clear
Jewish minority, and most of the Palestinians living here don't enjoy democracy. So that kind of awakening is
something that needs to happen, and I believe will happen. Our problem, our main problem, is our total lack of
leadership. We have no leadership of inspiration, not in Israel and not in Palestine at this point. And this is
really terrible, the arena of potential politicians out there beyond Netanyahu are not inspiring and are not
leaders, and are not people who can make brave decisions, because we know what needs to be done. The return of the
two state solution is the best thing that can happen to all of us, and with all the obstacles in place, it can
still be done. And there are formulas to make it happen, but the first prerequisite for that happening is
leadership. And I believe, having been part of 40 weeks of demonstration against the attempt to overthrow our
judicial system here, and then weeks and weeks and months of demonstrations since the war began here for the
hostages and now for new elections, there's a whole new generation of Israelis who have risen into positions of
leadership, of leading mass protest movements in Israel, and I know that amongst them is the future leadership of
the State of Israel. And I know from my Palestinian friends and colleagues that I work with that there are new
leaders out there who are not willing to adopt the strategy that has failed them for 76 years. My friend Samer, for
instance, says, If I were the foreign minister of Palestine, I would close 100 of the 110 embassies that we have
around the world, and I would open up 10s of 100 branches of the Palestinian government in towns and cities all
around Israel, because Israel, The Israeli people, as Samer says, are not the enemy. They're our solution, and we
will get what we need to get when we learn how to address Israeli fear. It's Israeli fear that's our enemy, and not
the Israeli people. It's through working with the Israeli people that we will get our freedom. And I think that's a
very positive, uplifting message, and if more people can recognize that we can find the path forward.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Agreed. So I do have questions from some of the chat about how Palestinians, or some Palestinians have
consistently said no two states, although I will say that many Palestinians don't say that. And, you know, at times
I think we're seeing polling where it's not necessarily no two states, but it's like a lack of belief that two
states can happen at the most hopeless point, not necessarily about popularity of an actual two state solution. But
can you speak to that question if you know…
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
There is no such thing as a one state solution if we believe there was one before October 7th. October 7th
proves that it's not a viable reality, that we can live together in peace in one single state, a unitary state, a
civilian state, a democratic secular state. It doesn't exist in reality. We have to face the fact that for more
than 100 years, Jews and Arabs have been killing each other in this land over territory and identity. It's who owns
this land and who gives its identity to it and who takes its identity from it. It's really interesting. If you read
the Israeli and Palestinian decorations of independence, they are mirror documents of each other, and they both
claim that they are the people of this land, and they have given their identity to this land, and they have taken
their identity from the land and their mirror images of each other. So if the war people have been willing to fight
and die over whose land this belongs to? The idea that we are willing to give up our identity to create a state
which does not reflect our nationality or ethnicity or our religion is on a different planet. It's not the planet
in which Israelis and Palestinians live. I know many Palestinians who say one state or two states. I don't care,
you Israelis negotiate between yourselves and decide and tell us what you want, and we'll accept it. Many
Palestinians would prefer one state solution, because they see all of Palestine as theirs, and they would like to
live in any place in Palestine. But if there was a viable two state option, most Palestinians would say, Yes, I'll
take it. If it's going to guarantee me my freedom, my equality, the end of the Israeli occupation and my suffering,
I'll take it. And I think there's a great deal of validity in that statement that we Israelis need to negotiate
amongst ourselves before we even start negotiating with the Palestinians, because we are deeply divided in this
society on what kind of solution, if any, we want to the Palestinian issue. So I think it's, it's, it's a very
valid argument when Palestinians say, we don't know what you want, tell us what you want, and then we'll know how
to deal with it. So I really think that's a challenge to us. And I think that models like "A Land for All or "Two
States One Homeland" provide a lot of inspirational answers on how we Jews can see the whole land of Israel as
being our homeland, and how Palestinians can see all the land of Palestine as being their homelands without
necessarily having sovereignty over all of it. We can have a differentiation between citizenship and residency
rights, just like exist in the European Union, you could be a Polish citizen living in Berlin with all the rights
to a German living in Berlin except the right to vote for the German parliament. You vote in the Polish parliament,
but you live in Berlin as an equal citizen there or resident. We could have a similar situation here eventually,
where there are Palestinians living in Israel as equal rights, not only the Palestinian citizens of Israel, but
also Palestinians from Gaza, from the West Bank, from the diaspora, as well as Jews legitimately living in the
state of Palestine. I like to remind people that when we read the Torah Portion every Shabbat, every week, we're
not telling the stories of the beaches of Tel Aviv. We're telling the stories of the hills and the valleys of Judea
and Samaria. That's where our heritage lies. And whether there is a border, a green line, which is a hard border,
an open border, it doesn't reduce the reality that that's part of our ancient heritage, just as Palestinians Haifa,
Ramle, Acre, and Lud are part of their homeland and part of their heritage and part of their memory. So maybe
there are ways that we can find to expand the current ideas that we know of as the classic two state solution, and
find other ways of implementing it. In the plan written by Ehud Olmert when he was negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas
back in 2008 he, for instance, proposed that the Old City of Jerusalem would have no sovereign and there wouldn't
be an Israeli flag. There wouldn't be a Palestinian flag over the Old City of Jerusalem, which is one square
kilometer, a tiny piece of land where all the holy places are, there would be five countries that would serve as
guardians of the Old City: the United States, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. And it's a brilliant idea
because it recognizes the Jewish connection and the Muslim connection, and also makes Jerusalem, the important part
of Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem, into an international city where everyone can have a piece of it, but we
don't own it. Jerusalem belongs to the world. It doesn't belong to one of us.
