Is the Two-State Solution Really Dead? - With Yair Golan
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I think that the main issue is not whether we want two-state solution, yes or no. The real question is one: where are we heading? Annexation or separation? What is best for Israel? To annex five million Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, and the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, or to separate ourselves from them?

I think that if you want Israel to remain the homeland of all the Jewish people and at the same time free and democratic state, we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians. Now we can start the discussion, what is the right way, what is the right process, and what is the timeframe for such a separation? But we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians.

It's 10 o'clock a.m. on Sunday, March 2nd, here in New York City. It is 5 o'clock p.m. in Israel as Israelis begin to wind down their day. Yesterday was the first Saturday since the hostage ceasefire deal began in January that we did not see hostages being released from Gaza. By now, the deal was expected to enter its second phase.

But Israel requested an extension of the first phase instead of moving right to the second phase. Hamas refused and insisted that the deal continue to proceed to the second phase. At least that was their official posture. In response, Israel has halted the supply of aid into the Gaza Strip and there is open speculation about whether or not the war will resume.

Since the second intifada in the early 2000s, any hope, any discussion, any speculation about the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, shall we say, been on life support at best. And then October 7th dealt what appears to be the final blow.

Now, though divisions in Israeli society clearly remain, there are various political factions and various groups intensely at odds with one another. The one issue on which there appears to be a consensus or a near consensus is that most

Israelis consider the two-state solution just not even within the realm of possibility. It's just not even a viable option to seriously discuss. But there's one Israeli and one Israeli leader, Yair Golan, the leader of the Israeli Democrats Party, which is a coalition of the former Labor Party and the former Merits Party.

He is a decorated general and former IDF deputy chief of staff. Yair Golan continues to insist that there is no other solution. According to recent polls, Yair Golan's party has been gaining momentum at the expense of Benny Gantz's party and Yair Lapid's party. Both of those are center and center left parties respectively.

According to these polls, Golan's party would be the fourth largest party if an election were held today, with 14 seats in the Knesset out of 120, which would make Yair Golan a major player in a future government that is an alternative to the Netanyahu-led government.

Yergalon, welcome to the Call Me Back podcast. Hello, Dan. I'm happy to be with you. Thank you. In Israel, you are a very well-known figure, especially since your personal story of October 7th, which we'll get into. But you were not as well-known outside of Israel.

I would say, as someone who's very active in the Jewish community here in the United States, you're not even very well known in the Jewish community. I hope you don't take offense, but I want to use this opportunity for people in the Jewish community in the United States and around the world to get to know you better. We're going to get into substantive issues later, but can you just tell us about your background? Maybe start with maybe about your family or your upbringing, what that was like, what kind of home you were raised, where you were raised. All right. Well, I was born in Rishon Lezion, a bit south of Tel Aviv.

My father immigrates, or I would say escaped Germany in 1935 when he was just five years old. My mother was born in Israel, and even her mother and her grandmother were born in Israel. So they came in the first Aliyah, and the first immigration wave to Israel, to Palestine, to then Palestine.

I grew up mainly played handball, and at the same time, I was very active in the youth movement. I think in the U.S., it's called Habonim Dror, Anor HaOved in Israel. By the age of 18, I was conscripted to the military.

I was a young paratrooper since 1980. I served for the next 38 years. Meanwhile, I commanded the 890 paratroop battalion, the Nachal Brigade during a defensive shield operation.

I commanded the Galilee Division and the Judean Samaria Division, the Home Front Command and the Northern Command, finishing my military service as the Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF. So I know the security history of Israel from a very intimate perspective.

So you were born in 1962. That means that the Yom Kippur War of '73 and the first Lebanon War in the early '80s, they're very present in the case of probably the Yom Kippur War, the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, and then going into the Lebanon War.

During formative years of your life, how did those events impact you on a personal level, just impact your worldview? Well, in a very deep manner, I was just, you know, about 11 at the Yom Kippur War.

My father was the battalion commander of electronic warfare battalion. He went to the war with black hair. He returned from the war completely white. I understood that the trauma was huge. And I think that what I took from the Yom Kippur experience is a very basic mistrust of the upper echelons.

