The legacy of the 1993 Oslo Accords

September 13, 1993 was a milestone in the Arab-Israeli peace process. Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised peace.

They had signed the first of the Oslo Accords. Though oft referenced now, the truth is, Oslo was an interim peace agreement meant to pave the way to a permanent peace which never happened.

"You build a bridge of ropes for five years. You drive on it and go on it for 30 years. You are surprised that it is not exactly as it was then, and you are celebrating?" says Yossi Beilin, key initiator of the Oslo Accords.

Today, On Point: From Oslo to today, learning from Arab-Israeli peace talks that failed.

Yossi Beilin, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister from 1992 to 1995. Key initiator of the Oslo Accords.

Omar Dajani, Professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. Served as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel from 1999 to 2001.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: One of the most iconic handshakes of the 20th century took place on September 13th, 1993, on the South Lawn of the White House. This handshake, between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, symbolized the possibility of peace for Arab-Israeli relations for the first time in decades.

President Bill Clinton presided over the ceremony.

PRES. BILL CLINTON: Now, the efforts of all who have labored before us bring us to this moment, a moment when we dare to pledge what for so long seemed difficult even to imagine, that the security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people, and there will be more security and more hope for all.

CHAKRABARTI: That day, Rabin and Arafat signed what was formally called a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self Government Arrangements. It's much more widely known as the First Oslo Accord. As the formal name states, Oslo was an interim agreement, an accord meant to pave the way later to a permanent peace.

Here's PLO Chairman Arafat speaking through an interpreter right after the signing.

(TRANSLATION)

ARAFAT: Our two peoples are awaiting today this historic hope, and they want to give peace a real chance. (APPLAUSE)

CHAKRABARTI: And Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

RABIN: We have no desire for revenge. We have no, we harbor no hatred towards you. We like you, our people.

People who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you. In dignity. In empathy, as human beings, as free men, we are today giving peace a chance, and saying to you. (APPLAUSE) And saying again to you, enough. Let us pray, that a day will come, when we all will say, farewell to the arms.

CHAKRABARTI: At the signing, Israel agreed to accept the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist. Both sides agreed that the Palestinian Authority would be established and assume responsibility over Gaza and the West Bank.

And then, crucially, permanent talks would be held later, regarding borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem. Later that day, after the signing ceremony, Rabin spoke at a different press conference, and he seemed less optimistic.

RABIN: To what extent, when we try to hand over gradually responsibility for public order and security of the Palestinians in the densely populated areas, will the Palestinians be able to control it?

For their own sake. To what extent we will be able to prevent the use of this area as a springboard for attacks on Israel? From the Palestinians' point of view, the issue will be the economic social development. If we not create a hope, a real one that is based on realities to the Gazans. That as a result of this agreement, their conditions will be improved, I don't know if the whole ceremony will lead to a solution.

CHAKRABARTI: It did not. Years later, peace talks collapsed. Ideally, people can learn from failure, but often people are doomed to repeat mistakes. So 30 years on, what were the critical mistakes? And what can be learned from the failed process launched by the First Oslo Accord?

In a moment, we'll hear from a Palestinian legal advisor who participated in talks later in the 90s, specifically at Camp David. But today we're going to begin with Yossi Beilin. He was the key initiator of what ended up being the 1993 Oslo Accord. He is also the former Israeli deputy foreign minister.

He served in that position from 1992 to 1995. Later on, from 1999 to 2001, he was the Israeli minister of justice. Yossi Beilin, welcome to On Point.

YOSSI BEILIN: Thank you very much.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, I really encourage listeners to stick with us because later in the show, Mr. Beilin, I want to ask you about why you've recently suggested that Oslo should just be torn up.

But I want to start with that handshake. Where were you standing when Rabin and Arafat shook hands on that day at the White House?

BEILIN: It was very hot. I tried to find a place with a shadow among so many people, so I was somewhere in the corner.

CHAKRABARTI: And from where you were standing, I'm curious about what you saw with your own eyes, because looking back at the video of that entire ceremony with the distance of 30 years between then and now, it seems rather not just staged, but stiff. That moment of the handshake, it's almost as if Clinton had to bring Rabin and Arafat together. Was there, amongst you and people that you were at the ceremony with, the same sense of optimism that the speeches seemed to indicate at the time?

