Omid Memarian, a journalist, analyst and recipient of Human Rights Watch's Human Rights Defender Award, is the Director of Communications at DAWN.
In the 1990s and again in the early 2000s, Daniel Levy worked as a peace negotiator in Israel's talks with the Palestinians, under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. He saw firsthand the promise of the Oslo peace process—and its ultimate failure, "eventually just becoming another way of managing the occupation," he tells Democracy in Exile. With the Biden administration reviving vague talk of a two-state solution—even as it has vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions for a cease-fire in Gaza and continues to provide the weapons necessary for Israel's war—Levy sees little reason for optimism. "It's important to understand that when the Biden administration, having really neglected this issue, then returns to a narrative about two states—I do not suggest it should be taken seriously," he says.
"We should probably understand this resumed talk of two states as a ruse, as a rhetorical sleight of hand," he argues. "But also, what it really is, is an attempt to go back to a peace process that's make believe, that allows the existing apartheid to be refrozen. That's what's on the agenda."
Levy is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a co-founder of J Street, and a frequent analyst and commentator on Israel, Palestine and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In this extended interview, he discusses how Israeli society and politics have changed in the decades since Oslo, the hard choices Israelis face in the aftermath of Hamas's attack on Oct. 7, and why the Biden administration has aligned itself "with an unreasonable and unachievable" Israeli goal in Gaza. "It really is the case that without the constant channeling of American weaponry, this could not continue," he says of Israel's war. "The American monopoly on peacemaking efforts has to be pried away," he adds, "because they are clearly not in a position to lead a good-faith effort toward a sustainable future for Palestinians and Israelis alike."
The following transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
The Biden administration has been unwilling to deploy its very real leverage. It really is the case that without the constant channeling of American weaponry, this could not continue.
- Daniel Levy
How has Israeli society, and the Israeli government, changed since the 1990s and the early 2000s, when you served as an Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians?
It's a very important question to look at, both where there is continuity and where there is change. And I think it's a story of both of those things.
In that early to mid-90s interregnum of the first peace process—the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the '92 Rabin government—first of all, the law to ban contact with the PLO is repealed, in the middle of the back-channel negotiations. And then you have that breakthrough moment. Israel is quite divided. You have an Israeli parliament, in which the Labor Party, which is a center-left party, and the Meretz Party, which is a party that is not represented in parliament today, have 44 and 12 seats, respectively. That's 56 out of 120. The magic number for a majority is 61. Two parties representing the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel have five seats. Yitzhak Rabin first closes a deal with those five to create a supporting bloc [for his government]. They don't join the coalition, but there are agreements reached with those parties so that they have a supporting bloc, and Rabin has his majority. Then he takes one of the Haredi ultra-orthodox parties, Shas, that at that time was ready to go along with this.
Now, today, Labor and Meretz together have four seats. Labor had been the party of the Nakba—let's not whitewash that history. It was the party of the Arab military government, under which those who were not expelled lived, the Palestinian citizens of Israel from '48 to '66. It was the party that began settlements under Shimon Peres.
Nevertheless, this was an Israel that was divided. An Israel that came out of the First Intifada visibly shaken and reassessing its position. It saw that there was a cost, there was a price to pay. The election in which Rabin came into power came off the back of the U.S. administration, under George H.W. Bush, having said that you can't have loan guarantees to resettle Jews who are leaving the collapsing Soviet Union if that money is going to be spent in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Bush administration withholds money that would be spent in those territories. Israel sees that in a changing world, it cannot advance itself with this unaddressed Palestinian question. It sees the reputational hit it has taken off the back of its violent response to the First Intifada. Rabin runs on a platform of money for the working-class neighborhoods, not for the settlements.
I give that historical background because it wasn't just that Israeli society looked a bit different then. It is also the context in which Israel was operating—the sense of impunity challenged, the sense that the U.S. might use leverage, the sense that internationally, Israel was in an unstable place. Rabin is assassinated less than four years later by a religious nationalist, a Jewish radical. Oslo beds down into eventually just becoming another way of managing the occupation. And many people will say: Don't be naive. That was the intention all along.
