The Deepening Disconnect Over Gaza

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Four months after Hamas’s October 7 attack, the war in Gaza continues, with little reason to think that Israel is particularly close to achieving its declared goals—and the Middle East is on the precipice of a full-scale regional war. It may be that that war has already begun.

To understand where things go from here, I spoke to Dahlia Scheindlin, who has written for Foreign Affairs on Israeli politics and public opinion, and Dalia Dassa Kaye, who has written on the regional response to the war in Gaza. Both had plenty to say about a better path forward, but neither was hopeful that the key actors would choose to follow it.

I’m thrilled to be joined today by Dahlia Scheindlin—she is the author of the new book The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel—and Dalia Dassa Kaye, a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University. Welcome to you both.

DALIA DASSA KAYE

Thank you.

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Thank you for having me.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We wanted to have both of you on in spite of, not because of, the fact that you share a first name. So I’ll resort to somewhat stiltedly referring to each of you by your full names.

Dahlia Scheindlin, let me start with you. You wrote in our recent piece, a piece that we published shortly after the October 7 attacks, that—and I’m quoting you here—“the attacks showed the terrible failure of the idea that the Palestinian political question could be sidelined indefinitely without any cost to Israel, a belief so axiomatic among Israel’s leadership that commentators found names for it: conflict management, or ‘shrinking the conflict.’” Say a bit about what that idea was and why you think it’s been exposed as so faulty—but, perhaps more curiously at this point, it does not seem that that conclusion is being assimilated into Israeli politics or policy debate right now; that it is, if anything, going in another direction. So what’s the underlying reality as you see it, and what are the politics of that in Israel at this moment?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

I think that idea is being incorporated into the Israeli governing decision-making level, but not with the same conclusion that maybe your listeners would expect. So the idea was that we don’t need to reach any sort of agreed political resolution to the conflict. I think that is the shortest way of explaining what the Israeli leadership had been conveying to itself and to its people for many years. And what I mean by that is that there was no need to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. So, no bilateral agreement, unilateral action could be okay.

But ultimately, the general political situation between Israel and the Palestinians for the last many years—it depends on when you want to start counting, but let’s say since 2005, when Israel dismantled settlements from Gaza (mistakenly, I think, labeled a disengagement because Israel continued to control Gaza in many ways from the outside)—but since then, there were efforts at negotiations. They were not considered very auspicious efforts, and they fell apart—and kind of Israelis convinced themselves that this holding pattern was okay. And the holding pattern, I think that’s where you also have a big disagreement within Israeli society over what that holding pattern was.

First of all, many people thought it could never be stable, it was always going to be dynamic. And then I think that for Palestinians or for any Israeli who looked at the policy critically, what they saw was that Israel is controlling Palestinians—either in the West Bank in various forms, in various regimes, in various places in the West Bank—or Gaza, effectively, from the perimeters, from outside in ways that affect everything about life in Gaza. And that that situation was the status quo—that Israel had dominance and control over Palestinians.

But the rest of Israeli society—and I dare say the majority, because we see which parties were getting elected—believed that there was an equilibrium. Because in their mind, and we hear this many times after October 7: “Well, Israel tried already to give Palestinians control over their lives through Oslo and through the disengagement, and it’s not working.” But up until October 6, they thought it was working, because they thought the Palestinians had significantly more control than Palestinians actually did have.

So I think that that sense that the status quo was legitimate and sustainable was the reigning paradigm among Israeli policymakers for many years. And they called it things like “managing the conflict”—and lately, I think the same concept dressed up in a different form was called “shrinking the conflict.” And this is something that even the change government—the brief, short-lived 18-month government when Netanyahu was not prime minister, between 2021 and late 2022—basically held the same principles with tiny little adjustments that weren’t very meaningful.

What happened after October 7, I would say, as I began saying in the beginning, is that many Israelis, including policymakers, said, “Well, that paradigm needs to be changed. We can’t continue with the status quo.” But the vast majority of Israeli political leaders—certainly on the right, which is most political leaders at this point—and certainly the government and the vast majority of Israelis are saying, “Right, we can’t keep up the status quo. Israel needs to have more control.” Again, because their starting point was, to my mind mistakenly, that Israel had given some control to Palestinians and needed to make sure that Israel maintains more control. And that’s where we are now, which puts Israel in a great divide and great opposition to where the rest of the world is—or those few Israelis and Palestinians, of course, who see the situation differently on the eve of October 7.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

When you watch what is unfolding in Gaza now, and the evolving Israeli debate about how this offensive proceeds, what the theory of victory is and what happens afterwards, do you see a clear strategy either from Netanyahu or from the war cabinet more broadly? Is there a strategy? Is there a theory of victory? It’s a little hard to discern from the outside.

