The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 71. Israel's former PM on why Netanyahu is finished, the settler movement, and corruption - Ehud Olmert

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

How much do you know about the last serious attempt at a two state solution in the Israel-Gaza conflict?  On today's episode of Leading, Rory and Alastair are joined by former Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, to discuss his time in office, the likelihood of a two state solution, and historic corruption charges. TRIP Plus:  Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes.  Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispoletics.com. This is Rory here. Welcome to our latest installation of leading and a interview that we've done with a former Israeli prime minister. It's, I think, fascinating. You learn so much about some very tough issues. He's right at the heart. of some of the most controversial issues in the world. And this isn't really an interview. And like a lot of our interviews, it's not really about whether you agree with him or disagree with him. It's about understanding how one of the very key players, who was right at the heart of both the questions of occupation

and the peace process thought and some of the moral dilemmas that he faced. And I hope that you find, as I do, that it really illuminates some of the problems that we're facing the Middle East today, on which over to Alastair. Yeah, thanks, Torrey. I agree. I think this is a very interesting interview. I think some people will probably want us to focus much more on the here and now,

what's happening today. We do a bit of that. But actually, I think it's very, very interesting to find somebody who's been involved in this at various levels of his political career over decades. He's somebody who's been on a pit of a political journey himself, as he will explain. As things stand, absolutely despises the current. Israeli Prime Minister and some of the hard right forces around him. And I think you maybe have to aim off a little bit for the fact that his own career

ended in, as you will hear, in a pretty controversial way. But definitely somebody who has made a big contribution to this debate still does, but also somebody who had really had interesting ideas about how we might have got to a better place than the place that we're in right now. So I hope you enjoy listening to our interview with the former Israeli Prime Minister, Eard Olmert, as much as Roy and I enjoyed doing it. Welcome to the rest is politics leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart.

And we're absolutely thrilled and very lucky to have a former Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Ehud Olmert, who was Prime Minister from 2006 to 2009, and also had two stints as a cabinet minister, was mayor of Jerusalem, had been deputy prime minister, acting Prime Minister, and took over when Ariel Sharon, was incapacitated through illness and then got his own mandate in 2006. And so we're very, very pleased to have you. Can I just start by, we like to get a feel for our guests of kind of their background and their

childhood. So you were born 78 years ago. And you were born in Palestine when it was under the British mandate. I'd just like to get a feel for two things. One, what your childhood was like, but also what you were born in Palestine. your senses of the British role in the history of Israel-Palestine. You mentioned correctly that I was born 78 years ago, in what was then Palestine, about three years before the inauguration of the state of Israel.

So you can imagine that my memories are not exactly fresh considering the fact that at that time I was two and a half years old. Unlike the present Prime Minister of Israel, who in spite of the fact that he was born after the inauguration of the state of Israel, he said that he still remembers when his father was holding him and he looked across from the balcony, the British soldiers in Great Britain, although the British soldiers were out of Israel years before he was born. But I don't have that kind of memory. I think that is the first of what I suspect will be several indications is that you don't

don't get on terribly well with BB Netanyahu. Well, that you knew even before I said. Years after, when I grew up a little bit, okay, there were still talks about the British time. And there were memories of our parents and our neighbors and people in Israel about the British time. My parents were members of the Irgun, which was the underground movement of Melachan Begin,

who later became the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. But at the time that he was elected, and I was already then a member of parliament of the Nekud, he was still called the terrorists in Great Britain. And I was born in a place which is called Shuni. Shuni is a big castle on the slopes of Mount Carmel, between a township, which is now known as Pinyamina and Zifon Yaakov, which at that time was a secret basis of the Egoon.

And very nearby, the Shunit Kasten, there was a British military camp. And they were about 500, 700 meters from where we lived, where I was born, in a place which had no running water, no electricity. I mean, this was, of course, under the most unbelievable circumstances. And about a year and a half after I was born, we moved into that township, Binyamina where my parents and their friends, which were part of this community, of Irgun members, built tiny houses where I grew up in. Tidal houses means like, I think, 40 square meters, okay?

without a bathroom inside the house and so on and so forth. So we grew up in a very modest conditions. Prime Minister, did you feel from the experience of your father fighting that you could see the connection between his perception of himself as a freedom fighter and the British perception of that group as terrorists? Did that give you some understanding of the complexity of that difference? I became aware of all these different perspectives and observations at a much later age when I grew up.

I thought when I was three, five, seven years old at that time. Now, you have to know something about my parents. My parents grew up in China. In the farthest place, Palestine. And they were inspired by one of the leaders, great leaders, of the Jewish people at that time in the early third. the late 20th of the 20th century in China, at the end of the world, in Manjuria, in Harbin, which is in the northeast part of China.

They were inspired by Jabotinsky. And my father decided to leave his family in 1930 when he was not yet even 20 years old and to immigrate to Palestine. He was at that time a student in the university in Harbin. But he decided that in order to be a pioneer in Palestine, he's going to go to study agriculture. And he went to Holland, and he studied there for three years. And then he still had the privilege of getting a certificate which allowed him to immigrate into the state of Israel. My mother joined him three years after he left China.