In that intervening period, what are the key things that change? There are things internal to Israel and extraneous. The internal to Israel, I would argue, is first of all, there's factual stuff. There's demographic shifts. The ultra-orthodox population continues to grow. But the ultra-orthodox population over time aligns itself with the right religious nationalists. And the center-left decides that anti-clericalism—that going against religious coercion of Jewish fundamentalists—is more important than settlers and nationalist fanatics and the Palestinian question. So they choose their coalition allies premised not on who will tackle the illegalities of the settlers, but often on who may form a coalition against clericalism of the Jewish fundamentalist variety.
The Israeli public see that, as things get worse, as the measures against the Palestinians become more draconian, as Oslo collapses, as the occupation is more entrenched, as racism comes more to the fore, Israelis see that there is no price for this. When they do see a price in the Second Intifada, it is one that is a far more armed, with violent insurrection, and it probably hardens people's opinions. Then after the Second Intifada, Israel sees that its international standing is fine. It later improves. Israel sees that successive American administrations do not challenge Israel's illegal actions against the Palestinians. Israel, in fact, expands its relations. Israel, under Trump, does these Abraham Accords.
There's a long story here. But the key factors are the regional and international context in which Israel is operating, which feed into and in turn are fed by the changes inside Israel. Where today, I would say that the political spectrum, the Zionist Jewish political spectrum, is essentially all nationalist—running from apartheidists with a smiling face, through to just racist apartheidists, right through to expulsionists and eradicationists, this phenomenon of Ben Gvir and Smotrich that people will be familiar with.
As a final thought, Oct. 7—of course, it was a violation of international law, criminal acts were committed. Oct. 6 and every day before that Israel is violating international law, committing criminal acts. Since Oct. 7 and in its actions in Gaza, Israel is plausibly now committing a genocide.
But if one thinks in the terms that I've just described, will we look back on this moment as one where the pendulum began to swing again? Israel's reputation took a massive hit. Israel's vulnerabilities have been exposed. And the Israeli public slowly sees that impunity is being challenged. Not at this stage by the U.S., let's be quite clear, but I do not want to rule that out as the long sweep outcome of the events we're living through.
How could the International Court of Justice case brought against Israel by South Africa, which found it "plausible" that Israel's actions in Gaza could violate the Genocide Convention, help shape or rebuild new coalitions, both at the political and grassroots level? How can the ICJ case have an impact, in that sense?
What we have seen today is a significant shift. I think Israel, first of all militarily, has seen the myth of invincibility very challenged. When you're carrying out that level of destruction, it's often a sign of weakness—that you're cautious where you're sending your infantry. It's not a sign of strength.
But whether it's the military front, the legal front, the moral front, reputationally, relationally, Israel is seeing challenges. They're seeing losses on several fronts. One of those fronts is that, both at the state level and at the popular level, coalitions are emerging, people are being mobilized around this question.
Both civil society actors in the West, and states themselves, often in the Global South, are almost seeing a reflection of the injustice of their own lives. The injustice is of the neocolonial global order being reflected in the injustice being meted out against the Palestinians, and the way the U.S. and the West are responding to that.
I think the most significant act in that respect has been the South African appeal to the International Court of Justice regarding possible violations of the Genocide Convention, and the need for immediate measures to prevent plausibly a genocide being committed. The Court ruling was very powerful. Because the Americans have dismissed it and the West has dismissed it, so has the Western media—which has played an appalling role, let's just be clear about that, in these last months. The Western media has largely not paid attention, and not included in its regular coverage references to this ICJ case.
But consider the fact that it was ANC, post-apartheid South Africa that brought this case, the statements made by the South African team in The Hague, the very unconvincing Israeli responses, the overwhelming ruling of judges—16-1 in most instances, 15-2 in some, in calling for provisional measures that Israel should take to prevent a plausible genocide.
