Ideas - Is the two-state solution dead?

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

As a former negotiator of the Oslo Accords for Israel, British-Israeli author and analyst, Daniel Levy, has both a diagnosis and a prescription for the land he refers to as Palestine-Israel. He says the two-state solution is “spent” and argues we need new ideas about how Israelis and Palestinians can co-exist peacefully.

The Powering Politics Podcast is available six times a week, but you might not be. If you want to catch up on what happened this week in politics, join me, Laura Dangelow and some of Canada's most tuned-in political strategists to break down the week that was. Short on time, the weekly wrap has you covered with a new episode every Saturday. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. There's nothing discreet or subtle about the goal. of definitively ending the Palestinian question and removing the Palestinians. Daniel Levy thinks current conditions make a Palestinian future in the West Bank and Gaza impossible.

So one scenario, which I take seriously, and there's questions of timeline due to it fast, due to it slow, is Gaza isn't the end of this. But the British Israeli author and analyst, former advisor to Israeli prime ministers, and a negotiator of the Oslo, Accords, the process that was meant to end in a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians isn't ready to give up. Personally, I think that the old two-state model is probably spent. So we've one assumes that Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews are part of the future. We're not talking zero-sum and that two states has failed. We have to expand our political imagination to going back to the idea

of how do we coexist in this space, which sounds fantastical? Daniel Levy says, despite the horrors and the setbacks of recent years, there is a way through. He has both a diagnosis and a prescription for the land he refers to as Palestine, Israel. What I want to try and touch on tonight, and spoiler alert, it's not a very happy story. Where are we now? How did we get here on Palestine, Israel specifically? What are the scenarios going forward? Along with my conversation with Daniel Levy, you'll hear excerpts from his recent talk at Carlton University's Michael Bell annual lecture. The reality in Gaza today is of a territory over 55%, some question is it 58, is it 60, 56 percent of that territory is directly under the control of the Israeli military.

the rest remains nominally under the control of the previous Hamas-led governing authority. Israel has continued to expand that since, people may remember there was a yellow line drawn in the 20-point plan cooked up by the neighboring administration in Washington, D.C. But 48 military outposts have been established, many taking on a sense of permanence. People are treated to PowerPoint presentations, which include images of gleaming future visions of Gaza with tall towers. But while we're treated to those presentations, the reality is that even tents have not been allowed in during the winter, tent poles being considered as a dual use item and therefore strictly prohibited under the absolute control that Israel still maintains. in the Gaza perimeter. And what I don't think is sufficiently absorbed into our thinking regarding the future

is that in many respects, Gaza is done. You say at the end of this section of your lecture, in many respects, Gaza is done. What did you mean by that? If one looks at the level of destruction, the collapsing of kind of the entirety of the infrastructure, Then one can marvel at the resilience of the population in Gaza. They'd gone back to areas that were destroyed to hulls of what were their former homes, been displaced again and again, gone back again.

Let's also remember that this is primarily a population that was displaced from what is now Israel in the Nakhba, in what's known as the Nakhba, in what's known as the, the catastrophe in the expulsion of Palestinians on Israel's creation. These are them and more often their descendants. So although we've seen this attachment to the land, I think we have to acknowledge that this isn't something that gets rebuilt any time soon. It's not intended to be livable for Palestinians. The idea is that this won't be a place that can sustain a reasonable life for a long time.

In fact, already close to a decade ago, the UN puts out a report suggesting this is long before October 23, the subsequent devastation. The UN puts out a report suggesting Gaza won't be Liverpool. The pictures we see of gleaming towers of the future Gaza put out by Jared Kushner and the Board of Peace, these are fantasy land. So one has to factor in to a future for the expanse of Israel, Palestine, where unless one is talking about what some in Israel have openly suggested should happen, which is. the physical removal of Palestinians, the attempts to encourage Palestinians to go to third countries, the occasional floating of the can we push them over the border into Egypt. Unless one is going down that path, I think this opens up a big question of if we don't see Gaza as this trapped, isolated enclave, but as part of an expanse that covers what is today Israel, the West Bank,

