In the Middle East, it was President Ronald Reagan who, immediately after the 1988 election (in which his Vice President George H.W. Bush won), instructed his Secretary of State, George Shultz, to initiate talks with representatives of the PLO in Tunisia. This decision in November, though the discussions were short-lived, marked a significant shift in US policy toward the PLO, paving the way for the Madrid and Oslo processes.

Bush himself, after losing to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, used his "lame-duck" period in December to send American forces to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope. This was an unpopular move (which ultimately did not bring hope to the war-torn country) that he chose to make during those unique months.

President Bill Clinton also waited until December 2000, between George W. Bush's election and his inauguration, to present his parameters for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The Israeli government was willing to accept these parameters with certain reservations, but the Palestinians rejected them. Although Clinton announced that he would shelve his proposal upon leaving office if either side rejected it, those parameters became the basis for both formal and informal negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Biden is deeply familiar with the Middle East and the details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He can use the upcoming days to visit the region, engage with leaders, assist in achieving calm and the release of hostages, and even offer a significant political horizon. Without such a horizon, the IDF could find itself managing Gaza for an extended period. This elderly statesman, who has declared himself a Zionist despite knowing how that resonates in the Arab world, and who is greatly troubled by the suffering experienced by civilians on both sides of the conflict, could indeed make a bold move.

Ministers under his command

The ease with which Yoav Gallant was dismissed and replaced by Israel Katz stems from a simple reason: over the past 28 years, Benjamin Netanyahu has served as Prime Minister for most of that time. At the start of his career, he was excited to be a young man in charge of senior and experienced ministers like Ariel Sharon, David Levy, and others. Over time, however, he grew disinterested in them. He concluded that as Prime Minister, he could effectively serve as Defense Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, and more.

With this mindset, he realized he could appoint people like Shlomo Karhi and David Amsalem, or even Tali Gotliv if necessary, and the sky would not fall since he, Netanyahu, oversees their ministries remotely. Thus, when he grew tired of Gallant, he felt comfortable replacing him with whomever he saw fit, as in his eyes, the true Defense Minister remains Netanyahu himself.

Don't look for a perfect fit. If Ben Gvir can serve as Minister of Police, and Smotrich as Finance Minister and half-Defense Minister, there's no reason why Katz shouldn't be appointed Defense Minister. Let the "boys" play.

We all quote Lord Acton, who will forever be remembered for his observation that power tends to corrupt. To this, we can add a severe but equally accurate statement: an overly long tenure fosters a disregard for others, and citizens bear the cost of appointing unfit individuals to critical roles. When such an appointment is made during a war for which Netanyahu is personally responsible for its prolonged duration, it is recklessness.

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Yes, there is a difference. Are there "good Palestinians" and "bad Palestinians"? Are all Palestinians the same? Are they all seeking to destroy us, and the only difference between them is a mask behind which Israel's potential murderers are hiding? After all, it is clear that differences between people are a human trait, and that in every society, just like among the Jewish People, there are some like that and some like that. It is not easy to throw out generalizations like "all Jews are the same," or "all girls want the same thing." There is nothing more simplistic than that.

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To say that there is no difference between Hamas and the PLO under Fatah's leadership is the ultimate way of saying that Israel is not prepared to talk to the Palestinian entity that recognized us, whose leader opposes the use of violence and believes in a two-state solution. The "theory" of "no difference" is factually wrong, of course, but historically helps the peace refusers: If they are all "the same," it means that the pragmatic agent willing to compromise will eternally be misleading.

Netanyahu's refusal to discuss the question of the day after the war and the control of the Gaza Strip with the Americans does not stem from a solution that he is hiding, but from the fact that he objects to the return of the Palestinian Authority (with which more intense security negotiations are being held, even though no one is prepared to admit this) to the Gaza Strip. If no solution is found, Israel will be the one to establish military rule there. He knows that the return of the PA will involve a return to the peace process, after which a Palestinian state will be established in the West Bank and Gaza, and since he has made himself Israel's best defender against the only solution that will guarantee the future of the Jewish state, he is simply not ready to talk about it.

Netanyahu's government was supposed to find itself at present in the midst of international discussions to establish a body that would temporarily lead Gaza, after Hamas. The composition of the Coalition prevents it from taking the most vital move imaginable. After the war, we will find ourselves in a conflict regarding the return of the PA to Gaza vis-à-vis a US administration that is closest to Israel than ever before. The events of October 7, in addition to the intelligence failure, are the result of a mistaken policy that favored Hamas, which was not ready for a political compromise, over the Palestinian cause that wants such a compromise. Whoever refuses to negotiate with the PLO continues to adhere to the old "concept," like the same blind horse that falls into a pit time and time again, and puts us all at risk.

