What Palestinians Are Thinking (with Dahlia Scheindlin) – Econlib

Dahlia Scheindlin: Thank you for having me on the show.

Dahlia Scheindlin: I’m happy that you opened with that question, and I’d like to start not by delving into numbers exactly–although public opinion is my expertise and I can talk about that. But, I just think it’s not the same country.

Certainly from October 7th onward, I would say the first three weeks to one month were characterized by a sense of complete, dazed shock. Israelis were shocked on so many levels that they didn’t really know how to cope with it. I realized that that whole phase, many of us spoke in half-sentences, and people were just trying to cope with understanding what had happened. Understanding both the attack itself, the nature of the attack, which in certain ways was different from other kinds of attacks. Israel is a place that has experienced terror attacks–by which I mean politically motivated attacks on civilians–over the course of many decades. But, there was something very different about these. It’s what I–I haven’t invented this term, but they were like intimate violence. People marched into civilian homes to slaughter them. And that was something that Israelis hadn’t experienced before. It was so huge and so unpredictable for the average civilian that people were just coping with the attack.

But then, at the very same time, they were coping with the shocking realization that Israel itself hadn’t anticipated or prevented the attack. And, there is an ongoing sense–I think the most common thing you hear in Israel today–is: How could you?

In fact, you opened by talking about how today we are listening to the International Court of Justice hearings on South Africa’s accusations of genocide. But there was something equally important yesterday, which is that the Defense Minister visited communities in the south and he talked to a woman whose grandchildren were killed, her son-in-law was killed, if I’m getting it correctly. And, she was so speechless when she saw him. But then, she started out in a whisper and she said, ‘How could you? How could you? Where were you? Why was there not even one phone call?’ And, this went on and on for quite a while, and it was all broadcast on the news, and the Defense Minister watched her kind of helplessly.

And I think that that epitomizes in many ways how the country is feeling. But particularly, I would say, in the first phase, the shock, the speechlessness really characterized how Israelis were feeling.

In the phases since then, everything is equally sort of dizzying. There’s multi-directional sources of events every single day that Israelis have to figure out what they think about them. The war, the accusations against Israel, the ongoing trauma because soldiers are dying, families are still losing family members. And, I think Israelis are reliving October 7th all the time: a). because the media is listening to many, many stories of personal trauma and what people personally experienced. And, because new evidence is coming to light as we get new investigative reporting about what happened that day, new bits of documentation or testimony, new stories that weren’t heard.

And so, we are both reliving the original trauma; coping with the double trauma of the attack and the sense of being abandoned–is the word that Israelis most commonly used by their own authorities–and the ongoing war; and the sense that the world is against Israel. And so, all of these things are just simply creating a very complex, difficult environment.

And having said that–I promise to get into the numbers at some point–and I’ll just give one quick observation, which is that the Israel Democracy Institute has been doing ongoing surveys, special surveys related to the war and their regular ongoing Israel Voice Index surveys. And they found, interestingly that there was an interesting uptick in the sense of optimism in the first–I think that they first polled maybe after about two weeks. And, a rise specifically among Arab citizens of Israel in the sense of identification with the state of Israel and its problems, but in general. And, I interpreted that as a ‘rally-’round-the-flag’ effect. It’s pretty common in other countries during wartime.

But, those numbers have begun to decline once again. So, these are not huge shifts. We’re talking about around the 40% range of people who say they’re optimistic about the future of democracy and security, which is roughly where it was before the war. But, it seems like the initial sense of rallying together–which I think was mostly Israelis reflecting their spirit, their encouragement that civil society, other people were rallying so much and they were taking comfort in one another–that is starting to fade as people really are digging in for the long and depressing sense of how this war has no end in sight and Israel’s troubles are ongoing.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. First of all, let me clarify that when we talk about the two million, that includes–usually the Central Bureau of Statistics includes Palestinians who are residents of East Jerusalem who are not full citizens. So, we need to take that into account. There’s about 250,000 of those.