So these people came out of idealism, out of an urge to be part of the resurrection of the Jewish people, and a race which was historically part of Jewish tradition and Jewish life and Jewish history. I must say that when I grew up, my father was not involved in my neighbors who were more or the same kind of community, We were never involved in any violent actions against the British. In fact, one of the British soldiers was secretly collaborating with my parents and their friends, helping them in all kinds of military or any secret matters, but in terms of assisting them to somehow get along with the very difficulties that were part of the lives. And maybe 30 years later, I spotted him in Melbourne, Australia,

and I brought him over to Israel to visit with us with a friend that was part of our lives, even though he was on the other side. So the memories that I had from the British, I heard lots of stories, and of course you know that more than 250 members of the igoon, including a person who subsequently became Prime Minister of Israel, Hach Shamir, who was one of the members of the commanders and the leaders of the Stirling gang, were expelled to Kenya and to Arithra, which is in Africa, and they were their exile for three years.

And some of our neighbors were also in that group of members of the Iran that were very exited to Africa. But I must say that in my early life, there was not hatred. Okay. Can I ask you, you've mentioned several very well-known Israeli political figures already, two of whom I think I met, Shamir and Sharon. But I wondered, can you just give us a sense, having been prime minister? What is special about Israeli politics?

It always feels to me like it's obviously got similarities to ours and to other political systems in the world, but it feels very different. It feels a lot tougher, a lot harder to do. I just wonder if you could reflect all that. Do you think that's a fair assessment of what it's like to be at the top level of Israeli politics? Well, Israel is changing dramatically.

It's a different country, a different society from what it was when I started life in politics. I was first selected to Parliament in a very young age, actually, 15 years ago, in 1973. immediately after the 73 war, it was still under the leadership of the Labour Party, the traditional control of the Labour Party, which was in control of the Jewish community before the immigration of the State of Israeli and then all the years after that, for almost 30 years from the proclamation of Israel. There was democracy. I always felt

as a young man that everything was in the way possible. There was a way possible. There was a was a great sense of solidarity and a very imminent social factor in our lives. The political system was demanding or sometimes brutal, or we didn't have the kind of maybe of finesse that may have characterized other systems, certainly maybe to some extent the British system in comparison to us, in the British system, in British Parliament, and you may have heard a member of Labour Party talking to a Tory member saying, the distinguished gentleman.

And in the Israeli class, it said already at that time, someone would have said to the member of the other side, you better shut up, okay? And so on. So the brutality in terms of the language, in terms of the members, the attitudes of people one to the other was different. But still, there was a great sense of solidarity.

Things started to change in 1973. That is, after the war in 1973, for the first time, there was a feeling which since then started to spread in the country, that the leadership, the people that were assigned that were given the authority to protect. the people of Israel and the country of Israel, that had all the means in order to exercise this authority in the most responsible manner that they failed

because of overconfidence, because of complacency, because of negligence, whatever, and that they were too long in the government continuously without a change for almost 30 years, right? from 1948 till 19706, there was one party in power. One party in power. When I grew up and I was elected in 1973 already to Parliament, it was obvious and natural that when there are elections, there are elections, there are free elections, everyone can vote.

But the Labour Party will always take control. Sounds like a very, very good system to me. No, not since then. And since then, it started to be much more volatile and violent and noisy. And unfortunately, it started to have this characteristic of distrust amongst many of the Israelis. Look, the Israeli society is maybe unique by any standard that you're familiar with. You're talking about when Israel was proclaimed in 1948, there were about 750,000 Jews living in Israel. Today, there are 7.5 million.

Now, the Jews came from every corner of the world. So, the Israeli society is a makeup of people that came from Muslim countries in the North Africa, from Europe, from different parts of Europe, the remnants of the Holocaust that after the Second World War, and after the British allowed them to enter into the state of Israel, years later they were kept in camps everywhere, but they came from European countries, which were entirely different in terms of background, language, manners, culture, personal histories, then the Jews that came from Muslim countries. The Jews that came from the neighboring countries, again in our area from Iraq, from Iran, from all of those places, and the Jews that came from South America. The Jews that came like my parents, from China that were originally from Russia or the Ukraine, the people that came from North America, from South America. I mean, this was a mixture of people with different backgrounds. Now, in as long as

Israel was safe and was fighting for its very existence, the degree of solidarity was enormous. We pulled out of this. We became a more successful country economically and stronger country militarily and we felt safer. Somehow, the differences amongst the different parts and the Israeli society started to erupt into controversies. And they have reached the point on these days, which is really endangering the stability. I'm going to quickly interrupt, because this is fascinating, but just one small thing as you tell the story. I was speaking to a British friend of mine who said to me that the real problem begins since 67, that in a sense the original sin was seizing the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights

and that the real problems start from them, because it's at that moment that you end up with a very difficult balance between a liberal democracy on the one hand and occupation on the other. I mean, do you think this was a big defining watershed and that many of the problems for the last 50 years, stem from 67? There are many problems with stem from 67, and I entirely subscribe to this observation and to some standing.

