On September 9, 2025, Israel Defense Forces struck inside Doha targeting members of the Hamas negotiating team. With the Israeli government appearing to reject any ceasefire despite the remaining hostages in Gaza, urgent questions emerge about the future of millions of Palestinians. Amid the crisis, a new book offers some clarity and context: “Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine” by Rob Malley and Hussein Agha. Drawing on decades of negotiations between the US, the Israeli government, and the representatives of the Palestinian people, the authors explore how we got here and what it could portend for the future.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(Music Playing)
Rob Malley: The pursuit of two states was always subordinate in American’s mind to other objectives, whether that objective was, at one point, in the peace process to try to counter this Soviet influence, to try to counter Iran, to try to counter Iraq, to try to even to save the Jewish state of Israel. It was rarely, if ever, because they really believed that the just outcome should be two states.
Hussein Agha: There is, or there was, and still is a very fundamental contradiction at the core of Oslo, because each party looks at it for a different reason. It’s supposed to be a step towards the resolution of the conflict. It was not. And both parties did not look at it as a step towards the resolution of the conflict.
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to “Why Is This happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. As I speak to you, it is Wednesday, September 10th, and I’m marking that date because on the 9th, the Israeli Defense Forces struck at several targets inside Doha, Qatar, at members of the Hamas negotiating team essentially that were there for the latest round of negotiations over a possible ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli government seems quite intent, if you listen to what is being said by both Netanyahu and ministers, particularly inside the government, to not have any kind of negotiated ceasefire, even though there are, as best as we know, probably about two dozen hostages still remaining inside Gaza, and instead continue with a campaign of, I don’t know the right way to characterize it, total annihilation, total war, total destruction of Gaza, with the endpoint apparently being a kind of U.S.-facilitated ethnic cleansing of the aStrip that would remove millions of Palestinians to some third country. All of this is being called “voluntary,” although, given the conditions there, it’s very hard to say that it would be voluntary. And then the Strip would be remade into some kind of like, you know, Dubai-esque, seaside Singapore, I don’t know.
It is all sort of deathlessly dark and horrifying. There’s over 60,000 people who have died in Gaza. Over 1,200 were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7. There’s 20 hostages still there, whose fates are in the hands of the Israeli government, and the decree to have negotiators come to some arrangement with Hamas that would lead to their release. And amidst all this darkness, it does feel like there’s no way out. I mean, really, that is the feeling that the entire thing is kind of a dead end, and all there is, bloodshed and mayhem.
And it’s because of that feeling of sort of hopelessness and darkness that I found a new book by Rob Malley and Hussein Agha so vital and important. It’s called “Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” These are two men who have both been in the room, intimately involved in multiple rounds of negotiations between the U.S., the Israeli government, and representatives of the Palestinian people. They come from different sides, in some senses, of the world and different sides of the conflict, if you will. They’ve also worked together and written together for decades.
These are two people who just have more authority, experience, credibility, texture, nuance and knowledge about the topic than just about any two people you can imagine. And this book is an investigation of how we got here and how to get out of it with respect to what is happening in Gaza and, more broadly, in the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea that currently includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the State of Israel.
And I thought, given how amazing the book is, it really is one of the best things I’ve read. It may be the best thing I’ve ever read on the conflict, but also one of the best things I’ve just read in the past year or so, that I wanted to have both Rob and Hussein on. So, Rob Malley and Hussein Agha, welcome to the program.
(Music Playing)
Rob Malley: Thanks, Chris.
Hussein Agha: Thank you. Hussein.
Chris Hayes: Hussein, if you don’t mind, I want to start with you, just because I’ve spoken to Rob before. We had an episode a lot about Iran specifically and his role in those negotiations. If you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up working intimately in negotiations over many decades, about what was the PLO and now the PA.
Hussein Agha: It was not a matter of choice, really. It was not a personal choice. At a young age, I found myself being sucked into the Palestinian problem because I was in Beirut and you could not avoid to see the Palestinians around you, especially the Palestinians in the camp, and you wonder why they’re living in such misery. You don’t know what it is when you’re a teenager.
And then little by little, you start finding out. My teachers in school were mostly Palestinians, and I found out later they were active in various political parties, Palestinian political parties. And because I was academically sound, and because I come from kind of a secure background where, unlike many people who joined, I don’t need their sponsorship, the material sponsorship, and because I crossed over, along with the various political lines, because I had various interests that attracted various people of various backgrounds, they kind of identified me as a suitable person for them to be able to deal with.
And little by little, immediately after they did that, I started meeting all the first-year leadership of the PLO, and they started asking me to do things for them. And when I went to Oxford, they gave me a very clear mandate, because I didn’t want to go to Oxford, I wanted to stay in Lebanon and fight. And they told me, no, you go to Oxford, you find Israelis. You try to engage with them. You talk. We have enough fighters. We don’t have enough people who can engage and talk with Israelis.
