This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
I don’t think it’s possible at this point to overstate how hellish life in Gaza has been over the past 20 months. The death count is above 50,000 people, more than 15,000 of whom are children. At least 1.9 million of the 2.1 million Gazans have been displaced — and displaced and displaced. Some have been forced to flee their homes, shelters and camps 10 times or more.
Starvation is everywhere. Some 500,000 people are in a catastrophic condition of hunger. For 11 weeks, Israel allowed no aid into Gaza, and 171,000 metric tons of food for Gazans just sat there. Almost half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been destroyed or are not operational. Many of the rest are barely holding on. There are only 2,000 hospital beds available for more than two million people. About 60 percent of physical structures, have been damaged or destroyed.
It has been 20 months since Oct. 7, when this war began, and Israel has no plan for the day after it ends — no theory of who should govern Gaza — and is instead weighing escalation. The plan being considered would herd more than two million Gazans into a small fraction of the strip. The argument is that this would isolate Hamas, further break its command and control structures. To the extent such structures still exist, it’s really quite hard to see how more devastation would degrade them.
In May a poll found that 55 percent of Israelis said they believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main goal is to stay in power. Not to have the hostages returned. Not even to win the war.
At the end of May, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, published a searing opinion essay in Haaretz. The headline read, “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes.” He joins me now.
Ezra Klein: Ehud Olmert, welcome to the show.
Ehud Olmert: Hi.
In your essay in Haaretz, you wrote, “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” That’s not how you initially saw it. Walk me through what, in your view, changed.
Obviously when it started, right after the 7th of October, Israel was in a state of shock. Well over a thousand Israelis were massacred and butchered and beheaded and raped in their living rooms, in their safe rooms, in bedrooms, with their pajamas — children, elderly people, mothers. It couldn’t remain without a very robust military reaction.
It lasted for much longer than I thought it should in the first place. I already called for the end of the war perhaps a year ago.
Certainly, more or less around March this year, the consensus within Israel, shared by very important people with a military background — the commanders of the I.D.F., of the commanders of Mossad, the commanders of the Secret Service, not just the average person in the field but people that are well trained and experienced in judging the military options — they all say: The war should stop now. End the war and bring back all the hostages.
And the general attitude in Israel now is that the war continues not because it serves any purpose which justifies it, not because it’s going to save the hostages, which are still kept by Hamas. On the contrary, it probably risks their lives for a war that is called, by the serious observers in Israel, a personal war for the sake of the political survivability of Netanyahu. This is a state of crime, and this is not something that is tolerable or acceptable.
I want to go through some of the points you raise in the piece. You write that Israel is “starving out Gaza. On this issue, the position of senior government figures is public and clear. Yes, we’ve been denying Gazans food, medicine and basic living needs as part of an explicit policy.” What is that policy?
It was — until the last couple of days, when it was changed — but for quite a few days, we were denying the humanitarian needs of the people. The people were starving. The pictures that we all saw were absolutely heartbreaking and terrible. And it became absolutely evident that this is the policy of the government, as was articulated and spelled out in the clearest possible way by Minister Ben-Gvir and Minister Smotrich.
I mean, look, I grew up all my life knowing that we have to fight when we have to fight and we have to fight in order to defend ourselves without any hesitation, sometimes killing our adversaries and our enemies. And we did it when I was prime minister.
But to look at two million people living in Gaza and to say, “They’re all Hamas; therefore they deserve to be starved”?
Netanyahu is captive. He is nominally the leader of the state of Israel. He’s the prime minister. But he’s entirely captive by these messianic, extremist, fundamentalist terrorists who are dictating the policy, because if he will not surrender to their pressures, he will lose his government.
We are, as you mentioned, 20 months in, and we seem to be in a period when what is being considered is escalation, not de-escalation. There are reports right now, very widely reported, that the I.D.F. is planning to herd Palestinians in Gaza toward the Morag Corridor, in the south of Gaza near the border with Egypt. That would mean concentrating Gazans, who are already incredibly densely populated.
What is the rationale for this? Why is this emerging as the policy?
I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t understand. Except that if this is an effort to carry on the war for an unlimited period of time, to just carry on, to perhaps clear the northern parts of Gaza from its population — I don’t know. But what is seen and is understood by this is bad enough to oppose it.
I think there is a policy. You mentioned Minister Smotrich a second ago. He said about this plan that the Gazans held there will be “totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” It sounds to me like the intention here is part of a broader campaign of mass expulsion, to make Gaza so hellish and unlivable that at some point, the Gazans somehow, to somewhere, leave.
Most likely, this is what they want. I’ve said that the strategy of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is not just fighting Hamas in order to try and eradicate the military power as a result of what they accomplished, which was terrible. This is far broader. After 20 months of fighting, after eliminating almost all of their leadership — Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, Muhammad Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh — and all the commanders — high-level and medium-level and low-level commanders — all were eliminated. The launchers were destroyed. The rockets were destroyed. The command positions were destroyed. So to say that Gaza now poses a security for the existence of the state of Israel is nonsense. The only possible interpretation is the one you offer: They want to get rid of all the Gazans, and this is only part of the strategy.