The other thing is that many of those people, many of those citizens identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel. Not all of them. Polls vary. My polls show that between 35 and 40%, roughly, sometimes going up and down, identify first of all as Palestinian citizens of Israel or some combination: Palestinian-Israeli, Palestinian-Arab, and others would choose Arab or Arab-Israeli as their primary identity. That doesn’t necessarily block out the other identities. People have multiple identities.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. Exactly. And, they are citizens of–again, other than the permanent residents of East Jerusalem who are not the citizens, most of them are citizens of Israel. It includes, as you pointed out, Muslims, Christians. The vast majority are Muslim. Also Druze, Bedouin.

I think the other thing I would point out just in response, quick response, to what you mentioned about May 2021. First of all, it was an unprecedented situation. As far as anybody really remembers from the beginning of statehood, there hasn’t really been–I’m talking about from 1948 onward–there hasn’t really been a case of citizens, civilians, rioting and implementing violence against one another between Arab or Palestinian citizens and Jewish Israelis. And that was what shocked many people so much.

But, I also want to point out that I think it would be a little bit misleading to characterize the demonstrations of some–we’re talking about small portions of any people who go out and demonstrate or riot–as support for Hamas.

I think that they wouldn’t put it like that. I think those demonstrations initially began as solidarity with home evacuations in the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem, which was actually part of the initial tensions that led to the beginning of that defensive wall–the Guardians of the Wall–operation. And then, it spread to, again, demonstrations that some of them became something like riots and clashes. Partly, I think they would say in solidarity with the damage being done to the people of Gaza. I don’t think very many of them would characterize it as support for Hamas per se. That’s how I hear their communications about it. So, I do think it’s important to clarify.

And so, when we talk about why the response is so different this time: I think that from my conversations, and certainly from polling, we see that most Palestinian or Arab citizens of Israel were frankly horrified by what Hamas did in terms of the brutality, the atrocities, the attacks on civilians. They were as shocked as anybody else. And many of them lost people, as well. A number of the victims–dozens of the victims–were Arab citizens of Israel who were either killed on the spot, sometimes in very brutal ways, or kidnapped. And so, there’s an equal sense of being dazed and confused, so to speak, within that community. And, at the same time, at the very same time, within hours, horror of what’s happening to civilians in Gaza as a result of Israel’s war, in response.

And so, I think that they are undergoing equally kind of confusing emotions around everything, trying to process these what seemed to be zero-sum or what is often felt to be zero-sum interpretations of what’s happening or zero-sum positions.

Now, I don’t think it has to be zero-sum, but many of us feel like we’re being put in that position: Choose a side.

And, typically in some ways this isn’t that different from what the Arab citizens of Israel have been through for most of history. They’re always being caught in between the political sort of tectonic plates of the Israel-Arab conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the occupation.

Many of them, of course, have family in the West Bank and Gaza, in East Jerusalem, because those are families who were broken up during 1948. By most estimates, about 80% of Gazans are refugees from 1948 Israel. And so, they kind of can’t be forced into one side or another demographically or emotionally.

And so, I think all of those things are playing into what’s happened.

At the very same time, I don’t want to underestimate the fact that the police, under the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Police Chief, took a very strict line; and very early on said they will not tolerate demonstrations against the war. They actually physically blocked–unlegally blocked–demonstrations in a couple of Arab communities in the very first weeks. And, there were quite a number of arrests. We have reports of about two hundred–a few hundred–people I would say being arrested for things like Facebook posts that were interpreted as somehow expressing either solidarity with Gaza and interpreted therefore as supporting Hamas on some level. Some of these may be, have, more genuine substantive charges behind them. Some of them seem pretty spurious. We have reports of people who were arrested or investigated for posts they wrote before October 7th.

And so, I think that we can’t underestimate the fact that there’s a lot of fear that if people were to go out, demonstrate, express their opinion, that they could face a very heavy-handed police response. And, all of those things play into the attitudes, I think, in that community.

I want to mention one last thing. There have been–early on, even on October 7th itself, that very evening–there was a convening, initiated by civil society leaders, particularly those who are involved in shared society initiatives, which basically just means Jewish-Arab cooperation in Israel. We have many such groups. NGOs [non-governmental agencies], nonprofit organizations, lots of people who deal with joint education and bilingual activities and peace activities and common social causes. And, they all got together even starting October 7th to talk about how to prevent a resurgence of violence through coexistence-related activities and de-escalation activities. And all of the groups, like, started filling in an Excel form saying: This is what we think we can do to help prevent escalation.

