How the “Dangerous Gimmick” of the Two-State Solution Ended in Disaster

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: How the “Dangerous Gimmick” of the Two-State Solution Ended in Disaster
Host: David Remnick
Guests: Hussein Aga and Robert Malley
Date: September 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode delves deep into the unraveling of the two-state solution as a framework for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Host David Remnick speaks with veteran Middle East negotiators Hussein Aga and Robert Malley, authors of the new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday. Drawing on decades of diplomatic involvement, they reflect candidly on whether peace was ever realistically possible, why the two-state idea became a “dangerous gimmick,” the failures of negotiation, the human and psychological drives behind the conflict, and what little hope or direction might remain today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Loss of Hope in the Two-State Solution

• Despair and Personal Reflection
  • Aga recounts initial post-October 7th feelings—a sense of exhausting futility after five decades trying to help, only for events to “culminate in an act of brutality”:
    • “It reminds me that I'm a loser. For 55 years I've been trying to do something and now it culminates in an act of brutality … it's all meaningless. It didn't amount to a hill of beans.” (Aga, 01:18)
• Misguided Rationality vs. Deep-Rooted Emotions
  • Aga notes that the West and some Israelis attempted to treat the conflict as a rational, technical problem, ignoring the emotional, historical, and psychological wounds that actually drive it.
    • “The deep issue of the psyche of both communities was given lip service... When you do that, you can never resolve it.” (Aga, 05:38)

The Two-State Solution as “Dangerous Gimmick”

• Failures of the Oslo Era
  • Malley, from a U.S. diplomatic perspective, argues that the process has not only failed but worsened the situation for both sides.
    • “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it because things are so much worse today.” (Malley, 06:40)
  • The two-state framework became, over decades, a hollow line repeated by officials while on-the-ground realities (settlements, demolitions, exclusion of alternate activism) moved in the opposite direction.
    • “At that point it does become a lie ... It's been used to cover and perpetuate a status quo that is in every way moving in a direction opposite to the stated goal.” (Malley, 09:27)
• Freezing Out Other Possibilities
  • The quest for two states marginalized other models: binational state, confederation, federation with Jordan. U.S.-dominated negotiations also excluded other Arab states for being “cumbersome”.

October 7th, Hamas, and Interpretations

• Motivations behind the Attack
  • Aga dismisses the idea that Sinwar (Hamas leader) aimed for a broader regional war; instead, he sought prisoner exchanges.
    • “Sinwar … promised his comrades in prison that he will not forgive them and he will get to get ways of freeing them. ... I think this really is the core motivation for Sinwar for October 7, nothing more.” (Aga, 13:47)
  • Malley is skeptical that stopping Arab normalization with Israel was the true motive, arguing it was more about making the Palestinian cause impossible to ignore.
    • “This is a way to remind the world that the Palestinians are not going anywhere.” (Malley, 15:02)

Camp David 2000 & the ‘Missed Opportunity’ Myth

• What Really Happened?
  • Aga challenges the American/Israeli narrative that Arafat rejected a generous deal:
    • “Show me the deal that was offered in Camp David. Show me anything official that really can be construed as an offer that was rejected. … They were ideas, they were like brainstorming.” (Aga, 16:55)
  • Malley notes even Israeli participants later agreed the “offers” amounted to demanding major Palestinian concessions for little in return.
    • “For them accepting to move on from their aspiration … they’re then told, sorry, we’re going to pocket that. Now you’re going to make a concession on your concession.” (Malley, 18:13)

Emotional and Historical Barriers

• Why a Technical Deal Never Worked
  • The value systems of each side are fundamentally mismatched; Israeli/American focus on rational proposals, Palestinians rooted in dispossession and national trauma.
    • “The Israelis, like the Americans, they have material matrix... It's not how the passing is staying. They think in terms of their feelings, of their emotions, of their history, of things like dispossession, dispersal.” (Aga, 21:21)

Post-October 7th Reality and Bleak Future Outlook

• ‘Arrangements,’ Not ‘Resolution’
  • Aga and Malley are both skeptical that “resolving” the conflict is even possible—what remains are only temporary arrangements, potentially truces (‘hudna’).
    • “I do not believe in the resolution of the conflict anymore. ... I believe in arrangements.” (Aga, 26:55)
    • “Any agreement based on trust is very fragile. ... But resolution, forget it. Not this generation, not next generation. Next generation is going to be much more radical than this generation.” (Aga, 27:42)
• The Dismal Future of Palestinian Leadership
  • Fatah/Hamas division, lack of representative leadership, and legacy of peace process manipulation have produced a “divided, impotent, feckless” Palestinian movement.
    • “That’s the leadership with which you’re going to negotiate something that’s going to last. That’s a contradiction in terms.” (Malley, 30:10)
  • Palestinian political groups have historically been parties of liberation, not governance.
    • “The Palestinians were not interested in governance. And governance was kind of came as an afterthought.” (Aga, 30:23)