Madeleine Cereghino:
That's so well said, and what a beautiful vision that you paint. Not to bring it back down to less beautiful
ideas. I have a couple questions in the chat from folks. One, I think we can answer quickly, because you did speak
about this bit. But I do have a question from someone who asks about whether or not any dispute over oil rights
plays a part in this conflict. I'm just going to go ahead and take that, which is, there is no oil there.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
No we don't have oil. We have gas fields. And there is a Gaza gas field that Ariel Sharon granted the rights
to, to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. And they have negotiated agreements with other gas companies in the
world to do the drilling. They thought that they had an anchor customer in the Israeli Electric Corporation that
was going to be the main purchaser, and made the investment of about two $50 million to drill the gas. But the
Israeli Electric Corporation pulled out of that deal many years ago, and the owners of the field, I think it's
Shell today, but I'm not 100% sure, are not going to spend two $50 million when a war is going on and with a gas
can't be safely pulled out of the ground and sold to customers around the world, and the Palestinians are really
banking on the Gaza gas field as part of their economic miracle that will save them in the future.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Thank you. Yeah. So like you said, this war is about identity and that connection to the land. So that brings
me, you know, to one of the potential, one of the kinks, we should say, in this EU version of Israel and Palestine
in the future, and that is violent settlers and how to deal with them. Obviously, we can get into the executive
order that President Biden had issued earlier this year, and the ways that that's been implemented. So we can talk
about that briefly, and we have, like, very little time left, so I'm sorry
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Do you mean the immediate response to violent settlers, or in future peace...?
Madeleine Cereghino:
I think in a future agreement, because right now we have, the United States is putting on some significant
pressure, and we're sanctioning violent settlers and those who support them.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
And don't forget the International Criminal Court in The Hague as well.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Yes, that's although less enforceable within Israel, but sure, exactly.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
It makes Israel a lot smaller for a lot of people who are going to have warrants of arrest against them
issued in any event, in the long term, presuming that we do reach a two state solution, and there is an agreed
border between Israel and Palestine, it will involve annexing a maximum of 4.4% of the West Bank in exchange for
equal territory within Israel. I say 4.4 because that's the maximum amount of land available within Israel proper
that could be swapped with the Palestinians, but that would include between 75 and eight 80% of the settlers.
Remember, the overwhelming majority of settlers live in two settlements, which are ultra orthodox, Beitar Illit and
Modi'in Illit. That's the bulk of the settlers with the but the main problematic population are the ones who live
on the central mountains of the West Bank and in Samaria, and they are the most problematic and the most violent of
them. And they're simply going to have to be two things that are done. One is that in the agreement, there has to
be an agreement of the State of Palestine that Jews can live in the state of Palestine, it is not reasonable to
expect that the state of Palestine would be you nine Jews should be welcome to live there, not as settlers, not as
armed militia, not as people with special rights, but living under Palestinian sovereignty, under Palestinian law.
I think that there will be very few settlers who will agree to that. But nonetheless, as a matter of principle,
Palestine, as a democratic country in the future, should have a Jewish minority. Minorities are good for
democracies. They help us be better democracies. And Palestine should have one in salaam Fayyad, the former
Palestinian Prime Minister, once said to me, we would welcome Jewish citizens of our state or residents of state,
and we will grant them exactly the same rights that the Palestinian citizens of Israel get, which I thought was a
brilliant statement to encourage Israel to grant Palestinian citizens of Israel greater freedom and greater rights.
In any event, the violence settlers will have to be dealt with in a way that they understand. Their weapons will
have to be taken away by the Israeli army who gave them their weapons, and they have to be notified of a time
schedule that when the Israeli army will no longer be there to protect them, and they have a choice to come home to
Israel proper, or to the settlements that will be part of the annex lands where they can remain in Israel, remain
in Judea and Samaria, or stay there and face whatever consequences they may have so. We cannot tolerate a minority
group of spoilers to prevent the people of Israel and the people of Palestine from enjoying peace. We were not
serious about this enough during the Oslo peace process, and this is one of the lessons of that failed process.
