3 Takeaways - A Former Israeli Foreign Minister Discusses The War With Hamas And What It May, And May Not, Achieve (#171)

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

As war rages between Israel and Hamas, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami shares some remarkable insights about the encirclement of Israel by well-armed Iranian proxies; the possibility the war will spread; the rise of antisemitism in America and Europe; and a possible path to peace. Don’t miss this important conversation.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another Three Takeaways episode. Today, I'm excited to be with former Foreign Minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami. Minister Ben-Ami had a leading role in the 2000 Camp David peace talks that

almost led to a historic peace. I'm excited to find out how he sees the future of Israel and the Middle East. Welcome, Shlomo, and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today. You're welcome, Lynn. Thank you for this invitation. It is my pleasure. Shlomo, you have seen what's happened in Israel. You just mentioned the videos taken from the Hamas cameras. What was it like? Well, I didn't see it because most people in Israel didn't see it. It's too horrific to watch. And it was sent seemingly to people in the international media or decision makers in different countries. But the verbal descriptions are truly heartbreaking. The way that 1,400 people were assassinated, they were tortured, their bodies were mutilated,

young girls were raped and shot immediately after. These kind of things that we get from the descriptions, the verbal descriptions, but I'm not sure that this is something that Israelis want to see. One, of course, wonders about the purpose of all of it. I thought that the purpose in terms of the objectives of Hamas was not a war in order to launch a political process, the kind of things that say, just for the sake of comparison, Sadat did. I mean, he did a war in 1973 against Israel because he wanted to activate a peace process that was frozen. That is not the purpose. I mean, Hamas doesn't see itself as part of a political solution.

They say very clearly then in their covenant, it says that the objective is to obliterate the state of Israel. It's not one of having a political deal with Israel. How is this attack by Hamas different? It is different in its magnitude. It's different in its barbarism. Nothing before was experienced in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is more similar than what you saw in America with 9-11, only that here, proportionally, that was even bigger. So in that sense, the shock was tremendous. And the shocks should explain, in a way, the reaction of the Israelis, of the Israeli government. I think, however, that

there are additional reasons that need to be considered when trying to understand why Israel has launched this war. It's not just a reaction to the massacre, it goes beyond it. There is a strategic objective here. Iran has managed to encircle Israel with militias, some of which has the firepower of armed nation states, such as Hezbollah, with its 150,000 missiles, many of them of high precision. So you have in the north Hezbollah, this is Iran. You have in the south Hamas and Islamic Jihad, this is Iran. You have in Syria Shiite Jihad. This is Iran. You have in Syria, Shiite militias. This is Iran. You have in the West Bank, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

And you have in Iraq and you have in Yemen. So Israel has been encircled. The sense here is, at least the military sense of the operation goes beyond a response to Hamas massacre. It is also an attempt to remove a vital link in the ring. I think that the war needs to be understood also in this perspective. What do you see as the biggest issues facing Israel today? The more immediate issues are for everybody to see, and that is release of the hostages, bringing an end to the war, devising a political endgame, not just the destruction of Hamas that might or might not be achieved. That's still not clear. And there are more long-term issues for the divide within Israeli society between the more liberal Israel and Orthodox communities, the messianic settlers in the occupied territories, and also the integration, the fuller integration of the Arab minority

within Israel into the mainstream of the economy. I think that much progress can be seen, but we need to upgrade the deal that Israel offers to its Arab minority. And finally, to have a constitution. Politically, Israel needs to have a framework of rules, political, social, human rights issues. All of this needs to be enshrined in a binding constitution. When you talk about full rights for the minority Arabs that are in Israel? Can you be more specific? What rights do they not have now that they should have? Well, for example, since 1948 to this day, not even one new Arab village was created, whereas the country is blooming with new Jewish settlements, new Jewish cities.

So provide lands for the expansion of Arab life within Israel. So this is just one thing that I can mention. But again, practice is more equal than people tend to think. But it is important to enshrine things in a constitution and in a law. We share a common destiny with the Arab minority. And this common destiny is an invitation for equal, unconditional rights. Now, it is true that they do not have the same obligations. They do not serve in the military because we do not want them to go into this internal crisis of being in a military that is at war or in a state of conflict with their people on the other side of the border, which is fine.

But the French Revolution taught us that rights do not depend on obligations. Rights are a given. If a minority or an individual have some obligations that it does not respect, then the legal system should take care, the judicial system should take care. But obligations and rights are not connected vessels. They exist independently. How do you think that the attack by Hamas will change Israel? Could it unify the country? Wars normally unite people.

The problem, peace divides them more, you know, because everybody wants peace, but they think that this is a free lunch and you don't have to pay a price. And therefore, people tend to be more divided in times of peace than in times of war. What we are seeing now is overwhelming mobilization of Israeli society, not only by the recruitment of the reserves, about 350,000 people have been recruited, in addition to the regular army. You see many, many people volunteering, in fact, feeling devoid that this ineffective, incompetent and corrupt government that we have here has created. The response of civil society has been much more effective and practically overwhelming, really, you can see throughout the country. And the government hasn't yet responded really to the

needs of those that were affected by the war. When terrorists attacked the United States on 9-11 and killed over 3,000 Americans, it led the U.S. to attack Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, when terrorists infiltrated India from Pakistan and killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, including people at two luxury hotels. India did nothing. It never retaliated militarily against either Pakistan or the terrorist camps. On October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel, killing at least 1,400 Israelis and taking several hundred hostages. Could Israel have done nothing after the Hamas attack? I think that there is a difference here. Israel is probably the only