The "Iran Question" and Netanyahu's Agenda

• Was October 7th an Iranian Plot?
  • Malley and Aga agree Iran’s larger “ring of fire” strategy is real, but see little evidence of direct tactical coordination for October 7th.
    • “If the plan had been to really go after Israel, the time to do was October 8th. ... Iran sat on its hands.” (Malley, 31:32)
  • Netanyahu’s focus, since the 1990s, has been to push the Palestinian question aside and concentrate on the Iranian threat.
• On the Nuclear Deal
  • Malley argues the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal (under Trump/Netanyahu influence) undermined efforts at nuclear containment:
    • “If your real preoccupation was Iran acquiring a bomb, then that deal at least gave you the 10 years ... The notion of throwing it out ... was completely at odds with the stated objective.” (Malley, 34:04)

The Role of the United States Now

• Prescription: Do No Harm
  • Malley: “Very hard to answer. ... I’d say the main thing is do no harm, which probably means stay away, right?” (Malley, 37:07)
  • He notes that U.S. policy is fundamentally inconsistent—calling for an end to war while “continuing to provide the weapons that fuel the war.” (Malley, 23:38)
• Aga: The (Unrealized) Potential of Abraham Accords
  • Suggests future positive steps would require the Palestinians being part of a larger Arab negotiation team—expanding the Abraham Accords to finally include the Palestinian cause:
    • “If the Palestinians can be incorporated in the Abrahamic Accords in the sense of ... the Palestinians would be part of a larger Arab delegation that would negotiate with Israel ... That will be a positive move.” (Aga, 37:37)
  • He doubts any bilateral Israeli-Palestinian initiative can succeed.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Hussein Aga:

  • “For 55 years I've been trying to do something and now it culminates in an act of brutality ... it's all meaningless.” (01:18)
  • “Rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” (04:25)
  • “Show me the deal that was offered in Camp David. ... They were ideas, they were like brainstorming.” (16:55)
  • “I do not believe in the resolution of the conflict anymore. ... Not this generation, not next generation. Next generation is going to be much more radical than this generation.” (27:42)

• Robert Malley:

  • “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it because things are so much worse today.” (06:40)
  • “At that point it does become a lie.” (09:27)
  • “Do no harm, which probably means stay away, right?” (37:07)
  • “You’re not going to have a peace between Israelis and Palestinians if you don’t have a representative Palestinian national movement.” (30:08)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Opening & Despairing View Post-October 7th – [00:41 - 03:48]
• Why Rational Approaches Failed – [04:03 - 06:08]
• Two-State Solution as ‘Dangerous Gimmick’ – [06:40 - 10:36]
• Motivations of Hamas and October 7th – [13:20 - 16:19]
• Camp David and the Missed Opportunity Narrative – [16:19 - 20:48]
• Emotional & Historical Impediments to Peace – [21:08 - 22:29]
• Assessment of Current Tragedy & What’s Possible – [23:00 - 24:52]
• Prospects for Coexistence, Binational State, Confederation – [24:52 - 26:06]
• No Blueprint, Only Arrangements – [26:47 - 28:25]
• Fragmented Palestinian Leadership – [29:24 - 30:59]
• Iran’s Strategic Role and Netanyahu’s Priorities – [31:32 - 35:15]
• What Can America Do? – [36:02 - 38:45]
• Closing – [38:45 - 39:19]

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Tone

• The conversation is frank, mournful, and at times deeply personal, blending high-level policy analysis with emotional candor. There’s little optimism offered for immediate change; instead, the focus is on recognizing the tragic realities, historical errors, and enduring psychological wounds at the conflict’s core.

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For further reading:
An excerpt from Aga and Malley's Tomorrow Is Yesterday is available at NewYorker.com.