But what I was talking about is in a very serious way, is independent, you know, mentioned. I would have come back to it anyway. Of course, the euphoric attitude that has devastated Israel after the 67 war, the feeling that we have, that God has brought us to us. back into where we were supposed to be from the very beginning. For the first time, actually, after 48, we are in charge of the entire Israel that was promised to us, Son and so forth, has developed the messianic spirit, and also the overconfidence of our capabilities.

But the divisions in the Israeli society that I was talking about started independently of this, started because of the lengths of the control of the one party, almost every facet of life in our country for many years, the feelings of inferiority, in a way, a feeling of segregation, which characterized the Jews that came from Oriental countries. The feeling amongst the people that came from Oriental countries or Muslim countries, that dominance in our society, in our life, in our institutions, in our courts, in our academic centers where all was completely

in the hands of Jews from Western backgrounds and not from Eastern background was a major source of bitterness and disappointment which has spread and started to shake the balance and the sense of solidarity

within the country, which had nothing to do with the other aspect that you have mentioned, which I entirely agree with. Okay? Can I develop a little bit, the other aspect, because another thing that happens in the 70s is the beginning of the development of a strong settler movement. And there you talked about a messianic idea.

And these are religious Zionists, many of them, in fact, from the United States who begin to really believe. I was talking to somebody recently with Alistair about a few months ago who said, oh, you have to understand that Hebron is, I don't know, where Abraham was buried, and so-and-so was where Joseph was born, and therefore these places have to be part of Israel, they can't be Palestinian. When does this view begin to develop? Because, of course, for an outsider, this seems a little crazy. I mean, we're not really sure very much about this historical figure called Abraham or Joseph. Definitely also I'm not familiar enough with the Jewish history because what he said about Hebron is historically accurate. Hebron is one of the foundations,

what the Jewish life will be, 2000, 3,000 years ago. And in fact, talking about a person I mentioned before, Menachembegin, who was the leader of the Uun and subsequently the leader of the party, of Khmer Party, and then of the new makeup, relatively new, the Likud, he was always talked about the two banks of the Jordan, which are the Jewish church and the symbol of the Irgun actually included not only all of the West Bank, but also the east bank of the Jordan. And Menachem Begin refused to change the symbol of the Yirgun, the logo of the Yirgun Eber. And after 67, Menachan Begin was the person perhaps more than any other person that said, that when we will come into power,

we will annex all of these territories because the West Bank is not the West Bank. It's Judea and Samaria. It is the historical basis of the Jewish life. Now, I entirely agree with him that the West Bank is indeed Judea and Samaria historically and that they were part of the basis

of the beginning, of the emergence of the Jewish life. But that I also subscribe to the wisdom and the leadership of enough and begging who understood when he became prime minister, there what he thought he would do when he would become prime minister is entirely impossible because the fact is that now in this time, 6776 to this day, the West Bank is inhabited by millions of people who are not part of us, who are not part of the Jewish people, and who are there, and there is no way that you can integrate these territories into the state of Israel

without giving them all the civil rights, human rights, political rights, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, everything that has to come with it. But in that case, they will eventually become the majority, and they will change entirely the nature and the essence of what Israel is all about. So we have to decide what do we want to achieve? And we have to give up. And Menach and Beggin never said that he will give up the territories to make any change in the status of the territories in the direction of the integration and the annexation, because he understood that this dream will never come true. When you became Prime Minister in 2006, I think in one of your first big speeches, you essentially said there has to be a Palestinian state, there has to be a two-state solution, and the Israeli withdrawal from West Bank.

And there seemed to me at that time considerable political support for that. When you talk about the way that Israel's changed, are we now in a position where, because of the politics of modern Israel, that that vision of the two-state solution, is further away than it's ever been. I don't know if it's ever been, but it's further away from where it was when I was Prime Minister. I have to say, if I can, because I don't believe that anyone will do it for me, to my credit,

before the elections in 2006, when I was elected, I did something which I don't think that any Israeli leader has ever done before, and I doubt that many in other countries were doing it. I decided to spell it out what I think and what I'm going to do, which I knew will cost me quite a lot of votes in the coming elections, but that I wanted to have the moral authority after the elections, and I was confident that I will win the elections,

what I want to do after the elections with the moral authority, I stayed in advance before you voted that I will do this. So I made a series of statements before the elections, in which I said, yes, I'm going to go for a two-state solution. I said, I'm going to propose. And I was also, before the election, the most active minister in the cabinet of Sharon at that time, as a vice prime minister, in moving forward the disengagement, which is the pulling out from Gaza in August of 2005. And then it was quite a painful process for Israel, because there were thousands of people living in those places near Gaza and we pulled them out because we say that this is not part

of the land of Israel. We don't want to be there. We don't want to be there. It's not ours. So before the elections, I said, and I'm going to pull out from the West Bank. And all my advisors say to me, you're crazy. Why do you have to say that so explicitly? Why do you have to spell it out in such a clear way? Leave it vague, you know, ambiguous, let's people think, or whatever they won't, focus on other things. They say, no, I mean business, and I want after the elections to try and really pull out on the territories. And I say, we will propose the Palestinians the most generous political plan,

and if they will agree, then we will have peace. If they will not agree, we will pull out from the territories on a unilateral basis. Something that, you know, we're just after the very, a very painful experience of the pulling out from the West Bank, and then suddenly, and I came with this. And indeed, I got a smaller percentage. But you won. So, Pramister then, and then ultimately it went wrong.