The other part of the strategy is to do the same in the West Bank. And they are the ones that inspire the Hilltop Youth to perpetrate atrocities on a daily basis in the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians are attacked in an area which no one can argue poses any serious threat to the very security of the state of Israel.
Can you say, for people who don’t know, who the Hilltop Youth are?
The Hilltop Youth are the young settlers in the territories of the West Bank, which are organized kind of like a private militia — very aggressive, very violent and very active. I call them the Atrocious Youth of the West Bank, but they’re known to everyone as the Hilltop Youth because they are building illegal compounds on the hills of the West Bank to have good control of the movement of the Palestinians and the ability to reach out for people that they want to attack.
I think the West Bank is where you can see that this is not just about Hamas or about security.
Sure.
In the year after Oct. 7, there was the largest amount of land seizures in the West Bank in 30 years. In May, Israel announced 22 new settlements, the largest settlement expansion since the Oslo Accords.
Of course, no one can ignore these statements and the impact that these statements — of building more settlements and so on and so forth — has on the spirit of and the atmosphere in the West Bank and the possible eruption of hostilities between Jews and the Palestinians in the West Bank. And unfortunately, so many of the Hilltop Youth are not waiting for the hostilities; they are perpetrating them.
But I want to tell you something because I want to change this pessimistic feeling a little bit. The truth of the matter is that in the last few years, there is a negative immigration of Jews from the West Bank. In spite of this arrogant rhetoric of building new settlements and so on and so forth — there was this resolution that was announced just a couple of days ago about these 22 new settlements — in reality, more people living in the West Bank — Jews — leave the West Bank rather than come in.
Which still leaves it optional for what I am campaigning for, which is a two-state solution. It is still doable and practicable, in spite of this rhetoric.
When I was in the West Bank about a year ago and talking to people in different settlements, one thing I heard from many of them, including people who were not that far right wing, was that they now understood themselves as sentries, that they were there almost in defense of Israel, an early warning system, that nothing like what happened in Gaza could happen because they’re there now. Then this June, Pew released a poll showing that a plurality of Israelis agree with that now. They say the continued building of settlements helps Israeli security rather than hurts it.
The politics of the settlements seem to have shifted over time, from something Israel’s maybe supposed to be a bit embarrassed about, may ultimately have to abandon, to part of its security strategy and maybe part of its national identity.
I must say that this is one of the most stupid childish, reckless, simplistic arguments that I have heard from people, who on the one hand say: Israel, if we need to destroy Iran, we will do it. So powerful, so capable that Iran — which is a regional superpower, one of the richest countries in the world, with enormous technological achievements that can’t be ignored — no problem. We can destroy them. And on the other hand, a few thousand terrorists from the other side of the border are a threat to the very existence of the state of Israel. Is this the basis of the strengths of a country that boasts all the time that we can destroy all our enemies?
Which we can, by the way. We did after October. We destroyed the military power of Hezbollah. And Syria collapsed. And Hamas is almost completely eradicated. And even when Iran attacked us with ballistic missiles, we intercepted almost all of them — hundreds of them — in one of the most unbelievable attacks in modern history. Hundreds of ballistic missiles with 1,000-kilo warheads were shot at Israel, and 95 percent of them were intercepted, with the assistance of America and Great Britain and France but largely because of us. So to say that there is an imminent danger to the very existence of Israel from a few thousand terrorists is ridiculous.
The truth is this: On the 7th of October — I have to say it; it’s important to emphasize it — we failed completely. We failed because of arrogance. We failed because of overconfidence. We failed because we were so certain that this bunch of nobodies can ever do anything of this nature, that in spite of the fact that we had all the intelligence and all the information, we didn’t even think that this is doable, because who are they? And therefore, we didn’t have an army, we didn’t have defensive forces, we didn’t have the choppers, we didn’t have the tanks, and we didn’t have the soldiers. And they broke through. And we had an exorbitant amount of victims. Terrible. I mean, this is terrible, the shock of the generations. There were some that tended to draw comparisons to the Holocaust, which, of course, is also baseless, but that was the shock.
But Israel was not in danger for its existence for even one minute, even on the 7th of October. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to make sure that we are completely careful and alerted, in the event that something similar to what happened on Oct. 7 happens again. We have to be careful, and we have to be alert. And we can.
I find the position of the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs and Israel Katzes fundamentally immoral. But let me try to describe what I understand their logic to be.
It’s not a few thousand people. It’s that, given what has happened in the West Bank, given what has happened in Gaza — the war crimes you describe — that it is millions and millions of people for whom, whether or not they take up arms, there is a seething resentment and fury. There is loss and a desire for revenge. And very few people in Israel now seem to believe peace is possible. The belief that peace is a plausible outcome has eroded substantially. And if you don’t believe peace is possible — like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir — what you are really left with, whether you admit it or not, is trying to find some pathway to expulsion, some pathway to total control. That’s what you’re left with.
