"Tomorrow is Yesterday:" Robert Malley on his New Book with Hussein Agha, The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, and October 7

We thought that because we had written the piece together back in 2001, and because we both sort of had front row seats at the time in different theaters—maybe watching a different show but with front row seats and an understanding of what had happened at Camp David—what it got wrong and how this notion that Palestinians were offered the best offer ever, they could never expect something like that. And by saying "no," they were saying no to peace and then saying no a to two-state solution. We said, "think again." There's a very different way of looking at it if you look at the facts.

So, that's why we wanted to spend some time on [Camp David]. It is such a big piece of the argument that is deployed by those who want to say the reason we are here today, some people say it's all about Oct. 7. Without a broader analysis, people say it's because Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and the mother of all opportunities was Camp David in 2000.

These perceptions and misunderstandings are powerful, and the personalities within them are powerful. You spent a lot of time with these personalities—the Clintons, the Arafats, the Baraks—all these different major figures. Can you explain the importance of those personalities and relationships within the broader Israel-Palestine conflict and efforts to resolve it?

So, yes, personalities matter. History is made by personalities and personalities can play a big role. But in this case, I think what's important is that these are personalities who epitomize a certain system or certain ways of thinking that each one brought to the table. You know, it's not so much President Clinton as President Clinton. It's a certain American view of the conflict and a certain apprehension of the conflict—of what is fair.

And again, it's not just Clinton. It was the team. It's the U.S. It's sort of the U.S. strategies behind it that are embodied at one point in a certain person. Likewise with Arafat. He was, as we say in the book, so in tune with his people because he acted only as he saw it. And most often—more often than not—he seemed to be correct in assessing what could and could not be accepted by his own people. So, he doesn't accept what is presented to him in 2000. He was, sort of, constantly trying to gauge the state of Palestinian public opinion. And Barak had his own personality. But there was a very Israeli way, again, of apprehending a conflict in a way that didn't understand how Palestinians could say no when, in fact, to use a term that President Trump uses, the Israelis "had all the cards."

And so, in what position were the Palestinians to say "no" when it was out of a sort of munificence that the Israelis were prepared to concede, even when they were prepared to concede. And I think there's that mindset—which perhaps Barak personified, as we describe in some detail—he had the personality of believing that he knew exactly how his counterpart, the Palestinians, would and should react. And when they didn't react the way he thought they would and should, he cried foul. But that was not just a personality trait—it was a personal tick of his, if you will—he expected them to react the way many Israelis, many Israelis in the establishment would believe, which is Palestinians were offered something at Israel's sufferance.

Israel was prepared to concede something and to make a deal, and that's why this notion of a generous offer—which is doubly insulting to Palestinians on the one hand—they don't consider it an offer. "What do you mean [by] an offer? This was ours to begin with," they would say. "The land is ours to begin with, so you're not offering anything, and you're certainly not generous, because how could it be generous if you're holding [our land]. If you're not [holding] it, not only are you not giving us everything that we historically think is our due, but even what little we get, if you were to give us back what we had in 1967, you're not even [doing that]."

So that "generous offer," which is the prism through which I think most Israelis would view what happened—not just in 2000, but throughout the history of offers—that Israel has made to the Palestinians, I think was personified very much by Ehud Barak's attitude, before and after Camp David.

And just to go back to Arafat: The notion that Palestinians are prepared to accept the existence of Israel, but not the legitimacy of the city [they want for their capital, Jerusalem], which is why it was so hard for them to accept some of the terms of whatever deal was being presented to them. Deep down, they are not prepared to give up on the notion that an injustice was committed—not just in 1967, but in 1948. The lines of 1967 are just the armistice lines. They're completely arbitrary. So, the lines that matter—those of 1948—they believe that was where the real injustice occurred.

And so, our fellows had that ambivalence, which again was reflective of the ambivalence of most Palestinians. Maybe under certain conditions, we're prepared to accept, and they did accept and recognize Israel's existence. But go beyond that, to accept its right to exist as a Jewish state, to accept the finality of claims, to accept that the refugees will not have the right of return, those all cut to the core—not just the narrative, which sounds too weak—of the lived and historical experiences of Palestinians.

I want to jump over to the U.S. role for a moment. In the book, there is certainly criticism of the U.S. role in negotiations. And it is notable, especially given your participation on U.S. teams working on the conflict. Can you speak more about the U.S. role in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and would you describe this in terms of "internationalizing" the conflict?