I learned to think by myself. I learned to understand that the fact that someone is superior to you concerning his military rank means nothing concerning his ability to analyze the situation and to make the right decisions. From the first Lebanon war, that was my first operational experience.

I knew war from a very intimate perspective by the age of 20, with all the horrors, the fear and the tension. I think on the one hand, it teaches me that I can deal with that. I'm well-fitted, you know, emotionally and physically to face the war.

and at the same time I learned what is the price and that war is something terrible. It's a terrible human experience. It's something we should avoid, although we need to prepare to a war on a daily basis. During the first Lebanon war you became an officer in the IDF, as many young Israelis do, and at what point did you realize you'd pursue a career in the military? You said you made it your profession, it's most of what you did in your adult life.

So why did you make that decision and where did you hope it would take you? What was your ambition? Only after my second term as a company commander, I realized that, all right, that's what I want to do.

I felt that, you know, by the very early age, I got so much responsibility and I was good at it. You know, I fell in love in these unregular way of life because it's not about going to the office day after day after day doing the same thing. Your life became, you know, very, very dynamic, right?

So I like it and do not regret any single moment. It was good, very tough, very challenging, something that brought me much meaning. I didn't experience any dull moment. I think that's fantastic. Now, it's something I think is very unique to Israel these days that people like you at the age you chose to go to make a career out of the military say,

So many Israelis at a young age, A, are looking for meaning, and they're given the opportunity to be part of something larger than themselves. Just being in Israel, you're being part of something larger than yourself. And I think it's very empowering for young people. I think it explains so much of Israel's success throughout its history. Yeah. Now, you completed your military career as the second in command of the IDF, as the deputy chief of staff of the IDF.

What year was that? 2018. 2018, okay. And then you decided to enter Israeli politics through the left. Walk us through how you entered politics. I thought at that time in 2019 when I entered the politics that there is no reason anymore to separate the Zionist left between the Labor Party and the Meretz Party. I thought they should be one.

Therefore, I went with Ehud Barak and we established together the democratic camp. The basic idea was that we are going to call the Labour Party and the Merits Party to join us and to create this unification of the Zionist left. Unfortunately, the Merits joined us, the Merits Party, but the Labour refused to do so.

It was very unfortunate. I think it was a terrible mistake of Amir Peretz at that time. The outcome of that, the results were quite terrible. We got only five mandates and we were relatively with no true influence on the political arena. And that was my first experience in the opposition with no much responsibility, a position that I really, I truly didn't like.

But since then, I thought all the time the same, that we need to come together.

And even today, I can tell you, I have no intention to hesitate with any future opportunity to get another unification in the left center camp. I don't like, you know, the terms right and left. I think they are irrelevant anymore. I would say that today we need a great unification of the democratic, liberal democratic camp in Israel. Okay, let's take us to Israel.

October 7th, 2023, a day that none of us, but especially you, I don't think we'll ever forget. So put me in the moment, take me to when you first learned about what was taking place in the South. What were you doing? How did you learn about it? Well, I woke up as usual a bit after six o'clock. This is a kind of military habit. Then I started to get pop-ups through my cell phone.

And it's, you know, it looks so strange. It was not like, you know, another terror event. So therefore I jumped from the bed, opened the radio, and for about an hour I heard the news and I told my wife, Wuti, that this is something completely different. So I go back to the military. I put on my uniforms, I found my military boots in the garage.

Now, just to be clear, you're not being called up. No, no, no, no, no. You're not part of the mill. You're not part of the reserves. You are. You have. I will say this respectfully. You have aged out of the IDF entirely. You've aged out of the IDF reserves.

So you have no, there's no expectation that you would put on your gear and start heading to the fight, right? I was 61. Yes, I'm probably too old to be a combatant soldier, but that's what I did. And I went straight away to the headquarters of the Homefront Command. I commanded the Homefront Command more than 10 years ago.

When I entered the war room and saw on the big screens the horrific events in Sderot, in Ofakim, and elsewhere around the Gaza Strip, I told the commanding officer of the Home Front Command,

Look, I would like to be your personal envoy to the south. You know, it's always very useful for a supreme commander to have someone with the same rank, with the same experience in the front, because I can see the events through his eyes. So he was very glad with this suggestion.