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Transcript

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[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For so long, our hopes for peace in the Middle east lay with a two state solution. Israel and a Palestinian state recognizing one another's right to exist with some kind of security guarantees in place. But nearly two years after the October 7th attack, the two state solution now seems like mere rhetoric, an illusion. The brutality of that attack struck grief and horror into nearly every Israeli, and it emboldened the most hardline elements in the Israeli government. In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Nearly every building there has been either destroyed or damaged. And last week, Israel ordered the evacuation of all of Gaza City. Where those Palestinians will go and live is unclear. Israel faces accusations of war crimes and even genocide. And in the West Bank, Israel seems poised to annex the territory entirely. And it goes on and on. The killing, the destruction, the displacement, the hostages, and so much more. Looking back now, we have to wonder, was there ever a real chance for peace? That's the subject of Tomorrow Is Yesterday, to my Mind, an essential book, a book difficult to read, but full of hard truths and no phony optimism. The authors are veterans of Middle east diplomacy. Hussein Aga was a negotiator for the Palestinians and he helped draft a key document called A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine. Robert Malley was in the US State Department, and he helped organize the Camp David summit in 2000. Later, he was the US chief negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal under President Obama. I spoke recently with Hussein Aga and Robert Malley. Hussein, very shortly after October 7th, I called you to get your reaction and you said, this is a dagger to my heart. It reminds me that I'm a loser. For 55 years I've been trying to do something and now it culminates in an act of brutality. Acts of brutality on both sides. It's all meaningless. It didn't amount to to a hill of beans. And I have to say that despairing note which you relayed to me not long after October 7th is threaded throughout this book. Tell me a little bit more about what you were feeling then and how.

[Hussein Aga]

It'S carried over the involvement in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I was kind of sucked into it. And every time I thought I'm going to get out of it, I was, what was it? Al pacino and Godfather 3 was sucked back into it. But I finished up doing this miserable thing because I thought that I can be of some help and finished up not to be the case. So it was very, very frustrating.

[David Remnick]

Now that's the personal angle, but do you think that the attempt to create some political arrangement between the Palestinians and the Israelis has been over the past half century a colossal waste of time.

[Hussein Aga]

It was treated mostly by the west and by Western minded Israelis as being something that can be dealt with materially, rationally, with a kind of formulation that lends itself to neat outcomes. And that was a big, big mistake because it completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. Because they always say emotions has a bad name. You can't be emotional, you have to be rational, you have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict. The language used was to find kind of solutions that have a technical outcome that are measurable and that can be portrayed by lines on maps, among other things. And that has no resonance with the majority of both communities. But it has a kind of necessity for leaders, mostly in the west, because it leads to neat outcomes. And what you finish up with is not the consequences of a rational handling of the conflict, but with the emotions, with the deep emotions involved. So people get surprised. October 7th, people get surprised. The total destruction of Gaza, but by the idf. It's not very surprising because that is very much in the nature of what the conflict is about. The deep issue of the psyche of both communities was given lip service to the same way they give lip service to history and to all kind of issues that do not lend themselves to solutions and move on to simpler ways that distort the nature of the beast. And when you do that, you can never resolve it.

[David Remnick]

Let's go to Rob Malley to extend this thought. What I'm hearing from Hussein and what I get from this book is a very despairing view of not only the situation, but your own work, both of your works for many, many years, that that somehow the attempt to come to a resolution, to come to a two state solution was a delusion. This is a very dark place to come to and God knows we're living in a dark enough time.

[Robert Malley]

How could you look at it otherwise? Look at where we were in 93. When the US gets formally involved in trying to resolve the conflict, almost by any metric, the situation was superior to what it is today. So how could you look at that and just objectively not say this was, I mean, a waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it because things are so much worse today. So it cannot be. And I'm going to turn to the US because I was a US official in several of the administrations during that 30 year period. The US with all the power it had, having designated this conflict as one of its priorities. And at the end of that 30 year or so period, we are in every way, we, I mean, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before. The US got so heavily invested. So it's hard not to look at it and say something was fundamentally wrong or sick about this. When we speak about deceit, we specifically say it may not have started as a deceit, but when after all these years you hear the same regurgitated problem about two state solution, we're trying to do it and we're going to do everything we can and everything that is being done is in fact moving in the other direction. And at that point it does become a lie. And you speak about, you know, despair. I mean, in fact, you use the.

[David Remnick]

Phrase, you both use the phrase dangerous gimmick. You say the two state solution, the attempt to create a Palestinian state side by side, in the Israeli interpretation, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with a shared Jerusalem and so on. All the vision of the 90s, that that was a dangerous gimmick.

