Israel-Palestine conflict | dstill.ai shared chat

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Why is there still war between Israel and Palestine?

The war between Israel and Palestine has a complex history and involves various factors. It is important to note that I am an AI language model and cannot provide a definitive answer, but I can provide some information based on the sources available.

One major factor contributing to the ongoing conflict is the dispute over land and territory, with both sides claiming historical and ancestral connections to the land . This has led to disagreements over boundaries and the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which many view as an obstacle to peace .

There are also differing political ideologies and aspirations between the two sides. The Palestinian leadership has historically refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and many factions seek the destruction or dissolution of Israel . On the other hand, Israel sees the refusal to recognize its right to exist as a major obstacle to peace .

Additionally, external factors such as the role of the United States and its foreign aid to Israel have been a point of contention . Some argue that U.S. support enables ongoing Israeli policies, while others maintain that it is important for Israel's security .

The conflict has resulted in devastating consequences for both Israelis and Palestinians, including loss of life, displacement, and human rights concerns . Efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution and a two-state solution have faced significant challenges and differing perspectives .

It is important to consider multiple sources and perspectives to gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

1

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): And he had a paper called, The Iron Wall Colonization of Palestine Must Go Forward. And all of these schools of thoughts were then shopping around for imperialist support for their cause. They tried to get support from the Ottoman Empire, they tried to get support from Germany, and this is in the 1800s, and then they got support from the United Kingdom. A great book to recommend is The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, that traces the Zionist movement, oftentimes in the Zionist's own words. And so today, what we're seeing is a continuation. And you know, people like Jabotinsky, who are like profoundly and explicitly racist, who have called for genocide, who have called the Palestinians barbaric, who have said and done racist things. You know, Jabotinsky also was like the founder of the Ergun, one of the other militias that later merged to become the Israeli army. which was responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre, which was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel. This is a person who's still celebrated in Israeli society. There are streets named after him, and Netanyahu, just two weeks ago, if I'm not mistaken, honored him in a public celebration. So this is Zionism. It's not even through my own words.

Lex Fridman: What do you say to people that describe Israel as having a historical right to the land. So if you stretch not across decades, but across centuries into the past.

(someone): This kind of thing is a red herring. It's a distraction because you don't think of any state as having rights.

2

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You know, as it looked like before the Israeli state emerged, I mean, we should be reading our history here. When you read like European and white historians, they'll tell you like Palestine was barren, many of them would say like it was even without a people, there were nobody, nobody was there, or like some of them will say we were uncivilized, but the fact of the matter is Palestine, Jerusalem particularly, had a diversity of religion, Druze, Jewish people, you know, my grandmother continues to talk about, well she continued until she died, she continued to talk about her Jewish neighbors when she grew up in the old city, or like when she was born in the old city, and then her Jewish neighbors in Haifa. We even had one Jewish member of our family, Msami, actually, who just also recently passed away. Jews were a part of Palestine and they spoke Hebrew, a different kind of Hebrew, but they spoke Hebrew. People really need to read the Hundred Years War on Palestine. It's really an excellent synopsis of the history. But this whole idea that this is like some kind of war between two religions is so misleading because what's happening is a bunch of, frankly, European settlers with a certain political secular ideology came and relocated here and turned it into a religious conflict between people who have lived harmoniously together for decades before that. And, you know, the whole idea, be it like, you know, Christian Zionism or, you know, John Hagee or like the calls for Jews to leave the United States and relocate in Israel or like, you know, recently, which we've heard about a long time ago,

3

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of Zionism, namely that the Jews deserve a state in this part of the world. The territorial dispute is something else. You have a territorial dispute if you say, okay, you're living on this side, we're living on that side, let's decide where the border is, and so on. That's not what the argument is. The Palestinian society, which is itself fragmented, but all the factions agree there shouldn't be a Jewish state anywhere, okay? They just disagree between Hamas that says, oh well, you should have it, we should get rid of it with terror, and the others who say we should also use political means to dissolve it. So that is the problem.

Lex Fridman: So even as part of a two-state solution, they're still against the idea?

(someone): Well, they don't want a state next to Israel. They want a state instead of Israel. And they say if we get a state, we'll use it as a springboard to destroy the smaller Israeli state, which is what happened when Israel unilaterally walked out of Gaza and effectively established a Hamas state there. They didn't say, oh good, now we have our own territory, our own state, Israel is no longer there, let's build peace, let's build economic projects, let's enfranchise our people. No, they turned it basically into a terror bastion from which they fired 10,000 rockets into Israel. When Israel left Lebanon, you know, because we had terrorist attacks from there, then we had Lebanon taken over by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel.

4

#334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): that completely reversed. Part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plight remained very much at the heart of the revolutionary Iranians who would see that part of the United States is to support, part of the United States' guilt, sin, is to support Israel vis-a-vis its very suppressive, very oppressive treatment of the Palestinians, completely illegal taking over of the territories which is not theirs since 1967, and therefore it is upon the Iranian regime, Iranian Islamic Republic, to support the cause of the Palestinians. This came about at a time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians, including Arab nationalism, basically reached the stage of bankruptcy. I mean, much of the regimes of the Arab world either are now coming to terms with Israel, or in one way or another, because of their own contingencies, because of their own concerns and interests, are willy-nilly accepting Israel in the region. Now, that old task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic. That sees itself as a champion of the Palestinians now. Without, as a matter of fact, having either the support of the Iranian people behind him. If you ask, if tomorrow there would be a poll or a referendum, I would doubt that 80% of the Iranian people would approve of the policies. of the Islamic Republic vis-a-vis the issue of Palestine. Nor the Palestinians themselves, because the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic, quote-unquote. And even within that, there is problems with Hamas, for instance.