and Gaza, we have to think about how both peoples are going to live in this space. And the obliteration of Gaza, in some ways, opens up questions that probably needed to be on the table anyway. So what would it look like, Dan and Levy, to sufficiently absorb, in your words, all of this into our thinking regarding the future? Personally, I think that the old two-state model is probably spent. Today you have a Jewish settler population illegally there under international law, but numbering upward of half a million in the West Bank, it seems, quarter of a million in East Jerusalem. That's a lot of people. You have two million mostly displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

you have an inability to accept the idea of Palestinian sovereign statehood, even on the mini state of 22% of the land that the Palestinians, under the then PLO leadership, were willing to sign up for in Oslo, and apparently the PA-PLO leadership of today is still willing to do, but that Israel has categorically rejected. So if one looks for alternatives to a zero-sum outcome, that either this is going to be the land of greater Israel, or it's going to be the land of Palestine without Israeli Jews. And by the way, more people are articulating the greater Israel without Palestinians and certainly people in positions of power than are articulating the alternative. but if we're not thinking zero sum,

if we're saying that there's an important Palestinian historian, Professor Rashid Khalidi, who was at Columbia retired recently, author of a number of important works. And he said, look, even if this, of course, leans into the idea that it is, is a settler colony. There is a permanence and an attachment to this land now of the Israeli Jewish community. And that is part of the future. So we've one assumes that Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews are part of the future.

We're not talking zero sum and that two states has failed. We have to expand our political imagination to going back to the idea of how do we coexist in this space, which sounds fantastical. I want to own that upfront right now against the backdrop of everything that has happened for decades and certainly everything that has happened in the last two and a half years, much harder for Palestinians to envision living with Israeli Jews, much harder for Israeli Jews to envision living with Palestinians. I don't think it's something that can be achieved in the short term.

I don't think separation and two states that delivers on basic Palestinian needs could be realized in the short time either. So I think we have to think in terms of the struggle for equality to overturn a regime of, I'm going to use a term that I wish wasn't as factually accurate a description as it is, but a regime of Jewish supremacy. And maintaining a regime of Jewish supremacy in which small Palestinian Bantu stands are carved out, I don't think either addresses the questions is, really Jews have to ask themselves and the changes they have to go through, nor what is needed for Palestinians. Daniel Levy was a negotiator for Israel in 1995 at the second of the two Oslo Accord discussions that were supposed to establish a framework for moving Israel and the Palestinians to lasting peace. I'd like to bring our audience along with you to understand how you arrive

at the end of the two-state solution, but also this kind of vision. that you are articulating now. And I want to go back to that time that you referenced Oslo days. You know, you spent many years as a negotiator for the peace process between Israel and Palestinians, and of course, hindsight is 2020. But how do you think about that time now?

Was there actually back then a real sense that it was leading to something sustainable? There are obviously many ways of looking back at Oslo. Some on each side see it as a, a betrayal, a devastating wrong turn. Others view it as something that was well-intentioned, but got pushed off track, and then you can go down the blame game route

as to who pushed it off track. And I think many, especially on the, who have studied this from a Palestinian critique, are convinced Nala that this was a premeditated Israeli effort to reorganize the parameters of the occupation. First in Tifada, that's a Palestinian popular uprising, union, civil society groups, take to the streets no longer are willing to cooperate with what had then been in the late 80s, a 20-year Israeli occupation. Israel responds with great violence. Its reputation is not looking great internationally.

And Israel, there's a feeling inside Israel that this is a festering problem that cannot be ignored away any longer. That the country is being held back from achieving the next stage in its story if it doesn't address this. And so you have a set of agreements, a set of negotiations between Israel and the PLO, which were supposed to kickstart a five-year interim period, at the end of which you would address all the outstanding issues between Israelis and Palestinians. The most difficult issues, yeah. That borders, Jerusalem, what happens to Palestinian refugees, security issues. settlements. That expiry date of five years is in May of 1999. So just for people to understand,

we're still supposedly, by the way, no Israeli government operates as if there is still an Oslo. But we're still supposedly in a process which hit its expiry date over a quarter of a century ago. The reality today is of a much more entrenched Israeli matrix of control of a Palestinian limited self-governance structure which works for the Israelis more than it works for the Palestinians. It does security for Israelis, not for Palestinians and many other things like that, which is absolutely dependent in terms of its economy and in every other respect on Israel and which has effectively suppressed and, And really consumed in many respects the formal Palestinian national movement. That's part of the story of why Hamas is so strong because the people who went down the path of nonviolence negotiations, diplomacy, the Fattah PILO leadership, have been left out to dry. They've achieved so little for their people. And then the question is, was that by design?

