Noam: Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode of Unpacking Israeli History is generously sponsored by Jean Lindenbaum and her children, Felice Amiel and Ariel Lindenbaum-Sabag. If you want to sponsor an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or if you just want to say, what’s up, be in touch at noam@unpacked.media. Before we start, as always, check us out on Instagram, on TikTok, YouTube, all the places. Just search Unpacking Israeli History and hit the follow or subscribe button.
Okay. Yalla. Let’s do this.
We’ve been living through a moment that feels like something has been fundamentally broken for a few years now. For many of us, October 7th shattered more than just a sense of security. It shattered belief. Belief that coexistence was possible. Belief that compromise had partners. Belief that history was bending even slowly towards something better.
And since then, the war in Gaza, the ongoing violence, the deepening mistrust, it hasn’t just made peace harder, it’s made it feel almost naive. So here’s the question that I keep coming back to over and over again in the past two and a half years. Is Israeli-Palestinian peace still possible? Or is it a complete pipe dream? Are we officially living in a post-peace era?
Because for decades, there was at least a framework for many of us, two states, negotiations, diplomacy, imperfect, but imaginable. Today, that imagination feels broken, which is why I wanted to have this conversation with Ittay Flescher, someone who probably disagrees with much of what I just said. Ittay is an Israeli Australian educator, journalist, and peace builder currently based in Jerusalem.
He serves as the education director at Seeds of Peace Jerusalem, an interfaith movement that empowers Israeli and Palestinian youth to create more just and peaceful communities. And he recently published his first book, The Holy and the Broken, A Cry for Israeli-Palestinian Peace from a Land that Must Be Shared.
And I’ll say something else upfront, Ittay is also a friend. But here’s the thing about friendship. Friends don’t necessarily see the world the same way. We don’t always agree. And that’s actually part of why I wanted to have him on. This is not going to be a debate. I’m not here to try to win an argument or score points. First of all, I’m not very good at debating, but more importantly, I’m not interested in it. In fact, I think the debate culture we see on TikTok is making people dumber, not smarter.
I wanted to speak to it because I think there’s real value in hearing from someone who looks at the same reality, the same pain, the same history and comes away with a different set of conclusions while still deeply loving Israel, the Jewish people, the Jewish story and being committed to its future. And I think for all of us, there’s something important in that to actually sit with a perspective that might feel uncomfortable or you might say overly hopeful or maybe even unrealistic and to ask ourselves what, do we make of it? Now, let me say the other side. I’m also sure many people who listen to Unpacking Israeli History will also really agree with it. And I’m encouraging you listening to think through why what he says is compelling. And if there are things you disagree with, why? Is Ittay being realistic? Is he being naive? Is he holding on to something we’ve lost or is he seeing something that others aren’t?
Ittay is not a diplomat. He’s not a politician. He’s something else. He’s an educator and someone who even now after everything is still trying to imagine a future where Israelis and Palestinians share this land, not just divide it, not in theory, but in practice. And I’ll be honest, I’m skeptical, not dismissive, but skeptical because if peace is still possible, it’s going to require answering some very hard questions about trust, about violence, about power, about whether history is moving forward or backward. So that’s what this conversation is, not a debate about policy details, a deeper question. After everything we’ve seen, should we still believe in peace? And if so, what would it actually take?
One more thing before we start. I want to reflect on something I heard from the great philosopher, Micah Goodman, or Micha Goodman in Israel. He said, a great conversation is between two who think the other is wrong. A bad conversation is between those who think something is wrong with you. Ittay, I may sometimes think you are right and sometimes think you are wrong and vice versa, but let me say that I never think something is wrong with you. And I hope the same thing is true for you. Thanks so much for joining me.
Ittay Flescher: It’s wonderful to be here and thank you for that generous introduction. I often say when I’m facilitating dialogue, setting ground rules is one of the most important things to do. And so I feel very welcomed into this now to begin this conversation.
Noam: Okay, I feel the same exact way. So let’s go through the reflections that I just started with and I wanna go through some data and ask you a major question about what is possible.
1,200 Israelis killed on October 7th, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Some people don’t like that framing because it connects the Holocaust to a moment like this and there are two different eras, one in which the Jewish state exists, one in which the Jewish state did not exist, one in which the power in Gaza is very different than the power of Europe. But still, is a marker to distinguish the absolute horrific nature of that day. And then 240 hostages taken into Gaza.
In the Gaza war that followed, casualties, estimates range from, it’s very hard to name it perfectly, but tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, massive displacement in Gaza, over 1.5 million people at the peak according to UN estimates. There’s been trauma on both sides and that trauma on both sides has deepened narratives. I’m not here to equate the different types of trauma. I’m just describing that trauma on both sides has deepened narratives and hasn’t softened them. It’s not just another round.
I do believe that Michael Koplow, when he was on this podcast, was right, that he said October 7th is the most important day in Israeli history, even more than the day that Israel was born, even more than 1967. It’s not just another round. Many Israelis see this as existential. Many Palestinians see Gaza as a catastrophic destruction that’s hard to describe.
So with all of that in mind, how do you feel about peace? How did you feel about peace before October 7th and how do you feel about it today after everything I just said? Do facts on the ground changing change the way you feel? Do you still feel peace is possible? Do you still believe the same solutions are possible? And if so, what are those solutions? Walk me through your thinking.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah. Thank you. So, as you said in your intro, I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. I’m an educator. I’ve been an educator since I was 16 when I started first working in a youth movement in Hineni and then I was a high school teacher for 15 years in Australia, made Aliyah eight years ago since then in Jerusalem. I’ve been the education of Seeds of Peace, I’ve taught at Masa, many gap year programs and what I do when I teach.