So from the outside, it looks as though the Ombuds Plan was derailed by the war in Lebanon. The Omit Plan was derailed by Abel-Marsen and the Palestinians being reluctant to sign up. and it was derailed also by views changing in the Israeli population, very large numbers of Israelis being opposed to this. I mean, how do you explain what went wrong? How do you understand why you failed to get this plan through? I had a plan well articulated of how to, if we would have signed the agreement with Palestinians, how to guarantee that there will be a majority support for it in the state of Israel.

I think that there was a good chance to achieve it. This was 16 years ago, 15 years ago. So it's been a long time. I mean, many things changed since then. You can judge what may have been done then to what can be done now. What went wrong? First of all, the forces that were opposing me and that were influenced by national religious groups and by the opposition led by Netanyahu.

I defeated Netanyahu in the elections in 2006. I didn't get all the votes that I wanted to get, but he got 12 seats in the Knesset, which is the smallest ever for the leading right-wing party in the history of the state of Israel. He was absolutely crushed. But since then, when they realized that I'm serious about my political plans, they started their manipulations and the investigations and the incriminations against me, every possible way assisted by some Jewish millionaires from America. The change in the makeup of the Israeli society was not affected by Jews that came from America.

They were relatively small number. It was mostly affected at that time by Jewish millionaires from America that felt that they can buy with money the territories for the Jewish people. Just to jump in, because some of our listeners won't necessarily know the full story, but what you're referring to there is that at the end of your premiership, you faced these charges of corruption and bribery and ended up in prison. Are you saying that they were all fabricated and they were all trumped up? At the end of the day, I mentioned it because I don't see any reason to hide it. You know, I'm not ashamed. I'm sad because of

the consequences that I think really set Israel back into an entirely different direction on the one that may have been the future of Israel, I was charged with all kinds of stupid things. At the end of the day, I was convicted for receiving 60,000 shekels, which is about 12,000 pounds as a political contribution. There was never any registration of this money. There was no one that saw the money, and it was all not the money that was given to cover. my political debt. I didn't have political debts. I didn't have this money. No one said that I took this money or I got this money for my own personal use. No one said that I ever got this money directly to say that he was paid indirectly from by one person to another person to cover political

debts that I never had and so on and so forth. This was all, Nancy, it doesn't matter. I was convicted. This was a concerted effort that was organized, financed, and executed by my political rivals, mostly from the messianic national religious groups, assisted and advised by people that wanted to bring back Bibi into power, knowing that he will take the country into an entirely different direction. So, Prime Minister, I suppose two things. What did it make you think about the Israeli legal system and the judiciary? Because, of course, as an outsider, we tended to imagine that actually the judiciary in Israel is relatively clear.

the legal process works, so if they convict you, you're guilty. And then I think the second thing is what was the experience of being in prison? What was it like to go from being prime minister to being a prisoner? Number one, I was very unhappy with the outcome. I know I was, by the way, I was acquitted on maybe three, four different charges, different court cases that were presented against me on the first place. All of these I was acquitted. I was was acquitted for all these charges. Subsequently, after I resigned already as Prime Minister and so they came with a new case. Now, I was very unhappy with the legal system in terms of the outcome of my case. I thought that they were wrong. I thought that they were somehow simplistic. I think

that I thought that they were acting under the enormous pressure of public opinion and the coordinated efforts by political parties. other political maneuvers. And I was very upset. But I never thought, never said. I never thought a legal system can be wrong. You know, a prime minister can be wrong. The chief rabbi can be wrong.

The chief justice can be wrong. The head of Mossad can be wrong. And judges can be wrong. So I thought that they were wrong. I never thought that there was a conspiracy by the legal system against it. I never thought then. And I never wanted to destroy. the legal system in order to avenge their decision that I was unhappy with.

Just before we leave you that period, so you've been in various sort of political parties and political groupings, but at the time when you were Prime Minister, you were part of this party called Kadima, which was with Sharon. And in a sense, we, so Rory, who's a conformed conservative minister, me, who's Labor, we are constantly being told we need to sort of set up a sort of centrist political force. At times you had Shimon Perez in there, ex-Labour, you had people from Likud.

Just tell us about what that said about Israeli politics at the time that a kind of liberal centrist force became the dominant force in politics, bringing people in both sides, against the situation we have now, which seems to us to be completely atomized and polarized, but utterly dominated by the far right.