I guess that’s where it all started. It was informal. I started talking to, originally, left Marxist Israeli groups like Matzpen. There’s a big community of them here in London, academics and non-academics. There was one guy, Akiva Orr, who was a sailor in Haifa, and he finished up here in London, and he was a quite left-wing, very skeptical of Zionism, but at the same time, a proud Jew. So, I started with them, and little by little, it developed into dealing with the mainstream Israelis, and the rest may or may not be history.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. The point in the book where I think it’s in ’82, right, in the war in Lebanon, when you want to take up arms and join a militant group, and they tell you, no, you’re going to go to Oxford and you’re going to be a talker. You’re going to be a diplomat. Rob, when did you and Hussein first meet?
Rob Malley: So we met in, I’m trying to remember, I think it’s 1999, because I had just joined the Clinton peace team, and Dennis Ross, who was then the Middle East envoy, wanted to organize a meeting between American members of the team and two people who were very close to the Palestinian leadership at the time, Hussein and Ahmad Khalidi, because Dennis felt that was a way to sort of get a sense of what could be done, particularly, if Barak had just been elected Prime Minister of Israel. There was this feeling that maybe now there was a chance to get something done.
And as we write in the book, if you wanted to know what Arafat thought, he knew you’d ask Arafat if you wanted to know what Arafat really thought, and knew you’d ask the duo, Hussein and Ahmad. And that was the goal at the time. And so, I met him, and I think what drew us together was that we both were kind of outsider-insiders. Hussein, as he just described, not a Palestinian, but brought into that world. And myself, as we discussed in the last podcast, not sort of your usual American official, but brought into that world as well, from a background, as we had discussed, my father being an Arab nationalist, Jewish Arab nationalist, anti-Zionist.
Chris Hayes: A Jewish Arab nationalist, right?
Rob Malley: Right. So, I think that brought us together. And then the rest, after I left the administration, we started writing together.
Chris Hayes: And your mother being a nice Jewish girl from Long Island, who is the representative for the FLM at the UN.
Rob Malley: I think all that is true, except I’m not sure she would consider herself nice, but yes.
Chris Hayes: Yes. So, you both have this really unique perspective, right, because you’re both kind of straddling different worlds, and you’re also spending a lot of time, over the years, wrestling with the problem, talking to the players in the room when diplomacy has happened. So, I just want to establish that first for folks, and part of why this book is so incredible is because of just the accrued expertise, and knowledge, and anecdotes and lived experience.
One of the things that I think is useful about the book is when you both adopt a frame of putting sort of moral considerations which are on the front burner in how we think about and talk about the conflict. I think both from Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, like it’s immediately a question of genocide, of terrorism, of death, of horror, all of which, to be clear, I don’t want to like sweep those away, right? But in a diplomatic sense, it is also about interests, about recognition, about respect, about all these other things, about what can each party give the other party, in an almost sort of game theory sense.
And so, if you think about that framework right now, and I’ll start with you, Hussein, like, how do you see the current situation in terms of the interests and parties involved, and how plausible some negotiated settlement is?
Hussein Agha: For me, the current situation is the result of 30 years of failed attempts to resolve the conflict, and the failed attempt to resolve the conflict, have that term in not being able to correctly define and identify the nature of the conflict, and falling into wanting to have a neat kind of outcomes that are easy, that seem to be obvious to outsiders. Like, you have those two people fighting over a piece of land. What’s the problem? Let’s divide the land between the two, and the problem is solved.
And all attempts, who are trying to find out where are the lines of division between the two parties, and what kind of arrangements you have to have the security? In this case, it was more kind of a recognition of Israeli need for security, and not really that much of Palestinian need of security, although the Palestinians, historically, in this context, were the more aggrieved party. So not having succeeded in that, it was inevitable that the whole thing will collapse. I did not predict the shape of the collapse. But what happened in October 7, when you look back to it and then the war against Gaza, it’s not very kind of surprising that this is what happened, because of what happened before.
And the danger now is to go back and try to do the same things you did before, which means that you’re only postponing the next breakdown, if you get to do whatever you did before. Probably you will not be able to do what you got to do before. And in the process, innocent parties, both ends, pay the price.
While the local parties have a better understanding of the nature of the conflict, the involvement of outside powers, mostly the United States, mostly because both parties are under the impression that without the U.S., you cannot have any local agreement. It becomes even more problematic. So, you have a third party, which when it is in the room, both parties start catering for it, rather than engaging. So, in my experience, all the meaningful engagements between the two parties took place when the United States or third parties were not in the room.
Chris Hayes: Interesting.
Hussein Agha: Whenever they’re in the room, you have big problems because, you know, the Israelis don’t want to appear to be making concessions in front of the Americans, because the Americans will come back to them and tell them, listen, you’ve already said that, so you have to live by it. The Palestinians are worried that their historical tenets, their moral cards, which are the only cards they have, might be robbed of them in front of the Americans, and then they can’t go back. While when the two together are on their own, they can speak more candidly. They can deal with each other more honestly, even though they might not be able to reach a solution.
Chris Hayes: In some ways, the book, Rob, is a kind of a requiem for the two-state solution, in some ways. I mean, maybe that’s overly dramatic, but kind of an autopsy of what was wrong, in some ways, in the inception of Oslo, what the seeds of its demise were from the beginning, how it developed.