So I took a rifle and other combatant gear and I went straight away with my private car, small Toyota Yaris, straight to the headquarters of the Southern District of the Home Front Command, a place where terrorists penetrated and there was a kind of massacre inside the base.

So I went straight away to this location in order to help them. I reached this point, you know, just a few minutes after the battle was over. I helped them to reorganize there. I looked at the gear of the terrorists. I started to understand, you know, what was happening there. The magnitude of this raid, of this terrible raid was...

Then I got a phone call from my sister and she asked me whether I can evacuate people from the Nova Festival location. I told her, all right, what is the Nova Festival? For the first time I learned that there was a festival like that, you know, very near to the Gaza border. I asked her to, you know, please send me a location of these guys who want to be rescued.

I look at the Google map, you know, signs and I told myself, all right, I know the terrain very well. I can reach them. I can take them back to safety. And that's what I did. I did these kind of tours in and out three times, took out of the Nova Festival location six guys,

And, you know, that was my very modest contribution to the overall effort. It's not modest at all. It's extraordinary. And I just want to stay on this, Dave, for just a couple more moments.

How did the day end for you? Well, it was really a terrible day. But I can tell you by the third tour, when I drove my car between bodies on the 232 route, very near to the Nova Festival location. It's the highway. That's the highway there. Yeah. The enveloping road around the Gaza Strip. You know, something that really touches me, you know, even now.

is a scene of a young woman, massacred woman, laying very gently, very softly on her car. And since then, I feel deep rage, a constant rage. And this rage is about the rage on Hamas and what Hamas did to us. And it's a rage on what happened to my beloved IDF.

And in a way, it's also a rage on my own government, my own government that brought upon us such a terrible disaster. And, you know, we warned them. We told them, look, you told the Israeli society from the inside that

You project weakness to the rest of the region. What you are doing is so dangerous to our destiny. It's not politics. It's about our ability to survive in a very unfavorable neighborhood.

Stop! Stop it immediately! And they refused to listen to us. And what are you referring to specifically? Are you talking about the protests, the judicial reform protests, the debate over judicial reform before in 2023? Yes, from the very beginning we told this government it is a disaster. You told the Israeli society from the inside why, for what?

for your corrupted initiatives. But just to stay on this for a moment, Yair, are you suggesting that absent those, the big debate over judicial reform, October 7th wouldn't have happened? I don't know. And it's really very dangerous to say what would happen if. Yeah. But I can tell you what happened. Not, you know, this is not my assumption. It's not about my, the way I analyze the situation.

We told the government, look, you bring a disaster upon Israel. Even the minister of defense, the former minister of defense, Yoav Galant, a member of the Likud party, of the ruling party,

told Netanyahu, look, you need to stop it because it's too risky. And he refused to do so. So I blame Netanyahu for having, you know, much responsibility for this disaster. And you need to, you know, to be out of office as soon as possible. The IDF just came out with its investigations of October 7th, which I'm sure you're deeply familiar with. I got to say, it's shocking to read.

So obviously, whenever a country, a government is surprised by whether it was Pearl Harbor and here that we experienced in the United States or 9-11 or October 7th for Israel, the political leadership bears a lot, if not most of the responsibility. But when you read that IDF investigation, there was something going on in the IDF for many years that contributed according to their own investigation. There was a complete misunderstanding of

of the threat that had been developing from Hamas. Before we even get into the complete lack of preparedness for the operational aspects of their response to the attack, but even just an understanding of what Israel was dealing with on its southern border.

It was shocking to read how off it was. Yeah, it's always like that when you deal with, you know, national disasters. It's a combination of military failure with political failure. It's always like that. If you take, you know, former events in the new history, October 6th, 1973, the same event.

You know, political misunderstanding with military blunder. The same story. The same story with Pearl Harbor or the same story with Barbarossa operation in June '41. So it's always the same story. But what I'm saying is you came of age in this institution. In fact, you were serving during many of the years, according to these investigations, where things have been so misdiagnosed.

