The last Israeli to negotiate with the Palestinians - with Tzipi Livni (Part 2)
Tzipi Livni has served as a minister of eight different cabinet ministries under three prime ministers: Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Her positions have included Justice Minister, Foreign Minister and Vice-Prime Minister. She has also been the official leader of the opposition.
As foreign minister, Tzipi Livni led negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, she was a key government figure during Israel’s disengagement from Gaza and during Hamas’s subsequent takeover of Gaza. She was foreign minister during Israel’s Second Lebanon War and during Israel’s operation to take out Syria’s nuclear reactor.
She began her service as a member of the Likud Party, and then the Kadima Party, and later the Hatnua Party and Zionist Union.
Earlier in her career, Tzipi served in the Mossad (including in the elite unit famous for being responsible for the assassinations following the Munich massacre).
No major Israeli political figure has had more recent experience trying to negotiate a two-state solution than Tzipi Livni.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
TL: We lived in a tough neighborhood. You know what? You've asked me about my parents. My mother used not to kiss or hug us. Yes, if you would come like this, she said ‘no way’. And she was asked by a family member who came from San Francisco, ‘why don't you kiss and hug your kids’? And she said, because this is a tough neighborhood and I cannot spoil my children. They need to be strong. So this is the situation and there are no miracles of ministers unleashing the army. ‘Let the army win’. Slogans are not the answer. It's more complicated than that.
DS: And now for part two of our conversation with Tzipi Livni. If you have not listened to part one, we encourage you to listen to that first before listening to this episode. Here's part two with Tzipi Livni. Okay, so I guess during any of these phases of negotiations that you were involved with, did you ever wrestle with the question of: there's so much debate inside Israel about recognizing - should Israel recognize, can Israel recognize, the notion of Palestinian self determination, the Palestinian right to self determination? We asked the question last, but I think it's come into sharper focus after October 7th. Do the Palestinians accept the right of Jewish self determination? Is there a narrative in Palestinian society that accepts the existence and the permanence of Jewish statehood? Of a Jewish sovereignty, Jewish nationalism. Because when you listen to the rhetoric coming out of Hamas -
TL: Hamas does not.
DS: There's no discussion about it. I know, but Tzipi, when you listen to the rhetoric of Palestinians that are quote unquote ‘Not Hamas’, they seem to be very sympathetic to what Hamas did on October 7th. When you look at the polling coming out of the West Bank, West Bank Palestinians, which are supposed to be the quote unquote ‘more moderate’, ‘more civilized’ Palestinians, they seem incredibly sympathetic to Hamas's worldview. So, I'm asking you as an Israeli, how do you reconcile those things?
TL: I'll say the following. You know, everything in life is about timing. And when I look at this conflict, and I just share with you that my parents came in 1925, the decision that we all celebrated, not me at the time, but the Jews celebrated in the streets in 1947, was the partition plan. In order to end the conflict, the partition plan suggested to establish a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs said no, they didn't recognize the right of the Jews for a state. They fought against us. Later, Israel used to say, ‘okay, we do not recognize that there is a Palestinian people’, if you recall. There was a moment of concern in 1993 and 1995 when Arafat and Rabin shared letters. Rabin recognized the right of the Palestinians, and Arafat recognized the right of Israel to exist. I'm going again, back and back and again, and I'm saying it also to my Israeli friends. The question is not whether we have a partner on the other side and what the Palestinians are thinking about us. In 1948, Ben Gurion decided to establish the Jewish state, although all the Arabs said that we don't have the right to do so. And now it's the same junction. So during the negotiations, you know, I will share with you the first time that I've met my counterpart. He was the Palestinian Prime Minister at the time, Abu Allah, and we were speaking about rights. I was speaking about the rights of the Jewish people. I started with the Bible. I mean, everything, all the list, really. And then this was speaking about his family in Jerusalem for so many years. And we had this discussion. And after, I think, two meetings, we said, okay, it's not about who has more rights. It's about how can we live - not together, by the way - in two different countries, when each people keeps his own narratives. And Tal Becker drafted, well, he drafted the last article of the agreement that was never signed, saying that two states for two peoples means that each state gives an answer to national aspiration of different peoples, and each people can save his own narrative as long as he would act in accordance to the agreement. So I'm not saying, oh, unfortunately the - now, and I'm saying it after two rounds of negotiations, I don't see the Palestinian leader that would sign an agreement now with Israel, but the choice in the Middle East is between bad options. And the other option is not even one state solution, it’s one state reality. And one state reality, the meaning is that Israel will not be a Jewish state. And excuse me, it's not for the Palestinians to define whether Israel is a Jewish state. It's my definition. With all due respect, I want to have their signature of end of conflict and end of claim. And frankly, I truly don't care, excuse me, about them. If I can end the conflict with another resolution that keeps Israel as a Jewish democratic secure state, that's fine with me. I don't have any. So, as Israelis, we need to decide what we want. And if we