The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Aaron David Miller - Did Arafat Reject Peace at Camp David?

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Aaron David Miller is an American Middle East analyst, author and negotiator. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has been an advisor to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, USAToday and CNN.com.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Comedy, formerly Raw Dog, and also available as a podcast and on YouTube. So you can see all our lovely faces. This is Dan Natterman, comedian, Comedy Cellar regular, along with Noam Dorman, the proprietor of the world-famous Comedy Cellar. And Periel Ashenbrand is with us. She's our producer and an on-air personality as well. We have with us, via the miracle of teleconferencing,

Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department Middle East analyst. He was an advisor to Secretary of State, both Republican and Democrat. He is with us today.

Welcome, Aaron David Miller. Thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure to be here. And thanks for having me. Oh, we're very we're very happy. I'm very excited to have you on. You know, I've been trying very hard over the last year and then it just accelerated when this war happened to get to the bottom of what really happened at these in this peace process with Clinton and Barack, with Olmert. You know, there's a there's this revisionist history that they weren't actually offered anything worth taking. I'm sure, you know, the revisionist history better than I. And, you know, just to tell you my thinking, it's as if whenever a fact would be very, very powerful, the other side in any conflict always seems to have to come up with some explanation of how it didn't happen. So we're seeing it even now with the rapes.

I'm astonished at how everybody is in denial about the atrocities because to admit them in some way is such a powerful thing to admit. It's unbearable. And to admit that the failure of the peace process was actually because the Palestinians did not, were not ready to make peace, would upend so many arguments. So I bought every single book. I've read Clinton's, I've read Ben Ami, I read Benny Morris, I read Indyk, I read everything I could.

What is your take on what happened there? And you would know, right? You know the principles. Dennis Ross, I would as well. I mean, I was there 13 days in July of 2000. A summit, frankly, that we argued for. It didn't take much arguing, given the fact that Barack really wanted it. And the president, who was looking toward legacy and cared deeply about the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict, he wrote in his memoirs that he loved Rabin as he had rarely loved any man, which is an extraordinary statement for an American president to make. But I did see Clinton grief up close and personal. And Clinton had a way with the Palestinians as well. Mohamed Dahlan, former head of Palestinian security for Gaza, having broken subsequently with Mahmoud Abbas, now splits his time, I think, between Mananegro and UAE. era dawns, interested perhaps in making a return at the Y River Summit, which preceded Camp David by almost a year, basically came up to me and said, why can't he be our president? So Clinton had a way with the Israelis and Palestinians. Barack was pushing very hard. He saw, I think, the prospects of serious violence in the fall. And the president basically couldn't say no. Arafat warned us that unless the summit was structured properly, that he'd be trapped and probably blamed for the outcome.

Clinton assured Arafat that he would not be blamed. And so we briefed the president after the invitations to the summit had been issued, which seemed to be a sort of a disconnect, right? I mean, you want to brief the president on chances for success before the invitations are issued, so you have some sense that you can actually achieve this. I mean, remember, only two presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, summoned Israeli and Arab leaders to Camp David.

It's no small matter. It's the big house. I'm a Michigan Wolverine. It's actually not the no small matter. It's the big house. I'm a Michigan Wolverine. It's actually not the big house, but it's America's house. And if you're going to call leaders to a summit, you better know what you're doing. Jimmy Carter did. He was dealing with two very strong leaders, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. They weren't dealing with any of the existential religious issues that marked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was no Jerusalem in the Israeli-Egyptian negotiation. In fact, there was a little proximity. And that's the real problem with Israelis and Palestinians.

