Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

ROBBINS: Thanks so much. Hi. I’m Carla Robbins. I’m a senior fellow here at the Council, and I also run a master’s program at the City University of New York and I am a fallen journalist. Anyway, today’s briefing is on President Biden’s upcoming trip to the Middle East. And you all know my colleagues. So my very brief introductions are not going to begin to do justice to their incredible expertise. Martin Indyk is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and U.S. ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the Clinton administration. His latest book is Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy. Steven Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at CFR and an expert on Arab and Turkish politics, as well as U.S. Middle East policy. He’s also a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine. And his next book, soon to be published, is The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. We share with you their new CFR special report, The Case for a New U.S.-Saudi Strategic Compact, as well as their very fine piece in Foreign Affairs, which I commend to you. So our format is the usual one. Steven, Martin, and I will have a discussion for about 25 minutes or so, and then we’ll throw it open for your questions. So Martin, Ambassador, if I might start with you, nearly all the attention so far about this trip has been focused on the Saudi leg and whether or not the president is going to—I’m going to have “leg” and “hand” in this sentence—(laughs)—will shake the hand of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man the U.S. intelligence community says ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Before he gets to Saudi, he’s going to Israel and the West Bank. So can we start there? What should we be looking for from that part of the trip? And can President Biden realistically, given that Israel is once again in a state of political limbo—has a caretaker prime minister, new elections coming up in November—can he get anything done on that trip? INDYK: Thank you, Carla. And good afternoon, everybody. It’s a pleasure to be with you. The original intention of this trip was to just do Israel. I don’t think Saudi Arabia was actually on the itinerary originally. That was before Ukraine, before the spike in oil prices. And it was essentially to show the flag, demonstrate the president’s pro-Israel credentials and that of his administration, in advance of the midterm elections in the United States. It was a question of, if not now, when? That was before the Israeli government collapsed. That was before things turned sour over the killing of the Palestinian journalist. We’ve got a Palestinian journalist killed as well as a Saudi journalist killed. And so the environment has changed quite a bit now. And to answer your question directly, it’s going to be hard for him to get much done. He will embrace, I think, very warmly the prime minister ad interim, the caretaker prime minister as he’s called, Yair Lapid, who is a centrist moderate, much like Joe Biden himself. And it’s no secret that Joe Biden and his advisers have no love for Bibi Netanyahu and wouldn’t like to see him come in. But on the other hand, there’s a sorry history of presidents from Clinton to Trump intervening in Israeli politics to try to get their man elected, and that hasn’t gone well for any of them. So I think that while Biden will want to show his friendship for Israel and his friendship for Prime Minister Lapid, it’s all going to be a little moderated. ROBBINS: So he’s—also, before we get to that, he’s going to probably—he has to meet with Bibi, right? He’s the head of the opposition. Is Bibi going to diss him the way he dissed Barack Obama all the time? INDYK: I don’t think so. I’m not exactly sure of the arrangement. As I understood a while ago, it was that they’d have a kind of pull-aside at the dinner that President Bougie Herzog will be hosting for President Biden. They’ll meet there. I warrant that there’ll be no photo op or Q&A. They’ll probably issue a photo afterwards. It’s traditional and appropriate for the president to meet the leader of the opposition, as former Prime Minister Netanyahu is at the moment. So I think they’ll try to deal with it in as lowkey a manner as possible. And I think that Netanyahu is not interested in picking a fight with Joe Biden at this point. So my guess is it’ll go off fairly quietly. ROBBINS: So Steven, President Biden has been talking about how Israel is the focus of this trip, probably as a way to avoid talking about Saudi Arabia as the focus. And we will get to Saudi Arabia. He’s going to go to the West Bank as well. But before we jump to the West Bank, he’s been talking a lot about how he wants to move the Abraham Accords forward and use this trip as a way of talking about improving even further Israeli security. Is that, you know, a realistic thing to happen? You know, as Martin said, a caretaker government. But has the administration been actually making progress in this time that it hasn’t been going to the Middle East? And is that something that we can assess this trip on? COOK: Yeah, it’s a great question, Carla. And thanks, everybody, for tuning in with us this afternoon. I think that the administration certainly can push things forward with the Israelis in the region more broadly, even under a caretaker government. In many ways the legitimization of Israel as a security partner for Arab countries has been proceeding apace, regardless of what the United States diplomacy has. The countries of the region—the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis—the Bahrainis have an IDF officer in the Israeli embassy there, something that could not happen without Saudi permission. We know that the Israeli defense minister revealed a Middle East air defense network a number of weeks ago. These are all kind of willing participants in security with the Israelis, which is, I think, a very, very important development. I think that the big case here is going to be what steps, if any, can the administration nudge the Saudis towards normalization with the Israelis. I think, you know, as Martin pointed out, this trip was originally an Israel-focused trip. Now there’s, you know, Saudi Arabia and the GCC plus three, and I2U2 meetings have been added on. I think symbolically— ROBBINS: Is that an Irish rock group, the I2U2? (Laughs.) COOK: Israel, India, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. ROBBINS: Thank you. (Laughs.) COOK: You know, this is great. We have MBS, I2U2, all kinds of acronyms coming out of this. But I think what’s—I think the idea that the president is going to fly from Tel Aviv to Jeddah, the first such public flight, it’s sort of symbolic of Israel’s legitimization into the region. And particularly the beginning of that, the real—(audio break)—of that has been security. It's somewhat awkward for the United States, though, because in ways the Israelis and its neighbors have developed a strategic consensus that the United States has kind of been on the outside of with regard to Iran and with regard to changes in the region that people had hoped for after the uprisings. But nevertheless, I think everybody agrees the United States is critical to advancing not just the circle of peace but a regional security architecture that everybody’s looking for. ROBBINS: So Martin, Steven brought up Iran, which seems pretty central for this. They are within arm’s length of having enough fuel to make a nuclear weapon; not necessarily having the hardware for it, but—and the last meeting—you know, the EU facilitating the meeting in Qatar went nowhere. What’s the president’s message going to be when he’s in Israel and, as well, throughout talking to the GCC on the question of Iran? Is it: Chill, we still—we’re still working on this? Or is he going to begin to talk about plan B on this trip? INDYK: The administration has a great aversion to talking about plan B in any circumstances, and that would include this trip as well. They’re still planning to play out the clock, and the clock is ticking as the sunset clause kicks in in 2025. And the administration has been warning in the past, you know, there’s only weeks to go before it becomes impossible to continue, and that weeks has turned into months. So I think they will continue to play out that game. And frankly, and interestingly, the Israeli position is kind of wanting to have it both ways. They oppose the agreement. They say it’s a bad agreement. But, on the other hand, they are not pushing the administration to call it quits. And significant voices in the defense establishment in Israel are now saying, actually, you know, it wouldn’t be so bad to have an agreement, even at this late stage, that shipped out all of that partially enriched—60 percent enriched uranium, which is what’s putting the Iranians on the threshold of at least enough weapons-grade material to make a bomb. And that would at least—if it was shipped out under the agreement, it would at least give Israel some more time to prepare its plan B, which involves sanctions, and containment, and deterrence, and a potential military strike. So I don’t think that there’s going to be a clash or disagreement here. There’ll be some statement by Lapid, you know, that doesn’t agree with it. And I expect that the focus, rather than on the issue of will Iran come back or not, will be on Iran’s problematic, threatening behavior in the region, because that is the glue that Steven referred to that brings Israel and the Sunni Arab states together. And that is the basis—the strategic basis upon which I think that President Biden wants to now build what I would call a new kind of strategic vision