It's not utterly dominated with the far right, but let's start. First, I think really Kadima was an absolutely revolutionary change in the makeup of Israeli politics. Many of us from Likud were part of the sometimes extreme right, and I was part of it. I publicly apologize for my wrong opinions at an earlier time. And I said, yes, I was wrong. 20 years ago, 25 years ago was entirely wrong and we have to change

as, by the way, Sharon. Sharon was the one that built all the settlements, right? And in 2005, I, together with Sharon, as Sharon as the leader, we dismantled all the settlements that Sharon built because he figured out

and he said it. He said, what you think from here, you don't see from there. So what I saw in the past is not what I see now when I am at the top of the helm, and I'm in charge of the fate of the future of this nation. I have to take decisions which may be different from what we took in the past. And I was in that section. So we decided, we figured out that there's a majority in the liquid which is against us. And we said, we are not going to battle now and lose

the fight because the fight is not for our personal political careers. The fight is for the future and the nature of the state of Israel. So we decided to create Kadima party. Sharon collapsed after a weeks. So I had to take it from there and build up the party and we collaborated with some members and the members of the Labour Party became part of the Kadima and it was the centrist party which was destined to dominate the politics of Israel and the right-wing factions and the extremist fundamentalist, messianic, right-wingers, both here and from overseas with big pockets of unlimited amount of dollars. In one of the court cases that I had,

a young lady that was working as a secretary in my office when I was mayor of Jerusalem, and she was observant. She was suddenly, from nowhere, she came to testify against me. And I was absolutely surprised because I knew her to be very friendly and very supportive when she worked for me.

and I didn't understand what happened. And she said, he was prepared to surrender the sacred land of Israel to the going, to the Palestinians. And this is terrible. I mean, this was sacrilegious. So are you saying she was set up to do that?

Yes, yes. I mean, yes, the right faction understood that Kadimba is a real danger because it will destroy the infrastructure of the the right wing messian groups and who changed the course of history

in the direction that I thought was essential for the future of the state of Israel. And when Bibi took over in 2009, everything has changed. Look, I was in charge of the military operation beginning of the South Line in Gaza. And quite a few people were killed, including some civilians,

fewer than, you know, in no comparison to what happened now. But at the end of that costly operation, in the beginning of 2009, 24 hours after we announced the ceasefire in the south, all of the major leaders of Europe came to the residents of the Israeli Prime Minister in Jerusalem for a dinner party that I hosted and sat with me in front of all the cameras of the world and said, Israel had a right to do what it did. Can you imagine them doing it now to this government?

So even when some were not quite happy with our military operation, they understood that the government that I led and that I represented was anxious to achieve peace in line with what most of the countries that were friendly with us. Nicola Sarkozy, Angela Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, you name it, came to Israel to express their solidarity with the attackers, with us, with me, even though we attacked Gaza because of what the Gazans did to us and so on and so forth. But the perception was that Israel was a country that was aiming at peace. You will never find anyone doing it now, obviously.

Okay, Prime Minister Alistair, let's take a quick break. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Zavarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. back to tell you about our new series on the rest of history, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world

economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very

first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history,

the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you.

We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts. Prime Minister, can we come back to your plan? And so your plan was to give up much more than 90% of the West Bank back to the Palestinians. You wanted to create a contiguous Palestinian state, a two-state solution. You were negotiating very closely with Abu Mazen, and in the end, it didn't work out. And you've talked about one of the reasons, which was the corruption investigation against you. But what did you learn from these negotiations about the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian negotiation?

Maybe give us the Palestinian perspective. Help us to understand. I don't want to speak for them. No, I don't speak for them. I think it's very easy, and I think it's not serious. for me to speak for the other side. I can tell you this, and this is very important. I know I urge you to be patient with me.

What I proposed to the Palestinians was historic. It was a dramatic departure for anything that was ever discussed in the passing. It was a full comprehensive response to everything that the Palestinians ever requested. I not only did I agree to have a two-state solution, okay, I say two-state solution on the basis of 67 borders. Now, it's true. I said we will pull out from 95% of the territories, but the 5% that we will annex in the territories,

we will swap with you in territories which were part of the state of Israel pre-67. So the size of the state of the Palestinian state will be 100% identical to what the territories were before the occupation. That's number one. Number two, I said the Arab side of Jerusalem will be the Palestinian capital. In other words, I was prepared to divide the city of Jerusalem, which was one of the most significant slogans of Israelis and the Israeli political leaders. To this day, you will not find one of the Israeli political leaders that are now in charge

or that may become in charge tomorrow, that they will replace that they are now, including Lapid and Gans and the other and Isaac Cot, that say that they are perfectly. earth to pull out from the Arab side of Jerusalem. More so, I say that we will agree to waive the exclusive sovereignty that we exercised in the Temple Mountain in the old city and the only basin of Jerusalem, that the holy basin of Jerusalem will be administered by a trust ship of five nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and America under the auspices of the UN Security Council, and that the refugees, issue, which was always hanging over us in the Middle East, will be resolved within the framework