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

No, it’s one of the big questions, I think, in Israeli life, too. And Netanyahu, as you hear, is constantly reinforcing the idea that there must be total victory. But he hasn’t gone further to explain what would be the real markers of this total victory other than early goals that we’ve been hearing from the very beginning, which involve crushing Hamas’s military and governing capacity. And if on a good day, when he remembers to talk about releasing the hostages—like today, the day that we’re recording happens to be the day that Israel did manage to actually free two hostages through a military action, which is the first time in this entire war. But we’ve never really been given a hard marker for what it means to topple their governing capacity, which is much more complicated because the military and political wing are fairly separate as far as we know.

And the governing structures, of course, involve everybody from the top political appointees and real senior officials down to the clerks at the health ministry. And so, what does it mean to destroy Hamas’s governing capacity? The Israeli government has never entered into that kind of detail. So I think a lot of people are left to presume, both Israelis and Palestinians, that what the Israeli government simply means is the greatest possible level of destruction in Gaza, and certainly that’s how Palestinians there experience it. And I think in many ways it allows Israelis to say, “Well, the more destruction, the more we’re winning.”

But there are questions—we see this in survey research—doubts about what those goals really mean, how they can be achieved; and doubts about whether the government is making these decisions purely on the basis of security-related considerations. And very high suspicion—in fact, a majority of Israelis, from the beginning, who believe that the government is making these decisions largely based on political considerations.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dalia Dassa Kaye, let me put a version of that same question to you. Do you see a clear Israeli strategy in Gaza right now?

DALIA DASSA KAYE

No, I do not see a clear strategy. I mean, it is clear what Israel hopes to achieve, and it is understandable after the trauma of October 7 that they want to prevent another threat emanating from Gaza or anywhere else in the region into Israeli territory. But the approach—and I think this is the general consensus in the region and the wider region, which I think Dahlia alluded to, is that there is a real fear that there is not a lot of thinking through what happens in the day after. And I think the day after is a misnomer. I mean, we’re talking about months or really years after. It’s going to take years to rebuild after such a devastating war.

But there is a real worry that before the region thinks about how to rebuild a governance structure for the Palestinian Authority or some kind of unified Palestinian government, how to reconstruct Gaza before you invest billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance and humanitarian assistance that will be most urgently needed—what is this going to go toward if in another year or two we’re facing the same problem again? So I think that is the biggest worry. It’s a worry in Washington. I think it’s a worry globally. And it’s certainly a worry among Israel’s neighbors.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dahlia Scheindlin, let me go back to you to get at some of those political questions that you alluded to a bit earlier. You wrote in your Foreign Affairs piece in October that, quote, “Many Israelis put the country’s disastrous security failure squarely on the shoulders of Netanyahu, the man at the top.” You had some survey research in recent months that has affirmed that that continues to be true. Do you see those positions evolving, sustaining? And when it comes to these questions about what is driving Netanyahu as the war continues, what are the suspicions, and what are the grounds for believing those suspicions may be true?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

One of the interesting dynamics that I’ve seen, I believe this is an Agam Institute survey at Hebrew University, is that the people who blame Netanyahu—and it is a very large majority, I think we’re talking between 60 and 70 percent if I remember correctly, but more than that—there’s always a breakdown of intensity; “Do you blame him a lot or somewhat?” I think the question is, is he solely or partly responsible? And what I saw—again, I am quite sure it’s the Agam Institute surveys, which is a panel survey, so it’s the same respondents over time—it turned out that the number of people who blamed him exclusively had doubled over the months, so from something like 17 to 35 percent. And that’s just, of course, a part of those who said he is responsible. And that’s an interesting finding. It overlaps with findings that I’m seeing in tracking surveys showing that people are increasingly concerned about whether Israel can achieve its goals in the wars.

And of course, the question gets asked in different ways by different organizations, but always comes to the conclusion that a majority believe that he’s bringing political considerations in; and what I mean, in a way, by political considerations are personal political considerations. Netanyahu, of course, is first of all on trial for three different counts of corruption. He’s been on trial since 2020 when his trial first opened. He’s been under investigation and then indictment for years, pretty much since 2016, 2017, when the investigations opened; the indictment was announced in late 2019.