One question I have for you, and I think I know the answer, but I think the book is a little ambiguous, is the Oslo process and the push for a two-state solution, here are two ways of looking at it. It was doomed to fail from the start because it fundamentally misunderstood key foundational aspects of the aspirations of both peoples, or it was not doomed to the start, but a set of tactical mistakes, contingent events, demagogues and others killed it? Which of those two do you think is right?
Rob Malley: So, I think you’re right to point out that tension, because it’s a tension that Hussein and I have discussed for quite some time. I think both are true at one level, and it’s really what the book tries to show. The conflict was misdiagnosed. Oslo was a bit of a con game, and that it pretended to do things that it didn’t do, and to give the sides things that they wanted, but that Oslo was not prepared or not able to give them.
And the fundamental issue is that the Oslo process or peace process did not really address the yearnings of either side. So, for the Palestinians, it’s justice. It’s redemption. It’s return to the land that they lost in 1948. And it’s very hard to do all of that without erasing what happened in 1948, which is very hard to do and to reconcile with the existence of a Jewish state. By the same token, for most Israeli Jews, what they really want is full security, absolute safety, which is hard to distinguish from absolute supremacy, which is hard to reconcile with the existence of a meaningful sovereign Palestinian state.
So, the two-state solution was always extrinsic. It was kind of imposed by others, from Great Britain, and then the partition planning was never an indigenous, local, authentic demand. Israelis and Palestinians haven’t been demonstrating, dying and killing for the sake of the two-state solution. Does that mean that it can never have happened? You know, this is where the book, I think, sort of hints that if maybe the U.S. had played a different role, and this is where you say the book is a requiem of the two-state solution, it’s also an indictment, I think, a pretty severe indictment, of the U.S. role, as Hussein just said, and it’s something that I’ve had to reflect upon because I was a member of at least two teams that pretended or claimed that they were seeking to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
It’s hard to see any way in which the U.S. helped this process. It’s hard to see how between 1993 and today, the U.S. achieved any of its goals, any of its stated goals, and made lives better for Israelis or Palestinians since the outcome is October 7 and everything that we’ve seen since. So, was it possible? Were there moments where maybe with a different hand and different way of proceeding, you might have reached some kind of agreement? Now, you could then debate, would it have been real peace? Probably not, for the reasons I just gave, but some kind of better outcome than what we’ve seen. I think it’s plausible. But you take into account the fact this was not a natural landing place for Israelis or Palestinians.
Chris Hayes: Right. It’s so extrinsic. That point, I mean, that really comes through in the book, like the degree to which this is a framework that is not organically emanating from the parties.
Rob Malley: From the U.S. point of view, another thing we try to show in the book is how the pursuit of two states was always subordinate, in Americans mind, to other objectives.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Rob Malley: Whether that objective was, at one point, in the peace process, to try to counter this Soviet influence, to try to counter Iran, to try to counter Iraq, to try to even save the Jewish state of Israel. It was rarely, if ever, because they really believed that the just outcome should be two states.
Hussein Agha: There is, or there was, and still is a very fundamental contradiction at the core of Oslo, because each party looks at it for a different reason. It’s supposed to be a step towards the resolution of the conflict. It was not. And both parties did not look at it as a step towards the resolution of the conflict.
For the Palestinians, it was a way to get to something that they had defined a few years earlier, which is an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. For the Israelis, it was how to resolve their Palestinian problem. They had the Palestinian security problem, which they were not able to handle, and it was becoming costlier and costlier, so they wanted to branch it out and give it to the Palestinians to do it for them. So, the Israelis wanted one thing, the Palestinians wanted another thing. And these are almost like parallel lines. They cannot meet, when it was all covered up by claiming that it is an attempt to resolve the conflict.
The Israelis were not thinking in terms of resolving the conflict. They were thinking in terms of, how do we get our security. Now, maybe at the future state, we can talk about how to resolve the conflict, but certainly not because of Oslo and the PLO coming to Ramallah and Gaza. The Palestinians were not thinking that Oslo is going to resolve the conflict, but they were thinking that this could be a step towards us getting a state, which may or may not be what the Israelis would agree to.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Hussein Agha: As a matter of fact, the Israelis never committed themselves to a Palestinian state. So how can you have a process where the end outcome is so fundamentally and radically different for each of the parties to reach that common ground. It’s almost impossible, and this is what happened. And the whole thing was covered up by the lie of the discourse, because the discourse was going on about how this is going to change the whole nature of the conflict. It did not. It made it worse. There were years when people were trying to feel out each other and see what possibilities there are, but they did not amount to much.
Chris Hayes: You said something before that I want to follow up on because, again, I found this very useful. Again, reading the book, I just want to be clear here when I say this because I, you know, like everyone else, I’m reading stories about snipers shooting and killing entire families as each one goes out to get the body if it’s dead. And I’ve interviewed families of hostage members, and people that were killed on October 7th, and people that have been relocated 10 different times. I mean, the level of pain and suffering and horror here is unspeakable. And I think particularly now for Palestinians in the aftermath of October 7, it’s almost too much to be able to articulate. With that said, thinking in these very narrow terms, right, like what are the interests? Who has what power?
You use this phrase, Hussein, about the cards to play. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is, in some ways, there’s such a profound asymmetry between the two parties, right? I mean, the military asymmetry here is enormous, right? We’re seeing it right now. What is the card to play?