was that premeditated? Did that address the problem for Israel of going to its next stage of successes, let's say, off the back of Oslo, Israel's international relations improved massively. Israel, of course, already had a separate peace with Egypt, but then it makes, it does its peace deal with Jordan, it manages to establish informal relations with a number of Arab states. Well, what do you think you were there? I don't want to be deterministic. I absolutely understand and have a lot of of sympathy with the this was inevitable critique, but I also can't do the counterfactual in history of what if Rabin, for instance, the Israeli leader at the time, had not been assassinated

in November of 1995. I can quote the speeches that Rabin gave where he still didn't accept a Palestinian state, even in the midst of Oslo and on the eve of his own killing, and he talked in terms that probably didn't leave much room for an outcome that could address Palestinian needs. But he had changed once already. So was he taking Israel on a journey? I can understand for sure the idea that partition would not have addressed the injustice committed to the Palestinian refugees in the Nakhba, nor would it have addressed whether the Zionism can normalize, whether Zionism is capable of accepting Palestinians as equals? I really am trying to get at the sense of whether there was actual optimism about the process that was ongoing at the time.

And maybe this is one way of doing it through the lecture that you provided. You knew the late Michael Bell, the former Canadian ambassador to Jordan, Israel, and later Egypt. and the lecture's namesake, you know, maybe explain a little bit of what was possible for players like him in the efforts that were ongoing at the time. And people were spending many human hours working on this intractable conflict. What was possible then that isn't possible now? And that's why partly I am reluctant to accept the idea in totality that, of course, there was only one outcome. Of course there was only one direction this could go in. Because there was genuine optimism. People thought maybe this could change. People also looked around

them. Remember it was a moment, a bit like we're in now. It was a moment also of geopolitical fluidity globally. It was after the Cold War, tectonic plates were shifting. Things were happening in South Africa. Things were happening in Northern Ireland and things were happening in Israel, Palestine. And there were diplomats who were really hyperactive, who were seeing opportunities. So Canada at the time was involved on a number of issues. Canada was the gavel holder on the question of refugees. Some really serious work was done in terms of, what would a kind of 360 degree solution or way forward on refugees that wasn't just on the terms of the more powerful party of Israel that wouldn't just say, listen, if there's going to be a resolution, Palestinians have to accept that there's no

return. It had to be more sophisticated than that. That couldn't be the, the entirety of the outcome. But I also don't want to suggest that it was just this small cohort of professional peace processes who were getting... I don't think it is a distortion of what was going on there to say that alongside the skepticism and alongside some very trenchant critiques of what was going on, some of which, of some of some subsequently been proven true. People felt maybe something better can come along. And I will immediately stimmy my own hopeful tone.

By remembering that there were more bumps than smooth roads traveled. There was settlements continued. They never stopped. The structural violence. of the Israeli military occupation continued, it never stopped. Palestinian resistance continued, it never stopped. There were horrific moments. Also, there was the period of suicide bombings.

Yes. There was periods of great destruction for Palestinians. There were closures imposed, which hadn't been imposed before, separating Palestinian town from town. So very soon it became clear that you can't, build confidence. You can't actually carry forward a sense of progress if the overall reality that people are living in is still one so defined by conflict and for Palestinians, one still defined by an aggressive, intrusive, rights and freedom denying occupation. And that was

the reality. And at the time, one way out was to say, well, let's rush, don't do five years. Let's go straight to so-called final status. But the traffic couldn't bear it. And in particular, I think you just have to acknowledge, in particular, Israel hadn't made the decision that it was actually going to divest itself even of the 67 occupation, let alone that it was ready to address the 1948 issues and Nukba, etc. As the most powerful party, it was really in Israel's hands to decide what direction this took. I don't want to deny Palestinian agency in saying that, but I want to acknowledge asymmetries of power. That could, of course, have been massively impacted by the outside.