So, my reading is that all of those things have contributed to the fact that we haven’t seen that kind of unrest or violence among Israeli civilians.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. Thank you for that question. Also very good.

I want to also point out something about the 2006 elections. I’ve also heard many times this argument that people voted for Hamas, so they’re all responsible for this. But, 2006 was a long time ago. Okay. That’s 18 years ago–

Dahlia Scheindlin: And, we have to remember that Gaza has a particularly young demographic. About 70% of Gaza’s population is below 30. I’m not sure if I have the exact figures of people below 18, but let’s just say it’s a vast swath of society in Gaza who did not vote for Hamas because there haven’t been elections since then. Not something I justify. I would like to have elections in any country every four years.

Back to your question about public opinion. What we know about public opinion–let’s talk first about the trends and then I’ll try to address the issue of credibility.

There is extensive public opinion among Palestinians. I should also say that I myself work very closely on what’s called the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Survey or the Palestine-Israel Pulse, together with my colleagues at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research run by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We’ve been working together on these Joint Survey Projects since about 2016. And, I’ve been using the work of the Joint Survey Project long before that because it’s very useful. And, that Joint Project began in the year 2000. So, there’s lots of data to look at.

And, what I do think we know pretty clearly–actually from the Arab Barometer survey, not the Joint Survey–is that just before October 6th–sorry, on October 6th, the Arab Barometer completed its final stage of data collection for its work among the Palestinians. And they published the analysis shortly–about two weeks after, I would say– October 7th happened.

And, Hamas was not doing well. It’s not surprising that Hamas was not doing well because Hamas has been leading a society which is living under authoritarian rule with no progress towards Palestinian statehood or liberation from Israeli control, dominance, occupation–you can choose your terminology–but Israel has vast control over life.

In Gaza as well, something to point out also, is that Israelis always say that Israel left Gaza in 2005. Israel withdrew its settlements.

But the fact is, is that Israel retains vast forms of control from the outside of Gaza in ways that we know about.

For example, controlling all of the crossings between Gaza and anywhere else other than the crossing with Egypt, which is in any case coordinated with Egypt. And Egypt joined in with this largely hermetically-closed situation.

So, all of the land crossings, sea crossings, electromagnetic fields, airspace. But also in ways that you can’t see. Israel controls the population registry. Israel decides who gets to travel. Israel gives very, very limited and restricted permits for people who can or can’t get in and out, which is pretty much very few. All permits are an exception. And that includes keeping Palestinians away from the West Bank, which is one of the most severe policies Israel has implemented.

So, these are technical bureaucratic things that don’t make headlines. But they have so much control over the way life is actually lived that from the Palestinian perspective, they’re living under Israeli occupation. Whatever Israel says about having withdrawn settlements. Which it did do. I mean, nobody’s denying that, either.

And, Hamas has not made any progress on changing that. And, Hamas rules with a strict authoritarian and theocratic form of rule. And the economic situation is very difficult because of Israel’s restrictions, which Israel says are related to the security needs, for the last–pretty much since Hamas took over in 2007 in Gaza, Israel has implemented a fairly hermetic kind of closure.

And of course, because of Hamas misuse of what funds it does get. And, it has gotten lots of money from the Qatari government as far as we know. We knew this over the years, but certainly since October 7th, more Israeli investigative reporting and international investigative reporting has proved, again, that the Israeli government tolerated and probably encouraged Qatar to send those kinds of funds to Hamas. And, Hamas used them largely for the purposes of building this vast underground network and building itself up militarily to implement exactly the kinds of policies we’re seeing now.

So, very few actors come out of this looking good. And as a result, the Palestinian population in Gaza in particular was angry at Hamas and their indicators were going down. And, what they were blaming them for was this whole range of things: You know, No opportunities, very poor economic prospects, and no progress towards ending the occupation and achieving Palestinian liberation, nor towards a more free society.

After October 7th what we saw is a vast sense in survey research–and we’ll talk about how credible it is–but a very widespread sense of rallying, like people rally during wartime.