When I look at polling — though people debate how good these polls are — where the Israeli public says they would support the relocation of Gazans to another country somehow — it seems, to me, many people have come to this conclusion that the Israeli center does not care about the suffering of the Palestinians. It wants this problem to go away, and it doesn’t know how to make it go away. And the only people with a plan — or one that anybody seems to semibelieve — are on the Israeli right. And that’s become, in a way, the Israeli center
Look, with regard to Gaza and the deportation of Gazans, when the American president — who is perceived by most Israelis to be a very committed friend of the state of Israel — says that he’s in favor of deporting all of the Gazans, he’s very easy to come along. And to say the president of the United States of America thinks that the deportation of all the Gazans is imminent and is acceptable and is reasonable and this is a good solution — perhaps to build a Riviera or a Trump Hotel? No. 1, I think the initial reaction of many of the Israelis, particularly after Trump’s reaction, was to adopt this possible solution.
But of course, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich want to get rid of the Gazans, then get rid of the West Bankers and integrate all of these territories into Israel. And for those who believe that we were destined by God to exercise the historical rights of the Jewish people over all of Israel, this time we are now in a position to try and carry it out. And you know that they are even sending rabbis to the south of Lebanon to find graves of old rabbinical figures that can prove that, actually, the south of Lebanon is also part of Greater Israel. And they’re also going to some sections in Syria for that same purpose.
Here we have a confrontation of historical proportions between two segments of the Jewish people. I believe the majority is on my side — on the side of those who understand that we have to compromise because there is no alternative for compromise but endless war and endless fighting and endless bloodshed and endless killing and endless losing of our children and no horizon for the future. This is the deeper confrontation we have now in our society. And this is, in a way, as I called it — it is a war on the soul of Israel.
Why do you believe that, in that war, the majority’s on your side? You were beaten and succeeded by Netanyahu, who has held power most of the time since. The main alternative to Netanyahu now seems to be Naftali Bennett, who in previous periods was understood to be somewhat to his right on some of these issues.
From the outside, I don’t see a reason to believe that the view of most Israelis is that the path forward is through concessions and compromise.
It depends on how you measure what a majority is. In all of the polls, consistently throughout the last 20 months, there was not one time that the government enjoyed the support of close to even 50 percent of the population. Most of the population is against the government. And when asked, more than 60 percent say they don’t trust the prime minister, and they don’t trust that his motivation is to defend the national interest of Israel but to protect his own personal political survivability and so on.
My understanding and my impressions based on talks that I have with all the possible experts and researchers and also my contacts with people is that there is a solid one-third of the Israeli population that is in favor of a political solution, and the only possible political solution at the end is a two-state solution. There is about one-third that is opposed to it under any circumstance. And there is one-third that is not in favor of a two-state solution but can be influenced. And the battle for the soul of the state of Israel is to try and change the balance.
Now, it’s true. You mentioned Naftali Bennett — Naftali is a very worthy guy. There is no question about it. He’s a decent guy. I think his appeal today is not because of his politics, which is largely a right-wing politics. I called him “Ben-Gvir with a suit” because, in a much nicer, simpler, decent, nonaggressive manner, he more or less expresses the same ideas of Greater Israel and settlements and so on and so forth.
But I think that his appeal presently is the fact that he seems to be normal. He’s a normal person. And it’s about time that we bring Israel back into some kind of normalcy, which is a desire of many. Those who are maybe not where I am politically, in that they are more in the center, even sometimes slightly more to the right, but they understand that these messianic people are a danger and that the personality and the spirit and the values of the Netanyahu family — all of this is something that is rotten and that needs to be changed. So for the time being, Naftali Bennett is a good parking place for these potential votes. Where will they end up? It’s hard to say.
It’s true, we have a leadership crisis. There’s no question about it. You look at the contenders — Gantz and Eisenkot and Lapid — all of them are good guys, decent guys, patriots. They are people that have done something in their life which was completely in the service of our country and our nation — nothing similar to the Netanyahu values and the Smotrich and Ben-Gvir values.
But you feel this absence of strength, of determination. When I look at them, I always say: I’m searching for someone who has a fire burning in his chest that is about to erupt and will burn anything that stands in its way. I don’t see it — yet.
Let me offer a different way of breaking up the pieces of Israeli politics and see what you think of it.
One way it has been described to me is that there’s a faction that believes in a two-state solution that has become much smaller over time, and it’s very weak in Israeli politics now.
There’s a faction that believes in annexation of Greater Judea and Samaria.
Yeah.
They now have power in the government, and they’re very energized. They are acting all of the time. They may not be a majority, but they are never still. They’re always trying to push forward their vision.
And then what most Israelis want is to not think about it. They are exhausted by it. They do not have an answer. And when I talk to Israeli political columnists, I am sometimes amazed. We’ll have a whole conversation about this set of problems in Israel and Israeli politics, around Iran, and at the end, I’ll say: Well, you didn’t mention anything about what any long-term solution around the Palestinian questions are, around Palestinian independence, around anything. They say: Yeah, I guess I didn’t.
It seems to me and many people that for the salient group, what they want is for it to go away. And in that indifference —
“Give me a break. Give me a break. Leave me alone. Don’t bother me.”