Noam: Ittay, a lot of people don’t know anything that you just said. Hineni, Masa, I don’t like, what are these things?
Ittay Flescher: Okay. So these are Jewish organizations that teach about Israel, Jewish identity, Zionism, those sorts of topics. I’ve been in the Jewish Agency, I’ve been working in those fields for for most of my life. And then when I when I moved to Jerusalem in 2018, since then, I’ve been working in Seeds of Peace. And what a lot of people think that when you put Israelis and Palestinians in a room, we don’t talk about October 7th and Gaza and the two state solution and Trump and the 20 point plan and like all the questions that that we’re just raised now because often when humans sit in a room that are different from each other, we just talk about very human things. We talk about our lives and our children and what we saw on TV and how we’re feeling today and what our school is doing and whether the checkpoint is closed and whether we had to cancel a family arrangement.
And so for me, Israeli-Palestinian peace, I don’t even think about it in those sort of political terms that you mentioned because the peace building that we do is very personal. It’s very one-to-one. It’s very much, can you, who lives in, you know, in Sheikh Jarrah or in Silwan, sit with a child that lives in West Jerusalem in Katamon or Baka or Anona or a neighborhood like that, and can you see each other? Can you talk to each other and can you show empathy for one another?
So obviously when October 7th happened, like every other Israeli, I was shocked, I was terrified, I was afraid for my children. I have two children living in Jerusalem. My wife, Pam, works at Machon Pardes together where Rachel Goldberg-Polin used to work and obviously worrying about Hersh. You know, the whole experience is, it was unbelievable that such a thing could happen to us. And even though bad things have happened before, think something on that scale and in that level of brutality and then seeing it all on the GoPro footage was, of course, I woke up thinking the next day, peace is impossible. I even did a Zoom, think on October 8th or 9th saying that, because you think this is it, this is it. We’re destined to fight each other forever and the strongest person is going to win. So do those thoughts cross mind all the time.
And then, to answer your question, why do I still work in a peace organization? Why do I still try and bring Israelis and Palestinians together? Why do I write a book about why peace is possible? Because I don’t see any other alternative. I really don’t. I think that the, the desire to fight, to kill, to destroy, hasn’t made Palestinians safer, hasn’t made Israelis safer. We now have more violence, death and destruction than ever before. And I want to see an alternative and I’m sure we’ll talk about it later on. But that’s why I still believe in peace, not because I think peace is going to be wonderful, just because the current reality is so awful that I can’t really wake up in the morning if I can’t, don’t believe that another way is possible.
Noam: I’m gonna be the skeptic in the room right now, not to be the annoying pest, but to be the skeptic, I’m stepping in for the listener basically.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, that’s fine.
Noam: The Palestinians and Israelis that you bring together, is it a self-selected group? Because I would imagine that this very human, this very human aspect of what you try to do from as an educator is so noble and yet I’m wondering if it represents Israeli and Palestinian society the Israeli and Katamon or the Israeli and Arnona who’s willing to meet with Palestinians like I that’s a unique Israeli and the same thing is true on the other side of things So is it is it representative of anything more than that very self-selected group, or is my assumption wrong?
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, No, your assumption is right. There are many youth organizations in Jerusalem and all of them are self -selecting, meaning that there’s a basketball club, and all the people that go there are really tall. And there’s a Dungeons and Dragons club and a lot of kids that go there are nerds. And then there’s a B’nai Akiva and all the kids that go there religious Zionists. So yes, the people that come to us are people who believe in peace, believe in dialogue and want to work on that. And, I don’t know, no one ever asks the basketball club, where are all the short kids? Like, because you every club sort of attracts people who are interested in it.
And, I don’t think we are just preaching to the converted though, because even though people already are inclined to believe in peace if they come to our organizations, once we start talking, we find that there’s many things that we disagree about. So even in the group that is inclined, there’s still a lot that challenges us in the dialogue between the kids, between the staff.
I also participate in adult dialogue. I’ve been in a Haredi secular dialogue group. I’ve been in many Israeli Palestinian dialogue groups with, they’re from Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank. So most people that sign up are on board and then things come up and then you question yourself all the time. That’s the nature of dialogue. That’s why it’s hard. That’s why a lot of people don’t want to do it because not only can dialogue potentially change the person on the other side, dialogue can change you. can change your beliefs and things that you hold dear. And that’s really confronting sometimes.
Noam: Okay, so if it is a self-selected group of people and like you mentioned, every group is some form of self-selection. And I asked if it’s representative or not. I want to go through some polling trends. Israeli Jewish support for the two-state solution dropped below 35%. Palestinian support has declined significantly, often below 30%. After the second intifada, trust had already collapsed. This was in the early aughts. And then October 7th, deepened it further.
From what I have and from the most recent study I saw in 2012, 66% of Palestinians and 61% of Israelis actually supported the idea of a two-state solution. That was at its highest. That was at its highest, I believe, in 2012. I’m blanking on the name of it. But there was the most recent study I just saw showed that in 2012, 66% of Palestinians believed that it was possible and 61% of Israelis did. That’s very, very high.
And then we’re also seeing that, and the question that I have then is, if both societies don’t believe in a two-state solution now, does it actually exist as a political possibility? Does it exist or does it not?