So roughly from 2019 onward, we saw that the political system was partly paralyzed over this because a number of parties refused to go into a coalition with him. And then, of course, being officially on trial, the same parties would not go into a coalition led by him, and therefore he’s very limited in who his coalition partners are. And the only ones that would go into a coalition with him are the parties that were in the original coalition prior to October 7, before he formed an expanded war cabinet. And those were very, very extremist, ultranationalist parties: two of them, well, they ran together, but they’ve since broken up; and his traditional allies of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, together with his Likud Party. But he’s extremely dependent on them, largely for that reason. And at this point, it’s not only for that reason; it’s that very few other parties want to go in with the extremist nationalists. So in other words, he’s the only one who could really take those parties on as his coalition partners, and they’re the only ones who would have him. But Netanyahu knows that he’s in a very precarious situation politically.

And so, when people ask me if I think that he’s making his decisions based on his personal political calculations—I don’t have a way of looking inside his head, but I do look inside the head of the public, and the fact that, consistently, a strong majority of Israelis believe that he is operating from the wrong considerations to save his personal political fortunes is a serious stain on his legitimacy at a time of war.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What are Israeli views of Palestinian civilian casualties, how much does that register in debate within Israel? And what is the view of international opinion, whether it’s the South African case of the International Court of Justice or other forms of international criticism? Is that seen as an important strategic consideration or geopolitical consideration, or is that just far from Israeli debate that is still very focused on the hostages and the wake of October 7, and doing whatever is necessary in Gaza regardless of those considerations?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Yeah, none of these are far from the Israeli debate. But, of course, I think that for one thing, let’s just set the stage: the overwhelming focus in Israel is on the situation of Israelis, Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers, who died that day, who lived that day, what happened on October 7. It’s almost as if our media intends to get to every single person’s story from October 7, because a lot of the airtime is taken up with people telling their personal stories, either about what they went through that day, or what’s happening with their hostage family members, or released hostages, or soldiers who were killed. And then the news that is discussed generally in between those personal stories certainly is focused on Israel’s political considerations, and that could include the international situation.

But let me start with your first question about the Palestinians. I think that Israelis are having a very, very difficult time distinguishing civilians from combatants, and that is partly because their leaders are telling them every day, all the time, that every Palestinian is responsible. And Israelis themselves are repeating this in light of their general—some of them because of their preexisting beliefs, and some of them based on what happened on October 7, but it has become a very sweeping approach. And even people who claim that they may pay attention to what happens to Palestinian civilians—I think the reality, and certainly we have indications of this in surveys; the Peace Index survey that came out recently from Tel Aviv University shows that a sweeping number of Israelis think that Israel has used the right amount of force or should use more. A sweeping majority of Israelis think that the casualties, the level of destruction including civilian casualties, is justified. And these are the realities of the Israeli public today. I don’t think there’s any nice way to put it. That’s the case.

Having said that, there is an understanding that there’s vast destruction in Gaza. There’s an understanding of the level of destruction of civilian infrastructure. The numbers are certainly being repeated all the time, even if the visuals aren’t as graphic on the Israeli television screens as they may be on Al Jazeera. But you can’t really characterize Israelis as not knowing. Everybody can know; we live in an age of information. Everybody who wants to know—just as I think that Palestinians who say they didn’t believe that there were atrocities committed on October 7, it’s a matter of what people choose to believe and choose to find out. Anybody can find the information, including Palestinians and including Israelis, in terms of the level of destruction in Gaza. And so I think that there is a broad awareness; but Israelis are certainly putting their own experiences first.

In terms of the international community, you have to remember that Israel’s relationship with international institutions and international law was not exactly at its healthiest for pretty much most of the history of Israel and international law. So from the very beginning, the concept of international law as it has been applied in ways that would constrain Israeli policy has historically been seen as a nuisance at best, and at worst an anti-Israel tool that was designed specifically to target Israel. And this is again a theme that has been prevalent in Israeli society, historically, and it continues to be extremely prevalent. I think the more the occupation gets older and deeper, and more extensive, and ventures into annexation, which it has for years, there’s been increasing efforts on the part of Palestinians or their advocates to use international law and international courts, and that makes Israel more defensive, and reject it.

And so of course all eyes were on the ICJ, just as all eyes were on the UN Security Council when they were debating ceasefire measures—but usually not really paying attention to the true ins and outs of the debates until it comes to the moment of crisis when these international systems or institutions are about to do something that’s uncomfortable for Israel. And then everybody pays attention and says, “Aren’t they all anti-Israel, if not outright antisemitic?” And so again, these are some of the very prevalent themes.