I’ll tell you something: This part which can change the balance is more susceptible to the potential prices that the state of Israel is going to pay if this policy of annexation and expulsion of Palestinians carries on. We are now witnessing the beginning of it, and it doesn’t smell good. And it’s not antisemitism.
I have a partner from the Palestinian side, a former foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, Dr. Nasser al-Qudwa, U.N. ambassador and the nephew of Arafat. We are campaigning together. We issued a joint statement about two states and so on. And we met many of the leaders of Europe, almost all of the foreign ministers in Europe. And President Macron has been a traditional friend of Israel. The French Army took part in the defense of the state of Israel just a few months ago when the Iranians were attacking us with ballistic missiles. So are the British. To say that they are antisemites or that they are now collaborating with terror is obnoxious. It’s outrageous.
However, they seem to now have adopted a certain path that can at some point become very costly to Israel if there will be economic sanctions. I heard yesterday that in one of the ports they refused to load trade to Israel, because they said: We don’t want to service the needs of a country where there is disregard to human lives and so on and so forth. The association agreement is a free-trade agreement between Israel and the E.U., and the E.U. is the largest trade partner of the state of Israel.
There will be economic sanctions if the expressions against Israel — you know, there is so much that you can say is antisemitism — there is antisemitism. And the latent antisemitism, which exists and which was part of our history and part of our lives in the past and in the present, has now erupted disproportionately, together with the expression of the anti-Israeli politics and the events which people are witnessing now everywhere and which they can’t tolerate.
But if all this starts to be very expensive for the Israeli economy, for the way of life, for the freedom of movement of Israelis across the world, I don’t know if the one-third that is not particularly interested in bothering itself about the solution will remain as indifferent as perhaps it is now.
I find this is a very difficult and tricky thing for Jewish people and for Israeli Jews to to talk about, but antisemitism predates the state of Israel.
That’s right.
Antisemitism is in some ways part of the creation of the state of Israel. But Israel becoming a global pariah state that is believed and is a force that is oppressing Palestinian life and independence, that is committing crimes in Gaza, that is starving people — that feeds antisemitism. There is a relationship between the two that is dangerous. How do you think about that?
Look, I don’t think that one needs to be an antisemite in order to be utterly devastated by watching the daily clips on the international media showing the mushrooms of smoke and fire that are rising to the sky when the buildings in Gaza are destroyed by Israeli planes. To say that you can’t be devastated unless you are also an antisemite is childish, is simplistic and is not true. And adopting this position drives you away from coming to terms with the problems that you have to address.
I can understand why there are many, many riots and demonstrations across many places against the Israeli government and against the state of Israel.
Look, I’m against this government. We are rioting and demonstrating in large numbers against the Israeli government in an unprecedented manner. There is nothing similar to what is going on in Israel for the last maybe two years — but certainly a year and a half, particularly after the war started — that there are so many hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis rioting in the center of cities, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem and in other parts of the country. Day in, day out, thousands and thousands of them. If that’s what the Israelis are doing, why would you be surprised that people in Stockholm or in —
I think you’re putting so much on this government, and I agree with you about this government. But I think the fury — put aside the antisemitism for a minute — the kinds of more legitimate protests you’re talking about, it’s to the idea that the state of Israel will exist in a permanent state of dominion over Palestinians. And that seems to be an idea shared by the Israeli mainstream. Naftali Bennett, as you say, does not disagree with that idea.
Yeah.
And that seems dangerous in the long term. In the short term, too.
I hope you don’t forget that Naftali Bennett was the executive director of the regional municipalities of the West Bank. He was at the core, at the center of all these settlement movements. He was the representative and chief of staff and so on.
So yes, look, it’s very hard for the Israelis to overcome, in generations, the obsession of being the victims of hatred. We so much fell in love with the status of being the underdog, the victim of hatred, of antisemitism, of discrimination, of segregation, of whatever — that we fall into this in every possible occasion that we have. And it’s so easy for so many among us to say: OK, what do they want from us? Don’t we have a right to defend ourselves after what they did on the 7th of October? So now we are defending ourselves. But when we defend ourselves, they hate us. and they attack us, and they riot against us and whatnot.
This is part of the emotional immaturity which has characterized the state of Israel since its proclamation. Also because we had many different occasions in which we could argue that when we were ready for compromise, the other side was not, and as a result of it, we were dragged into these endless wars when it could have been resolved.
One of the problems that I personally have is that whenever I argue, people say to me: Hey, are you not an example? You proposed a comprehensive solution to the Palestinians in 2008 that is entirely compatible with everything that they were demanding all these years: a two-state solution on the basis of ’67’s, with the Old City of Jerusalem not under the exclusive sovereignty of either Israel or Palestine but under a trust of five nations, of which Israel and Palestine were to be part, also with America, with Saudi Arabia, with Jordan, and that you agreed to negotiate the refugee issue within the framework of the Arab Peace Initiative. This was the spirit of what I said in Annapolis, and this is what I presented Abu Mazen as a peace plan, representing the government of Israel, and the outcome was that they didn’t sign. They never said no, it’s true, but they never said yes.
