47. Tony Klug: Could the Israel-Hamas conflict restart the peace process?

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0:19Welcome to The Rest Is Politics, leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And we're going to be talking to a gentleman by the name of Tony Klug. and he's somebody who has a long long experience of the Middle East he's worked as it were on both sides of the Israel-Palestine divide in trying to advise and help and cajole people towards a phrase that we've been hearing an awful lot of in recent days and that is the two-state solution Tony Klug very kindly presented Rory and me with a clutch of publications that he's written on this situation and on the two-state solution over about six decades now.

1:07He's remarkably fit and healthy. And you'll also see that he's a wonderfully articulate person, no ums, no ahs, no gaps, no pauses, very, very erudite. And he was telling us as well that he last played football aged 76, which is pretty good. But Rory, why don't you just, before we get going with Tony, why don't you just give us a sense of what you think we mean when we talk about the two-state solution? So as we've discussed in the podcast before, in 1967, 1967 war, Israel took bits of what were then Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Those were Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Since then, under international law, that territory, which was outside the 67 borders of Israel, was considered to be occupied territory.

2:03It was territory in places particularly like the West Bank and Gaza, very, very large Palestinian communities were living. The idea for a very long time now, and this is what Tony Klug has really been at the heart of since the early 1970s, is the creation of a two-state solution where those bits of territory outside the 67 borders would become a Palestinian state. At the moment, the international community considers it occupied territory occupied by Israel. So what is the problems with creating a two-state solution? And this was at the heart of all the conversations in Oslo in the 1990s. And Tony Klug's really going to take us into this, but there are basically, I suppose, six main things.

2:43The first thing is where are the borders going to be between Israel and Palestine? Because the obvious thing is to say they should be on the 67 borders, but as we're about to discover, settlements have been built all over the place. So there are nearly 700 ,000 Israelis living in places which were beyond the 67 borders. And therefore, there's probably going to have to be some land swaps in working out how to get back to a border where maybe Israeli settlements or some of them might remain within Israel. Other Israeli settlements would have to be evacuated. But if you think about that, that's hundreds of thousands of people moving and the Palestinians might have to get land elsewhere.

3:24And the shape of this also matters because for Palestine to have a viable state, it needs contiguous territory. And at the moment, it's divided into hundreds of little enclaves by Israeli wires and the protection of these settlements. And of course, there's this big division between the West Bank and Gaza, so borders. Second thing is Jerusalem. Both sides see Jerusalem as their capital. And most of the proposals around two-state solution increasingly suggest it should be a shared capital, although people on both sides reject that. The third is something called the right of return. So in the creation of the original state of Israel in the late 1940s, in a process called the Nakba, 900 ,000 Palestinians were expelled from what is now Israel.

4:12And I think I'm right, Roy, that Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe. For catastrophe, exactly. What's known as the catastrophe. So these were huge numbers of Palestinians who were pushed out of where they were living, pushed out of their villages, and those villages became Israeli villages. So the right of return is about Palestinians' right to come back. Now, again, that's very controversial because there are so many Palestinians that there would be real concerns in Israel that if they all came back, then Jews would no longer be a majority inside Israel. And therefore, the idea of Israel being a Jewish homeland would be undermined.

4:48So one solution to that is to try to see it as more of a symbolic right of return, that people would have the right of return, but they wouldn't exercise it. Fourth thing, and I promise I'm going to come to the end, is security concerns. So Israel, very concerned that if Palestine became an independent state, it wouldn't pose a security threat to Israel. And of course, that's really relevant because Gaza was essentially, Israel evacuated it. It took its settlers out. And although it's continued to enter militarily, many Israelis see Gaza as an example of what happens if you create an independent Palestinian state.