I want to pick up on exactly that point, because that asymmetry is something you talk about a lot in today's context. In remarks to the UN last year, and again in this lecture at Carlton University, you highlighted what you called two major things. One is what you described as zero-sum thinking on the part of the Israeli government, along with what you described as kind of a general lack of recognition internationally of this power symmetry between Israel and Palestinians. Is there any better understanding today in your estimate of how these dynamics impact the prospects of a negotiated settlement? I'm hesitating, Nala, because I fear that today we may be in an even worse situation. looking back on it now what oslo did was it allowed israel to have the make-believe of pursuing peace while having the reality of entrenching occupation and going to the next level which which was the entrenchment of of a reality that has now been defined not just by palestinian groups but by israel's human rights organizations beths, Elam Mniesh Din, by the Blue Chip International Human Rights Organizations, Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch, by the International Court of Justice in its July 2024 findings as a reality of apartheid. So Israel was able to expand its international footprint, go to the next level in terms of becoming this high-tech power. Israel is more powerful today. The Palestinians are more divided and weak today, politically, and it is more difficult to envisage the outside, weighing in and putting its thumbs on the scales of how do we bridge that gap of asymmetry. I want to ask you about Donald Trump's Board of Peace. The board is named in the UN Security Council's resolution on the Gaza peace plan. Palestinian leadership is divided on it. Israel endorses and it has a seat on the board.

You have your ear to the ground. What are the experts like yourself who grappled with the nuance and the intricacies for years really think about this board? If I can simplify and probably do an injustice to the so-called community of experts,

broadly speaking, I divide that into two camps. One, who are still operating in the peace process, paradigm would, as they have done throughout, would say, how can we make the most of this? Yeah, it has its limitations, but, you know, maybe you can get a bit more stuff into Gaza. Maybe you can get a bit of self-governance. Maybe you can keep the Americans interested by moving this along and then they might hold Israel back from doing its worst in the West Bank.

Then, and it's probably self-evident that that's not where I am, then there's another camp which is really just dismissing this as the intentionally continued management of an appalling reality that it is. When the Board of Peace was proposed as something that was just about Gaza, when Trump announces 20-point plan, the plan is incoherent. Gaza today, Palestinians are still killed every day. The Israeli hostages, the Israelis held in Gaza, living and dead were released. That is obviously huge for the individuals concerned, for their families.

Some of the Palestinian bodies being held by Israel were returned, many once. Some Palestinian prisoners being held often in detention without trial, Israel were released. Most weren't. Israel still occupies 60% of God. So the idea that this is a ceasefire isn't of itself incorrect. But the idea that a board of peace could be something constructive was something that people were willing to sign up for because it was just about Gaza and Palestinians. And it was even embedded in a UN Security Council resolution. As soon as Trump in Davos launches the Board of Peace and says, well, this is going to be for everything and pay a billion dollars and you can join. Suddenly, many countries and most of America's Western allies said, wait, what do you mean?

You might use this Ukraine or Greenland? If this is something for the Palestinians, well, we're used to treating them as a lesser people. They're brown people who, that doesn't feature for us. So we can go along with it. But now you're talking that this could be something you use in Europe. Heaven forbid. We're not going to come along with it. We're not. showing up. And I think that tells you everything about the uns seriousness and the illegitimacy. This is not a legitimate body. It's the UN, by the way, voting away its own role. It's a terrible act of self-harm. There's no transparency to it. If you read the charter of the board, it exists at the goodwill of one individual. So I think this is absolutely the

the continuation of the system of control that Israel has in place and of the denial of Palestinian basic rights and freedoms. That is analyst, author and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy. Our conversation includes excerpts from his talk at the Michael Bell Annual Lecture at Carlton University. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. On Big Lives, we take a six. single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, little Richard.