At some level, let’s say you don’t care about human rights, and you don’t care about claims on the land. You don’t care about moral arguments, and you don’t care about international condemnation. Throw all that out. We’re just talking raw power. Why should the Israelis do anything for the Palestinians? They have the biggest ally in the world behind them. They have the most powerful military in the region. They’re the only nuclear power in the region. They can act essentially at will. Their security problem, they sort of solved. And then October 7 show they hadn’t solved it completely, but I think now they think they can resolve it.
So, from that point of view, again, throw all the moral arguments out, all the reasons for recognition, and just purely in those terms, like, what cards are there left to play for the Palestinians in real power politics sense?
Hussein Agha: It’s a difficult question. I mean, Zionism is based on two things. It’s based first on founding a Jewish state. Second, for this Jewish state to be a normal state, to live as part of the family of nations normally. As long as the Palestinian issue is not resolved, they cannot do that. They know that, even people who do not admit it. And then there is the sense of the guilt.
Chris Hayes: That’s a great point, wanting to be a nation like all others.
Hussein Agha: Yes. And not being able to while you are subjecting another people to what increasingly more and more people look at as being unfair, unjust, and I’m using mild terms to describe it.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Hussein Agha: And being at the end of your military might, paying for it in flesh and blood. So, you have to find a way out of this. As long as this exists, Zionism, the dream of Zionism is not fully fulfilled, and you have to fulfill the dream of Zionism. This could be the thought of the original Zionists, of people of a certain generation of Israelis. But then afterwards, it became a matter of just like, you know, I’m sure you’ve seen videos of IDF soldiers making jokes about killing Palestinians and killing children and all that. It turned into kind of a video game situation where, you know, you have to win the game.
And this is the nature of the conflict right now. There is no politics involved anymore. Nobody thinks in terms of real solutions. And it’s not an accident that nobody has come out with a clear idea of the so-called day after the Israelis refused to discuss it. The Palestinian come out with feeble ideas that they know the Israelis will not accept. But both of them are involved in a kind of biblical confrontation, where violence, the spilling of blood, revenge, are the modes of behavior.
Chris Hayes: Yes. Well, this question, I think, really cuts in both directions, right? Because at some level, again, if we sort of drop kind of a moral framework and we just think tactically, and the use of violence as a tactic, I think it’s unambiguous that Palestinian use of violence has been a failure, tactically and strategically.
Hussein Agha: I disagree.
Chris Hayes: You disagree? Really??
Hussein Agha: Yeah. Because it was their use of violence that brought them back to Ramallah and Gaza. It was Hamas’ use of violence that forced the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza, you know? And if it was just a matter of them being civilized and resorting to diplomacy, it would not have worked. And I’ll tell you more, they learned that from the Israelis. When people talk about international law, about the United Nations and all that, the Palestinians are aware that Israel came to be because of the force of the Haganah, of for Lehi.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Hussein Agha: They had gun, and by sheer power, not because the international community decided one day. Of course, they have support from the international community, but that was not the determining factor. They won it because they fought for it.
And the Palestinians, although they are much weaker, they are trying to fight. And they have achieved a few successes by coming back. For instance, the first time in the modern history of the Palestinians that they are in areas where, supposedly, they govern themselves by themselves. They never had that before.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Hussein Agha: And that’s an achievement.
Chris Hayes: So, here’s my question then, on the next point, it seems to me, like to the extent there’s some tactical gains to be achieved by violence, and this is true for both parties. Like, what you’re seeing feels like killing sprees. I mean, it doesn’t feel particularly tactical. I mean, the bloodlust and the massacre that happened in October 7th, whatever the formulation of that operation might have been, you know, including children inside a bomb shelter and things like that, and what’s happening in Gaza, again, whatever the tactical objectives, Rob, it does look a lot just like a killing spree, like a bloodlust, like a revenge. And that the parties aren’t operating in particularly like rational means, about how they’re applying this “tool.”
Hussein Agha: This is exactly what it is. What you described is exactly what it is.
Rob Malley: By the way, that’s not inconsistent with the view that the major changes that have occurred between Israelis and Palestinians from way back, from the turn of the 20th century, have been through acts of violence. So, both things could be true, that what we’re seeing now is sort of, I don’t know what you want to call it, Hussein used the word biblical, but sort of these —
Chris Hayes: Primitive.
Rob Malley: Exactly. Primitive acts of violence. But that doesn’t mean that violence hasn’t served a purpose —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rob Malley: — and particularly for the Palestinians, because whenever they’ve tried to resort to other means, diplomacy, international accountability, they’ve been told, particularly by the Americans, “Ooh, you can’t do that. We’re going to sanction you.” So, any means short of violence, in fact, even violence, but the violence, they would just do against the wishes of the U.S.
But I want to bring it back to another point, the two points that you made. First, as you said, if you were in Israeli shoes, why would you act differently? I think that’s absolutely right. And one of our mutual Israeli friends who read the book, told me afterwards that he was surprised that we were much tougher on the Americans than on either the Israelis or the Palestinians. And my answer to him was, yes, Israelis and Palestinians are acting according to forum. They’re doing what they know how to do best. And what I think he’s saying, our condemnation of the U.S., that the U.S. didn’t do what it knew best. It didn’t do anything at all that was effective.