5:23And of course, we saw at the beginning of October this horrifying terrorist attack, which will have given many Israelis again the sense that if an independent Palestinian state is created, they have serious security concerns. And then finally, I guess it's all around the issue of how this is going to function, how these economies are going to work, how they're going to trade with each other, what's it going to mean to be a sovereign state, how the West Bank and Gaza will deal with each other, and what Israel's called. Is it a Jewish state or which is how Israelis want to view it. Palestinians challenge that because they say there are a very large number of Palestinians living in Israel, and therefore the idea of a Jewish state is uncomfortable to them.

6:02So that's the best I can do on a bit of an introduction. But Tony Klug is a much, much deeper expert who's been in the hearth of this and is going to explain, I guess, all the political context, all the emotion that makes this theory so challenging. And I think one of the reasons why it's important that people listen to somebody like Tony Clug, as people are going to hear very shortly. He just has this stuff kind of oozing from his fingertips, the history, the context, and I think a pretty deep understanding of both sides. I think very, very irritated with America, their historic role, quite irritated with the way that he sees it as outside powers, thinking that they're always the solution when they might be part of the problem.

6:47But I think the other thing that's important is just to, it comes across from when you listen to him, just how complicated it is and how hard it is to explain something as complicated as the history of this. And that's what I think you and I have been trying to do with some of the extra podcasts we've been doing in recent weeks. And we should say that in addition to talking to Tony earlier this week, and we're talking now today on the day that there is finally talk of a possible four-day truce to allow some of the Israeli hostages to be released. But we're also going to be talking in the coming days to the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, who, like Tony, knows the history of this stuff inside out.

7:33So I hope listeners will enjoy this. He's a very, very interesting guy, written an awful lot about this and also been at the sharp end. And I think just one more thing maybe to bear in mind is that he is very much a two-state solution person. And you'll hear when he's interviewed that he's very frustrated with a push for another idea, which is the one-state solution. And the one-state solution essentially says that the two-state solution can't happen. There are too many settlements. There's no way hundreds of thousands of Israelis are ever going to leave where they are. And therefore, many Palestinians are now saying, let's have one state, which will include all of the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel in a single state, proper civil rights for Palestinians.

8:15But the problem there is that's unacceptable to Israel because the Palestinians would be the majority in that binational state, and it would no longer be a Jewish homeland. So we'll also hear Tony trying to challenge the alternative, which is the one state solution. So here we go, Dr. Tony Klug.

8:35So, Tony, welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you very much for that over-generous introduction. I hardly recognise myself. You've said that every perceived advance since 1967 has been provoked by a seismic event. First of all, what do you mean by that? And secondly, I think we can all agree that what we're going through at the moment is a seismic event. What advance could come out of where we are now? Well, let me just tell you what I mean by every peaceable advance has followed a seismic event. I mean from 1967 onwards. If you start with the 1967 war, that generated a movement among the Palestinians, which ended with them supporting a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel, instead of in place of Israel, which had been their previous position.

9:26The 1973 Egypt-Israel war ended up in 1999 with the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. The first intifada of 1987 prompted the Oslo Accords, and the second intifada prompted the Arab Peace Initiative. So these are probably the four major peaceable breakthroughs since 1967, and they all followed with a time lag obviously some seismic event does that mean you think that those parts of the world that need to that aren't necessary from that region in that region only really focus on this when we're in a crisis and is that why crisis can be the thing that leads to progress i don't think it's so much the rest of the world because really the rest of the world had little to do with all four events that i just mentioned they were actually prompted from inside.

10:20I don't think that's going to happen on this occasion, because I think the two parties, I don't think they really know what they're doing. They don't have any clear strategies. It urgently needs outside intervention on this occasion. Moving forward then to now, what do you think is the solution? What should people be working towards? If you were in charge of trying to negotiate a solution, what would it be? Who would be involved? How long would it take? Well, the ultimate solution has always been the one that for the last 50 plus years I've been advocating. I mean, it wasn't done by caprice. It was done by really knowing Israelis and Palestinians very well and getting inside their hearts and souls and minds and trying to identify what their absolute basic minimum core aspirations were.