for the region, which I believe will unfold in Jeddah. I’ll get to that, but it’s essentially one in which Israel and the Sunni Arab states step up to counter Iran, and the United States is supporting them. The most obvious manifestation of that will be this integrated defense system against Iranian missiles, rockets, drones, et cetera, in which Israel has a vital role to play. So that normalization process, which was fueled originally by a common perception of threat from Iran, is something that I think that President Biden is also going to embrace in a way in which President Obama, for example, did not. And that will be the underlying story of this trip, in my opinion. ROBBINS: So much more about the conventional threat and the ability to take the responsibility themselves with the U.S. providing technology and backup. So—and then much more for the Jeddah part. So I would be remiss if I left Israel and the West Bank without talking about the West Bank. So, Steven— INDYK: You would, yes. (Laughs.) ROBBINS: I know. We’re rewatching Fauda at home right now—(laughter)—and just really—it’s just—I just, when I think about—we were in Madrid. You know, we’re always like—it’s just never changing. Nevertheless, back to talking about a two-state solution. Is there going to be— anything going to happen on that front? Is Biden, you know, just going to tip his hat and say I really care about it, or are they coming with any idea at all? COOK: Well, you know, generally I would defer to Martin on this given how much time he has spent on it, but I think the answer is pretty straightforward. ROBBINS: (Laughs.) Perhaps best not subjecting him now to that. (Laughs.) COOK: Right. I’m going to save him. He’s a valued colleague. You know, the Biden administration has done a number of things with regard to the Palestinians. They have reestablished relations with the Palestinians. Those are, you know, step forwards. You know, at least there is dialogue in which—where there wasn’t with the—with the Trump administration. But thus far, the president really hasn’t evinced any strong commitment or interest in pushing a two-state solution. He's more than likely going to say it. But you know, the obstacles to progress remain as they have been, and once again he doesn’t seem like he’s terribly interested in moving this forward. And one can understand why, given the fact that you have a(n) Israeli government that is clearly in transition. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. Mahmoud Abbas is in the seventeenth year of his four-year term. A deeply divided Palestinian political leadership. And what we know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what we’ve known for a long time, is that the minimum requirements for peace cannot be satisfied by either side. And no matter which way in which the United States has tried—and perhaps Martin—(laughs)—is a living example of this—it has been very, very hard to alter the interests and incentives of the parties, not for lack of American trying. So, in addition, I think the Palestinians are in a particularly sour mood over the statement from the State Department with regard to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. It was—I tweeted it was transparently weaselly. There was no real investigation. It was really kind of splitting the difference, and it made no one happy, particularly the Palestinians very unhappy. I thought the better way to go was to actually have an FBI investigation of her death. So I don’t expect much progress there. ROBBINS: So final jeopardy just on this part of the trip, which is, Martin, if—you know, we journalists tend to want to assess whether a trip is successful or not. You know, what are the—what are the metrics you would be using for success or failure for this trip? What should we be watching for? What are you predicting? And do that all in forty seconds. INDYK: On the first—I presume you’re talking about the leg because the second leg— ROBBINS: On the first leg of the trip. On the first. INDYK: Yes. So the first leg is basically get out there without a new settlement announcement, something that Vice President Biden experienced early on when he visited. Get out of there without a terrorist attack. You know, kind of get out of there without a major protest on the Palestinian side because, as Steven says, there’s a sour mood there. They’re disappointed. The president promised to reopen the consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians. He hasn’t done that. He’s going to visit Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leader, in Bethlehem, and so that’s good. They appreciate that compared to the way they were—they were dealt with by President Trump. There will be some new aid announced to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, but it’s really small beer. And I think Steven’s right; the Palestinians are going to be quite disappointed. The Israelis will be happy to have the president there. He’ll say some positive things and announce that, you know, the visa restrictions will be removed in a year’s time or something like that. But the visit is the message. And there will be a lot of that same old, basically tired rhetoric about how the United States and Israel are steadfast allies, and the United States wants to see a two-state solution with equal measures of freedom and dignity for both. But the reality is the focus of the administration’s efforts is not Israeli-Palestinian peace, to state the obvious. It’s all about dealing with the strategic challenge that comes from Iran, both to Israel and to Saudi Arabia and the other Arabs that President Biden will be meeting in Jeddah. ROBBINS: So, Steven, do you want to add to that or should we move onto the next—the next leg? COOK: I think we should move on to the more interesting stop. ROBBINS: OK. So not long ago President Biden was vowing to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state. Now he’s going there. The White House is trying to lower expectations that the visit is going to bring down gas prices. But if it’s not all about gas, gas, gas—and I’m skeptical—what’s going on? And I might add that the president seemed less than enthusiastic about the visit when asked about it in Madrid. He said, yeah, maybe I’ll meet with the king, maybe I’ll meet with the crown price; you know, I’m sort of going to be in Saudi Arabia, but I’m not, like, really going to Saudi Arabia. So, what’s going on with this trip? Why is he going? And what is he really going to try and accomplish? COOK: Well, I’ll start, and then I’m sure Martin has his own thoughts on this. I think there’s a number of issues on President Biden’s mind. And you’re quite right; you know, this is the pariah who’s not the pariah, and the Saudis have proven themselves right that the president would need them at some point. And certainly, I think the story about oil and gas is part of it. If you look at what the administration has been doing, they want to be seen as trying to do everything that they possibly can to relieve pain at the pump for Americans, and one of those things is, obviously, getting the Saudis to pump more, something that they haven’t been willing to do; they’re not willing to break their agreement with OPEC+, which means their agreement with the Russians. And there’s, I think, an important question whether the Saudis actually have the capacity to produce more. But I’m not sure it’s necessarily whether the president is going to fly with some agreement in hand that the Saudis are going to start pumping more oil tomorrow. I think the bigger issue—and this is something that Martin and I raised in our Council special report, which is that there be some steps towards an understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States about how the Saudis would be helpful going forward in balancing the energy market so that we don’t find ourselves in this situation once again, to the extent that they can, because they still are the biggest low-cost producer out there that can make a difference. I think, obviously, there’s a number of other issues on the president’s mind and that’s, you know, obviously a question of human rights, and connected to that is Yemen, pushing some public step on normalization, and the topic we haven’t spoken about which is the great-power competition in the region, as well as Iran, and those are all kind of all folded in together in security. And we’ve seen how some of our partners have drifted away or tried to play both ends of the stick on Russia and deeply involved with the Chinese, and I think that in part the president going to a GCC+3 meeting and sort of leading—you know, reasserting American leadership there is something, symbolically, that they want to do. What the Saudis in particular and others are going to want in response from the United States is an enhanced commitment to security and stability in the region, and what form that they may take we’re starting to see with the, you know, air defense security architecture. I mean, Saudi’s opening bid was for a NATO-like commitment, which is not likely to happen, but there’s room for negotiation, as Martin and I lay out in this report, for things about, you know, ranging from a strategic framework agreement all the way up to something akin to what the United States has with regard to Taiwan. So I think the agenda in Saudi Arabia is actually fuller. It has a number of risks for the president. Meeting the crown prince is certainly a risk. If you just look at the pictures of the crown prince and President Erdoğan, certainly President Biden does not want to be in a similar type of situation, but it is a fuller, richer—an agenda that has some significant opportunity, I think more so than the Israel-Palestine