So, when you have parties that are acting, and if you’re an Israeli, as you say, A, why should you act differently? Worse than that, the U.S. is providing the protection to continue to act the same way and not pay a price. So, all that is true, but that, again, is one of the reasons why there’s so much focus in the book, a lot of it, is on the U.S.
And then the other point that you make which is what cards of the Palestinians have to play. I mean, that’s a core question, because in the negotiations between any two parties, it only works if one side has something that the other side really wants.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. What are you negotiating over?
Rob Malley: And at some point, I think it became clear to the Israelis, we don’t really need the Palestinians, other than in the sense of, yes, if we want to be a normal country. But otherwise, we have good relations. They had good relations with the West. They were beginning to normalize with our country. They were prosperous society. Every now and then, they were outburst of Palestinian violence, which they repressed, suppressed, and then they moved on to the next thing.
Hussein Agha: But it is unfair to blame the whole thing on the Americans. The root is in the region. Somebody famous said that the first sign of failure is when you blame someone else for it. So, we cannot. It is us in the region because of the nature of the engagement and the tools we chose to deal with it. Of course, the outsiders have a role to play. But it is with us, essentially. And the others, the outside did not help.
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
(Announcements)
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: There’s a dynamic that you illuminate, that I found really useful to think about in the current context of negotiations over a ceasefire, and it’s a dynamic with Arafat and Ehud Barak at Camp David. But once you see it there, you see it everywhere, which is to the extent there’s concessions in a negotiation, particularly from one side, as opposed to, oh, we’re getting closer, the concessions sort of tell the other party, oh, well, now I got them. If they’re conceding now, I don’t want to agree to anything because I can get more concessions out of them.
So, there’s this sort of like perverse thing that happens where concessions, as opposed to getting you closer to something, feel like the counterparty sort of decides to sit back. And I’ve heard this from Israelis when they have been pretty close to ceasefires in the Gaza negotiations, where it’s like, well, Hamas has made these concessions. And it’s like, right, they’re making these concessions because they’re under pressure. And if they’re under pressure, and we keep pushing, we can get more concessions. And so, it feels like the negotiated settlement is like the proverbial carrot over the donkey that, like, if one party is conceding, then it’s just sending a signal the other party like, oh, you can squeeze them for more.
Rob Malley: So, I’m not trying to use the analogy to what’s happening now because I think you could make a pretty strong case that Netanyahu has not been negotiating in good faith —
Chris Hayes: Right. Yeah.
Rob Malley: — and it’s not because of Hamas negotiations.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Rob Malley: But if you go back to Camp David, and it’s a point that we make, the Israeli attitude at Camp David was not let’s see what is an outcome that would be “just fair that we think we could justify its merits to the Palestinians.” It’s given our supremacy, given the fact that we own all the assets, all the land or the territory, what can we get away with? How much do we need to give the Palestinians for them to say yes? And if you negotiate that way, then every time you say something and the Palestinians say no, you take it a step further.
So, at first, 80% of the West Bank would be given to the Palestinians, they said no. 85%, they said no. 90%, they said no. Until you get to the point where the Palestinians are convinced, as you just said, well, let’s just wait because —
Chris Hayes: Yeah. Right.
Rob Malley: — there’s no logic. If it’s not based on logic, if it’s not based on something that you could defend, then by definition, the Palestinians will wait until they believe that either they’ve squeezed enough or justice has been rendered. And the Israelis will feel like, wait a minute, what is this process where we keep giving more and more and more? What was lacking and, again, it goes to the problem of Oslo was there was no definition of what the outcome should be, and there was no congruence between the two sides of what that outcome would be. So, the whole negotiation became more of a charade, more of a bizarre than anything serious.
Chris Hayes: Hussein, there’s a dynamic in domestic politics and a dynamic in international politics I want to ask you about. So, after reading your book, whenever I hear a politician who’s asked a difficult question about, let’s be honest, one of the thorniest, most difficult conflicts in the world. And one could arguably say that who controls the Holy Land is like, literally, the most polarizing and controversial issue of the last millennia plus in Western society. But when asked that, you see, particularly, Democratic senators reach for the two-state solution, kind of security blanket, just like it’s a thing to say about the outcome that you desire. So that’s on the domestic side.
Internationally, we’ve seen as international condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza has grown, you know, rightly, because I think it’s appalling and indefensible, the recognition of a Palestinian state. Am I wrong to feel like that’s sort of similar to when Democratic senators say two-state solution? Like, it feels a little bit like it’s a rhetorical place to land amidst the darkness and chaos, when you have nothing else to say. Or do you feel like it’s something significant?
Hussein Agha: All the parties who talk about the two states are either ignorant, or lazy, or lying. There is no other solution. There are no other ways of looking at it. They’re ignorant because they don’t know what they’re talking about when they say two states. Because what state? I mean, they’ve been negotiating two states, and they never agreed on the contours of the two states. So, to say that you want two states without specifying what these two states are is meaningless. So, this is the ignorance.