So people come to me now and say: What do they want? Do they want peace? The fact is that they failed to answer you when you presented them with everything that they wanted. So this is a strong argument, and this is something that so many Israelis are anxious to fall in love with, to prove that the other side is not ready and is untrustable and unreliable and never will be accepting and so on and so forth.
But let’s not forget: From 2009 until now, the Israeli government didn’t want to make peace. No Israeli government at that time was ready to embark on a meaningful, serious process of negotiations similar to what I did. Also, in all those years, the security agencies of the Palestinian Authority cooperated with the Israeli Secret Service in order to battle terror from the West Bank. And at the same time, the Israeli government ignored the Palestinian Authority and cultivated Hamas with money that came from Qatar.
But at the end of the day, so many of the Israelis say: Listen, we don’t want to hear about that. We don’t want to deal with that. They hate us. They didn’t want to make peace. They’re terrorists. They’re fundamentalists. They are ayatollahs. They are jihadis. They are whatnot. And we have to be strong and defend ourselves.
OK, we have to cope with this, and we have to change it. For me, it’s my life’s mission. I have nothing else to fight for but to try and change this and contribute to change this balance.
The point you make about cultivating Hamas and ignoring or weakening the Palestinian Authority seems very important here. You had somebody in your day to negotiate with. Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, is now still notionally in charge but very, very weak, and Israel does not seem to want to have a strengthened Palestinian Authority. And I was struck by this, that in late May, Israel barred the foreign ministers from a number of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, from visiting the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Absolutely crazy, outrageous, obnoxious and damaging. You are talking about the foreign minister of the Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed — a friend of Israel. The guy who signed the Abraham Accords with Israel was actually the brother of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, his foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — a lovely person, by the way, and a friend of Israel. They kept good relations. Over the last year and a half, when all the airlines of the world almost canceled the flights to Israel, the Emiratis didn’t.
So now you say to the Emirati foreign minister: I don’t want you to come? To the Saudi foreign minister — the Saudis are ready to normalize relations with Israel, and you don’t want the Saudi foreign minister, the Bahrainis and the Jordanians? Jordan, we have peace with Jordan. And Egypt, we have peace with Egypt. Not to allow them to come in? It only proves to you what I said before, that the government is completely captive. It’s held by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to such a degree that Netanyahu is doing, in the most open way, the most outrageous, incredible, crazy things in order to satisfy his partners, at the cost of ruining the very fragile and sensitive relations we have built with great efforts for a long time with Arab countries.
Here’s the other thing that I genuinely do not understand. If you had told me a year ago that Israel would still be at war in Gaza, I would have believed you. If you had told me a year ago that there still would be no plan for what comes after that war —
[Chuckles.]
— not among the governing coalition in Israel, not among the main opposition parties to that governing coalition in Israel; that Gaza would just be ruins, which it is, and nobody would even be talking about what comes next; that there’d be talk of escalation but not of “this is how Israel plans now to govern and control Gaza”; and that there is just no horizon of the future, I think that would have shocked me.
How, at this point, this far into this, can there not even be a proposal?
It didn’t shock me. Because when I started to voice my criticism publicly — writing articles, appearing on the international and local media everywhere — I kept saying exactly this: How can you seriously expect to have the support of the international community if you are not prepared to say what is your political horizon? What is your plan for the day after? What do you want to happen?
I kept saying all the time — I used this argument: Look, let’s assume that Israel will be extremely successful militarily and we will kill every single Hamas fighter. Which, of course, is impossible. It’s not something that really can happen. But let’s assume just for the sake of the argument that we can do it. There will not remain one Hamas person holding a gun or an R.P.G. or a hand grenade in all of Gaza. There will still be 2.2 million people. What are we going to do with them? What are we going to do with the three million people living in the West Bank? What do we want to do with them? Remain occupied forever? Forever and ever and ever?
I never heard an answer. And the reason I never heard an answer is very simple: Yes, this is precisely what Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and those who support them want. They want eventually, as we said before, to get rid of them there, to get rid of them in the West Bank, in Gaza — to clean the area in order to lay the foundation for Greater Israel, with so many Jews everywhere.
Now, Netanyahu, of course, knows that that’s what they want. Netanyahu wants only one thing: Save me. Save me, at any cost. And he is prepared to comply with everything that they want in order to save himself. This is the tragedy that we’re facing these days in Israel.
But how is there not more demand for some theory not of peace, not of a solution, but of a plan?
Look, I take your point. Israel’s clearly going to control Gaza for the foreseeable future —
I hope not.
But nobody’s offering a plan on how that control will work. Right now, it is a strange arm’s-length — now there’s some control over the aid, which is slipping through, and you have soldiers opening fire and dozens of people dying and arguments over why that happened.
If Israel is going to be the governing authority, then it needs governing institutions. Nobody’s setting up the groundwork for that. It’s just going to occasionally launch military incursions into the ruins?
Well, I guess that you don’t ask me to try and explain Netanyahu.
Yes.
OK.
I’m asking why there isn’t a demand for something else.
What you are really asking me is: How come there are not other voices, strong, powerful public voices coming from different political sides within Israel that propose an alternative plan? Something for the day after?
Yes.