They're living right on top of each other, and their lives are inextricably linked together. I think it was Mark Twain who said that proximity breeds contempt and children. So Carter succeeded at the first Camp David in September 78. And seven months later, he risked a trip to the Middle East in February of 79. And by March, he brought together, leaders together for a signing ceremony in White House lawn. Clinton had a much, much, much harder task. By the time Barack came to Camp David, his government was shaky. Arafat, in my judgment, looking back now, the last concession, real concession Arafat

was prepared to make, and it was a concession, was during the Oslo years, agreeing to these interim arrangements with no reference to a Palestinian state. You will not find in any of the Oslo documents any remote reference to a Palestinian state, no reference to removing Israeli settlements. So Arafat came to survive at Camp David. Ehud Barak came to make a deal and went further and farther in making these decisions and concessions that any Israeli prime minister had gone. Clinton, well-intentioned, really committed to this. I mean, he really was. He had lost Rabin to assassination. His friend King Hussein to cancer in 1999. So this was a huge investment for Bill

Clinton. And for 12, 13 days, I'm sorry to say with the best of intentions, we didn't run the summit. The summit ran us. So Barack puts on the table an offer that by any standard, judged by what his predecessors had been willing to offer, was actually pretty bold, pretty risk ready. But let's be clear about something. Arafat's transgression at Camp David was not that we were this close to an agreement and Arafat decided he couldn't accept it. Arafat's transgression at Camp David was A, he did not respond with a counteroffer to what Barack put on the table, a meaningful counteroffer. It is a negotiation after all, right? Can I stop you there for one second and ask you a question about that?

Stop me anytime you want. So, you know, I have some experience with negotiations. If somebody doesn't make a counteroffer, it's almost an irrebuttable presumption that they're not actually interested in the deal.

Because as I mentioned, no, I'm I came to survive. So I would have accepted a deal very close to what I call the Palestinian narrative. And the Palestinian narrative is, again, I'm not an Israeli. I'm not a Palestinian. I'm charged with defending and advancing American interests. Palestinian narrative is, we actually should have had all of Palestine. But between the Brits, the UN, the Israelis, we now have only 22% of it. That's what we have left. It's the West Bank, all of it, 100%. It's Gaza, all 363 square kilometers, twice the size of the District of Columbia. And there was no way in 2000, or again, it's not just Ken David, Clinton made a better offer to Arafat at the end of the year with Clinton parameters.

There was no way Arafat was going to accept what Barack put on the table, which was 91% of the West Bank minus a swap of 1%, which would have been territory from Israel proper. He wouldn't say where it was, but it was territory from Israel proper that would be transferred to the Palestinians. So we're now at 92%. There was a lot of discussion about Palestinian refugees, but nothing that would ever satisfy, and I'm not sure Arafat could be satisfied on this score. On Jerusalem, Barak again was pretty risk-ready, offered the Muslim quarter to Arafat, and some of the adjacent suburbs to the old city. And there was an intensive discussion of security and sovereignty. But no Palestinian leader, certainly not without Arab support on the issue of Jerusalem.

And Clinton called the Arabs on the eighth day of the summit and tried to explain to the Saudis and to President Mubarak what he had offered Arafat. I don't think Mubarak had a clue what he was talking about. Because we had kept the Arab states in the dark in large measure because understandably, Barak didn't want any of his offers to leak. So I guess my takeaway here is Arafat deserves to be criticized, without a doubt. But we need to dispense with the urban mythology that, again, with my forefinger and thumb a millimeter apart, that we were this close to an agreement. We were this close. I can't get my arms out any further farther. We were this close to an agreement. Well, let's let's take that. We had to we have to put that one to rest. You got a better case in December of 2000. Clinton's about to leave office, and he tries one final attempt. And I was there that day

too. He sat the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators down, and he dictated to them what is now known as the Clinton parameters. And remember, between September and December, you had a full-on intifada, sparked partly by Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, you know, the overlapping sacred space. You have the reliquary, the Dome of the Rock, and Al-Aqsa covering the two. Ehud Barak disputes that, right? But we don't get sidetracked by that. Arafat, well, Arafat is, from time to time, disputed that the Jews had any claim to Jerusalem. No, I mean, Ehud Barak disputes that the Intifada

was a spontaneous eruption outside of Iraq. And that debate will continue in the Israeli intelligence community probably for, well, now the Israeli intelligence community has a much greater problem to argue about October 7. But you have a better case in charging in the charge sheet against Arafat for not responding to Barack's offer. That offer was 94 to 96% of the West Bank. And a presumptive Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat never even responded to that. I think he was wrongly coached by whom is unclear that he could expect a better offer