The other one is that they’re lazy. You know, two-state solution, okay, they’re fighting over a piece of land. Partition it, and then you have one state here, one state there, and that’s it.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Hussein Agha: You know, what’s the big deal? I heard that from distinguished foreign ministers all over the world. You know, what’s the big deal? They all come with the idea that they can resolve it because it’s very easy. It’s divide the land then have two states.
And they’re lying, the third reason why they say it is because they have to say something when they don’t have anything. So, they say something because it sounds good, it sounds reasonable, it sounds acceptable, but —
Chris Hayes: It doesn’t get you in trouble, crucially, right?
Hussein Agha: No civilized person will stand up and take a position against it. And they have not indulged in trying to seriously look at what are the possibilities and the options they are confronted with. I mean, they say we want two-state solution because there’s no alternative. You cannot say that because that assumes that the two-state solution is an alternative, and you are taking it because there are no alternatives.
But the two-state solution, you’ve been at it for a long time, and it proved itself not to be an alternative. For example, the status quo that’s been going on for God knows how many decades, it’s a more real alternative than the two states that has never been —
Chris Hayes: Correct. Yes.
Hussein Agha: So, you know, what’s this thing about there’s no alternative?
Chris Hayes: There is an alternative. People live it every day.
Hussein Agha: Exactly. So, you have this combination of ignorance, laziness, lying diplomats. You know, diplomats, with a few exceptions, they have certain periods of time during which they’re active, and then they go somewhere else. You know, today, you’re working on Israel-Palestine. Tomorrow, you work on Venezuela. I mean, there are diplomats who are genuinely committed to the Israel peace.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Hussein Agha: And a lot of the American team are genuinely committed to find the resolution for this conflict. You know, people you may agree or disagree with, but people like Dennis Ross, the late Martin Indyk —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Hussein Agha: — Aaron Miller, they are genuine about their commitment to try to find the resolution for this conflict. But it’s not enough. It’s not enough to be serious about it. You have to know what it is.
Chris Hayes: So then, Rob, to you, like the spate of states that have announced recognition of a Palestinian state, how do you understand that? How do you interpret that? What’s its significance? What does it mean?
Rob Malley: So, I think it’s pretty easy to understand it. These are European leaders, for the most part, who are facing sometimes restless public opinion, who are not prepared to take some of the more costly steps in terms of sanctioning Israel or sanctioning its leaders, and who find refuge in the safe harbor of saying, we recognize a Palestinian state. It’s a big deal. Israel is upset. So, by definition, it must be good for the Palestinians. It satisfies part of the public opinion. It won’t change the life of a single Israeli or Palestinian, certainly not in a good way.
I mean, for me, it really is a gimmick. I don’t understand what it means to recognize a Palestinian state which doesn’t exist, which won’t exist unless Israel says that it will exist, and Israel certainly won’t. And it just makes the Europeans feel good, and then they’ll turn around and say, we’ve done our duty to the Palestinians. Don’t ask us for more.
Now, the Palestinians have to prove that they’re deserving of a state, which is why it’s often coupled with these conditions from the Palestinian authority, a commitment that Hamas will never govern, which again exposes the unseriousness. You don’t recognize a state based on what government may or may not have.
So, yes, I do think, you know, they’re doing it for their own reasons. Some of them think, you know, we’re going to do good. Maybe they’ll actually believe it. But it won’t change anything, and it’s not done for the right reason. There are things that they could do if they really were serious about helping the situation there, in terms of make making sure that Israel will pay the price for what more and more people are considering a genocide. And instead of that, you have this conference in New York about recognizing a Palestinian state, nobody will remember it a year from now. As I said, not a single Palestinian, the ones who are supposed to be benefiting from this step, will see their lives change at all.
Chris Hayes: Hussein?
Hussein Agha: Look at the British and the Canadian position, they say we will recognize a Palestinian state unless Israel does this, this and this, meaning that if Israel does all these things —
Chris Hayes: Conditional. Yes.
Hussein Agha: — yeah, we will not recognize the Palestinian state. So, it leaves you with wonderment.
Chris Hayes: Which is, philosophically, a completely bankrupt and indefensible position.
Hussein Agha: It does not tell you whether they’re serious about the Palestinian state or not. You know, they’re using it as a tool to influence Israeli —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Hussein Agha: — behavior. And as a matter of fact, it will influence the Israeli behavior in the opposite direction that they hope for. It will not make the Israelis more amenable to listen to them. It will make the Israelis more adamant to continue on the way they’re continuing. So whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t work.
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
(Announcements)
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: So, let’s say the two of you who have had this partnership for many years. You’ve written together. You’ve written this, again, remarkable book that I really can’t say enough positively about it. And you’re both incredible writers. I don’t know how you sort of achieved this very distinct and very beautiful writerly voice between two people, but it’s very impressive, as just writer to writer.
So now, the two of you, let’s say we empower you with the magic wand to do everything. You run policy. Okay? So now, like, what? You just said there’s some things they could do. Like, covering it every day, I just feel the pull of complete nihilism and complete darkness. And honestly, to me, sometimes I feel like the most honest way to think about the conflict is like, yeah, man, the way the world works is like whoever got the most guns wins.