11:07And in both cases, the conclusion was self-determination in a state of their own within the country that each claimed as its own. There is no other solution that is outside that framework. Well, any solution has to satisfy the minimum core aspirations of the two peoples and allay their maximum fears. So if there is another solution which is capable of doing that, then I would support it. But I'm not aware of any others and I don't see the others. And therefore, I think, you know, recently, one or two people who have been strongly critical of two states in the last few years and ridiculed it have come back on board and are now calling for its urgent implementation.

11:49Tini, just to step back for a second and step away from what you're proposing towards the bigger context, looking objectively at this or stepping back from what we know you want, what are the arguments for and against a one state solution or alternatives to a two state solution? Okay, so to be clear, first of all, it's not a question of what I want, because what I want is to see this conflict resolved. I have many friends and colleagues over many years among both Palestinians and Israelis, and that's my aim. Therefore, what I favour is the proposal which is capable of achieving that. It is two states, but if it were one state, then I would go for that.

12:27Play devil's advocate and make the argument against yourself. What would people say who are attacking you? Well, they would say that you should have a state with total equality, full democracy, in which everyone is treated equally. And I agree with all that. I mean, if you ask me theoretically, what sort of state I like, I like democratic secular states. I sort of live in one with all its flaws. So to summarize that vision, that is a vision where all the existing borders that exist between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel disappear. It becomes one government, all Palestinians, all Israelis are voting for a single parliament or government and that everybody's civil rights protected.

13:08That's supposed to be the alternative vision, is it? Well, that's one alternative. But bear in mind when people talk about a one state solution, they have lots of different ideas in mind. If you ask Hamas, they support a one-state solution, an Islamic state. Ask the far right in Israel, it's a Jewish state. Ask the PLO out of their charter, it's an Arab state. It could be a binational state. What would a binational state be? Well, it would be a sort of federated state where the two parties, the two peoples, would be able to exercise their own national self-determination within their own chambers within the context of one state.

13:43The problem with the one secular democratic state is it atomizes everyone down to the level of the individual. So there are no collective rights acknowledged. And that's not acceptable to either Israelis or Palestinians. Why would that not be acceptable? Because, of course, for many British American listeners from a sort of liberal enlightenment tradition, that would seem self-evident. You know, equality under the law, equal votes. Why would it not be acceptable to either side? I think within each state, there has to be equality under the law and full equality. The question is whether that's done in one state or two states.

14:17There's nothing magical about the number of states. It could be three states or four states. But in the one state solution that you were just talking about, why is it that you think that it's unrealistic to imagine it in terms of atomized individuals? What is it that makes that not suit the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians compared to, for example, people elsewhere in the world who do accept those kinds of states? Well, it's not elsewhere in the world. It's very much a Western notion. And in fact, that is the problem with the whole proposal. It comes largely from well-meaning Western liberals or leftists who want to create their own image out in other regions.

14:52And they can't just replicate that. You can't just impose your own preferences and systems and structures on other parts of the world. We, the British and Europeans more generally, the Americans as well, have been doing that for centuries. And it's created mayhem around the world. So given all that, what is it about the aspirations or views of Israelis and Palestinians which mean that it's unrealistic? Because both peoples aspire to self-determination in their own state. If they didn't do that, then I think the one-state democratic secular model would be worth considering. But all of the options that you listed a few moments ago, right now, today, feel absolutely impossible.

15:35Can't imagine it being an Islamic state. Can't really imagine it being a Jewish state. Can't imagine it being an Arab state. Are the hatreds not so deep that actually imagining any form of coming together, right now, today, 2023, feel more distant than they've ever done? Well, I think the way to bring them together is for each party to exercise its self-determination and then to create, I think it would happen naturally, a number of horizontal connections between the two sides, political parties, trade unions, sporting activities, cultural activities, and so on and so forth, normal and natural.