don't find a partner, I would not build more and more settlements that would make it impossible. In the future, if we find a partner, to separate. Because we live in a world of images and perceptions. When people are speaking about, okay, about me, for example, as somebody who negotiates, ‘Ah, they are the naive. They believe that they will find partners on the Palestinian side, that we can live happily ever after’. No way! As I said before, I want to divorce them, while the others, those that are thinking about greater Israel, they are the naive. Selling me that they can leave, you know, Jews and Palestinians all together, with the Palestinian villages nearby, and in the end they will respect us… no way. This is not the situation. And when I'm looking at the situation in the streets and the universities in the US, even before October 7th, the discussion is no longer about national rights of the Palestinians. It's about individual rights. So next thing would be, give all these Palestinian voting rights. And when people are calling from ‘the river to the sea’, they are not calling for two states for two peoples. They are calling for one state that will be Palestine. So just thinking of what the Palestinians are thinking about us, excuse me, well, I wish we can live happily ever after. But without it, it's about us making decisions where we would like to go. And I would separate security from settlements that don't give security to Israel, but demand security. And after October 7th, when we saw what happened to civilians, on the border, all this massacre. So excuse me, the role of those who need to give security, or, it's the Israeli army and the soldiers and not civilians inside Palestinian population centers.
DS: The issue of settlements, let's leave that to, because I think that is traditionally divided, some parts of Israeli society, but today what you have is I think, many on the left in Israel have all made a few clicks to the right politically. They're not entirely where the right is, but they're more to the right than they were before October 7th. Not because they are suddenly sympathetic to the settlement movement. I think the settlement movement is as absent from their imagination or hope for the future of Israel as it was before October 7th, but they've just become more practical and more clear eyed about what they're dealing with. So when you say, if there's someone who can lead the Palestinians that Israel can negotiate with, a plan along the lines you're describing -
TL: There is not now.
DS: There's not now. Exactly.
TL: I agree. I agree.
DS: That's a big problem.
TL: That's a big problem, but we should not create more problems for the future. I'm not the one saying that - as I said before, that I don't want to get married with them. I don't want to see them. And you know, let's take October 7th. What happened is that the Israeli army failed. A huge, unbelievable failure in guarding the Israeli border. So does it mean that we don't need to have a border now? It's like, somebody that his neighbors infiltrated into his home, and the alarm didn't work, and they, I don't know, raped his wife and killed some of his children, and now he says, okay, I don't need the alarm anymore, and I will send my family to live with these neighbors. It's not right. I understand the feeling. It's not - I don't think that this is the time now, and I don't think that there is somebody… It's a problem now, but it doesn't mean that we are going to abandon the idea of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. And as I said before, civilians shouldn't give security to other civilians. It's about the army. So I know that some would say, ‘okay, if we have settlement, then the army will guard them’. But why can't you, can't we, as a country, say that now the role of the army is to give security? Let's speak about what brings security to Israel. Occupation? Is this the only way to bring security to Israel? Why don't we occupy Iran now? Or the entire Lebanon? I mean, I'm more realistic than others, maybe. And I'm looking at the trends against Israel. Undermining the legitimacy of Israel to exist these days. And we should take everything in consideration. And as I said before, I'm not changing my vision. I'm not changing my vision about the nature of the state of Israel. And I know that unfortunately, since Netanyahu succeeded in portraying those that are still saying the words ‘Palestinian Authority in Gaza’, he portrays them as traitors. So politicians in Israel are not willing to speak about it. So you know what? After all this war, Netanyahu is going to keep Hamas in power. Because when we enter to the goals of the war, that I completely support… eradication of Hamas, yes, I wanted to do it before Netanyahu understood that he cannot keep Hamas in power. But who's going to replace them? Topple the regime is not something that the army can do. And if he does it, leaving a chaos the day after there for other terrorists to emerge? We need to replace Hamas.
DS: Okay, so, I want to move to Lebanon in a moment, but before we do I just want to, just because it's so in the news right now, there's been, you know, President Biden gave this speech last Friday about this Israeli proposal, and there's a lot to say about it, and we don't have to dissect all of it, but one part that was vague in President Biden's presentation of the proposal was the sense that Hamas will still sort of be a player in Gaza when the dust settles. He doesn't say that explicitly. He doesn't rule it out. And then Netanyahu has said, over the past weekend, ‘absolutely not. Hamas cannot be in power in any way’. You have said that in this conversation a little while ago, I wrote it down. As you said it, you said, you know, no Hamas in a military capacity, in a governing capacity, the regime has to be destroyed - paint a picture for me, if you think it's even feasible, that Israel says the war is now over, and Sinwar is still alive, and Hamas is still more or less the most dominant player in Gaza. Like, do you think the Israeli public from right to left anywhere would accept that?