[Robert Malley]

But the gimmick is not the effort to achieve it, it's the way it was. People went about it, the Americans and others went about it. Why dangerous? Because what did it do in the end? It froze out other possibilities, right? Such as who knows how Israelis and Palestinians might coexist. But again, look at it today, hard to see, I would say impossible to see how you're gonna get two states. You didn't get them under much, much better conditions. How are you gonna get it now? So it ruled out other possibilities of coexistence from one state to confederation to federation with Jordan. It protected the US peace process, protected Israel from pressure. It propped up effectless Palestinian Authority, the authority that was set up by the Oslo Accords to rule the Palestinians in the 90s. In the 90s, it gave the Palestinians the illusion that the Americans were going to rectify the glaring imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians, which they didn't do. It elbowed out other potential participants, Arabs in particular, who were viewed as kind of cumbersome in this process. It really was a menage a trois between the U.S. israelis and Palestinians. And what it did, and this I saw directly, is that this notion that we were progressing towards a two state solution led the United States to try to and Israelis to say there are forms of Palestine activism that are off bounds, that are illegitimate. Going to the International Court of Justice, trying to get forms of accountability, boycotts, divestment, sanctions, whatever they are, they were always told, the Palestinians were told, if you do that, that's going against the grain of the attempt to reach a two state solution. So we're to sanction you. So those forms of activism were excluded. And at the same time, and again, I witnessed this directly, the Israeli forms of unilateral action like settlement construction, those were kind of, you know, they were criticized, but they were excused in the name of the search for two state solution. And one administration after another would say, let's not make too much of a fuss about this, about the home demolitions, about the settlement construction, because if once we get a two state solution, all of that will go away. So that's why we say it's a dangerous gimmick. It's because it's been used to cover and to perpetuate a status quo that is in every way moving in a direction opposite to the stated goal.

[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with Robert Malley and Hussein Aga. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Foreign.

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[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking today with Hussein Aga and Robert Malley. They're former negotiators, both involved for many years in attempts to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Since the 1990s, the United States backed efforts to achieve what's called a two state solution in which Israel would exist side by side with a Palestinian state. That was the goal for a very long time. But in their new book, Tomorrow is Yesterday, Hussein Aga and Rob Malley look back and conclude that they and all the parties involved were part of a charade. Aga and Malley have come to the grim retrospective conclusion that there was never any way that a two state solution could fully satisfy either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Their historical and emotional grievances just ran too deep to overcome. We'll continue our conversation now. I did a long profile. Obviously I couldn't speak to him, but I tried to do a long profile of Yahya Sinwar, who was then the head of Hamas in Gaza. What was Sinwar trying to do on October 7th? Now that we've had in excess of 700 days to think about this.

[Hussein Aga]

There'S a Western and Israeli fantasy that Senwar was building this grand strategy of which October 7th was the trigger to get the region to be involved Hezbollah on another front and eventually lead to the end of Israel. This is nonsense. Sinwar, when he left prison.

[David Remnick]

Sinwar is in prison for two decades for killing Palestinians.

[Hussein Aga]

For a while, yes. But when he left the prison, he promised his comrades in prison that he will not forgive them and he will get to get ways of freeing them. So he thought we can kidnap more Israeli soldiers and trade them with prisoners. I think this is really is the core motivation for Sinwar for October 7, nothing more. He did not think that October 7 is going to liberate Palestine, quote, unquote. He's not stupid.

[David Remnick]

Do you agree with that, Rob? I mean, there's a great deal of evidence that the ambition on the part of Hamas was greater than that. There's a lot of evidence that Hamas feared a widening Abraham Accord in which Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, would normalize their relations with Israel while completely overlooking the fate of the Palestinians.

[Robert Malley]

I've not seen no evidence that that was the motivation. That that would really surprise me that the motivation was to stop normalization. That's not. I don't think that was announced by.

[David Remnick]

Hamas's own spokesman on Jeddah.

[Robert Malley]

Who are going to believe that argument that they make? Listen, I think certainly the fact that.

[David Remnick]

Hamas, that's their motivation. Why shouldn't they?

[Hussein Aga]

You have to read between the lines. This is not an issue where you can translate what they say into English and believe it. You have to resort to hermeneutics in the words of Habermas and Heidegger, where you have to interpret what they say, why they say it, not the content and the meaning of the words. And then you have to.

[David Remnick]

So why would they give it a grander interpretation even on the day?

[Robert Malley]

Because, I mean, that makes sense to give it a grand interpretation. I think what we say in the book is that it's a long standing Palestinian way of doing things, which is, yes, their goal is to liberate their comrades. That's what Palestinians have done, Fatah has done for many, many decades. Do they have the hope perhaps that this will be the trigger for something bigger? Of course. Now on the issue of normalization, my own view on this is certainly the.

