Israel’s Endgame in Gaza Should be a Palestinian State says Former Israeli PM

Israel’s Endgame in Gaza Should be a Palestinian State says Former Israeli PM

TIME

With a full-blown war unfolding between Israel and Hamas, it’s hard to imagine a new dawn of peace. The body count in Gaza is rising daily, a month after Hamas stormed southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking hundreds more hostage. It’s a cycle of violence that threatens to paralyze the moral and political imaginations of Israelis and Palestinians alike, deepening the impression that an accommodation will remain forever out of reach.

But to hear one of Israel’s elder statesmen tell it, now is precisely the moment to resurrect the goal of a renewed peace process.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaks during a rally to protest the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plan, in Tel Aviv on June 24, 2023© Jack Guez—AFP via Getty Images

“I think there is a need in Israel, under the heaviest, most difficult conditions, never to lose sight of the objective,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak tells TIME. “The right way is to look to the two-state solution, not because of justice to the Palestinians, which is not the uppermost on my priorities, but because we have a compelling imperative to disengage from the Palestinians to protect our own security, our own future, our own identity.”

Put another way: As Israel embarks on what many suspect will be its longest, most devastating war, it should be preparing to make painful concessions once it’s over. Otherwise, Barak warns, Israel will lose legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. It won’t be able to corral the Arab countries that could help reconstruct Gaza. And it will remain haunted by an existential crisis that threatens the nation’s character as a Jewish democracy.

For Barak, who was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001 and Defense Minister from 2007 to 2013, it’s personal. In Israel’s 75-year history, no Israeli leader came closer to securing a peace deal with the Palestinians. Through a series of negotiations in 2000, brokered by President Bill Clinton, Barak made Israel’s first ever offer to establish a Palestinian state. The proposal included roughly 97 percent of the West Bank; all of Gaza, where Israel still had settlers; and a capital in East Jerusalem. “It was historic,” Clinton wrote in his memoirs. “The ball was in Arafat’s court.”

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Unfortunately, that’s where the ball stayed. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat spurned the proposal and ignited a strategic onslaught of suicide bombings against Israel that became known as the Second Intifada. The four-and-a-half year ordeal entailed Palestinian guerilla fighters killing more than 1,000 Israelis, Israeli military forces killing more than 3,000 Palestinians in retaliatory strikes, and a psychic wound that devastated Israel’s peace movement.

But now, in the face of another seismic conflict, Israel’s most decorated soldier says the country can’t revert to the status quo of a one-state reality. A full-on embrace of two states is the only path out of the abyss.

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Header featured image (edited) credit: Ehud Barak/open public card picture

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