And we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Rite. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. Today we bear witness to an extraordinary act in one of history's defining dramas, a drama that began in the time of our ancestors when the word went forth from a sliver of land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1993, chairman of the PLO Iasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin flanked U.S. President Bill Clinton on the South. lawn of the White House. Minutes later, they signed the first of two interim agreements known as the Oslo Accords. The ceremony marked the beginning of a process meant to lead finally to a peace treaty. Now the efforts of all who have labored before us bring us to this moment. A moment when we dare to pledge what for so long seemed difficult even to imagine that the security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people, and there will be more security and more hope for all.

The Oslo era was marked by high hopes for a two-state solution, but there was skepticism among Palestinians and Israelis. The Oslo Accords set out a five-year timeline for a final agreement on the thornyest issues. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat went on. to share a Nobel Peace Prize, quote, for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. More than a quarter century later, not only are the thornyest issues outstanding, conditions have never been worse. This is our topic of conversation with analyst, author, and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy. You have been quite critical, heavily critical

of attempts at, you know, quote-unquote making peace. Last year you described the ongoing negotiations as, quote, the refuge of scoundrels who want to maintain the status quo. And coming from someone who was once involved in negotiations to attain some kind of peace, you know, those words lend heavily. And I wonder why? Why did you describe it that way? Sadly, that is what the parameters of talks have become. And that's the worst thing because the whole point is one needs an alternative to violence. The worst thing is war. So you need diplomacy.

You need negotiations. You need talks. So when you have no serious structure to address things politically. And that is precisely what we have. No serious structure. The premise of talks at the moment are, how do you rearrange the things? deck chairs on the Titanic when it comes to the Palestinians. Which particular accoutrement accessory do you want to place on this apartheid structure?

That's never going to be the way you can get out of these things. So what we desperately need is to get into a path where serious politics can address the serious issues. I don't think that will happen as long as the headline is Israeli impunity. We've got to go back to how we can live in this space as two national communities, or we're going to continue down a path where it's one at the expense of the other. I want to dig into that a bit more, but I do want to, since you raised the conflict that we're, the ongoing conflict that's happening right now, I wanted to actually just go back in time a bit to 20 years ago at the outset of the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006.

I covered that war from the Lebanon side. And I remember when the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, called the violence, quote, birth pangs of a new Middle East. Is what we're seeing today in the region still birth pangs, or is this new violent reality what's been born? I think Nala that it is in significant measure what was born, in particular if one looks at Israel and Lebanon. Remember that war happens just six years after Israel has finally ended an 18-year occupation of South Lebanon. So I think what we saw was after the Cold War, when you had this interregnum of American primacy, and you had Oslo, you eventually settled down into, I think, what we could call a Paxamericana. And you have the Iraq War, of course.

And that was, you know, this in a way was a continuation of that. It's the same, it's the same Bush to administration. And the Pax Americana with the Iraq War and the deployment of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, an American presence in the region meant that Israel had tremendous freedom of movement, it had a tremendously permissive environment in which it could operate, whether against the Palestinians or in Lebanon, but there were also certain restraints because America had Arab state allies and things could become very uncomfortable for them. And so Israel occasionally had to be reigned back in. And if you remember, part of the birth pangs of the new Middle East was Palestinian elections, which happened the same year in 2006.

Six. Where Hamas come out with the most seats. And suddenly it was, wait, this democracy wasn't supposed to bring. reduce that outcome. And as the Palestinians try and respond to that, create a unity government, as they should, suddenly conditions are imposed. Net conditions not imposed on Israel in terms of what the Palestinians would have to do vis-à-vis Israel. And there's an attempt at a coup. This whole division between the West Bank and Gaza politically, of course, anyway, it's geographically divided. That's the outcome of Nakhba. But this whole political division comes from an attempt to the coup. This whole division between the West Bank and Gaza politically, of course, of course, anyway, it's geographically divided. That's the outcome of Nakhva. But this whole political division comes from an attempt. attempt to reverse those elections. So America, first of all, says, okay, we get it. Democracy wasn't a very good idea. But if you fast forward, what I think we have seen in the last two and a half years is the end of Pact's Americana. Partly because the world is changing. We don't live in a unipolar world. We live in an increasingly multipolar world. One of the fascinating