And you know, look what the U.S. did with the Native Americans. In the end, it just was what it was, and the facts on the ground were the facts on the ground. And that’s how the problem got worked out. And that’s true of a lot of places in this world. I mean, it is. I mean, that’s dark. I don’t believe that at a philosophical, moral, ideological principal level, but I also sometimes feel like, what is the way out here?
Like, the whole thing is so insanity producing, because the level of suffering is so great. The international reaction, even if it’s sort of moving towards some condemnation, seems totally insufficient to what we’ve seen transpire. And the hardening of Israeli public opinion seems so profound. I don’t know. So, to go back to you, Rob, if you had to start, if you got brought in tomorrow and say, okay, here’s what we do.
Rob Malley: So, the first thing I’d say is don’t give me that wand. I mean, the efforts that Hussein and I have been involved in, because we were, as you said, not only spectators, those failed too. So the notion that we’d come up today and say we know what needs to happen, I think it’s more a matter of disposition, and again, understanding the nature of the conflict that we’re dealing with, which is not going to be resolved through these technical means, but by understanding what is motivating and pushing both sides.
And you start it off with talking about what happened in Doha. For us, when we heard about it, it really brought us back to the title of the book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” because everything we’re seeing now, nothing of it is new. The Israelis used to go to Paris. They used to go to Rome to kill Palestinians after Munich. They used to besiege Beirut. You then go back to 1948, how they treated the Palestinians. And likewise, the Palestinians have engaged in acts against the Israelis. There really is nothing new under the sun. It’s the same old story.
And let’s confront that reality rather than say, okay, we’re going to deal with a reality that we prefer, in which good Israelis and gentle Palestinians are going to get together, negotiate a two-state solution, and then we’re going to put it back in a drawer.
Chris Hayes: Sell it to their people.
Rob Malley: Exactly. So, start by understanding what this is about, and that it’s nothing new. We’re not sort of shocked. We shouldn’t sit here and say this is an aberration. It’s abnormal, what we’re seeing. It’s in the long continuity of the nature of this conflict.
Now, does that give an idea, as we suggest in the book, at least paths to follow? But that Israelis and Palestinians are going to have to figure out, and as we also argue, that the Arab countries should play a bigger role because they’ve been excluded for reasons that are kind of hard to understand from the whole peace process. But are the modes of coexistence short of full peace that Israelis and Palestinians could reach, for the better of both peoples? Again, I’ll leave it to Hussein, but I don’t want to sort of be prescriptive in that respect. It’s really, let’s give up the illusions of the past, confront the reality, and see if there’s different modes of coexistence that are certainly better than what we’re living today and better than what the most likely outcome is, Chris, as you said it, which is the status quo, and the status quo just getting worse.
Hussein Agha: It’s dark. It’s very dark. But there is one element that will define it for a long time and may increase its darkness, which is that as long as the Palestinians do not surrender, and by surrender, I don’t mean materially. I don’t mean winning over. I don’t mean having the power to confront Israel. But as long as they stay put, then Israel will not be at peace. And as long as Israel is not at peace, as being as the more powerful party, it will have to look at how to resolve this.
It has tried so many things. I mean, you cannot say it has not tried violence. You cannot say it has not tried a form of diplomacy. You cannot say it did not try involving third parties, whether they are in the West or the Arabs, to try to resolve something, and it still did not work. The onus is on Israel to try to think how it is going to confront this reality. An essential part of it is that your enemy, you can destroy it, but you can’t win against it. And there’s a difference between killing and destroying and winning.
Until now, they have killed and destroyed. But as long as Hamas is not willing to go their way, they haven’t won. When that will come? We don’t know. I suspect it will never come, because it has not come all through the history of their relations with the Palestinians. The Palestinians found themselves with nothing, but they still were a problem for Israel. Still, Israel had to deal with it.
Chris Hayes: I want to follow up on this, just because I think this, to me, gets to the heart of it. I mean, when I speak to members of the Jewish diaspora who are very connected to Israel and would describe themselves as, you know, pro-Israel, or Zionists, or Israelis, one thing you get articulated, which I think is kind of the other side of a coin, the other face of the same coin that you two write about the book, which gets to this point, Hussein, of like there’s nothing they will accept, other than turning back the clock before the creation of the state, slash us vaporizing into the air, or leaving the land like the French left Algeria. Like, yeah, right, exactly. There is nothing they’ll accept, short of we go away, and we’re not going to go away. I’m saying this from the view of Israelis and Jews in the diaspora who support them.
And the flip side of that is something that you articulate well in the book about the shift to Oslo and the Palestinian authority became very focused on the Palestinians that live in the West Bank or Gaza, and the sort of administration of those areas. But the Palestinian cause is also a diasporic cause. There’s millions of Palestinians who have been scattered by the Nakba in 1948 and who live in Egypt, and in Lebanon, and in Jordan and throughout the region. And that’s a cause, that’s not about the division of the land. It’s a much deeper thing about the original trauma of the displacement. And in some ways, those sort of say the same thing, right? It’s about the fundamental moment of the state’s creation, a clock that can never be turned back and won’t be.
