Recently, we put out our two-part episode on Palestinian statehood. Those episodes were packed with history, politics, and competing visions.
And, as you know from the last two episodes, we’re bringing you the conversations in full, as special bonus content.
And today, you’re going to hear my interview with Einat Wilf. She is razor sharp and got me thinking in ways I wasn’t, which by the way, is my favorite thing ever. Not to sound too nerdy, but the conversations I love are ones in which the person I am speaking to helps me see things more broadly, not just to reaffirm what I already thought. Einat is a former member of Knesset, a public intellectual, and one of the sharpest, most challenging voices I spoke to in this whole project.
Einat doesn’t shy away from skepticism. She’s skeptical about international recognition, skeptical about empty rhetoric, skeptical about whether Israelis and Palestinians are truly ready for statehood right now. But she also brings this wealth of historical perspective and personal experience that makes her take on statehood uniquely compelling, whether you, listening, agree or disagree with her assessments.
For me, this conversation highlighted how complicated, how personal, these questions really are. And whether you agree with her or not, Einat forces you to think hard about the assumptions we often bring to the table when we talk about peace, recognition, and the future.
So you know what, let’s jump right in.
Noam: Okay, so I’m going to go direct into questions with you, Einat Wilf. France, the UK, Canada and others are quickly moving towards recognition of Palestine. Like right now, like it’s happening. From your perspective, why is this happening now?
Einat: I don’t know why it’s happening from their perspective, perhaps a desire to avoid dealing with the key issue that is at the core of the conflict, a desire to keep alive a sweet illusion that the conflict is not one in which there is a total Palestinian Arab war against the existence of a Jewish state, but rather one where there are extremists, Hamas and moderates, the PA, and you can actually move forward by recognizing or rewarding the moderates.
Noam: So let me just challenge that for a second. I just read from Amit Segal, who spoke about that France is going to be recognizing the Palestinian state and their reasoning for it, according to Israeli Palestinian Affairs Advisor Ofer Bronchtein, don’t know how to pronounce his name, who told Arutz 12, channel 12’s Tomer Almagor, he said that their geopolitical assessment was that the October 7th massacre would not have happened if there had been a Palestinian state. What do you think of that?
Einat: Dead wrong, of course, shows the quality of their geopolitical assessment. But the reason that there is no Arab state between the river and the sea, an Arab state of Palestine, is because for over a century, nearly a century and a half by now, the Arabs of the land have made it very clear in words and violent deeds that their singular top priority is to ensure that the Jews do not remain sovereign in any piece of land between the river and the sea. So in order for there to have been an Arab state of Palestine prior to the attack on Israel on October 7th in the massacre, would mean that we would have had to have Palestinian Arabs whose ideology is that they actually want to live next to a Jewish state, but such Arabs have never existed for the last century, century and a half. So it’s lovely that their geopolitical assessment invents people who never existed, but that’s not how you conduct policy.
Noam: Okay, so I think that what you’re referring to is this idea that there’s never been a recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, meaning did the PLO recognize Israel at some point, but did they not recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Is that part of what you’re talking about historically?
Einat: Precisely. When the Palestine Arabs, when they said beginning in the 90s that they supported two-state solution or that they recognize Israel, we made the assumption that recognizing Israel means understanding that Israel’s very raison d’etre, very reason for being is to be the sovereign state of the Jewish people, that if an Arab Palestinian leader says a two-state solution, they understand that one of the two states is the Jewish state. In retrospect, this was our crazy wishful thinking assumption because throughout, when the Palestine Arabs said that they support a two-state solution, when they say that today, they mean an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza and another Arab state to replace Israel, through this mechanism of what they call refugee return.
The millions that they claim are refugees are not by any international standards. There’s no such thing as the right to settle inside the sovereign state of Israel against its sovereign will, what they call the right of return, but they believe in it. And the way to really simply test what I’m saying, because supposedly it’s a grand statement, is to see if there was any single moment ever since the Palestine Arabs spoke about two states where they acknowledged that that would mean that the other state is the Jewish state and that the two implications are that they are not refugees and that there’s no such thing as a right of return. Those are two highly effective litmus tests that immediately break apart any notion that there was once a willingness to live next to a Jewish state.
Noam: I’m interested to hear your history. you could give me a sweeping history, like an under five minute history of the Palestinian statehood and different attempts to potentially create an Arab state and a Jewish state. Where would you start and where would you end?
Einat: So I will start from two directions. One is an anecdote that appears in the book, the excellent book by Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936. It’s a conversation in the early 20s.
Noam: Excellent book, by the way. Really excellent. Great.
Einat: Yes, yes. It’s a conversation between the Arab mayor of Jerusalem in the early 20th century and a leading Zionist activist. The Arab leader says, look, Jews are great, Jews contribute to society, you know, it’s great to have Jews. They’re like salt in bread. But if you have too much, better to have nothing at all. Again, if you have too much or too many, better to have nothing at all. The Zionist activist says, but we are done being the salt, we want to be the bread.
Essentially from that moment you can argue that the conflict is essentially inevitable. The Arab side continues to adhere to certain vision of the proper role of the Jews, a bit of salt, knowing their place, a minority that is at the mercy of Arab and Muslim rulers as they have been for the previous 1,000 and more years. The Jews through Zionism have a different vision of their role as equal, liberated, sovereign, masters of their fate, in many ways a vision that was destined to clash.
But if you’re looking at the more political organization, I believe the place to start is the end of World War I. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire. You know, World War I is essentially the war that begins the process of breaking up the empires. World War II completes it.
And for the region, World War I was far more important because it breaks up the Ottoman Empire that really shaped the region for centuries. Now, in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, you have two competing visions. The British and the French want to take the lands of the Ottoman Empire as colonial possessions. They just won the war as far as they’re concerned. The Americans new to this field are saying absolutely not. The principle of self-determination.