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My Jewish identity precedes my Israeli identity. I believe that Jewish continuity is the utmost goal. Israel, as far as I'm concerned, in addition to being my homeland, is the most effective tool for ensuring Jewish continuity, especially for those who are not ready to take part in religious rituals.

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The two most important projects that I initiated in the first half of the 1990s – the Taglit-Birthright project and the Oslo Accords, which I believe are two sides of the same coin, even though at first glance they seem distinctly different: Taglit is designed to strengthen the connection between young Jews around the world, and between them and their Israeli peers, and Oslo was intended to lead towards an Israeli-Palestinian agreement focused on a permanent border, guaranteeing a Jewish majority in Israel for many years to come. I see both as main components in ensuring Jewish continuity.

During my lifetime I supported solutions that were supposed to lead to this goal. I supported a Palestinian Jordanian state and the London Agreement from April 1987 between King Hussein and Shimon Peres, which is written, not by chance, in my handwriting. After then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, rejected the agreement, and after Hussein announced in July 1988 that he was giving up his claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians, and after the PLO accepted the famous Security Council Resolution 242 in 1988, I made a public call to open negotiations with him and took action in the Knesset, to repeal the law that prohibited any contact with the PLO.

Yitzhak Shamir surprised many by agreeing to participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991, following which negotiations between delegations from Israel and delegations from Syria and Lebanon began in Washington, also including a joint delegation of the Jordanians and Palestinians, but it soon became clear that he was doing all he could to avoid promoting them. He later admitted that he intended to drag out the talks for ten years. I decided that if the Labor Party would lead the government in the 1992 elections, I would make an effort to overcome the differences between the Israeli and Palestinian positions.

I intended to initiate informal talks between Israeli and Palestinian parties, to bring about agreements on all issues related to the interim settlement, to suggest to Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin that they put the solutions on the table of the heads of delegations, and to get them to sign an agreement of principles, without necessarily knowing how the agreement was reached and who was standing behind it.

When Terje Larsen, head of the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, came to me and asked what he could do to help advance the faltering peace process, I brought up the idea of ​​the informal channel and he promised that Norway would host such a channel. We talked about the possibility of talks between Faisal Husseini, the most powerful Palestinian in east Jerusalem, and myself and we met a few days before the elections – Husseini, Larsen, my friend Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, who accompanied me in my contacts with the Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem, and myself. We decided that if the Labor Party wins the elections, and if I have a political position, we will establish a channel of communication in Oslo.

The agreement that Peres hid from me

The plan did not come to fruition due to a development that I did not consider. After the elections, Rabin appointed Peres as Foreign Minister and I was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. After everything was ready for the meeting between Hosseini and myself in Oslo, I brought up the topic during my daily conversation with Peres, at the end of the day. I did not consider going to Norway without informing him of the plan, and I estimated that he would have no objection to it, due to the freedom of action that he had given me in my various positions.

But when I sat down in front of him with the portfolio of topics, I had to talk to him about, I saw that Peres' face had changed from the day before. I asked why he was upset, and he told me that he arranged a meeting with Husseini (with whom he used to meet occasionally), but when he informed Rabin about this meeting, the Prime Minister demanded that this meeting be canceled.

I was very surprised and then Peres revealed a secret to me, that if I had known earlier – I would not have agreed to be appointed as his deputy. He apologized for not notifying me earlier and admitted that he felt very uncomfortable telling me that in exchange for his appointment as foreign minister, he had to promise Rabin that he would not hold any negotiations with the US, or bilateral negotiations with the Arab factors. No more, no less.

Now I had to make a quick decision: if I had told Peres about my intention to meet with Husseini, he would have asked me to refrain from doing so, because Rabin would be convinced that I had traveled on Peres's permission. I decided not to go to Oslo, and not to inform Peres about the possibility of having a channel in Norway. I made up my mind to present the existence of the channel to him and Rabin, only if I have a signed agreement between the parties. I asked Hirschfeld to travel in my place, and instead of Husseini, who did not want to go to Oslo without me. He suggested that Ahmed Kriya (Abu Ala), the Palestinian "Minister of Finance," be appointed as Hirschfeld's interlocutor. The first meeting in Oslo was held on January 20, 1993, four days after the Knesset approved, in its second and third reading, the cancellation of the ban on meetings with PLO members.

I approved for Yair to include his former student, Dr. Ron Pundak, while Abu Ala, Maher al-Kurd, and Hassan Asfur joined him on the Palestinian side. Already in the first talks, it became clear that the PLO representatives, who informed the Israelis that they were representing Arafat, were ready to reach an interim settlement in the form of autonomy in the Gaza Strip and an autonomous zone in Jericho. Issues that seemed impossible to agree on in Washington were settled in Oslo. There were crises, there were difficult moments, and even tears, but an initial paper was already agreed upon after the second round.