I’m wondering if you’re thinking if we’re in an era that is post peace or if we’re in an era that could still be pursuing peace like I understand the idea like Tal Becker has shared that the Jewish person should be pursuing peace, not necessarily accomplishing peace, should be a rodef shalom, a pursuer of peace. And that’s important in there personally, and that’s important from a humanity perspective. But I am interested to know historically, with what I just shared, is there anything that happened in 2012 that led to Palestinians and Israelis supporting the idea of a two-state solution that you could think of at that time that made it very likely and then now when it’s so low what do you make of that? How do we think about that? Are we in a post-peace era or is there a way to go back to 2012? Was it some sort of nostalgic moment that we the world could help recreate?
Ittay Flescher: So I don’t know you’re familiar with the Mitvim Institute, they have a report called the Israeli Initiative and they also tracked support for peace over various times in history and actually found that during Oslo was the time before Oslo where support for Hamas was the lowest, it was less than 10% in Palestinian society because and their theories about what makes support for peace or the two-state solution higher or lower often depends on what you see on the other side. So when Palestinians see an Israeli prime minister like Yitzhak Rabin talking, negotiating, you know, engaged in some sort of dialogue about self-determination for Palestinians, support for Hamas was very low. When Israelis see a Palestinian leader, Abu Mazen, however flawed he is, but still sort of doing security cooperation with Israel, arresting terrorists in the West Bank, showing that there is some sort of desire both to make peace and to keep Israelis safe. There’s an increased likelihood that there’s peace and there was very good secure cooperation, you know, 10 years ago.
When Israelis now see a very corrupt and flawed Abu Mazen in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza, and Palestinians see the Israeli government, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Netanyahu, the support for peace is very low because they don’t see a partner on the other side. They assume, I think it’s a very logical conclusion that the only solution is violence or resistance, some sort of distraction. I think if you want to increase the numbers of people who support a two state solution or peace, then you need to have leadership in both Israel and in the Palestinian territories that speaks that way, that speaks that language. I think, you know, if Israel wanted to increase the number of Palestinians that support peace, a very simple thing we could do is to stop settler violence, just to put the resources that we put into stopping Palestinian terror into stopping Jewish terror. If we did that, would show to the Palestinians very clearly that we care about your well-being in the West Bank. We don’t want you and your villages to be to be burned and stoned and face graffiti and all these things all the time. If Palestinians want to show that they want to be a partner for peace, they can, you know, stop payments to, to pension payments to terrorist families and many of the other things that Israel demands in terms of reforming their economy and all those things that were in the 20-point plan. So there’s many steps that politically we can take to show that we are a partner for peace.
But often the obstacle is we say, why should I take these steps when the other side is not taking those steps? And then you get into an impasse where everyone leans into more extreme politics because they don’t see a partner for peace on the other side.
Noam: Okay, great. I mean, it sounds to me that you’re equating the two, that you’re equating in this pursuit of peace, that you’re equating Hamas on one side, Abu Mazen on one side, and then Bibi, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich on the other side. Now I have an issue if that is the way you’re framing it, from a similarity perspective. I don’t think Hamas and Abu Mazen, this is me giving my opinion everyone, engage in the same rhetoric and to the same degree at all in the same category as Bibi, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
That is not to say at all that I think that Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, just speaking about those two specifically, use language and say things that are at all helpful to the pursuit of peace. I believe that they say things that are incredibly destructive to the pursuit of peace without a doubt. But I still think that there’s a major, major gap between them and Hamas, a major gap between the two.
Now, I’m not looking for you to agree or disagree with me on that. The reason I’m mentioning that is I think that what you said is right in terms of like extremes, breed extremes. That’s basically what you’re arguing and that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I agree with that. I think that is, and not just I agree with that, I agree with that educationally. I agree with that psychologically. I agree that that is true. I also think that part of the challenge is this very emotional challenge. Just that sentence in which you said, you know, and people pay for terrorism, the Palestinian government pays for terrorism. Maybe stop that. It’s like, what?
Like that stuttering that I just did is like a very natural, like what? That’s insane. How do you possibly have it even come close to having a conversation with someone that is paying to kill Israelis? Like what are you talking about? And so I think that it’s what I just did is I got emotional. My reaction is an emotional reaction to something that you said and you’re not even saying the thing.
But just putting them in the same sentence makes people even moderates. what are you, well, Hamas and da da da, and Betzalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir, da da da. I think that’s part of the challenge here. It’s a very emotional, emotionally difficult conversation that makes people’s rational faculties kind of go to the side. Because you’re not even saying, what I just described, and you’re not making the moral equivalence between the two, you’re simply describing the extremism breeds extremism. And I think that that’s a really hard part of this conversation. Is it not?
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, so just to clarify, I have no sympathy for Hamas. Hamas have killed my friends in Gaza. Hamas have killed my friends in Israel. Hamas is a terrorist organization and I wish that they were not in power in Gaza and I wish that all of my Palestinian friends had leadership that represented the vision that they want for Palestine. So if it came across in any other way, then that’s not what I meant to say.
And I didn’t vote for the current Israeli government. I don’t think that what they do is constructive at all to developing peace. And I do think that without comparing, there is, as you said, an equal and opposite reaction between different extreme actions and I won’t, you know, don’t want to bore your listeners with all the detail and all the historic developments that have led up to this situation. But I think what you’re touching on is a deeper question, which is the question of trust.
I think what you’re saying is really how can I be asked to take any step, even the example I gave, why should Israel address settler terrorism and the expulsion of 30,000 people from the West Bank? Why should Israel address that issue when on the other side you’ve got Hamas and people that don’t seek peace at all?