Ultimately, the peoples of the land of the Ottoman Empire will attain sovereignty. This is the principle for drawing new borders in Europe. And it is understood that the peoples of the Ottoman Empire are the Turks, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Arabs, the Jews. I always let people know if the Jews had received their fair share of lands of the Ottoman Empire based on their proportion in the Ottoman Empire, their state would have been five, six times the size that Israel is today.
So essentially the world with the newly established League of Nations based on the notion really of new states, new peace, has this principle of self-determination with under British and French tutelage. This is kind of the nod to the British and French imperial desires. And they essentially divide up the Ottoman Empire to reflect a combination of imperial interests and self-determination. The Turks do what they do to the Armenians and the Kurds. The Kurds still don’t have a state. The Armenians ultimately have a state somewhere else. The Arabs essentially try to do the same thing for the Jews with some success.
They’re essentially able to prevent the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq are all created as a result of this combination of carving up the Ottoman Empire with self-determination for the Arabs. And the Arabs who essentially remained between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in the lands that are to become the sovereign Jewish state, they begin to form their identity as a collective, and that is in many ways the tragedy that we’re still living, their entire identity from that moment on becomes wrapped up in their absolute rejection of the idea that the Jews can be sovereign in any part of the land. And they have quite a few successes.
As a result of the Arab revolt, the British ultimately betray the terms of the mandate. No Jewish state is established in the 30s. The gates are closed. And in many ways, the scale of the Holocaust would have been very different if it were not for the Arab violence and British betrayal that prevented a Jewish state from existing in time. To the credit of Zionists, they had the vision, they established institutions in time. It is the Arab violence and British betrayal that prevented the Jewish state from being established.
After World War II, contrary to the view that the Jews received a state as this gift by guilty Europeans. Europeans were not guilty after World War II. took a while. Some still are not. And the only reason that the Jewish state was still established because the general view was actually that there would not be a Jewish state because there are just no more Jews.
The Jewish state is established as a result of two things.
One, the end of the imperial era, this time of the British and the French. This is why India, Pakistan are ultimately established. But also because the Jews have already established their state. If you see the kind of the elements, the diaries of the members of the committee established by the United Nations to see what to do with the mandate, right? The one mandate that was not fulfilled goes to the United Nations, the era of the League of Nations.
And if you look at their diaries, the only reason that they ultimately support a Jewish state is because the Jewish state already exists, because the Jews have built it. But the Arabs at this point could have clocked quite a few successes. They prevented the establishment of a Jewish state in the 30s, which meant that six million people were not available to immigrate to Israel. The Jewish state is therefore much smaller.
There is support for another Arab state, right? There was already Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, so they actually get the support of the United Nations that already broke with the terms of the mandate to take more land that was supposed to be for the Jewish state and create one more Arab state.
But as I love to bring the quote by Ernst Bevin from February 47, the British foreign minister after World War II, everyone will know a friend to the Jews he was not. He needs to go to the British Parliament to explain why Britain has betrayed the mandate. I mean, it’s a failure on behalf of Britain. It unanimously received a trust from the League of Nations and it didn’t fulfill that trust. In February 47, you have none of the current excuses that we are told are the reason there’s no Arab state of Palestine. There’s no settlements, there is no occupation, there’s no Bibi, there’s no Ben-Gvir, there’s no Smotrich, and no one has been displaced. So in February ’47, you have no excuses. And yet the conflict is described as irreconcilable.
And he goes on to say, the two people in the land are Jews and Arabs. For the Jews in the land, the top priority is to establish a sovereign Jewish state, Jewish sovereignty. They basically want to exercise the principle of self-determination, the one that was to shape the world after World War I, for the people. So self-determination for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. That’s the Jewish priority.
And then he says, and this is the priority of the Palestine Arabs, the one who will later take the term Palestine to be named Palestinians. He says their top priority is to resist to the last, that word resistance, resist to the last, not just generally to the last, the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. So the reason he describes the conflict is irreconcilable.
Notice he’s not saying this is a conflict between the Jews wanting a state and the Arabs wanting a state and we need some help drawing borders. This would have been a two state solution, right? One Jewish, one Arab. But he already then says that’s not what the conflict is about. The conflict is an irreconcilable one between one position, the Jews want a state, the Jews want to be bred, and the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state. They want the Jews to be solved. This is irreconcilable.
So when you think about the fact that Bevin already phrased it in February, 47, the amazing thing is that he actually predicted everything to the present day. He predicted that at any moment when the Jews and Arabs will face a choice of divide the land, the Jews will always say yes. This is why you see the Jews again and again agreeing to partition, to establish a Palestinian state. They vote in prime ministers like Barak and Olmert who promised to make it happen. And the Arabs, Palestine Arabs, whenever they are faced with a choice, you can have a state, sovereignty, dignity, self-determination. But the price of that, and it’s always been the price, is to live next to a Jewish state every single time.
They acted according to their top priority that the Jews will not have a state. They said no and they went to war.
Noam: Einat, I’m just going to start peppering you with these questions. Number one is you kept on using the term Arab and not Palestinian. Do you think that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian? And that’s that’s A. And B, if you don’t think there’s such a thing as a Palestinian Arab, do you think that that is a helpful or a harmful way to engage with people on the other side of this conflict.
Einat: So I always like to bring the terms of the mandate. The mandate by the League of Nations is called the Mandate for Palestine, right? And it has the following language. “Recognizing the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine.” What? The historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine? Yes, because about a century ago, everyone knew that Palestine was merely the Roman and therefore the Christian and therefore the European and therefore the colonial name for the geography that everyone knew was connected with the Holy Land, the promised land, the ancient Jewish kingdoms. So when a century ago, the League of Nations unanimously spoke about the historic connection of the Jews with Palestine and the mandate for Palestine, no one thought it was odd.