Between Oslo and Washington

When Yair and Ron returned to Israel, they were very excited, and it was clear to us that we now had to get the green light from Rabin and Peres, to proceed towards a more detailed document, that included schedules, exact locations, etc. During my daily meeting with Peres, I placed the document on his desk, and after he read it and was very impressed, we held a conversation with Yair and Ron, and Peres said he would show the document to Rabin at their weekly meeting.

I was very tense. Presumably, Peres had to confirm his suspicions to Rabin that he would breach the agreement between them and end the bilateral talks. I feared that because of this, Rabin would announce that he was renouncing the new channel. But Peres returned with Rabin's approval.

I don't know what exactly went on in the conversation between the two, but the deadline Rabin set for an agreement with the Palestinians, and which he repeated in all his public election campaigns, came closer and closer, but he had nothing in hand. His other attempts to send envoys to negotiate with the PLO did not promote the political process, and suddenly a draft agreement was put on his desk that was in line with his own opinions!

We immediately arranged a third meeting with the Palestinians. In the following weeks, Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Uri Savir, and the appointed legal advisor to the ministry, Yoel Singer, joined the talks. The channel remained confidential, but it became official, and Rabin established a four-way forum in Israel that moderated the issues and negotiators who participated in it besides himself – Peres, Singer, and me. He never added another person from any of the bureaus, and in retrospect, Rabin was criticized for this.

The Mutual Recognition

The forum's most important decision was to respond to Abu Ala's proposal and hold secondary negotiations that would try to lead to mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. From the moment this happened, there was no room for my original consideration of holding a "shadow team" behind the scenes, which would submit a document to the parties for signature. The Oslo process was put on stage. The historic recognition between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements, after years of searching for alternatives (mayors, village associations, and non-PLO Palestinians, on the one hand, and non-Zionist Israelis, on the other), was the real upheaval for the Oslo Accords.

In a long conversation between Rabin and myself, I told him that my takeaway from the talks in Oslo is that we have someone to talk to and that it is not worth wasting the "meeting of the stars" that had been created (the PLO's weakness after Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein, the loss of support in the Arab world, the loss of Soviet backing and turning the Hamas into a political threat, as well as President Bill Clinton's need for a significant political move, and Rabin's own commitment to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians), in order to divert the talks towards a permanent settlement, and not suffice with an interim agreement that would only encourage the extremists on both sides to torpedo.

Rabin did not deny the logic of the proposal but opposed it for two reasons. One – if the talks on the permanent agreement fail, he said, it would be very difficult to resume talks on the interim agreement; and second – Oslo is part of the process that began at the Madrid Conference, which adopted Begin's idea for Palestinian self-government for a five year period. When we announce the Oslo Accords, and when the Right wing criticizes us for the move, we can easily prove the connecting thread.

Like a Bar Mitzvah Boy

On September 31, 1993, a hot day in Washington, when the Accords were signed on the lawn of the White House, people from all over the world came to watch the event. I felt like a bar mitzvah boy, with heads of state and foreign ministers coming to shake my hand and congratulate me.

When the agreement was signed, and Clinton, Rabin, and Arafat shook hands – it seemed that a historic peace agreement had been signed. However it was not a peace agreement, and the elating ceremony created exaggerated expectations.

In the fall of 1994, I received a phone call from the Chief Rabbi of Norwegian Jewry Rabbi Michael Melchior, asking me if I was interested in receiving the Nobel Prize. I told him that the ones who should receive the prize are the ones who are taking responsibility for this move, and those are Rabin and Peres. Melchior told me that most members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee are leaning towards the Rabin-Peres-Arafat trio, but committee member, Kåre Kristiansen, was threatening to resign (and indeed did so) if Arafat was awarded the prize. An alternative option was suggested to award the honorable prize to Mahmoud Abbas and me, as the ones who mastered the move behind the scenes. I refused and asked him to apologize on my behalf.

The grip of the Right

The interim agreement became a permanent agreement in Netanyahu's hands, when he demanded that the Palestinians act and cooperate as if there was a peace agreement between the sides. The Palestinians rejected several proposals for a political settlement, and Israel – mainly in the construction of settlements in Judea and Samaria – contributed its share to the elimination of the permanent agreement.

The Oslo Accords failed because they are actually still here. The Right's "success" in perpetuating an interim settlement and expecting it to behave like a peace agreement is costing all parties too much.

The main argument of the Oslo's critics is not that we did not try to reach a permanent agreement in Oslo, but that it was a grave mistake to regard Arafat as a partner, and that he came to the negotiating table with the clear intention of returning to a violent conflict with us.