And, the rallying expressed itself in numerous indicators in surveys. Including over 70% of Palestinians in general showing that they thought Hamas was correct to attack. Basically supported what happened or supported Hamas in general or had a positive view of Hamas.

Now, those are difficult numbers to see when you know what happened on October 7th. And, how do I explain them? First of all, I would never want to excuse them. I don’t think that’s my role as a public opinion researcher.

But, I will say that what I thought about is the fact that 85% of Palestinians in the latest PSR [Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research] survey–that’s the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research–had not seen the video evidence of atrocities that were committed on October 7th. And the way the survey questions are asked is the way people talk about this, which is it’s basically a military operation.

Now, I don’t–it’s hard to know whether people are brainwashed or simply not opening the right news channels, but I think we as Israelis should understand exactly how you can kind of shut out the news that you don’t want to see. Because the truth is that most Israelis aren’t really watching the devastation of Gaza as well.

And, I think this is the reality: is that most Palestinians see what happened, or most Palestinians who answered those surveys in that way, see what happened as a resurgent military response and an attack on Israel that was designed to shake everybody’s complacency, put Gaza’s suffering back on the map. And, it gave them a sense of pride that all of a sudden Hamas had managed to strike back at an enemy they feel has been tormenting them for all these years. So, it’s not a pleasant picture, but it is a reality of how people behave and think in conflict.

There is another aspect to this, which is that it’s not a free society. And, as we know about any polling in free society, part of the problem is that: a). people feel intimidated, as you pointed out, to say the wrong thing. However, I’m less concerned about that because I’ve been tracking Palestinian public opinion for so many years, and I see that the fact that we have fluctuations, you can follow trends, that there are rational trends over time responding to either negotiations or conflict, shows that people do respond honestly. But, we also have to think about what it means to live in a non-free society in terms of the range of ideas they have at their disposal.

Okay? So if everybody in your society and all your news channels and newspapers and dinner table conversations and leaders are talking about what a great military operation this was and mention nothing about atrocities, that’s sort of the range of ideas you have in your head about what happened.

Again, I don’t want to justify it, but I do think we have to understand what’s behind these kinds of numbers.

I should say one more thing. We often see during wars with Israel–during the many wars that Hamas and Israel have waged–that public opinion supporting Hamas goes up and then usually a few months after the war, it goes back down as people sink back into the depressing reality in which Hamas rules their lives.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Well, it certainly changed my prior attitudes of how effective the blockade was. Listen, I should say: I’ve been critical of the blockade pretty much since it started. But even I thought, ‘Well, I understand there’s a security need for it. And, I think what happened for me on October 7th–among many questions that I had to ask myself about my prior views–but one of them was a more severe criticism of the blockade. Maybe there’s a security justification, but we should be limiting the damage that it does to civilians and human rights.

Now, I think after October 7th, one of the first questions I asked–and I researched this because I wrote a whole article trying to answer the question–is: What in the world did it do for us on a security level? And, I don’t disagree with the fact that Hamas is essentially armed to the teeth. Where did it get those weapons? Well, from what I understood, some of them are homemade as we know. Some of them are locally manufactured. Most of them–I think that the consensus of the Israeli experts I spoke to from the security establishment–were smuggled in probably through the Rafah area, through Egypt–

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. However, some of them indicated to me–some of the people I spoke to hinted, more than hinted–that they were probably also being smuggled across Israeli crossings. Maybe less and possibly even by sea.

And so, what we see is that the Israeli policies managed to embitter the lives of civilians in Gaza for 16 years before October 7th, but without much security benefit. Hamas was able to smuggle in all these weapons–or build them–even though Israel was severely restricting the kinds of materials that they called ‘dual use’. So, materials that Palestinians would say ‘We need concrete to build homes,’ and Israelis said, ‘No, you’re going to use them for tunnels or weapons,’ and so Israel restricted those very severely.

And still Hamas managed to arm itself to the teeth through these various means, and wage war together with Israel four or five times depending on how you count each operation before October 7th.

And, in between those operations, rocket fire on people in the south.

And so, I don’t exactly know what the security justification was.