And then it goes on to say, this recognition of this uninterrupted historical connection is the grounds for reconstituting the Jewish homeland. So it’s understood that in the Jews building a state, a modern political state in the geographical area called Palestine, they are reconstituting an ancient homeland. Now, I’m sure our listeners have seen many, many memes. I love it. It always makes me highly amused on the internet that said, look, Palestine existed and you see like a football team playing a match against Australia, the Palestine football team in the 1920s or 30s. And they’re like, look, Palestine had a football team that played Australia. And then you zoom in on the names of the players and they’re all Goldberg and Kraut and like they’re all Jewish, right? Because Palestine, because of the mandate for Palestine, was associated with the reconstituting of the Jewish homeland.
Now, after World War II, when the Jews reconstitute their homeland, establishing a modern state, they do what every self-respecting people did when the colonial empire was finally gone. Finally, as far as the Jews are concerned, the Romans are gone, the Ottomans are gone, the British are gone. Finally, everyone’s gone and they can call themselves by their indigenous geographic name, Israel.
So the Jews become the Israelis. They call themselves Israel. This is what everyone did. Gold Coast becomes Ghana. Every self-respecting people did. Now the Arabs just waged an unsuccessful war to resist the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land, they failed. The Jews are able to withstand the onslaught, declare independence.
Now, the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Arab refugees in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, essentially refused to accept, that this is how the war ended. They refused to accept that they were defeated in their goal of preventing the establishment of the Jewish state. And they essentially build themselves as a people around the idea that they will ensure that this Jewish state is undone as soon as possible. Now, in no small reason, because they are taking care of an organization which essentially they hijack very quickly through violence, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, which also meant the Jews, but Israel took care of the Jews who were ethnically clenched from Gaza and the West Bank. Israel takes care of those Jewish refugees. The Arab refugees begin to call themselves Palestine refugees and ultimately Palestinians. And Palestine becomes a word that gets hijacked in order to basically infuse it with an exclusive Arab identity and erase what was once understood as a Jewish identity and a Jewish connection.
Now, what I’ve come to call this is Palestinianism. And I call Palestinianism the ideology that unites the Arabs of Gaza, the Arabs of the West Bank, and millions in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. And Palestinianism is this ideology that unites them. And when you say, there a Palestinian people, they are definitely a united collective. The only problem is, and that’s why I’ve created the word Palestinianism, is that there is no constructive element to that collective identity. There is no element in that identity that says we actually want something. We want to build a state, we want sovereignty. It is an identity that tragically is organized around negation, around destruction.
And that’s something unique. You actually have no parallel of a people, claiming to be a people, claiming to want liberation, self-determination, statehood, and repeatedly having the opportunity to achieve that and repeatedly rejecting it.
So at one point you have to understand that this is not a regular people seeking self-determination because regular peoples who want self-determination, I can assure you this is universally true. All people who achieved self-determination are not happy with the allocation of land they got. Nobody. They all have visions of, they were once much greater. There’s nothing unique about a people having self-determination and saying we got less than what we deserve or less than what we are connected with. That’s actually quite universal. You don’t have the people who say we want a state and again and again and again and again don’t take it. And the reason is that what unites the Palestinianists is essentially this ideology of negation.
Noam: Fascinating. So you view the history of Palestinians as the history of the rejection of a Jewish state in the land of Israel, in the region known as Palestine for thousands of years.
I want to turn to different aspects of what you said and it’s gonna be slightly all over the place here, because my mind started wandering as you were talking. I’m interested to know why you, Einat Wilf, think that there is a right for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Like why should there be a Jewish state in the land of Israel? By what right?
Einat: So the right is the right of self-determination. So the 20th century could be actually politically explained quite simply as the arc from empires to states. We begin the 20th century when much of the world is divided between empires and we end the 20th century with much of the world divided between states.
When those states are lucky, they went through a process of self-determination, meaning there is a sense of self, a collective self, typically a combined ethnic, linguistic, land, national identity, often religious or secularized religions. Generally as a rule, those are the most democratic advanced countries because they went through a process whereby the collective went through self-determination and fought for their independence and statehood in the name of that collective. And again, that’s the principle that was established after World War I to essentially divide the lands of the empires. This is the universal principle in the name of which the Jewish people claim their right to self-determination.
When unlucky, many states were created by the receding empires. The receding empires would essentially draw lines, throw together different nations, ethnicities, languages, and religions, and tell them, you’re a state. Many of them are our neighbors. And they typically have spent the decades since their independence in civil wars and dictatorships and civil wars and dictatorships.
So in that sense, the Jewish people went through a process of self-determination, inspired by the idea of self-determination for peoples. And from the Jewish perspective, there is only one land to which the Jewish collective is connected. Individually, Jews can live anywhere they want. Collectively, the Jewish people are connected to one land and one land only.
In that sense, the Jews are in many ways the prototypical indigenous people. In the great book by Ben Freeman, The Jews and Indigenous People, he explains that to be indigenous is not just to live somewhere for a long time. To be indigenous is to have your entire culture, sense of time, rituals, habits, idioms, connected to a specific geography and piece of land. So right, the Jews have preserved the Hebrew calendar, which is the agricultural calendar of the climate of the Levant. They preserve that calendar in Poland. It doesn’t make sense in Poland, but they preserve that calendar because that’s what an indigenous people do. Even when they’re not on a specific land, they preserve themselves as a people in connection to a geography.
Now again, individual Jews might say, I don’t care about that. Fair enough. But the fact that you individual Jew don’t care about that does not change the fact that for the Jewish people collectively, they’re connected to only one land.
Noam: So you as somebody who denies the existence of God, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t weigh in for you one way or the other, or does it?
Einat: So I’ll specify. First of all, as an atheist, my argument is not that there is no God, but that God is the human expression for our fears, our sense of oneness. This is not to say that people don’t have collective identity. I am not of the view that humanity was born today. Even when we think of ourselves as modern secular people, we are shaped by texts, books, ideas that have created our sense of identity, our sense of belonging.