things about the attack on Iran is how unpopular it is in America from day one. America does not go to war with such a divided politics and public, except now under this administration, partly because Americans had been there, had seen what wars in the Middle East do to America, to its economy, for instance, and didn't want that anymore. So I think we've moved into, we have now definitively moved into, an era in which Israel is trying to replace Pax Americana with greater Israel, with Pax greater Israel. I grew up in the UK, I moved to Israel, I became Israeli, served in the military, then went into the political side there, worked with leading Israeli politicians in the 90s,

ended up working in the Prime Minister's office during my military service on the negotiations, then going back into the negotiations. I don't know. I can't speak to the intentionalities of the people I worked with, and I can't speak to the counterfactual of what if Robin hadn't been assassinated or what if certain other things hadn't happened. Was the intention of Oslo all along to set a trap for the Palestinians? I understand that from the perspective of a quarter of a century and more later, it's very easy to draw the conclusion that anyone who doesn't see it that way would be terribly naive, but I don't

want to fall into the trap of being deterministic in that respect. I think this could have gone in different directions. The reality is, though, that by failing to address the power asymmetry, which is at the core of any conflict of occupier and occupied, of settler colonial and native, by failing to address that, this kind of an outcome was made all the more likely. And perhaps it was a naive Palestinian assumption to say that a peace process in, let's remember geopolitically, this is a unipolar era in the 90s, the outcomes in Northern Ireland and South Africa look very different. So maybe it wasn't so naive to assume that external sponsorship of a process which assumed an outcome of at least partition into something that could be viably considered

a Palestinian state would work out. As soon as you fed that through the of, but we're not willing to pressure Israel. We will continue to put our thumbs down on the scale which exacerbates rather than closes the asymmetry. As soon as it was clear that those were the rules of the road, I think the direction of travel, even if not the details of the outcome, were quite predictable. There's a history during Oslo of violence, whether that's the violence of the targeting of Israeli civilians during waves of attacks, whether that's the violence of seizure of land and settlements or the daily violence of occupations and closure. One can be against that violence while simultaneously acknowledging not as a justification

when it comes to violence from the Palestinian side, but as a reality that decades of dispossession and occupation and structural violence from the Israeli side are unlikely to lead to security for Israelis, which if I bring that fast forward to today, what you have today is almost, and I spoke to it when I mentioned those votes in Parliament over UNRWA. There was another vote in the Israeli parliament. I think it was 18 odd months ago. Totally gratuitous, put forward by the Israeli Prime Minister, that there can be no Palestinian state, a declarative bill. You were, and maybe you still see yourself, although I don't want to speak for you.

but you were part of the Israeli establishment at one point. But then you went on to sound a warning about Israeli policies and the states moved towards, as you describe it, non-democracy. What were you seeing and hearing from the inside that pushed that shift for you? So I worked in the establishment, I think as someone who had been a relatively newcomer as a Brit. I'm not sure I was part of the establishment. I think I was conscious of democracy not. Really being inclusive when it came to the non-Jewish citizenry of Israel.

What we see today is a threat to, as many Jewish Israelis perceive it, as a threat to, I'll use my words, as Jewish democracy, which is this whole Datenyahoo judicial overhaul, which was taking many people out into the streets to protest before October 7th. What I saw was a system that was apparently structurally included. capable of accepting Palestinian equality inside the recognized borders of Israel, let alone in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. And there were things that I witnessed inside government committees I sat on. By the way, often with a combination of people who were exasperated by that reality and people who were committed to maintaining that reality.

People who wanted to challenge it and people who wanted to perpetuate it. And things were, it was often tangential to, yeah, that was the subtext, not the text. But experiencing that and experiencing the inability of the system to be able to navigate these questions differently, obviously led to a questioning of what is the superstructure? What is holding this together? And what about now in this moment? How receptive are Israelis inside Israel and outside, of course, to your message that the state is sliding towards non-democracy? Well, like I say, I don't think you can call a state that maintains an occupation of its near neighborhood and people when those people are also its citizens.

who are not treated equally a democracy in the first place. So I think there is much greater receptivity to the idea that democracy is under threat, but again, it's Jewish democracy that is seen as under threat rather than a democracy that treats all its citizens, let alone all of those under its dominion, under its control, equally. You've phrased the question interestingly Nala, because you said Israelis inside Israel and on the outside. And I think this is a growing phenomenon of Israelis leaving.