First of all, this is reality. Which is a sad reality. I can say that I’ve proposed it. [Chuckles.] I’ve done it. I don’t have any formal political position now, but I think my voice is heard every now and then someplace, so this is not insignificant, it has to be said.
But I think that one of the problems, the difficulties in dealing with it — and it’s why Bibi wants the war to continue — is that when we are fighting, when there are thousands and thousands and thousands of Israelis, the reservists who are now mobilized and are fighting, the consensus, the desire of most of the people is first: Bring them back home. Don’t bother me now with what will happen afterward. First we have to win the war. Now, maybe we have to end it, as most people think in the polls, but as long as it goes on, we have to win the war, and don’t bother me now with what should be afterward. We will deal with it afterward.
That’s precisely why Netanyahu wants to keep the war going forever. Because as long as the war goes, we are not yet ready, from his point of view, to discuss the day after. We have to discuss the win, the victory, the total victory, which we have to accomplish as soon as possible. This is the only possible explanation I have.
Let’s say that they don’t accept two states as a possibility or they don’t accept the Palestinian Authority as the governing body in Gaza. So what do they propose? If not this, then what? Nothing comes.
My impression of Benny Gantz and some of the others is that they believe politically that to propose anything and have to own the flaws and downsides of it is more politically dangerous than proposing nothing.
Now, I’m not sure they’re right because I think they’ve all fallen. Benny Gantz is the former next prime minister of Israel, and now I think his star has fallen quite a bit. But the sense of the people I spoke to, it seemed to me, was the view that there was nothing the Israeli public would support, that the options are all bad. And nobody wanted to be the one to propose the option and then have every other faction attack them.
As a retiree of being almost 50 years in the center of the national arena of such a volatile and exciting country, I’m asked every now and then: What do I have to say about what makes a person a great leader? What makes a person a man of history rather than just a passing political phenomenon? I used to say that, in my mind, one of the things that characterizes a great leader is the ability, when the time comes, to make a decision that is 180 degrees opposite to everything that he has preached for and believed for and fought for and defended for all his life. There comes a moment when you have to make a decision and the only reasonable, rational, logical, healthy decision is the opposite of everything that you stood for.
Now, normally on various occasions when people are asked, “What do you think about this guy or that guy or this political figure or public figure?” people tend to say, “He’s a very fine man. You can trust him. He will always do what he promised.” Sometimes you need someone that will do the opposite of what he promised, and that will make him a man of history.
You know who did it? Menachem Begin. When Menachem Begin was elected in 1977 as the prime minister of Israel — at that time, I was already elected to my second term in Knesset — everyone was scared to death that the first thing that Menachem Begin would do was to annex all the territories, because this is precisely what he said: Judea and Samaria are part of the state of Israel. We’ll annex everything, and of course, Sinai and Sharm El Sheikh and whatnot.
They were scared. And the next day, across the board, the British papers said: A terrorist was elected prime minister of the state of Israel.
There was fear of what would happen, that the Middle East was going into a terrible situation and whatnot. Had someone told them on the 17th of May, 1977, the day of the election, that a year and three months from then, Menachem Begin would agree to pull out completely from Sinai, against everything that he promised, everything that he defended all his life, no one would believe the fact that he did it.
And the fact that he never tried to annex the West Bank, even though he said: The West Bank is Judea and Samaria. This is part of Israel. It will be part when we are in power.
This was the highest manifestation of the greatest leadership by a person that had the courage to do the opposite of everything that he promised.
Also, you have to give credit to Sharon. I was privileged to be his vice prime minister when we decided to pull out entirely from Gaza. And he reached the inevitable conclusion, which was the right one: We have to dismantle all of it.
This was leadership. Now, when you ask me: Why would some of the potential contenders for prime minister in Israel not spell it out as it is? Because they’re afraid of being unpopular, because they are afraid of losing some ground, because it may not be the right thing to do now and so on and so forth.
And I said: Maybe they are right. But you don’t make a breakthrough, you don’t change history if you don’t have the guts and the courage and the inspiration to do that which is unexpected and that which may not be necessarily popular but which is the only thing that reasonable people understand needs to be done.
To be generous to that story, Begin and Sharon — they all did this when they were in power. Let’s say they made these 180-degree pivots in leadership when they were in power more than when they were running for power.
We agree that Netanyahu is not going to do this. But let’s say Naftali Bennett or somebody like Bennett succeeds him. What would that move look like now to you?
At the end of the day, if Bennett will become the next prime minister, which I doubt, I’ll do everything in order to encourage him to do exactly this. Do I think that he has the personal strength, the wits of his intellectual and emotional basis to do it? I doubt it, but I’d rather hope than leave no hope.
But what would the move look like? Put aside who it is. What exists now? If you were in power, what would you propose to the Israeli people? Given where things are right now and what they believe right now, what would you propose?
You have to change the nature of the dialogue and the appeal to the Israeli people and start to talk in a different way. Instead of warning us all the time that we are on the verge of destruction, which is what this government is doing now for 15 years, not just in the last couple of years.