from the incoming administration. Remember, Clinton was no longer in office. Well, he wasn't until January of 2001. So in Arafat's mind, I figured he's risk-averse by nature. He basically figured, you know, this guy's leaving. Maybe I'll get a better deal with the next guy. And the next guy happened to be Ariel Sharon, who defeated Ehud Barak in the worst electoral defeat of any Israeli prime minister, probably because of the Second Intifada and Bar Barack's willingness to compromise with Arafat. So we got Ariel Sharon. And just to close this piece of it, my last official meeting with Arafat

was in March of 2002 at the height of the Second Intifada. Tony Zinni, who had been charged by President Bush, former CENTCOM commander, being a dollar a year special envoy, and I had the job of being Zinni's advisor. We enter Arafat's compound, and the IDF has got it surrounded. They're literally barricaded in. And electricity shut off. The bathrooms don't work. All the windows are blacked out. We enter Arafat's conference PLO with his machine gun sitting on the table. Zinni turned to me and whispered and looked, he said, Arafat's guys look like they were drowned rats. Arafat is talking to us about martyrdom and the defense of Palestine. So, you know, I've been hammered by just about everybody for even believing that Arafat had any opportunity or incentive to make any deal.

Upon reflection, that may well be true. I don't think he had what it would require to become a Mandela and to make the transition from a revolutionary leader with much blood on his hands to someone who was capable of demonstrating real statesmanship. And I think that in Arafat's death, the situation, of course, got worse. Had Arafat lived, Hamas would not be in control of Gaza today. That I can assure you. But as a peacemaker, as a guy who was willing to

make big concessions, lead his people, that was not him. Well, there was a letter from, I've read this before on this show, from Nabil Amr, who I guess was one of the people in Arafat's contingent.

Nabil Amr, yeah. And he wrote in an open letter, he was shot after he wrote this letter. Were we honest about what we did? Were we right in what we did? No, we were not. Did we jump for joy over the failure of Camp David? Didn't we throw mud at the picture of President Clinton, who dared to submit a proposal for a state with some modifications? How many times were we asked to do something that we could do, but we did not do it?

We have committed a serious mistake against our people, authority, and the dream of the establishment of our state. Do you think that's a legitimate take from somebody who was inside? I mean, I think, again, the problem with Palestinian leadership, aside from the fact that it's divided, dysfunctional, Palestinian national movement, when did Nabil Amir write that?

Do you have a date? I'm guessing like 2003 or something like that. I don't have the date yeah that's still probably in the middle of the interfa look there's been very little introspection very few long looks in the mirror uh when it comes to what palestinians didn't do i mean i know israelis who sound more like Palestinians than they do Israelis. I know Israelis who are far more critical of their own government than they have been of Palestinians. So you do not have, Nebularma obviously was an exception. I mean, to write that, to say that publicly requires an extraordinary degree of courage. Yes.

But, you know, Noam, as you know, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not just one hand clapping, right? I mean, the mutual needs and requirements of both sides need to be met. And we've never really had a situation where on both sides, you've had leaders who are masters of their political houses, not prisoners of their ideologies. We've never had a situation where you could actually – Clinton parameters, I think, came the closest. But then again, Bill Clinton was two weeks away, three weeks away from – But I have two questions for you so the first thing is and there's a there's obviously a historical precedent for this when sadat announced that he wanted peace with israel

and came to the kineset um if any palestinian leader in his heart of hearts said you know what i've had enough of this i want to make peace with Israel. Why could he not make a speech and say, listen, in 2007, your prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered us very close to a deal. Whatever happened, happened. But I'd like to come to Israel, and I'd like to revisit that, and I want to sit down, and I want to make a deal so our children no longer die. My take on the Israeli public is that it would certainly swing to the left more than enough to have a leader who was ready to receive that. But they don't do that. And people talk and talk and talk, and I think that fundamental truth is,

well, if you wanted it and you're ready to do it, just like Sadat did, your leader would get up and say so. I just saw a speech from 2002 where Lapid at the UN said, I believe in a two-state solution. We want to sit down with you Palestinians. All we ask in return is to stop the rockets and together we will chart out a future for our children. You know, very beautiful words. Yeah, Rabin said it at the Oslo sign. But this was just

a year and a half ago. Not 2002. I mean, Lapid was prime minister in 2021, right? That's 2022. This was 22, first part of 20. But I'm saying there was no response. There was no, nobody picked up the phone.