This can't be self-implementing, right? So the ruling comes through, things don't change. But these are things that one will look back on, I think, in the future and say that was a big deal—the vulnerabilities this also exposes Israel to legally in national courts, in terms of future arms deals, amongst other things, the potential complicity in this plausible genocide of America and others. This is going to constantly crop up.
There is another case before the ICJ, arising from a vote of the United Nations General Assembly, where the Court has been asked to provide an advisory opinion on Israel's prolonged occupation, and its legal consequences, including responsibilities of third parties. In that case, you had the most states ever appearing before the Court. You had about 25 states and regional groupings actually referencing the word and the crime of apartheid in their presentations to the ICJ.
This is no longer just human rights groups or Palestinians, B'Tselem or Human Rights Watch, using that terminology, making that designation. This is state actors, including some of the most significant states in the Global South. And what this says to me is we are in the nascent stage of ad hoc coalitions forming in society amongst state actors, of new challenges being brought to bear, of power beginning to shift.
Now I don't want to get carried away with myself, because Israel retains not just residual power, but considerable power. Israel retains considerable backers. The U.S. administration is very good at frustration and name-calling. But it does not follow through in any tangible, serious policy way. However, that's how tectonic plates start shifting. There is a sense that we may be going back to the era where impunity is challenged. The Israeli public are suddenly facing hard choices.
Very important, however, what we do not have is a Palestinian national movement that can bring Palestinians together, that can lead this, that has a strategy. You have seen the absence of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. Some of their ambassadors, including where I am in the U.K., have been outspoken and effective. But the leadership have been nowhere to be seen in their people's most critical hour—basically demonstrating that they are not speaking for the Palestinians. They are a subcontractor of the occupation. In the absence of that Palestinian edifice to carry and lead this struggle, you have seen the hinterland of Arab states speaking out, but not really acting in a concerted fashion.
The administration has aligned itself, not just in the beginning, but continues to align itself with an unreasonable and unachievable stated Israeli goal in Gaza.
- Daniel Levy
Five months after the start of the war, what do you think Netanyahu wants to achieve in Gaza?
It is quite hard to separate out the different motivations that make up the layers of the Netanyahu approach on this. Let's at least acknowledge, without attributing to it primary or secondary or third-level significance, that Benjamin Netanyahu is a prime minister who is also in court on multiple charges, which very possibly—in fact, most legal commentators would say more than likely—if allowed to go the course, would find him serving a prison sentence. Which has happened to seniors Israeli figures in the past. I don't think it's crazy to think that that is an outcome Netanyahu is most keen to avoid.
So what we see is a prime minister who was leading an extremely polarized moment in Israel, in Israeli society, in Israeli politics, prior to Oct. 7. If people cast their minds back, there were these weekly demonstrations. Much of the economy was being closed down. Mass mobilization ostensibly against a judicial reform package, which was seen to undermine Israeli democracy. Let's just park for a moment at least the elephant in the room, which is, of course, that the protesters were talking about saving an Israeli democracy that had as its most damning exhibit of a lack of democracy its illegal occupation, control and apartheid regime vis-à-vis the Palestinians—and that wasn't the central thrust of the protesters.
But it was a Netanyahu government that was not popular, that was deeply polarizing. And Netanyahu, of course, then presides over this disaster of Oct. 7, a disaster of intelligence, a disaster of deterrence, a disaster of initial response. He is the man at the helm when that happens, and his polling numbers have tanked and have never recovered. It's not just polarized; he himself is deeply unpopular. And I imagine he looks very worried at what happens the day after war, when all these questions come to the fore, when someone has to be answerable, and the commissions of inquiry will begin their work. So those are Netanyahu factors.
However, one has to acknowledge the war that Israel has unleashed—in all its ferocity, in all its illegality, which I think is being proven in terms of the methods used, in terms of the collective punishment, in terms of the type of weapons used in high-density areas, the indifference to Palestinian civilian suffering, the prevention of humanitarian aid, all the things actually that the International Court of Justice referred to, including the incitement to genocide. We're not just talking about Netanyahu, but from the president of Israel and former chairman of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog, and right on down. All these things are part of that longer-term trend.
Netanyahu likes now to say that Palestinians must be deradicalized. You literally flick on your television in Israel, understand a bit of Hebrew and watch a few minutes, and you begin to ask yourself which society needs deradicalizing. There is popular support for what Netanyahu is doing. The way he defines the mission is a total victory against Hamas. The Israeli leadership and cultural figures and rabbinical leadership have spent much of these last months telling us that there's no real difference between civilians and combatants. And that's how the military has acted. Since the ICJ case came along, they have been a little more careful—many of them, but not all of them—in what they've said.
But this total victory is something that history suggests is not achievable. You can degrade Hamas's military capacity. But the movement, the idea—resistance to an oppressive regime of structural violence against Palestinians—will continue. It's largely an unachievable thing that Netanyahu is selling to his public, but his public are buying it.
If Netanyahu is ultimately forced to give up power, who do you think will succeed him? And would they substantially change Israeli policies?
The person who is benefiting most in the polls at the current juncture—and this is a phenomenon that really kicked in since Oct. 7, this wasn't what the polls looked like before—is Benny Gantz. Gantz came in not as the leader of the opposition after the last election; that was Yair Lapid. Gantz is a military man. After Oct. 7, Gantz moved from the opposition to joining an emergency war cabinet. He has not taken a ministerial portfolio, but is in that cabinet.
And Gantz has not offered a different way forward. He has perhaps prioritized a little more the question of the hostages, and a deal and a negotiation to achieve their release. Gantz and Netanyahu are not close. They have had several rounds of elections in which they have competed, sometimes cooperated. Gantz does not have the political chops, the political experience of Netanyahu. He has been outmaneuvered by Netanyahu several times. And, of course, what holds in the opinion polls may not be borne out in an actual general election, and we don't know when that election will be. If the polls are anywhere near correct, and the election is soon, Gantz has the best chance of forming a coalition. In Israel, it's always coalition politics.
But Gantz has not offered an alternative vision. When he is on record in recent years, it is opposing a Palestinian state. He says there should be a Palestinian "entity." It all sounds like Bantustans to me, and I think to most people. You don't even have to read the small print. It's spelt out in pretty large capital letters.
Gantz is considered by some a moderate. He could get rid of at least the excesses of Ben Gvir and Smotrich. He could take Israel in a less draconian direction. But everything suggests that he does not have the vision, the courage, the political nous and probably not the morals and the spine to offer a different way forward.
This would be a retrenching, a refreezing of an apartheid reality. Just as we had, if we remember, when there was a year without Netanyahu, where the leadership consisted of Naftali Bennett, an important leader from the National Religious settler wing, plus Lapid and Gantz. It was essentially more of the same. Settlements continued. There was a return to extrajudicial killings, a return to major incursions into Palestinian cities in the West Bank, the criminalizing of Palestinian NGOs. So, no improvement.
I will say this: The enormity and scale of the shock of Oct. 7 may—after this, let's just be frank, genocidal phase—ultimately lead to new openings. But we are not there yet. We are not seeing the leadership offering a fundamentally different way forward.
Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Experts say famine is imminent in northern Gaza, and there is a risk of famine during the next four months in central and southern Gaza. Given this, how do you explain the Biden administration's unwillingness to use the leverage that it has over Israel, and its unwillingness to push for a permanent cease-fire, or even just to demand that Israel stop blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza?
It's really hard not to draw the conclusion that they are either evil or stupid, or both. And that's not a nice conclusion to draw. The administration has aligned itself, not just in the beginning, but continues to align itself with an unreasonable and unachievable stated Israeli goal in Gaza. We can, of course, take into consideration how this issue plays out in American domestic politics. Although it does not seem to be helping the president in advance of the reelection campaign, and with his own voters. We can take into account the peculiarities of the role of campaign finance in the U.S. political system, and how that plays out on a number of issues, including on this issue. We can think about how the U.S. sees the current iteration of its attempted Pax Americana in the Middle East when it wants to be focused elsewhere. And it's hoping to build these alliances with Israel at its core, building on the Trump Abraham Accords between Israel and certain Arab states.
Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.-Saudi deal, was at the forefront of everyone's minds prior to Oct. 7. For some of the administration, this is still the whole holy grail to be pursued. And one can consider that the U.S. has long aligned itself with Israeli positions, which are antithetical to international law, to the achievement of peace, to Palestinian rights, indeed, to the humanity of Palestinians being acknowledged. In so doing, the administration—and not just this one, but historically—U.S. administrations have encouraged Israel to go on this journey to greater radicalism, until you end up getting the government with Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
And that government, after decades of Israel trying, is the government which the U.S. under Biden hands the visa waiver to, allowing Israelis to travel to the U.S. without a visa. That's a big deal. That may sound technical to people. But this is a major achievement to hand to Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Smotrich. Having said all of that, there is an assumption that the administration wanted to prevent a spillover into Lebanon and used some leverage, perhaps, to prevent that. I think the administration would consider that to be the case.
But without wanting to attribute a concern for Palestinian innocent lives, which the administration gives us no reason to believe exists amongst their ranks—and I wish one didn't have to draw that conclusion—the sense is that the administration, at a certain point, began to understand that this will only get worse. That Israel doesn't have a plan, that this is bad for their politics, for their geopolitics, their international standing, and that they actually want to see a significant shift in the dynamics and a winding down.
Unfortunately, even at that moment, the Biden administration has dramatically misread the Israeli political dynamic, how to impact Israeli calculations, and it has been unwilling to deploy its very real leverage. It really is the case that without the constant channeling of American weaponry, this could not continue. There are other things, but we could just focus on that. Breaking military sales down into 100 different consignments; the transfer of weapons so this wouldn't have to go through Congress, so it couldn't be transparent, so there couldn't be accountability. All of these maneuvers they have undertaken to keep the weapons flowing, allowing the war to continue.
Therefore, the Israelis can ignore the rhetoric because it's not backed up by action. And that is much harder to understand. It may well come down in significant measure to the person of the president who lives with an Israel in his head which probably never existed, and certainly doesn't exist today.
The Biden administration, European governments and others are emphasizing a goal of moving quickly to achieve a two-state solution after a cease-fire. This comes at a time of growing skepticism that a viable two-state solution can ever be achieved. How do you see Oct. 7 and the ongoing war in Gaza altering prospects for a long-term solution, whether two states, a single state, a confederation or some other outcome?
Well, I think it's important to understand that when the Biden administration, having really neglected this issue, then returns to a narrative about two states—I do not suggest it should be taken seriously. Because none of the things that would make that consequential and meaningful are even being contemplated. In other words, even if, and I don't think they will, but even if they recognize the state of Palestine, would they recognize it on certain borders? Would they sanction the country that would then be an occupation and conducting illegal activity in the state that they're just recognized? The answer categorically is no.
We should probably understand this resumed talk of two states as a ruse, as a rhetorical sleight of hand. But also, what it really is, is an attempt to go back to a peace process that's make believe, that allows the existing apartheid to be refrozen. That's what's on the agenda. That is, I think, where you actually have a common Israeli, American, Western position—that they are trying to pull the deeply compromised Palestinian Authority and some of the neighboring states into that.
In terms of what they should be doing, I do not see how under this reality that Israel has created of one political space, how we cannot now be talking about the fact that equal rights in this one space is at least as likely and as worthy, if not more worthy, a thing to be pursuing. We're not in a moment where solutions can emerge immediately. The Palestinians must rebuild their national movement without external interference. The Israelis must feel that there are costs and consequences for their policies. And the American monopoly on peacemaking efforts has to be pried away, because they are clearly not in a position to lead a good-faith effort towards a sustainable future for Palestinians and Israelis alike. We will hopefully see others step forward from outside of the West that has behaved so appallingly in these last months.