leg of it. ROBBINS: So, Martin, the new report and piece that you wrote with Steven is very ambitious. It asks a lot of the United States and, you know, commitments—a range of commitments, as Steven noted, potentially militarily, but it also asks a lot of the Saudis. I suppose two questions I have is—one is, do you have a sense that the administration is thinking that way? And, two, do you think the Saudis are really willing to make the sort of changes—they always talk about reforms and very little follow-through from them. INDYK: Yeah. I don’t think that Steven and I ever intended that this ambitious idea should be something—or would be something—that could be achieved on the president’s trip; rather, we argue that it would be wise to try to establish a roadmap for an updated relationship which takes into account the problems that have plagued the relationship in the last decade, particularly once Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, came into control there. And this—we think that this should be the first step on the road to a renovated relationship. And the alternative, which is essentially a return to the old realist deal—you, Saudi Arabia, provide the oil, we’ll provide the security and we’ll sweep everything else under the rug—is a recipe for a return to the screwed up relationship which we now have with Saudi Arabia. So I think, on the one hand, there is a pragmatic deal that does need to be done on this trip, which is, basically, MBS, the crown prince, agrees to pump more oil and President Biden agrees to take him out of the penalty box. And I think that the president is making a mistake by making it look as if he’s holding his nose as he goes into this, you know, really doesn’t want to shake his hand, because the American people want to see the price of their gas come down, you know, I would say almost universally, with the exception of a few people who legitimately are concerned about MBS’s human rights record, not just in terms of his ordering the killing and dismembering of the Saudi journalist, Khashoggi, but more generally, you know, human rights record in Saudi Arabia. That’s an issue which I hope that the president will raise with them. I expect that he will do that. But the issue of the moment is to get the Saudis to pump more oil, and that’s just the reality. Unfortunately, the sense of arrogance—I was just in Riyadh last week—the sense of arrogance coming out of there, well, yeah, now the president’s going to have to eat crow and kiss the ring and we always knew that would be the case because we’re too important, versus, on the president’s side, this kind of, well, I’m not really going there to shake the hand is, I think—it’s a recipe now for a suboptimal outcome, and I think that that’s a mistake, that basically should understand—both sides should understand that they need to find a way to work with each other and set the direction in the future for a better relationship, which includes ending the war in Yemen, which includes bringing the people to account who actually dismembered Khashoggi, and a commitment to better behavior on the part of the crown prince towards his own people. But without that broader roadmap, I think that the opportunity here is going to be missed, unfortunately. ROBBINS: So I want to turn it over to the group that’s here and I’m going to give you the last word for your Final Jeopardy for this: How do we assess success, failure on this leg of the trip? Are there deliverables for the GCC meeting or are you going to be keeping your eye mainly on sword dances with the Saudis or—(laughs)—what’s your—what are your metrics of deliverables for this part of it? COOK: I’m not a sword dance or orb kind of guy. I think that we have to look at what—where they start on reweaving the relationship, and that’s the—I think that’s the important thing and that’s what Martin and I have emphasized. But in the immediate sense, can the president get some sort of commitment from the Saudis on energy or at least look to be doing that? What does—what steps does the GCC+3 with the United States take towards further developing regional security architecture, and how does that include Israel? As I said before, we see the legitimization of Israel as a security partner; what steps are they publicly willing to take? There are certain members within the GCC who are willing to take it, but there are holdouts. The Kuwaitis. The Qataris are ambivalent. The Omanis have hosted an Israeli prime minister but remain ambivalent. You have others, the Iraqis, who are going to be there, who don’t want to do it. But how can we—how can they finesse those issues? And I think those are really the important pieces that we’ll be looking for. I don’t think—you know, the administration is, you know, lowering expectations. I think that that’s entirely appropriate. The president is going a long way, but this is going to be a long process. The changes in the Middle East are very, very new and they are reversible. So those few discrete issues, I think, are going to be the most important. Whether the president—I know people are going to be fixated on the president and the crown prince, and that is obviously an important thing, and people are legitimately concerned about human rights, but there’s a broader strategic relationship and concerns for the United States in the region. INDYK: Could I just add, Carla, that one thing that is likely to come out of it is going to be some small steps towards normalization with Israel. I think that is going to happen. The Israelis have very high expectations that something dramatic will happen. I suspect that that’s not going to happen because we’re dealing with Saudi Arabia and they’re reluctant. They want to see progress on the Palestinians and so on. But beyond the strategic level, there will be, it appears, some agreement that Israeli commercial airlines can fly out of Saudi Arabia en route to Asia, perhaps, direct flights for Israeli and Palestinian Muslims to make the pilgrimage to Mecca directly from Israeli airports and these kinds of things, which indicate the direction that, I think, the crown prince, clearly, wants to go. But it also signals that it’s going to be a slow process as long as there’s no progress on the Palestinian front that they can point to that would provide them with a cover. And just one other point to stress here is that there is, as part of this process that Steven is describing of Israeli-Sunni Arab integration, on the strategic level there is also what’s called the Negev process, which brings together the countries that have normalized with Israel, countries that have made peace with Israel—the Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan—in a regional framework that is addressing regional challenges to do with climate change and economic development and these kinds of things, and that process is something that the Biden administration has nurtured and is beginning to take off as well. So the overall picture is going to be one in which, I think, that we’re going to see that the Saudis will step up, over time, their oil production. The Emiratis will as well. Hopefully, there’ll be something that signals the market that that is going to be the case from September on when the OPEC+ quota agreement runs out, and beyond that, this strategic—the emergence of this strategic alliance—the Abraham Accords axis, if you’d like to call it that—with American support, and I think the president will lay out that kind of strategic vision in his presentation to the GCC+—Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq—the meeting that he will be addressing—participating in at the end of this trip. ROBBINS: Thanks. So I want to open it up. I’m going to turn it back for the directions to everyone about how to ask questions, and I’m sure there’s lots of questions. So please remind everyone how to ask a question. OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) Back to you, Carla. ROBBINS: Great. Thanks so much. We have a question from—is it Ching-Yi Chang, who’s—identify yourself and share your question. Q: Hi. I’m Ching-Yi Chang with Shanghai Media Group. I have a question on this I2U2. Will this become a security alliance? And the other question is actually on Jordanian king, Abdullah II. The other day he said he’d support the forming of a Middle East NATO. Is there any possibility and do you think that President Biden will discuss this issue with the Middle East leaders? Thank you. ROBBINS: Jump in. COOK: Well, since I brought up I2U2, I guess I will answer that piece of the question and leave the question of the Middle East NATO to Martin. You know, it’s no secret that the Indian government has been keenly interested in participating in and benefiting from the Abraham Accords, and there’s going to be an American-Israeli-Indian-Emirati research center that’s set up in Dubai to do kind of basic research. You know, the Israelis already have a robust security relationship with the Indians, and as they have a robust—developing robust relationship with the Emiratis, I think that there’s an opportunity here for all of those countries to get together. I think the focus is mostly going to be with regard to counterterrorism and extremism, and all of those three countries can, you know, bring their expertise to bear on that issue. And I think it’s something that—you know, quite obviously, all three countries as well as the United States, and United States for its own interests in terms of what it sees is its future in the Indo-Pacific and, I think, have a real interest in nurturing these relationships. So I expect that, you know, we’re going to start at a kind of low level but that, certainly, counterterrorism cooperation, which already exists among these