And I think that question is ultimately why there isn’t peace. John Kerry, when he did the negotiations, when he was Secretary of State for the US, he did 30 trips between Washington and Jerusalem. He wrote an article at the end about why there wasn’t peace. And he said, we agreed on everything. We agreed on water, on Jerusalem, on refugees, on Jerusalem, on final status, on area A, B, and C, on security, on airports, every negotiations, thousands of hours, they agreed on everything. Everything was written down. And he said the reason there wasn’t implementation because there wasn’t trust. The Israelis thought that the Palestinians couldn’t be trusted to carry out the things they promised and the Palestinians thought the Israelis couldn’t be trusted. And so the reason I do the work I do again, I’m not a politician, is I think that in order for political peace to happen, you have to have trust between the people.
And the only way to have trust between Israelis and Palestinians is us for to care about each other, to be in each other’s lives, to meet together, to have meals together, to wish each other happy birthday, to go and have holidays together, to have friendships and normal relationships that there’s trust. And then that’s going to be reflected in our politics as well.
Noam: I’ll tell you what’s so interesting, Ittay, on a personal note, and then I have a historical question for you, but on a personal note, on Shabbat once, you took me and my wife on a little tour to East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem. The reason it’s like I’m smiling about it is I thought it was such an important moment in, this is gonna not be, in my wife’s life. Like I’ve been to East Jerusalem many times, but I thought it was fascinating that she had been to Israel so many times, so many times. And it was a three block walk, four block walk. I’m maybe exaggerating a little bit. Five blocks that we went very close walk that we did from, you know, the area that surrounds a lot of these hotels, the Inbal Hotel, the King David Hotel, these different areas in western part of Jerusalem.
And then we walked a few blocks and all of a sudden we’re in Salal ad-Din Street, right? And it looked radically different. It was a Saturday afternoon and the market was wide open. There were Palestinians exclusively there, essentially with some tourists in there. It was a totally different world, but it was three blocks away. It was three blocks, I’m asking everyone to imagine that, three blocks away, totally different world. But they’re all right next to each other.
So we think of this thing called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as though they’re living so in such different places, such different lives. Yeah, the lives might often be different, but the geographic location is right next to each other, right next to each other, not miles away, next to each other, often with each other. Well, not so with each other, but next to each other, adjacent to each other. That, the imagery of going like, just imagine that imagery of going from a place where you see mostly Jewish people to mostly Palestinian people within a couple of blocks in the same location. And so your humanity approach, I’m just asking everyone to think through that, just like have that image in mind and what that looks like about the future of these two peoples who are right next to each other. So from the personal to the historical now, now let’s go through the historical. The historical, what have different, yeah, yeah, please.
Ittay Flescher: Can I just say something? Hold on, just before that question. So over the last year, I’ve been leading many tours of Jerusalem because people contact me often and they say, Ittay, why do you believe what you believe? I don’t get it. And the tour I do is called the bookstores of Jerusalem. So I take people to the Steimatzky on Rehov Yafo, which is a very Jewish Zionist bookshop. Then I take people to the educational bookshop in Salah Hadin. And then I finish the tour at Manny’s bookshop, which is in Mea Shearim. It’s a Haredi bookshop.
Noam: Brilliant. Brilliant.
Ittay Flescher: And in each bookshop, I asked them to look at what’s the language of the books? What are they selling? What’s their agenda? What are they saying? In between the bookshops, we walk and again, it’s about, you know, three miles the whole tour and they see three different planets. It’s like you’re not in the same city. You know, when you’re in Haredi Jerusalem, you feel like you’re in a shtetl in Poland, you’re in East Jerusalem, you feel like you’re in Jordan, everything is Arabic and in the West.
Noam: It’s such a good call. Yeah, Ittay, when you and I were doing this together, we saw the Haredi part of East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, right in the border area.
Ittay Flescher: When you cross the road, yeah.
Noam: And one of the things you said is you’re ready to go from Israel to Poland. And what was also interesting is I think a lot of what we saw was a bunch of Haredim who are ready to protest the Israeli police for being something, I don’t know, open on Shabbat, something, I don’t remember exactly what it was. again, it shows the complexity of Israeli society. So there’s so many different Israels that you could see within one mile and everything that we see is manicured to different extents. It’s really manicured to different extents and we have to be aware of what it is that we’re learning and seeing. And again, that’s, think, my goal of this podcast is to explore the wide contours of Israeli society, historically and civic society now.
So I want you to go through, give me different historical attempts at peace. Just lay it out for me a couple of types of, not historical, what are different ways to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Give me three or four ways to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and tell me what your model looks like and why.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, so, when I was writing my book, I spent a lot of time researching this question. I went to several Israeli and Palestinian museums to look at how they tell different histories from the Palmach Museum to the Irgun and Begin Museum. And then I went to the Palestinian Museum in Ramallah, in Al-Bireh, in Bethlehem as well. And everyone had a different starting point. Everyone had a different focus. I include many of those stories in the book. But one of the things I encountered was there was a letter written by Khalidi, he was the mayor of Jerusalem in 1899, and Herzl and I found these letters, it’s the first ever a letter between a Palestinian mayor–
Noam: This is Rashid Khalidi’s great uncle. Is that who it is or something? Okay.
Ittay Flescher: es, yes, yes, it’s the first ever letter between a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem and a Zionist leader. And the letters are exchanged through Rabbi Tzadok, who was the chief rabbi of France at the time. And what’s fascinating about those letters is that Khalidi writes to Herzl saying, I know Jews have a historic connection to this land. It’s in my tradition that your people are here. And I know that what you’re going through in Europe and I know that you want to come here to establish a state, but I want you to know that there’s already a people here, and for the sake of peace, please leave Palestine alone.