Now again, these things can be interpreted, reinterpreted, changed, but I do not deny that the Jewish people, and I’m a part of that, and I take great pride in being a link in the chain of the Jewish storytelling, that the Jewish people as a people have maintained an unbroken connection to one land and one land only, and that when the modern era comes, and empires are gone and new states are established, not only does the land of Israel the only place that makes sense, it’s the only place that empirically works. There were a lot of efforts in Argentina, upstate New York, Birobidzhan, like, let’s settle the Jews somewhere. None of those stick. Why don’t they stick? Because only in one place could the Jews mobilize, even very secular Jew, this sense of meaning and collective effort that was required to build a modern state.
Noam: And you are somebody, I wanna come back to the Palestinians here, the concept of Palestinian state, you’re somebody who worked for Shimon Peres, you worked for Moshe Dayan’s think tank. You were in the Knesset from 2010 to 2013. I wanna know how you thought about the prospect of a Palestinian state throughout those years and I wanna know if your viewpoint changed at any point in time.
Einat: So hugely enthusiastic and very supportive. So I grew up in Jerusalem in the 80s and 90s into kind of socially and politically into the Israeli Labor Party. This is the moment when the Labor Party transitions from kind of more the socialism to the idea of land for peace that Israel has a path to peace.
The 90s are a decade of euphoria for me. As soon as I can vote, I vote for every Israeli prime minister that promises to bring peace. I am absolutely convinced that the only thing standing between us and peace is a state of Palestine, is getting out of the West Bank and Gaza. I’m against the settlements, believe that only the settlements and Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza stand between us and peace.
Huge proponent of dividing Jerusalem. I grew up in Jerusalem, always physically observed the lie of united Jerusalem, all these Arab villages. I mean, Jerusalem was never united. So that’s why I’m concerned like, divide the thing, just end this, give them a state and let’s be done with it. And again, I’m euphoric. I support every prime minister, even after Arafat leaves Camp David, even after the bloody massacres of the misnamed Second Intifada, no popular uprising, I was like, no, we still need to try, we still need to make an effort. I support the disengagement from Gaza, I support the logic that says fine, if the Palestinians are incapable of signing an agreement that says this is over, we’re done, then let’s just give them the territory. We will not be hostages to their rejectionism. Let’s just get out of there. I support Olmert and Sharon with the idea that we’ll also get out of the West Bank, everything.
So my background is a massive, huge supporter, and I will say even to the present, if tomorrow morning the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank finally forego Palestinianism, finally forego this obsession with the non-existence of a Jewish state, I am more than happy to live with them side by side. I don’t have like a total view that says never.
But I observe. I observe how again and again, given the opportunity to have an independent state, no occupation, no settlements, capital in East Jerusalem, including holy sites, they walk away, they follow it up with violence, and most important, there is zero internal debate. There are no Palestinian voices anywhere, not even in London, not even in Columbia, you know, it doesn’t have to be in the West Bank and Gaza, who say that was a historic mistake. We could have had a state, Abu Mazen, Arafat, go back and get us our state. How dare you, right? There are no such voices.
Noam: I just want to interrupt for a second, what about my friends, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who writes for The Atlantic, and Samer Sinijlawi, they’re not like the Palestinian Arab voices that are just like shills of the Israeli government. They’re very opposed to the Israeli government in many, many, many ways. But they’re voices that are, I think, up and coming, who very much so are saying everything that you’re saying right now.
Einat: And this is my greatest source of hope. But we should be under no illusion that this is in any way representative. This is the first time that Palestinians have an NGO that says enough is enough. Enough with this ethos of resistance, enough with this perpetual refugeehood, enough with the idea of return. That’s the first time ever. And by the way, if you read what Ahmed is saying, his main criticism is typically not at Israel. As you said, he certainly minces no words on that, but it’s against Westerners who sideline his voice in favor of the resistance voices and essentially thereby making it impossible for his voice to emerge and gather more support. So in many ways, he more than anything demonstrates what we’re up against.
The one thing I wanted to say. So over the years, a bit like you asked, people have told me, Einat, you’ve changed your views. You’ve changed your opinions. And what I’ve come to tell people is like, this is not a view. This is not an opinion. I have plenty of opinions. This doesn’t happen to be one of them. And I say, look, think of it like an empirical scientist. We had a hypothesis, deeply held. The hypothesis was what stands between us and peace is the establishment of this Palestinian state or Palestinian control of the territory. Then comes the part that so many just try to erase or by now many people don’t even know. The hypothesis was tested and because we’re good Jewish scientists, we tested it in a variety of ways. It’s the variable, the leadership, we tested it with Arafat, with Abu Mazen, same response. Is the variable the ability to reach an agreement? We tried through an agreement, negotiations, we tried unilaterally. We know what they did with their control of Gaza. So you’re a scientist, you look at the wreckage of your experiments and the data, and you ask, what is the alternative hypothesis? And the Bevan hypothesis, the Jews want a state, the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state, meets all the data.
So what I tell people is that this is not a view. This is not an opinion. And if we go back to your opening question, you cannot invent facts and you cannot invent Palestinians that don’t exist. In fact, it would be actually nice if you supported, I’ve counted four individual courageous Palestinians who basically say very clearly how to live next to a Jewish state. They need to be supported and that’s not what’s happening.
Noam: Right. Okay, I’m going to switch gears for a second and I might come back to some things in a minute, but I want to switch gears for a second. You’ve written extensively in the War of Return, this idea about the Palestinian insistence on the right of return is the thing that undermines the two-state solution. And I want to go back into history, into 1948, in which let’s say anywhere between 300 to 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, Either they fled or were expelled. I think a lot of people would say that’s a terrible tragedy of what took place. Who is to blame for it is a large historical question.
But my question is with regard to this issue of refugees and reparations, is there another way to go about this instead of saying, all the Palestinian Arabs and their descendants should return to Jaffa, should return to Lod, Lydda, should return to the places that they were either expelled from or fled from? Is there an alternative that you would consider?