5

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman: So this was an Israeli military incursion to Jenin. The raid included more than 1,000 soldiers backed by drone strikes, making it Israel's largest such operation in the West Bank since the end of the second Palestinian uprising in 2005. The Israeli military said it dismantled hundreds of explosives, cleared hundreds of weapons, destroyed underground hideouts, and confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars in, quote, terror funds. Many of the 50 Palestinians who have attacked Israelis since the start of the year have come from Jenin camp and the surrounding area. Palestinian attacks inside Israel have killed 24 people this year. UN experts describe the Genian operation as collective punishment, in quotes, for the Palestinian people amounting to egregious violations of international law. Many of the more than 150 Palestinians killed by Israelis this year have also come from these communities. Palestinian fighters say they need arms to defend themselves against Israeli occupation and military incursions into the camp, during which Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed. So those are the I would say different perspectives on the many people on both sides who have been killed, many more Palestinians. Can you comment more about the situation?

(someone): I mean, I think the Washington Post article is a little bit more careful than other media that came out recently about Janine. I think, you know, I was listening to a Reuters radio show and they failed to ever mention the occupation. I don't even think this paragraph mentioned that Janine is under occupation by the by the Israeli forces, by the Israeli regime. I think this is the most important piece of context that gets obsecured in our media reporting is these cities, these refugee camps are under illegal occupation.

6

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): right to movement, you still even can't move from town to town within the West Bank without encountering settler violence or military violence while you're crossing the checkpoints and so on and so forth. And then the last category we have is people who live in Gaza. We are talking about over 2 million people who live in an open air prison, who have no right to movement, but also have no access to clean water and no access to supplies, no access to good food, no access to good health care, and so on and so forth. We routinely get bombarded every few years. Gaza is like two hours away from my house. It feels like an absolute faraway planet because it's so isolated from the rest of the country. So imagine all of these different legal statuses fragmenting your everyday identity and creating different challenges and obstacles for you to deal with, for each group to deal with. You know, it's amazing and impressive that despite these colonial barriers, the real cement ones and the barriers in the mind. Despite all of these barriers, the Palestinian people have maintained their national identity for 70 years. That is incredibly impressive. And it also sends a message that as long as we have a boot on our neck, we're going to continue fighting. Violence, cracking down on refugee camps, bombarding refugee camps is only going to bring about more violence.

Lex Fridman: So West Bank is a large region where a lot of Palestinian people live, and then there are settlements sprinkled throughout, and those settlements have walls around them with security cameras. Security guards. Security guards.

(someone): There's almost a million settlers in the West Bank.

7

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Okay? And everybody recognizes that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement. So they're really arguing about something that has already been decided and agreed upon, really, by Americans, even by Arabs, many Arabs. They don't think that Israel is going to dismantle these blocks. You look outside the window here, and within about a kilometer, a mile from here, is you have Jerusalem. Half of Jerusalem grew naturally beyond the old 1967 border. So you're not going to dismantle half of Jerusalem. That's not going to happen. And most people don't expect that. Then you have the other 10% scattered in tiny, you know, small communities. And people say, well, you're gonna have to take them out. Why? Why? Remember that in pre-1967 Israel, we have over a million and a half Arabs here. We don't say, oh, Israel has to be ethnically cleansed from Arabs in order to have, from its Arab citizens, in order to have peace. Of course not. Jews can live among Arabs and Arabs can live among Jews. And what is being advanced by those people who say that we can't live in our ancestral homeland, in these disputed areas, nobody says that this is Palestinian areas, And nobody says that these are Israeli heirs. We claim them, they claim them. We've only been attached to this land for, oh, 3,500 years. But, you know, but it's a dispute, I agree.

8

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): No, they turned it basically into a terror bastion from which they fired 10,000 rockets into Israel. When Israel left Lebanon, you know, because we had terrorist attacks from there, then we had Lebanon taken over by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel. And therefore, every time we just walked out, what we got was not peace. We didn't give, you know, territory for peace, we got territory for terror. That's what we had. And that's what would happen as long as the reigning ideology says we don't want Israel in any border. So the idea of two states assumes that you'd have, on the other side, a state that wants to live in peace and not one that will be overtaken by Iran and its proxies in two seconds and become a base to destroy Israel. And therefore, I think that most Israelis today, if you ask them, They'd say, it's not going to work in that concept. So what do you do? What do you do with the Palestinians? Okay, they're still there. And I don't, unlike them, I don't want to throw them out. They're going to be living here and we're going to be living here in an area which is, by the way, just to understand, the area, the entire area of so-called West Bank and in Israel, is the width of the Washington Beltway, more or less, just a little more, not much more. You can't really divide it up. You can't say, well, you're going to fly in. Who controls the airspace?

9

#334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal. or try to come to terms in some fashion. But it's a very complex picture, and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under very uneven circumstances, when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories, or in terms of their security in future vis-a-vis Israel.

Lex Fridman: So I think there's, as you probably know, quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation, can you steelman their side? Can you steelman Israel's side that they're trying to be a sovereign nation, trying to protect themselves against threats, ultimately wanting to create a place of safety, a place where people can pursue all the things that you want to pursue in life, including foremost happiness.

(someone): I tend to agree with you. And I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people. But there are two arguments. One is a moral argument. To my mind as a historian, Jews across around the world for all through their history suffered. And this is a history of suffering. This is a memory of suffering. And I find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much sacrifice, suffering, loss of life, and variety of Holocaust above all, would find itself in a position not to give the proper justice to a people who could be their neighbors.

10

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): I say, okay, call it what you will, call it, you know, I don't know, limited sovereignty, call it autonomy plus, call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the reality. And right now, if you ask Israelis across the political spectrum, except the very hard left, most Israelis agree with that. They don't really debate it.

Lex Fridman: So a two-state solution where Israel controls the security of the entire region?

(someone): We don't call it quite that. I mean, there are different names, but the idea is yes, Israel controls security in the region. It's the entire area, it's this tiny area between the Jordan River and the sea. I mean, it's like, you know, you can walk it in not one afternoon, if you're really fit, you can do it in a day. Less than a day, I did.