And then Herzl writes back to him four days later. And then Herzl says to him, I know that the Palestinian, we’ll call them the Arab people in the Ottoman Empire, you know, have a deep connection to the land. And I promise you that Jews are not a warlike people and we’re not coming to occupy or conquer. Coming to live not to live but not, know, to build and be built. And basically says it’s going to be a startup nation without using those words. And then he finishes off by saying, and if Palestine doesn’t work out, we’ll go somewhere else. You know, he’s probably thinking Uganda at this time.
The reason I start the book with these two letters is because on the one hand there’s there’s two things in there that you never see today. One is there’s a lot of respect between Herzl and Khalidi. There’s an acknowledgement of the indigenous claims of one to the other and in reverse. And on the other hand, there’s also a sense of a red line as well, which we do have today, obviously. Now, no Zionist is going to say, look, Israel didn’t work out. Let’s try again in Kenya tomorrow. You know, that’s already not on the table.
But many Palestinians do feel like Zionism has been the worst thing that happened to their national peoplehood. And so that’s where the dialogue sort of began 120 years ago. Now, since then, there’s been many, peace initiatives, probably the dominant ones are the one state solution, the two state solution, and the confederation. So I’ll just speak briefly about them.
Noam: Well, yeah, tell me what each of those are.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, so a one state solution, is so firstly there’s one state Israel which is the current solution it’s current reality where Israel is in control of all the territory from the river to the sea in one shape or another and Palestinians have different levels of citizenship or residency or non-citizenship based on whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank or they’re citizens of Israel. I won’t elaborate on that in detail because that’s literally what we live today. Then there’s one state Palestine where from the river to the sea we’re
Noam: Wait, wait, wait, no, go back to that for second. I do think that we need some clarity on that. How many Jews live in Israel right now?
Ittay Flescher: Yeah. Okay, about 7.6 million.
Noam: 7.5 million. And how many Palestinian Arabs or Arab citizens of Israel or how many live there? Also, it’s like 20, 25 percent, something like that.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, yeah, one point nine million something like that. Yeah.
Noam: And then how many live in East Jerusalem?
Ittay Flescher: East Jerusalem is about 350, 400,000. Yeah.
Noam: That’s like three to four hundred thousand, is that right? And that’s not included in the one point nine million, correct? That’s not included.
Ittay Flescher: No, no, because they’re East Jerusalem residents, they’re not citizens of Israel, so they can’t vote in the Israeli
Noam: But if they, I know it’s hard for them, but if they want to, they can apply to be a citizen, but they haven’t because of different issues, including the challenges of being able to, and because of the stigma of being normalizing with Israeli society from the Palestinian side.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah, 95 % of them are not about 5% are. You can apply, it’s very complicated, but you can do it. But yeah, most of them are not and then and then beyond that, then you’ve got Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. if you want to look total the total number of Arabs and Jews in that piece of land, it’s about 51% Jews 49% Arabs if you include all of those territories together.
Noam: Right. Okay. So the solution number one is keep status quo, keep Israel as is, have Israelis, have Israel have the military ability, the administration of the West Bank, what many people call Judea and Samaria, and in Gaza, that’s its own story that there is some, we don’t know what the, you know, what that’s.
Ittay Flescher: There’s a new government there that’s been, you know, it’s a technocratic government that don’t know how much power it has, but it’s just been installed a month ago, so we’ll see.
Noam: Right. So that’s solution number one, keep as is status quo, right? Okay, so what’s solution two?
Ittay Flescher: Yes. Solution 2 is that the whole state would be Palestine, which many supporters of the Palestinians outside of in the diaspora want, where Israel wouldn’t exist anymore. The whole territory would be Palestine and the Jews that lived in that land would live in some form of second class citizenship under a Palestinian government that would be united between Gaza and the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital. That is a solution almost no Jewish Israelis want, but it is a solution that obviously clearly Hamas want and some supporters of the Palestinians in the diaspora want.
Noam: So when I hear that solution, I’m telling my reaction, I held back a smirk because I like you. What I mean by that is, well now I’m breaking my rule, now I’m laughing. That’s like saying to me, what you just said is like saying, my three year old is very excited. She’s really insistent to have, she wants a unicorn at her upcoming three year old birthday and she asked for every Minnie Mouse to arrive at the party also. And so that’s just a potential solution of what she could get at her three-year-old birthday party. And now some people might be offended by what I just said. I don’t think I’m wrong though, because I think that even throwing that out as a potential solution is something that is ahistorical.
Israel exists, it’s there, it’s not going anywhere the same way it’s actually not only not going anywhere, it is becoming much more of a regional power. And I think the reason this episode is so important is because the podcast is called Unpacking Israeli History. So we have to know the history of Israel, how we got to this moment. Then also this episode, what we’re doing right now is the future. So I don’t think that anyone who’s listened to Unpacking Israeli History could potentially think that a solution or a future could include a one state solution that is Palestine. Now, if you said to me that there is conversation about a bi-national state, which is something that was a conversation prior to 1948, even by some great Zionist thinkers like Judah Magnus and others, then I’d say, is that what you really mean by the solution to or no?