Right now, it's almost inconceivable. Well, forget October 7th. We can talk about that in a minute. But even before October 7th, chances for the emergence of a Mandela, because that's what you need, strike me as just incredibly remote. Legitimacy in Palestinian society is derived from the struggle.

And that's a cruel testament to the reality of Palestinian politics. nor do I think if the most left-wing prime minister became prime minister, there would be no way that anyone would agree to what we had talked about during the 90s because the Israeli-Palestinian relationship has been hammered and traumatized and Israelis are in no mood for making these sorts of historic decisions. Who could blame them? Can I make a distinction and see if you agree with it? Yeah. The Palestinians, as you said, they're defined by the struggle. So the reason they wouldn't do it is that psychological challenge.

In Israel, to my mind, it would be such severe distrust. It's not that they wouldn't want it. If God came down and said, listen, if they make a deal with you, I promise they'll keep it, of course the Israelis would take the deal. They don't want this nonsense anymore. It's just that they can't,

they don't feel they can trust it. And let me ask you my next question and then you can comment on all of it. I think a lot lately about the concept of critical mass. In a democracy, 51% is critical mass, and if the government makes a deal, then the rest of the nation, the other 49%, will go along with it, whether they like it or not. That's the way it works. Israel's dealing with an entity that if 5% aren't ready to go along with it, that may be enough to upend the whole deal.

They may sign a deal and then that 5% starts shooting up the place and kills somebody and rips up the piece of paper, and then the rockets start coming from the new Palestinian state, just like they were coming from Gaza. And I don't know how Israel can ever get past that notion that they're not dealing with, as I said, that they don't know what critical mass is, you know. Right. And that raises the whole question of why Egypt and Israel managed, despite bloody wars, to essentially come to terms. You had two strong leaders, very strong leaders, who were masters of their politics,

not prisoners of their politics or their ideology. Sadat paid with his life, as you know, so did Rabin, for these decisions. But you're talking about two states behind borders. In the Israeli-Palestinian question you have a state, an established state, and a non-state actor. And that non-state actor, the Palestinian national movement looks like Noah's Ark. There are two of everything. Two constitutions, two sets of security services, two sets of patrons, two visions between Hamasistan on one hand and the 40% of the West Bank that Mahmoud Abbas controls, Fatah, on the other, of where Palestine is and what it should be. So let me express your view in another way. If the Israelis are ever going

to get into a negotiation, they need a Palestinian partner that has one gun, one authority, and one negotiating position. I'll say it again. One gun, one authority, and one negotiating position. I'll say it again. One gun, one authority, and one negotiating position. The mark of statehood, one of the marks of statehood, of responsible statehood, or even authoritarian, non-democratic states, is the monopoly over the forces of violence within their society. That's right. Palestinian National Movement has never, well, under Arafat they had it, but they were still, as we saw throughout the entire Oslo process,

Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Brigades activities without being controlled, let alone repressed by the governing Palestinian Authority. So we are dreaming here. It's magical thinking. Even before October 7. After October 7, it's even worse. You want a two-state solution, which I would argue is still the least worst solution to this conflict. Of course.