But the truth is that the disagreement between us is on the question of the consent to divide the western Land of Israel between the Palestinians and us. Those who prefer the "integrity of the land" over a Jewish state under the auspices of a Jewish majority, will not agree to any Palestinian partner.

Oslo's critics tend to forget that the gates of hell for terrorism were opened in February 1994 by a doctor in an IDF uniform, wearing a kippa], who murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarchs. 40 days later, at the end of the days of Muslim mourning, suicide terrorism began in Hadera and Afula.

Oslo's critics do not see any connection between Ariel Sharon's provocation on the Temple Mount in September 2000 and the Intifada that broke out the next day. They have a paradigm, and they are not interested in any "interference."

The attempts of the Right to find Palestinian partners who would not demand a state for themselves have all resulted in nothing, and even if they had succeeded, they would have very quickly caused a situation by which the Palestinian majority would demand the realization of their just rights. The Palestinians under our rule (such as Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi) were not ready to hold significant political negotiations with us, arguing that only the PLO, under the leadership of Arafat, is the legitimate agent to hold negotiations with Israel.

When we returned from the talks in London in 1987 with a document agreed upon by King Hussein, and which determined that Jordan would take responsibility for the negotiations, with the cooperation of Palestinians who oppose terrorism, the Likud, led by Shamir threw us down all steps, and the king transferred the West Bank into Palestinian hands.

And the main thing – if Oslo was so disastrous, how is it that I have been calling for its abolition for two decades, and all Right-wing governments, including the current one, are eagerly clinging to it?

The biggest obstacle to the division of the land is the fact of the large dispersion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and this problem can be solved by establishing a confederation (modeling the early days of the European Union) between Israel and a Palestinian state, which will allow any settler who wishes to remain in his home as an Israeli citizen and a permanent Palestinian resident, but with a clear border between the two countries, and the extent of its openness will depend on the security situation at the time.

Only those who do not want an agreement, and do not understand its importance, will continue to claim again and again that the disputes are impossible to solve and that there is no partner. Giving up, in my opinion, is giving up on Zionism.

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The ultra-Orthodox lawmakers are seeking to restrict immigration only to people born to Jewish parents – not those with a Jewish grandparent – or who have converted to Judaism because of the assumption that Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu will eventually be forced to comply with all of their demands because he has no other factions to rely on.

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There are three million people in the world whose parents are not Jewish, but whose grandparents are or were (or at least one grandparent) that are eligible to make aliyah under the Law of Return. In some years, they made up the majority of immigrants to Israel. Most of them integrate into society, learn Hebrew, identify with our culture and serve in the IDF. And most of them are not interested in converting because they are not religious and do not want to make commitments they might not keep.

Only those who oppose Zionism can propose such a change to the Law of Return. It should be rejected completely and our doors should remain open to all who consider themselves Jewish, and there is no reason to doubt their intentions.

Meanwhile, on Nov. 22 the world will mark 55 years since the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, the only document to date adopted by the international community that outlines a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Egypt and Jordan accepted it immediately, while Israel hesitated – in view of an ongoing debate between the Right and Left with regard to the legal status of the West Bank – but adopted it, as did the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988.

Many praised the resolution because it seemingly met the needs of all involved: on the one hand, it reiterated the principle of not taking land by force, and on the other, linked disengagement from the territories to a peace agreement.

The problem is that both Israel and Palestinians, as well as those who drafted the resolution, believed that it would only take several years to reach an agreement. Little did they know that 55 years later the status of the West Bank would still be undecided.

Israel would go on to often refer back to the resolution. The three decisions of the Arab League leaders at the 1967 Khartoum Summit– no recognition, negotiations, or peace agreement with Israels – allowed it not to withdraw from the territories, which is also when it felt free (contrary to international law) to settle them.

As long as there is no peace with the Palestinians, does the resolution grant legal backing and the right for Israel to continue its actions? The Palestinians' referral of the matter to the UN is a legitimate move, and Israel does not have to repeat the mistakes of the past and boycott the institution.

It previously paid the price for refusing to cooperate with the committees, which could have been avoided. If the Israeli government decides to cooperate, it will be entitled to appoint its own judge to the court. This is a significant advantage. Israel should think twice before automatically rejecting the idea.

Lastly, in 2006, Netanyahu headed a party that had 12 members in the Knesset. He was then the leader of the opposition, of which I was also a member as the head of the Meretz party. In one of our private meetings, I asked Netanyahu why he did not convene all opposition lawmakers to coordinate more effective parliamentary activity.

He replied that he did not wish to invite the Arab parties. I told him that even under his own rationale, there is still a big difference between establishing coalitions with certain parties versus simply coordinating with them. He was not convinced. Prime Minister Yair Lapid will make a grave mistake if he follows in Netanyahu's footsteps and boycotts those who might help him in the opposition.

