Tom Friedman on the Only Way to Solve the Israel-Hamas War

0:01This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:14I'm Thomas Friedman. I've been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since I was 15. I cover foreign affairs for The New York Times, but with a particular emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

0:30So, on this second anniversary of the war, how am I feeling? You know, this has been the longest Israeli-Palestinian war. It's also been the first war that, despite its length, two years now, it actually has no name. the 1948 war, the War of Independence, the Nakba War from a Palestinian point of view, the 1967 war, the Six-Day War, the Sinai War, the October War. This war, two years, still no name. And so I have a name for it. It's the worst war. This is absolutely the worst war ever between Israelis and Palestinians because it comes after a failed attempt at peace. It's a war that was launched by Hamas with complete viciousness aimed to kill as many Israeli soldiers and civilians as Hamas soldiers could encounter.

1:24And it triggered an Israeli response against Hamas that has devastated Gaza, inflicted tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties, both soldiers and civilians, and done so without Israel offering any political horizon for the morning after. And so it's left both communities more devastated physically, more traumatized than ever, and farther than ever from what is the only solution, two states for two people.

2:04So now, thanks to initiative by President Trump, the two sides, Hamas and Israel, are trying to forge a ceasefire that will involve the return of all the Israeli hostages, both living and dead. Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of them in Israeli jails, and an Israeli withdrawal from at least most of Gaza to some border region, and basically paving the way for an international peacekeeping force to come into Gaza and secure the areas where Israel is evacuated. a Palestinian technocratic cabinet to basically run Gaza, and over and above that cabinet, a kind of international body chaired by President Trump to supervise the reconstruction of Gaza.

2:55It's an extremely complicated plan in an extremely broken place. There have been a lot of optimistic noises about whether or not this will be achieved. I certainly pray that it will be, but I think it's going to be very difficult because Hamas is going to want to retain at least some arms for its people for self-protection so it can still play a political role in a post-war Gaza. And Israel is going to be very careful about how far and wide it withdraws from Gaza and what kind of security arrangement will fill in its wake. And so I hope the ceasefire that President Trump has initiated will come to fruition.

3:36And I'm watching every day, but it's not going to be easy.

3:42What intrigues me about this plan is that it contains the seeds of what I think is the only possible solution now to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You know, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, you know, many people have said, when you have a difficult problem, enlarge it. And in effect, that's what we're doing. I think the thing that people need to understand most about the peace talks going on right now is the sheer number of actors involved. What is the underlying logic of this plan is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now so broken, the two sides are so traumatized, that this problem can no longer be solved with the traditional tools.

4:32And at the traditional level that it was resolved before, that is the two sides negotiating with each other and an international mediator in between them. I believe if we are ever going to get to two states for two people, it's actually going to require some kind of international body to oversee both Gaza and the West Bank. and assure Israelis that no threat can ever come from those areas and that they don't have to rely on Palestinian promises to demilitarize. And assure Palestinians that Israelis will be gone and enable Palestinians to develop their own non-corrupt governing authority. And so basically, if we want to solve this problem now, I think we have to go back to the whole idea of mandate, kind of agreed upon Arab international mandate to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, to oversee the rebuilding of Palestinian governance in the West Bank.

5:34And only that kind of international structure that would assure both decent Palestinian governance and real demilitarization of both Gaza and the West Bank supervised by international troops that would almost surely have to have an American component. I think that's the only way to solve this problem now.

6:01Let's step back for a second. and ask, you know, how did we get to this point where we can even have these kind of talks that are going on in Egypt this week? And it's for several reasons. One is that Iran and its threat network of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Shia militias in Iraq, Iran was dealt a devastating blow by Israel with the help of the United States in what was called the 12-day war. So Iran, its ability to meddle and destroy peace talks has been severely set back. Israel, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, finds itself not only more isolated than ever internationally, but it has a very different sort of diplomatic slash political problem with the Trump administration.

6:51Whenever U.S. presidents, particularly Democrats, tried to press Prime Minister Netanyahu to enter into peace negotiations, Netanyahu could always run to evangelical Christians and Republicans, basically, and use them as a lever to neutralize the White House and to deflate any pressure on Israel. But under Trump, that's not possible because he completely controls his party now. And so Netanyahu found himself really forced to enter into these negotiations very grudgingly. But his old levers that he used to pull in order to diffuse American pressure, they weren't available under Trump. For Palestinians, you have an analogous situation.