Hussein Agha: Except I don’t think you’ll find any Palestinian who, in his mind, he wants really to obliterate Israel, to use the language of the day. They want to have their freedom. They want to have the dignity, and they are aware that there is another people there who may want the same thing. The question is, or the problem is, that people has the upper hand, and from the past, same point of view, is abusing it.
But if the two people have some kind of truth and reconciliation, then it is possible, because the Palestinians don’t think in terms of throwing the Jews out of the sea, into the sea, or trying to destroy the State of Israel. Even the most ardent Hamasnik would not think like that, mostly because they’re not stupid, you know.
Chris Hayes: Right. They understand that’s impossible. Yes.
Hussein Agha: I mean, the Israelis used to say the best dream you can have is wake up in the morning and find that Gaza has drifted into the sea, you know. But that was a dream. It was not something that he carried out his policies along the line. So, there are certain realities that both parties are aware of and they are doomed to live together.
The question is, what is the formula? The first step is to recognize the nature of the conflict, to recognize to deal with it not just from a material point of view, but from an emotional, psychological point of view. When Barak goes to Camp David, and he’s condescending towards Arafat, it’s lost. Whatever he says, it will not be taken because Arafat thinks that, you know, who’s this guy? He’s trying to make a fool out of me. I won’t accept it. I won’t accept it. And this element of the conflict is very, very important, specifically in the past 30 years, where the two communities interacted diplomatically.
And I’ll tell you, there are islands of understandings that were reached by people on both sides who dealt with each other, not through this condescending attitude and this kind of I know better than you kind of thing, including the security matters. There are Israelis who know how to speak with the Palestinians and know how to deal with the Palestinians, and there are Palestinians who know how to talk with Israelis. I mean, Abu Mazen, for a long time, was somebody who knew how to speak with the Israelis. He was not given a chance. There were people in the security establishment of Israel, like the late Amon Lipkin-Shahak. He knew how to speak with the Palestinians, and very often they could reach understanding. I mean, Abu Mazen reached an understanding with Bibas (ph) emissary on Hebron. Other Palestinians could not reach that understanding.
So, you have to change the psychological kind of nature of the interaction to be able to get to the right material outcome. The material outcome does not come through a mathematical formula that, you know, irrespective of feelings, emotions, the earnings, history and all that kind of thing. Once you put it in that context, you’re on the right path. We are very far away from that. But that’s what will happen.
There are Israelis who instinctively think like that. Maybe they are not in power. There are Palestinians, I mean, the example of Abu Mazen. Abu Mazen was genuinely committed to have a political agreement with Israel, recognizing that Israel and the Israeli people exist, and that continue to exist and you want to have relations with them. But he was undermined over and over and over till he finished up being irrelevant.
Chris Hayes: Final thing for you, Rob, I mean, I guess, again, I don’t want to end on like an incredibly dark note. It doesn’t seem like U.S. policy under Donald J. Trump is going to get any better. But maybe, am I missing something? Is there some possibility?
Rob Malley: I understand. He is who he is. And first of all, it’s not as if policy before Trump was particularly —
Chris Hayes: Did great. Yeah, right.
Rob Malley: — admirable. And he is somebody who can break with convention. So, there was at least the hope, I think, to say that today, given the ways in which he’s broken with convention, sounds completely unmoored from reality. So, I’m not going to place any stock in that. But in theory, he’s somebody who could have done things in terms of the relationship with Israel, in terms of talking to Hamas again. That was a taboo for one administration after another. And he comes along and he says, they’re the ones who are holding the hostages, so maybe we should talk to them.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Rob Malley: Again, I’m not praising what he’s done vis-à-vis Hamas, but —
Chris Hayes: No. But I had the same reaction to that, like, why weren’t we doing that before?
Rob Malley: Well, that’s a very good question. When you claim you want to reach a solution, but you’re not dealing with one of the parties that has the greatest influence over that outcome, it does seem to be somewhat self-defeating. So, no, I mean, at this point, I’m not going to say that expectations for Trump are high.
But, again, if you want to end on a more positive note, as you know, my current profession is teaching, and when you look at what this generation of Americans is going to grow up with. And I believe every generation has a few foreign policy episodes, incidents that shape their brain, that shape their emotional makeup.
Chris Hayes: Absolutely.
Rob Malley: For me, it was through my parents, the war in Vietnam, and then, directly, the Iraq War, which convinced me about certain things, about the use of American power. For this generation, how could it be anything but —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Rob Malley: — American impotence and war’s complicity in what’s happening in Gaza? So, the question is, what does this generation as their moral awakening? And do they care enough about this so that when they are in positions of power, you see a change? I think that, for me, I mean, again, just listening to students, they have an attitude, and it’s not just a reflexively anti-Israeli attitude. It’s an attitude that wants to reach some kind of understanding and settlement, but believes that America has played a negative role for decade after decade. And if they have a chance, maybe they could do something different.
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: Rob Malley and Hussein Agha are collaborators and co-authors for years, and their book is called “Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Hussein Agha: Thank you.
Rob Malley: Thank you.
(Music Playing)
Chris Hayes: You can always email us at withpod@gmail.com. You can get in touch with us using the hashtag #WITHpod. You can follow me on Threads, Blue Sky, and what used to be called Twitter, with the handle @chrislhayes. Be sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Bob Mallory, and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening.