Is Palestine Closer to Statehood?

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a great three-day weekend. If you had a three-day weekend as always, here's a nod to those of you who had to work on the holiday weekend so other people could go shopping, or go to the beach, or go out to eat, or if you were working to keep others safe, if you are a safety worker, a lifeguard, or a first responder of any kind. Also, since we were off yesterday on tape with some repeat segments, I want to acknowledge Memorial Day here for a minute before we move on to today's business.

The original purpose, as most of you know, was to honor the war dead from the Civil War. It was a day of honor for all service members eventually who died in any US War. How many people is that? That never gets said. According to the statistics website Statista, the deadliest was the Civil War with an estimated 620,000 soldiers killed between the two sides. Then World War II, 405,000 Americans, World War I, 116,000, approximately 58,000 American service members were killed in the Vietnam War. Every name, as many of you know, is engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial in DC. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars took more than 7,000 American lives.

Whether any of us supported any of those wars or not, still people gave their lives doing what they believed was in the essential interest of our country, plus those who had no choice because they were drafted. Another expansive way to memorialize on Memorial Day is to consider how many total people were killed in any of those wars because they are all human beings, including civilians who got caught in the crossfire or even enemy soldiers who died in their sides war efforts. That's a tough one. Do we grieve at all for Nazi soldiers from World War II, or ISIS fighters in Afghanistan, or the Confederates fighting to maintain slavery?

Memorial Day officially does honor both sides in that war. Is that a good thing? All these war dead from different enemies were also people killed in wars we were in, so approach that question the way you will. The US military estimates that more than 200,000 Vietnamese soldiers, both sides combined North and South Vietnam, were killed in that war, for example. Regarding civilians, according to the Watson Center for International Affairs at Brown University, the Iraq War took the lives of between 280,315 Iraqis civilians, the best estimates that they have. Some estimates are higher than that. The Vietnam civilian death toll estimates are usually more than a 1,000,000.

Whatever the exact numbers we acknowledge on this day after Memorial Day, the incredible toll of war period, how sad and what a failure of human social development that we haven't figured out as a species, how to solve our differences more consistently without any wars. That brings us to the present. A new round of ceasefire talks could start this week in the Israel-Hamas War, according to officials quoted in multiple news organizations. Meanwhile, civilians, whatever the exact number continue to be killed at a devastating rate, including the dozens reported killed in a bombing in Rafah over the weekend in what Israel called a tragic mistake.

In the Ukraine War, a Russian bombing of a construction supply store in the major city of Kharkiv killed a reported 14 people and wounded dozens of others according to the AP, as President Zelenskyy warned that Russia is planning to intensify its assaults on that region. On Israel-Hamas, the International Criminal Court last week requested arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the Israeli defense minister, and the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and his top deputy. Separately, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its operation in Rafah. That was before Sunday's bombing.

Also, three European nations last week recognized a Palestinian state, Ireland, Norway, and Spain. Some of you heard them discussing that as a development from over the three-day weekend on the BBC just before. We'll try to take a closer look now and explain in more detail than they could do or than one could do in a few minute news report. What some of these things mean because the short news reports many people hear can leave more questions than answers. Joining me now is Roger Cohen, who covers international affairs for the New York Times. His title is Paris bureau chief, but he also covers the war in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza.

He's also covering the rise of the far right taking place now in Europe. Among his latest articles is one called Can European Recognition bring Palestinian Statehood Any Closer? Another one posed as a question is Just How Dangerous is Europe's Rising Far Right? Yet another one is about Xi Jinping's recent visit to Europe this month trying to woo even France closer to Beijing and away from the United States. Roger, thank you for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Roger Cohen: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for reminding us of those chilling numbers.

Brian Lehrer: On the three European countries recognizing a Palestinian state, Spain, Ireland, and Norway, did they do this as a group or independently?