So I understand why you're angry at the political leadership. Are you equally angry and frustrated with the culture within the leadership of the IDF that was building for years and years and years? Of course. Of course, yes. And I can tell you, you know, I saw it because, you know, in 2014, we have conducted a major operation inside the Gaza Strip. And

And I commanded at that time the Northern Command. And I sent most of my troops to the south.

You know, I was, you know, shocked by the way we maneuver around the Gaza Strip and almost did nothing, nothing to destroy Hamas. And that was, you know, very stupid from a professional perspective, from pure military perspective, because we dealt only with the tunnels and the gates of the tunnels instead of, you know, destroying the military wing of Hamas.

And at the same time, the way the political echelons form the main objectives of the war

Well, that was a disaster. It was terrible. There was no understanding that the minute you use military power, you need to use it effectively. And this is not something we did in 2012 or in 2014 or in 2021. And over and over again, we did the wrong thing inside the Gaza Strip.

Even when we had opportunities to beat the military wing of Hamas, we did very, very small part of the job. And that was a terrible mistake.

I just want to go back to October 7th briefly. During that day, you were in touch with Amir Tibon, the Haaretz journalist who has been on our podcast. We did a big episode with him when his book was published. Can you just tell us what you learned from Amir Tibon that day on October 7th, how you wound up being in touch with him?

I know Amir's father, you know, Noam T. Bohm. Noam T. Bohm was a corps commander in the Northern Command. When I commanded the Northern Command, in a way he was my subordinate. We are good friends. We share the same frustration. This lack of willingness to destroy our enemies.

This, you know, very foolish assumption that the conflict could be managed, that the conflict is nothing but a splitter in the ass.

The way, you know, Naftali Bennett put it, you know, in 2013. Yeah. This terrible assumption that we need to weaken the Palestinian Authority and at the same time and strength the Hamas. And we need to say loud and clear that this combination of political corruption with nationalistic extremism held by the extreme right in Israel is

That was a terrible misperception of the overall conflict. And in a way, for many years, we helped Hamas to build up its power. And at the same time, instead of, you know, invigorate the most cooperative element in the Palestinian society, the Palestinian Authority, we did the opposite.

We weakened the Palestinian Authority from day to day. I can tell you that by 2009, when Netanyahu came to power, the Palestinian Authority was at its best and Hamas was in a very low point after Kastlet operation. Instead of, you know,

So continuing with this, you know, tendency, even invigorate more the Palestinian Authority and weaken more and more the Hamas from day to day, Netanyahu did the opposite. Why? Because he want to buy some sort of a quiet borders and at the same time fulfill the desire of the extreme right in Israel.

Okay, let's stay on that for a moment. If Netanyahu wanted to, quote unquote, maintain some kind of quiet, some kind of status quo quiet between Israel and Gaza, presumably he or any political leader, for that matter, would not have advocated for that.

if they actually knew what Hamas's real ambitions were, right? We now know that Hamas had genocidal ambitions that it intended to operationalize within close proximity, like within the last, you know, we now know they'd been planning this for years. Let's say that, as you say, for a number of years, we now know Hamas was planning to operationalize its genocidal ambition against the Jews in Israel.

So presumably no political leader knew that. And one of the reasons no Israeli political leader knew that was because the IDF military intelligence and the Shin Bet and the Shabak, all their concept based on their own intelligence was that was not what Hamas wanted. On the one hand, this is the ideology of Hamas. They were quite clear. We know that the discussion is around the question of the capabilities of Hamas, the

And this is something we missed along the way, because we let Hamas to build up his power. We let Hamas to get more and more financial funds straight from Qatar.

We considered Qatar as a neutral element that in a way helped us to deal with Hamas. That was a terrible mistake. Qatar is a very negative entity. The Qatari leader is part of the Muslim Brotherhoods, is a person that they admire. Sheikh Kardaoui from Egypt.

a very fanatic, antisemitic person was like that. And I think that here what we see

is this combination that on the one hand, the military echelons and strength, the political tendency to see the PA as a negative element that we should make it, you know, less and less powerful. And at the same time, the political echelons support this, you know, tendency to think that we can manage the conflict, we can handle it.

It's under control.