[David Remnick]

Fact that the Palestinians, normalization, meaning Saudi.

[Robert Malley]

Arabia, the fact that the Palestinian issue was sort of being buried, that nobody was paying any attention to it, that formed part of the context within which Hamas hatches its plan. It's not so much, oh, we need to prevent Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing, but this is a way to remind the world that the Palestinians are not going anywhere.

[David Remnick]

Let's turn the clock back here a little bit, Hussein. You were both involved in intense negotiations that seemed very promising at the time. And the standard narrative in American political discourse and in Israeli political discourse was that there was a great opportunity in 2000 at Camp David and Yasser Arafat then the head of the PLO walked away from it. So what actually happened at Camp David in your view, when to this day Bill Clinton says they had it all and Yasser Arafat walked away from it.

[Hussein Aga]

Show me the deal that was offered in Camp David. Show me anything official that really can be construed as an offer that was rejected. They were ideas, they were like brainstorming. They used to go to Arafat and they say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And Arafat used to ask the President, is this the Israeli position? And he says, if you accept to them, I may get the Israelis to agree to them. It's not good enough for Al Fat because if he accepts them, he's already made the concessions in return for something which is vague and non existent at that stage.

[David Remnick]

Hussein, did Arafat want a deal?

[Hussein Aga]

Arafat is probably the only Palestinian leader ever who wanted a deal. I think the successors, they knew they could not deliver a deal. Don't forget the two state solution for a long time for the Palestinians was an act of treason. And Arafat single handedly almost single handedly, turned it into the objective of the national liberation movement of the Palestinians. Now you don't have a figure post Arafat who can transform the concessions that the Palestinians have to make into achievements.

[Robert Malley]

Hussein and I discussed, debated for a long time how much emphasis to give to Camp David in the book. And in the end we gave its proper due in part because of the point you made. I hear so many American politicians, some of whom I worked for, who say to this day the Palestinians could complain about what happened after October 7, but if only they had accepted no less an authority than Shlomo Ben Ami, Foreign Minister of Israel has said, if he had been in Arafat shoes, he never would have accepted, as Hussein said, the very vague promises that were made at Camp David because those would have amounted to a basic betrayal of the Palestinian cause in exchange for very little. You don't need to agree with them to recognize that for them accepting to move on from their aspiration, which is of all of Palestine. They believe that what happened in 1948 was, you know, that it was that they were dispossessed of their land. So when they accept the 1967 borders, all of the west bank and Gaza, that for them is a historic concession. They're then told, sorry, we're going to pocket that. Now you're going to make a concession on your concession. It's going to be 80 or 90% of the West Bank. You're not going to have the right to have your defense forces, you're not going to have control over your airspace, you're not going to have control over your borders, whatever it may be. So for the Palestinian, their own psyche, their emotions, this is about 1948 and the catastrophe, the nakba that they suffered. We can make similar arguments about why it was difficult for Israelis to accept a genuine Palestinian state. We could come to that. But on the Palestinian side, I think this notion, first of all because they rejected offers in the past, they only have what they deserve. I think we really need to be very careful playing Rob, from the Israeli.

[David Remnick]

Point of view, the antipathy toward the objection toward a potential Palestinian state, even on the basis of Camp David's suggestions, as you put it, was that the claims would not stop, that the violence would not stop. Can you address that?

[Robert Malley]

I mean, obviously that's one. It's also, and again, we write about it that today, at least from the Israeli, whether you accept their narrative or not, they feel they withdrew from Gaza, they get missiles, they withdrew from Lebanon, they get missiles. So they do have how do you address that from the Israeli perspective? By the same token, their yearning, their aspiration is for full security, full freedom, to feel like they could never be threatened again, which is hard to distinguish with full dominion. And that's very hard to achieve if you have a genuine sovereign Palestinian state. So what is really driving the two sides is very hard to accommodate. And within the confines of the two state solution, even assuming that there was ever any seriousness on the American side to try to make that happen.

[David Remnick]

Now, as I recall, Hussein, after the Summit collapsed in 2000, you drafted a proposal that you thought reflected the interests of both sides. It included a swap of territories. It recognized both sides claims to Jerusalem in some way. Why was your draft proposal more viable.

[Hussein Aga]

Than what we had? The proposal before? Camp David? When we went to Camp David, Barak refused to look at it.

[David Remnick]

And then Ehud Barak, the Prime minister at the time. Yeah, yeah.