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the very famous American author who’s become controversial in many circles right now after his last book about his view of the Israel-Palestine question. He says about reparations for black people in America, he says:
The matter of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress, but it is also a question of citizenship. This body has a chance to say that this nation is both its credits and debits. The question is not whether we’ll be tied to the somethings of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them.
And I’m wondering what you think about this aspect of the conflict. You’re making the argument that Palestinianism is the rejection of the idea of a Jewish state, which includes this desire to return to the land in which they inhabited and which they lived. And that, according to you, is basically a death sentence to the Jewish state. If it were to be the case that Palestinians would return to the land of Israel, the state of Israel, then there can’t possibly be a Jewish state if they came back en masse. What do you think about the idea of reparations then? Do you think that there’s any value to the Jewish state doing something like what Ta-Nehisi Coates is talking about and the United States potentially providing reparations to the descendants of slaves. Do you think that there is any value in Israel acknowledging the expulsions that took place in 1948 or not and doing something that is either acknowledging it or allowing some minor form of refugees and the descendants of refugees returning either to the state of Israel or to, to allow them to come to the West Bank and to Gaza.
Einat: So I’ll start from a direct answer and then go a bit in background. If anyone owes anyone reparations, it’s the Arabs to the Jewish state. Because they have, as I said, repeatedly acted violently and engaged in numerous, and I would argue unnecessary wars. You sometimes hear people even now about October 7th. What option did the people of Gaza have? I’m like, there was always the option of choosing to live next to a Jewish state. But because their ideology was that the Jews should have nothing, whenever they failed, we are not the ones that owe them for the price of their failure.
I always like to bring the history of the term, the Nakba. Before it became in the 90s, by the way, through deliberate effort, what my wise colleague, Dr. Shany Mor called Holocaust envy, the Nakba in real time, when it was coined by Constantine Zurei, was described as following.
Seven Arab armies went out, in an effort to subdue Zionism. Subdue Zionism really goes back to the notion of, go back to being salt, right? Don’t be bread. And went back on their heels, impotent. The word impotent is very powerful in this context. So the Nakba in real time was understood to be not some just, know, dispossession or displacement that happens in war. It was understood as the shameful inability to defeat the lowly Jews.
So I actually believe that there is nothing that the Jews owe to those who have repeatedly attempted to prevent their sovereignty. And when they failed, we somehow have to compensate them for their failure, not even to bring in the ethnic cleansing of Jews from North Africa, from the Levant, from Arab countries. Jews who did nothing, were loyal subjects in Arab countries and were only completely thrown out for the crime of belonging to the Jewish people. By the way, pretending that the issue was Zionism, but no Jews were left.
Now let’s look at the issue of refugees generally, just like I spoke about the right to self-determination. This transition from empires to states was bloody. It involved the two world wars that broke the empires, numerous civil wars, local wars, regional wars. This process of divvying up the lands of empires, drawing new borders was incredibly bloody and involved the movement of tens of millions of people who fled and were expelled, typically to decide that was ethnically, religiously, nationally, and linguistically similar to them. Nothing special about this war. The thing that was special about the 48 war was it was done in the names of an ideology of annihilation. But to the extent that refugees are created in the course of an empire receding and new states being established, entirely normal. The Arab refugees are not special. All these refugees, Hindus and Muslims, Turks and Greeks and Ukrainians and Poles and Germans and Jews all received one message. It’s tough, it’s tragic, and you move on. And that was understood to be the most peaceful message because if you did not send this supposedly harsh message but the only one that could guarantee peace, you create an endless cycle.
And indeed, is what we have here because this is the only place where as a variety of reasons, oil, the Cold War, the Arab refugees were allowed to hijack the mechanism that was supposed to settle them, UNRWA, to ensure that it never closes, to perpetuate their existence generation after generation, to organize their education around turning back the clock and undoing the Jewish state.
And think about how many wars we fought because of that. Think how much suffering we Jews have come to accept so many insane things as normal that we don’t even think that we are the ones that are owed reparation. How crazy is this ideology that will not allow a Jewish state to live in any part of land, even like little lands were claimed from malaria in the desert.
Now, when you describe this idea of a right of return, you describe it as some innocent longing to home once lost. Now again, everyone had longing. The German refugees who were brutally, deliberately expelled after Germany already signed unconditional surrender. They were expelled and was truly brutal. They wanted to go home to what is now Western Poland, but no one indulged them because it was clear that this would just continue the war. So yes, of course people are sad that they lost homes, that they had to flee, but everyone else was told to move on. But the Arab refugees were told, you did not lose your war to end the Jewish state. You will be one day victorious. So try again.
So, if anyone owes anyone reparations, it’s the Arab, it’s the Palestinians to the Jews, it’s the Arab countries to their Jewish subjects and their generations. And I will even say this, Israel repeatedly thought that the issue was, you know, just give financial compensation for homes lost, but that was rejected. It was rejected by Arafat, was rejected by Abu Mazen, it was rejected again, it was part of the Trump peace proposal. It was rejected because this whole idea of a right of return was never some innocent longing. It was designed from the get-go. The Arabs, in real time make it very clear that the idea of perpetual refugeehood and return is the way that they seek to undo the Jewish state if war will not achieve that outcome.
Noam: So let’s go back to this potential of a Palestinian Arab state that you once said, hey, this is a good idea. And then maybe the facts on the ground shifted. Maybe you saw a little bit more. But I want to play devil’s advocate for a second and get your take on this.
You said that they just constantly rejected it. So let’s go through this. Michael Koplow, would make the argument that wait a second, the Palestinian Arabs gave up their big dream of the 78% of the land of Israel within the Green Line. And what they’re making strong claim for is the remaining 22%. So when people like Ehud Barak or Olmert say, hey, we’re going to make a deal with you, but within the 22%, we’re going to actually retain 5%, 8% of that 22%. So the Palestinian leadership will then say, wait a second, we’re not the ones being rejectionist, you’re the ones being rejectionist. How dare you make this claim after you got four fifths of the land. And now you want to take within the remaining 22% that we have allotted to us in Gaza and the West Bank and you want to take a percentage of that land? Come on. This is not something that is fair.