three countries, will be on that agenda as well. INDYK: If the question, given that’s the Shanghai Post—that’s what the name of the journal is—is wondering whether this I2U2 format is directed at China, I don’t believe that that is the case in terms of its purpose. But there is a broader strategic context, which is that the United States is placing a priority on dealing with China’s assertiveness in Asia and, of course, Russia’s aggression in Europe. And that has been portrayed as America turning its back on the Middle East, particularly by our allies and partners in the Middle East. And I think the message that the president wants to send by this visit and by this I2U2 meeting—well, it’ll be a virtual one in Israel, but that’s part of this symbolism. It is that we’re not—the United States is not leaving the Middle East. It’s shifting the way that it’s dealing with its interests in the Middle East because it necessarily has to make Asia and Europe its priorities. It’s going to be looking to its partners, Israel and the Sunni Arab states the president will be meeting with in Jeddah, to step up and the United States will shift from being the dominant player in the region to be the supporting of this new architectural framework for protecting America’s strategic interests in the region and the strategic interests of our allies and partners there. ROBBINS: So I have a follow-up question while I’m waiting for more questions to come in. There are—come on, you guys. You’ve got questions or you wouldn’t have—we wouldn’t have both taken the time to do this. So can you talk—either or both of you talk a little bit more about how much there-there there is in this new security architecture? Because we’ve heard from the Obama—I’m sorry, the Biden—which administration are we in?—the Biden administration a lot about, you know, IPEF and, you know, they’ve got this new thing for Latin America. There’s a lot of acronym-y stuff going on out there. But they haven’t put any real structure to any of these relationships. But it seems as if there’s something substantive there. The Israelis are now talking about how there’s really some air defense agreements. We know behind the scenes for a long time there have been security dialogues. And it’s something that the Israelis can, certainly, add to the region because they’re very good at that. Can you talk a little bit more about what we’ve learned and what role the United States can play in facilitating this integration—the security integration, which is, as you said, all about Iran? COOK: Martin, you want to go ahead and take that? INDYK: No. Go ahead, Steve. COOK: (Laughs.) Well— INDYK: I’ll be happy to. (Laughs.) COOK: No. No. I just—bounce back and forth here. Look, I think that the—I think that there is more to this than just talk. I think, clearly, the United States wants to provide the tools to its regional partners to establish a regional imbalance that allows the United States to attend to its interests in Asia and Europe. You know, political scientists like myself have some—we call that something. It’s called offshore balancing. It doesn’t have a great track record in reality but, nevertheless, this is what it’s clear that the administration is seeking to do. It doesn’t indicate an American withdrawal from the region. The United States can be in the region in a different kind of way. But it’s not just acronyms, and I think that the president’s meetings, particularly the GCC+3 meeting, is part of the effort to kind of grow what it is that we’ve begun there. That is, clearly, about the Iranian challenge. I think that the administration did not calculate that getting back into the JCPOA would be as arduous as it has been and I think that they also are responding to what we all call great power competition now—the Russian malevolent activity not just in Europe but also throughout the Middle East and the Chinese presence there that is, clearly, unnerving to the United States if not necessarily our partners in the region. But it is, as Martin said, a way in which the United States is going to be doing business in securing its interests in the region in a way that is different from, let’s say, arguably, the period of 1991 up through the invasion of Iraq because suddenly the global order is quite different. But just to get to the core of your question, there is something there and there is clearly an interest on the part of our partners on working together under the auspices of the United States. INDYK: Let me jump in on the question about NATO that was also raised. You know, labeling it in that way, I think, would be counterproductive for two reasons. The region has bad history with that kind of labeling, from the Baghdad Pact back in the 1950s onwards. But secondly, I don’t think the administration is yet in a position to make a kind of NATO-like Article 5 commitment to the defense of our allies and partners there. But it’s—this is laying the foundations. And that is the direction that you’ll end up going, even though I think that there will be real hesitation about making that kind of commitment. I say that because, as Iran approaches the threshold of nuclear-weapons capability and over time we prove unable to prevent it from at least being kind of a screwdriver turn away from having nuclear weapons, there is going to be real pressure on the other Arab states to engage in a nuclear-arms race, acquire their own capabilities, and a lot of pressure on Israel to take preemptive action or bring its own capabilities, rumored capabilities, out of the basement. And then we have a deeply destabilizing situation. So eventually I think the framework that we see being laid now by the Biden administration will emerge into a kind of deterrent commitment, including at the nuclear level, nuclear deterrence provided for by the United States as a way of short-circuiting a nuclear-arms race, at least. But I think that’s off in the future. ROBBINS: So we have several questions in the chat. From a corporate member, Amy Conroy, who asks—says she can’t go on audio: Several analysts argue that the price of oil is likely related more to limited refining capacity and not just the quant of crude production, especially since KSA, meaning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, can’t greatly increase production. If this is true, isn’t Biden’s visit a loss re energy and public image if it doesn’t bring the price down? COOK: Well, I think it’s clear that there is a lack of refining capacity. This is what—the Saudis have said that’s the problem. There’s been this massive underinvestment in refining capacity. ROBBINS: Well, it says that Amy Conroy works with Shell. I just wanted to add that. I just had that texted me—texted to me. COOK: Well, Amy probably would know better than I would, but I’m more than happy to offer you what I know. The Saudis have said it over and over, along with the Emiratis, that the problem is really refining capacity and that they, you know, do not want to break their agreement with OPEC Plus. As I said at the opening, I think that the real issue here is for perception case and that the administration has been looking for every possible way to demonstrate to the American public, especially as we get closer to November, that it is doing everything it possibly can to bring the price of gas down from the, you know, whatever it is, close to five dollars where I live and close to seven dollars where, you know, people on the West Coast. I think it’s likely the case that the Saudis don’t have the ability to bring down the price of oil as quickly as they can or as quickly as many people would like to believe. Again, that doesn’t mean that that is a marker of success or failure of the trip. I think overall, yes, the administration obviously, for political reasons, would like the price of gas to come down. It does seem like it’s drifting down anyway. But in a broader way, this is about reweaving a relationship with a very, very important country. And this is the beginning of that. So I think, you know, kind of short term, what do we get out of this and what’s going to have—yes, that is certainly an issue. But what we’ve been most interested in is how to set up this relationship in the long term so that it—some of these problems that have been plaguing it can be resolved without there being and avoiding a breach in the relationship, which is neither good for the United States nor Saudi Arabia. ROBBINS: So Rosiland Jordan from, I believe, Al Jazeera asks, has the White House made a strong enough case for engaging with Saudi Arabia, given its human-rights record? What does it need to change in its messaging? I assume meaning the White House’s messaging. And then also there’s a question from Darren Mitchell (sp) about Congress’s role in this and whether the White House has been managing this. Certainly some of the harshest criticisms, when the White House announced the trip, certainly the stop in Jeddah, came from members of the president’s own party and some rather outspoken members, including the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So are we going to see that, or did they sort of just shoot off their (role ?) and now it’s they’re all—they’re all going to be calm? Do you think they’re going to be able to handle the human-rights issue well, Martin? INDYK: I think it’s going to be— ROBBINS: You’ve been inside when they—when they plan these things. INDYK: Yeah, I haven’t had to deal with this one. And I think that it’s going to be hard to manage, very hard to manage, partly because, as I said before, the president is just not comfortable in this situation dealing with the crown prince. I don’t think yet he’s figured out a way to handle that that is convincing. We always talk about