There is also a clear understanding of how much Israel needs its allies for support for this war, and I think there is also maybe an increasing realization that Israel doesn’t have very many stalwart allies in this. It’s the United States, it’s the United Kingdom, it’s Germany—and to some extent other European countries, but everybody knows Europe is divided.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dalia Dassa Kaye, let me turn to you to talk a bit about the regional dynamics here. You were quite attuned to the risks of escalation shortly after the October 7 attacks; you wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs in the days afterward warning of the escalation risks. I’m curious both what you were focused on at that time, what you saw as the chief risks—and as you look at what has happened in the region in the months since, there have, of course, been attacks in the Red Sea and the U.S. response; there’s been a lot happening on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon; there have been the militia attacks in Iraq and Syria and the U.S. response. There’s one way of seeing that as escalation that will continue, another way of seeing it as tit-for-tat that’s actually quite constrained. So I’m curious both what you saw as the risks in the days afterwards, but also how you see those dynamics now.

DALIA DASSA KAYE

At that time, a lot of people were talking about why this wouldn’t turn into a regional war. It would not extend beyond Gaza because everybody had, the main players had reasons for restraint. Most importantly, Iran wasn’t interested in a direct conflict with Washington—or Israel, for that matter. Hezbollah wasn’t interested and was particularly restrained. And then, of course, the United States was not interested. The last thing the Biden administration wanted, and we saw this very early in the war, the Biden administration sent two aircraft carriers very early in the war, signaling, “Don’t think about it, anybody who wants to try to capitalize on this.” So it wasn’t just me thinking, it was a lot of people worried about this.

I think what’s notable is that now we’re not talking about the question of will it become a regional conflict; it is a regional conflict. Dan, you just alluded to a few of the fronts, but we’re on a multi-front conflict now. It’s not a region-wide war, but I think what’s really important to keep in mind is that you don’t need a full-fledged war for lots of bad and costly developments to be happening. And what is remarkable is even though the United States really worked hard to stay out of this war, now, moving into the fifth month of the Gaza war, the United States is now directly engaged in two military theaters.

Now, we can say that this is contained and controllable and calibrated, and the U.S. response has been controlled and calibrated, it is not attacking within Iran itself. It’s not even attacking Iranian commanders outside of Iran, although the Israelis are. But I worried in that piece, and I continue to worry today, that keeping a conflict controlled and calibrated when you have the unpredictability of events on the ground—as was occurring early in the war; but is only heightened now, as so many of these non-state actors, they’re supported by Iran, but they have their own agendas—as this unpredictability increases, it is a very, very risky and dangerous situation.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The Biden administration has, of course, stressed that same tension or that same balance that you referred to; the need to restore deterrence, but also to avoid escalation, especially when it comes to direct encounters between U.S. and Iranian forces. How well do you think the U.S. government has done, the U.S. military has done at getting that balance right? Are there things that you would change in their strategy or their response?

DALIA DASSA KAYE

I think they’re doing their best in terms of the military approach, in terms of calibrating. I think there has been a lot of caution to keep the response—even when there were U.S. deaths, which was a U.S. redline—there was a real attempt to limit the response to non-state militia actors and not target Iran directly. So I think that was a wise decision, to try to contain this from really becoming a U.S.-Iran war. So in that sense, yes. But I think where they have fallen short, and what is going to be very difficult, is to really see where the endgame is here, because these tit-for-tats will continue continuously if you ultimately do not end this war.

Now, as I said, a lot of these conflicts started before the Gaza war, but there is no question that they have intensified considerably since the onset of the war. And the longer this war goes on, the worse these regional conflicts are going to get, and the harder it is to contain them. So the administration is, I think, right in trying to keep it contained, but ultimately is not addressing the fundamental problem, which is the war is continuing. And they are not supporting a permanent ceasefire; this is really an issue that has put them at odds with the wider region, which is unanimously in favor of a ceasefire. This was true early in the conflict, it’s certainly true at this stage. And I think there is a sense that the United States could be doing more on the diplomatic track.

I think you see some positive developments here in recent weeks. And interestingly, one of the most worrying flashpoints on the Israeli-Lebanese border could potentially be the best prospect for a diplomatic, I wouldn’t say “solution,” but arrangement that could contain things. The United States has sent an envoy—I think that’s a very wise move—to try to arrange some kind of deal with Hezbollah to pull back from the border. Not to the extent that the Israelis would like—that actually is written in a UN Security Council Resolution that ended the last war, that Dahlia talked about, in 2006—but to move them away seven kilometers, is what’s being discussed. Try to give everybody a way to save face and just calm that border region, because that is an extremely dangerous flashpoint. Because as bad as this Israel-Hamas war is, if we have a full-out Israel-Hezbollah “take two,” this is going to be far worse than anything we saw in 2006, especially coming on the heels of the catastrophe we see in Gaza, and the tension and emotions and anger that are so high in the region right now, and the capacity of Hezbollah is so much more sophisticated and dangerous now.