Were you screaming from the hilltops to the Israeli political leadership saying, we cannot negotiate for quiet with Hamas, informally negotiate? Were you saying this whole setup, we're letting all these international actors send resources to Hamas that's building up Hamas. We're making a huge mistake here. Hamas is dangerous. Hamas has both genocidal ambitions and more capabilities than we realize militarily.

to act on those ambitions, we need to be doing something different. Well, I thought at that time that whenever we have an opportunity to destroy the military wing of Hamas, we need to jump on this opportunity. And we didn't do that.

But I have to admit, I didn't imagine that Hamas could launch such a raid. So it was not here, I have to admit, although I left the military in 2018, five years before this terrible event. But at that time, in 2018, I didn't think that Hamas could launch such a raid.

And maybe at that time, it couldn't. You know, it was not the kind of ability that was in the hands of Hamas many, many years ago. It's an ability that was developed along the years. And my impression, you know, while traveling between different combat scenes around the Gaza Strip on October 7th, is one, that most of the weapons were brought into the Gaza Strip

in the very few years, maybe three, four years at most before 2023. Okay. You strongly supported when Ariel Sharon withdrew, disengaged from Gaza in 2005. You were a strong advocate for that? Yeah. And I can tell you why. Go ahead. Because I think that the main issue is not whether we want two-state solution, yes or no. This is not the real question.

The real question is one: where are we heading? Annexation or separation? What is best for Israel? To annex 5 million Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, and the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, or to separate ourselves from them?

I think that if you want Israel to remain the homeland of all the Jewish people and at the same time free, egalitarian, and democratic state, well, we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians. Now we can start the discussion, what is the right way, what is the right process, and what is the timeframe for such a separation? But we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians. Personally,

I think that talking today about this two-state solution is too ambitious. And right now we need to build or rebuild self-confidence in Israel to overcome the terrible trauma of October 7th. And I think that the formula for that is civil separation with security responsibility.

Civil separation in order to lessen the friction between two hostile populations. Civil separation in order to provide as less as possible opportunities for terrorists. But at the same time, keeping a responsibility for the security in the hands of Israel. And that means freedom of action all over the area.

We should prepare the land for separation, but we cannot fulfill this process unless we can trust the Palestinians. And right now, talking about trust in the Palestinians, well, this is not something in the real world. So therefore, we need to build it from the very, very beginning. It's not just upon us. It's also upon the Palestinians.

I just want to stay on 2005 for a moment, and then we'll get to now.

So you were supportive of what Sharon did and the Sharon government did in pulling out of Gaza, but you also didn't think they went far enough. You were making the case, and there was some disengagement also from... North and Samaria. Yeah, yeah, in the northern West Bank, northern Judea and Samaria. Yeah. But you thought they should even go farther. You thought the path should be disengagement from most of Judea and Samaria too, not just disengagement from Gaza. That was the plan of Sharon. I think that...

you know, without the stroke of Sharon on January 6, 2006, Sharon had this plan to do the same in Judea and Samaria. And it was about taking out 22 settlements along the ridges of Judea and Samaria and

in order to split the country and in fact in order to fulfill this notion, this perception that we need to disengage ourselves from the Palestinians in order to save the Jewish state. And I think that was the truth then, that was the truth in 1947 and this is the truth right now.

We need to understand it. I know how hard it is for the Israelis right now. And I know that with all the poison machine of Netanyahu, it's really hard to move forward in any positive manner. But we need to understand something very, very basic. Separation or annexation. Annexation is a disaster for Israel. It will ruin Israel from the inside.

Separation opened a window for us for a better future. I think that part of the challenge, it's not just the Hamas problem.

It's a Palestinian society problem. And I think, and I'm not, I don't live in Israel. You do, but I speak to a lot of Israelis. And what I'm struck by is the growing awakening to the reality among many Israelis, not just after October 7th, although there was that, but particularly over the last few weeks, the combination of

I think the Bibas family's tragedy and trauma represents something really sick in Palestinian society, not just because of the horror of it, but the growing understanding that that wasn't professional Hamas, you know, that executed the Sherry Bibas and the two children. It looked like it was Palestinian civilians who came in after Hamas's initial penetration. A gang, a kind of local gang.