I remember the days when I was fighting Hezbollah. After my war against them, everyone said how we failed and so on and so forth. But a few years later, I started to hear that they are so powerful, that there is a danger to the very existence of Israel if Hezbollah attacks Israel. And we keep hearing all the time that Iran is threatening the very existence of the state of Israel. And we hear also about Hamas today — these days, when Netanyahu talks, why does he need to explain the war? Because Hamas can become a danger to the very existence of the state of Israel.
This has to change. You have to open a dialogue with Israeli society on a different basis, on the basis of hope — something which will change the lifestyle and the hopes of the younger generations. Then we will not have to fight all the time.
And then, of course, it’s always a matter of leadership. If we can assemble all of those who criticize Israel today and seem to be hostile and suddenly unfriendly — like the Macrons, like the Carneys from Canada and the Melonis from Italy and the Starmers from Great Britain and Chancellor Merz in Germany and others — to work with us to create that kind of solid framework of support and cooperation that will establish a certain sense of security and confidence in the Israeli public opinion.
And of course, at the end, with the United States of America. But I’m careful when I say “the United States of America”; I don’t know who the president will be. I’m being asked all the time: What do I think about — how do I analyze what President Trump is doing?
I have nothing against him. And he certainly, up until now, has been friendly to the state of Israel, to the people of Israel. But do I know how to anticipate what Trump can do or will do or will say? Elon Musk thought that he could anticipate Trump. I don’t think he still thinks that way. So I’m careful.
But of course, for years and years and years, the core strengths of Israel’s status in America was the bipartisan support. Israel did everything in the last 10 years to antagonize the Democrats and to dissociate itself — ourselves — from the friendship, the cooperation, the respect and the support of the Democratic Party. There was nothing that could be worse than the way that Netanyahu treated President Barack Obama — in my mind, an outstanding president and a friend of Israel and a friend of the Jewish people. We antagonized him. We alienated.
Today, the United States of America is — well, I don’t know. Look, we are still dependent on America and the friendship of America, but I’m afraid it’s not what it used to be. That has to change also.
Given everything both that you saw when you were in leadership and everything you’ve seen in the years since, so many people — I would largely count myself among them — have given up hope, given up the belief that a two-state solution remains possible.
Beyond hope, make the case to me that it is possible. You’ve been out working on this. You’re involved, I believe, in the French-Saudi talks that are set to start very soon.
Yes. OK.
Make the case to somebody who now doubts that this is still possible why you think it is.
I think that there is no alternative. I think that annexation of the territory may ultimately lead to one state for two people, but half of the population will be citizens with full rights, and half of the population will be residents without political rights, without freedom of movement, without freedom of speech, without freedom of association. This is a disaster that will break down the soul of Israel and will eventually also break down the strengths of Israel.
I don’t think that the majority of the people of Israel will be prepared to bear the possible consequences of living without a solution. The price of not resolving into a two-state solution is to continue to be occupiers. Even if the definition will be somewhat softened and mellowed, it will still be an occupation without equal rights of the Palestinians living under the control of the state of Israel. This is intolerable.
I wanted to say before: I think that all of the land from the Jordan to the sea, historically, is linked to the Jews and not to the Palestinians or to the Arabs. When you dig underground, you find remnants of the biblical stories. You don’t find remnants of the Quran or the history of the Palestinians. So, yes, it is our land, and we have to cut it and give part of it, because under the historical circumstances as they developed, there are other people living there with other desires, with other dreams, with other aspirations. And we have to give up that which we think is ours in order to make peace possible.
In other words, if we have to choose between the yearnings and the prayers of history and the hope and chances for the future, I’m for the future, at the cost of making the terrible, painful concessions of the past.
And believe me, I was at that point, when I sat in front of the Palestinian leader as the prime minister of the state of Israel, and I negotiated with him. At some point I said to him: OK, this is what I propose. We divide the city of Jerusalem — what is known as the city of Jerusalem — and the Arab side of Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state. Believe me, emotionally, it was heartbreaking for me to do it. But I felt that there was no alternative. And if I had to lie on the dreams and the prayers of the past at any cost over what can possibly create a different future for my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, this is what I have to do.
I think, at the end of the day, it will take time. It will be difficult. It will probably be part of very tough confrontations within Israel. But at the end of the day, this will win.
You have made, to me, very stirringly, the negative case for all the other alternatives, that a single-state solution will not work. But I think the people who doubt the path you were laying out believe that it is not possible — that peace is not possible, that security is not possible, that there will not be enough freedom for the Palestinians, there will not be enough security for the Israelis. What makes you believe it could work — not that the others will fail and this is the only thing left?
First of all, according to my view, according to my plan, there will be an independent Palestinian state with borders, clear-cut borders. It will take them time to recuperate from the miseries of their recent modern history and to build up a more stable political system that will overcome all the controversies and all the divisions that characterize the Palestinian society, with the extreme terrorist organizations — Hamas, Jihad and others.
But it will be an independent Palestinian state with a clear-cut border, well defined. They will be protected from our side by Israel. According to the broad beginning of understanding or agreement that I had with Abu Mazen, there will be an international force along the border on the Jordan River that will separate the Palestinians from Jordan.
