Can we break the Israeli-Palestinian paralysis? - with Tal Becker
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There is genuine paralysis that is deeply understandable. There are those who ideologically or politically do not want there to be progress and take advantage of the paralysis and trauma in order to advance that agenda. My argument is simply that if you think that this paralysis is serving us well and there's nothing we can do about it, then that's fine. But if you think it isn't serving us well, then asking what can we do about it feels like an urgent thing. I'm talking about the real thing. How do you create a dynamic in this impossible reality and in the tragedy that we face to nevertheless move to a better place and a more positive dynamic? If you want to produce change, the first thing you need to do is generate a belief in the possibility of change.
And I think both societies believe fundamentally that change is not possible.
It's 8 a.m. on Wednesday, July 15th in New York City and in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the Army War College, where I am right now for the AI and National Defense Summit hosted by Senator Dave McCormick. It's 3 p.m. on Wednesday, July 15th in Israel. On Monday, we released a conversation with Rahm Emanuel after he gave a provocative speech at Tel Aviv University, where he offered his own take on how Israel should address the Palestinian state question. It was a somewhat heated conversation, got a lot of attention, but one that I believe was done in good faith. But it got me thinking. Rewind the tape to 10 months ago, when on this show, ARC Media contributor Tal Becker, who's also a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute and counsel to Honigman LLP, called the wave of Western recognitions of a Palestinian state.
You'll recall that last summer when country after country was recognizing a Palestinian state in this effort orchestrated by the U.N. and France. Well, Talbecker called that wave of Western recognitions diplomatic theater, symbolic in nature and divorced from any actual change on the ground. He was right. Nothing had really changed either then or since. There's no Palestinian government with effective control, and there's no serious proposal on the table from anyone, not from Ramallah, from Jerusalem, or from any capital in the Arab League, or really from any capital throughout the West, that looks like a way out. Are we, by any honest measure, stuck? Today's conversation is about that paralysis, but not as a lament.
We're going to work through it in three moves. First, what are the understandable and legitimate reasons Israel and the region are stuck where they are? Second, what is the next Israeli government, whoever leads it? actually need to do to get unstuck if stuck isn't a place any serious person wants to stay? And third, and this is where Tal and I actually diverge, what does unstuck look like in practice? Tal has spent decades in the room for these negotiations. He was on the legal team representing Israel at the Hague. He's been involved in numerous bilateral negotiations. engagements between Israel and countries in the Arab world and Washington. He was involved in drafting the language for the Abraham Accords.
If anyone can tell us whether unstuck is actually possible and what it costs, it's him. Let's get into it right after this message.
I'm Debra Pardes, the host of ARC News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters.
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