And in fact, there are some critical–you know, people from–I think the ones who were formerly of the defense establishment speak much more freely. And one of them said that from the earliest stages of this policy, he was critical of it because he said it didn’t really have sufficient security benefit. And, even from inside the system that people in the army at the highest levels kind of were aware that the security value of the closure policy was not significant enough. Because, rockets can go over a wall or a fence and of course over an underground barrier; and that it wasn’t able to really stop the actual forms of armament.

That leaves us with a lot of questions, among the many, many questions Israelis are asking of their authorities and their policies.

So, on your question of: What does it mean that there is some wealth in Gaza? I don’t know how there are some people with villas. Of course, there are some rich people in every society, whether it’s because they’re at the top of the pyramid and whether they are siphoning off money, or maybe because they’ve been historically wealthy families. We all know that wealth is transmitted over generations, and that’s no different when you’re in an occupied undemocratic society than when you’re in a free-market capitalist heaven like the United States. I mean, wealth is transferred over generations, and that could be another reason.

It doesn’t justify–I don’t think it has any connection to the fact that there’s 45% unemployment in Gaza and over 60% among young people.

And so, the vast majority of Gazans–I haven’t seen a breakdown, but I’m imagining that if there are people who have fancy villas–and I have no doubt that there are; I’ve seen the pictures, as well–that they represent the tiniest little sliver of the top brass, whether it’s Hamas-connected people or whoever else. It just doesn’t represent the experience of most Gazans.

And, wealth is also one thing, but even those people who have villas are still living in a very restricted environment under Israel’s form of blockade. And again, the security justification for that has been severely called into question by what happened on October 7th.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Or export. Import or export.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Import or export.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. I smiled when you said that I’m on the left in Israeli politics. Of course I am, but I also always bristle just a little bit at labels only because I know that when people hear them, they tend to assume a very precise set of views. And, I’d like to think that I do–

Dahlia Scheindlin: No. No. It’s not you. It’s not you–

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. We should put[?edit?] that out.

Dahlia Scheindlin: No, no, no. I don’t think we should start over. I think that it’s a legitimate description. I just would like to clarify that I would like to hope that I don’t fall into predetermined positions on everything because I have positions that are generally viewed as left-wing in Israel.

And, we should say that those focus–I know this both from my personal experience living here, but also from my survey research over the last 25 years–that when you say you are left, center, or right-wing in Israel, first and foremost, you are referring to your attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Israeli-Arab issues or Israeli-Jewish identity issues in Israel. Those are, first and foremost, the way people understand the terms left, right, and center here.

And, anything to do with economic policy or the size of the state or tax rate is so marginal as to be actually irrelevant to the concept of left, right, and center. Almost. There are slight differences, but they are not necessarily in the direction you would expect over time. And, the differences between the parties would be a whole divergent, tangential conversation to try to understand what we mean when we talk about left, right, and center.

The only other factor you should take into account when understanding left, right, and center in Israel is religion. How religious you are and your perception of whether there should be separation of religion and state is another major determinant of whether you consider yourself to be left, right, and center. I have some disagreements with colleagues of mine over whether it’s the Number One determinant. And of course, it very much overlaps with attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s mostly a largely religious people–not only, but largely religious people–who think that Israel, by definition should include all of the land from the river to the sea. And, if they had their way, probably even land beyond the Jordan River: well into Jordan, as promised by the Bible.

So, and then, people who are on the center and the left don’t have that kind of biblical basis for looking at the geographic spread of where the land of Israel should be, and say, ‘We need a pragmatic understanding of what the state should be according to international law and ways that we can govern,’ and specifically to preserve a Jewish majority within more narrow boundaries.

So, these are the kinds of things that determine whether you’re left, right, or center.

So, in that divide, my views of the conflict for most of my life, I have to say, have been that a political and diplomatic resolution to the conflict is a better way of containing the reality that we have an ongoing historic–over a century old–conflict between two people who both claim a right of national self-determination pretty much in the same land.

Now, I think the first major divide is people who think that we need to resolve this militarily and that one side simply needs to defeat the other completely through some sort of military means, whether it’s destroying or controlling through military means. But, that’s one general approach.

And my approach has been the other side. No, I think we would do better to have a political resolution in order to determine by agreement how the people should live. And, the other side of that is that I do believe that if Jews have a right to self-determination–which I do think they have–that Palestinians also have a right to self-determination.