Yeah, on the U.S. role—which goes a little bit to the genesis of the book—one of the things that Hussein and I have been discussing, which Hussein would press me on over and over again, was, "So, what's the point of the U.S.? Why did the U.S. do what it did? Didn't you know that what it was doing was failing and then repeating? Why did they lie?" In some cases, you just couldn't even understand why we would keep saying something knowing that it was untrue or when we should have known it was untrue. And so, I think that was part of the spark to the book: trying to understand. And because I was in several administrations, I think he wanted to understand it from somebody who had been inside.

As we say, it's hard to argue the U.S. played a positive role. And we can go through all the ways in which the U.S. role was detrimental, certainly to Palestinians, but I would say to the broader cause of trying to reach a resolution or an arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians that would be acceptable and livable by both. I think it's hard to escape that and come to my own choices being in these administrations, if you will.

I'm not entirely sure we use the word "internationalization" in many instances, but one of the things that the U.S. role entailed was elbowing out others, specifically Arabs and others who might have been able to play a role. As we say in the book, it's completely unnatural to exclude Arabs when the Palestinian cause is an Arab cause. It's hard for Palestinians to do anything without their backing and public opinion. Palestine is an extension of who and what they are. So, there's that piece of it, which is sort of, as we say, the elbowing out of other actors as a result of the U.S. sort of monopolizing.

There have been attempts by the Palestinians to, quote unquote, I'm not sure if internationalized is the right word, but to try to use other international vehicles. The U.N. General Assembly's efforts to recognize Palestinian statehood, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and international sanctions or boycotts. Those were systematically viewed by the U.S. or treated by the U.S. as inconsistent with the bilateral negotiations that Israelis and Palestinians were engaged in and their own mediating rule that those were unilateral steps. Now, as we write, the U.S. could define the conflict and give certain assigned roles to certain actors. But those kinds of unilateral steps were viewed not just as inconsistent with the model of the bilateral negotiation. They were viewed as so inconsistent that the U.S. would take punitive action against the Palestinians if they engaged in any of them.

Whereas the Israelis could take certain unilateral action—building settlements—the U.S. could frown upon it, as they did from time to time, but not take any retributive or punitive action, basically arguing to the Palestinians, "Okay, you don't like the settlements, the settlements are unhelpful, they're off the coast of peace, whatever. But if we get a deal, the settlements that need to go away will go away and the settlements that will be absorbed into Israel will be absorbed into Israel. Just treat it as sort of the cost of doing business. It's not great, we'll denounce it, but it's not so inherently incompatible with the negotiations that we're going to take action against Israel."

Again, when the Palestinians even thought of engaging in some quote-unquote unilateral actions of their own on the international arena, those were immediately punished, or the Palestinians were threatened with punishment and often were deterred from taking those steps because of American admonition. The fact is that the U.S. sought to exercise not just its own monopoly on who the mediators would be—who the genuine, meaningful mediators would be, because every now and then they would accept others to play the role of a bystander—but also that they would exclude international instruments from trying to influence the balance of power between the Israelis and Palestinians, even as the Israelis were taking steps that every day were shifting that back.

You discuss that this is more of an Arab-Israeli conflict at the end of the book, correct? And so, you would say that including Arab states is relatively important?

All the more so today. I mean, as we say, that's why "Tomorrow is Yesterday." Because this is how it began. A genuine or powerful and representative Palestinian national movement started with coordination with Arab states. Arab states tried to manipulate it and to exploit it to their own ends. But today, when you try to assess who the representative Palestinian official organizations are, it's very hard.

Arab states are going to have a more central role. Now, I say that at a time when the Arab states have shown themselves, for the most part, to be entirely feckless and passive in the face of untold horrors committed by Israel. So, it's not exactly a moment where I think many Palestinians are prepared to count on or rely upon Arab states. But if a negotiation is going to be resumed, it's hard to imagine that it will take place without that role, which had been the case in the past.

Do you feel that something along the lines of a national reconciliation effort, both within the camps and between them, is necessary before broader peace talks that can reach something sustainable?