A local gang. Yeah. And there's another Israeli hostage who was released in this first phase of the deal, one of the four female soldiers, who said in her entire time in Gaza, she never interacted with a single Palestinian as she was moved around.

who had any designs on her other than a lynching, meaning that Hamas was protecting her because she was currency. But if Hamas weren't protecting her, any number of Palestinian civilians would have done indescribable things to her. And there's just this sense that this is not just a Hamas problem. This is much broader and much deeper. And then when you think that had Sharon not had his stroke...

And had Sharon been successful politically, being able to extend into a disengagement from the West Bank, had leaders like you been able to achieve that, Israel could have been facing not only this catastrophe from the South, but also from the West Bank, also from its eastern front. And that part of the region has much closer proximity to key parts of Israel. So you just start to think if it's a

radicalized society and not just a terror group running a society, but it's a radicalized society. The idea that Israel just pull out and hand territory to this society on all fronts, you know. No, I understand what you're saying, but let me say that we jump from 2005 to 2023 and, you know, and in between our 18 years and meanwhile, you know, all kinds of things has happened and

So, let me say the following. We need to concentrate all our perceptions and thoughts on what is best for Israel. I'm an Israeli patriot. What is best for Israel? Annexation or separation? I have no illusions. And I can tell you, we told Rabin back then in 1994-95, we should stop the implementation of the Oslo Agreement because Israel

the PA refuses to treat Hamas in the right way. Let's stop it. Let's tell them, you know, we cannot move forward unless you keep them in jail for a long period. Of course, we should have insisted on changing the education system in the Palestinian Authority. Of course, there are many elements and we did some terrible mistakes.

But concerning the very principle aspect, it's right for Israel to separate itself from the Palestinians. I think that the same conclusion of Ben-Gurion from 1937 and then from 1947, that we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians, was right. The way we do it, the way we implement that, this is something we need to learn how to do it correctly.

And I think that the following formula, which is about civil separation with security responsibility, I think this is the most promising formula for the destiny of Israel.

And when you say security responsibility, I just want to be clear. So you mean having the IDF have a security responsibility inside Gaza? Yeah. Going forward and continue to have some security responsibility inside the West Bank? The meaning of that is that we have no intention to transfer responsibility for security to any other entity but the IDF and the General Security Service, the Shin Bet.

This is it. We have no intention to compromise the security of Israeli citizens. But at the same time,

We tell ourselves, which is the most important issue, and we tell the rest of the world, and we tell the Palestinians, if you want your own state, you will be able to have it. Not for you. It's for us. Because we don't want to take the risk of annexing five million Palestinians into Israel.

And I think that this illusion that we will wake up, you know, in a shiny morning and there will be no Palestinians in the Holy Land, that's a kind of, you know, nice dream.

but has no connection to reality. And concerning that, even the vision of President Trump, or this idea, this very vague idea of, all right, we are going to take all of them out of the Gaza Strip and build, you know, some sort of, I don't know, Miami-style casinos and, you know, resource area,

Well, this is not something practical for tomorrow morning. We need to come with some practical solutions for the situation.

Civil separation with security responsibility is a practical measure that we can and we should implement tomorrow morning. And what you're basically saying is Israel would still have a security presence in Gaza and obviously in the West Bank and... Freedom of action. It's not about presence. It's about freedom of action all over the terrain, including land operation.

But would it involve, I mean, you in the past, when you've talked about disengagement from Judea and Samaria, you've talked about Israel having a security presence on the border between Jordan and the West Bank. So Israel would...

You know, many Palestinians have argued that's not Palestinian sovereignty. This is right. And I'm going to tell them, we won't let you to get full sovereignty unless you show us that we can trust you. Right now, we cannot trust you. We cannot trust your ability to cope with Hamas's

to cope with the jihadic Islam. We cannot trust you to change your education system in a way that support a reconciliation process with Israel, full recognition for the right of Israel to exist. And therefore, unless we can trust you, we won't let you take full responsibility for security unless we will feel safe enough.

And won't the Palestinians say that this is just continued occupation, which you're laying out as just another form of occupation? Yes, but I open a gate for them to have their own independence, but under certain conditions, under certain terms. And I think this is the right thing to do. This is the right thing for us. And this is the right thing for them.