Lex Fridman: So the expansion of settlements in the West Bank has been a top priority for this new government. People, many harshly criticized this as contributing to escalating the Israel-Palestine tensions. Can you understand that perspective, that this expansion of settlements is not good for this two-state solution? Can you describe it?

(someone): Yeah, I can understand what they're saying, and they don't understand why they're wrong. First, most Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria live in urban blocks, and that accounts for about 90% of the population. Okay? And everybody recognizes that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement.

11

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Netanyahu has said a slew of racist, hateful things. Jabotinsky, the pioneer of Zionism, Herzl, one of the pioneers of Zionism, all have said horrible, hateful, things, we also cannot wait to cite a confession from a former Israeli soldier whose guilty conscience is keeping them up at night. And we use all of these confessions or slip ups as evidence to prove that this is a racist country that is enacting racist acts, but we don't need this because the material proof is on the ground. You see it in the policies that are enacted, you see it in how the country, how this regime has behaved for the past 75 years. I don't need, you know, confessions from the likes of Netanyahu to understand that his heart is full of hate.

Lex Fridman: So if you could return to 1948 and describe something that you've mentioned, the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic. What was this event? What was this displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948?

(someone): Well, you know, like May 15th, 1948 is commemorated every year as, you know, the anniversary of the Nakba, but I would even argue, and I think this is like a very popular idea, is that the Nakba did not begin or end in 1948. The 48 was rather, you know, a crystallization of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. And what happened was that many Zionists paramilitaries that again today merged and made the Israeli army, which calls itself the Israeli Defense Forces, even though they're literally always the aggressor, committed atrocities and massacres and, you know, they,

12

#334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Nor the Palestinians themselves, because the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic, quote-unquote. And even within that, there is problems with Hamas, for instance. But nevertheless, it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people. Whether they have a solution, if you look at their rhetoric, if you listen to their rhetoric, it's the destruction of the state of Israel. And that, it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis, Israeli population, and Israeli government, particularly those who are now in power, Netanyahu, the Likud, and more kind of a right-wing politics of, polity of today's Israel. That being said, I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of threat of Iran, quote unquote, in order to present themselves a rightful to, for terms of security and whatever else. the way that they're treating the Palestinians, which I think is extremely unjust. I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since 1967 at least, and not to try to come to terms with it. Of course, there are a huge amount of, I'm not denying that at all, there's a huge amount of failures, mistakes, and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal. or try to come to terms in some fashion.

13

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): who forced themselves inside the media cycle. This was what was unique about Sheikh Jarrah. We were able to penetrate an industry that usually ignores us and usually refuses to use any of our framing, any of our quotations. And these people that March, these people that spread the rhetoric, spread the facts, wrote articles, these people that made videos online and got arrested, and many of whom are still in Israeli prisons paying higher prices than I have ever paid. These people are the ones that truly moved the international community into action. It wouldn't have. The United States, I don't think, would have said anything had it not been for the immense media pressure that was created from the immense popular pressure. There are a lot of moving parts to a global campaign. And I think it's so impressive, you know, that we were able to do this without any media backing, without any institutional backing, without any training, without any budget, nothing.

Lex Fridman: You mentioned the United States. What's the role of the United States in the struggle that you've been describing? What's the positive? What's the negative?

(someone): The role is perpetuating what's happening, Yanni. It's all a negative role, to be honest.

Lex Fridman: With the money, with power?

(someone): Yeah, it's like the 3.8 billion in military aid every year. It's the standing ovation.

Lex Fridman: Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion.

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#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You have people losing their homes. You have people who are held in Israeli prisons without trial. or charge indefinitely, but the conversations that are being held on the Hill, the conversation that are being held on CNN are, does Israel has a right to exist? Or like, why would you negate Israel's having a right to exist? That's one. Now, of course, I just find it's ridiculous, again, that opposing a secular political movement that was explicitly colonialist, expansionist, exclusive and racist through the words of its own authors is somehow, and also again, opposing such a political movement that is quite young and quite recent, is somehow equivalent to opposing a religion that is thousands and thousands of years old. But it is convenient, again, for Israeli politicians. to frame us who oppose Zionism, a form of racism and bigotry, as anti-Semites. But I can guarantee you Benjamin Netanyahu has no problem with anti-Semitism. This is the same man who has no problem getting on stage and shaking hands with Pastor John Hagee. doing web webinars with Pastor John Hagee. For those who don't know, Pastor John Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel, who has said on multiple occasions that Hitler was a hunter, who was sent to hunt the Jews, who said on multiple occasions that Jewish people are going to perish in hell. All of this is verifiable by Google. And this is one of the Israeli regime's closest allies, right? So the Israeli regime does not have a problem with anti-Semites when it serves its interests. It has a problem.

15

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You can't say, well, you're going to fly in. Who controls the airspace? Well, it takes you about two and a half minutes to cross it with a regular, you know, 747, okay? With a fighter plane, it takes you a minute and a half. Okay, so you're not how are you going to divide the airspace? Well, you're not going to divide it. This was going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic space and And so on so security has to be in the hands of Israel my view of how you solve this problem is that is a simple principle and the Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel, which basically means that the responsibility for overall security remains with Israel. And from a practical point of view, we've seen that every time that Israel leaves a territory and takes its security forces out of an area, it immediately is overtaken by Hamas or Hezbollah or jihadists who basically are committed to the destruction of Israel and also bring misery to the Palestinians or Arab subjects. So I think that that principle is less than perfect sovereignty. because you're taking a certain amount of powers, sovereign powers, especially security, away. But I think it's the only practical solution. So people say, ah, but it's not a perfect state. I say, okay, call it what you will, call it, you know, I don't know, limited sovereignty, call it autonomy plus, call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the reality.

16

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Just objective things are coming out, changing the picture. So I would say the attempt to brand me as corrupt is falling on its face, but the thing that is being uncovered in the trial, such as the use of spyware on a politician, a politician's surroundings, to try to shake them down, in investigations, put them in flea-ridden cells for 21 days, invite their 84-year-old mother to investigations without cause, bringing in their mistresses in the corridor, shaking them down. That's what people are asking. That corruption is what they want, correct?