And then the other challenge that I want to throw at you and get your take on is you said that in Gaza during the hitnadkut, during the unilateral withdrawal in 2005, the hypothesis was a very straightforward one. Let’s see what happens if Israel fully leaves Gaza. Now, the response to that would be one second. This wasn’t done in good faith. It wasn’t done in two parties engaging with one another. It wasn’t, it was exactly what it sounds like. It was unilateral. It was not in conversation. It wasn’t the Palestinian Authority working together with Ariel Sharon.
And what Ariel Sharon was really doing was he was actually trying to ensure that the Bush administration wasn’t going to pressure him to have a Palestinian state within the West Bank. So instead he said, you know what, let me leave Gaza, let me make sure to leave Gaza and fully focus on ensuring that there’s more settlements in the West Bank. And Gaza, we’ll see what happens there, but it’s, wasn’t meant as a peaceful gesture. And Israel still controlled the flow of goods between Israel and Gaza. Israel still controlled the sea and the air and Israel still had the ability to do all of that. And Israel allowed Palestinians in Gaza to develop their their own selfhood by allowing essentially Hamas to develop, develop, develop within Gaza. And it wasn’t done in good faith, the leaving of Gaza wasn’t something that was actually done between two enemies. Yes, but sworn to figuring out peace between each other.
So I’m wondering what your take would be on both of the points that I just made. This is what I think someone else in the room might say if they were the third person here, they would say Gaza, I think you’re being a little bit flippant about how kind Ariel Sharon was to, the Palestinians and within the West bank, think you might, someone might say, listen, there’s, there’s the 22% issue. So how would you respond to that?
Einat: Again, these are stories we tell ourselves, but they have no basis in what the Palestinians are saying. I’ll take a step back. The wonderful Israeli ambassador to now to Azerbaijan, George Deek, there was a time when he did a one-year program in Georgetown. And as I’m sure you know, he’s Arab, Christian, and an Israeli citizen. And the professor showed the map of partition and essentially said, look, you know, this is unfair. That in itself is bizarre. You know, the Jewish state was the lands reclaimed by Jews from malaria plus desert. But she says, this is unfair. Would you have agreed to that?
And George raises his hand and he says, is there any evidence that this was the Arab claim, that the problem was that the percentages were not fair. She said that pretty much after that, she wouldn’t let him talk ever. Because we want to tell a story whereby maybe it wasn’t exactly fair. But they’re being very clear that they did not give up the 78%, which is the state of Israel. That’s when we’re not counting trans-Jordan already given up. They’re saying, this is what Abu Mazen said to Condoleezza Rice when he didn’t take Olmert’s proposal. I cannot tell four million refugees, they’re not refugees by any international standard, that they are not returning. There was not a single moment throughout all these two state negotiations for about 30 years where there was an Arab-Palestinian vision of living next to a Jewish state. There is no evidence of Arabs saying that our only problem is that we didn’t get 3% more.
You know, over the years, I would say, look, the Jews want a state, the Palestine Arabs want the Jews not to have a state. That’s the conflict. And I would also say, look, I’m not making a judgment. It’s a description. You might actually believe that it’s a wrong idea for the Jews to have a state in the land of Israel of whatever side, but this is the conflict.
Okay, Jews on my feed would respond—
Noam: I have to interrupt right now, because I need to play devil’s advocate within devil’s advocate. You see the Likud platform, and it says it right there that Israel, there should be a Jewish state from the river to the sea as well. You hear the thinkers of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and many others.
By the way, many of us within my community, like I identify as a religious Zionist. like, you know, like the many, many, many, many people, I think, believe deeply in Israel and greater Israel. As a matter of fact, the way I was taught about Zionism was probably different than the way you were, but it was, we would say a blessing. I still do say on Yom Haatzmaut on the day on Israel Independence Day and Yom Haatzmaut and the day that Jerusalem was the way I view it liberated, I know others view it as conquered or okay. you know, and what we’re saying is that we, what a lot of people are saying is that we want a greater Israel. Ultimately the goal is greater Israel. How is that not the same thing as Palestinianism on the reverse? It sounds similar and a listener might be like, no, you’re so stupid. It’s not similar. It’s not. It’s not similar. Here’s the thing. I’m not stupid. And, and a lot of people are not stupid who think these things. So I want to, I want you to explain it to me a little bit better how it’s how they’re totally different things.
Einat: Okay, so I’ll walk through this. Whenever I would post, for years, long before October 7, this is the conflict, the Jews want a state, the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state. What you would have on my feed would look like this. Jews in Israel and abroad, liberal left-wing Jews would say, Einat, you’re exaggerating. You’re painting with a broad brush. It’s about Bibi or Ben-Gvir or Smotrich or extremists. You know, if we only got out of the West Bank or if we only did this or, you know, that’s the issue. The Arabs on my feed would say the following. Of course, you are white Europeans, settler, colonialists, crusaders, all essentially synonyms for foreign, get out of here.
And what I loved always about those exchanges is that the Jews kept on trying to invent a conflict that doesn’t exist and has never existed. One that, let me maybe say here, I really understand why people do that. I understand this because to, except that we are facing a total ideology that wants nothing less than our non-existence means that we need to rethink a lot of issues and a lot of people just prefer not to do that. I understand that. So again, it is the Jews that would invent a conflict who doesn’t exist and would therefore needs to be resolved in the way. And it is the Arabs who made it very clear.
And again, to the credit, Palestine Arabs and if there’s one thing that Adi and I are very very proud of in the book the war return is that we give them the respect of taking them at their word. We actually give them the respect that I believe if our leadership gave the people of Gaza, we would not have had the massacre if it would have given them the respect at taking them at their word that they are organized, dedicated, and committed through the generations to the non-existence of a Jewish state.