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Settler leaders have a solution to the increased disputes in Judea and Samaria: Operation Defensive Shield II. For them, it is clear that the other side only understands force and that only this will bring calm to the region. Wrong. Operation Defensive Shield did not stop Palestinian terrorism in 2002. The scope of terrorism right after the operation was similar to the scope just before it. The Second Intifada was only stopped after Mahmoud Abbas was elected as president of the Palestinian Authority in early 2005 and under his explicit order.

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The return of the prospect of a peace process might contribute more to calming the area (even if it aggravates the peace refusers on both sides and causes some of them to use violence). Israel holds the key to returning to the process but it is currently being pulled towards a magnet of Palestinian violence, initiated by extreme Palestinian forces.

The way to achieve this is not complicated: Israel refused to enable the Palestinians in east Jerusalem to vote in the parliamentary and presidential elections that were due to be held in mid-2021. Under the current situation, President Abbas announced that the elections would not be held at all. Their participation was permitted by Israel in the first elections for the Palestinian legislative council and presidency in 1996, in the presidential elections of 2005, and in the parliamentary elections in 2006. A new government in Israel would be able to allow the votes to take place for the presidential elections and for the legislative council elections, which might cancel the obvious excuse for not holding them: it is clear that Abbas, who was concerned for the election results, wanted to prevent them, and Israel did the dirty work for him. Israel has no security or other problem with permitting the Palestinians in east Jerusalem to vote and the moment that it does so, things will move in a way that might change the situation very, very quickly.

Abbas will have no choice but to call for elections, in which he will not necessarily be the winner. Following these elections Israel will be able to examine which direction the Palestinian leadership is facing. The consent of the chosen leadership to open political talks with Israel would have to be accepted by us with open arms. A Palestinian decision not to do this and even possibly to annul the Palestinian commitment to the Oslo Accords, might lead Israel into a unilateral move that will release it from direct control over Judea and Samaria and over the one million Palestinians who live there.

The current situation, where our sons are returning to the refugee camps, to the city centers and markets, and clashing with young Palestinians, must stop. Operation Defensive Shield 2 will only exacerbate the violence and its price might be extremely high.

And things could also see major shifts in another conflict. After many years of being part of the United Kingdom, Ireland expressed its desire to disengage. In 1922 after a long and violent battle, 26 of the 32 districts with a Catholic majority won independence. Six districts, with a Protestant majority, who wished to stay as part of Britain, remained outside of Ireland and became Northern Ireland.

For seventy years high tensions existed between the Catholics in Northern Ireland, who wished to join Ireland, and the Protestants, who opposed such a move. The Catholic violence against the symbols of the British government was exceptionally brutal and Northern Ireland became a very violent place. If you didn't have to go there, you didn't.

The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 put, to a large extent, an end to the violence there. Autonomic institutions were set up, jointly ruled by the Protestants and Catholics and it was decided that the sovereignty over the six Irish districts would be decided by a public referendum.

The interim agreement was convenient to all sides, but again proved how helpless the ongoing interim agreements were: several days ago a census was completed in Northern Ireland and the official results show a dramatic demographic turnover. As of now, there is a Catholic majority also in the north. The Catholics are now starting to demand a public referendum and the Protestants are not rushing anywhere, because they know what the result is going to be. Tensions are rising once again in Belfast and it has been proven again that a successful interim agreement is no replacement for an acrid permanent agreement. Once again the centrality of demographics has prevailed.

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Ahead of the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the task of receiving foreign dignitaries was split up among government ministers. One of the dignitaries that I welcomed and accompanied was Prince (now King) Charles. He arrived as a regular mortal, without a crown or a sceptre, and surprised me by asking countless questions after having been warned that he was a bit of unemotional. He asked questions about security and mistakes that enabled the assassination, but he was most curious about whether the Oslo process would die along with Rabin.

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It was an unsurprising question as all of us were asking ourselves the same and were asked about it endless times by the media. The answer given by the proponents was that the leader had been killed, but not his legacy and that our task was to make Rabin's vision a reality. Prince Charles looked at me and asked whether I thought that way. I told him that Rabin, with his unique personality and courage, was totally committed to the peace process and that he would be sorely missed. But, I added, that didn't mean his death would end the peace process. After all, Peres was committed to the peace process no less than Rabin was, and people like myself saw the process as our life's mission and were willing to die for it. He fell silent. I feared my response had not convinced him.