of the Arab League Peace Initiative, which was approved in 2002 in Beirut, and again in 28th of March, 2007 in Riyadh. This was a revolutionary approach. Now I answer you, now what happened with the Palestinians? At the end of the day, if you ask me, I think that they didn't have the courage to make that one step which will change history. I was pleading. I sat in my study in Jerusalem and there were all kinds of stories, I mean, urbanic legends that I drew the map on an epkin. I presented it with a map which was prepared by the geographic department of the Israeli army, which was a very big map with all the necessary ingredients that were to be part of it and so on. And he said to me, I am not

familiar with reading maps. So perhaps I'll have my expert, see, will you give me the map? I said, President, if I'll give you the map, I'll never see you again. And in two years' time, and three years time, you'll come back to the Israeli

and I will say, this, this I already have, I got it from all that. Now, let's start negotiating for the rest. So I said, no way. You want a map? Sign it now. I will sign it, and you will sign. And I said, listen, President. In the next 50 years, you will not have one Israeli prime minister that will propose you what I propose to you now.

I give it to you. You know, you can trust me. You know that I mean it. You know that I care for it. You know that we've been sitting for hundreds of hours together and talking about it. Sign it now. Otherwise, it will disappear. And he said, give me 24 hours.

I'll call you back. I'm still waiting. By the way, in the meantime, now I think that he didn't have the courage. He didn't have the courage. Had I been in a similar situation, the other side gives me a proposition. And he is likely not to support what he proposed. I could be in the best possible position. Had Abu Mazin signed the initials with me as I proposed to him,

and then we would go to the United Nations Security Council, and the United Nations Security Council would have approved of it. And then the next Prime Minister of Israel will come and say, I don't approve of what my government proposed to the other side. side, it would have left Abu Mazen in the best possible position in the international arena rather than to be the one that refused. Goon bring things just briefly right up to date. You mentioned earlier that Netanyahu looked like he was finished back in 2006 and here we are almost two decades later and he's still

prime minister. What does that say about him? What are your views on Ben Gavir and Smotrich? And most importantly of all, how is this thing going to get resolved? Number one, Netanyahu. Netanyahu is a much better political person that most of the opponents that he had dealt with since I left. He lost to me, as I said in a very significant manner. The guys that came after me were not, unfortunately, didn't have the kind of firmness and determination and strength,

inner strength to face him. And he manipulated, and he's a great performer. I always said that fortunately for Lawrence Olivier, he died before Bibi because had he lived for the time of Bibi, no one will talk about Dorens Olivier, everyone will talk about Bibi. Bibi is a performer. He is, for every speech, every appearance that he makes, it's like a performance in the old week, if you want.

He is made up. He's what we may know his hair. I don't have, as you can see. anything while he's dying it with purple colors, and he's preparing like this is a theatrical appearance. And he's a great performer. He's the greatest performance in international politics in comparison to anyone that I know in the world arena.

He is a man without any moral convictions. And I think that, unfortunately, he is... Nothing can stop him and nothing matters to him. And he has been successfully manipulating the international arena as well. You know, I wondered all the time, how come President Obama, who is an outstanding person? I know it. I worked with him a little bit. He's an outstanding person. How come when Netanyahu was in such a provocative, manipulative way was conspiring against him?

How come he didn't take some measures to against his government, of course, with the possible ramifications for the standing on the state of Israel? And he refrained from doing it, although I know exactly what he thought about Netanyahu. One of his assistants that I talked with privately said to him, no one ever insulted the Oval Office in the history of the United States of America as your prime minister referring to Netanyahu and my interpretation is that both Obama

and I don't include Trump in this context because I think he's a different guy and a different person but you look at Biden now I mean he is conspiring against Biden

in every possible way and look how helpful supportive Biden is to the state of How long can that last? I don't want to say I don't want to say what I want to say

You see? So let me say this. I think that the days of Vidi are numbers. Bibi is finished. The elections will be sooner than later. They will be in four months, five months, six months. At the end of the year, there will be elections. And he will be thrown to the sidelines of history, where he belongs. And what about Ben Gavir and Smotritch? And then there will be the big battle will be against Ben Gavir and Smotritch, not against them, personally only, but against what they represent. I think that what they represent is an imminent danger

to the security, the safety, the stability, and the integrity of the state of Israel. And they have to be thrown out with him. I think he's much more important because he has been capable of pretending to be something different that misled a certain part of the Israeli population which is not necessarily extreme right-wing fundamentalist messianic as small-tritch in the bank team.

So the priority for us is to get rid of him. We'll get rid of him, we'll get rid of him, we'll get rid of them. What replaces them? I don't know what to say. I can say only one thing that when I say to some of the contenders in Israel, that the greatest challenge of leadership is the ability of a leader

when he is in the position to take decisions which will determine the fate of his nation is the ability to do the opposite of everything that he ever promised he would do. Normally when we measure our political guys we say, ah, he's a great guy, he's a good guy, you know, he stands by his word.

