Who Still Believes in a Two-State Solution?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Martin Indyk has probably spent more time and energy than anyone else, certainly more than any other American, trying to find a path to peace among Israel, its neighbors, and the Palestinians. After October 7, he was one of the first people we at Foreign Affairs wanted to hear from. He’s worked on these issues as an American Special Envoy and Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador to Israel, and much else.

We spoke on April 1. We discussed the prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza, how the Biden administration is and is not using its influence to shape Israeli actions, and the possibility that this terrible war could finally move both sides toward a two-state solution.

There’s a lot of history I want to get into, as well as the big question of where we go from here, especially the vision you laid out in your most recent Foreign Affairs essay called “The Strange Resurrection of the Two-State Solution,” but I want to start with your understanding of where things stand now in the war, as we approach six months since we all woke up to the horrors of October 7. There’s obviously growing global condemnation, including in the United States, of the way Israel is waging the war in Gaza. But even with lots of fractiousness in Israeli society about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s leadership, about the hostages, and much else, there seems to be relative agreement in Israel about the broad course and objectives of the offensive itself. How would you, at this point, describe the Israeli strategy in Gaza? What are they trying to achieve and how do they think they can achieve it? And what, in your assessment, in what ways is it working or not working?

MARTIN INDYK

Well, I would be hard-pressed to describe it. It’s a problem which has plagued the Israeli campaign from the beginning. For reasons that we can get into, the broad perspective of total victory against Hamas and total return of the hostages has not been translated by Prime Minister Netanyahu into anything that could be conceived of as a strategy for both—or even either—of them. So there’s this disconnect between the rhetoric and what’s actually happening on the ground.

So, for what seems like months now, we’ve been near an imminent attack on Rafah, which has stirred the world to insisting that such a campaign cannot happen unless there’s a plan for evacuating 1.7 million displaced Gazans—which, if you think about it for one minute, you realize there’s no such plan and that’s not going to happen—and yet Netanyahu talks about Rafah as if it’s an imminent attack. And yet, I don’t believe there’s any indication that such a thing is going to happen. But it’s just one example of the disarray in the Israeli campaign.

They are sending the negotiators back to Cairo today. The prime minister is under heavy pressure to resolve that problem, and I think most Israelis have the attitude now of “let’s get the hostages home and then we’ll deal with the rest later.” It’s all about the hostages, except for Netanyahu, who seems to want to drag out the hostage negotiations—perhaps to drag out the war, perhaps to avoid the critical judgment day of the electorate.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me put a version of that question to you on U.S. policy. How would you describe the Biden administration’s theory of the case? And again, how well does it seem to be working?

MARTIN INDYK

Well, I think something very important has happened in the evolution of U.S. policy, particularly in the last few weeks. The evolution started with a very notable speech by Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, who went to Michigan to speak to disaffected voices in the Arab and progressive community. I think it was about six weeks ago. But his remarks were leaked, and they were a mea culpa on behalf of the administration that they had not been sensitive enough to Palestinian casualties, that they had not focused enough on the Palestinian dimension of this conflict. And that started a process that unfolded very quickly of the vice president, Kamala Harris, the president himself, and then Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate, were all coming out and making clear that they had greater concern on Israel’s part with the humanitarian problems that they were contributing to in Gaza.

And it became a chorus of criticism of Israel, the likes of which we have not seen before, clearly aimed at trying to signal to Democrats that quote, “We care,” unquote, and that the battle for what might or might not happen over Rafah became the real indication of—a real test of where the administration was true to its word in that regard. And so it became a real confrontation between Netanyahu, and Biden, and Schumer, and Kamala Harris. I mean, the big guns came out on the American side in a way that we’ve never seen before. But what it marked was, I think, a fairly dramatic shift in American calculus, whereby it was no longer a question of standing by Israel and hoping it would all blow over. It was now a question of standing by Israel as much as possible, but making sure in the process that Israel keep into account the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.

That was a big shift in policy. And then when the administration felt that they were not getting Netanyahu’s attention, that he was more defiant than pliable, they started to press in areas that were previously forbidden territory. And so we heard talk out of Washington of conditioning arm sales. We heard Democratic senators talking about legislation that would put humanitarian conditions on arms supplies to Israel. This previously was something that would never be discussed, let alone considered to be implemented. And that, in a way, crossed another guardrail.

And finally, we had a vote in the UN Security Council where the United States abstained on a resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire and a release of the hostages. That abstention was a shot across Netanyahu’s bow, an indication that he could not rely on the United States anymore to protect Israel in the Security Council if Israel was going to take actions that created problems for the United States, in particular on the humanitarian front.

And to just underscore how radical a change this is, Chuck Schumer, leader of the pro-Israel community, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, top Democrat, and top pro-Israeli, gives a long speech in which he calls for the overthrow of the Israeli government of Netanyahu and the president of the United States supports him.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I just want to turn to the Hamas side of this because you wrote something very notable in Foreign Affairs on October 7, where you said, “I fear that Hamas’s intention is to get Israel to retaliate massively and have the conflict escalate: a West Bank uprising, Hezbollah attacks, a revolt in Jerusalem.” We haven’t seen those last three, but I am curious, if you look at this from Hamas’s perspective, do they have a strategy? Do they have a sense of how this might play out that could work to Hamas’s advantage?

MARTIN INDYK

It’s not going well for them. They’re under a lot of pressure militarily. Their ranks have been broken up, their command-and-control has been disrupted. It’s hard to know; if you listen to the Israelis, it would suggest that they’re close to their last legs but not there yet. Others are more skeptical, but they’ve certainly suffered a military blow and their ability to exercise control in Gaza is very questionable now.

But they’d hoped, always, I think, from the beginning, to spark a wider conflagration, first with Hezbollah, then with other Iranian proxies. They’ve been most successful with the Houthis. Hezbollah’s been a very controlled engagement, which—Hezbollah has made clear it doesn’t want a war with Israel.

But the biggest test—and the biggest failure, I would say, so far—is in these current days of Ramadan, when Hamas hoped to spark an uprising in Jerusalem, at the most sensitive place at the most sensitive time of the year. And it’s been quiet, amazingly quiet. This is partly because, granted, where credit is due, and I don’t give him much, but Netanyahu took action to defuse the situation and to prevent his crazy ministers, particularly Itamar Ben-Gvir, from stoking trouble there.

But there was clearly a decision on the part of the leadership of Jerusalem Arabs, Palestinian Israelis, to keep things quiet, and in effect, to break with Hamas. And I think that sends a very important signal that, basically, Hamas is unable to spread this conflict beyond the Houthis, and that’s somewhat contained. They have failed to really spark an uprising in the West Bank or in Jerusalem, and I think that that is the biggest blow to them.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

That’s a good segue to the very powerful and trenchant essay you have in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, which again is called “The Strange Resurrection of the Two-State Solution.” You focus on the fact that after several years in which the efforts to really make progress on a two-state solution have been more or less moribund, there is a kind of glimmer of hope, somewhat paradoxically, in the horrors of what’s going on.

You have, of course, been engaged in this effort probably more intensively than almost anyone else for the last few decades. As you look back at that history, there’s so much of an attempt to understand what happened in the 1990s, especially when you were very central to those efforts and what we should take from those. As you look back and look at the hopes of that period in the Oslo process, what do you wish you’d known then? What would you do differently if you could go back and do it again, if anything?

MARTIN INDYK

Well, I think what became most obvious in our engagement with the two sides was that neither was it about making peace or reconciling on the basis of a two-state solution. Political conditions simply weren’t there. There was no trust between them or between their people that could serve to overcome the leadership problems. And there was basically nothing the United States could do to change that dynamic.

So the big question now is, with so many Israelis opposed now to anything for the Palestinians, there’s this extraordinary—I find, as somebody who’s been involved with Israel for so many decades—extraordinary insensitivity to the suffering of the Palestinians. And it’s not just right-wingers; it’s across the board, as Israelis remain preoccupied, understandably so, with their own suffering and a feeling that they, as long as their hostages aren’t returned, that they will be indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians. And that is just a reflection of how far we are from a reconciliation. And on the Palestinian side, it’s similar. How could it not be, after some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, so many thousand children? So to start from here and try to promote reconciliation is a hard sell to Israelis or Palestinians, and I think we just have to face that reality.

On the other hand, and there is another hand, there has never been a common conviction on the part of the United States, the Arab Sunni leaders, the international community, that there has to be a way forward to resolve this problem, we can’t just keep on going like this forever, and the suffering is too great. And so I do think that that pressure on the two sides forces them to come up with some way forward. That is manifesting itself now with the decision of Palestinian president, Abu Mazen, to change his prime minister and bring in a technocratic government and start the process of revitalization, and he’s also taken steps to remove the pay-to-slay arrangements that caused the Palestinian authorities so many problems with the United States and Israel.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

This is payments to the families of Palestinians who have killed Israelis, that’s the pay-to-slay?

MARTIN INDYK

Exactly. They were engaged in terrorist acts. Under the old arrangements, they were paid more for killing Israelis. So Abu Mazen has undertaken that, and that process appears to be underway. And we’ll see in the next few weeks whether that happens, but it wouldn’t be an even step towards the revitalization of the PA that so many have been talking about.

You have Arab states—particularly Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis, the rich Gulf Arab states, but also with the support of Egypt and Jordan—willing now to take a bigger role than they’ve ever been willing to play before in getting behind the Palestinian Authority, building its capabilities, helping with the United States to train its cadres of security people, to introduce them into Gaza and areas where they can operate, like controlling the passages and so on. And this is a lot of weedy stuff, but the point is that there is a growing willingness to do things that weren’t previously considered.

I don’t want to exaggerate it, but I see some green shoots there. Unfortunately, on the Israeli side, it’s the exact opposite. The coalition government of Bibi Netanyahu is so opposed to the Palestinian state, to a two-state solution, to the Palestinian Authority exercising any kind of control in Gaza, that we’re stuck and we’re unable to move with them, even though there is the kind of golden pot at the end of the rainbow of normalization and peace with Saudi Arabia. If the Israelis were to move down this road towards a credible path for a two-state solution involving rehabilitation of the PA, Saudis are ready. But Netanyahu is not, because of the composition of his coalition government, which is absolutely opposed to introducing the PA or to anything that might cramp their style when it comes to their efforts to annex the West Bank, which is a complete non-starter for the Arabs, of course.

So you’ve got this disconnect, and this is why there is so much tension between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government, because President Biden sees an opportunity here to chart a course to a more positive future for Israelis and Palestinians, and he’s got the Saudis and the other Arabs ready to cooperate, and the rest of the international community, but he can’t get Netanyahu to cooperate.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Before getting to the possible path to that better future, just to linger on some of the darker visions, you noted the desire of the far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition to annex the West Bank. They’ve talked about clearing Palestinians out of Gaza since the war began. In some ways that “solution,” quote-unquote, seems like one of the more likely ones, just given who is in power in Israel and the way those wars are playing out. Do you fear that some of that could come to pass in the months ahead, given again, the composition of that coalition and the state of politics on the Israeli side?

MARTIN INDYK

I don’t fear it, because I think that they’ve put everybody on alert now, and the Biden administration’s not going to let that happen. Another guardrail that’s come down has been sanctioning settlers. Successive administrations were very reluctant to do that, but now we’re doing that as well. Vigilante settlers who attack Palestinians are subject to U.S. sanctions and that hurts them in their pocketbooks. They can’t function financially. And we’re going to be doing more of those things. I think that when Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken made it clear that from the administration point of view now, settlement activity was illegal under international law, we crossed another line. And so I think the full array of pressure will be brought to bear to prevent the disruption of the status quo that could lead to annexation of more territory, whether it’s in the West Bank or Gaza.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What other kind of pressure do you think the Biden administration could and should be using to try to bring about a change in the leadership or politics on the Israeli side?

MARTIN INDYK

I think there are two aspects to this. One is operational and the other is political. On the operational side, the administration wants to have a significant say in what operations Israel undertakes now to minimize the humanitarian impact—the civilian casualties, especially. But on the political level, there is a strong need for the administration to be able to show that it is actually reducing the number of casualties, stopping what looks like a disastrous raid on Rafah.

And so the combination here is, I think, proving to be quite successful without actually withholding security assistance to Israel. And the reason for this is subtle, but it comes down to the following reality, which is that the Israeli defense forces are heavily dependent on the United States now for arms supplies, particularly as they look to the north and have to try to figure out what to do about this increasingly hard conflict with Hezbollah and the fact that something like 180,000 Israelis can’t go home in the north, which is an unacceptable situation for any government.

And so, as they think about their options there and the potential for war with Hezbollah, they have to have the United States on side. They cannot afford any slowdown of military equipment, any talk of slowdown of military equipment. So Netanyahu may want to go out by Biden, but people around him understand very clearly that there’s a limit to how far this game can go, and they’re not going to push it. It doesn’t require Joe Biden to tap the brakes.

They already understand it, and it’s why we haven’t seen an operation in Rafah, and that dependence, which has been driven home in this war, will continue for the foreseeable future.

So we have a lot of braggadocio from Netanyahu, but when you look at the reality on the ground, there’s a lot of willingness to take the advice of the United States and make sure that that relationship is not damaged by Netanyahu’s childish performances.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

As you look at the opportunity that that leverage creates, as you look to the next six months or so, what would be a kind of optimistic scenario about what U.S. pressure can achieve in terms of ending the war, but also laying the groundwork for the kind of pathway to two states that you lay out in the essay?

MARTIN INDYK

It’s very hard to say because it depends, in the first instance, on whether it’s possible to get a prisoner exchange, and that’s what’s being negotiated as we’re talking now. If they succeed, and that includes a six-week pause, it changes everything. There will presumably be a pause with Hezbollah and a pause with the Houthis as well. There will be a breathing space to bring in the humanitarian relief that’s so necessary, and there will be time, which I believe the Biden administration will use, to try to launch the “day after” project, both in terms of bringing the PA into Gaza, with international support and Arab support, and in terms of opening the way to conventional negotiations on a two-state solution.

So a lot gets triggered by a ceasefire and hostage exchange. If that doesn’t happen, then I think we’ll see some controlled operations into Rafah, and various places moving displaced people out, and targeted attacks, and the kind of continuation of what we’ve been living with in the last few weeks. Operations we saw in two hospitals, but not a lot of casualties, not a lot of bombing, and just a slower pace of war until something else turns up.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Do you think, as you look beyond this next phase of the war, progress on negotiations requires a change in leadership in Israel? Does it require, as Chuck Schumer said, Netanyahu being out of power? And you’ve been sparring with Netanyahu since the ‘90s when you were ambassador to Israel. How likely is it that he will, in fact, be out of power a year from now?

MARTIN INDYK

Well, from my experience, the likelihood is pretty low. He’s the great survivor, and there’s nobody quite like him in terms of his political skills and maneuvering with the Israeli political system. But he’s in a tight corner, and something very significant happened, I would say, at the beginning of April—two important things have happened in the last couple of weeks that we should take note of.

We’ve already discussed the way in which the United States is moving to pressure Israel in ways that it’s never done before. But the second thing that’s happening is that the demonstrators are coming back to the streets of Israel. Now, for a long time after the October 7 atrocities, this was not the case. You’re considered unpatriotic to demonstrate against the government in the middle of the war. That has all changed, I think partly because of the United States and the pressure that we’re now putting on Netanyahu, that the public in Israel are responding. And this last weekend, they came out in very large numbers, tens of thousands, again. And for the first time, you saw protesters who had been involved in protesting Netanyahu before the war coming out again now and joining with families of hostages who, for the first time, called for Bibi’s overthrow.

Now, it’s not yet critical mass. There were tens of thousands in the street. But we will see how that develops. It has the potential—with U.S. backing, which is so overt now—it has the potential to become a widespread civil disobedience campaign, general strikes, and pressure on the Knesset members to go to a new election.

So I think there are a lot of moving parts now. If they manage to get a hostage deal, it’ll send us off in a potentially positive direction. If they don’t, I think the action is going to be in the streets of Israel and the calls for Netanyahu’s resignation are going to become thunderous.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

One other recommendation you make in the essay, and this is one that has been picked up by a range of other observers in the last few weeks, is that President Biden should give a speech directly to the Israeli people, not necessarily in Israel, but one in which he really speaks directly to them. Not so much going after Netanyahu, but trying to make the case to them that a return to negotiations and creating a path to a Palestinian state is really the only way to avoid a much darker future. Do you see the moment for that kind of speech coming and how might that, if executed well, reshape the debate around this, within Israel?

MARTIN INDYK

No, I did not believe that he should go to the Knesset and make a speech. That’s a difference between Richard Haass and myself, partly because of the parallel with Bibi going to Congress, which was so controversial, but mostly because he would get no respect there. They would throw tomatoes at him, and I think it would be pretty bad to expose the president in that way.

But I do think that in the context of a ceasefire, with everything calming down and the hostages coming home, the President, to speak from the Oval Office, to Israelis and Palestinians and Americans, and explain his vision and lay it out in a way that is non-threatening and provides hope for all sides, that there is a way forward to a two-state solution, and try to take away the things that the Israelis, in particular, most fear about Palestinian state.

So to make the case that it would be demilitarized, there would be security arrangements, there would be testing periods, there are ways of dealing with all of these issues that the United States and the international community can be involved in—but they don’t need to fear this, and it’s not being forced down their throats by them. I just think there’s a way for him to speak directly to the Israeli public to address this and to the Palestinians as well. That timing’s ripe for that if we can get a ceasefire.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Why would the Palestinians trust him at this point? I mean, thinking, when you look at views of the United States among both the Palestinian population and Middle Eastern populations more generally, the views of the United States are close to historic lows, I believe, or certainly as bad as they’ve been in many years. Are there other leaders, whether that’s Mohamed bin Salman or others in the region, who would be the right partners there? Or is there a possibility for American leadership to shape Palestinian opinion in a way that it hasn’t for some time?

MARTIN INDYK

You know, it’s a paradox that while everybody hates the United States and blames the United States because the United States is so supportive of Israel, it gets all the blame and none of the credit if anything positive happens. But everybody, and I underscore everybody, knows the reality. It’s only the United States that can influence Israel and they look to the United States to influence Israel. They get upset when the United States doesn’t do what they want them to do, but it doesn’t change their view that only the United States can deliver. For all of the bellyaching and complaining, in the end, they know that Washington is the address, and we know that as long as we can deliver Israel with the Arabs, we’ll be fine.

The problem we have now is delivering Israel. They don’t have a cooperative prime minister. We have instead a prime minister who is defying us. It really does undermine our ability to influence the other side. They don’t like us fighting with Israel. They’d much rather see us delivering Israel. So there’s no alternative to the United States taking the lead, most importantly because of our supposed influence on Israel. Nobody else can come close to that.

But I do believe, as I wrote in the Foreign Affairs article, that Saudi Arabia can have a very positive role to play here. I mean, if you imagine a situation in which the president is trying to paint a picture of a more peaceful future for Israel and for the Palestinians, what better way to do it than to have the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia backing him up and saying he’s ready to join this alliance of peace, and to make peace with Israel, and the Saudi Crown Prince remains keen to play that role. The challenge is to kind of break through the skepticism that the Israelis have at the moment because of their traumatic experience, and they’ve blocked out anything that could possibly be good in favor of everything that’s bad for them.

So it has to be choreographed carefully, but you have a willing player in the Saudis, and that can certainly, I think, be used to good effect in a situation where we’re past the hostage problem, we can kind of move on or try to look to a different future. And I really believe, in the end, that Israelis do not want a future of never-ending war, occupation for their children and grandchildren. And it’s just a matter of finding the right time to be able to articulate to them a credible alternative that they can support.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to end on a somewhat more personal note if you’re willing. You’ve devoted much of your professional life for almost half a century to bringing about peace in the Middle East, to achieving a two-state solution. But as you reflect back on those decades, what has driven that quest? What has kept you added in the face of the disappointments and setbacks along the way?

MARTIN INDYK

Well, I just had the belief that my job in this world is to try to help Israel make peace. I came upon that notion, arrogant as it sounds, when I was a student in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, and I was on ground zero in Jerusalem when war broke out. And from that point on, I just decided I would pursue peace in whatever way I could, to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors, the Palestinians in particular, and that the only effective route for doing that was via the United States. The United States provides Israel with everything from a loaf of bread to a Phantom jet. And so I said, “I’m going to Washington. I’m going to Washington to try to get them to help Israel and the Arabs make peace.” So that’s been my driving motivation for my life, though I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime.

I’ve had my Mount Nebo moment. Mount Nebo was when Moses was shown the Promised Land and told by God that he would not cross into it. And I’ve seen the Promised Land, I’ve seen what it looks like. I’ve negotiated the details. I know where they will end up. There’s a lot more killing, unfortunately, but I can see it, how it will work out. And so even though I won’t cross over, I’m still confident that in the end, as all conflicts come to an end, this one will too, and its result will be a two-state solution.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I will say again, the very compelling piece is “The Strange Resurrection of the Two-State Solution.” Please go and read it at ForeignAffairs.com. Martin, thank you for that essay, as well as for joining me today.

MARTIN INDYK

Thanks 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. Special thanks also to Grace Finlayson, Caitlin Joseph, Nora Revenaugh, Asher Ross, Gabrielle Sierra, and Marcus 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.