Meanwhile, the question running through my mind as we spoke was a very different one. I wanted to ask him whether he was considering the annulment of the monarchy in the United Kingdom as once he became king this would to a great extent be up to him. After all, it is hardly reasonable that a democratic country give the role of head of state, even if symbolic, to one family with the only criteria for being crowned one's ranking in the succession hierarchy. If tourism is the main motive for keeping the crown, France has just as many tourists as the UK and those tourists visit unoccupied palaces and still leave impressed as if Louis XIV himself was sitting right there in one of the rooms. Despite the opportunity and the temptation, I never gathered the courage to ask.

I accompanied Prince Charles to his hotel, we parted ways, and then met again at the funeral. He told me that since our conversation he had not stopped thinking about how the peace process could continue without Rabin. He said that he hoped my response was right, but he feared that tough times were ahead. He wasn't wrong.

There are no magic numbers

When Lt. Gen. (res.) Gadi Eizenkot recently appeared in "Meet the Press," a quite incredible fact emerged: It was his first time in a television studio. The interviewers – rightly so – presented this as a major scoop, but made the mistake of not making do with the novelty of his TV appearance.

The former IDF Chief of Staff had already interviewed with newspapers and podcasts and expressed his views at length, with his principle message being the critical need to change the diplomatic status quo. He makes sure to refrain from laying out a precise solution, thus joining those who wish to shrink and manage the conflict. As Eizenkot's diplomatic remarks bore no new message, his interviewers pressured him to declare what he considers the minimal number of Knesset seats required to provide legitimacy to form a government. His response was later used as a headline.

The special interviewee, who had until then acted smartly and tried to refrained from making promises and sloganeering, first only said that double digits were required, but that was still not good enough for the interviewers. In the end, they breathed a sigh of relief when Eizenkot mentioned the figure 13.

Clearly, he too hadn't planned on giving out that number when he entered the studio. It is as clear to him – as it is to everyone – that if the results of the election are such that the head of his party – Benny Gantz – will be able to assemble a coalition of at least 61 seats even without the State Party gaining 13 seats, Eizenkot won't be the one who blocks the move. After all, 13 is not a magic number.

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It's been known for a while that the 1993 Oslo Accords have long gone from being a left-wing initiative to becoming the right-wing darling. After the initial fright that Oslo would lead to the division of Israeli land, the Right understood that bringing the accords to a halt right there and then would result in the best of both worlds: A majority of the Palestinians concentrated in the 360 square kilometers of the Gaza Strip and the 2,500 square kilometers of Areas A and B in the West Bank; partial autonomy for the Palestinians, but without sovereignty in the West Bank or any interest in sovereignty in Gaza; and freedom of action for the IDF to search for suspects at night. Meanwhile, the settlement enterprise is blooming, security cooperation works and saves Israeli lives, and the world continues to finance the Palestinian Authority to the tune of billions of shekels a year.

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All of the above under the auspices of a diplomatic agreement that the world respects. As long as the sides haven't reached an agreement on a permanent status accord – even though the sides agreed to do just that no later than May 4, 1999 – the interim accords remain in place and Israel can hide behind them and claim that everything it does is under their auspices.

But the interim accords have become a farce. Agreements made under the understanding that they would be short-term are approaching 30 years now and can no longer carry the burden – not of temporary economic solutions, not of temporary diplomatic measures, and not of the exceptionally problematic map. The short-term thinking that the "conflict can be condensed" - reduced or managed - without a clear diplomatic horizon, without a return to the negotiating table free of wrangling over who torpedoed the success of the talks in the past, and without making a supreme effort to reach a final status accord, is an idle thought.

The numbers are crystal clear. There is no Jewish majority west of Jordan, something that should be a nightmare scenario for any Zionist who believes in democracy. The Palestinian Authority can't be strengthened when every night our soldiers search for suspects in their homes, and when the alternative to a diplomatic solution is financial assistance and work permits in Israel "so that they know what they are losing when they are prevented from working in Israel." After many years in which the right-wing thought that the solution lies in cooperation with Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority, and after years in which the centrists thought that strengthening the PA's economy could lead to pushing off a diplomatic agreement into the distant future, both schools of thought have hit a wall.

Perhaps Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be the one to pull the coals out of the fire for us when he makes his annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly about ending the Palestinian commitment to Oslo. Last year, in his address to the assembly, he said that unless Israel withdraws from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Palestinians will no longer be committed to recognition of Israel and will call on the International Criminal Court in the Hague to declare Israel's presence in the territories captured in the Six-Day War to be illegal. Since he had made similar statements before, not many took Abbas seriously but given his inability to control parts of the West Bank this time he may make good on his threat.