Roger Cohen: I think there was coordination between them. Certainly the timing was coordinated. It reflects growing exasperation with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel and his determination to continue the war despite growing pressure on him to stop it. Now, whether recognition of a state, and remember there are 145 states in the world of the 193 UN members, whether recognition of a state that does not in fact exist on the ground and therefore cannot bring to its citizens as that state does not exist yet, what they are seeking in terms of prosperity, in terms of opportunity, in terms of a better future, whether that advances the core cause of getting a real physical Palestinian state, I think is an open question.

Brian Lehrer: Did they unrecognized Israel or were they more recognizing the concept of a two-state solution?

Roger Cohen: They didn't unrecognize Israel, those three states still recognize the state of Israel. They are passing around in what I would call a pretty desperate way for some means to revive the idea of a two-state outcome, which faces enormous problems right now suffices to spend a day in the West Bank and see what, 500,000 plus Israeli settlers means in sheer geographic terms. How do you move those people? Where would such a state go? It's very notable that until October 7, until the Hamas terrorist attack that took some 1,200 Israeli lives, there had been almost no-- Did the Biden administration talk about two states?

I don't recall it. Were any European states talking about a two-state outcome? I don't think so. The idea had grown that you could somehow finesse the Palestinian national issue, which is at the core of the conflict by some wider agreement with the Arab world, following up on the Abraham Accords where there was normalization between Israel and Bahrain, Israel and Morocco, and a couple of other states and extend that to Saudi Arabia, which would be hugely significant obviously. That somehow by doing that, you could cause the Palestinian issue to go away. The Saudis would pour money in, everybody would say that's yesterday's issue.

No, no, and no, it is and always has been the core of the issue. A narrow sliver of land contested by two peoples, the Palestinians and the Jews, the Israelis. The idea back in 1947 when the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 approving the creation of two states, one Jewish, one Arab in what was then British mandate and Palestine, that if you look back on it was a much better proposal than anything that is on the table today. A lot of time has gone by since then. There have been some near misses, particularly at the time when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel was assassinated in 1995. I would say in all the decades that I've been covering the conflict, this is the worst moment. This is the moment of biggest breakdown. This is the moment of greatest hatred, fear, alienation. This is also the moment when everybody is mouthing the words two states. Maybe there's an issue there. Maybe there's a problem.

Brian Lehrer: When you say that the Biden administration's part of the Abraham Accords, getting those various Arab states to recognize Israel left the two-state solution behind, left the Palestinians behind. I've had guests on the show, at least one US senator who I'm not going to name because I want to make sure that I'm remembering this accurately and I don't want to misquote, but other people also who have said that the two-state solution was always supposed to be part of the Abraham Accords, and that Saudi Arabia wasn't ever going to agree to recognition of Israel without some path to a Palestinian state being a part of it.

Now, certainly the Biden administration is talking about that much more actively now since October 7th with these big picture diplomatic efforts they're trying to engage in at the moment. Can you say for certain that that was not part of the strategy before that or do you think some people are engaging in revisionist history saying, "Oh, no, we didn't forget the Palestinians," or was it?

Roger Cohen: It was the Trump administration that reached the Abraham Accords with those Gulf states. I don't think the Trump administration had any interest really in some kind of outcome that led to two states. That administration was entirely dismissive of it. The Biden administration came in and maintained the Abraham Accords. It is true, as you've said, but we've heard it a lot more just recently than at any time previously. It is true that the Biden administration and the Saudis would like to get at least some vague Israeli commitment to a process that might eventually lead to two states.

To say that the Palestinian issue was not relegated, was not almost entirely off the table before the Hamas attack of October 7, I think is wrong and is proven wrong by the facts that simply was not much interested in it. There was not much interest really in the Arab world. The Arab world had moved on. Indeed if you look back at history, the real rather than rhetorical Arab interest in the creation of two states has, I would argue, been low to minimal in terms of really trying practically to achieve that.

It's perhaps worth recalling that Jordan controlled the West Bank, controlled it for 19 years from 1948 to 1967 when Israel won the war that then led to its occupation of the West Bank that then for hubristic and somewhat disastrous reasons was maintained. Did Jordan in those two decades ever do anything to try to bring about a Palestinian state? No, it did not. The Hashemite monarchy was scared of that notion and still has great reservations about some real form of Palestinian national power. No, Brian, I don't think there was really any serious interest in using the Abraham Accords to bring about an outcome of two states that satisfied Palestinian national aspirations.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think it was such a low priority, a Palestinian state, for the Arab nations, as you just said, as opposed to just a high priority for the rhetoric?

Roger Cohen: It was convenient. These were oppressive systems, and it was convenient to use the Palestinian conflict as a distraction. Certainly for a monarchy like Jordan having a Palestinian state on its doorstep was the worrying concept and there was the conflict of Black September, the fighting around Black September between Palestinians and the Hashemite monarchy, and that left a very wounding memory. Of course since 1979, that's a long time now, Egypt that had been leading the fight, if you like, against Israel has made a peace with Israel, a cold peace as has Jordan and derive certain advantages from that.

It's worth remembering because it seldom is that the blockade of Gaza was not just the work of Israel, it was the work of Egypt too. Both countries were blockading Gaza, sorry. It was much more useful as a device for distraction from domestic woes than it was in terms of really pushing the Palestinian leadership to reach a two-state outcome. Now, it's often forgotten, the PLO recognized the State of Israel in 1993. They didn't get that much back from the Israelis. They got recognition of the leadership role of the PLO, but not recognition of Palestine. We were in a totally different world then. It was a time of opening up. It was just after the end of the Cold War.

There was a feeling that problems could be solved and could be solved outside of war. The Oslo Accords went a long way toward opening up the possibility of a two-state agreement. I personally believe that if Yitzhak Rabin had not been assassinated, and it's worth recalling that he was assassinated not by a Palestinian or an Arab, but by a religious nationalist, Israeli fanatic who did not want any land to be ceded to the Palestinians.

That was one of the most successful assassinations in history and it sidelined the possibility of that outcome, while gradually increasing the power of the rightest nationalist force in Israel, which is so present today, notably in the form of ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. These are people who are absolutists. They believe all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean belongs to Israel, it was deeded to Israel in the Bible and so there's nothing to discuss. If there are other people on that land and there sure are, they need to somehow get out of the way. That's what those two ministers think. Now, this is unconscionable and it's also extremely damaging.

Brian Lehrer: At the same time, Hamas believes in a river to the sea solution. Didn't they play a role in thwarting the Oslo peace process too because they weren't going to recognize a two-state solution, and so they were carrying out terrorist attacks, even as Israel was planting more settlements in the West Bank, and so there's a Hamas aspect to this too?

Roger Cohen: Oh, absolutely, Brian. There's more than a Hamas aspect. There's a Hamas enormity. There is no question, as you said, that Hamas always has resisted a two-state outcome. There is no question that this war started with a heinous terrorist attack from Hamas. I arrived in Israel on October 9. I was down at the border with Gaza two days later. I was at the site of the trance music festival that turned into a bloodbath. The hammocks were still there, the tents, the Coca-Cola, the children's toys. I went into one caravan where two families had slept. There was blood on the ceiling, blood on the walls, blood on the floor.

I don't know what went on in that caravan, but I could hear the screams. I went to kibbutz Be'eri, just down the road from that festival site. While I was there, a 15-year-old boy who had somehow not been found in the previous four days was pulled out. He wedged himself under a table and [unintelligible 00:19:28] Hamas had found him and killed him. Israeli soldiers and officers gathered around and offered a prayer, sang a prayer. These are things one never forgets. One of the problems with the situation today is that so much is demanded of Israel and almost nothing, at least that I can see, is demanded of Hamas. Who is saying to Hamas, "Release the hostages." Who is saying to Hamas, "You can lay down your arms and end the war." Who is saying to Hamas, "Revoke your charter which was adapted but never fully revoked that pools not only through the destruction of Israel, but calls for killing Jews wherever they are found." I mentioned the Israeli far right, but much more than counterpart is Hama that believed all the land from the river to the sea is Palestine. I remember being in Gaza in 2015 and interviewing Hamas leader, and he said to me, "Well, 6 million," and that's a number that certainly resonates in the Jewish psyche, 6 million. "If America is big, why not just take them all and jettison them in America or somewhere else?"

This was not fanciful, this was a serious proposal on his part. One of the unfortunate things that have happened over the last seven, eight months, at least in my view, is that the term colonial, which in my view is perfectly applicable to the West Bank, Israel colonized the West Bank. It has all or nearly all the aspects of a colonial administration. There is no question that that is what Israel has done over the past decades. No, the word colonization now it's the whole baby. It's Israel. Let's just destroy the whole thing. Let's get rid of it. It's a white colonial apartheid state opposed by indigenous people. Let's do away with it.

This has no justification to be there. Now, that is not going to happen. Jews tried relying on the kindness of strangers once before and it didn't turn out too well. I would say the depth of understanding of the Israeli psyche in the aftermath of October 7 is extremely limited. What that detonated inside not only Israelis, but Jews around the world is something very primal. Now, the primal is not a very good way to go through life.

You can see some of the results of that in Gaza where the heavy bombing has been disproportionate with an appalling toll in civilians who knows what the real number is. There's also been a cutting off of food and aid for which there can be no possible justification. That definitely infringes international humanitarian law, there is no question. What we have is a lot of violent emotions on either side and a very, very intractable problem.

Brian Lehrer: Where, and I want to get in a minute to some of the other particular developments in the last few days from the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas and Israel, and the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to cease the current military operation in Rafah. Listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is Roger Cohen, who covers international affairs for the New York Times. His title is Paris bureau chief, but he also covers the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel and Gaza.

He's also covering the rise of the far right taking place now in Europe.

He's also the author of the book that came out last year, An Affirming Flame: Meditations on Life and Politics. Listeners, we can take some questions or comments for Roger Cohen as he tries to explain the context of mostly the recent diplomatic and international law developments in the Israel Hamas war, but you hear how deeply rooted in history his reporting is. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 call or text.

Before we get to those court rulings or court requests in the case of the arrest warrants, you were describing a mutual death grip between Hamas people on the one side and Netanyahu people on the other side. Where's the peace movement? I don't mean just the ceasefire movement that's mostly focused on Israel, but a real peace movement in both camps, or around the world, or just sick of it, and know that there's no good outcome for either people in the way things have been progressive. Where is it or why isn't it?

Roger Cohen: Mutual death grip is very good, Brian, I might borrow that phrase.

Brian Lehrer: That's yours.

Roger Cohen: The peace advocates on both sides are much weaker than they were. At the time of Oslo, which I've talked about, they were pretty strong. There are people on both sides who see the fruitlessness of this conflict. Neither people is going away, neither people is going away. Generation after generation can die or somebody can say, "For all the wounds of history, what's more important is putting food on our children's tables. If we want to put lots of food on our children's tables, then if we had peace and eventually a fairly porous border between the two states, like the border between old enemies like Germany and Poland or France and Germany, then we would all be better off."

The piece movement has been battered. Social media, as we all know, means that the most extreme voices shout louder and shout all the time. I've spoken to people recently in Israel and in the West Bank who are reasonable people. They are reasonable people and they would like to reach a two-state compromise. The space for that middle ground has shrunk and the practical possibilities for creating two states have faded because not only as somebody was saying on the previous show, I think the number of Palestinians who actually favor a two-star outcome is smaller than it was.

Among Israelis, there's a feeling, "Okay, we make peace, but that has to be the end of it. It can't be a year later." How about Jaffa? How about Haifa? How about the rest of Israel? The conviction that any final point could be reached like that is very weak right now. For the reasons I gave, there are a lot of people around the world who in one form or another of vaguely concealed language or not concealed at all are saying, "Israel is not right to be there, let's get rid of it."

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Roger Cohen. We'll get to that court request for arrest warrants for leaders of both sides and more and we'll take a few of your phone calls or texts, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with the New York Times, Paris bureau chief, international affairs correspondent, Roger Cohen, who also covers the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel and Gaza. Roger, you reported on the arrest warrant requests by the International Criminal Court for leaders of both sides in the war. I wonder if you could begin to explain that further. First, to begin very basically for just a minute, remind us of what the International Criminal Court is? Who's on it and what's it supposed to do? Who makes this decision to request an arrest warrant for both Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas?

Roger Cohen: There's a lot of confusion between the two courts in the Hague. There's the International Court of Justice, which is the judicial arm of the United Nations established more or less at the same time as the creation of the United Nations, which judges cases between states for example, South Africa bringing the genocide charge against Israel. The International Criminal Court was set up much more recently.

I don't recall the precise state, but its role is to establish whether war crimes have been committed, crimes against international law have been committed by certain individuals, be they in the former Yugoslavia, be they in Africa, be they as now in the Israel-Gaza War and issue if it's so fines. The arrest warrants issued so far need still to be approved by three judges of the ICC. That is not yet happened. If these individuals can be arrested, bring them to trial and eventual sentencing in the Hague.

Brian Lehrer: What does it mean that the stories as I'm seeing them are worded as the ICC requested arrest warrants or maybe you just answered that. Who did they request those warrants from?

Roger Cohen: The judges. The judges have to approve this request for the arrest warrants. If the judges do that, then there will be an arrest warrant order out for those individuals who are named who, as you said, include the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, and Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack and his number two, Mohammed Deif. That's where we are right now with that. It could be a matter of months still, certainly weeks before the judges rule on that.

Brian Lehrer: Is it accurate to say these arrest warrants are only symbolic like the recognitions of a Palestinian state by the three European nations because the International Criminal Court has no police force to carry them out?

Roger Cohen: No, I think they're much more than symbolic. If the warrants are approved, then there's a real risk for those individuals certainly, if they leave where they are right now that they will be elected. Very few courts have absolute power to bring their verdicts or bring their orders about. The International Court of Justice, its rulings, they bear considerable moral weight and can certainly bring practical outcomes, including compromises between states. There is no guarantee just because these courts say something or order something that it will come about.

Brian Lehrer: You reported that this twin set of arrest warrants is widely seen in Israel as unforgivable moral equivalency by the court because the terrorist of Hamas and Israel's democratic state are not equivalent. Do you also see in your reporting a claim of a false moral equivalency from the other side? Because Palestinians and their supporters also will often say October 7th was horrific what Hamas did to all those civilians, but there's no moral equivalency between a powerful state with a powerful army and a resistance movement, even a terrorist one fighting decades of occupation and imposing grueling living conditions. I feel like I've heard this, there is no moral equivalency argument from both sides.

Roger Cohen: Israel is a democratic state. There are more than 2 million Palestinians who live in Israel who are Israeli citizens. It is not impossible for Jews and Palestinians to get along as that illustrates. It's not that there is precise equality between the two. No, but there are plenty of Palestinians lawyers, doctors, professionals, you name it in Israel. By the standards of the Middle East, there's a level of tolerance toward the Palestinian minority that is unusual or non-existent in the rest of the region.

I don't think you can really compare [laughs] the democratic state of Israel with a terrorist organization recognized as such by the United States, by Europe bent on one thing, the destruction of the state of Israel and the killing of Jews, and also completely uninterested in the living conditions of more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. We now know that tens of millions of dollars a month were going to Gaza from Qatar. Did it ever occur to Hamas to build a bomb shelter? Did it ever occur to Hamas to try to improve the living conditions of Palestinians there? No, Hamas is bent on martyrdom.

If you are very cynical, and I'm tempted to be sometimes, you would say that the more Palestinian victims there are, the stronger Hamas views its argument as being. Certainly defending and protecting the citizens of the area it ruled over was a very, very, very low priority for Hamas. No, I can't buy really the moral equivalency argument when it comes to the terrorist attack of October 7 because yes, conditions in Gaza have been very difficult and there's a long conflict that's been going on since the 1940s and even before, in which Israel's relative power as compared to the Palestinians has grown exponentially.

You can certainly blame Israel. You can certainly blame Israel, but you should not blame Israel without recognizing the deep profound responsibility of the Palestinian leadership and its repeated failures in trying to bring about any kind of decent existence for its people. As for the ICC ruling, I don't see why the prosecutor lumped the two together. I think it would have been quite possible to request initially a warrant for the Hamas leaders and then at a later stage if you saw fit to do so, also for the Israeli leadership. Inevitably lumping them together made them look equivalent.

[chuckles] I'm sure the prosecutor felt that under international law, get equally valid arguments in both instances for the infringement of international law. I think the decision to lump them together simply caused outrage in Israel because they do not see this terrorist organization and the state of Israel however great the excesses, the toll on Palestinian life, the measures I mentioned earlier, including cunning of faith, et cetera. However appalling that has been in many instances and however negative some of it is for the state of Israel going forward, they cannot accept placing a democratically elected leader who is very unpopular right now, Netanyahu on the same level as Yahya Sinwar.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of people are calling and texting with what I might call the usual very polarized takes on the situation and their interpretations of things that you are saying. Other people are writing in to thank you for the nature of your presentation and to ask you substantive questions. Here's one piece of praise for you, Roger. A listener writes, "Of all the interviews in writing there has been on this since October 7th, this is the first time I've heard anyone mention Resolution 181 and how much better off everyone would be if the Palestinians had agreed to it, that was the 1947 UN Partition Plan, or at least accepted it as a basis for dialogue.

Thank you for this very balanced discussion grounded in historic factual detail." I know there are Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights who may not even agree with that take thanking you, but there's one. Here's a caller with a question. I say we're getting a lot of comments and also some questions, and I'm going to take a couple of questions for Roger Cohen. Mitchell in Stuyvesant Town, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Mitchell: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for taking the call. It's always great to hear you and your wonderful show. Roger, I also want to commend you just to start. It's wonderful. It's very wonderful to hear someone with such historical background here and bringing facts to the surface instead of just a lot of emotional reactions, which we get so often. I want to just ask you something and get your sense of my larger historical sweep, talking about history.

I look at the suffering of all people, number one. Number two, of course, the Jews. I am of Ukrainian Jewish descent. My nieces were married in Israel. I have a deep affinity and love for the country. At the same time, what I really see is the Zionist movement doing everything it can, from its get-go in 1897, actually if not a little before, to snuff out the Palestinian people and to utterly marginalize them. They've been very successful and effective in doing so for a long, long time. With that as the backdrop, and my understanding of Hamas, difficult as they are and as much as I abhor what happened on October 7th, I keep saying to people this was not the beginning of the war at all.

It was a continuation of a long-term slowly simmering war and sometimes not so slowly simmering. I'd like to get your perspective on that. Even though Hamas, I would just say the last thing here, is very difficult to deal with on so many levels as you've cited, still you can understand psychologically that they're in reaction to being pushed into an apartheid open-air prison.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Mitchell. Roger.

Roger Cohen: Thank you, Mitchell. I would definitely agree that it's the continuation of a conflict. It's not the start of anything, it's a particularly vile and terrible continuation right now. There's no question that the life's work of Bibi Netanyahu has been the attempt to avoid a two-state outcome. That is why he very cynically even supported the sending of large sums of money to Hamas so he could say to the world, "Well, how can I possibly even envisage two states? The Palestinian national movement is divided between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, and Hamas is the terrorist group. It's a non-starter, we don't have a partner, et cetera, et cetera."

The temptation of holding all the land after 1967 was very strong. There's no question that Judea and Samaria, as the Israelis call it, is where the Jews 3,500 years ago or so became a people of the land and there's a fierce emotional attachment. Nevertheless, in my view, it was an error, a hubristic mistake on the part of Israel to decide to populate the West Bank, sorry, with a growing number of settlements, now in the hundreds of thousands of people living on the other side of the Green Line and that that has had a disastrous effect in terms of making the Palestinians feel they would never achieve statehood.

I think to say that we could have talked to Hamas, we could have reasoned with Hamas, given this Palestinian suffering, Hamas is a fanatical, fundamentalist, religious, Islamist movement that wants to destroy the state of Israel. At times it said maybe we could have a truce for a decade or something, but that is the fundamental ethos. It's as that Hamas leader said to me in Gaza 10 years ago now, "Why can't the Jews just go elsewhere?" I don't really see how you engage with Hamas. Certainly, after what has just happened, Israelis will never agree to that. There's all this talk of two states, much more important things have to happen before then.

There has to be a deal. There has to be a release of the hostages. There has to be an end to the war, an end to it. There has to be some arrangement in Gaza, probably involving some kind of international or partial international authority that has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will never, never, never again accept Hamas rule over Gaza. Anybody who doesn't take that as a starting point, is in la-la land.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more caller in here with a question that suggests at least the theoretical possibility of a different kind of ultimate solution. We talk about one state versus two states. Tom in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Roger Cohen from The New York Times. Hello.

Tom: Hey, Roger. I keep hearing people talk about one state and two states, and it just goes on forever, and the Jews want to have safety, and the Palestinians are displaced. How about a three-state solution? How about a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, and then a state where the people want to live together? We fund that state and we don't fund the other ones. I'll take my answer off the line.

Brian Lehrer: You're getting a good laugh out of Roger Cohen. In all serious, Roger, I've also heard a framework floated for a confederation that would be one overarching state, however they did that with different areas where there would be more autonomy for Israeli Jews, more autonomy for Palestinians. I don't know how that works, but I think serious people are talking about that. Address that and address Tom's three-state solution in our last minute, and then we're out of time for today.

Roger Cohen: On three states, I would just say I think two states are problematic enough. Adding a third will only complicate it further if that is even possible. It's a sweet idea, but I think it's a non-starter. On the confederation, my basic belief is that Palestinians need a state. We need to start with a state, two states, and then it would be natural, given the complementarity between the West Bank and Israel, what that could be eventually to possibly have some kind of a confederation. I think you have to start with the creation of a Palestinian state.

As for those who argue for one state, and there's more and more of them, really, that sort of United States to the Holy Land, what would you call the streets? You're going to have one part of the population celebrating the independence war on the same day as the other half of the population marks the Nakba or catastrophe of 1948, the Palestinian part. No, there is too much hatred. There is too much suffering over decades and decades and decades to bring that one state about.

It is not conceivable, in my view. Start with two states and then gradually let the border between them become invisible or unimportant in the same way as borders in Europe have. I've always been an optimist, I'm now a pessimist. I don't think I will see it. I think maybe fifty years from now, there will be two leaders who say, "Okay, enough." There'll be the Mandela, de Klerk moment and somebody will say, "We're both here. We can either kill each other or live with each other. Why don't we do the latter?"

Brian Lehrer: Roger Cohen, international affairs correspondent for the New York Times, also, the author of a book out last year, An Affirming Flame: Meditations on Life and Politics. Roger, thank you.

Roger Cohen: Thank you so much, Brian.

 

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