That’s part of the organizing principle of the 20th century. And, you know, it started in the early parts of the 20th century emerging out of currents in the late 19th century that people have a right to determine their future. They don’t always have to seek self-determination in the form of independent statehood. There are communities that have decided that they want to live as a national minority, or they can have some other form of autonomous entity.

But if they are a national group who seek sovereignty in an independent state and they have a reasonable claim to land, territory of people and government and the ability to have foreign relations–which is pretty much the accepted definition of a state–that they should have statehood. And Palestinians, I think, have an indisputable claim to self-determination in this region.

So, the question is: How do we reconcile these two claims?

Well, for much of my own life, I thought the best and neatest kind of political means of containing those two seemingly contradictory national claims–that they both wanted to have national self-determination in the form of a state in the same land–through a simple division of the land. Right? Just divide the land in two. It’s a small land, but you divide it into slightly smaller halves and each side gets about half or whatever it is. And that should be the end of the story.

Over the years I came to be critical of my own views. It wasn’t, of course, just my view. This became the general global paradigm, I should say, for how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A). It was never a half-half split. If you look at the history of Mandate Palestine, the territory that was controlled as a British-run mandate up until 1947 when the British decided to end the mandate–which then formally ended on 1948–of that whole historic region, the modern state of Israel has sovereignty over more than 70% of it. So, it’s not a half-half split.

But nevertheless, many people like me still thought that the Palestinian state should exist in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem with the final exact location of the borders to be determined by negotiations. And, the two sides kind of put up a wall, separate–each side has to work out their own form of statehood. And end of story.

What happened was that around 2010, 2011, 2012, I started to realize that it was no longer feasible. That, Israeli citizens had spread out in the form of what we call settlement activity so deeply into the West Bank–which was the kind of biggest chunk of the future Palestinian state–that it became impossible to imagine uprooting so many of them. And, they were spread out much more than just these clusters of settlements close to Israel’s, what we call ‘the green line,’ or close to sovereign Israel.

And so, first I started to think that it was unfeasible. I also was looking at Jerusalem because the idea of a two-state solution involved splitting Jerusalem: essentially putting up a boundary between the parts of Jerusalem that would be Palestinian and would belong to a Palestinian state and the parts of Jerusalem that would belong to Israel. I started to realize that that was unfeasible from a municipal perspective; undesirable from an economic and social perspective.

And so, I started to think that this really can’t happen anymore. For a long time, people talked about the closing window for reaching a two-state solution due to settlement spread and these kinds of things. And I started to think what a shame. But then over time, I stopped thinking what a shame, and I started to think, ‘You know, if I really consider myself to be a liberal–right? I believe in individual rights–but I also believe the universality of human worth and the universal application of human rights and the ability of people to live in pluralist societies based–on the shared basis–of human rights; and that actually isn’t really a set of values that is manifested in the idea of ethno-national segregation and partition. And, I started to think that actually it would be better if the two sides are not ripped apart artificially. Not that it’s possible anyway. And, that we still need two states because the two sides still have national self-determination claims.

And, that’s how I came to identify more with the idea of two states in a confederated approach, which means that they are really two states expressing the national self-determination claims of both sides with general territorial boundaries. And, a boundary between them: but, a boundary that is more open, more porous, that is designed to give access to people to be able to travel and even live as permanent residents on the other side if they accept the sovereignty of the other side. And, that is a mechanism that allows you to have settlements if they accept the sovereignty of a Palestinian state, but they want to stay on land they consider part of their history. Settlers can be there. Palestinians who accept the sovereignty and law of Israel can live there. They cooperate on economy and other shared needs like climate, environment, health, security in ways that both sides are equal. And both sides are states, but they do share what are very clearly common needs on an equal basis.

And so, that’s what I’ve been supporting up until now. And, in fact after October 7th, I think that I support it even more, which, for reasons that I can explain.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Confederation. We prefer confederation.