I don't want to exaggerate the extent of it, but I also, it shouldn't be understated. There is, you know, there is a significant Israeli diaspora now. Is this a voting by their feet? So I think it is. So that's what I want to suggest. And I think that community is voted by its, with its feet. And I think some of those will become people who, or are people,

for whom, whether it's at a high degree of, of, of conscious, acknowledgement or something less clearly understood and articulated. This is not what they thought they were signing up to. This is not what they hoped this project would become. But inside Israel, you don't have a robust political opposition in the Israeli Jewish camp. The entirety of the Zionist political representation in the parliament has supported the war in Gaza. When Natharhu put to a vote, closing down, for instance, the UN agency that helps and supports and provides sustenance to Palestinian refugees. Not a single Zionist M.K. voted against that move. When Nathanyahu put to a vote in 2024 that there can be no Palestinian state, not a single Zionist MK voted against

that. So you have a problem in Israel. What happened? What happened to the moderate and progressive voices in Israel? First of all, of course there are still progressive voices. Many people who believe in equality would now find themselves in a position that they did not anticipate or necessarily sign up for when they thought they were just being good Jews or even good Israelis who believe that everyone's equal of being dissidents of those who have stayed. Elsewhere you have people who I think are in confusion, in cognitive dissonance. I cannot do justice to this without acknowledging what a shock October 7th. was. Right. First of all, the reality of it, the crimes that were committed.

Secondly, the discourse that developed around it, how this was folded into Jewish history in ways that make no sense at all, are almost revisionist in terms of the Holocaust. This, how can you compare these things? But that fell on very, very fertile ground when it comes to where Israelis were at. the extent to which the media was absolutely mobilized, a supposedly free media, and Israeli society has now gone on a journey to have created a basic society that coalesced around a willingness to pursue a genocide. So there's the very nasty end of it, which is endless videos that many people will have seen of just sheer cruelty and taking joy in the suffering of others.

And then there's the other end, which is people who know better, but they've lost something. They've lost some ability to connect with never again for anyone, with basic what I would consider, by the way, to be Jewish ethics and values. But they're universal humanity, really. And societies can go through really horrible types. The question is, how do you stop that? How do you pull a society out of that? And if the lesson that the outside world keeps sending is, no, we understand, we're with you, it's normal, we'll have trade relations,

you can travel to our country without even having to sign a declaration that you weren't involved in the committing of war crimes in Gaza. You can participate in our international sporting tournaments, in our international song tournaments. We'll have normal arms trade even. It sends the message that this is normal and it's anything but normal. And the sooner Israelis realize it's anything but normal, the better for that society because it needs to navigate itself out of this. Because I think this is going to generate appalling blowback for Israel and Israel's Jewish community.

And by the way, Jewish communities around the world, as they make their establishment leadership at least, makes their interests indistinguishable from Israel's. And this is overreach. You're a small country. You cannot humiliate indefinitely the entire surrounding populations and expect this to end well. And that genuinely worries me. We started this conversation with the suggestion that there seems to be some consensus that the two-state solution is dead. And if that is the case, as a former negotiator, how would you approach the current situation? Where would you start? as a starting point? So I don't want to feign ignorance at the idea that most diplomats and most states would still offer rhetorical salutations to two states. And it's not the policy of the Israeli government, but it is still the policy of the PLO. And it's the policy of the majority of the vast majority of states around the world.

So I would simply say that that is absolutely vacuous. And therefore, if one doesn't say, start by citing ritualistic rhetorical devotion to two states, where should one start? And I think there are some obvious places. The most obvious is stop sending the signal to Israel and Israelis that this is normal, this is okay. Of course you can do these things. People make the accusation, Israel is held to a higher standard. Nonsense.