Okay. According to Israeli polls, something like, and I know it depends how you ask these questions, but let's just say roughly 70% of Israelis have expressed support for President Trump's Gaza plan.

It sounds to me like you don't take the plan very seriously, but why do you think most... It's not a plan. Okay, a vision. Yeah, yeah, all right. Why do you think most Israelis want something like this? Because it's very tempting to think that, all right, we will wake up and there are no more Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and maybe elsewhere.

Yes, all right. Yes, I support it. As a dream, it's a wonderful dream. But, you know, the minute you find, you tackle with reality, this is something completely different. And I believe that the very inner circle of President Trump also understand it. So I don't know, you know, it's very hard to predict the way history is developed.

But let's talk about tomorrow morning, the day after, and even if we will be able to send, you know, half a million Palestinians to all kinds of places around the globe, we'll still have 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on a very small land of, you know, 365 square kilometers. So it's still one of the most densest area on earth.

Where are we heading? What is the right solution? And I think that in Israel, we need to keep this willingness to do something practical because we are the one who need to take responsibility to our destiny, to our future. And therefore, we should come with practical measures. Practical measure is to build inside the Gaza Strip an alternative to Hamas.

And the only option to build an alternative to Hamas is by this combination of bringing back the Palestinian Authority, not alone, with Saudi Arabia, with the United Emirates, with Egypt, with Jordan.

with the support of the MFO, the American force along the border between Egypt and Israel. And by this, you know, international combination, regional combination, we will be able to start this political initiative of replacing Hamas with something better.

It's not enough to fight Hamas. But I think part of what we're both seeing in Israeli society is that something better is not so easy to imagine. It's not easy. It's a process of years. I want to quote here from a friend of mine who, and I won't say his name, but he sent me an email late last week. He lives in Israel. I would say he's in, as he would self-describe it, liberal-ish circles. So let's call him center left. And he writes, I'm quoting here. He says, I think there are a lot of people right now in light of what we've seen that

that have totally given up on peace in our lifetimes. Given that, I think there are many more people, including in our, quote, liberal-ish circles, who would love to see Donald Trump disperse the Palestinians. These people know that Israel cannot do it and that Jews cannot do it. But barring that, this will never end. And at the end of the day, we're going to have to make a choice, close quote.

So this is someone who, you know, maybe not be one of your voters, although maybe he could be one of your voters, but he could easily be a year Lapid voter or Benny Gantz voter. And he's saying-

We're stuck. And, you know, Trump is the only person who's put forward a vision that shakes things up. I think that no one from the outside will solve our problems. We need to take responsibility as a proud nation, as a strong nation. And we should convince as much as possible Israelis that we need to take the initiative.

We are strong enough and we can take the initiative in order to build a better future, a responsible future.

And again, I think that by this formula of civil separation and security responsibility, we will be able to create the right conditions in order to save Israel from this terrible vision of annexation. Annexation is a disaster for Israel. Annexation will end the Israeli project, the Zionist project.

And this is something we need to understand. But I don't think annexation is a real possibility. I mean, I think that's what he's proposing. But I want to talk about the here and now, just news we're dealing with right now. Israel announced today that it is stopping aid from going into Gaza. It is the hostage deal and ceasefire, at least for now, is at best on hold.

Do you think Israel should resume the war to defeat Hamas? What are the goals? You know, if you conduct a war, you need to define what are the goals of the war. I don't understand it. We have beaten Hamas for almost a year and a half. We killed 45,000 people inside the Gaza Strip.

We destroy most of the ammunition and the weapons of Hamas. What is next? The next thing, the more desirable future for Israel is to free all the hostages and we should do it as soon as possible. We have no time. They have no time.

And this is something much more important than killing more Hamas members because the hostages deal in a way represent the ability of different Israelis to live with each other.

It's about the Israeli cohesiveness. It's about the Israeli solidarity. It's about the Jewish solidarity. And if we want to reopen a war with Hamas, let's do it, you know, not tomorrow morning, two years from now, three years from now. So what? Again and again, I claim that Israel should be a proud nation, a strong nation, and therefore we should behave according to these, you know, self-perceptions.