TL: Nobody now is speaking about who's going to replace Hamas, because Netanyahu is not willing to speak about it. I would like to draw a picture of the ultimate victory without Hamas. Let's speak about it. The goals are to eradicate Hamas military capability, or terrorist capability. This is what the army is doing. But Hamas is taking, again, the places when the army is leaving because nobody is replacing it as a regime. So if there was a broader deal saying the following: the U.S. and the entire world supports the goal of eradication of Hamas and Israel can continue in acting against Hamas. It's going to be replaced by the legitimate Palestinian Authority. I am not going to throw the key to the other side of the border, but it's going to be one place after the other, after reforms that they would do. And the United States is working with them on these reforms. And during the first ceasefire that Biden portrayed, we can have also a change of the security structure in the region with the Saudis. But Netanyahu stops just here because he's not willing to say who's going to replace Hamas. So let's speak about the alternative. No Biden, nobody is speaking about stopping the war. We continue. We continue. We continue. We continue. And then what? When Netanyahu is speaking about the ultimate victory? You know, he gives Israelis hope that you can get rid of Hamas completely, but without a plan. I mean, Netanyahu knows better than everybody else that without an alternative, a regime stays. Trust me. And he promises something that he cannot deliver. And Israelis now are like falling from a building, that was created, or the gap between slogans and reality. And like somebody who is falling from the building and is being asked on the second floor before he hit, you know, okay, and he says, ‘so far so good’. But even if he continues without a plan, and I said it, on the eighth day of the war, I gave an interview, and I said the responsibility of the cabinet is to speak now, and to form now. The alternative, and to work with the U.S. and with the Saudis. But this brings us back to the different GPS of Israel. Because Netanyahu is going to keep Hamas in power, because Hamas is a threat to Israel's security. But the Palestinian Authority is a threat to those believing in greater Israel, because we need to negotiate with them. It brings Saudis on board, it's the key, it's the ultimate victory on Hamas because you can topple the regime with that. But he’s not willing to do so. Therefore, we started with two different visions for Israel. It's not only the judicial reforms. It's also what stops - now the Israeli government and it would be such a pity and so disappointing. I mean, Israeli soldiers fought, paid with their lives, were injured. And after all this war, it would end just like all the other rounds like we had in Cast Lead and in Protective Edge. So I want to tell you another thing. At the end of Protective Edge, I drew a resolution of the Security Council with the U.S. saying that the goal is to demilitarize Gaza and to bring the PA not once, but to the crossings at first, in stages, and you know what? I was waiting at the Prime Minister's room, John Kerry, Secretary of State, was waiting in Washington. John, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N, and the American ambassador to the U.N. was waiting for Netanyahu's decision. And he said, ‘no’. And I asked him, why? And he said, because the last sentence says that we need to negotiate with the Palestinians. So this is the price that we are paying with Israel security
DS: And Protective Edge was 2014, which was the last major operation inside Gaza.
TL: Yes, yes.
DS: That the IDF conducted that lasted about 50 days.
TL: Yes, and at the end of the operation since I didn't want to end the operation just by deterrence, in an understanding that Hamas is not being really deterred for many years - so let's work together with the international community for Israel security. This is how you can work with the moderates, or with the free world, against the extremists and the terrorists. And Netanyahu took the other way, to keep Hamas in power and to delegitimize the Palestinian Authority, and we are paying the price.
DS: Before we wrap, Tzipi, I want to talk about another part of the region you have a lot of experience in, which is Israel's northern border. The 2006 Lebanon War, you were foreign minister during that war. It ended with, among other things, what is, with UN Security Council resolution 1701 - that did what? Can you just describe what your hope was or what the goals were for that settlement?