So that, I think, is promising. But ultimately, there’s a lot of disappointment that the United States has been falling short in terms of rhetoric and action, in terms of pushing for an end to the fighting. And ultimately, it’s really hard to get partners on our side. Dahlia talked about Israel’s limited partners in this campaign—even in the maritime arena, where we should have global support for stopping the Houthis. This is a global problem; this isn’t an American problem or Israeli problem. We are having a really hard time, the United States is having a hard time in getting even Middle East Red Sea states—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—to join us in this maritime campaign against the Houthis. This is because there’s a lot of frustration with the lack of U.S. diplomacy and the lack of willingness to really press Israel and have influence on Israel in restraining the extent of this war.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dalia Dassa Kaye, how should we understand Iranian strategy when it comes to other proxies that are perhaps less potent but also less essential than Hezbollah—whether the Houthis and their attacks on the Red Sea; the Shiite militia attacks, including on U.S. forces that you referred to—how does that fit into Iranian strategy? What does it tell us about their calculations at this point?

DALIA DASSA KAYE

Well, it’s clear that they are capitalizing on this conflict to disrupt. This is the question that’s always asked in every interview: “How much does Iran control these non-state groups?” That’s the hundred million dollar question, or however much money we call it these days. And the bottom line is, we know it’s not a mystery that Iran funds and trains and shares intelligence and political support for all of these groups.

Now, what they don’t do, and what is increasingly worrying, is necessarily have operational control over every operation that these groups launch. What we have seen, I think especially since 2020, when Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, when he was killed, the assessment of a lot of close Iran watchers is there was a bit of a decentralization of this so-called axis of resistance of all these groups. So while there’s a lot of coordination among them, there was a looser leash, I think.

And so the Iranians, as they’re feeling the pressure from increased sanctions, the nuclear deal is pretty much gone, but the Iranians also feel empowered to some extent. They weren’t doing so badly before October 7, actually: the United States was reaching deescalation deals with them, prisoner releases; their relationship with Russia because of the Ukraine war has really bolstered their confidence that they have Russia covering them and they have their back. So the Iranians had been getting a little bit more provocative, and they’re playing a very dangerous game. So their view is, the United States doesn’t want war, all the parties are going to be constrained, and therefore we can push and probe, and we’ll use these proxies to disrupt—as long as the return, the response does not threaten the regime itself. And so I think that’s the worry, is that some of these actors could take their own initiative and cross lines the Iranians may not have wanted to cross, because if it puts the regime directly in harm’s way, that’s where they would draw the line.

So it seems to be that’s the strategy; that they also, just like the United States, think they can calibrate and control things. But again, as we’ve seen, this is already—when we talked about if we would have had this discussion the first two weeks of war, we would have said, “Well, nobody wants a wider war, it won’t go beyond Gaza.” It is beyond Gaza. So now it’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to get. Let’s hope we can keep it relatively contained beyond how bad it has already gotten.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dahlia Scheindlin, I want to get your sense of the U.S. role when it comes to how dynamics go forward in Israel and how the war in Gaza itself is playing out. The theory, as we understood it from the Biden administration, is that by hugging Bibi close and showing very clear solidarity with the Israelis in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the United States would have some leverage to shape Israeli actions afterwards.

Biden was extremely popular in Israel in those weeks; I believe he remains quite popular. But you’re starting to see seams in that relationship and growing frustration by U.S. government officials about Israeli policy in various ways. How do you see the Biden administration’s theory playing out? Was that the right theory, and do you think it will work? Has it been working, or is there a shift in U.S. approach that would be needed to more significantly affect Israeli policy?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Well, the question is, when you say, “Is it working?” what the Biden administration was hoping to achieve. And I think that we have to take into account that this “bear hug” as a strategy wasn’t just a strategy. In the case of Biden, he is truly, deeply, emotionally, and organically committed to Israel, to the point where I’ve heard Palestinians describe him as more Zionist than the Israeli Prime Minister.

So I think that it came from a very genuine place for him, and that in itself made a tremendous impression on Israelis. And Israelis are extremely aware that they’re lucky right now to have somebody they consider so completely committed to Israel from a very significant and not just strategic place. I think that the problem was—a president like Obama, when he expressed as much of a bear hug as he could, it didn’t even register because people didn’t feel like it was coming from this deep place inside his soul. Israelis are very sensitive to that; and the truth is, I think most people can pick up on authenticity, yes or no.

But the idea that it’s a strategy—and that the more you give a bear hug, the more you have credibility to do things that are less comfortable for Israel and maybe with other countries, too—it’s limited. It’s limited. Because right away—I mean, not right away, but let’s say the Biden administration basically gave Israel everything it could possibly have wanted. There was nothing lacking in the earliest weeks and months of the war. The Biden administration gave political cover, gave weapons, brought the warships, and essentially the blank check, including literal blank check in terms of aid in the early stages, and for months—I mean, even now, the aid is going to continue, and Israelis are aware of that.