I don't want someone to stand by his word. I want him to be a good guy. able to say to do the opposite of what he said for the country. And now I want that I want that when I look at a person that may take over, there will be fire in his chest, threatening to erupt in like a volcano and burn everything that will stand in its way. You ask me whether I see someone in the present time in any of the possible places where the alternative can come with this.

kind of fire in his chest, I don't. Prime Minister, my final question. From the outside, it looks very, very dark. It looks as though Israeli public opinion is much more right-wing than it was in the 90s and early 2000s, that, you know, 85% of Israelis are against a ceasefire in Gaza that... Who said so? That's not true. Well, there was a Times of Israel, Poland. times Israel up there's to be more right-wing, it's true. Yet, yet. Since last year, in almost 100 different polls that were done through the year until last weekend,

80% of the Israelis do not trust the prime minister, and the possible number in the Knesset is always around 70 to the opposition and 50 to the coalition of BBG. But Prime Minister, the problem with the polls is you're right. Nobody likes Netanyahu, but they are overwhelmingly supportive of the operations in Gaza. They're opposed to the idea of a ceasefire. So this means that we're now in a situation after October where... They're not overwhelmingly, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't think that they are overwhelmingly in support of not stopping the war.

In fact, I think that many of them are in some... The war is finished, by the way. The war is ended. There is no war. They are just operations here and there, but it's fading. It's fading. The problem is this. You can't ignore what were the circumstances on the 7th of October that influenced and impacted the emotions of the people in Israel

and the attitudes toward Gaza and the Palestinians and Hamas. I know that the way you look at it, and I try to explain it, by the way, to the Israelis also. And I spell it out almost every day on the Israeli media. I said, look, we still feel the terrible pain of what happened to a couple of thousands of Israelis that were butchered and beheaded and raped and whatnot by the Palestinians in their living rooms, in their bedrooms, in their safe rooms, in their houses, not as soldiers, not as a fighting group, etc. And we are also still worried for the originally 240 Israeli hostages, which are now 130, and we don't know how many of them are still alive,

and they are raped and tortured on a daily basis at this very moment by their captors in the most brutal way. So you can't overlook the impact of these experiences in the emotions in the hearts of the people of Israel. But that can be changed if there will be a leadership that will have the power, the determination, and the courage to do. The opposite of what people thought they would do, because this is the right thing to do.

And I think that this can be changed. It can be changed, and it will be changed, because at the end of the day, when you say to them, okay, let's continue, let's destroy everything, let's take another six months, and we will kill every single Hamas person that there is, and there will not be Hamas anymore. There are still six million Palestinians. Do you think that we can carry on the occupation forever? Do you think that we can still deny the Palestinians from civil rights, human rights, political rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, freedom of movement forever? Do you think it's possible?

Do you think Israel can contain it? Do you think that the international community will tolerate Israel as an occupying force forever? Forget about it. And when you talk like this to people, then in spite of the emotions, in spite of the hatred for the Palestinians that committed these atrocities to the Israelis, they understand that something must be done. But in order to be able to achieve it, we need a different leadership. And unfortunately, at the end of our meeting, I am not certain that I can give you the names or the people

that I think can be the ones that will lead the country because I don't know that they are. I don't know where they are. But the point you're making is somebody has to emerge who essentially says that one day we are going to have to live in peace side by side with the Palestinians. Simple as that. I say every time I am on television in Israel,

I just said it the other day in a prime time major television show. I said it, but I am a further prime minister on the future. Okay. Well, listen, thank you for giving you so much of your time. And we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you, Prime Minister. Bye, bye.

So, Rory, that was very, very interesting, quite tough to interview because he likes to command the microphone and he doesn't necessarily like being interrupted. Yeah, I think 78-year-old former prime ministers from any country don't take kindly to people interrupting him. Listen, I thought it was fascinating. I mean, I think people have to read it in its context as a historical thing. So just to point out the obvious,

if you are a Palestinian listening to this and in fact if you're many people you don't have to be a Palestinian many many people will be very angry people who care about Gaza will feel that he wasn't remotely sympathetic enough about the horrors that have been inflicted on Gaza and they will remember his participation

in the Lebanon War and in previous attempts Gaza people from the right will say we let him get away with saying that he was completely guiltless and actually some of the evidence around the corruption trials seem to be pretty compelling, including video evidence. However, now I'm just going to flip back to you, I think it was completely mesmerizing. I think he is an very interesting political figure. It's absolutely true that the Olmert plan was the last serious attempt to get to a two-state solution, that it was pretty

bold and radical. And I agree with him that if Abu Mazen had felt able, to sign up to it, we probably would be in a much better position today. But brackets, I can see why Apple Marson didn't sign up to it. Yeah. No, I find, I found parts of it, particularly towards the end, I found it mesmerizing, and I found him very, very compelling in some of the things that he said. I think the early stages we were being sort of, you know, lectured at a little bit. And also, I think he's very, I guess for understandable reasons, very, very anxious to relitigate both, his career, because ultimately it did end with these corruption and bribery charges and the corruption and bribery charges themselves. So there was an element, I guess, of defensiveness.