Once this is established by agreement and recognized by the international institutions, by the United Nations and by the big powers, the Europeans and the Americans, there will be an enormous effort by the Arab countries — the wealthy Arab countries — to help the Palestinian state move forward, because it’ll be the interest of all those countries as well.
And what of the Israelis who say to you, “That state just becomes more powerful and becomes more of a threat to us — that success for them is danger for us”? That is what I feel Israeli society is going to conclude.
[Chuckles.] Look, the country which leads the world in technology, which has been most successful economically, even throughout these last two years with the war, with the riots — still, the Israeli currency is one of the strongest in the world. Such a successful, capable, strong country that we have to fear that the Palestinian state will become a challenge to the state of Israel? That is incomprehensible.
I’ll tell you what: I think the opposite. I believe that a Palestinian state will be the best partner to the state of Israel, out of all the Arab countries. They are smart, they are capable, they are dynamic, and they are ambitious. We know them, and they know us. They know us better than the Egyptians, better than Jordanians, better than the Emiratis or the Saudis. They know us because they live with us.
But of course, it will become possible only if the agreement will be an expression of an open mind and open heart and good will on both sides, rather than something that comes with force and with violence and with humiliation and with deprivation of rights.
When I started to negotiate with Abu Mazen 18 years ago, at the beginning I made every possible effort to make him feel that we are equals. I always thought that building a personal human, emotional rapport is enormously important if you want to negotiate with someone and you want to win him, and if you want to convince him that you mean well, you have to mean well.
You tell a story in your memoir about how you got Abu Mazen to come over for dinner.
[Laughs.] This is something that my wife deserves all the credit for.
Look, I respect Abu Mazen. I respect him, and I would never say anything bad about him. Never, OK?
What happened is that we tried to set up meetings with him, and every time that we set up a meeting, at the last minute, they called and they said the president can’t come because of this and that, this and that. And already it was coming to the end of 2006 — December of 2006 — and we set up another meeting: dinner at the residence of the Israeli prime minister in his home in Balfour.
Sure enough, Friday, there is a call from his office, and they say the president wants to speak with the prime minister. And I take the phone, and he’s on the line, and he says: Prime Minister, I’m sorry. There is this and that, and I can’t come. And we talked for maybe 40 minutes. So finally I said to him: You know what, President? I think I understand you. You want to insult me, and I can understand it. You say: Who does he think he is — the prime minister? That he will dictate to me when to come, how to come, this and that? No. You want to prove to me that you decide and that you determine and that you don’t play by the rules that we, Israel, set forth. OK, you know what? I understand.
The only question I had is: Why do you want to insult my wife? He says to me: Your wife? Why? No. I said: Look, I told her 48 hours ago that you are coming to have dinner with us on Saturday evening, and she has been standing on her feet for the last 48 hours trying to cook the food that you like. Now tell me, what am I going to say to her now?
There was a silence for 15 seconds, maybe 20, which is a long time on telephone calls. And then he said: I will come. And he came. And then his motorcade was driving through the streets of Jerusalem with sirens and blue lights and red lights and everything, like when the president of America comes. When he was near the residence of the prime minister, he could see on the roof of the residence of the prime minister two flags: the Palestinian flag and the Israeli flag.
And then, of course, he came to the residence. My wife came down to shake hands with him, and he said to her: I know that you are in our favor — which was funny. And I know that afterward, he said to his people: It’s a new ballgame. It’s not anything like it was. It’s a different game now. We have to get adjusted.
And the reason was because we try to build up a certain personal human trust, even with enemies, and he’s our enemy. He’s not our friend. He is the president of the Palestinians. He’s not supposed to be our friend. He’s supposed to be a patriot of the Palestinians, but he’s supposed to be smart enough to make sure that he takes care of the Palestinian interest. Unfortunately, at the last minute, he failed. But since he never said no, I still give him a chance.
I think that’s where we’ll end. Always our final question: What are three books you would recommend to our audience?
First of all, I’d like to recommend “The Gates of Gaza.” It is the story of Amir Tibon, an Israeli journalist and the son of General Tibon. And the story is how his father was a general commander of the Israeli ground forces in the past and a reserve general on the 7th of October. When he understood that his son was in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which was invaded by the Palestinians, he took his wife and a gun and went down and saved his son. The whole story about what happened and how it happened is a fascinating and moving story. So this is one book that I recommend.
I actually read two books about American politics, maybe more. One is “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power” by Jon Meacham, an extraordinary life story of one of the greatest figures in American history.
And then, of course the Michael Wolff story, “All or Nothing,” about the last year before the last elections in America, about President Trump, which is interesting, very exciting.
I can also recommend the book of Doris Kearns Goodwin. I like to read her history books, which are absolutely fascinating, about the “team of rivals” and of Lincoln, of Johnson, of you name it. But she also wrote “Wait Till Next Year,” which is a personal story, not her biography but a personal story, about her time in Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Dodgers were still the most popular baseball team, which was part of her life.
So, yeah, I think that’s enough for this podcast. [Chuckles.]
Ehud Olmert, thank you very much.
Thank you.
You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick and Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Frankie Martin of the Wilson Center and to Orca Studios.
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Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox; the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. He is on Threads.
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