Separation through negotiations. These people, these peoples cannot live under the same roof and live happily ever after. They cannot. But you want a serious negotiation between the state of Israel and a Palestinian national movement, then the Palestinian national movement must have a monopoly over the forces of violence within its society. I'm not talking about the lone gunman now. We have that problem here. We don't have a total monopoly over the other state, the Palestinian part of the state, not the Israel part. So, I mean, it's you know, it's fine to talk about peacemaking. I mean, and I do it all the time because I have two grown children and I can't say never

to them. I don't have that right. I occupy a small space on the planet for a very short period of time, and I'm not going to tell an Israeli or a Palestinian, frankly, you'll never have peace with one another. That's ethically and morally unconscionable for me. But I refuse to get involved in discussions which seriously try to debate the possibilities of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict ending agreement without acknowledging the hard realities. I lived under the illusions when I was working, because there really was empirical evidence to suggest that Arabs and Israelis Israelis and even Israelis and Palestinians could actually come together.

But you've got a completely different frame now. And if you want a two-state solution, then you need to give me three things. And if you give me these three things, I'll give you a chance to have one. Number one, you need to give me three things. And if you give me these three things, I'll give you a chance to have one. Number one, you need leaders. You do not have them on either side of the line. You have an Israeli government now that is the most right-wing, homophobic, extremist, Jewish supremacist government in the history of the state of Israel. You have a Palestinian authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, the 19th year of a four-year term, with no credibility.

And you have, two months into the war, Hamas in Gaza, showing no signs as of yet of being ready or willing to capitulate. We're two months in. And this conflict could easily end with a residual Hamas presence in Gaza diminished clearly in terms of its military capacity. And an Israeli presence in Gaza that is going to prove extremely

dangerous for them, which is one of the reasons Sharon, rightly in 2005, withdrew the IDF from Gaza, dismantled the settlements, and pushed 8,000 Israeli settlers out. But he did it unilaterally. And two years later, Hamas launched its coup against Fatah. And the rest, as we say, is history. But we are farther than ever away from any possibility. You have two traumatized communities now. The butchery and savagery of October 7, the sexual predation,

the 15 to 20 women hostages who are still controlled by Hamas, reports out of Israel that Ham're not, Hamas may not have them, they may be in the hands of gangs or clans or Palestine, Islamic Jihad, reports which no one can confirm. Let me be clear that the reason this truce collapsed is because the Israelis had prioritized the release of the remaining women in Trulda and Hamas, refused, and the analysis was that they will not release these women because of what they're going to say. That was the Israeli analysis? No, those are reports I've heard from Israelis. I cannot confirm that.

Would that surprise me in the least, given the sadistic nature of the killing that occurred in the wake of October 7th? No, it would not surprise me. Max, can you bring up that thing from the Times? I want to ask you a question about October 7th, because this issue of civilian life is obviously very painful to look at. And yet it seems to me that the death of civilians is Hamas's only war aim here. They don't have any military objective. They can't take any Israeli territory.

They're sending these rockets in, not with the hopes of accomplishing something. So there was this interview in the Times with Taher El-Nunu. I don't know how to pronounce that name properly. He says, I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders and

the Arab world will stand with us. And the Times says, Israeli airstrikes have reduced Palestinian neighborhoods to expanses of rubble while doctors And the status quo, and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel. Max, you can take that down now. If that's their aim, what nation can fight another country that wants its own people to die more than the nation they're fighting? And how can they contain civilian casualties? I struggle with it to understand, though, understand that it is like it's as if Hamas is pushing people in front of a moving vehicle. And even if the driver is drunk, even if you want to say that the Israelis are reckless, you're still pushing these people in front of a moving car because you want them to die, meaning you're killing them. Yes, Israel's you're provoking Israel. Yes, Israel's invading. Yes, Israel's, you're provoking Israel. Yes, Israel's invading. Yes, Israel is doing a military action. But Hamas, you don't have a single ounce of civil defense infrastructure.

You, I mean, I'm so naive about this. Like, why can't they go to the beach? Why can't you just put everybody on the beach? Why is everybody getting killed? Sorry. It can't be a surprise to you. I mean, this was not the taking of territory. This was the taking of blood. It's part of the mukawamah the resistance Hamas is objective was to subject

Israeli soldiers and civilians to a degree of pain and degradation and humiliation and torture unprecedented in any of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts on the scale that we watched unfold in the wake of October 7. The bloodiest day for Jews, Hamas now holds the record, the bloodiest single day for Jews since the end of the Nazi Holocaust. That was the objective. To provoke, to radicalize. In that, and to traumatize.