And yet when the Biden administration really, for the first time I think since the early 1990s, announced something that can be considered a policy constraint on Israel, which came in the form of an executive order for sanctions that affected four individuals—sanctions against settlers who’d committed violence against Palestinians in the West Bank—then already the far right flank was gone. They were saying his government is tainted by a huge moral stain, and there are already accusations of antisemitism, et cetera. And so I’m not saying that he’s lost them forever, because they’re trying to backtrack on themselves, but the only measure for the real extremists—and remember, those extremists have key positions in the Israeli government—is total loyalty. So that side of it has to be considered of limited value.

And then there’s the broad center right, which is, let’s say, anybody from supporters of Benny Gantz’s party—and including, let’s say, the core center in Israeli society, which is a little more liberal-leaning—through to Netanyahu himself and parties in what I’m calling the “security right;” or the “happy hawks,” they’re happy with where Biden has been up until now. And so they will make the effort not to push back too hard on what they consider limited constraints on Israel’s policy. And again, constraints may be even overstating the case. Right now, we’ve had this one executive order that places sanctions on four settlers and serves as a warning, primarily, to other settlers who are committing violence in the West Bank. We recently found out that the administration is also considering similar sanctions for anybody in the army who commits similar violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

But the other list of ideas that seem to be on the menu for American policy are still all at the stage of, I would call them rumors; rumors, leaks, and speculation, and those include the possibility of America recognizing a Palestinian state. Interesting idea, except that you have to also have a plan for how to make sovereignty meaningful if you’re going to recognize a Palestinian state. There was this idea going around of a possible blacklist for visas for settlers who are committing violence. And also more recently, I think just as of the last few days, we have—again at the level of leaks and rumors—found out that the administration is considering rolling back the Trump administration’s policy by which settlements were not considered a violation of international law, which would mean reverting to American policy pre-Trump, something that Biden didn’t do up until now. He pretty much continued all of the Trump policies.

So these are the kinds of things that are very, very minimal steps. Again, only one of them is an actual executive order; all the others are still just theoretical. And yet Israelis are paying very close attention. I think at this point they’re just asking themselves, “Do we have to be careful with what we can expect of the Biden administration?” But if they go further, I wouldn’t be surprised if various communities, depending on where they are on that right-wing spectrum, increasingly peel off.

And then, of course, that’s not to mention the cost the Biden administration is paying on many other fronts. Of course, domestic opinion among progressive Democrats, young people, Middle East allies—Middle East public, I should say, because certain Middle East leaders are not exactly unhappy with Israel, what Israel is doing to Hamas, at least. But all of those are things that he will have to take into account. And just a little shameless self-promotion, I wrote a whole article exactly on this topic last week; and it’s looking at all those different constituencies, if you will, around the globe that he has to take into account. So I don’t think you can cater a policy just to the Israeli security hawkish right and expect it to be enough in terms of the other costs of the administration.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What is your understanding of what is the Israeli theory of what happens in Gaza after the most active part of the fighting is over? There are fears about mass expulsion and reoccupation and settlers returning. Is that where the center of gravity in the debate is, or are there other ways of seeing this?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Well, part of the problem is that there’s not a clear center of gravity coming from the government. That’s exactly why the field is open to some of these more radical and extreme ideas. And some of those radical and extreme ideas are coming from government figures themselves, including the far-right parties I mentioned before, which are really extremist supremacist parties, but also figures from within Netanyahu’s Likud. I mean, he’s basically reshaped, refashioned the Likud in the image of some of the most extreme other parties in the Israeli political spectrum. And they were all to be found at a big conference a couple of weeks ago in Jerusalem calling for Israel to completely conquer Gaza and reestablish settlements there. So that has to be considered part of what certain key influential figures in the Israeli leadership have in mind.

However, what we’re hearing—more significantly, I think—from people like the Minister of Defense, and generally from Israeli military officials and political officials, is that Israel will retain security control over Gaza, military control over Gaza, while trying to distance itself from civilian control. Now, I think that is very misleading. I don’t think you can really have something like full military control over Gaza in the way that they seem to mean it now without ultimately having control or influence over everything to do with civilian life. And the reason I think that is not because of my imagination; it’s because of the West Bank. In the West Bank, you have Israeli military control over area B, and A, where Israel is not in control of civilian affairs, theoretically. But go ask a Palestinian living in area A which parts of his or her life are affected by Israeli military control; it’s everything.