BEILIN: It was a very emotional, for me personally, of course, it was the most important day in my public life. I couldn't believe it. It's something I thought about nine months earlier would become such a huge international focus. And you could see there on the White House, West Lawn, actually everybody. Everybody, prime ministers, foreign ministers, heads of all international organizations from the UN, many others, and I felt like a Bar Mitzvah boy and all of them, or many of them, came to me, to congratulate. And yes, it was seen like something totally unbelievable. But also frightening.

Frightening because I thought from day one that this ceremony was a little bit too big. It was like a peace treaty ceremony, not like an interim agreement ceremony of signing. And as a result of it, the expectations were very high, and, of course, the frustration was very big, too, when many things have not been materialized.

CHAKRABARTI: So I want to reiterate that you were deputy foreign minister for Israel from '92 to '95, and it was you who initiated the process that became that first Oslo Accord, what was it that gave you the optimism or thought that there was an opening to enter into talks with the Palestinians prior to Oslo being signed in those first secret meetings that happened in Norway?

BEILIN: The main thing was that the talks between Israel and the Palestinians in the joint very artificial Jordanian Palestinian delegation, were stuck. It was impossible to find solutions to the issues on the agenda. And these talks were a result of the Madrid conference of '91. And the invitation to the Madrid conference was written by secretary of State Jim Baker, who added to the invitations, also the main lines for the main points for the negotiations, so that nobody would be surprised and that the result of the conference would be known in advance.

And on the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, the idea was to have an interim agreement and after five years, a permanent agreement. This was the mandate of the negotiations. And as I said, they went nowhere. So what I thought, and I was then in the opposition in '92, that there should be a behind the scene meetings or process of meetings between the Palestinians and a small group of Israelis in order to solve informally all the problems on the agenda.

And then showing the results to the leaders on both sides, so that they will tell their delegations in Washington to sign the agreement. This was my original idea. And I thought that all the issues, which I knew exactly, what they were soluble. And I thought that we could help solving all these issues in quite a short while.

And so the idea was to do it behind the scene. The problem was that when I came to my boss, to Mr. Peres, who was the foreign minister, to tell him that I intended to go to Oslo. He exposed to me the secret that he had not told me before. And could, would he tell me before I would not have taken the function of a deputy.

The point was that Rabin agreed with him that he would not be involved at all with the peace processes, not only with the Palestinians, but also with the Lebanese and the Syrians. And that was quite a humiliating situation. So I could not tell him, "Hey, I'm going to Oslo to save the world."

And I had to cancel my own my own tickets and to ask my friend Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, to replace me and to negotiate for me. I don't remember whether I told him the real reason for that, but I said to myself that I could actually come back to Peres, who would have to go to Rabin with any paper, only when I have a paper.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Now, Mr. Beilin, just for clarity, when you said you had first gone to Shimon Peres, who was then the foreign minister for Israel, and said, "We can have these talks." And you were going to go to Oslo in order to do that. You said that, was he the one who was opposed to it, or Prime Minister Rabin or both of them?

BEILIN: No, I did not tell Mr. Peres anything about the talks, because on the same day that I intended to tell him, he told me the story that Rabin agreed to nominate him as a foreign minister, although he did not like him and was always suspicion of him, provided that he would not be involved with the peace process.

When I heard it, of course, I was shocked. I wouldn't have taken the job to be his deputy had I known that he would not deliberate with the peace process. I mean, this was my whole world, has been. So once he told me that, I decided not to inform him about my intention to have this Oslo channel and to get back to him only once I have something in a written manner agreed upon by both sides.

CHAKRABARTI: Understood. Okay. So does that mean, though, that Prime Minister Rabin was not really ever in favor of negotiating with the Palestinians or even recognizing the PLO?

BEILIN: No, he doesn't say so. What he says that the animosity between Peres and Rabin is part of our story.

And that had I told Rabin or had Peres told Rabin that I'm involved in such a channel, Rabin would have immediately say, "Don't do that." Not because he was against talking to the Palestinians necessarily, but because he didn't want Peres or his people to deal with it.

CHAKRABARTI: Then who would he have wanted to deal with it?

BEILIN: I don't know. It is such a complicated and problematic story that it is difficult to tell. Usually, you have a prime minister. He tells his foreign minister, I want to negotiate with the PLO. Please find a place to do that secretly. The foreign minister will tell his obedient deputy minister to do it for him.

And then I would talk to the Palestinian side. But it was the other way around.

CHAKRABARTI: I ask that because, in this being the 30th year since the first Oslo Accord, there's been a great deal of posthumous analysis, if I can put it that way, about what went wrong in Oslo. And it's one of the things that was a mistake, that there was no clear goal for the talks that led to the signing. Because there are many people who said the goal was trust building, which is critical at that time, but trust building is different than saying the goal for these talks is a two-state solution.

It sounds as if maybe the goals were not so clear because of Prime Minister Rabin's lack of desire to discuss or to discuss fully with the Palestinians.

BEILIN: No, not at all.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Okay.

BEILIN: The story was like that. The goals were very clear. And as I said, they are written in the invitation letter of Secretary Baker to both sides.

The goal was to agree upon the details of an interim agreement of a self-rule for the Palestinians for five years. This was the clear goal. Now, what we did in Oslo is that we also referred to the issues which have to be dealt with towards the permanent agreement about which we will negotiate after three years.

Now we referred to all of them, but we didn't even try to solve them. Now, I came at a certain point to Rabin and told him that the relations between the two parties are so good that I believe that it may be better to negotiate directly on the permanent agreement. But he did not want it, not because he did not want a permanent agreement, but because he wanted to be loyal to the invitation of Baker and felt that if he doesn't do that, the American side now under Clinton and Warren Christopher would not see it as a positive development.

CHAKRABARTI: Really?

BEILIN: And that is, and there was another point. On the Palestinian side, there was no enthusiasm to get directly to permanent agreement. For example, the chief negotiator on the Palestinian side, Abu Ala, told me at a later point that the Palestinians were not ready to take upon themselves a state.

He said, "You, the Jews, you prepared yourself for 30 years. In the land of, in the holy land for the moment when you get a state, so you had an army, you had institutions and whatever. We had nothing. So we had to invent ourselves." And that was premature.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

Let's listen.

BEILIN: We had a public debate after the signature, the signing ceremony in which I supported getting immediately to the permanent agreement, and he was against it.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. That seems very critical to understand. So Yossi Beilin, hang on for just a moment because I want to bring in Omar Dajani right now. He's with us from Sacramento, California. Currently, he's a professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. But from 1991 to 2001, he was a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team at the peace talks at Camp David and Taba. Professor Dajani, welcome to you.

OMAR DAJANI: Hi there.

Thanks very much. It's good to be with you.

CHAKRABARTI: So tell me what your view is of these sorts of critical insights that Yossi Beilin is offering to us about why the initial the first Oslo agreement had weaknesses build into it.

DAJANI: Let me start by saying that I think that if Yossi Beilin had been prime minister of Israel these last 20 years that we would have achieved peace. He's a person whose commitment to trying to advance peace is truly unmatched. That said, I might differ a little with his account.

I think that where Yossi and I undoubtedly see things eye to eye is that the Oslo process did begin without a clear vision with regard to the end game. Although as Yossi pointed out, there was a sense that during an interim period, the Palestinian Authority would be established, and it would have jurisdiction over parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Though I think it's very important to add just small parts. At the height of the Palestinian authorities' authority in the West Bank, it had full jurisdiction over Palestinians, never any jurisdiction over Israelis, a full jurisdiction over Palestinians and less than 25% of the West Bank's territory.

And civil jurisdiction in another 20%. So always less than half. And not even over all of the Gaza Strip until 2005. A very limited authority territorially and with fairly limited governmental functions in that space. Now, there was a hope that this would be a step toward a two-state solution on the Palestinian side, but that was not set out explicitly in the agreements.

And where I would differ with Yossi is that I think that Palestinians recognized that it would take time to establish a state. What they didn't anticipate was that it would take so long for Israel to accept the idea of the creation of Palestinian state. That's something that didn't happen till the negotiations that I was involved in, which began in 1999.

And then well into those negotiations into 2000.

CHAKRABARTI: So Yossi Beilin, let me turn back to you on that, because in those early years, in the mid '90s, again, in the attempt to learn from history here, was part of the problem possibly that peace did not necessarily mean the same things to the Israelis as it did to the Palestinians.

Again, I've been reading analysis that says Israel understandably wanted security more than anything. No terrorism, no attacks. But peace, as Omar Dajani is saying here, for the Palestinians, involved, or the concept of commitment to land. Those two things are not the same. They don't have the identical solutions.

Was that part of the problem, Yossi Beilin?

BEILIN: I don't think so. I don't think so. If you ask me, the main reason for Israel or at least for our government then was to assure that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. As it was promised exactly 76 years ago by the UN, the resolution of partition.

A Jewish state and an Arab state, and the idea was that if we don't have a border on the east side, it would be impossible to have a democratic and Jewish state together, which would be a disaster for us, at least for the center left part of the Israeli map. And so this was the main issue, besides the other issues like the need that our neighbors will not suffer.

We understood the suffering of the Palestinian people. We understood what it means to be under occupation. And to put an end to occupation was very important for us. I cannot say that it was the first issue on the agenda of all of us. What was the first issue was the demographic point.

CHAKRABARTI: So Professor Dajani, let me ask you about something else that you heard Yossi Beilin say a few minutes ago. And that is, it is quite something to hear from Mr. Beilin that Prime Minister Rabin decided against accelerating talks because he felt that would potentially dishonor the terms of the invitation that James Baker had made to both sides, when it came to getting to that signing point in 1993.

But in the interim time between the first Oslo Accord and the second, and then definitely by the time we get to Camp David, where you were part of the negotiations, Professor Dajani, so much happened, right? We have the five months after the first Oslo Accord, we have an Israeli settler opening fire on praying Palestinians in Hebron, a huge moment.

Then we have Hamas in 1994, sending a suicide bomber to blow up an Israeli bus, the first of about a dozen of attacks launched by Hamas. Of course, and then in 1995, Rabin himself is assassinated by a far-right wing religious Jew, or two brothers. Some people say that gap between the trust building of the first Oslo Accord and then the hard work of making the big decisions about territory, about Jerusalem, about refugees, that gap was part of the problem.

What do you think about that?

DAJANI: I couldn't agree more, Meghna. I think it's important to bear in mind that when Palestinians entered the peace process formerly in 1991, and when the Bush administration inaugurated the Madrid process, but the Oslo process there again after two years in 1993, they had already been living under military occupation since 1967.

That means no political rights. Very severely restricted civil rights, a little opportunity to build their economy. And they believed that finally after all of this time, independence, freedom, dignity were just around the bend in a state of their own. They believed that having consented to Israel's having recognized Israel, that owned on 78% of the land that had been Palestine, that what was left, the 22%, would quickly come under their authority and jurisdiction.

And so it was a shock to Palestinians that during the course of the Oslo processes interim period, which continues by the way to this day. But during this long transition, it was a shock to them that not only did conditions not improve radically, but that there were additional movement restrictions that were placed upon the movement of both persons and goods during that time.

Now, in part, that was a function of the changed security situation in Israel as a result of suicide bombings that occurred that Hamas had undertaken in the mid-nineties, but Palestinians also felt that their ability to build an economy was severely circumscribed. And that was all the more the case when Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel in 1996, his first time in that role and began rolling back some of the commitments that Israel had already made to the Palestinians.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes, I think all of those factors were significant in Palestinians disappointment with the way the interim period was going. Yossi Beilin, we have about a minute before our next break, so I'll let you begin to answer this question, because I'm trying to understand. It's so interesting and bothersome, I have to say, to hear that the same names, Netanyahu, Hamas, that we're talking about from the mid '90s are at the heart of the situation now between Israelis and Palestinians.

But do you think that in the absence of evidence of concrete progress, that long gaps between talks are indeed a problem?

BEILIN: There's no question. There's a gap between the expectations and the reality, always having a very problematic impact. And in our case, that was the same on both sides.

The Israelis believe that if we sign an agreement, then security wise, there will be a quiet situation. The Palestinians believe that they would have a state much earlier and this did not happen.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Yossi Beilin, let me ask you, I have heard that you were obviously continuously at work on trying to realize the process that Oslo had initiated, and you even had something of a map at one time to propose what Israel and Palestinian territories should look at, and that you were ready to, or had presented to Prime Minister Rabin, but he was assassinated?

Can you tell us that story?

BEILIN: The story is that immediately after the Oslo agreement was signed, I went to Tunisia to meet with Yasser Arafat, and I agreed with him that parallel to the negotiations about the interim agreement, which began only then, I would negotiate with somebody he trusted secretly on a permanent agreement.

And maybe we will make the efforts for the interim agreement redundant. He was ready for that and he give the mandate to Abu Mazen. To the current president of the Palestinians. And for more than two years, we negotiated the peace, the permanent agreement, which included a map and got to the details for the first time between the two parties.

On all the issues of refugees, Jerusalem, you name it. And then I said to Rabin that I would like to meet with him and talk with him. I was then the Minister of Economy and he of course said whenever you want, and I had to go to the United States for a short visit. And then during these few days, Rabin was assassinated.

So I never showed it to him.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, that is incredible to hear Yossi Beilin. So is there the possibility, do you think that there was any possibility that had you had that opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Rabin that he would have accepted the map and the agreement that you were supposed to put in front of him?

BEILIN: I hoped so. To describe history retroactively, or alternative history, is always very dangerous. I would like to believe that the answer is yes, but I'm not sure.

CHAKRABARTI: I agree. It's hard to resist asking the counterfactual question, but you're absolutely right. We cannot know. But it sounds like that was one of those moments where, again, radicalism intervened with a process that could have been successful.

Omar Dajani, what do you think about when you hear that story from Yossi Beilin?

DAJANI: I think that there were a lot of missed opportunities over the course of the period that we were negotiating to get down to the details. And one of the things that is tragic is that it was already, that we waited all the way until 1999 to come back to the agenda that Yossi and Abu Mazen began as early as 1996. By that time, as you pointed out earlier, there was already a lot of bad blood flowing under the bridge and that's a problem.

But I will say that one of the things that hindered the negotiations as we moved into Camp David in 2000 was the fact that there hadn't really been adequate attention to a lot of the details that needed resolving, regarding everything from where exactly the border was going to run, including through Jerusalem, regarding what the fate of Israeli settlements would be, regarding what the security arrangements would be, regarding what the fate of Palestinian refugees would be, and a range of other issues.

And I think that as important as the preliminary negotiations that were done earlier on were, there was a crucial need to get to some of that detail.

CHAKRABARTI: By the time we get to Camp David, though, Professor Dajani, as I understand it, eventually the U.S. did present options to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian negotiating team, I think maybe one of the ones that's publicly best known is the one where there would have been Palestinian sovereignty over what? 95 ish percent of the West Bank. Some refugees would have had the right to return to the West Bank and Gaza.

And there would have been Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but the reporting at the time indicated that Yasser Arafat said no to those offers. Are those some of the best opportunities? Yeah, go ahead.

DAJANI: So I would say first of all that was not the offer on the table at Camp David itself.

I think it's important to bear in mind. So some of what you're pointing to was a way of looking at the ideas that were presented by President Clinton in December of 2000.

CHAKRABARTI: Afterwards. Yes. Thank you for the correction. Go ahead.

DAJANI: Yeah, absolutely. And at Camp David, it was much more oblique.

We were bearing in mind that just six weeks earlier, we had received a map from the Israeli government that provided for Israel's continuing control over around a third of the West Bank. So to get a sense of how little preparation there had been done with respect to the summit at Camp David, bear in mind where Israel was 6 weeks earlier.

And as we are in the early stages of the Camp David talks, one of the things that's a problem is that the Barak government is presenting different ideas regarding different issues at different times, the proposal that Israel offered was never coherently presented as a single package.

And very often it was framed in terms of oblique principles. Palestinians having been burned, as we were discussing earlier, by years of problematic implementation of the vague commitments in the interim accords were very reluctant to green light an accord that didn't look like an accord. That just looked like a set of vague ideas that had, and there was no discussion whatsoever of refugees' period until we arrived at Camp David.

And even then, there was no discussion of Palestinian right of return, which for Palestinians is to their homes inside the state of Israel, though Palestinians signaled that they were prepared to be very flexible with regard to implementation if the principle were affirmed.

At Camp David itself, Palestinians found themselves on the one hand with these very vague proposals, and on the other they found themselves with a mediator in the form of the United States. That was anything but unbiased. Aaron David Miller, who was a leading American diplomat under six or seven U.S. administrations wrote a piece in the Washington Post in which he talked about what was called the 'no surprises' policy pursuant to which the United States had to run by Israel any idea that it was going to place on the table for the talks before presenting it to the Palestinians.

And what in his words, he said, we cast ourselves as Israel's lawyer in these talks. And I think that also made it very difficult for Palestinians who sitting at this summit under incredible pressure to negotiate on the fly things that had not really been addressed in detail.

And seeing that the world's, at that juncture, only superpower is running everything by Israel first, Palestinians became incredibly cagey. And I think that goes some of the distance to explaining our posture during those talks. I see.

CHAKRABARTI: Yossi Beilin, let me, I'd love to hear your response to that. Because, of course, Dennis Ross is also on the record, in his view, the Palestinian negotiating team said no to a lot of things. And again, this is Dennis Ross's view. Never came up with a sort of viable counter proposals. And Omar, I know you very likely object to what Dennis Ross has said. I want to acknowledge that. But Yossi Beilin, just again, in the spirit of seeking out what lost opportunities were, do you think there were lost opportunities at Camp David?

BEILIN: I don't know about Camp David, whether it was a lost opportunity. I believe that the negotiations were done in a very amateurish way, if I may say so. On the side of the Americans, the side of the Israelis and the side of the Palestinians. I think that a few months afterwards, as Omar said, there were the Clinton parameters.

On December, I believe, 24, suggested to both sides at the same time, these parameters were in a way to to summarize the views of both sides and to suggest bridging ideas. And it was, in my view, it is a very good paper. Clinton showed it to both sides. He asked both sides to give him the answer until Wednesday.

I remember we had a special cabinet meeting and there was a tough debate and eventually we agreed to it, and then Arafat went to the states. With an answer which was actually no, and I know it from Clinton himself. He was very upset by the answer off Arafat. He did not say no to him, but Arafat somehow gave him the very clear impression that he was not ready to agree to some such ideas.

And, he also told me something about Camp David. That at a certain point there was an American special specific suggestion and Arafat came to Clinton and said to him, "Mr. President, if I accept your offer, you will come to my funeral?" So I asked the president, what did you answer?

And he said, "What could I say?" And then he said, "What you would say, you'll see." And I said to him, "Had it been up to me, I would say, so what? How can you compare the idea of peace with your own life?"

CHAKRABARTI: Wow.

BEILIN: That's it.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, given that I cannot imagine the crushing sadness and disappointment both of you are feeling right now, given the devastation that's going on in Israel and Gaza, which is why in the last few minutes of the conversation, I would love to have your historical expertise guide us forward, if at all possible.

And, Mr. Beilin, it is remarkable I have an article before me that says in September of this year, so before October 7th, but in September of this year, you were giving a talk with Chatham House in London. And you, being the key initiator of Oslo, you said, "I think the best thing which should happen to Oslo is to kill it.

It's being abused by those who don't want a permanent agreement and prefer the zero-sum game." First of all, did you say that? And B, what is the alternative?

BEILIN: Of course. I don't want to cherish an agreement which was signed 30 years ago for five years and since then is alive and kicking. This was not my original idea and neither the idea of my superiors and nor of the Palestinians.

But Omar and myself are involved in the same project of suggesting a holy land confederation. And under which both countries, both states will be independent and fully sovereign. But will have a joint umbrella. The model is the EU. And under this umbrella there will be much more cooperation than otherwise envisaged.

And there will be also special arrangement for the settlers, which will solve the major problem of the future negotiations, which are the settlements. By allowing those who would like to remain in the Palestinian state as permanent residents to remain also Israeli citizens and the same number of Palestinian citizens will be allowed to Israel as a permanent residence.

And I believe that now we are closer to peace than in September, because apparently Hamas will not be the powerful spoiler as it was before, because we have an American president who is committed to the two-state solution and repeats it twice a day at least. And in such a situation, when I believe that the Israeli government of today, which is really the most extreme rightist one, will not prevail politically a day after the war.

It might be much more realistic to speak about a two-state solution. Maybe. Under the confederations that we are suggesting.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. Omar, we have about a minute left. Professor Dajani, I should say. Do you share that same optimism? Cause it's quite something to hear given the current situation on the ground.

DAJANI: I'd say just a few things. The first is that I totally agree with the vision of a two-state confederation, and I think it's the best approach for Israel-Palestine. I think getting there faces some hurdles. I think that an important one, as Yossi pointed out, is the current government in Israel. I worry about the increasingly right-wing shift in Israeli public opinion, and I hope that changes.

But I think if we're to prevail, what we need from the United States is what we didn't have back in 2000, which is a clear commitment to what the end game looks like, not just saying, "We hope for peace. We hope for a better future."

But saying what we need is a two-state solution with the two states united in a confederation with freedom of movement and residence for both peoples and a serious effort to address all of the issues that are on table with equality.