And to draw Israel in, perhaps, to an urban environment where humans per square mile range anywhere from 20 to 30, 40,000, in a densely populated area where Hamas's military assets are embedded in and around civilian structures and civilian populations. You look at the narrative in the wake of October 7, almost everything that Hamas has wanted, even at the expense of perhaps the demolition of their military capacity, is coming around. The world, you just look at the storyline. It's not a split screen anymore. With October 7, creating some form of understanding and empathy for the Israelis in what they're doing in Gaza. It's not a split screen anymore.

It's one screen. And the screen is horrific. Even if you don't believe Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health, and by the way, they're tabulating combatants as well as civilians. The toll is anywhere from 15,000 to 16,000, a quarter women and children, more probably, in large part because it is magical thinking to believe. And this brings you to a sort of a head-exploding point. that Israel can accomplish its goals, the eradication of Hamas's military structure, above ground and below ground, and the elimination of its senior leaders, strictly Yaqia Sinwar and Mohamed Deif, the two architects of the October 7 terror surge,

without jeopardizing, endangering the lives, ending the lives of thousands of Palestinians. It is magical thinking that there is a way to square that circle. You could try to change the ordinance. The Israelis were dropping 1,000, 2,000-pound bombs. The administration has tried to get them to understand you can use lower, less powerful ordnance. You could try targeted strikes, which I think is what the plan is for the southern campaign. But to do what they want to do will take months. And you got two clocks while operating here. You got Israel's operational

clock, which is in months, and you have the world's, the administration's clock, which is in weeks. Joe Biden has been unbelievably supportive, basically because of who he is and because of the butchery of October 7th. But my concern is these clocks are getting increasingly out of sync. And it's, I mean, I watch, you know, I do a lot of TV and a lot of interviews, particularly with European outlets, even though CNN and MSNBC in interviewing the hostages have really brought the terror and savagery and brutality of what those people experienced to light. You go beyond mainstream media, which is not where 18 to 30-some-year-olds are getting their news from, and you see public

opinion in that age group, it's already turned. 67%, I saw a recent poll, 18 to 39-year-olds are against what the Israelis are doing. Joe Biden, I mean, we're a year out from the most what well may be the most consequential election in American history. And that's saying a lot, given what this country has been through. But the presumptive Republican nominee could win. And in a close election, a divided Democratic Party, with people complaining that the president's too old, his messaging is wrong, he's not in touch with young people, the economy's bad. And now, presiding over this, you know, what many people wrongly describe as genocide of the Palestinians. I mean, if this is still going on in April and May, it's going I mean, this is where I come to a point where I just can't answer, I can't come to grips with the issue. Because if a ceasefire is declared today or tomorrow, which would stop the killing of innocent Palestinians.

Humanitarian situation would improve. But Hamas will still be there, negotiating of 100 plus hostages. And this time the ratio isn't going to be three to one, it'll be 100 to one. And the pressure from the hostage families in Israel, the ones who have not been redeemed, will continue to grow. And Israel will be handed an unbelievable defeat. Because Hamas will have survived.

It will still be in control of much of Gaza. With its senior leadership still intact, negotiating for the return of Palestinian prisoners, which boosts their stock and their credibility. Meanwhile, an entire generation of young Palestinians, having weathered what they've been through, is much more likely to hate the Israelis and the Americans for what's occurred, rather than to blame Hamas, who they know have put them in the, no, I'm in exactly this position that you just described. So, I mean, we're at a crossroads here, and it's a question of bad or worse. Wow, what a pessimistic, dark picture you've