human-rights issues. The president always talks about human-rights issues when he goes to countries where there are problems. And I’m quite sure he’s going to do that again. And he needs to do that. As for Congress, it’s a bigger problem than just criticism to him going there. You know, as I said, I don’t think the criticism is worth him worrying about. I think he’s overdoing it, because the American people understand he’s trying to get the price of gas down. And most people will applaud that effort, even though it may take a little time to play itself out. But Congress presents a problem to this broader strategic effort that we’ve been describing here, because they’re holding up arms sales. They have a kind of scleretic—sclerotic, excuse me—system there that is really impeding efforts to try to create this supportive role for the United States. It’s not just Saudi Arabia’s arms sales that are being held up. It’s other countries like the Emirates as well, even though there’s overall support for those kinds of sales. And I think the administration is going to have to spend more time working the Hill and trying to get the Hill to embrace this broader strategic vision as well. Otherwise it’s just going to be very difficult to fulfill the expectations that the president is going to create. ROBBINS: So I— COOK: Let me— ROBBINS: Please, Steven. COOK: I just wanted to add quickly on this question of human rights is that I think that, you know, at the outset I can understand why President Biden wanted to make a very big deal about adding values and making values an important part of American foreign policy, given the previous four years in the administration and that administration’s kind of, you know, willful disregard of those issues. But I’m afraid, when it came to Saudi Arabia and with other countries, quite honestly, the administration did not give itself enough room for maneuver. This is not just a problem with Saudi Arabia. The president was forced to deal with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the president of Egypt, who he’s also going to see when he goes to the GCC plus three. You know, Sisi presides over a profoundly repressive regime. And there was a way to register our concern about human rights without putting the president in a situation where he looks as if he’s going hat in hand now, something the Saudis saw as, you know, entirely foreseeable. I do want to point out, though, and, you know, with reference to Martin, his vast experience in the U.S. government, when it has come to making these choices between, you know, values and what our strategic interests are or gas prices for the average American driving around in, you know, their giant SUV, those strategic interests and the well-being of, you know, someone driving around in a Ford Expedition have always come first, at the expense of brave activists in the region who want to live in more open and democratic systems. ROBBINS: So cynical for one so young, Steven Cook. COOK: I’m older than I look. I’m glad the question, though, from Al Jazeera, given my Tamim scarf just over my shoulder here. So you should get good coverage, Martin. ROBBINS: Martin, can I go back—and I do want to then go on on that question because human rights is not the only tradeoff. There’s a climate tradeoff, and there’s a good question about that in the chat. But before we go to that, Martin, I want to—I want to go back, drawing on your vast experience—Steven’s emphasizing your age here—(laughs)— COOK: Yeah, at a painfully young age Martin’s vast experience, I should have said. ROBBINS: So you made a very good point about Biden’s ambivalence as well as—you know, you were just in Riyadh and you’re worried about—that they’re not preparing the president to handle this well. He’s quite an experienced diplomat. He’s got a lot of experience traveling around the world and he tends to shine better out of the country than in the country, where everybody’s talking about how weakened he is and the Dems are jumping on him right now because they’re afraid about what’s going to happen in the midterms. So if they were to bring you in as an expert adviser and as someone who just came back from Riyadh, what would you tell them about how he handles that potential face to face with MBS? How does he handle it? INDYK: Actually, I think Brett McGurk, his Middle East adviser at the National Security Council, has just been out there trying to massage this. First of all, just before I give you my opinion what to do, the way it’s set up now, people may not be aware, it is not what the president described, as just going to a regional meeting and he’ll see MBS there—you know, maybe there will be a pull-aside or something. There is a day on which they’re going to be dealing with Saudi Arabia and the next day they’ll have the GCC+3 meeting. So this is going to—there is going to be an engagement. I think it will be with the king present so there will be three of them rather than two, and that will probably be the photo op. That’s maybe some way of ameliorating the tension. But the tension’s going to be there. The president is not going to want to be seen shaking his hand and smiling with the crown prince, and that’s exactly what the crown prince is going to be wanting. So how they handle that choreography of that particular handshake is something that I would be trying to work the president on, trying to work the crown prince on as well. You do not want to leave that one to chance. There should be no kissing, for example. (Laughter.) ROBBINS: So but what would you be telling President Biden? And what should McGurk be telling the Saudis right now? Since it’s, obviously, in the interest of both of these countries to not have this come out looking like a disaster. INDYK: Yeah, right. I mean, I think the president’s mature enough and has had enough experience, even though I think his dislike for the crown prince is palpable, that he’s going to have to, you know, suck it up and be nice. Doesn’t have to embrace him. Certainly, you know, doesn’t have to kiss him. But just be civilized, and I’m sure he will be in that regard. ROBBINS: You seem to be suggesting— INDYK: And on the other hand, McGurk has to—sorry. ROBBINS: You seem to be suggesting we needed to be more arrogant with the Saudis than we were being. INDYK: More arrogant? No. Less arrogant. ROBBINS: OK. INDYK: We need to be—they need to be less arrogant. The Saudis need to be less arrogant. And that’s what I hope McGurk is telling them, is, guys, if you want this to go well, just cool it; we don’t need you crying about this because that won’t be in your longer-term interest. So I think, you know, this is stuff of pride and diplomacy, of working out the choreography, and those details matter. And by the way, we got to get the—(laughs)—White House press spokesman onboard, too. She hasn’t exactly been following the talking points. So, you know, everything’s going to—nothing can be left to chance here because it could go badly awry, and then that will rebound badly for the president. ROBBINS: One does wonder, I mean, they’ve been handling Ukraine really well after blowing Afghanistan really badly. So wondering why they’re sort of running around like, you know, the robot in “Lost in Space.” I’m not exactly sure. INDYK: Well, it’s simple. It’s simple: The president doesn’t like doing this. Pure and simple, he doesn’t like MBS and that’s what shows in his body language. But, as I said over and over again, there’s a—there’s a priority here that, as president of the United States, he just needs to do this. ROBBINS: We have a question from Sara Schonhardt from E&E News: What message does it send about Biden’s climate commitments if he does appeal to Saudi Arabia for oil? I mean, I gather there’s going to be a—you know, a climate component to this trip as well to try to offset some of that, Steven. COOK: Well, yeah. I think the administration is talking generally about, you know, cooperation in a variety of fields, not just security. And of course, the Negev Summit, which is now going to be an annual thing, does have a climate component to it. A lot of these countries have embarked upon doing things that will lead to adaptation in climate. I think what we need to keep in mind is, yes, the president’s emphasis on putting more oil on the market does compromise his climate commitments, but not fatally. You know, I think if we look at the climate crisis and the coming energy transition there are going to be periods of time where, you know, countries that are fossil-fuel producers are going to be more important for a short period of time and then less important over a period of time. As our colleagues—colleague Meghan O’Sullivan and co-author wrote in Foreign Affairs, the transition is going to be jagged so that Saudi Arabia will, at moments of geopolitical shocks, take on importance beyond what we know is necessary in order to decarbonize the economy and begin that energy transition. But there’s no way, really, of getting around it. The president’s politics, as Martin has emphasized and I’ve mentioned a number of times, dictates that he at least be seen to be doing something to moderate the price at the pump for Americans. He clearly believes—and I think he’s not wrong—that, you know, the fate of the Democratic Party in the midterm elections and his potential run for office again in 2024 are going to be dependent upon the way in which Americans are feeling about the economy. And gas prices are, you know, very, very high, and people are having a hard time making ends meet as a result. ROBBINS: So we are almost done. Martin, give us some summary thoughts about what you’re watching for on this—on this trip and what we should—we should all be watching for. INDYK: Yeah. Just