16:10And that may evolve into some sort of confederation between Israel and Palestine, except that I would say that it couldn't work unless it included Jordan as well. I've had a fair bit to deal with both Israelis and Palestinians. When you're talking to them, when you're trying to get to the heart of what they think and what they want, how different are they as negotiators, as political entities? How would you define the difference? Well, I think there are two levels. One is how they negotiate. The Israeli system of negotiating is very much the Western type model where you put forward your proposal less than you're prepared to accept.

16:48The other side puts something a bit higher, and you barter, and you reach an agreement, but with no necessarily any notion of the endgame. Well, if you look at all the Arab peace initiatives, let us say the Sadat Initiative, the PLO decision in 1988 to recognize Israel and have a state next to it, and then the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, these were all started with the endgame, and then they work back. So you begin with the end game, and then the negotiations are about the logistics, how you implement it, the timing, and so on. And what was the end game in these cases? Well, the first one was the Sadat Initiative, and the end game was that Israel withdraws completely from the whole of the Sinai Desert that they captured in 1967 in exchange for Egypt recognizing Israel and establishing full diplomatic relations and peace.

17:40The 1988 decision by the PLO was that they would recognize Israel and recognize, in fact, its right to exist in peace and security. They went further than I had ever expected them to go in exchange for Israel agreeing to a state on the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem. And the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 was an offer to Israel for full diplomatic relations and recognition by the entire Arab world in exchange for Palestinian statehood. So all these three, you had the end game, and then they wanted to discuss the logistics. The word strategy keeps popping up, and I'm a bit of a strategy obsessive.

18:20And I'd love to ask you to try to define what you see as the current strategy of both Hamas and of Israel, because from where I'm sitting, it's very, very hard to fathom. I mean, you're not the only one who's finding it hard to fathom a strategy. In fact, I would go further and question whether Hamas or Israel has a strategy or an endgame at all. Really? Both of them? Yes, in the current circumstances. And if you judge from their actions, for Hamas you might think that their strategy is one of self-destruction. And in the almost certain knowledge that Israel would respond ferociously to their attack to bring death and destruction on the people of Gaza too.

19:03And why might that be a thought-through strategy? Why might they think that was sensible? I'm just saying that if you look at what their actions are, you can deduce that strategy. It's difficult to deduce any other strategy other than maybe a total frustration and a prison breakout sort of thing without consideration of the consequences, which have been absolutely dire. And equally with Israel's strategy, again, if you judge from its actions, not only would you say, well, their strategy was to collaborate in this endeavor, but to also thoroughly alienate world opinion and continue on its march towards becoming a pariah state, so contrary to its founding purpose and principles.

19:45And the primary victim, of course, of all these quasi-strategies, as often, are the ordinary people. We've talked about this several times on the podcast already, But is part of it the fears that Hamas had that relations between the Israelis and the Saudis were reaching a more fruitful phase? And why would they have been worried about that? Well, they would be worried, of course, about being sidelined and their policy is still the eradication of Israel. although in their 2017 revision of the original Hamas charter, they did apparently concede a readiness to recognize a Palestinian state on the West Bank in Gaza.

20:28But the establishment of, I mean, Saudi obviously is the most powerful country in the region, and so they might have felt that they would lose the plot altogether of the Saudis' established relations with Israel. When you're following the British media or talking to any ordinary person, what do you think the British public misses about this? What do you think people don't understand about what's going on? I think a big problem is that this conflict has gone on for far too long. It's outlived the century which created it. Now, you had other conflicts. You had the Northern Ireland conflict. You had the apartheid in South Africa.

21:01You had the whole of communism in Eastern Europe. all products of the 20th century, all resolved before the end of the 20th century. And this one looked online to be resolved. In fact, you had delegations come over from South Africa and Northern Ireland, join the Oslo years of the 1990s to see how they were handling their progress towards what appeared to be a solution. And it didn't happen. And it wandered into the 21st century and it's now lost. And people don't have the memory, the history, the experience to know how to handle it. Even the top leaders don't. So many people have said to me recently, what is this conflict all about?