painted. We're going to let you go soon. So am I reading you right that you seem to feel that Israel has to follow through as much as it can. It has to get rid of Hamas. To leave Hamas standing would give them a kind of psychological victory while having all these people having died in vain. They've come this far. They have to go through with it and achieve Gaza. How they do that is not necessarily only as a consequence of the tactics they're deploying now. They will not be able to kill the estimated 15,000 to 25,000 Hamas fighters. They will not be able to do that. The question is the day after, Helen. That's where the Israelis can win. If, in fact, they can deal Hamas a significant blow, end Hamas's control of Gaza, and then try to figure out a way, working with their regional partners, with the Americans,

and yes, with the UN and the other international agencies, to try to create a governance structure. Over time, it will not be easy, and you can't bring the Palestinian Authority back. They're weak and they're feckless right now. That's the real problem. Even if they killed the senior leaders, Sinoir and Daif, and you had 10 or 15,000 Hamas fighters killed, Hamas will resurge in Gaza. The Islamists will resurge in Gaza unless Gaza can be somehow changed. And the people there given a stake in another future. And it's 2.3 million people, 363 square kilometers, twice the size of the District of Columbia. It's not beyond the realm of human imagination that you could find a better future for that place

and for those people i just think right now norm that the israelis are stuck that's the problem it's such a it's such a tragedy you know i know a lot of uh arabic people palestinian people in in new york and it's funny how and they're you know they're very pro-palestinian And it's funny how, and they're, you know, they're very pro Palestinian, but it's funny how just the geography changes you're in America. You get along, you're friendly. You can, you can even argue politics at all. It all melts away, you know? You know, you're right. You broke the code and that's, that's, you know, part of it, the absence of space and, and the way the way Israelis, particularly on the Palestinian side, let's be clear, it's really hard.

I ran a program for three years after I left the Department of State called Seeds of Peace. It brought young Israelis and Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Yemenis Into conflict and coexistence programs in Maine And then followed up with them in the region And these are 14, 15, 16 year old kids And you get them here for three weeks And within three weeks Hardest for the Israelis and Palestinians

Because they are in the most bitter of the conflicts. Within three weeks of working together, socializing, they are literally in mourning because they know they're going from the future, a three-week future back into the past, where their parents, their imams, their rabbis, their politicians, their journalists will basically tell them, you can't forget the other. So, you know, I can't reach the conclusion where the end game is as pessimistic as I am about what's on the ground now. I really can't give up. I know. And look, we know the answer. It's the same answer everywhere in the world.

I had this argument with somebody and it's corny. Cue the music, Max. Freedom is the answer. You know, Palestinian people come here and people. Cue the music, Max. Freedom is the answer. You know, Palestinian people come here and people from all over the world come here. And in one generation, they have money and they're living fulfilling lives. And then their next generation, their children are doctors. And Israel is an example of that, too. And, you know, if only somehow, as you say, these people would be given a chance with a system that would allow them freedom to make lives for themselves in a short time they'd they

wouldn't believe they were fighting this way like what were we fighting about we were crazy you know but to you know make that happen maybe it's's never going to happen. I don't know. You agree, correct? I do. Yeah. All right, sir. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on. If there's anything else you want to say,

please be our guest. I just don't want to... I think we're all set. Thanks, Sam. You're patient with your guests and your listeners are lucky to have you. Well, that's very nice of you. Now, you say your daughter lives in Brooklyn. If you ever do get to Brooklyn and you want to come to see a show with the Comedy Cellar, we'd be very happy to have you. Well, that's very nice of you. Now, you say your daughter lives in Brooklyn. If you ever do get to Brooklyn and you want to come to see a show with the Comedy Cellar,

we'd be very happy to treat you and your family. That'd be great. In fact, I'll plug my daughter as an author, but her first book was called Inheriting the Holy Land. It's the best single volume to introduce young people to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her name's Jennifer Miller. I'm going to get it for my son. Inheriting the Holy Land, One American Search for Hope in the Middle East. Oh, that's fantastic. Terrific book. Really is.

Tell your daughter, please, to get in touch with her if she wants to come to Comedy Cell. You may have never heard of it, but it's a pretty famous comedy club. I'm sure she'd have a great time. It'd be great. Noam, thanks for having me and uh thank you thank you sir happy new year happy new year thank you merry christmas bye happy hanukkah