Just to focus on the Palestinian side because they're the ones who really need a repair. I'm not Palestinian, so I don't want to speak for them, but the notion that a divided movement—so utterly divided as the Palestinians have been geographically, politically, ideologically—can negotiate with a power like Israel [is unrealistic]. We talk about other national liberation struggles that Hussein and I are familiar with—in my case the Algerian one, but there are many others. Sometimes you have had two parties that were at loggerheads. In the Algerian case, you had that. They had their own fight, but in the end, either one party emerges victorious, or you find some kind of, as you say, national unity so that they can come to the table with one voice.

But the way in which Palestinians have been divided, the way in which Israel has been able to exacerbate and exploit the division, and much of the rest of the Western world as well, by not only keeping Hamas at arm's length but threatening Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) if they were to reconcile, [makes reaching a deal difficult]. Again, President Abbas and his party didn't seem particularly eager to reconcile for their own reasons. But it is very hard to imagine, under those conditions, negotiating a deal or reaching a deal, let alone having it stick because if you have a constituency as strong as the ones who are excluded who oppose the deal, [it is difficult].

As I said, Israel has made that argument, often in bad faith, because they've exacerbated the very division that they then used as an excuse for not wanting to negotiate. But the reality is that when you have a divided house in the way that Palestinians have been, it is hard to imagine how you are going to reach a deal and how that deal can last. So, yes, that's something that I've argued now for years, and that Hussein and I argue in the book, which is the need for Palestinians to find some sort of a new, more unified—not everyone has to agree on everything—but a strategy that the Palestinian national movement can agree on and then pursue diplomatically. That could be extra-diplomatic, whether it's a judicial appeal to international fora, but if they are divided, it's just very hard to see how they are going to move forward.

Oct. 7 plays a prominent role in the book as an example of how unaddressed issues lead to tragedy. But in your assessment, you also argue that Hamas' attacks were, quote, "neither a sudden jolt borne of frustration, nor a pre-arranged plan concealed through years of stealth and studied deceit. Rather, it was a combination of both." Can you explain that reasoning for our readers, as well as how it needs to inform future steps to resolve the conflict?

I think that the point that Hussein and I make about Oct. 7 is that it's not an aberration—it's not abnormal, it's not a rupture from the past. If it hasn't happened before, it's not because the Palestinians didn't want to find some spectacular way of reminding the world that they exist, of making Israel pay a price, of taking prisoners who they could then exchange for their own. This has been part and parcel of the Palestinian movement, and it's never succeeded, in their eyes, in the way that Oct. 7 did. But it is not particularly Islamist and, again, it's not an aberration in that sense. The aberration is how effective, and I use that not because I endorse it, but because it's effective just in terms of it did manage to break through Israeli defenses. And Israel's response, we equally make the point, is not an aberration. It's not something that jolted out of the blue. It inscribes itself in a long tradition of how Israel and Israeli Jews have dealt with the population. And if they haven't reached that level of brutality living through the war as we speak has, it's not for lack of desire but for lack of opportunity.

So, in both cases, we say that these are reenactments of the past, perhaps in some ways amplified reenactments of the past, but nothing in it, as we write, is surprising. Not the focus on Gaza, where so much of Israeli-Palestinian bloody conflict has taken place; not the attempt to take hostages or prisoners; not the brutality of Israel's response. None of it is new in that sense. Again, "Tomorrow is Yesterday."

So, when people look at Oct. 7 and just focus on it, it has deep roots in the past and is sort of an outgrowth of the past and a repetition of the past in its own way. Every repetition is unique in its own way, but it also has features that, as we say, are replicated time and time again. And we give the list of Palestinian actions throughout their history of attempting to take hostages, of trying to trade them for their own prisoners—hostages, again, we could use different terms, depending on where you sit—and hoping that it will unleash something much greater. That's not just Hamas hoping that Iran and others will intervene. It's also Fatah and the PLO in years past. It's hoping that Arab world would intervenes. It's hoping that [such actions] would put the Palestinian question back on the map. That's something we've seen from Palestinians who feel whenever they—well, they've almost always felt ignored by the world—take action to remind the world that there is a price to pay for tossing them aside.

Just as we also have a list of Israeli actions, brutal actions against Palestinians going back to 1948, but also pre-1948, but also afterwards. You know, history is a useful reminder that we're not dealing with some abnormal deviation from the past, but something that is, even though it was unexpected—I can't say that, I saw it coming—but it was not surprising in the sense that it is very much in line with so much of what, unfortunately, we've seen in years and decades past.

So, understanding that, how do you assess today's changing region and the direction of the conflict today?

One thing that Hussein and I try to make very clear is that this is not a book that's going to offer prescription. That would be absurd. We're not at that state. Many people offer prescriptions, and they just sit on the desk, and nobody will pick them up again. So, that's not what this book is about. We're not claiming that we have the answer. We know where things are going. We know, and I think we sense broadly that as we say, the trends that we're seeing now are not unfamiliar trends. They're very familiar. They're very recognizable and we have, as we say, whole lists of those.

And so, we are now at a stage where it's some of the illusions, delusions and lies of the past, we can hopefully toss aside to see the conflict more viscerally—in a more raw state of what it is and has always been about. This is an existential struggle between two nations vying for the same plot of land, with all of the injustices and brutality and violence that has been inscribed in their relationship, with one side having more power and therefore exercising more of the violence than the other. As we say, one thing we want to make clear is the notion that—and we still hear, we're hearing it just the last few weeks—that the only solution is a two-state solution. Well, it is a solution that has been tried and tried again, and it's not the only one. There are many other possible futures.

Probably the most likely future is what we're seeing today. The continuation of the status quo, which only works if Israel entrenches its presence in the West Bank—treating the West Bank as it treated Gaza, treating Gaza the way it's treated the West Bank—by trying to entrench its presence in Palestinian territories. And then you could imagine, more or less [of these scenarios]: more ethnic cleansing or less ethnic cleansing, more expulsion or less expulsion, annexation or no annexation. But the basic contours of Israel, sort of firming up its presence, and depriving Palestinians of their basic rights.

And then, another option, which may seem less likely—again from the worst, which is mass expulsion of Palestinians to the better [option]—is some form of coexistence. Some people have spoken of a bi-national state. It's hard for us to imagine that, but some form of confederation, some role for Jordan. We're not even weighing the likelihood of these outcomes. Our point is, for those who say there's only one alternative, and the alternative is the two-state solution. The two-state solution may well be the most realistic, best outcome, but it's no longer realistic because it hasn't been achieved, despite effort after effort after effort. And right now, as we write, it's become a dangerous gimmick that is bandied around by people who either don't know and have nothing else to say or want to use it to deflect from their own moral culpability—their passivity in the face of the genocidal acts that have taken place against Palestinians.

We could say. "We're now going to recognize the Palestinian state because two states are the only way forward," but they have no way of making it happen. They have no pathway to make it happen. So, if their argument is "there's no other alternative," yes, there are alternatives. And unlike the two-state solution, those alternatives—not all of them—have not really been tried. Some have. As I said, the status quo has been tried and it's now lasted for decades, since 1967. There are other alternatives that maybe are worth exploring that we were not prepared to explore because we were conditioned to believe that the only outcome is a two-state solution. As we say, today, that outcome serves to freeze all other possibilities—all other forms of action, all other forms of thinking—and it's, in that sense, a dangerous game.

You talk in the book about how Hamas came to be, how it became an alternative, how it came from the Muslim Brotherhood. But it became an alternative from Fatah, especially after Oslo. Given what's happening in Gaza today, what does that mean for other Palestinian factions that accept violence, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad? What does that mean for talks moving forward?

One thing that we say is Fatah and Hamas may survive at the end of all of this. It's possible, but certainly not in their current shape. Fatah has had nothing but empty words to offer in the face of what some would say is the worst catastrophe in a Palestinian's life, others would say the worst since the Nakba. Either way, it ranks way up there. And the most [Fatah] has been able to do is sort of make statements, but no concrete form of action to protect or try to protect their brethren in Gaza. Hamas had a plan for how to attack Israel, but no plan for how to deal with not just the likely, but the certain response by Israel, and no plan to protect its own people. So, both of them are going to have to—there'll be a reckoning, right, at some point with Palestinian public opinion. There will be some less Islamist, some more Islamist forms of Palestinian expression in the future, whether it's Hamas, Fatah or others. History will tell.

So, to that extent, I think we are where we were yesterday, in the sense that the Palestinians are at the beginning of a new path. They are going to have to reinvent their Palestinian national movement, learn the lessons of all the failures—not just what happened since Oct. 7, but what's happened since and also before—and the failure of the negotiations, upon which first Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas embarked. So, the most we can say is that this is a moment of re-creation, but re-creation along the lines of what we've already seen in the past, where some of the interrogations of the past, which is "should Palestinians be in favor of their own state? Should they be in favor of only one state? What kind of state would that be? Do they want a confederation with Jordan? Do they want something else?" All those questions, which have been buried as legitimate questions since at least Oslo, are now coming back to the surface because they have to be asked in the face of the calamity that we've witnessed. Reflection is overdue, but as we say, Oct. 7 adds the final explanation point.