Going forward, to portray that Israel can maintain security control while trying to advance the idea that Israel will not maintain civilian control, I think that the government will have to develop better answers for that, even if it doesn’t want to convey them publicly. It knows on the ground that either it ultimately ends up being those who control Palestinian civilian life or it will have to empower other actors to do that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The other disconnect between U.S. (and international opinion more broadly) and what seems to be a developing debate in Israel is on the question of a Palestinian state or the future of the two-state solution. There seems to be a push from the Biden administration, from other outside actors, for a sort of grand bargain that would put Palestinians on—the language changes, but an irreversible path to statehood, something that would really mean significant progress in the near term. Is there any prospect of this, or any prospective Israeli government supporting that? Is there support among Israelis for a return to a path to a two-state solution, or is there just a total disconnect between the various sides here?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

At the political level, I would say it’s pretty much a total disconnect. I mean, the parties that openly supported a two-state solution consistently all these years, even if they didn’t front it in their campaigns, are frankly dead in the water. I mean, there are two parties like that that represent the Jewish community, or maybe a smattering of the Arab voters in Israel or Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Labor and Meretz: only one of them is crossing a threshold in any survey; only one of them crossed the threshold already in 2022.

You have to also remember, this was a very, very despairing time for the prospect of reaching an agreed two-state solution long before October 7. There was no majority for it among the Israeli or Palestinian publics for about five years now, in my joint Israeli-Palestinian surveys that I conduct together with Khalil Shikaki. And so this was already pretty—well, not off the map, but just very, very limited support both in politics and in the public. After October 7, I think what we’re seeing, really, is that the number of people in society who support the two-state solution has dropped about 10 points. It’s not dead. What we have now is roughly 30 percent of Israelis or 35 percent of Israelis in total, but between a quarter and 30 percent of Jewish Israelis; always higher among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who support it. But still, that’s significantly lower than in the past.

And among the political parties, I think it’s a mistake to assume that Benny Gantz, the head of the National Unity Party, who is winning in all of the polls by a long shot, by a wide margin, over Likud—at least if the elections were held today, he would certainly be the next prime minister—we don’t really know what he stands for. He’s been cryptic about it; he’s been famously vague about what sort of solution he supports. At one point he said he opposes the idea of a two-state solution, but maybe he supports two entities. What exactly does that mean? Is it agreed? Is it unilateral?

And so I think that in this situation, there’s nobody of political authority in Israel who’s making the case to the public about why there should be any agreed political solution with the Palestinians, let alone a Palestinian state. And so that will have to change—certainly at the political level, but I don’t think it’s going to come from the public, and that it’s a mistake to expect the public to suddenly transform, no matter what the public is told from outsiders who think it’s a great idea. I don’t think that until there’s a real change at this point—I think it’s going to be a top-down driven change, elite driven; opinion formers, politicians, other influential figures that have to start changing the discourse and at least making the case for a political agreement that can contain the conflict.

I even have lowered my standards. I no longer talk about resolving the conflict. Nobody’s resolved the problem of human conflict and human violence, but at least political frameworks should be there to contain hostilities rather than only ever resorting to the use of force, and nobody’s even making that case in Israel. That’s what we’ll have to change, certainly coming from the political leadership, if you eventually get a political leader who wants to advance something like that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Would the prospect of normalization with Saudi Arabia change that debate in a meaningful way, or would some kind of meaningful pressure from the United States?

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Meaningful pressure from the United States, yes. Normalization with Saudi Arabia might change the minds of some, but right now, let’s just put it this way. When you have only about 30 to 35 percent of the public that supports it, you would need a lot of people to change their mind. And so far, Saudi normalization has been theoretical; very mixed messages about whether it’s really imminent or not. I’m erring on the side of not, for now, and so it’s not really changing minds. I see the right wing already posting all over social media saying, “We lived all these years without normalization with Saudi Arabia, we’re certainly not going to do it during a time that we consider a Palestinian state to be an existential threat.” And those messages are coming across loud and clear already. American pressure, yes. America has lots of leverage. It’s just a question of whether it wants to use it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dalia Dassa Kaye, Dahlia Scheindlin just referred to the question of U.S. leverage, what U.S. pressure might do in shaping Israeli decision-making with the Palestinians and the prospect of a Palestinian state. Do you see a meaningful prospect of the United States using leverage that it hasn’t so far, and if so, what would that look like?