country in the world whose very physical existence is under threat. The countries in our neighborhood have a problem of regime survival. That's what matters to them, not state or nation survival. Israel has a problem. I never took, I must admit, I never took very seriously this discourse about Israel being an existential threat. Now I do. It changed my mind. What happened on October 7th and the possibility that a great part of the country

could be neutralized by a surprise attack, that we saw it in the south. Now you see refugees in Gaza moving away from urban centers to the south of the Gaza Strip. But Israel also has its own internally displaced civilians. Here in this house, we live in central Israel. We had, until a few days ago, my sister, her two daughters, granddaughters or grandsons living here because she was evacuated

from northern Israel. She lives just adjacent to the border in a place called Kiryat Shmona. So people were evacuated from along the borders of Gaza. They were evacuated from the north. So the sense that if, for example, Hezbollah joins the conflict, this would be a cataclysmic reality because these people have capabilities that is far beyond what Hamas has. So I do take seriously now, and many people like me, those from the center or the left of center, lefties, take seriously the possibility that such a cataclysm can happen. And in that way, it moved the Israelis more to the center and perhaps even to the right.

Not necessarily the kind of Netanyahu right, but yes, standing behind the army, standing behind the need to defend ourselves, standing behind the need to convey a message to the militias that surround Israel, that we will respond as effectively as we can. Because yes, there is a feeling that the question of physical survival is a real one. What do you think that Israel can accomplish with its invasion of Gaza? I am not sure that it can accomplish militarily the objective that we hear about of eliminating Hezbollah. Maybe they will be able to diminish its military capabilities. Hamas is a natural growth of Arab societies. It's an idea, it's a reality, and it will reappear somewhere else. If you

win in Gaza, they exist also in the West Bank. So militarily, we might not achieve, I guess, the objective. What worries me is that this government has launched this war without having a political objective. Hamas, of course, attacked civilians in Israel. Hamas did not attack the Israeli military. Can Israel attack just Hamas in Gaza without attacking civilians, without harming civilians? Is that possible? I think, frankly, this is impossible. I think that these are the kind of wars that we have these days.

The Israeli military has an experience in the grand, elegant maneuvers in the desert of tank brigades, this sort of stuff. This is how we changed the course of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. But now this is a battlefield totally different. Today, that kind of elegant wars and glorious victories do not exist anymore. Nobody wins this kind of war simply because in the asymmetric wars of today, the battlefield is urban centers. The weaker side, or the supposedly weaker side, has always a tactical advantage because it is surrounded or displayed amidst the civilian population. The Americans saw it in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are not winnable wars. I mean, you can never win these kinds of wars. Shlomo, as Israel's foreign minister, you had a leading role at the Camp David peace talks, which many view as the closest that Israel and the Palestinians have ever come to a lasting peace. What would need to happen now for there to be peace? What we saw now is a war that can possibly bring about a change of government in Israel, a change of government that will create, inevitably, a peace process again, that I truly hope would lead to some kind of a solution. Although right now we have two sort of end games. The more immediate political end game is what would happen in Gaza, much depends on what would happen in Gaza, whether the PA, the Palestinian Authority, can extend its rule to include the Gaza Strip.

If this happens, there would have to be a political price paid by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in the form of a political process with a wider horizon of a political solution. These are the things that are the ideal things that can happen in order to relaunch the chances of a political solution. These are the things that are the ideal things that can happen in order to relaunch the chances of a peaceful solution. Before I ask for the three takeaways that you would like to leave the audience with today, is there anything else you'd like to mention? What should I have asked you that I did not? I would like to mention that this crisis of confidence that we have with the progressive left that goes far beyond this particular conflict. And that is the sense that Jewish communities throughout the West suddenly feel the shadow of Kristallnacht

looming on their communities with mass demonstrations, pro-Palestinian demonstrations, calling the Jews back to the gas. These are slogans that were heard. So this is a crisis that I see as one of the saddest consequences of the current war. So this is one thing that I thought I should perhaps underline. Shlomo, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? One is the urgency of a political solution. This can't go anymore like this. Cycles of wars, the threat of an extension of the war to other parties. This will endanger not only Israel, but also its allies. It will draw its allies into a broader conflict that nobody wants.

So this is one, the urgency of a political solution. The second is keep the Jews of the diaspora out of this conflict. You have a conflict with Israel. You have a conflict with Zionism. You're welcome. We will debate it. We will discuss it with you. But keep the Jews out of this conflict.

This is a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It's not a conflict between Jewish communities abroad. They need to be secure. They have chosen not to live in Israel. They are citizens of America. They are like any other American. They stood at the forefront of many of the most advanced and progressive causes in America. And there is no reason why they should be targeted by this hate campaign that we see in different places in America and Europe. So this is the second thing that I would add. What could be the third? Well, I would say that the Abraham Peace Accords, the peace accords between Israel and different Arab states needs to be maintained, needs to be salvaged from the current conflict

and hopefully extended, but with one condition. It should be used as a regional framework for a possible solution of the Palestinian problem. That the Palestinians are right in seeing the Abraham Peace Accords as something that ignores their plight, because it is a peace that is being done, being made between Israel and its Arab neighbors without a condition of solving the Palestinian problems. So if we have this framework right now, we need to extend it, consolidate it, but use it at the same time as a platform for a solution of the Palestinian problem. Thank you, Shlomo. You're welcome, Lynn.

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