TL: Yes. At first I'll share with you the options, okay? I was the foreign minister. We had Hezbollah, a terrorist organization in Lebanon. The government of Lebanon was legitimate and supported by the international community, including the US and France. Hezbollah was an armed militia. They were not part of the government. So first decision was whether we are acting against Lebanon or against Hezbollah. And the decision was to act against Hezbollah. So the first day of the war, I asked the chief of staff, as a minister, okay, what's the definition of victory? Because when a country like Israel is fighting, we are looking for a victory. You know, Six Days war, something like this. For this terrorist organization, victory is survival. That's why at the end of the road in Gaza, somebody, and also in Lebanon, some terrorist can get out of the Talon and say, yeah, he won. That's it for them. And there was no definition. So we started the war, and it tended to be very problematic also to the Israeli army, because it's difficult to look for all these stories. The second day, also, Tal Becker drafted Resolution 1701 before we knew that it was going to be 1701. And I said, okay, here are the options. One, to stay in the south part of Lebanon. So you know what? We've been there for 18 years, after this was the first war in Lebanon. We paid the price with the Israeli soldiers’ lives, and Hezbollah is still there. The other option was to pull out what Ehud Barak did in 2000, and just leave the place without, in a way, pulling out, withdrawing. Without any agreement, without - so this sends a message of weakness. And therefore we said, let's work in accordance to this strategy. Let's work against Hezbollah. Before that, there was another Security Council resolution, 1559, saying that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that needs to be dismantled. So on top of this, we said, okay, we have the Lebanese Army. By the way, the last meeting of Ariel Sharon before, you know, he fell and got sick, was about a place on the border, Rhadjar, and he said, why the Lebanese army cannot get there? So the goal was to bring the Lebanese army of the legitimate government with international forces to the south part, to the Israeli border, and to get Hezbollah outside of Litani River, far away from the border. International forces came. They stopped, I mean, it's quite unbelievable now to think about it, ships, warships that came to the Lebanese shore and arms embargo on Hezbollah. Now we succeeded. So we had 18 years inside Lebanon with all the prices. Now we had 18 years that during this time Hezbollah went back and came back to the border. So it was a success for a while. And it demonstrates what I said before about the need to do both. I'm not the one believing that just with political means we can tackle this challenge of these terrorists, but it was a military operation, a war inside Lebanon. And then you know what happened? Iran said the announcement of Iran on 1701 was that this is a danger to Lebanon, or they were completely against it. When Netanyahu called me a danger to Israel, and now you know what he's doing? He's trying to re-implement the decision that at the time he called the danger to Israel. So the choice is between bad options. And if this resolution will not be implemented - because during the time we acted militarily when they tried to, when they infiltrated weapons to Hezbollah. But now, if it would be implemented, that's one thing, and without it, Israel will need to take military means, for sure. But also, let's assume that we have another military operation, a war against Hezbollah. It's not going to eradicate Hezbollah from Lebanon. So, in the end, it would be a leverage to achieve something which is similar. We live in a tough neighborhood. You know what? You've asked me about my parents. My mother used not to kiss or hug us. Yes, if you would come like this, she said, ‘no way’. And she was asked by a family member who came from San Francisco. And she said, ‘why don't you kiss and hug your kids’? And she said, ‘because this is a tough neighborhood, and I cannot spoil my children, they need to be strong’. So this is the situation, and there are no miracles of ministers sitting in a cabinet and just making, unleashing the army. Let the army win. Slogans are not the answer. It's more complicated than that.
DS: So, I want to, actually, based on what you just said, I know we said we were done with the Palestinians for this conversation, but I want to come back to it because there's something relevant to what you said, to how Israel proceeds here from - based on your experience with Lebanon, how Israel proceeds here with Gaza. To your point, there are no good options. One option is leaving some semblance of Hamas in charge in Gaza. Not a good option, really bad option.
TL: Bad option.
DS: Unacceptable option. Another option is coming up with an alternative to Hamas, a version of, you know, it could be the Palestinian authority or some version of what exists in the West Bank. A third option is the international community providing security in Gaza in the interim period.
TL: They don't want to.
DS: They don't want to, I agree with you. But let me give you a fourth option. A fourth option is not the messianic view of those of some on the right in Israel, which is reoccupying Gaza, settlements in Gaza, but a practical hard headed approach, which is, we don't want settlements in Gaza. We don't want Israeli sovereignty over Gaza. But let's be realistic. For the next few years, Israel's going to have to provide basic security in Gaza.