let me end upon a quick point about the climate issue. Saudi is actually one of the champions on climate change and making big investments in it as well, all the while running to the bank with their windfall profits from the high price of oil. But nevertheless, there will be some receptivity to the climate message and the Saudis are likely to embrace that. Overall, I think, as I’ve said before, what we should be looking for beyond, you know, the choreography of the handshake and so on, which is kind of fluff, is the substance of the formation of a new strategic vision for the region which brings Israel and our Arab allies and partners together in a combined effort to deal with threats to peace and stability, primarily coming from Iran; and the commitment of the United States to be there to support that effort and to, in that way, reverse the signal that the region has taken from—particularly from the shambolic end of our engagement in Afghanistan, that we are turning out backs on the region and they, therefore, had better find a way to get into bed with China or, God forbid, Russia. So I think they don’t want to go that way anymore. They’ve checked that out and seen that it’s problematic—that is to say, to hedge with the other powers, external powers. They’re looking to come back in and work with the United States. The United States is going to signal that that’s what we’re prepared to do as well, and I think that that’s the most important—that will be the lasting achievement of this trip. ROBBINS: Steven, final word. Over to you. COOK: Well, thanks very much. Just two thoughts. One, on the Israel-Palestine leg of the trip, the president has to get out of Bethlehem and the West Bank without having too much trouble on that in order for—you know, to get away cleanly from that given all the problems associated with the Palestinian Authority and events there. And as I said before, the more interesting thing is the trip to Saudi Arabia. And I think what’s important is something that Martin hit upon, and that is the beginning of the building of a kind of deterrence and containment of Iran, which was probably the more rational way to deal with the Iranians from the beginning rather than some complex agreement which half the region was opposed to anyway. So, to the extent that we’re demonstrating some leadership in reentering a regional consensus that has existed is going to be important, and how receptive those countries are. One area where I’ll differ just a little bit with Martin on this is that I don’t think there’s going to be too much of an unwinding of the region’s relationship with the Chinese. The Chinese are the single largest investment in the region, as they are in many, many other regions. And I think that as our Arab interlocutors see what happens here in the United States and the political dysfunction here in the United States, China and Chinese investment become more and more important to them. But I think overall the idea that we are going to be knitting together a regional security architecture—which is something that I think that they want, but they want to know that it’s not just going to be words—will be—will be important. ROBBINS: I want to thank Steven Cook and Martin Indyk from the Council on Foreign Relations. I heartily recommend their report and their—and their article in Foreign Affairs. It’s been a great conversation. And we will test you to see whether your predictions come true. Thank you all for coming and— COOK: (Laughs.) I’ll be—I’ll be away, so. INDYK: Thank you. ROBBINS: I’m sure you’re great. INDYK: And thanks to you, Carla. ROBBINS: OK. Thank you. COOK: Thank you very much, Carla. INDYK: Thank you very much. COOK: Have a good one. (END)  

Marc Gopin, director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution and James H. Laue professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and Zaha Hassan, fellow in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discuss human rights issues and approaches to peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine. Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at CFR, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. COOK: Well, thank you very much. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. I’m Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies here at CFR. As a reminder, the webinar is on the record. The audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website and on our iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Now on to the business of the morning. We’re delighted to have Marc Gopin and Zaha Hassan with us. We shared their bios with you, but I’ll just give you a few highlights before we begin. Marc Gopin is the director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, and the James H. Laue Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He’s written a ton. He’s done a lot. He has six books. And he has a Ph.D. in ethics from Brandeis University, and was ordained as a rabbi at Yeshiva University, which means I’m going to have to behave extra nice during this. Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously, Zaha was the coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks—that’s my New York accent—Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012. Welcome to you both, Marc and Zaha. I have been really looking forward to this conversation. Let me start with you, Zaha. The two of us participated in a Foreign Affairs-sponsored event, so to speak, in which the magazine posed the following statement to a group of experts asking them whether they strongly disagreed, disagreed, were neutral, agreed, or strongly agreed. And here’s the statement: “The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer viable.” Now, you wrote you strongly agreed with a confidence level of ten. I also strongly agreed, but with a confidence level of eight. When I was thinking about that, I was wondering what the difference was between eight and ten and why I said eight rather than ten. But nevertheless, we’re basically in the same place on that. But I just want to share with the group a little bit of what you wrote along with your number strongly agreeing with the proposition that the two-state solution is no longer viable. OK, here we go. Hold on, everybody: “There is no political constituency in Israel to support either meaningful Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or enfranchisement in the state of Israel. Most Israelis are fine with the continuation of the status quo or formal annexation of the occupied territories. Israel’s Jewishness is valued more than democratic governance and equal rights. U.S. policy, which has operated to guarantee that Israel would be shielded from the consequences of its actions that violate international law, has facilitated the current sense of impunity among Israeli officials. There is no sign that U.S. policy will change appreciably in the next four years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now morphed into a struggle for freedom and equal rights for all living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.” Now, here’s my question: If Israelis value Israel’s Jewishness more than democratic governance and equal rights, and Palestinians question or reject the Jewish connection to the land, how does the struggle for freedom and equal rights for all living between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River play out? How do we get to what everybody thinks would be coexistence, whether it’s—I agree with you. I think that there’s no two-state solution. But whether you conceive of a two-state solution or not, or a one-state reality, how do we get to that point of coexistence if Israelis believe that Jewishness is more important than democracy and Palestinians don’t even necessarily recognize the Jewish connection to the land? So how does this happen? HASSAN: Yeah. I mean, I would  question that premise that Palestinians don’t accept Jewish—the Jewish connection to the land. I don’t think that’s accurate. I think what they object to is their displacement and their dispossession on the land, or that their rights are somehow subservient to Jewish rights to the land. And so I—if you think about Palestinian support over time for a two-state solution, you see that that support has always been a bit different than the conceptualization of what Israeli support for a two-state solution has been. There has never been, really, a meeting of the minds on what exactly that means. For Palestinians, a two-state solution meant a sovereign Palestinian state, but that didn’t negate the Palestinian citizens’ rights inside of Israel to equality nor did it negate the refugees’ right to choose to return to what became the state of Israel and to reparations for their refugee-hood. That’s what a two-state solution means to Palestinians. To Israelis, a two-state solution was a way to maintain Israel as a Jewish-majority state and to prevent the overtaking of Israel as a binational state. And that was viewed as somehow making Israel less secure. If there was a binational state, it would defeat the whole purpose of the creation of the state of Israel. And so that meant that refugees would not be able to return. It meant that Palestinian citizens couldn’t enjoy equality because there was always going to have to be an artificial way to maintain a Jewish majority so the Palestinian citizens of Israel could not overtake their Jewish neighbors in terms of the demographic makeup of Israel. And so the idea that there was ever a two-state solution on the table that both sides could agree to I don’t think was ever there. And so now what we’re left with is this idea that, why not—why not one state where Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians can live together, can share the entirety of the land, and do so with equal rights and equal dignity? Today, what we see is we have equal numbers of Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Jews, and—but all of them are living under the jurisdiction of Israel, whether they’ve living under occupation or they’re living as citizens of Israel, or whether they’re living in East Jerusalem in some kind of  status that is— COOK: Weird administrative status. HASSAN: (Laughs.) Yeah, some status in between. So the reality is we have one state. And the question then becomes, what kind of state should it be? Should it be one state where this domination of Palestinians continues and the repression continues, where Palestinian dispossession/displacement/evictions continue, or should it be a place where people can live together under protection of law? And I don’t know why we think that—(laughs)—this can’t be the case in Israel just like it’s the case in the United States, where you have a pluralistic society that enjoys  same equality before the law. Of course, it looks farfetched today because there’s been so much done in the last  twenty-plus years to embolden the Israeli right and to empower it and to make it think that there isn’t going to be any repercussions for their actions on the ground—the settlement expansion, the displacement of Palestinians. So, of course, that segment of the Israeli electorate feels empowered, feels emboldened, and doesn’t want to compromise. Why should it? But that can change if over time you see a U.S. policy that changes, if the international community starts to hold Israel to account for its action, over time you will start to see a shift in the way Israelis think about themselves, and think about their country, and what they want for their country. I think international opprobrium does matter to Israel. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t see such a push towards Arab normalization and Muslim normalization of Israel. That’s very important to Israel. And if it’s allowed to think that this state of domination of Palestinian lives is normal, then it’s going to continue. And so that’s why I am not pessimistic that things can change; I am optimistic that things can change. I have had friends—(laughs)—who told me that they thought Apartheid-era South Africa would never change absent violent confrontation, and then one day it ended. And I think, similarly, things can change and attitudes can change in Israel-Palestine. But I don’t think   it’s something endemic to Palestinians that they could never conceive of themselves living with Israelis. Palestinians work in Israel. Palestinians are citizens of Israel. There’s a lot of experience with living with Israeli Jews in daily life, interacting in daily life. It’s not like they don’t have experience with that. What they don’t want the experience of is one of domination, and so that’s what needs to change. COOK: As with so much when it comes to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the end is easier to conceive than how to actually get there. I have a follow up, but let me  get to Marc. Marc, ever since I was a 23-year-old research associate and sat outside the office of a guy named Douglas Johnston, who I think you know, when he was the executive vice president of a think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I’ve been hearing that religion is the missing component of peacemaking in statecraft. You’ve been deeply involved in these efforts for many years, but for all the talk about religion and coexistence—and I don’t mean the kind of day-to-day interaction that Zaha was just talking about. Anybody who’s been to Israel and Palestine understands that at that kind of daily interaction level Israelis and Palestinians interact because they have to. There’s no way to actually separate from each other. But it’s—for all of the work that’s been put into the idea of religion as a component of peacemaking and statecraft, there hasn’t been much headway toward resolving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians on this score. Palestinians are no closer to a state than they’ve been before. In fact, one can make the argument that they’re further away from their own state. Israel’s occupation and annexation of territory continues. Politically, neither the Israeli government nor the Palestinian leadership are making the moves—are capable to make the moves required for peace even if they wanted to because of the configuration of their domestic politics. So why should we expect religion and whatever commonalities there may be between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—why do we expect that to fill the gap? And why do we expect that politics won’t undo that, as politics is often the problem that complicates things? So convince me that this is more than just talk shop. GOPIN: Right. So these are excellent, excellent points. And I agree with so much of what Zaha said in her analysis and appreciate your thoughts. And here’s the thing, there are constructs here that we have to look at from a scientific point of view. From a scientific point of view, you have to look broadly and historically as well. And that is that in history there were times when it was inconceivable to think of French-German reconciliation. It was inconceivable to think of the end of a thousand-year war. It was inconceivable for Protestants and Catholics to coexist. And over time, in fact, the whole—the very secular notion of separation of church and state evolved out of religious people who developed that notion, and then it became a thing. Then it became a reality. In other words, right now—in the last forty, fifty years—we have been working with almost no funds whatsoever on stopping violence between Israelis and Palestinians behind the scenes with religious advisors and influencers on government on both sides. In that process of the work that’s the—the clear works of imams and rabbis that have stopped various forms of violence, and are also building more education on all sides for human rights and religion as something that can coexist. There has been a steady process of very conservative Muslim and Jewish rabbis—Muslims imams and Jewish rabbis who are more and more in consensus on human rights and on women’s rights than ever before as a unit. And there is the work of Rabbi Melchior and Rabbi Danny Roth, and before him the more radical work that I did with Rabbi Froman at the time in order to subvert the processes of violence. The fact is that we don’t know scientifically what it would be like if we had the same income for religious coexistence that we have for violent confrontation. There’s never been an experiment in putting together the amount of resources for diplomacy, millions and millions of dollars, that would go into religious coexistence and beef up a process that was not only rabbis and imams, not only women on all sides, but something that would go deep into messaging the entire civilization. Because Judaism and Christianity and Islam are instrumentalized by politicians, and violently instrumentalized, around the world. This is a method of control and of power, because there’s a vacuum of diplomacy considering the assets that could be in—could be for the processes of peacebuilding if diplomacy saw religious leadership and religious masses as a potential ally in the processes of building equality and coexistence. So there are a number of rabbis and imams that get this and already are working tirelessly on this, but they’re completely unfunded. And, honestly, the progressives in Israel and Palestine consider those folks to be a threat. They assume that religion means less women’s rights, for example. They assume it means less secular rights. However, this is a process of negotiation on both sides that needs to take place in order to create a common constituency of religious identity and human rights that would then move towards aneither one-state; or confederation; or a move towards majority-Palestinian in one part, majority-Jewish in the other, with equal rights in both. We could do that, but right now religion is mostly purely instrumentalized for violence. It’s purely instrumentalized for resistance. You can call it violence. You can call it terrorism. You can call it—call it fascism. Whatever names you want to call the instrumentalization of religion, it’s horrific around the world but it’s because it’s well-funded. And the peacebuilding is completely zero-funded by comparison. Afghanistan: a trillion dollars for war, zero dollars for building Islam and peacebuilding, and we lost it. Some of us tried very hard in Afghanistan. Again, it was a pittance. So, from a scientific point of view, you really can’t judge it unless you look at the relative investments in both efforts. COOK: I do want to get—thank you, Marc. I do want to get to questions from participants in the webinar, but I do want to follow up because, Marc, you raised an issue that I think is important to explore a bit with both you and Zaha. There seems to be—let’s take at face value the desire among some rabbis and some imams and others for peaceful coexistence, but there seems to be two very significant problems here. The first is—Marc, you referred to it—extremism, and you do have extremism on both sides in the name of religion. Hamas does not—sees all of Israel and Palestine as Muslim lands, and thus the illegitimacy of Israel and Jewish claims to those lands. What do these imams who are interacting with these other—how do they overcome that? I recognize that there’s a money problem, but money doesn’t solve everything. These are ideas. These are powerful ideas. And then—so that’s the question, is what do you do about