Ittay Flescher: So yeah, I’ll first say the one state Palestine idea, even though it might sound like a unicorn to us, it’s what Iran believes, it’s what Hezbollah believes, it’s what Hamas believes, it’s what many people on the other hand. Yeah, I’m not saying it’s the solution I endorse. You asked me what are the solutions on the table? This is the solution that is part of the discourse. I don’t like it, but it’s there. And you asked me to describe it to you. Yes, that is.
Noam: Okay, so you’re describing what others are saying. Right. Yeah, okay fine, okay fine, fair. Right. Right. So the dissolution of the Jewish state is solution two. Okay.
Ittay Flescher: You know, in the same way that there are there many Jews that don’t want a state of Palestine to exist in any part of that region. There are are Palestinians and and, the Iranian regime and Hezbollah, they don’t want a Jewish state to exist in any part of that region. And that is that shapes why we have a war, because they don’t recognize it. So I have to acknowledge that as OK, I’ll move on to the next slide.
Noam: Right, right. It shapes the shapes the discourse. That’s helpful. Again, the intellectual distinction is that one exists and one doesn’t. And so therefore it’s to equate the two, I think is is is not a real picture of what’s taking place. They’re not the same. One is the one exists and will it continue to exist? The other one doesn’t exist. And some people who are, you know, for the destruction of the Jewish state wanted to exist.
Ittay Flescher: Yes.
Noam: I think it’s very different, you’re right that it’s part of discourse. Okay, fine. Give me number three.
Ittay Flescher: Okay. The next is number three is the bi-national state. So this used to be actually within the Zionist discourse, Martin Buber, Judah Magnus. This was once within the Zionist tent. It’s obviously no longer in the Zionist tent, but this is a solution that talks about one person, one vote. And like you have in other liberal democracies, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand, that the people would determine the character of their state. And probably there would be a mixture of certain Jewish characteristics and Arab characteristics, characteristics in the state and everyone would have to cooperate and blend some kind of new nationalism that is neither Israeli or Palestinian very very far-fetched idea again not one I support but that’s also on the table.
Noam: Okay. Right. And historically, again, it is helpful to know that this is something that, if my looking at my book called The Jew in the Modern World, like a great Jewish history textbook. So that’s the type of thing that was discussed in early Zionist thought by people who are self-identified Zionists. Now it changed since 1948, just like when facts on the ground change, facts on the ground change reality. But that is something that was discussed, and it is rarely rarely discussed now being descriptive not prescriptive. Okay give me number four solution number four.
Ittay Flescher: And number four is the two state solution. This was what Oslo process sort of began to work towards and then there was the Geneva initiative for those who don’t know that was signed by moderate Israelis and Palestinians in 2003 that really mapped out in detail to 50 page document exactly where the borders would be refugees Jerusalem it was sent to millions of Israeli Palestinian homes to build a movement that would support a two-state solution and the two-state solution is still favored by I’d say 90 95 percent of the countries in the world that have a view on this, have a view that Gaza and the West Bank would be Palestine, Jerusalem would be a shared capital of Israel and Palestine, and then Israel proper would be a Jewish state.
Noam: Right. So this is the two state solution is almost like the de facto, I want to call it polite solution. Like it’s almost like if like if you’re in civic society and you’re having a discussion amongst people, the polite thing to say if you’re in in public, typically this is a kind of funny way to frame it is like, yes, I believe in the two state solution. It’s like that’s what that’s just that’s what you say.
Ittay Flescher: Yes. Yes.
Noam: Right. That’s a fair fair. OK, fine. All right.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah. No. Yes.
Noam: Give me number five.
Ittay Flescher: And number five, the last, and this is the solution I support. So that’s why I saved it for the end.
Noam: Wait, so before the solution, your support, there is a fifth solution. The fifth solution that I’ve heard is, I don’t know if you heard this one called the Palestinian Emirates Plan. Have you heard of this one?
Ittay Flescher: okay. Do you want to extract that one? Because I’ve heard it, I don’t know.
Noam: Yeah, so I was once in conversation with someone who is a well-known historian and he was talking about the argument for what he called the Palestinian Emirates Plan. He believed that the Palestinian territories, referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, should be something that is autonomous. If you understand the history of Islam and you understand the history of the Middle East or West Asia, some people call it, you’ll understand that there were many different clans, these different clans established different types of leadership, and that the Palestinian authority is kind of this creation that is synthetic and it’s not real. And what’s real is the clans that live within each of these societies. So Hebron would have its own emirate. Nablus, Shechem, would have its own emirate. And they would manage all of their own internal affairs and their own internal security and things like that. And this would be in coordination with Israel, but it wouldn’t be its own state. It wouldn’t trust the PA as its own leadership. It would be something that helps with the fragmentation in Palestinian governance, but is something that would allow for these different Emirates, kind of like United Arab Emirates, to be able to have their own, you know, territories within a broader Israeli society.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah. Yeah, look, I’ve heard of that solution. It’s not something I favor because I think ultimately, think Palestinians want to be united and have some sort of common government and flag and anthem, not to have a state here and a state here and a state there. But yeah, I can see why that could be maybe on the interim on the way to a two state solution, that could be an option.
Noam: Okay, fine. So give me option six. This is great. Six options. There’s so many different ways to solve the conflict. It should be simple. There’s so many different ways. Okay, so now we have option number six. This is great. What do you got?
Ittay Flescher: Yes. This is going to be the last one and I saved it for last because it’s the solution that I favor. It’s a little bit complicated so just let me finish it before you ask questions.
Noam: Okay, I will do my best to listen carefully.
Ittay Flescher: Okay, so this solution is called a confederation or also called a land for all or eretz le kulam. The idea of this is that there should be initially two states in one homeland.