[Hussein Aga]

So when we went, me and Rob, with this, a new formulation or a kind of trying to capture what happened in Camp David in a way that is agreeable to both parties. The Palestinians were not interested in looking at it because they thought they let us down. And then now they want to take us back again to discuss the same things we discussed before. And the moment had passed. And when the political moment had passed, then whatever agreement you have, it will not fly. The Intifada started slowly and the Israelis, with the Prime Minister Barak hit very hard against it, which accelerated it. And culturally they could not communicate because the Israelis, like the Americans, they have material matrix and that is its cost benefit analysis. It's like, this is good for you. You should take it. That's not how the passing is staying.

[David Remnick]

How do they think? How would you say they do?

[Hussein Aga]

They think in terms of their feelings, of their emotions, of their history, of things like dispossession, dispersal.

[David Remnick]

And how can they possibly be addressed?

[Hussein Aga]

Well, you need to have a new framework to refer to all these issues. And I don't have a blueprint. But I tell you, everybody who has a blueprint, this blueprint not only does not work, it leads to outcomes that aggravate the situation rather than try to solve them. October 7th and the war against Gaza is the outcome of 35 years of interaction and negotiation and engagement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

[David Remnick]

Well, here we are, two years later after this. And the reality is this. There are tens of thousands of Palestinians dying dead in Gaza. The infrastructure of Gaza is all but destroyed. Israel has moved increasingly to the right. Its sense of grief, resentment is intense. Other than assessing these realities and looking at them with both grief and clear sightedness. Where are we and what's even remotely possible? What's possible?

[Robert Malley]

I want to echo what Hussein just said. We're not in the prescription business. We were in that business. At least I was in that business for too long. Given that, the prescription, you feel humbled by this, to say the least. And I don't know. I mean, the first part is obviously to put an end to this war. And that means, you know, we're not there yet. We're not there yet. But the only way it's going to happen is if there are consequences that Israel incurs for continuing the war. And those consequences can't be European leaders saying that they're going to recognize a Palestinian state. It has to be consequences that make Israel think twice about continuing on the course. It's right. What would they do right now? Stop any military support? I mean, from an American perspective, but even from European, well, that would make the biggest difference. And that's where, if you want to go back because nobody expects it or few expect it from Trump, that's where the real indictment of the Biden administration stands to, on the one hand, say we need to end this war, but to continue to provide the weapons that fuel the war. That is a inconsistency, to put it mildly, that I don't think they'll ever be able to explain away. We have to think, not we, but Israelis and Palestinians are going to have to put on the table ideas that were there yesterday. Why did we call the book to Mars yesterday is because where we are today is very much where we were a decade, two decades, five, six decades.

[David Remnick]

Ago, only with thousands and thousands of people dead. True.

[Robert Malley]

But after the catastrophe of 1948, there were many. Palestinians were dead as well. So there are times of sort of pure naked violence where neither Israelis or Palestinians have a shared idea, not just a roadmap, but even what the destination should be. And where ideas that are rooted in the past, ideas such as a binational state or confederation or federation with Jordan, those are sort of on the more quote, unquote, promising side. And then ideas like annexation or ethnic cleansing, all those ideas, annexation and ethnic.

[David Remnick]

Cleansing seems to be exactly where we are.

[Robert Malley]

So if you ask me where I think we're headed, I think we're headed, unfortunately, towards a worsening of the situation with forms of ethnic cleansing and forms of annexation. Even if it's not formalized, it could be, it doesn't have to be. You don't have to announce annexation. It's happening Every day on the ground. At some point, one would hope Israelis and Palestinians will realize that they're going to. Neither side is really going to go away and they're going to have to find ways to coexist. And that's where some of the ideas of the past that were discussed among Israelis and Palestinians before the straitjacket of the two state solution took hold. Those ideas, one could only hope, will flourish again. But I'm not going to stand here and say, here's how we get and get from A to Z.

[David Remnick]

The focus on the hostages in the Israeli media is intense. Far less, needless to say, focus on Palestinian suffering in Palestine. In both the west bank and Gaza, everybody almost has lost multiple relatives, multiple friends in the sense of rage and grievance. No matter what their politics individually are, I have to think are going to be not just long lasting, but generational. How is a politics of any kind possible after that? Hussein, for a long time to come.

[Hussein Aga]

Before we get there, let's not forget about the Palestinian hostages that are in Israeli jails for some of them for decades without going through due process. And all of them, as some of the news that came out recently, have been subjected to all kind of inhuman practices and violation of their rights. There is this kind of monopoly of suffering of Israeli hostages. I'm totally against taking hostages, so let's make that clear. Your question is? I do not believe in the resolution of the conflict anymore. I think it's the kind of conflict that will not be resolved. I believe in arrangements. One idea, I know it's not very popular anymore. About a decade ago, Hamas suggested the.