Dahlia Scheindlin: It’s only reinforced it. It’s only reinforced it. When you say that we used to have a situation in which we lived together, we still have a situation in which we live together. Twenty percent of the residents of Israel are Palestinians or Arabs. It’s far from a perfect relationship, and the struggles for equality have been long and difficult. But I think that it’s indisputably–the empirical reality is that we had Arab-Jewish violence and very limited rioting over the course of not even two weeks–once in our entire national history of 75 years. And, Gaza, which is the most isolated, shut down, hermetically sealed part of this land where you had the greatest implementation of partition and separation is where we saw the most savage violence coming to threaten Israelis. I find it even more urgent in a way to reach some sort of a mechanism that allows just the level of openness that’s needed.

It’s not a call for a one-state solution. I don’t think either society is willing to give up on its political or national identity. I think we still need, again, those national self-determination claims. And, we do have geographic regions that are mostly Palestinian or mostly Jewish.

But, I think it becomes almost indisputable that when people have more access to each other, not necessarily because of coexistence programs–even though I like them. But, I think that what we really have to accept is that we are interdependent. We have shared needs. Where we have professional economic and social needs from one another, we manage to make it work. Just go to any hospital in Israel today. I’m not just talking about people who clean the floors. I’m talking about nurses, doctors, and heads of hospital units who are Palestinian citizens of Israel–or Arab, however they define themselves–and I don’t think anybody minds being treated by them except for these very random and rare individual fringe cases that make the news because they’re the exceptions.

Dahlia Scheindlin: I think the urgency is greater than ever.

Dahlia Scheindlin: It was formed in 1987. I don’t know when the charter was made. It was formed in 1987–

Dahlia Scheindlin: 2017. Yes.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. And, they also began to talk about having a state within the 67 areas.

Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. To be blunt about it, I’m very concerned about radical Islam, fundamentalist Islam. Any interpretation of Islam that encourages violence, particularly against civilians. Guess what? I’m equally concerned about it in Israeli society. I’d like to point out that four of the five parties currently sitting in the governing coalition are specifically religious parties. Two of them are ultra-Orthodox, two of them are ultra-nationalist religious parties. They call themselves religious Zionism. They actually ran together. So, you could say it’s in a way, three out of four parties, but they’ve broken up ever since the government was established, so it’s four out of five parties. Four out of five parties in the governing coalition in Israel are devoted religious parties that place the word of God, Torah, Jewish law, Jewish scripture above anything else. Above even Israeli civil law. How do we know that? Because they tried to undermine the judiciary without so much as a care in the world.

In other words, the aim of fulfilling Israel’s own messianic missions, for example, of annexing the West Bank, was so important that they wanted to sacrifice Israel’s judicial independence and undermine its judicial institutions in order to have full freedom for the government to do that.

And, I spent this morning–on Thursday, 11th of January–watching the International Court of Justice hearings in which the major accusations against Israel were not only what Israel is doing, but the stated intentions of some of its leaders; and much was made of the fact that the Prime Minister himself has drawn on the Bible to encourage Israelis to think about wiping out the seed of Amalek–Israel’s biblical enemy–drawing on religious texts and showing soldiers dancing around in Gaza citing these biblical phrases calling for the destruction of the other.

I am worried about religious fundamentalism in any political system that claims that it has a liberal democratic outlook or civilian state secular authorities. And of course, Hamas never claimed that. But Israel does claim it.

And so, yeah, I think that if we’re ever going to have something like two states that live in a more open confederated association, they will have to have some basic shared concepts of human rights, which is a completely secular prospect. It says that everybody of all faith and confessions[?] from any background, any culture shares certain inalienable human rights. And, they will have to have some sort of an institution to guarantee that, especially if there are people living on the other side as permanent residents.

So, I don’t think it’s something we can implement tomorrow, but I do think we had better start charting a course to get there, because otherwise we’re going to be locked into these cycles of non-decision, ongoing military control, ongoing resentment and hostility. And that feeds extremism on both sides.

I want to point out something else. I don’t think you can erase all religious fundamentalism. I don’t think you can erase all political extremism. And I don’t think you can erase all violence. Nowhere in human society, anywhere on the globe, have we managed to do that. The problem is we are exacerbating it: we’re fueling it, all of us in this region. And, I think that the aim should not be to promise that I can provide perfection with this approach. The aim is to say: Let’s remove all factors that are likely to fuel more extremism, make people who wouldn’t otherwise have been so hostile or violent into the kind of people who join in those violent efforts. [More to come, 53:22]