There are many lessons of the failed process, but dealing with the spoilers with much more determination and much
more clarity is something that's going to have to be dealt with when we have negotiations again. There are also
Palestinian spoilers who use violence and will use violence to destroy the chances of peace as well.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Yes, well, the right on both sides have clearly fueled each other, and that's obviously part of what's gotten
us to this situation. Speaking of the right, we have very little time left, and this is a huge question, so I
apologize, but I'm going to combine a few questions from the chat. The crux of it is, does this conflict help
preserve or does this current war help preserve Netanyahu's political situation? Obviously, he's highly unpopular,
but at the same time, you know he's able to prevent elections from happening. We know that he needs to stay in
power in order to, you know, prevent his own personal legal troubles from catching up to him. So can you talk a bit
about that? Is this personal, you know, desire to save himself part of why we haven't seen a deal yet.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Yeah, there's no question that Netanyahu is putting his own personal political interest ahead of the interest
of the country. And the problem of Netanyahu is not his legal problems. That's the least of it. The corruption that
he represents in Israeli societies, is the minority of the problem that we face with Netanyahu. Netanyahu
strategically designed and implemented a plan which removed the peace option with the Palestinians from the table
when you consider that we had five rounds of elections where the issue of Palestine wasn't even discussed. The two
state solution wasn't discussed at all. Instead, we were talking about managing the conflict, or reducing the
conflict, or anything but resolving the conflict, and the empowerment of Hamas and Gaza and the weakening and
delegitimation of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was Netanyahu's strategy, which he successfully
implemented to remove Palestine from the agenda. He succeeded in convincing Donald Trump, and who managed to,
surprisingly convince the Emirates and Bahrain to do the Abraham Accords, in which they tossed the Palestinians
under the bus and broke out of the Arab Peace Initiative, which the Arab states help from to from 2002 until today,
and Netanyahu, was able to convince a majority of Israelis and a majority of people in the world that the
Palestinian issue could be managed. We don't have to deal with it. But October 7th changed that. On October 7th,
the Palestinian issue blew up in our faces, and we will never return to a situation where we can ignore it, never
so the problem with Netanyahu staying on is not his legal problems, but his continued commitment to prevent Israel
from ever negotiating a genuine peace with the Palestinian people, and that will limit our ability to make peace
with the Saudis and other Arab countries and Islamic countries. And we need to do that. We need to get rid of
Netanyahu, because he endangers our security. He endangers the well building and the moral code of the State of
Israel. He is a disaster. He is a person who believed, before October 7th, and he said this, that he would go down
in history as the greatest leader of the Jewish people since Moses, when, in fact, he will go down as the worst
leader that the Jewish people have ever had. And that's how he needs to be written in the history books. It is
unimaginable, I shouldn't say unimaginable, because it is actually imaginable, but it is disastrous to imagine
that, after all he has done and his refusal to take responsibility and to deflect the responsibility for October
7th on to everyone except himself, mainly the Israeli army and the intelligence, who are definitely to blame for
what happened on October 7th. He is the head, and he is responsible, and if Israel reelects him to be Prime
Minister, that's a signal to me, as someone who's dedicated my life to this country and has been living here for 46
years that this place is not repairable, and that will be the saddest day in my life. I can't believe that we could
arrive on that day. We shouldn't-- We should never be there. We should never allow this man to be re-elected as the
prime minister of this country, and that's the task of every single one of us in America, and here to ensure that
this guy can never be back as the leader of this country.
Madeleine Cereghino:
I wholeheartedly agree. So I'm going to, I think, think this is a perfect point to end, because I know we
have a lot of questions left and a lot more we could talk about, but I think that each question is going to require
another like, 20 minutes, and I don't want to keep folks for that long. So thank you.
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Everyone can contact me if you want. My email is gershonbaskin@gmail.com one word, I'm on Twitter and on X,
whatever it's called. On Facebook, on Instagram, you can find me easily, or Whatsapp.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Wow. Well, thank you for that very generous offer. You've already been so generous with your time, and now I
know we're all going to be bugging you with our questions, because this, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be
resolving as quickly as I think we had all hoped it would. I know when we scheduled this webinar, in our hearts, we
were all really, really crossing our fingers that we'd be having a different conversation about how this hostage
release deal had been achieved. So next time we speak, we will be
Dr. Gershon Baskin:
Inshallah.
Madeleine Cereghino:
Yes, so thank you to everyone. Thank you. Gershon. See you all next time.