[David Remnick]

Hudda, a truce with some conditions lasting a period of years.

[Hussein Aga]

Yeah. What if in these five years and 10 years we found out that we can coexist? You have to reach arrangements and arrangements not based on trust. You see, people say there is no trust between Israelis and Palestinians and that's one reason you don't have an agreement. I say no. Any agreement based on trust is very fragile. You cannot base agreements on trust. You have to base them on conditions and specifications that will ensure their permanence. But resolution, forget it. Not this generation, not next generation. Next generation is going to be much more radical than this generation.

[David Remnick]

On both sides.

[Hussein Aga]

On both sides.

[David Remnick]

What is Palestinian politics going ahead after this war ends?

[Hussein Aga]

It's not going to be very pleasant and it's not going to be very predictable as going to be a throwback to the past and thus the title of the book. It's going to go through a period of being Kind of the lost Palestinians looking for their objectives that make sense, looking for a political system that they can live within, looking for the leadership that represents them. Now, how long will that take? I don't know. Is there a blueprint for that? Definitely not. So it's not matter of blueprint. It's a matter of process that you cannot really pin down. You have to find clarity in the confusion. As Jean Luc Godard used to say.

[Robert Malley]

This is another of the legacies of the peace process, which is the state of Palestinian politics today. Because weakening the Palestinian Authority, that has been a trademark of the last, you know, 30 years. Keep isolating and excluding Hamas, even after Hamas won the elections that the Bush administration, George W. Bush had called for. They win the elections and then they become sanctioned and excluded, and then keeping the Palestinians divided between Fatah, Hamas and Kurd, enabling that division. All of that is part of the legacy of a process that was saying we're moving to a two state solution, so we want to keep Hamas out and we don't want to put too much pressure on Israel because we need their support for the two state solution which only weakens the Palestinian Authority. You're not going to have a peace between Israelis and Palestinians if you don't.

[Hussein Aga]

Have.

[Robert Malley]

A representative Palestinian national movement. It's just impossible to do that. So divided, impotent, feckless. That's the leadership with which you're going to negotiate something that's going to last. That's a contradiction in terms.

[Hussein Aga]

It's worse than that. Don't forget the political system in Palestine and the political parties in Palestine are parties of liberation, not parties of building a state. Unlike the Zionists, the Zionists wanted to build a Jewish state. Very clear, very straightforward, very successful. The Palestinians were not interested in governance. And governance was kind of came as an afterthought that, okay, now we have part of Palestine, we have to run it. And they were not good at it because they were not prepared for it.

[David Remnick]

Let's talk about Iran, because in the Israeli conversation, particularly about what's happened in the last two years, they saw, or certainly Netanyahu saw October 7th as something that was initiated by Hamas, but was part of the ring of fire concept that really what was behind this was Iran and that somehow October 7th would have ignited a holistic assault on Israel. How do you view what's happened there and what will happen? The effect of that be rob?

[Robert Malley]

It's a little bit strange for people to say this was all part of a plot that Iran was masterminding. When Iran Sat on its hands after October 7th for a long time.

[David Remnick]

And, well, some would say that Hezbollah is an extension of.

[Robert Malley]

But Hezbollah, as you said, it didn't go after Israel in the way that some people thought they might.

[David Remnick]

No, it wasn't full. It wasn't full.

[Robert Malley]

So if this was a plan, if there ever was a moment, and I'm not, you know, like you're saying what happened on October 7th, I would agree, was, you know, so it's horrible what happened to Israeli. So I'm not saying that this should have happened. But if the plan had been to really go after Israel, the time to do was October 8th. Right. Israel was at its weakest. So, you know, you could say maybe Iran was not in the loop, but still, what were they? You know, so they thought they were going to wait for some other day to launch operation. So that's what I'd say on that. I know Hussein. I knew he'd want to jump up on this.

[Hussein Aga]

And then Remnick is right about what the Iranian strategy was. It was to create a ring of fire. Definitely. That strategy was almost explicitly stated by Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian revolutionary leader who was killed by the Americans during Trump's first term. So that strategy was there, but what wasn't there was the coordination on the tactics.