And my self-perception, we are strong enough to take the risk of stopping the war right away, freeing all the hostages, because it's much more important than killing another Hamas member tomorrow morning. You have said in the early months of the war, I heard you on a couple of interviews, you'd said there should be a million people was your benchmark, a million people in the streets protesting the government.

And until Israel gets a million people out on the streets, you don't really have the political momentum to really change the course of the war. And even some of these issues I think you're talking about right now. Obviously, there's been a lot of the protest movement and the movement on behalf of the hostage families has been intense and robust and vibrant.

But at least to my lights from afar, it doesn't in any way approximate the size of the protests and the intensity of the protests that we saw at the peak of the judicial reform protests in 2023. Are you surprised by what I'm describing? No, it's not a surprise for me. And I can tell you because Israel right now is a nation in trauma. So many, you know, young people still serve in the military as a reservist group.

So many people deal with their daily difficulties. They have no desire to look at the national level. I can understand it. But at the same time, I'm going to fight for this so important issue of freeing all the hostages as soon as possible.

And we should not give up. And it's a process. And any political, you know, struggle is complicated. And in any political struggle, you have ups and downs. And we have no intention to give up. This is the worst government we ever had in our history. This government is a very problematic combination of nationalistic extremism with corruption.

This is a terrible formula for national lives. So my final question for you here is you're staking out in this conversation, as I'm sure you have in others, very stark differences with this government. But your peers on the left, obviously, they're more to the center, like Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz.

have not staked out such stark differences with the government. I mean, they're very critical of the government, but yet whenever there's an issue that's presented, like the Trump vision, quote unquote, they don't really criticize it. And they either dance around it or they actually express support for it in some way. Are you surprised? I mean, you seem to be wanting to draw very bright lines. They do not. I think they are mistaken.

And I think that it's very unfortunate to save Netanyahu over and over again.

I think that the fact that Benny Gantz, in a way, saved Netanyahu during the corona crisis and also in the first eight months of the war, that was a terrible mistake. But in a way, they are still my partners, and I'm the first to acknowledge that we need to work together in order to change this government and in order to build an alternative.

And I know that the future alternative of Israel won't be the Democrats' alternative alone. The alternative is a kind of a national unity government with parties from the right,

from the center and from the left, and we should gather together, also with an Arab party. No problem with it. But we need to replace the current government because I would like to re-emphasize the very basic fact that you cannot build a healthy nation upon corruption and nationalistic extremism. On

On the contrary, these elements of corruption and nationalistic extremism destroy so many nations along the history, and we should avoid it. And this is the puzzling way of history concerning the national lives. It's always complicated. And in most cases, you need to choose between bad and worse. I prefer the bad.

With all the difficulties, with all the complexities, we need to separate ourselves from the Palestinians. No other way. Annexation is a disaster. No other solution. We need to admit it. In the Holy Land, there are pretty much the same number of Jews and Arabs, and we need to find the right way to moving forward according to the same Zionist lines of our founding fathers.

emphasizing all our efforts in order to build a nation, healthy nation, and do it in the homeland of the Jewish people, a country with a vast Jewish majority. We can handle, you know, this big Arab minority of Arabs. We want to make them partners. But we cannot annex into Israel five million Palestinians tomorrow morning. That could be the end of the Zionist project.

All right, Yair, we will leave it there. Thank you for this, what I thought was important and constructive exchange. I'm glad our listeners are able to hear an alternative view that I think is from the mainstream conversation in Israel. And again, I thank you. I'm in awe of what you did on October 7th, really. And I look forward to staying in touch and having you back on. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for this opportunity.

And we need to remember one very basic thing. The secret of our existence is our intellectual capabilities and our moral standards. Let's keep them, you know, as the most precious gifts that were provided us, you know, by God, by history, by faith. I don't know. But this is the most important things. And resilience. Thank you, Yair. Thank you. Thank you.

That's our show for today. You can head to our website, arkmedia.org. That's A-R-K, arkmedia.org, to sign up for updates, get in touch with us, access our transcripts, all of which have been hyperlinked to resources that we hope will enrich your understanding of the topics covered in the episodes on this podcast.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Archimedia's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.