7:36For decades, basically, Palestinians were able to have enormous influence over the core Arab leadership in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, by threatening them that if they didn't support the Palestinian cause, which their people did, the Palestinian movement would attack and delegitimize those leaders. And because those leaders, in most cases, were illegitimate, they were very vulnerable to that kind of sort of political blackmail from Palestinians. But what's happened in the last, you know, 10, 15 years is that leadership of the Arab world has moved from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the republics, to the Gulf, to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular.

8:20And these monarchies have a lot more legitimacy. And therefore, they're actually not so vulnerable to the sort of traditional Palestinian, you know, blandishments. And they have made it very clear that they are ready to participate in a ceasefire in Gaza, in a transition for a different kind of Palestinian governance. And one thing we know about the Palestinians living in Gaza, many of whom have been uprooted four, five, six times from their homes. They are exhausted. They're traumatized. They've lost their homes in many, many cases and lost family and relatives. They want this over. And I think that's another pressure on Hamas.

9:01Hamas knows that it does not have the mandate of heaven anymore to perpetuate this war indefinitely. And so for all these reasons, the parties have found it very difficult to avoid this negotiation. This is a hugely complicated process, but, you know, certainly one of the key actors has been the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

9:27Netanyahu was finally cornered by Trump after, let's remember, you know, last January, December, President Biden had a very similar deal on the table, and Netanyahu rejected it, walked away from it after the first stage of hostage release. Netanyahu has managed to survive this war because of the devotion, the cult-like devotion of a core of his support. He has done everything to divide Israel in order to stay in power, to give basically a permission slip to the ultra-Orthodox, to not fight in one of the most vital wars of Israel's history in order to keep them in his coalition. He's done a whole series of what I find really disgusting things, but has managed to survive politically and avoid a commission of inquiry.

10:16Bibi Netanyahu never wanted this war to end. He did everything he could to perpetuate it because he knew that the morning after the morning after, there will be a reckoning for him. I think he deserves to be called to account, and I believe there will be a reckoning. if this ceasefire comes through and the hostages are released.

10:40The biggest loss maybe for Israel is that it lost its moral halo among people who were predisposed towards Israel. So Israel has lost something deeply important, albeit intangible, because the way it fought this war, the way Netanyahu fought this war, which was to basically go after Hamas with little, often not zero, but little regard for Palestinian civilian casualties along the way. When you fight a war that's going to necessarily involve so many civilian casualties, but you offer no political horizon whatsoever, which is what Netanyahu did, it starts to just look to people around the world, especially if you're viewing it in 15-second bites on TikTok, as just killing, killing for killing's sake.

11:29And that's how it was perceived by many people around the world and particularly many young people. And as a result, Israel's credibility, standing, moral support among lots of young people around the world in particular, not to mention old people, has been so badly damaged that Israelis are not welcome in a lot of places now around the world, whether it's their soccer teams or their singers or their academics. and that's been a huge price to pay. So what about Hamas and its leadership? Well, I certainly hope there'll be a reckoning for them too. You know, I wrote a while back when Yahya Sinwar, who was the leader of Hamas, who planned and launched this war, was still alive, that if there were ceasefire and he held a press conference, I wanted to be in the first row and I wanted to be able to ask the first question.

12:25Mr. Sinoir, you just achieved what you called a great victory. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a restoration of the ceasefire. What did you have on October 6, 2023? You had Israel out of Gaza and a ceasefire. You launched this war to get yourself exactly where you were the day before, with a ceasefire in Israel out of Gaza. Shame on you. Yes, you drew attention to the Palestinian cause, but that attention will only be translated into something positive if it actually leads to exactly the solution you didn't want, which was two states for two people. So you will go down in infamy. Donald Trump has been saying for a while that he really wants, he already thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

13:25Well, if Donald Trump is able to secure a ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, return of Israeli hostages, and it holds and paves the way for negotiations on the only solution of two states for two people, to quote my Israeli friend Nahum Barnea, the columnist from Yidiot, Trump will not only deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, He'll deserve the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry as well, because that would be quite an achievement. It's like he's trying to put together a Rubik's Cube while people are still shooting at each other and at him, metaphorically speaking. And the pieces themselves are sort of crumbling.

14:10And so to try to get them all arranged, all the same color on one side, all going the same way and sustain it the morning after the morning after. Sustaining this would require the full work of a single U.S. Secretary of State for the rest of his career. And my question is, will the Trump administration have the attention, the energy, the focus that will be required every day to keep such a complicated solution on track? I hope so.

14:51Thank you.

15:21Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

15:51Thank you.