[David Remnick]

Netanyahu, it is very clear that from his very emergence in politics, both in the United States and at the UN and then as a Knesset member, and then beginning in his first term as prime minister in the 90s, was out to achieve at least two things. One was to put the Palestinian question out of sight, and two was to make the focus on Iran that more than anything, his focus, even early speeches 25 years ago, 30 years ago, was about the peril of the Iranian nuclear program. And now the opportunity presented itself because the Israelis had knocked out Hezbollah to a great degree, and eventually.

[Robert Malley]

And the Iranian defenses and the Iranian air defenses.

[David Remnick]

So where are we now?

[Robert Malley]

So first, I think there I have to go back to what we were talking about earlier and the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration reached with Iran. I still believe that that was. If your real preoccupation was Iran acquiring a bomb, then that deal at least gave you the 10 years where you.

[David Remnick]

Could say a hudna, one could say.

[Robert Malley]

Not a bad term, and maybe more than 10 years where you could at least just not worry about it and try to see whether you could reach the next iteration of a deal. There was logic to that. The notion of throwing it out, which Benjamin Netanyahu convinced President Trump in his first term, to do that was completely at odds with the stated objective because, as we know, Iran accelerated its nuclear program than what they had prior to the agreement. And so it's hard for me to say, yes, this was all because of this obsession about the nuclear program. Because if that was really the concern, there were other ways, ways to deal with it than what they did. Now, where we are today. I have no doubt that Iran's nuclear program is far, far, far from what it was. It's degraded significantly. So I don't expect Iran is going to try to reconstitute its program anytime soon because it fears Israeli penetration, American intervention. But do they have this latent desire at some point to have the deterrent? I assume they have it more today than ever before.

[David Remnick]

Deterrence, you say?

[Robert Malley]

The nuclear weapon, for whatever purpose. Yes, Deterrence would be the one.

[David Remnick]

We could talk about this for hours and over time we obviously will. But right now where we are is extremely dark, extremely depressing, and there's no getting around it. And your book doesn't mince words about where we are. There's no jolly ending to your book. There's no blueprint for the future. And we have the president that we have who's suggested maybe in effect, further ethnic cleansing, voluntary, involuntary, and the construction of the Fontainebleau and the Riviera in Gaza. What possibly could the United States do to move things forward? Hussein?

[Hussein Aga]

Ask Rob first. He's the American.

[David Remnick]

Okay.

[Robert Malley]

Very hard to answer. Particularly in the immediate future. I'd say the main thing is do no harm, which probably means stay away, right?

[David Remnick]

I mean, there's never stay away, disengage.

[Robert Malley]

Of course, they're never going to completely stay away because they will be continued to support Israel. But it's hard for me to see something good coming out of any of these plans, some of which we're hearing about for Gaza, future of Gaza. My hope, if there is a hope in the US is more that in the future. Hussein spoke about the dynamic politics of Israel. US Politics on this issue have not been particularly dynamic from the time that I was a young man to today. But my new profession is teaching. I see students, I see how they are assessing the Israeli Palestine conflict, the US Role in it, how uncomfortable they feel with the moral hypocrisy, the compromises, the deceit you could imagine in American politics that will emerge in which you could start thinking about what America could do that would be positive. Very hard for me to see something coming out in the immediate future. But maybe Hussein is both more creative and optimistic than I am.

[Hussein Aga]

Hussein Yes, I think very important step that the Americans managed to carry out successfully lost during Trump's last tenure was the Abraham Accords.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, you're referring to the normalization agreements which they wanted to expand to Saudi Arabia and beyond.

[Hussein Aga]

And I think if the Palestinians can be incorporated in the Abrahamic Accords in the sense of if you want to have negotiations with Israel, the Palestinians would be part of a larger Arab delegation that would negotiate with Israel to make it worthwhile for Israel to see the returns of why it should make concessions to the Palestinians and to give the Palestinians the depth and support that they need and they don't have. That will be a positive move. So we have to take it back to its origins because the Palestinians don't have much to give to Israel in return and everything they tried to give in the past finished up not working out. Whether Hamas in Gaza or the PA in the West Bank, I don't see any, any hope or any future in any kind of bilateral Israeli Palestinian engagement. And I see that the consequences of the Abraham Accords have not been fully made use of as yet, and they have great potential to be something much more than what they are.

[David Remnick]

The book is Tomorrow as Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine. Hussein Aga, Robert Malley, thank you so much.

[Robert Malley]

Thanks, David.

[Hussein Aga]

Thanks, David.

[David Remnick]

You can read an excerpt from Hussein aga and Robert Malley's important book@New Yorker.com it's an essay called what Killed the Two State Solution? And of course you can subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com I'm David Remnick and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

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