What you keep doing, not you personally, but what you represent in many of your questions is the complete erasure. Every time Israel has to prove again and again and again it’s goodwill, and the Arabs are somehow never held responsible for their consistent rejection. But Israel has to every day wake up and prove its willingness to compromise. But when does disengagement come up, after the complete failure to achieve a negotiated agreement? So people say, why was Gaza not negotiated? We are like, we just failed to achieve a negotiated agreement where we really, really tried.
It was followed by a campaign of murderous massacres, as I’m sure you remember, before October 7th, the darkest time to live in Israel, a real palpable sense of merely by leaving your home, boarding a bus, going to a cafe, you’re playing Russian roulette with your life. I remember the sense of despair, a bit similar to what we have today. How will we ever defeat an enemy willing to kill themselves so that they kill us. How will we defeat that? If an enemy is so committed, again, Dr. Shany Mor said beautifully that nothing ever more represented the Palestinian cause than suicide bombings. So, okay.
Noam: I mean, I was there 2003, 2005, your description, Russian roulette with your life when you went on a bus. You really, really, really felt that way.
Einat: Exactly. So we try negotiations and Israelis begin to say to themselves, what are we forever going to be hostages to Arab rejectionism? We’ll get out. And this is the basis. Now, even though this was officially unilateral, we did actually coordinate with the Palestinians.
So as Israel’s preparing to clear the settlements, we send a message to the Palestinian Authority, do you want the houses? Right, they’re good houses. And the answer comes back, should have been our clue. The answer comes back, do not leave a stone over a stone. And it already shows you that even in that level of coordination, they were not thinking like a people saying, amazing, we’re going to now take advantage of this opportunity and these are houses and we’ll use them and we’ll build it and all that. What they wanted to see was destruction.
Now at one point, you have to look at the full span of the last century, almost in a half, and appreciate the absolute consistency of both words. As I said, they never said the thing that we would have wanted them to say. So, you know, I’ve invented a word in the book, I call it Westplaining. A lot of what you described people would say is classic Westplaining.
Recently, one of the chief American negotiators, one of the veterans, said in a closed briefing, he said, you know, looking back on 30 years of negotiations, I have to admit there were never negotiations, in Hebrew, it’s even better, masa u’matan, like actually given. He’s like, what happened is that Israel proposed and the Arabs said no and Israel proposed again and the Arabs said no. And Israel proposed some more and the Arabs said no.
And I’m adding, to the extent that there were ever negotiations, it was between America and Israel. America would pressure Israel, Israel would respond, but no one ever bothered to challenge the ideology of Palestinianism. And this is by the way, something that goes back to the very early days of the conflict.
In the new book that Adi and I wrote to kind of after October 7th, updating the war of return, we say there is a persistent pattern in the conflict. The Arabs are consistent. They never change their views. They always, always say no Jewish state, no Jewish state, no Jewish state. Israel builds settlements, removes settlements, occupies territory, gets out of territory, has a right-wing government, left-wing government. The Arabs remain consistent. No Jewish state. Return, refugeehood, those are all synonyms.
The West and the global powers never ever challenge that. You don’t see them come– in many ways, President Trump is the first to basically come close to that. No one ever goes to them and says in Arabic, chalas, enough, that’s it. I mean, you tried, you seriously, you really, really tried. You can live next to a Jewish state, not on top of it.
And because there is never a challenging of the Arab position, all the pressure is always brought on Israel through basically demanding Israel to do things that are not expected of any power. As Abba Eban said after the Six Day War, it’s the first time in history that the victors had to sue for peace and the vanquish demanded unconditional surrender. We’re seeing it now in Gaza. Israel was attacked, invaded and yet somehow people think it’s expected demanded that we shall supply our enemies and this is our somehow our obligation.
Someone once was very angry at me, you know, many years ago when I would keep posting, this is the conflict, the Jews want to stay there, Arabs want the Jews not to have a state. He’s like, Einat. Is there anything that would lead you to say that Israel is the reason we don’t have peace? And I was like, yes, if we had a billion Jews, if we had a billion Jews, I’ll concede we are the problem. And you know the ratio of Jews to Arabs never changed despite all the kids and Aliyah, we’re one to 50, one to 60. The tiny Jewish minority in this region, except for its desire for sovereign existence, we go back to the beginning, except for its desire to be the bread and to challenge what people think is the proper role of the inferior Jew. Other than that, we are not the problem, we are not the reason that there’s no peace, that there’s no two-state solution. The problem is, has always been, never changed, the complete and total Arab refusal that the Jews will be sovereign in even a tiny, tiny strip of land.
Noam: Einat, September 2025. Here we are. The French president said that they’re going to have an ambassador in Ramallah. Samer Sinijlawi, who I had on the podcast right before this, he said that he doesn’t care what the Western countries say about this because what matters, is that Israel recognizes a Palestinian state. Until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state, his point was it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world recognizes or doesn’t recognize. From your viewpoint as a scholar, as an author, as a former member of Knesset, do you think that it matters whether or not Western countries say that there is a state of Palestine or do you think it really doesn’t matter and they’re just like blah, blah, blah, words, words, words, word salad, word salad? Where do you stand on this issue?
Einat: I’ll explain where it does matter. I’ve come to call the state of Palestine or the recognition of the state of Palestine, Schrodinger’s Palestine.
Noam: That’s good.
Einat: Meaning what? Is Palestine a state for the purpose of assuming responsibility for having invaded a neighboring country, for paying reparations for that, for surrendering collectively and ending the war? Is Palestine a state for the purpose of recognizing that no one who lives in Palestine is a Palestine refugee? That there’s no such thing as the right of return into another state. Is Palestine a state for all of these responsibility assuming purposes? No, the cat is dead.
Is Palestine a state for the purpose of making life miserable for Israel and international bodies? Absolutely yes, the cat is alive. So this is where it matters and doesn’t matter. Of course it doesn’t constitute the state per se, but for that again, the Palestine Arabs have to actually want a state.