And what I mean by that is that Israelis have a national identity and a national story and a national culture and Zionism and Jewish history. And we have a right to have that expressed in a national home because I believe in Jewish self-determination. The Palestinian people have their own language, their own culture, their own dance in the Debka, their own food, et cetera. And they deserve that to have experience recognized in a state.
The problem I have with the two state solution is that if there were two states, there would be one very powerful state in Israel with a top 20 OECD economy and one very poor state in Palestine that 80% of the houses are destroyed in Gaza. Like what kind of state can they build up? And I fear that if there were two states, those two states would be at war almost from the moment that they were created. And so what a confederation does is on the one hand it acknowledges the right of Israelis and Palestinians themselves determination, but it also creates a mechanism of shared government. And probably a model that is similar to this is the European Union. So in the European Union, you have France, you have Germany, have Switzerland, each has its own culture, language, identity, national holidays, national curriculum. And you have a European Union that does shared interests. So maybe a shared currency, shared foreign policy, shared imports and exports, those sorts of things, because the Israeli and Palestinian economies are tied to one another. buy into, we bought, all of us, even in Gaza, use the shekel. It’s the same currency everywhere.
And so I believe that having some sort of shared union, something that sits above the States of Israel and Palestine is more likely to be sustainable than a two state solution, which I see as a divorce. And just one other reason why I favor confederation is because it says all of the land is Israel and all of the land is Palestine. And what I mean by that is under a confederation, Jews can live everywhere. They can live in Hebron. They can live in…they can live in Tel Aviv, they can live in Haifa and Palestinians can also live everywhere that was historically Palestine, all of the land that that was, that was once there, they could live in all of those places. So no one has to give up the ability to do that. And in terms of voting, the way it would work is everyone would have two votes. One vote is for the municipality, which is wherever you live. So it could be an Arab, a Haredi, a secular municipality.
And the other is for a government and you could vote for the Israeli government even if you’d lived in Palestine and could vote for the Palestinian government even if you lived in Israel. So you get two votes for a municipality and a Knesset and the idea of a confederation sort of I think ultimately recognizes the desire for both to have nationalism and creates enough shared infrastructure to prevent future war and that’s why it’s the solution I favor.
Noam: How’d I deal with not interrupting?
Ittay Flescher: You did very well. I could see you wanting to jump in many times and well done.
Noam: No, actually, I actually modeled what we teach with listening. So I was actually listening very carefully. Okay, I have clarity on it. A couple questions. Question one. I’ll say all my questions, no interruption.
Question one. How do we deal with the law of return where the Jewish people have ultimately the state of Israel is the ultimate insurance policy of the Jewish people who have historically been subjugated, oppressed, persecuted, and genocided throughout Western history, world history. How do we deal with the question of law of return? Does every Jewish person get to return no matter what, if something terrible happens and there’s a tremendous amount of Jew hatred out in the world, which makes a lot of people want to return to their home?
Two, how do you deal with the question of the right of return, quote unquote, for Palestinians who have not given up the quote unquote right of return to go back to the home that they were either expelled from, which is fact in 1948 or ran away from also fact in 1948. How do you deal with that?
Question three, what’s the national anthem? How do you think about the national anthem of said confederation is do we replace kol od b’leivah penima, nefesh yehudi? Are we getting rid of that? So is that going away?
And question number four that I have is why in the world would a Jewish person think that living under Palestinian governance and outwardly dressing Jewish is something that is anything other than a death sentence?
Ittay Flescher: Okay. So I’m going to answer the questions not in the order that you asked, but just I’ll start with the anthems. So there would clearly be an Israeli anthem and a Palestinian anthem. The Israeli flag would still be the Magan David and the blue stripes and the Palestinian flag would remain the same. I’m not interested in doing anything that says to Israelis and Palestinians, your flag, your anthem shouldn’t exist anymore. In the same way that if I go to France and Germany, I will see on all government building French and German flags and yes I’ll also see an EU flag but the dominant flag that they are waving you know in sports activities and the Olympics and all of those things is their national flag so I very much believe in Israeli and Palestinian nationalism and they should have people should have a right to do that.
The second question of, you know, why would I do this? There’s so many risks in what I just said. And you outlined them, the war of return, citizenship, security, borders, everything I’m saying is incredibly risky.
And it assumes an immense amount of good faith, right? What if when you’re negotiating a confederation, there’s bad faith and people use different freedoms to perpetrate more violence or Hasbushalem another October 7th. That is a huge risk. And I think one of the flaws of the left in Israel is whilst we often say, oh, we don’t like Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Bibi, we very rarely articulate the fact that the alternative that we’re proposing has a lot of risk and it can go badly. And so the question is, should you take a risk? You know, now we’re sitting sort of, we’re not sitting at a table of playing poker, we’re sitting at a table with literally our lives. And whether we take the risk of giving the Palestinians more rights and changing the status of our borders and our immigration policy and our security and tax policy and all of these things that would happen under a confederation, it’s a huge risk, and things could go wrong and things could go really badly.
And, you know, in my book, I explore in depth what happened in Northern Ireland when they took this risk and changed the structure of their country post the Good Friday Accords and some things worked well and some things didn’t work well. So you’re asking me essentially, before I get into all the detail, why do I want to take this risk when it could potentially explode in my face?