The government of Yair Lapid will have to respond to any such development, but I fear it may not be adequately prepared. With elections looming, Lapid will be hesitant to enter the diplomatic fray lest he be accused of being left-wing, God forbid. But exercising caution is not a recipe for winning elections. An unequivocal statement that if he is elected prime minister he will finally determine a border between Israel and the Palestinians – be it through an agreement or unilateral measures, and will put an end to the Oslo process – could give him a political advantage. Many Israelis who have lost hope for peace would view this as a crucial statement. It would also speak to many Palestinians who have lost all faith in the possibility of reaching a diplomatic agreement, and it would make the elections a referendum on the need for a solution to save the Zionist enterprise.

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Neither an angel nor a seraph. Contrary to the caution he adopted in the previous round of elections, and without repeating his unequivocal promise that Itamar Ben Gvir won't be a minister in his government, Benjamin Netanyahu came to the understanding that the two rivals won't manage to overcome by themselves the obstacles in the way of a reunion between the Kahanist faction, Otzma Yehudit, and Bezalel Smotrich's messianic Religious Zionist Party.

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Netanyahu understood that unless he holds separate talks with each of them and employs his political experience to find a compromise, no one will do it for him. His analysis was that he doesn't have another option to reach 61 Knesset votes for his camp. He also has concluded that the only way for him to get a plea bargain that will prevent him from going to jail is by sacrificing the premiership.

Netanyahu is far from being a fool. He hasn't changed his opinion about Smotrich's delusions, about his dreams of a state ruled by Jewish law, a state where sacrifices will be offered at the temple to be founded in place of the mosques. Neither has he changed his opinion about Ben Gvir who wishes to rid Israel of the Arabs but says he only means "terrorists," which, of course, only he will determine.

Netanyahu is willing to take any measure to avoid incarceration. He believes the whole world is against him and that in view of this "conspiracy" he can do things he wouldn't have imagined when he still played by the rules. He is convinced that because of this it is permissible for him to invite the two opponents of democracy to Caesarea.

If he succeeds, and his camp gains 61 Knesset seats, Israel will be a very different place, different even from what it was during the period when he was prime minister. It will become like Hungary, and if he doesn't succeed he will go down in history as someone who, to paraphrase the Biblical exegesis, both took a beating and ended up being thrown out.

Responsibility is in the eye of the beholder. In his testimony last July before the committee of inquiry into the Meron disaster, Netanyahu, who was prime minister at the time of the tragedy, explained that he can not be held responsible for something he did not know about. He wasn't aware of the State Comptroller reports that warned of the situation at Meron on Lag BaOmer, and therefore, in his words, he can not be blamed, for anything.

Netanyahu tries, time after time, to set new legal norms that have no basis. For example, he has repeatedly explained that it is permissible to receive gifts from friends (relying on the opinion of his late attorney Dr. Jacob Weinrot), while purposely ignoring the issue of the financial value of said gifts.

Now, in view of the letters of warning issued by the committee of the Meron commission of inquiry, his confidantes are repeating the message that everything is political and that the probe was established for political reasons, that its members are political opponents of Netanyahu and that everything has been done before the elections so that the warning letters can serve as a political tool to harm the Likud and its chairman.

The political context is, almost always, the last refuge of the political suspect, and there is no point in conducting a debate about it. But not being aware of a major issue that falls under your purview is a colossal failure and in any case, not knowing does not exempt you from responsibility. It is part of the job to know what falls under your authority even if you had no direct connection to a particular problem or calamity. Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law excuses not.

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The Meron disaster, in which 45 people were killed and 150 injured, is the worst civil disaster in Israeli history. Despite that, the Netanyahu government did not plan to establish a state committee of inquiry. There is not a single person in Israel who was not aware of the existence of the annual event and the terrible crowding there. The decision to give in to the demands of the ultra-Orthodox and not limit the number of participants in the gathering, especially with the coronavirus pandemic and previous reports by the State Comptroller, was reckless. When it transpires who was responsible they won't be able to get away with just a slap on the wrist.

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The political map has gotten clearer as we approach the elections. There is Likud, a right-wing-populist party, about which the only democratic thing is how its members were elected in the primaries, many of whom view democracy as not essential. They prefer authoritarian rule, view all gatekeepers as enemies of the national interest and renounce the central Zionist principle of a state with a stable Jewish majority and full equality for all its citizens.

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Further to the right, there are two factions competing against each other in hatred and racism, without whom former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be able to form a government. They owe their strength to his horrifying political move a few years earlier. Even if he regrets the connections he managed to make in the delusional Right, the beast has already gotten out and is taking votes from the Likud itself. Neither Otzma Yehudit nor the Religious Zionist Party believe in democracy or the original Zionism.

On the Zionist-Democratic side, we have four parties whose leaders have already been elected. One needs a magnifying glass to understand the difference between Labor and Meretz, and the only reason they don't run in the elections together is out of fear that together they would garner fewer votes than separately.