You know, over time I just tell people, at the most basic level. You cannot want for them what they’ve never wanted for themselves. They’ve never wanted a state if it has to live next to a Jewish state. So you can’t want it for them. Again, we have so many people inventing a conflict that doesn’t exist, inventing Palestinians that don’t exist. Wait for them to actually want a state next to a Jewish state. Help them reach that conclusion by supporting voices like Ahmed, by not putting him down and supporting all the resistance return voices, by not indulging the idea that the Jewish state will one day disappear.
And this is where my criticism of our government is of Israel not having a sophisticated diplomacy. What are we focused on? Making to ensure that Germany doesn’t recognize, getting like Canada not to recognize, yay yay diplomatic achievement. Look no, just like you do with kids, you don’t say no, you say not this, but yes this, right? That’s good parenting. You show them what’s the alternative. So here, basically go to all these countries who at least claim to recognize Palestine in order to promote peace and a two state solution, tell them fine. Look, we think because of the history of the conflict, it’s weird, you can’t want for them what they’ve never wanted for themselves, but fine.
Your vision is a two state solution, one Jewish, one Arab, that’s important. Then please make sure your recognition looks as follows. We, France, recognize the state of Palestine. We make it clear that no one living in Palestine is a Palestine refugee. We’re issuing a legal opinion that there’s no such thing as a right of return. And this is our recognition, essentially create a package that really supports a two-state solution with one of them being Jewish. And I’m like, get the French to do that kind of recognition and let’s see if Hamas and the PA will congratulate them for that kind of recognition.
For me, where Israel fails is first of all, by the fact that we allow people to erase our repeated goodwill. You know, Netanyahu said yes to Palestinian state. And Abu Mazen is the one that, true to the Palestinian ethos, told Trump, no, no, and a thousand times no. You have to notice who says yes, who says no. But my criticism is that Israel, yes, the floor, as we say in Hebrew, is crooked. But if the floor is crooked, you send your best dancers. You don’t just blame the floor.
And this is what early Zionism did. We sent our best dancers to a very crooked floor to achieve actual diplomatic achievements like the mandate, like partition with nothing. So go to these countries and give them another option for recognition, the one that would actually call out the Palestinians for their rejection.
Noam: What are alternatives to statehood? I mean, the alternatives that I have, alternative number one is one state for everyone instead of Israel and Palestine being two separate countries. There’d just be one country where everyone lives together with equal rights. Meaning, I don’t know, Israel annexes the West Bank, annexes Gaza, and now you have around seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians. That’s one alternative. The challenge to that is that I think Israelis would worry that they would stop being a Jewish majority state and Palestinians might worry that their voices could get lost in that.
Another idea would be a confederation, two countries, Israel and Palestine, but they would share some things like open borders, water, and maybe even a joint parliament. And then there’s the Jordanian or Egyptian option. Instead of making a brand new Palestinian country, the West Bank would join Jordan and Gaza would join Egypt.
And then there’s the autonomy self-rule idea where the Palestinians wouldn’t get a full country, but they would run their own cities, schools, and police while Israel still controls borders and security. I guess that’s what is most like the current scenario.
Of all the solutions, which that I said or didn’t say, do you think is the best solution? And is the answer status quo?
Einat: Okay, for years, pretty much every day, I get in my mailbox another proposal, the five state solution, the seven state solution, seven Emirates, this, that every day, you know, I get a, and to all of them, say, look, the problem has never been the lack of creative solutions. Again, if you look through the history, the amount of effort that people from around the world have invested in coming up with various ideas, solutions, political arrangements, I’m like, if we do not deal with the molten lava which is at the core of the conflict, nothing else is relevant. As long as the Arabs believe that the Jews have no right to sovereignty, every solution is not a solution.
I genuinely, genuinely am agnostic about the formulation of the political solution. I believe that all of these things are later. First, the ideology of Palestinianism has to die, not the people, the ideology. They need to finally, 75 years too late, acknowledge the stupidity and defeat of the war of 1948. They need to get the message that tens of millions of refugees received, which is tough, tragic, move on. You can live next to a Jewish state, not instead of it. When the ideology of Palestinianism is replaced by what I call Arab Zionism, essentially an Arab willingness to live next to a Jewish state, a lot of political arrangements are possible, but if we don’t touch that issue, then no political arrangement is possible.
Noam: Einat, last question, last word. The Jewish people are not the people of Yeush, not the people of despair, we’re the people of Hatikva, of hope. Give me a hopeful note as we conclude this conversation. If there’s anything of hope that you’re seeing amidst this chaos, amidst all the difficulties, amidst recognition of Palestine, which is something that I think many Israelis are going to, be pretty unfriendly towards and so give me a word of hope?
Einat: I see two elements of hope and they work together. The first is what we’ve seen clearly since October 7th is the true commitment of Israelis to the idea that there will be a sovereign Jewish state in the land of Israel. And people are willing to fight for that. And that we have not come to be a temporary aberration in the region. We have not come in order to be just another story before the next exile. Truly you’ve seen the willingness of Jews both in Israel and around the world to mobilize and fight for that.
The second is even if Arab Zionism sounds absolutely nuts now, I argue that one day it will not. And we already see elements of that. I’m sure Ahmed would not appreciate me calling him an Arab Zionist.
Noam: I don’t think he would.
Einat: Or Loay Alshareef who he kind of is coming around to that. All I’m saying is to be an Arab Zionist is to have a proud Arab and Muslim identity that does not revolve against the non-existence of a Jewish state and is willing to actually live next to it. That’s all it is. And even though the voices that are willing to have that vision are small, for the first time in the conflict history, they actually exist.
Noam: Right. Right. Right, right, right. The brilliant Einat Wilf, thank you so much for tolerating all my questions and giving us your incredible knowledge of history and politics. And really, really appreciate having you on. Thank you.