But I think his analysis of Israeli politics is always worth hearing. I thought he's, I mean, it's perfectly clear he absolutely despises Netanyahu and Ben-Gabir and Smotrich, but it's because of the damage that he thinks they've done and continue to do. I also think there's something really interesting about political courage. So for all his flaws, what he was trying to do was very radical. I mean, he was genuinely trying to leave 90% of the West Bank dismantle an enormous number of settlements. Not all of them, but an enormous number of them. And you can see that sense of a flawed character, but also a ferociously bright character,

incredibly tough and determined. And exactly the kind of person that you need if you're going to get peace. I mean, if you think about peace in Northern Ireland, you know, there's nothing cuddly about Martin McGuinness or indeed Ian Paisley, right? That these are pretty raw, tough, compromised street politicians with very difficult records. But that's where peace comes from, I guess. So I did admire it. I mean, I believed him.

I don't think he was faking it. I genuinely think, with all the problems with that man, this was a guy who was trying to do something astonishing, which might have led to a much better situation in the Middle East. And it's interesting, isn't it, how his perspective on the international community at the moment, I mean, a lot that you hear here, particularly, I think, from younger people, is why are the Bidens, the Sunnaks, the Macron's, well, actually, Macron's been pretty tough recently,

but why are the sort of international leaders so supportive? But he was making the point that when he was involved in military action in Gaza, that because of what had led to it, and I can remember it, Gordon Brown did go there. Merkel did go there, Saikosey did go there. There was this sort of huge international support. And I think I'm right that Gordon Brown was part of that group with Allmerton, Palestinians and also the king of Saudi Arabia that were at one point trying to drive this and get it back on the road. But it's also a moment. I mean, we've talked about this a little bit because our friend, Tom, who was in number 10, was part of making Gordon down.

Yeah, Tom Fletcher. Yeah, Tom Fletcher go vote for a UN resolution against Gaza at that period, which was very critical of Israel and the U.S. abstaining. So, I mean, I think one question that listeners will have listening to this is probably, I think, one of the most important interviews we've done. But one of the questions people will have is, why? didn't the Palestinians sign up to his plan? And I think there are many, many reasons for that. One, as he said, is that they thought he was a lame duck, couldn't deliver. Yeah, and politics was also changing elsewhere. And then, and if you think about Abel-Marsen with his map, you can completely understand why he's like, wait a second, I'm not signing this now. I need to go back to my people and talk. I also think that there was a big problem, which is that he had his own plan,

so he wasn't following the roadmap, which was the US, George H.W. Bush process. He wasn't following the Saudi process. And it wasn't negotiated. It was unilateral. And that made people very uncomfortable. So what the Arab countries at time was saying is, listen, this is fine, but we want to negotiate. We don't like being the position of the Israeli primates are just saying, take it or leave it. This is what you're doing. We want to get to this together. So there's also a question of personalities, how this stuff is done. But it feeds a narrative, which is very difficult for the Palestinian cause, which is, of course, many Israelis on the basis of these things will often say, well, you know, Palestinians have rejected every attempt that we've made.

And again, finally, I'd like to come back to you on this because I've been teaching here in the States civil rights. And of course, the big question for people looking at politics is when are you a rejectionist and when do you accept incremental gain? So if you're a movement like the Palestinians, you feel this incredible injustice and somebody says to you, I'm going to give you back, you know, 90% of the territory, but we're going to leave 40,000 settlers in place. Do you take it? Or do you say no, we're fighting for our justice? We reject these settlements. We're going to go for 100%.

The other thing is going through the whole, if you think about the whole interview, and there's a guy who's coming up to 80, 78 now. And he taught rightly about that period when you kind of felt that the Labour Party was like the party of government in Israel. Then you had this period where you had this more centrist party, Eucadema that he was very, very centrally involved in. And now it does feel, I mean, he pushed back at me saying it's utterly dominated by the far right.

What I meant, I guess, by that was utterly dominated by the right with these very far right elements that are kind of pulling it further. So that trajectory from left to right has been pretty stark. I guess what he was saying at the end when he was actually talking about revolution, I guess he was saying that the only good that can now come out of this. this is that people understand this is so bad that we have to go right back into a completely different phase, which is essentially, and this is where I think he probably is sort of holding on to his own role in history, is actually that the, you know, the foundations are in the sort of

approach that he had. We have to live side by side. We have to live peacefully. We have to give as well as take. And that is something that he clearly doesn't think he's ever going to come from the people in power now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm, there's so much to think about that. And we didn't even get on to things like, I mean, he was a very influential mayor of Jerusalem. And I think his change in position from being quite a kind of right wing guy to a much more centrist guy happened during that 10 years when he took over from Teddy Collick, who was this great labor, heroic mayor of Jerusalem. And so there's so much exploring. And I wonder whether, despite his tendency to talk at great length, whether we might

want to get him back on at some point. Yeah. Good. You get back to teaching about rights. That's right. Thank you very much, Alast. Have a great day. Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye-bye.