TL: Okay, I agree. So let's check all the options, okay? It's clear that there is no option, unfortunately, by the way, unfortunately, I was never against any military operation against Hezbollah or Hamas, okay? But if you control, if you occupy the place, even without settlement, this is a moment when you are responsible to all the citizens that live in Gaza Strip. For education, for health, for everything, welfare, for everything. We don't want this. And therefore, we need to find a solution where we can be in charge on Israel's security. It's important. While somebody else is taking care for the civilians, okay? This is the goal. Now, let's think about the options. Okay, as I said before, Hamas, no way. People were thinking about Egypt. Trust me, they are still dancing in the streets of Cairo because Begin was willing to take the Gaza Strip from Sa'adat in the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. They don't want to be there. Okay? Arab countries are willing to help as long as there is a legitimate Palestinian regime. And therefore, the Palestinian Authority, as I said before, they are not going to take care of Israel's security. But there are those that are willing, and this is what we are doing in the West Bank, to cooperate with Israel on Israel's security. And since now the entire international community wants this war to end, this is a leverage for Israel to make demands on Israel's security. What can we do? With whom? And how is that? And Arab countries are not willing to come alone. You know, I was thinking also about the Emirates of opening schools and there are lots of changes that can be done. But nobody will do it without a legitimate Palestinian Authority and therefore after reforms… and I truly don't care if it will be called the Palestinian Authority or somebody else, as long - you know what? I will publish an ad in tomorrow's newspaper: a regime wanted for Gaza. It should be, not a terrorist regime, that is willing to cooperate on Israel's security. That's who I need. By the way, nobody is going to apply for the job without the Palestinian Authority. So, therefore, it's an opportunity, we can use the leverage of the war and the fact that the international community wants us to end it. And if we can bring the Saudis as well, so this can be a real regional change. But, unfortunately, what they want is to get Israel to agree to the Palestinian Authority. And you know what? If I need to choose between those that this holocaustic massacre in Israel is, and those that maybe support or saying or not condemning, this is the choice. This is the only choice. And I prefer anybody that is not Hamas. When I joined politics, my father was not alive and my mother was a true supporter of greater Israel. And when I start talking about two states for two peoples, I hope that she doesn't listen. And then I got the phone call from her saying, ‘listen, Tzipi, I hear you and it hurts me, but we fought for the establishment of Israel and I see young people that are leaving Israel to America. And we didn't fight for a place where only us, the old guys, will stay. So, we did our part, now it's your generation who needs to decide about the future.’ I hope we'll make the right decisions.
DS: Well said. I actually had one other question. I know I said we were going to end, but I want to ask you one other question. You talked about getting into politics, your decision to get into politics. I've just been thinking about this, it's been in the back of my head as we were talking. During the Oslo period, and then obviously the aftermath of Rabin's assassination. It's a completely separate question from what we've been talking about. What Saul Singer and I wrote in our most recent book about Israeli society, ‘The Genius of Israel’, about the resilience of Israeli society. And we go through all these periods in Israeli history where Israel has seemed bitterly, bitterly divided. And each time, it's like every 10 or 15 years, there's a moment from the debate over whether Israel should accept German reparations in response to the Shoah from the West German government to fast forward to the protests over the first Lebanon war to the Gaza disengagement, the debate, which we talked about to… I mean, we can go through each of these judicial reforms. Obviously each of these periods, you feel like the country's coming apart. And yet somehow the country holds together. And we wrote about the Rabin assassination, how it, in the book, in our book, we wrote about the Rabin assassination, where it's almost hard to, sometimes hard to remember how divided Israeli society seemed. It was a sense that half the country blamed the other half for creating the political environment that would inflame someone to do something so insane as to assassinate a prime minister. And Saul at the time wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post describing what the mood was like in Israel, I'm going to go back and look at that piece. It really was a very extremely, extremely understandably dark time for Israel. How does this moment, in terms of the divisions in Israeli society today, and I'm not just talking about October 7th, obviously the legacy of 2023 more generally, do you feel that there's a sense that Israel can bounce back? Like, does this feel like one of these dark moments in the past? I'm not talking about what we were talking about at the beginning, about the threat, the sense of failure of the Jewish state. That's a separate issue. I'm just talking about Israeli society. Israelis deciding that they're going to hold together, even though there are these fierce disagreements.
TL: I hope that we can get out of the mud, the place that we are here now, and take eternity into an opportunity. But in order to do so, I'm not, you know, for speaking about unity without substance because we have enemies. We need to be for something. And maybe in an understanding that we cannot continue like this. Maybe this would be a moment where we can go back to the same sentence that can not only unite us, but also can unite Israel and the world jury, about what does it mean to be a Jewish democratic state in terms of the Declaration of Independence. And I want to say to you something, and thank you for something, because for so many years we let the conflict define who we are, and you rep it in one sentence as a ‘startup nation’. And just before 2022, Israel turned to be this startup nation as identity. It's not just a small state surrounded by enemies, but a small state that contributes to the international community. And I hope that we can regain this identity. Thank you.
DS: All right. Thank you, Tzipi. I appreciate it. And I hope you'll come back on. We covered a lot of territory, and I feel like we only scratched the surface.
TL: Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
DS: All right. Thank you.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Tzipi Livni, you can find her on X at tzipi underscore livni or tzipilivni.co.il Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.