So, I just addressed the Palestinian component, but I think it's true of the Israeli side as well. They too are going to have to think about this. So, what are they aiming for now? And there's certainly an organized segment of Israeli polity that knows where it's going, and where it's going is full Israeli occupation, perhaps reoccupation of Gaza, perhaps mass expulsion of Palestinians, either forcibly or simply by making the living conditions in Gaza impossible and seeing what they could do. And we know what's happening in the West Bank: more settler violence, more land appropriations, more settlement growth. So, there is that Israeli view, but there are other Israelis—more than half a dozen Israelis in that sense, half a dozen Palestinians, because their public opinions are quite fragmented—but they're going to have to figure out as well where they're going. Or they just go down the path they are going down now, which is a horrendous path for Palestinians, but it is the path on which Israel seems to be embarked.

There is an interesting part of the book where you discuss Clinton, Biden and major U.S. leaders in the book. My sense is that Clinton seemed to want to deal a little bit too much, whereas Biden, interestingly enough, was painted especially cynical in your book. You wrote in the book, "Sympathy was hard to distinguish from disdain." Can you expand on that assessment of Biden?

I'm not sure [Clinton] wanted a deal too much, I think we say he wanted a deal too much and not enough. Too much in the sense that it was clear how eager he was to try to get a deal. One could say, if they really wanted a deal, there were certain steps they could have taken, that the U.S. administration, that the president could have taken, but they would have run up against domestic political considerations—constraints—which they were not prepared [to confront]. And so, if you think of after the Cold War, the U.S. is in a unique position worldwide. I mean, it's at the apex of its power, influence and leverage. It has almost unprecedented influence over Israel, given the military assistance that it provides. It has huge leverage over the Palestinians and Arabs because they're all looking to the U.S. as the only country that could achieve their aspirations.

So, with all that leverage, all that influence, all that power, they could achieve so little. You know, there's several explanations. Pure incompetence, and we do point out some of the incompetence, but also that deep down, strategically, this was not important enough. So, yes, it was important at an individual level for the president, President Clinton, but strategically, in terms of everything else, and politically in terms of the political considerations and electoral considerations that came, it was not important enough. And I think that has to be the conclusion because if it had been important enough and if they had applied themselves, then they at least should have moved closer to a two-state solution as opposed to what happened, which is that we moved away from it.

Now, on President Biden, I think people who worked with him in this administration, who worked closely with him and who've spoken about it—partly because he's been at it for so long and has seen failure after failure—I think he came into office not believing that this was really an issue worth expending much political, diplomatic or strategic capital on. I think that was true also during the Obama administration. I don't think [Obama] was of the view that this should be a priority because he thought [former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry]—it was a quixotic effort—if he wanted to engage in it, fine. He had, in the meeting when I first joined the Obama administration, and I forget what I had said, I think then Vice President Biden was sort of trying to act sympathetically, but as I say, with a little bit of disdain. [He worked on] the notion that this issue was one that Arabs cared about, and as he said, no Arab leader raised it. Americans raised it much more than either the Saudis, or the Egyptians or Jordanians.

So, it's something that we care about, but the region doesn't. I think he felt, and maybe it was the realistic point of view, that this was not something that a U.S. administration should spend so much of its capital on. And I think it's known that he was one of the voices at the end of the Obama administration, when President Obama ordered that we abstain in the vote of the U.N. Security Council on the illegality of settlements—as opposed to opposing that resolution, which had been an American habit for years—Vice President Biden objected and thought that we should veto it. But I think that reflected his natural empathy—sympathy for Israelis—that came across in spades after Oct. 7, but also his notion that this conflict simply wasn't going to be resolved, it wasn't going be resolved in any way soon. It wasn't worth the United States plunging, wasting time, political or diplomatic capital, even at the end of the Obama administration, to try to move it.

In that sense, he may have been right, given his understanding of where the United States was, that even under President Obama, we were not prepared—the parties weren't ready to do it on their own. We weren't prepared to do what it would take, perhaps, to get them to where they needed to be.