DALIA DASSA KAYE

I think that the chances are pretty slim. There is growing pressure: you’re seeing congressional pressure; you’re seeing pressure in the Democratic Party, on the more progressive side; but I think it will probably grow even in centrist camps because there is a feeling, and President Biden said it himself the other day, that Israel’s campaign is over the top. I mean, there is a certain point where there will be a feeling of, how can these billions of dollars in aid not bias any leverage over how this war is being run, especially when it actually impacts U.S. national security interests? And we are now involved in this war; even if we say it’s unrelated, it’s related across the rest of the region, not to mention the concern about this fueling extremism that could come back to haunt us, as well. So I think the biggest dilemma that the United States faces is that the Biden administration understands that there is a need, in terms of getting the rest of the region on board, which is going to be necessary to having any kind of post-Gaza stability, that there needs to be some kind of political horizon.

And so this is why we keep going back to this discussion of a two-state solution, which wasn’t talked about a whole lot before October 7, it was a dying phenomenon. And now you’re hearing a lot of talk about it—and this is really coming from the region itself and an understanding that at the end of the day, this is probably the only viable solution.

But we are so far from that point, and as we just heard from Dahlia, I mean, the domestic landscape in Israel, it’s not just Prime Minister Netanyahu that is opposed to a two-state solution, and he’s been very clear, and in ways that are incredibly embarrassing to President Biden and undermining all of the support the United States and President Biden personally has been giving Israel. But it goes beyond Netanyahu. There is not a lot of political support at the moment. There wasn’t much before October 7, and after these sets of events, I think there’s very little interest in Israel in having a discussion about a Palestinian state, which—Israelis look at Hamas in Gaza as, “That was a Palestinian state, and look what that brought.”

So we have a real disconnect between U.S. plans very focused on this idea of a Palestinian state and a so-called revitalized Palestinian authority, and the Arab world talking about an irreversible path toward a Palestinian state as essential if they’re going to buy into supporting some kind of new governance and stability process in Gaza. But we’re really, in many ways, just talking in a vacuum. So I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge moving forward, and so before we get to that outcome, we’re going to have a lot of building blocks to focus on.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You have a fantastic piece in our new issue, coauthored with Sanam Vakil, called “Only the Middle East Can Fix the Middle East,” and let me just quote a passage from that piece. You write, “Any expectation that Washington will be able to achieve a grand bargain that could definitively end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is detached from the realities of today’s Middle East. In the end, major diplomatic breakthroughs are most likely to come from, and depend on, the region itself.” That sounds like a slightly more hopeful possibility than much of what we’ve been discussing so far. What would meaningful regional action look like that could, if not get us to a two-state solution, at least start to address some of the challenges that you’ve laid out?

DALIA DASSA KAYE

It is hard to be hopeful in this period, but I think we do need to step back and think about a few things. One is that unlike other Arab-Israeli wars, the region doesn’t want war with Israel. Normalization or no normalization, and I’m in the skeptic camp on Israeli Saudis. But I think it’s pretty well understood, actually, that most of the region has accepted Israel. So the good news is, there’s a lot of interest in the Arab world in trying to contain this conflict and figure out a way forward because they want to focus on a lot of other things, so that’s the hopeful point.

You’ve seen a lot of coordination, a lot of mediation from Israel’s Arab neighbors, from Egypt, from the Qataris. You have a new group that’s been emerging. Sanam and I like to call it the Arab five plus one: three Gulf States—Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris—along with Egypt, Jordan, plus Turkey. And they’ve been doing a lot of coordination; you just saw a foreign minister summit last week, this is since we’ve written the piece. We talked a lot about this regional momentum. Of course, a lot of the focus is now just how to get hostages out and stop the fighting. But there’s actually, with all the fissures and fragility of various rapprochements happening in the region, most of them have helped since this war started, and we’re seeing unprecedented coordination.

It’s not to say they don’t have their differences—they do—but there’s something about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it’s a very unifying force for the wider region because everybody understands the danger of this kind of conflict metastasizing and affecting all of them. So I think that’s where the optimism is; it’s not that there’s a solution. The irony is, at a moment in the history of this conflict where the region might be closest to be willing to accept Israel, we have an Israel that might be most resistant to making peace. And that’s a real tragedy.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dahlia and Dalia, thank you so much for joining me today and for your fantastic work in Foreign Affairs over recent months.

DALIA DASSA KAYE

Thanks so much, Dan—and Foreign Affairs—for having me. This was great.

DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN

Thank you for having me.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today’s show at foreignaffairs.com. The Foreign Affairs Interview is produced by Kate Brannen, Julia Fleming-Dresser and Molly McAnany. A special thanks also to Grace Finlayson, Caitlin Joseph, Nora Revenaugh, Asher Ross, Gabrielle Sierra, and Markus Zakaria. Our theme music was written and performed by Robin Hilton. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every other Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.