And my simple answer is what I said to your first question is it’s exploding in my face now. The current reality is one where we are not safe. We are not able to be free and all the dreams of Zionism have not been realized. The Palestinians are clearly not safe and many in Gaza are homeless and destitute. And the current solution is so bad that even though what I’m suggesting has enormous risks, I would rather risk that than continue on the current path, which I think is worse than anything, any other alternative. And I think that when you when you talk about politicians, politicians are very good at criticizing things they don’t believe, but then they’re often not very good at saying what they’re for. Because as soon as you say what you’re for people are worried about this, what about the law of return? What about all the questions you asked? And thankfully, I’m not running for office. I don’t need anyone’s votes. I’m an author and I’m a thinker. And what I’m trying to do is trying to put ideas in the world based on my life experience that I think will increase the ability of Israelis and Palestinians to live joyful and meaningful lives, worshipping their religion, living in community, sending their kids to university, growing and being happy. And that’s what I’m trying to achieve. And that’s why I’m putting these ideas forward.
Noam: So all the details of law return, right of return, those will be worked out, worked through in the proposed.
Ittay Flescher: Yes, yes. And here’s the thing, if there’s trust, there’s solutions in the Geneva initiative. Again, I don’t have time because we have to finish in five minutes, but there’s very, very detailed plans about the law of return, about Jerusalem, about Al-Aqsa, about the Kotel. I don’t want to list it all now because it can be overwhelming. All these things are solvable. They’re all solvable.
Noam: Okay, but you’re saying that it’s addressed.
Ittay Flescher: And even go to a landforall.org, they’ve got a 20 page document there that lists this all in detail. I think the key thing missing again is trust. And that’s why I work in facilitating dialogue because I think once you have trust and you have goodwill, anything is possible.
Noam: All right, let’s get two more questions and then I’ll let you go. One is I wanna be concrete with you, no theory, reality. Give me three things that need to happen in the next one to five years to make any version of peace plausible again. Now you’ve been talking about trust, which is a little bit of a theoretical philosophical thing that has substance to it. Do you like but what does the next one to five years look like? Give me three things that need to happen specifics.
Ittay Flescher: Yeah. So practically, if you said, I’m giving you a million dollars to promote peace, the first thing I would do is I would teach all Israelis Arabic and I would teach all Palestinians Hebrew. I think nothing could increase
Noam: That I agree with, number one I agree with.
Ittay Flescher: I’ve been learning Arabic now for four years. And what I find fascinating is when I learn Arabic, I’m not just learning words and grammar and how to construct sentences. I’m learning about Islam and about culture. And I used to be Hebrew teacher. And when I taught Hebrew, I wasn’t just teaching ani, ata, ve’hu. I was teaching about Herzl and Yehuda Amichai poetry. So when you learn a language, you don’t just learn the words, you learn about the culture, you have a teacher who is of that that speaks that language and is of that faith. So I think language instruction doesn’t require a change in politics, it doesn’t require anything, just learning the language of your neighbor is a huge sign to say to them, I want to share this land with you. So that’s number one is I would invest heavily in learning Hebrew and Arabic.
The second thing that I would do is I would look at religion. So in terms of the way that Judaism, Islam and Christianity is taught, there’s the golden rule in each religion, you know, love your neighbor as yourself. But then there’s also the reality of the fact that you could go to many religious institutions where the way the religion is being taught is this whole land belongs to me and God gave promise to me that this land is mine, it’s mine exclusively. And therefore all sorts of violent actions come out of that.
So the next thing is, I think, I think we need to have a very, very serious look about how we teach religion in this land. And again, I’ve got many examples in the book of like, what’s the tier, what they’re doing in Islam, and, know, all the way from Michael Melchior to the mosaic Institute today about ways to teach religious Judaism in a different way. And then the last thing that I would do today is to make sure that there’s 50-50 leadership of men and women in all peace negotiations. In there’s many, many studies that show that where women are involved in peace negotiations, there’s a 30% higher likelihood of that peace agreement being realized. In Oslo, there were almost no women involved. In the negotiations between Hamas to release the hostages, there was almost no women involved as well. In my book, I have a poem by Rachel Goldberg-Polin actually called To the Boys in the Room, where she imagines what would happen if the negotiations were conducted by Israeli hostage mothers and mothers in Gaza whose children are hungry. And she says it would take them far less than 850 days or however many days it was to come to a solution. I think involving women in all negotiations would mean you’d have 50% more ideas around the table. And I think that would change a lot. Learning each other’s language would change a lot. And looking at the way we teach religion, that would be in the next five years, the things I direct my energy towards.
Noam: Do you and I agree then that Rachel Goldberg-Polin should be the next Prime Minister of Israel?
Ittay Flescher: I would definitely vote for her, b’kef.
Noam: Okay. On that, we will conclude our conversation. Ittay, thank you so much for joining me in conversation about the history of Israeli-Palestinian peace, about the future, more importantly, of Israeli-Palestinian peace, and about how you, as an educator and as a human being, try to engage in the topic. I encourage everyone to explore and to look beyond whatever you’re normally interested in, and to find a book like The Holy and the Broken, Cry for Israeli-Palestinian Peace from a land that must be shared. It’ll give you a different perspective. It’ll make you think. It might make you upset. It might make you happy. It might make you optimistic. But ultimately, it’ll be something that you will grapple with and will think a lot about. So thank you so much, Ittay, for joining us and looking forward to continuing the conversation.
Ittay Flescher: Thank you very much.
Noam: Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode or if it made you think, leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify. It really does help other people find the show. One more time, I love hearing from you, so email me at noam@unpacked.media. This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Jason Feld, Rob Pera, and Ari Schlacht. I’m your host, Noam Weissman.
Thanks for being here and see you next week.