Israel is held to no standards, held to a lower standard. not good for Israelis either. If you want, if you want to understand how Israel has gone on this journey, you have to understand the practical lived experience of Israelis that they could get away with this, that there has not been a cost and consequence. So I don't think Israel can be sanctioned into withdrawing its, its occupation and illegal policies towards the Palestinians. But I do think it can be indulged into doing even worse. And therefore you have to shift that incentive structure, that cost-benefit calculation. And you know what?

All you have to do in order to make that happen is live up to your own supposed commitment to international law, to ICJ rulings, the rulings of the International Court of Justice, to things that often exist on your own statutes in terms of restrictions that you should have on trade, etc. That's one thing. Secondly, give Palestinian national... politics, the space to breathe.

Stop trying to dictate what the Palestinian Authority has to do or not do, whether Hamas can be part of political structures or not, what discourse Palestinians can adopt. Because what I am convinced of is you can put the building blocks in place that will allow us to create a political process that has a chance of succeeding where here to fore those processes have have stunningly failed. And first and foremost, the obvious thing, stop the killing, end what is a daily horror show of mistreatment of Palestinians

across the territories that are controlled by Israel. It is so poisoning, obviously Palestinian society, but I would say also Israeli-Jewish society. I do think that just as Oslo came about in a moment of punctuated disequilibrium, global geopolitics were shifting, the local Israel-Palestine seen after the first Intifada was shifting. I think we're now in another period of punctuated disequilibrium, massively accelerated by the person who sits in the overall office today. And for the carriers of that zero-sum Zionist flame, this is the moment to finish the job. They are very open about this. There's nothing.

discreet or subtle about the goal of definitively ending the Palestinian question and removing the Palestinians. So one scenario, which I take seriously, and there's questions of timeline, due to it fast, due to it slow, is Gaza isn't the end of this. And whether it's through eradication, through ethnic cleansing, through encouraging out migration, through a push into Jordan, and believe me, people in Jordan take this prospect very seriously. That's a scenario. A second scenario, which I also take seriously, is that this is wildly overambitious from a country of 10 million people in that part of the world, where half of their own population don't enlist for the military in terms of young people today, because they either come from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community who don't serve in the army or from the Palestinian Arab community, most of whom don't serve in the army. and that this kind of overreach, when you set up a zero-sum equation, you better be damn sure that there's only one possible outcome.

That the zero-sum can only apply to the success of your side and the vanquishing of the other side. And then is there a third way? Do we see a different option? I think that would require, first of all, a Palestinian reassertion of Palestinian political agency. I don't see it coming from anywhere else. Some friends think this could be a joint Israeli-Palestinian thing.

I think it has to, first of all, come from the Palestinians, which would challenge that community that is mobilized around Palestine. It would challenge Israeli society by offering a different way out. And, of course, it would challenge Palestinians to get beyond these divisions. I think that takes us beyond the two-state paradigm, as is probably obvious from everything I've been saying. I found it fascinating when I was doing some research. this evening that I presume in one of the last interviews Michael gave, he talked about how

two states had been an option, had seemed viable, strongly suggesting that that was no longer the case. So I don't think you can follow the logical conclusion of what I think is a correct diagnosis and a correct prescription for addressing the incredibly dangerous time we are in if multilateralism and rules of law collapse without addressing Palestine differently. And if one were to do so, then you're at the beginning of changing, of reversing, of giving some hope that the trajectory that I described that we are on for Palestinians and also for Israelis in terms of how that center of gravity is shifted, we have begun to create the conditions for perhaps being able to reverse and challenge and question that, because unless Israelis see that this is abnormal, that there is not impunity, that there is a question to be addressed here,

that there are costs and consequences, unless that happens, what we have seen in Gaza, but what we are also seeing in the region, what we are seeing in Lebanon today will not stop, and it will come to an unpleasant in whichever direction ending. You've been listening to my conversation with British Israeli author and analyst Daniel Levy. He's the president of the U.S. Middle East Project, an NGO policy institute, focusing on, quote, the situation in Palestine, Israel. You can follow his writings at 6.5. Substack.com at Daniel Levy 2.

This episode was produced by Nahid Mustafa. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Johnny Casamatta and Emily Carvezio. The senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas. And I'm Nala Ayad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.