21:37I thought it was about to be solved, or I thought it could just be managed or contained. What do you say when people ask, what is this conflict all about? Well, essentially, it's about two peoples who have a pretty lousy history, a chronicle of suffering, who aspired to their own states in what they consider to be their own land. and it's fundamentally a conflict over land. You'll get different views from partisans on each side, but that's fundamentally, it's a territorial question. Therefore, it has to be solved territorially. I think it's still possible, but the longer it goes on, the more difficult it is.

22:11And going back to your personal experience, you began studying this quite early on in the 70s. And I think you describe having this eureka moment where you woke up and suddenly thought the most striking thing for you was that the narratives that you were hearing from Israelis and Palestinians, and I think this contributed to your doctoral research, were radically different. And this animated quite a lot of the ways in which you saw things going forward. There's a lovely quote where you say, like Archimedes, I was lying in the bath at the time. But unlike Archimedes, I did not go running naked through the streets.

22:41I just sat wrapped in my towel robe over my typewriter as I contemplated what my supervisor used to call another blinding insight into the bleeding obvious. Your eureka moment, as you described it then, was realizing there was not one history, but two discrete histories from two discrete peoples. Why was that a eureka moment and how has that helped you? I wasn't brand new to the topic. I'd been involved in NUS politics. I'd been deputy president of the National Union of Students with responsibility of international affairs. So I had traveled extensively and this issue had dominated just about every agenda wherever I went, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, whatever.

23:15So I went back when my term of office ended to do my PhD on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. And my supervisor said to me when we agreed that I would write the introductory chapter as a brief history of the conflict, just make sure you're being objective and neutral and impartial and don't be swayed by the passions or the emotions, just stick to the facts. And I set off to do that and I did far more extensive research and talking to people and reading. And I found I couldn't get one fact to sit still long enough to get it down on paper. Then came the eureka moment when I realized what I was trying to do was impossible.

23:53There wasn't one history. There were two histories, two distinct peoples. Each had its own history, and they coincided on the same piece of territory at the same period of time. So in a good world, in an ideal world, in a positive world, that would lead kind of automatically and inexorably to a two-state solution. And yet, I can't think of a time when it's felt more distant. So how do you keep going and how do you keep hopeful that this thing can be resolved? Well, I don't know how hopeful I am. When I wrote this pamphlet, which was in the early 1970s, advocating a two-state outcome, I fully expected it to be implemented by the mid-1970s.

24:34And then I would get on and do something else with my life, become an England international or something like that. I did not expect my life, 50 plus years later, to still be dominated by this. And at this point, of course, it will see me out. What I'm saying is that there is only one way of resolving this conflict, and it has to be mutual recognition and mutual self-determination. If it doesn't happen, we're looking at eternal conflict. And this is what I've been worried about for a long time. You've had two mantras going on over the years. One says, the two-state solution is dead. And And the other says there is no alternative to the two-state solution.

25:11And my fear over the years has been that they're both right, that there is no alternative, but it is dead. There are a lot of people who feel, as I do, that unless you allow both people to exercise their self-determination, no solution will work and be sustainable, even if you try to impose it from the West very often. But, you know, that's a sort of neocolonial mindset still, that you're trying to impose your own views on other people. You have to see it from the inside. And that's what my approach, my pamphlet was about, is writing the histories entirely from the inside, subjectively, with all the emotions and the passions left in.

25:50And then the second thing that people say is the two-state solution is dead. And what do they mean by that? Well, they think it's passed its sell-by-day. And why? Well, I think partly because they don't like it, because they rather like this secular, democratic, liberal, Western type of notion and think that the whole world should comply with it. It's a bit more than that, though. Public opinion in Palestine seems to have turned against it since the early 2000s. The number of settlements seems to make it practically more difficult than it would have been when there were a few thousand settlers.