A magnifying glass is also needed to understand the difference between Yesh Atid and the State Party. Here the problem is purely personal, and there is no reason a solution cannot be found.

Alongside these two camps, there are two veteran ones, which are neither Zionists nor proponents of the idea of democracy: the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs. Both have traditional reservations about participating in the government based on principles that are different and even contradictory. They find solutions, such as being deputy ministers or joining the coalition, but not taking an active role in the government, so as not to be in charge of its policies.

The upcoming elections will be different than any that came before because of what we see in the polls: the growing power of the far Right. The transition between one camp and another almost never happens. The main question is which faction will manage to get its supporters out of the house and to the voting booths on November 1st.

The establishment of a Zionist-Democratic faction out of the four parties (Meretz, Labor, Yesh Atid, and State Party) to run together in the next election may, in itself, bring about a different mood in the camp, leading to more volunteers and saving energy by no longer needing to criticize each other.
The message should be clear: the joint front will fight anyone who targets the courts, legal counsel, and law enforcement; and in the political sphere, will create a border between us and the Palestinians, either by agreement or unilaterally, within the next four years.

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They possess the winning card. The political map that has been created now prevents the Likud from a joint run, and the center-Left camp must not waste this opportunity to unite, given the calamity that will befall Israel if the populist Right and the far Right gain a majority in the Knesset and get to implement even a part of their vision.

The electoral risk is not great. Voters for either of the four parties that will run together will have no real alternatives. All that will remain is to reach an agreement on personal matters and create a joint list that will take into account both the result of the elections to the 24th Knesset and the trend reflected in the polls.

This is their chance.

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The things that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in Berlin (of all places) were chilling, and deserved all the condemnations they garnered, and even more. But the question is what conclusion should be drawn about Israel and its interests. Those who oppose dividingng the country and are ready to pay for it with one country west of Jordan in which a Jewish minority controls a non-Jewish majority hold up Abbas' remarks to show that Israel doesn't have anyone to talk to, and therefore doesn't need to do anything other than leave a non-Jewish and non-democratic entity.

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Anyone who sees themselves as a Zionist cannot view that as an option. If Yasser Arafat wasn't an appropriate partner in peace, and Mahmoud Abbas isn't a partner either, there can be only one conclusion – that Israel needs to spearhead a unilateral move.

Arab Israelis, even before they started defining themselves as Palestinians, saw Jewish aliyah as a threat to their lives there. The Zionist movement, which was mainly a movement dedicated to saving European Jewry from persecution, did not understand their fears and found it difficult to understand why they weren't welcomed in the land of their forefathers. The Palestinians, who saw how they were purchasing their land, evacuating them, and trying to inculcate the idea of "Jewish labor," saw what we perceived as pioneering as annexation, and made a huge effort to stop the Jews making aliyah and settling the land.

The Holocaust of European Jewry gave Zionism a moment of mercy because of what had happened to the Jews, and support for the 1947 Partition Plan. The monstrous magnitude of the Holocaust did not allow the world, which had stood by while it happened, to do anything but recognize a Jewish state, and an Arab state alongside it. The Arabs started to portray the Holocaust as just another pogrom, and failed. They thought that the smaller the Holocaust seemed, the less legitimacy Israel would have, and what there was might crumble.

Most Arab leaders have tended to play down the Holocaust. Many – from Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Anwar Sadat – were supporters of the Nazis, or at least allies. Israel, which struck a historic reparations deal with Germany exactly 70 years ago, could not allow itself to boycott world leaders who leaned toward Nazism but remained in power. The terrible dispute between David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin about reparations was decided by pragmatism, because Israel's security and growth were the top priority, with all the pain.

When Begin took the most important diplomatic step in Israel's history and negotiated with Sadat about an Israeli withdrawal from an area three times the size of its sovereign territory, he didn't ask him to deny his admiration of Hitler. The opponents of the Sinai withdrawal criticized Begin for that. He was smart enough to give precedence to a peace treaty with what was then Israel's biggest enemy.

Mahmoud Abbas is a pragmatic leader who understands that peace with Israel is vital for the success of the Palestinian national enterprise, and that living alongside Israel is the best option for the development of a Palestinian state. His insufferable comments about the Holocaust (even if he took back what he said, calling it the biggest crime in modern history) shouldn't stop us from making an effort to reach a peace deal. Anyone who believes there is a possibility of a deal like that won't wait for a more moderate Palestinian leaders.

But those who want to talk about Israel as a democratic, Jewish, liberal country but aren't willing to talk with the leader in Ramallah have to get up and lead a unilateral move, with all the dangers that entails, and draw a border that will remain in place until peace is negotiated. Giving into the people who prefer the entire land of Israel over the state of Israel is a true danger to the future of this country.

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