Lex Fridman: What is the top obstacle to peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians? Let's talk about the big question of peace in this part of the world.

(someone): Well, I think the reason you have the persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which goes back about a century, is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people in any boundary. And that's why they opposed the establishment of the state of Israel before we had a state. And that's why they've opposed it after we had a state. They opposed it when we were, we didn't have Judea and Samaria, the West Bank in our heads and Gaza, and they opposed it after we have it. It doesn't make a difference. It's basically their persistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundaries. And I think their tragedy is that they've been commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of Zionism, namely that the Jews deserve a state in this part of the world. The territorial dispute is something else.

17

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): We've only been attached to this land for, oh, 3,500 years. But, you know, but it's a dispute, I agree. But I don't agree that we should throw out the Arabs, and I don't think that they should throw out the Jews. And if somebody said to you, the only way we're gonna have peace with Israel is to have an ethnically cleansed Palestinian entity, you know, that's outrageous. If you said the only way, You know, you shouldn't have Jews living in, I don't know, in suburbs of London or New York and so on. I don't think that will play too well. The world is actually advancing a solution that says that Jews cannot live among Arabs and Arabs cannot live among Jews. I don't think that's the right way to do it. And I think there's a solution out there. But I don't think we're going to get to it, which is less than perfect sovereignty, which involves Israeli security maintained for the entire territory by Israel, which involves not rooting out anybody, not kicking out, uprooting Arabs or Palestinians. They're going to live in enclaves in sovereign Israel, and we're going to live in probably in enclaves there. probably through transportational continuity as opposed to territorial continuity. That is, you know, for example, you can have tunnels and overpasses and so on that connect the various communities. We're doing that right now. We're doing that right now. And it actually works. I think there is a solution to this.

18

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about the legal classifications for Palestinians. You know, Israel, much like any other colonial entity, has divided and fragmented the Palestinian people. As I said earlier, I have a blue ID, which means I'm a resident. A friend of mine who lives in Haifa, for example, two hours away from me, 150 kilometers, nothing too bad in this country, has an Israeli citizenship. He can travel, he can enter the West Bank, he can do a lot more. He's a citizen, he can vote if he wants to, not that we want to. You know, I always tease my friends, oh, you can go to Italy without a visa because you have an Israeli citizenship. But, you know, they battle national erasure, they battle crime in their own communities because of police negligence. They battle land confiscation and have battled land confiscations since the 50s. Whereas somebody with a green ID, somebody from the West Bank, cannot leave the West Bank. cannot go anywhere without a special permit and lives behind these walls. And even within the West Bank, the West Bank, I think hilariously, George Bush described it as Swiss cheese because of the holes. Every few hundred meters, there's a new settlement or there's a new military checkpoint. So even if you live behind the wall in the West Bank with your green ID, even though you're robbed of your right to movement, you still even can't move from town to town within the West Bank without encountering settler violence or military violence while you're crossing the checkpoints and so on and so forth. And then the last category we have is people who live in Gaza.

19

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman: So just to give some context to the intense violence happening here. What do you think about Hamas firing rockets into Israel?

(someone): Well, the framing makes it seem as though unprovoked Hamas is like firing rockets onto Israel, regardless of what you think of Hamas, obviously, but unprovoked. But that's not the case. The provocation is the fact that they are forced to live in a cage. that they have no access to clean water, they have no access to basic rights, no access to imports, no access to anything, that they can't live. They're living in a densely populated enclave that was deemed uninhabitable by the UN, that was deemed an open-air prison. So the rockets, in any case, are retaliation for the siege. Let's start there. But again, this is just to prove my point, violence begets violence. Palestinian people are not violent people. We are not violent people at the core. And I think what serves this narrative is Islamophobia, is xenophobia towards Arabs, which I don't have the luxury to write laws about. By the way, I'm quite frustrated by this. I am preoccupied and the Palestinian people are preoccupied with the material violence that we have to deal with on the day-to-day, the demolitions, the bombings, the imprisonment. That's what we're distracted with and

20

#352 – Omar Suleiman: Islam

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Occupation. When Israel was created in 1948, you will find many Jews who are opposed to Zionism. And I think this is important, you know, to talk to Jews who are opposed to Zionism, and they are many. that will say that we were told that it was a land without a people for a people without a land. The problem with that was there were people there, our ancestors, 750,000 Palestinians expelled in the Nakba and many Palestinians that have been removed and harassed and that are treated in horrific ways. And the occupation is expanding. It is an illegal occupation. The settlements are still expanding. And the United States enables that occupation with its funding, with its unconditional support, unwavering support of Israel. And it does so in a way that completely undermines any of its claims to being a beacon of freedom in the world. because it is in plain sight now that the world can see what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah, what is happening in Jerusalem, what is happening with these expanding settlements, everything that flies in the face of any claim to wanting a peaceful solution. The children in Gaza, when I talk about dehumanization, the children that were on the face of the New York Times, which is historically one of the most anti-Palestinian newspapers in America, the faces of the children of Gaza, America and many parts of the world are now seeing it. We have been saying for a very long time, this is apartheid. This is an occupation. This is an injustice. The world needs to check it, hold it accountable.

21

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman: foreign aid since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion. As you said, it's providing currently 3.8 billion every year. A lot of people raise the question of what's the interest of taxpaying American citizens in this kind of?

(someone): Yeah, zero interest.

Lex Fridman: Foreign aid.

(someone): zero interest. I don't think Americans, I think Americans, a lot of Americans are concerned with healthcare, a lot of Americans are concerned with clean water in Flint. I don't think they're concerned with funding apartheid in another country. And I think it's a disturbing phenomenon that although public opinion in the United States is shifting, I would argue drastically about Palestine. People in Washington are yet to catch up. It was only, I think, nine Congress people who boycotted Herzog's speech in Congress yesterday. And he received standing ovation after standing ovation after standing ovation after standing ovation. And I wonder, if the everyday American is concerned that many of their politicians are Israel first politicians or politicians who care more about maintaining a relationship with the Israeli regime than they care about their own districts.

Lex Fridman: You've tweeted that 49 years ago, Ghassan Khanifani, or you can maybe correct me on the pronunciation, was assassinated. You wrote, quote, his revolutionary articulations of the Palestinian plight for liberation shook the colonial regime. Yet, he's not dead. His ideas remain ever timely and teachable. And he also tweeted an excerpt from his writing.

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#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You know, I'll tell you a story. I was interviewing a person whose brother was killed by the Israeli military during a Israeli raid on their village, and the person was so concerned about whether I was going to report that her brother allegedly had a Molotov cocktail in his hand. And I found it absolutely insane, absolutely absurd that we can just glance over the fact that there is, again, a foreign military in tanks with rifles and snipers, invading the village at 4 a.m in the morning, shooting live ammunition at people's houses, throwing tear gas, that we can just glance over, it's normal, we could just report on it, no problem, nobody's going to bat an eyebrow. but the fact that potentially somebody might have picked up a Molotov cocktail to throw it at this invading army is where we draw the line. It says a lot. It says a lot about whose violence is normalized, is accepted, is institutionalized, is glorified even, right? And you walk around Tel Aviv and you see all of the plaques plastered around the streets of the country, of the city, celebrating the battles that they had won, the massacres that they had enacted against the Palestinian people. But God forbid, God forbid Palestinians have any kind of similar sentiment.

Lex Fridman: So on July 4th, during this intense period, a Palestinian rammed a car into pedestrians at a bus stop in Tel Aviv, injuring eight people before being shot dead by a passerby. Also that night, Hamas fired rockets into Israel and then Israel responded with strikes on what it said was an underground weapons site. So just to give some context to the intense violence happening here.

What would it take to end the war?

Achieving peace between Israel and Palestine is a complex challenge. While I cannot provide a definitive solution, there are some ideas and perspectives to consider.

One perspective suggests that a solution could involve less than perfect sovereignty, where Israel maintains overall security for the entire territory while Palestinians govern themselves . This approach recognizes the need for Israeli security while allowing Palestinians to have governance.

The major obstacle to peace is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundaries . Additionally, the political ideologies and aspirations of both sides differ, with some factions seeking the destruction or dissolution of Israel . Overcoming these ideological challenges is crucial for a peaceful resolution.

The external role of the United States and other countries can also influence the peace process. Some argue that U.S. support enables ongoing Israeli policies, while others see it as crucial for Israel's security . The involvement and influence of other countries and international organizations can play a significant role in facilitating negotiations and fostering peace.

Efforts towards peace may require compromises on various issues, including borders, settlements, and the status of Jerusalem . Meaningful land swaps, dismantling of settlements, and addressing access to resources and freedom of movement can be important considerations .

Engaging in nonviolent methods, such as diplomacy and peaceful protests, could also play a role in seeking a solution . However, it is important to acknowledge that these methods alone may not have been effective in the past, given the complex dynamics and historical context of the conflict .

In summary, achieving peace between Israel and Palestine would require addressing the key obstacles, including territorial disputes, political ideologies, and external influences, while seeking compromise and exploring diplomatic solutions. It is important to consider multiple perspectives and foster an environment conducive to dialogue and understanding.

1

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): We've only been attached to this land for, oh, 3,500 years. But, you know, but it's a dispute, I agree. But I don't agree that we should throw out the Arabs, and I don't think that they should throw out the Jews. And if somebody said to you, the only way we're gonna have peace with Israel is to have an ethnically cleansed Palestinian entity, you know, that's outrageous. If you said the only way, You know, you shouldn't have Jews living in, I don't know, in suburbs of London or New York and so on. I don't think that will play too well. The world is actually advancing a solution that says that Jews cannot live among Arabs and Arabs cannot live among Jews. I don't think that's the right way to do it. And I think there's a solution out there. But I don't think we're going to get to it, which is less than perfect sovereignty, which involves Israeli security maintained for the entire territory by Israel, which involves not rooting out anybody, not kicking out, uprooting Arabs or Palestinians. They're going to live in enclaves in sovereign Israel, and we're going to live in probably in enclaves there. probably through transportational continuity as opposed to territorial continuity. That is, you know, for example, you can have tunnels and overpasses and so on that connect the various communities. We're doing that right now. We're doing that right now. And it actually works. I think there is a solution to this.

2

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You can't say, well, you're going to fly in. Who controls the airspace? Well, it takes you about two and a half minutes to cross it with a regular, you know, 747, okay? With a fighter plane, it takes you a minute and a half. Okay, so you're not how are you going to divide the airspace? Well, you're not going to divide it. This was going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic space and And so on so security has to be in the hands of Israel my view of how you solve this problem is that is a simple principle and the Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel, which basically means that the responsibility for overall security remains with Israel. And from a practical point of view, we've seen that every time that Israel leaves a territory and takes its security forces out of an area, it immediately is overtaken by Hamas or Hezbollah or jihadists who basically are committed to the destruction of Israel and also bring misery to the Palestinians or Arab subjects. So I think that that principle is less than perfect sovereignty. because you're taking a certain amount of powers, sovereign powers, especially security, away. But I think it's the only practical solution. So people say, ah, but it's not a perfect state. I say, okay, call it what you will, call it, you know, I don't know, limited sovereignty, call it autonomy plus, call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the reality.

3

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of Zionism, namely that the Jews deserve a state in this part of the world. The territorial dispute is something else. You have a territorial dispute if you say, okay, you're living on this side, we're living on that side, let's decide where the border is, and so on. That's not what the argument is. The Palestinian society, which is itself fragmented, but all the factions agree there shouldn't be a Jewish state anywhere, okay? They just disagree between Hamas that says, oh well, you should have it, we should get rid of it with terror, and the others who say we should also use political means to dissolve it. So that is the problem.

Lex Fridman: So even as part of a two-state solution, they're still against the idea?

(someone): Well, they don't want a state next to Israel. They want a state instead of Israel. And they say if we get a state, we'll use it as a springboard to destroy the smaller Israeli state, which is what happened when Israel unilaterally walked out of Gaza and effectively established a Hamas state there. They didn't say, oh good, now we have our own territory, our own state, Israel is no longer there, let's build peace, let's build economic projects, let's enfranchise our people. No, they turned it basically into a terror bastion from which they fired 10,000 rockets into Israel. When Israel left Lebanon, you know, because we had terrorist attacks from there, then we had Lebanon taken over by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel.

4

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): And it actually works. I think there is a solution to this. It's not the perfect world that people think of, because that model, I think, doesn't apply here. If it applies elsewhere, it's a question. I don't think so. But I think there's one other thing. And that's the main thing that I've been involved in. You know, people said, if you don't solve the Palestinian problem, You're not going to get to the Arab world. You're not going to have peace with the Arab world. Remember, the Palestinians are about 2% of the Arab world. And the other, you know, the other 98%, you're not gonna make peace with them. And that's our goal. And for a long time, people accepted that after the initial peace treaties with Egypt, with Prime Minister Begin of the Likud and President Sadat of Egypt, and then with Jordan, between Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein. For a quarter of a century we didn't have any more peace treaties because people said you got to go through the Palestinians and the Palestinians they don't want a solution of the kind that I described or any kind except the one that involves the dissolution of the state of Israel so we could wait another half century And I said, no, I mean, I don't think that we should accept the premise that we have to wait for the Palestinians because we'll have to wait forever. So I decided to do it differently.

5

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): No, they turned it basically into a terror bastion from which they fired 10,000 rockets into Israel. When Israel left Lebanon, you know, because we had terrorist attacks from there, then we had Lebanon taken over by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel. And therefore, every time we just walked out, what we got was not peace. We didn't give, you know, territory for peace, we got territory for terror. That's what we had. And that's what would happen as long as the reigning ideology says we don't want Israel in any border. So the idea of two states assumes that you'd have, on the other side, a state that wants to live in peace and not one that will be overtaken by Iran and its proxies in two seconds and become a base to destroy Israel. And therefore, I think that most Israelis today, if you ask them, They'd say, it's not going to work in that concept. So what do you do? What do you do with the Palestinians? Okay, they're still there. And I don't, unlike them, I don't want to throw them out. They're going to be living here and we're going to be living here in an area which is, by the way, just to understand, the area, the entire area of so-called West Bank and in Israel, is the width of the Washington Beltway, more or less, just a little more, not much more. You can't really divide it up. You can't say, well, you're going to fly in. Who controls the airspace?

6

#375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): It's not just the threat of violence. I don't think Hamas is going to be an arbiter of peace for the Palestinian people either. I think the Palestinian Authority is a question mark. I'm not sure. So I think that there need to be some preconditions that would need to be set with regard to everything from settlements to a lot of this minutiae. Big picture though, if I imagine what the most likely solution looks like, it doesn't mean it's a perfect solution and obviously it's a solution. Many people will say it's not, it's not going to happen. I think it's a solution where the borders are similar to what was being discussed in the Clinton era to some degree. as many of the settlements as possible have to go, understanding that some of the bigger ones are just not going to go and there's going to have to be meaningful land swaps with which Yasser Arafat seemed to be amenable to when he weighed in on it. I believe it was in the 90s. The topic of, um, the temple Mount and Jerusalem, et cetera, is a complicated one, but I think that almost certainly, uh, Um, East Jerusalem is going to have to be part of an eventual Palestinian state. You know, I mean like we can go as kind of as far as, as we want to with a lot of this stuff.

Lex Fridman: What role does us have to play in this coming to the table with good faith parties?

(someone): I don't know whether the I go back and forth between believing that the U.S. should play a big role to the U.S.

7

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): If we go to the 98%, we have a much greater chance of persuading the 2%. You know why? Because the 2%, the Palestinian hope to vanquish the state of Israel and not make peace with it is based among other things on the assumption that eventually the 98%, the rest of the Arab world will kick in and destroy the Jewish state, help them dissolve or destroy the Jewish state. When that hope is taken away, then you begin to have a turn to the realistic solutions of coexistence. By the way, they require compromise on the Israeli side too. And I'm perfectly cognizant of that and willing to do that. But I think a realistic compromise will be struck much more readily when the conflict between Israel and the Arab states, the Arab world is effectively solved. And I think we're on that path. It was a conceptual change, just like, you know, I've been involved in a few, I told you, the conceptual battle is always the most difficult one. And, you know, I had to fight this battle to convert a semi-socialist state into a a free market capitalist state. And I have to say that most people today recognize the power of competition and the benefits of free markets. So we also had to fight this battle that said you have to go through the, you know, the Palestinian strait. S-T-R-A-I-T, to get to the other places. There's no way to avoid this. You have to go through this impassable pass. And I think that now people are recognizing that we'll go around it and probably circle back.

8

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): I say, okay, call it what you will, call it, you know, I don't know, limited sovereignty, call it autonomy plus, call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the reality. And right now, if you ask Israelis across the political spectrum, except the very hard left, most Israelis agree with that. They don't really debate it.

Lex Fridman: So a two-state solution where Israel controls the security of the entire region?

(someone): We don't call it quite that. I mean, there are different names, but the idea is yes, Israel controls security in the region. It's the entire area, it's this tiny area between the Jordan River and the sea. I mean, it's like, you know, you can walk it in not one afternoon, if you're really fit, you can do it in a day. Less than a day, I did.

Lex Fridman: So the expansion of settlements in the West Bank has been a top priority for this new government. People, many harshly criticized this as contributing to escalating the Israel-Palestine tensions. Can you understand that perspective, that this expansion of settlements is not good for this two-state solution? Can you describe it?

(someone): Yeah, I can understand what they're saying, and they don't understand why they're wrong. First, most Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria live in urban blocks, and that accounts for about 90% of the population. Okay? And everybody recognizes that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement.

9

#273 – Chris Blattman: War and Violence

Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman: But let me ask you, one of the most difficult things going on in the world today, Israel-Palestine. will we ever see peace in this part of the world? And sort of your book title is The Roots of War and the Paths for Peace, or the subtitle, Why We Fight. What's the path for peace? Will we ever see peace?

(someone): Yeah, if we think about this conflict in the sense of like this dispute, this sort of contest, this contest that's been going on between Israelis and Palestinians, it's been going on for a century. And there were really just 10 or 15 years of pretty serious violence in that span of time. Most of it from 2000 to 2009 and stretching up to like 2014. They're like sporadic incidents which are really terrible. I'm not trying to diminish the human cost of these by the way. Like I'm just trying to point out that whatever's happening as unpleasant and challenging and difficult as it is, it's actually not war. And so it is at peace. There's sort of an uneasy stalemate. Israelis and Palestinians are actually pretty good at just sort of keeping this at a relatively low scale of violence. There's a whole bunch of like low-scale sporadic violence that can be repression of civilians. It can be terror bombings and terror actions. It can be counter-terror violence. It can be mass arrests. It can be repression. It can be denying people the vote. It can be

10

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Just objective things are coming out, changing the picture. So I would say the attempt to brand me as corrupt is falling on its face, but the thing that is being uncovered in the trial, such as the use of spyware on a politician, a politician's surroundings, to try to shake them down, in investigations, put them in flea-ridden cells for 21 days, invite their 84-year-old mother to investigations without cause, bringing in their mistresses in the corridor, shaking them down. That's what people are asking. That corruption is what they want, correct?

Lex Fridman: What is the top obstacle to peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians? Let's talk about the big question of peace in this part of the world.

(someone): Well, I think the reason you have the persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which goes back about a century, is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people in any boundary. And that's why they opposed the establishment of the state of Israel before we had a state. And that's why they've opposed it after we had a state. They opposed it when we were, we didn't have Judea and Samaria, the West Bank in our heads and Gaza, and they opposed it after we have it. It doesn't make a difference. It's basically their persistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundaries. And I think their tragedy is that they've been commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of Zionism, namely that the Jews deserve a state in this part of the world. The territorial dispute is something else.

11

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): One side has makeshift weapons and the other side is one of the most sophisticated armies in the world. So I don't know. I don't know how effective violence could be in this case.

Lex Fridman: But if you look at the flip side, do you see the power of nonviolent resistance? So Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the power of turning the other cheek. He spoke negatively about turning the other cheek. So I sense that doing so has not been effective for the Palestinian people.

(someone): We've turned the other cheek generation after generation. There's this Zionist trope that is used against us. They say Palestinian rejectionism. They say that we reject everything, but if you look at the history, like our leadership, the Palestinian Authority has given up inch after inch, has compromised on acre after acre, has signed deal after deal after deal after deal, and still there is no peace. So turning the other cheek is not, you know, the most effective method in my book.

Lex Fridman: What are the top obstacles to peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians?

(someone): the occupation comes to mind, the shoot-to-kill policies come to mind, the siege comes to mind, the asymmetry of the judiciary comes to mind. The whole system needs to be dismantled. I will quote my dear friend Rabih Al-Bariyya, who's a lawyer who says, you know, the solution, justice comes about through recognition, return, and redistribution. There are millions of Palestinian refugees who are living in excruciating circumstances in refugee camps around the world. There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners who are held in prisons for defending their homes, hundreds of which are held without charge or trial, by the way.

12

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): And let me say in advance that if I have any opportunity to use my contacts to help bring about an end to this tragedy, I'll do so. I know both leaders, but I don't just jump in and assume. There would be a desire at a certain point, because the conditions have created the possibility of helping stop this carnage, then I'll do it. And that's why I choose my words carefully, because I think that may be the best thing that I could do. Look, I think what you see in Ukraine is what happens if you have territorial designs on a territory by a country that has nuclear weapons. And that, to me, you see the change in the equation. Now, I think that people are loathe to use nuclear weapons, and I'm not sure that I would think that the Russian side would use them with happy abandon. I don't think that's the question. But you see how the whole configuration changes when that happens. So you have to be very careful on how you resolve this conflict, so it doesn't Well, it doesn't go off the rails, so to speak. That's, by the way, the corollary is here. We don't want Iran, which is an aggressive force with an just aggressive ideology of dominating first the Muslim world and then eliminating Israel and then becoming a global force, having nuclear weapons. It's totally different when they don't have it than when they do have it. And that's why one of my main goals has been to prevent Iran from having the means of mass destruction, which will be used, atomic bombs, which they openly say will be used against us, and you can understand that. How to bring about an end to Ukraine?

13

#334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Nor the Palestinians themselves, because the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic, quote-unquote. And even within that, there is problems with Hamas, for instance. But nevertheless, it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people. Whether they have a solution, if you look at their rhetoric, if you listen to their rhetoric, it's the destruction of the state of Israel. And that, it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis, Israeli population, and Israeli government, particularly those who are now in power, Netanyahu, the Likud, and more kind of a right-wing politics of, polity of today's Israel. That being said, I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of threat of Iran, quote unquote, in order to present themselves a rightful to, for terms of security and whatever else. the way that they're treating the Palestinians, which I think is extremely unjust. I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since 1967 at least, and not to try to come to terms with it. Of course, there are a huge amount of, I'm not denying that at all, there's a huge amount of failures, mistakes, and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal. or try to come to terms in some fashion.

14

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): right to movement, you still even can't move from town to town within the West Bank without encountering settler violence or military violence while you're crossing the checkpoints and so on and so forth. And then the last category we have is people who live in Gaza. We are talking about over 2 million people who live in an open air prison, who have no right to movement, but also have no access to clean water and no access to supplies, no access to good food, no access to good health care, and so on and so forth. We routinely get bombarded every few years. Gaza is like two hours away from my house. It feels like an absolute faraway planet because it's so isolated from the rest of the country. So imagine all of these different legal statuses fragmenting your everyday identity and creating different challenges and obstacles for you to deal with, for each group to deal with. You know, it's amazing and impressive that despite these colonial barriers, the real cement ones and the barriers in the mind. Despite all of these barriers, the Palestinian people have maintained their national identity for 70 years. That is incredibly impressive. And it also sends a message that as long as we have a boot on our neck, we're going to continue fighting. Violence, cracking down on refugee camps, bombarding refugee camps is only going to bring about more violence.

Lex Fridman: So West Bank is a large region where a lot of Palestinian people live, and then there are settlements sprinkled throughout, and those settlements have walls around them with security cameras. Security guards. Security guards.

(someone): There's almost a million settlers in the West Bank.

15

#334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal. or try to come to terms in some fashion. But it's a very complex picture, and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under very uneven circumstances, when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories, or in terms of their security in future vis-a-vis Israel.

Lex Fridman: So I think there's, as you probably know, quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation, can you steelman their side? Can you steelman Israel's side that they're trying to be a sovereign nation, trying to protect themselves against threats, ultimately wanting to create a place of safety, a place where people can pursue all the things that you want to pursue in life, including foremost happiness.

(someone): I tend to agree with you. And I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people. But there are two arguments. One is a moral argument. To my mind as a historian, Jews across around the world for all through their history suffered. And this is a history of suffering. This is a memory of suffering. And I find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much sacrifice, suffering, loss of life, and variety of Holocaust above all, would find itself in a position not to give the proper justice to a people who could be their neighbors.

16

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): Okay? And everybody recognizes that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement. So they're really arguing about something that has already been decided and agreed upon, really, by Americans, even by Arabs, many Arabs. They don't think that Israel is going to dismantle these blocks. You look outside the window here, and within about a kilometer, a mile from here, is you have Jerusalem. Half of Jerusalem grew naturally beyond the old 1967 border. So you're not going to dismantle half of Jerusalem. That's not going to happen. And most people don't expect that. Then you have the other 10% scattered in tiny, you know, small communities. And people say, well, you're gonna have to take them out. Why? Why? Remember that in pre-1967 Israel, we have over a million and a half Arabs here. We don't say, oh, Israel has to be ethnically cleansed from Arabs in order to have, from its Arab citizens, in order to have peace. Of course not. Jews can live among Arabs and Arabs can live among Jews. And what is being advanced by those people who say that we can't live in our ancestral homeland, in these disputed areas, nobody says that this is Palestinian areas, And nobody says that these are Israeli heirs. We claim them, they claim them. We've only been attached to this land for, oh, 3,500 years. But, you know, but it's a dispute, I agree.

17

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): You have to go through this impassable pass. And I think that now people are recognizing that we'll go around it and probably circle back. And that, I think, actually gives hope not only to have an Arab-Israeli peace, but circling back in Israeli-Palestinian peace. And obviously this is not something that you find in the sound bites and so on, but in the popular discussion of the press. But that idea is permeating. And I think it's the right idea, because I think it's the only one that will work.

Lex Fridman: So expanding the circle of peace, just to linger on that, requires what? Secretly talking man to man, human to human, to leaders of other nations. Theoretically, you're right. Theoretically, okay. Well, let me ask you another theoretical question. On the circle of peace, as a student of history, looking at the ideas of war and peace, what do you think can achieve peace in the war in Ukraine? Looking at another part of the world, if you consider the fight for peace in this part of the world, how can you apply that to that other part of the world between Russia and Ukraine now?

(someone): I think it's one of the, the savage horrors of history and one of the great tragedies that is occurring. And let me say in advance that if I have any opportunity to use my contacts to help bring about an end to this tragedy, I'll do so. I know both leaders, but I don't just jump in and assume.

18

#391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): who forced themselves inside the media cycle. This was what was unique about Sheikh Jarrah. We were able to penetrate an industry that usually ignores us and usually refuses to use any of our framing, any of our quotations. And these people that March, these people that spread the rhetoric, spread the facts, wrote articles, these people that made videos online and got arrested, and many of whom are still in Israeli prisons paying higher prices than I have ever paid. These people are the ones that truly moved the international community into action. It wouldn't have. The United States, I don't think, would have said anything had it not been for the immense media pressure that was created from the immense popular pressure. There are a lot of moving parts to a global campaign. And I think it's so impressive, you know, that we were able to do this without any media backing, without any institutional backing, without any training, without any budget, nothing.

Lex Fridman: You mentioned the United States. What's the role of the United States in the struggle that you've been describing? What's the positive? What's the negative?

(someone): The role is perpetuating what's happening, Yanni. It's all a negative role, to be honest.

Lex Fridman: With the money, with power?

(someone): Yeah, it's like the 3.8 billion in military aid every year. It's the standing ovation.

Lex Fridman: Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion.

19

#389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Lex Fridman Podcast

(someone): And in the course of giving that speech before the joint session of Congress, our delegation received calls from Gulf states who said, we can't believe what your prime minister is doing. He's challenging, you know, the president of the United States. Well, I had no choice. I mean, because I thought my country's own existence was imperiled. And remember, we always understand through changing administrations that America, under no matter what leadership, is always the irreplaceable and indispensable ally of Israel. And we'll always remain that. We can have arguments as we have, but in the family, as we say, in the mishpocha, you know, it's the family. But nevertheless, I was forced to take a stand. That produced calls from Gulf states that ultimately led to clandestine meetings that ultimately flowered into the Abraham Accords. And I think we're at a point where the idea of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Arab-Israeli conflict can happen. I'm not sure it will. It depends on quite a few things, but it could happen. And if it happens, it might open up the ending of the Israeli-Islamic conflict. Remember, the Arab world is a small part. It's an important part, but there are large Islamic populations and could bring about an end to an historic enmity between Islam and Judaism. It could be a great thing. So I'm looking at this larger thing now.