something like Hamas? Or, Marc, you mentioned in an email to me that you’ve worked with settler rabbis. How do rabbis, how do they overcome the powerful ideas? These are maximalists. These are Jewish supremacists in the West Bank who, sure, they may say, hmm, we can have Palestinians in our midst, but it’s sort of a reversed dhimmitude. Sure, they can have some rights, but we control this land because this is Jewish patrimony. How do we overcome both of those things in order to get to a place of peaceful coexistence? It seems to me this is extremely, extremely difficult to do, given the political power of actually both. GOPIN: So just as Christian democracy emerged in Europe and the Christian democratic parties became the locus for a different hermeneutic, a different interpretation of Christianity that came to dominate; and just as Indonesians have allowed for Islamic democracy parties to be the largest parties in the country that now dominate; so, too, we are working very hard on Islamic interpretations and Jewish interpretations that allow for coexistence and human rights and equality. And in fact, I’ve spoken to—I mean, the settler rabbi that I worked with—only one, Rabbi Froman—Rabbi Froman was at the forefront of reaching out to Hamas and working with Sheikh Yassin at a time when it was absolutely verboten and impossible for Israelis to do so. He tried desperately to prevent the assassination, ultimately, of Sheikh Yassin, not because he agreed with their methods but because he was absolutely convinced that on a religious and human level it was possible to achieve a sharing of values that would end the war and allow for the building of apology, repentance, and coexistence. As far as the notion, the maximalist notion of Eretz HaKodesh, of Holy Land for Jewish conquest; or for Waqf, for Islamic conquest, the fact is that for centuries and centuries these notions have been subject to interpretation. And that’s why it’s so dangerous when politicians use authority. And we know from obedience studies that the power of authorities to distort in one direction or another—we’ve seen this in the United States now—is massive, from the obedience studies of psychosocial effects of leaders. So our argument is that if the leaderships—and we have a lot of intelligence agency folks and military folks that have come to agree with precisely our position, that our big missing ingredient was understanding Islam, was welcoming Muslims. This is from all—many senior generals in Israel. This is something that has happened in history but not yet here, in some ways because of the stubbornness of the diplomatic class of not believing it’s possible. Our argument is that if managed with a man like Yasser Arafat, very tough—very tough customer—to agree to a religious peace treaty, but at the time is the Americans and the Israeli leadership that would not accept the idea of a parallel religious treaty process, but Arafat did, that was interesting to us. We knew what he was doing. We knew the violence he was perpetrating. But we also knew that with a vision, a common vision of the holiness of Jerusalem, for example, there was a way forward. And that way is continuing among forward-thinking people in the religious circles. But if everyone in the world says, no, religion is just for violence, then that’s what it becomes. If the only place to resist occupation is religion, people become religious. So if we create an alternative, then we’re influencing the way in which religion is going to be interpreted by millions of people. COOK: Zaha, I wanted to give you equal time on that as well. HASSAN: Yeah. I just want to amplify what Marc was saying about how religious interpretation can change. I think we would all agree that U.S. policy plays a huge part in the dynamics that take place in Israel-Palestine. And we’ve seen especially in the last administration, that the passionate evangelical wing of the Republican Party really had a lot of influence on the Trump administration and their thinking about how to relate to Israelis and Palestinians. And what we’re noticing now among the younger generation of Evangelicals is sort of a different way of understanding the conflict. And in the last few years, we’ve seen support among younger Evangelicals really drop for sort of the interpretations of their elders with respect to the conflict. So I do think that people’s understandings, people’s interpretations are—can change. They change all the time. Not just in Israel-Palestine, but even in the U.S. So we shouldn’t plan our foreign policy with the understanding that things are all—people’s viewpoints are going to be stagnant, or  people’s understanding of their faith is going to be stagnant. Things evolve all the time, and it depends a lot on the way we conduct ourselves and our foreign policy as well. COOK: OK. I think we are ready to for Q&A from participants in the webinar. So I’m going to ask the folks in the background to remind people who to ask a question. And then we’ll go forward. OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) Dr. Cook, back over to you. COOK: Thank you. It’s like the voice of God telling us how to ask a question, so appropriate for this. The first person in the queue is David Michaels. MICHAELS: Hi. can you hear me? COOK: Yes, we can. Go ahead, David. MICHAELS: Great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation and for all of your contributions. I’m David Michaels, director of UN and intercommunal affairs at B’nai B’rith International. I wanted to question and perhaps push back a bit at Zaha Hassan’s assertion that Palestinians broadly speaking do accept the legitimacy of Jewish history and presence on the land. I think many who closely monitor Palestinian political discourse, media content, educational programing, and public polling would, in fact, report extraordinary denial of Jewish and Israeli legitimacy on the land. And I think that that denial can be attributed to a number of factors. So I’d ask, beyond incitement also by the leaders of Fatah, does she know, or do you, Dr. Hassan, do you not recognize the ideology and, in fact, the strength of major groups, including Hamas, as Dr. Cook mentioned, which openly and doctrinally demand Israel’s violent destruction? HASSAN: No, I— COOK: Zaha, the floor is yours. HASSAN: Yes. No, I don’t—I don’t deny that Hamas  has violent—(laughs)—feelings about the state of Israel as it exists today, for sure, and that it denies  the legitimacy of the state of Israel as it exists today. But likewise, as Marc was saying, there’s a lot of room for change within Hamas. And we’ve seen a lot of change with Hamas over the years. A lot of Hamas officials now have talked about the two-state solution, as a—at least as a temporary matter, a long-term temporary solution. And there is a lot of change taking place in terms of how Hamas is rebranding itself. And we saw that in the last couple of years in terms of its changes to its covenant and public statements that it’s been making. So I don’t think that—again, these positions that various religious factions have taken, I don’t think they’re stagnant. I think they can change. A lot of Hamas’s problems with the Palestinian authority and the peace—the Oslo peace process was the way in which it didn’t address important issues to Palestinians. The core issue, which is Palestinian displacement from 1948, and the refugee issue. Those are legitimate grievances that all Palestinians want to see rectified. And so it’s not just a Hamas issue. It’s a Palestinian issue. So I think—and, again Hamas has—Hamas is sort of coming around to the idea of a two-state solution. Is it negating that? They’re calling for the same things that much of the Palestinian population is calling for, which is meaningful choice for return and reparations for refugees. So, yeah, I didn’t—I don’t mean to say that  Hamas is not opposed to the state of Israel when I was making my comments about Palestinians and how they feel about Jewish claims to—and Jewish history in Israel-Palestine. It was to say that it’s not about in history, claims of Jews to Palestine. It’s about whether Palestinians have a place in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea at the same time. COOK: OK. Great. Thank you. Riki, can you see if there are any questions in the—written questions in the chat, please? OPERATOR: We’ll take a written question from Chelsea Garbell, associate director of global spiritual life at New York University. She asks: Why must religion be something that is instrumentalized? Religion is like any other aspect of the social and works on, and is impacted by, politics and culture in turn. The assumption of instrumentalization implies that religion isn’t an independent actor in its own right and a player in this conversation. COOK: Who wants to take that? I suspect that that may actually be a question more appropriate to me, but I’ll leave it to the panelists. (Laughter.) GOPIN: Well, I just—I wasn’t saying what should be. I was talking about what is. And the reality is that organized religion has always been instrumentalized, and it is around the world, sometimes for the good and sometimes for very destructive purposes. These are—many religions are state-based religions. They fall in line with whatever the leaders, democratic or nondemocratic, want them to say and do, and affirm. And these are realities that we have to live with. Sometimes it’s beneficial. If there were a serious reformation and transformation of the Jewish-Palestinian relationship, we already have evidence that across the Gulf they would be—the states would be more than ready to have the muftis and others  pronounce an embrace of the Jewish-Palestinian peace treaties, et cetera. So and yet in Iran it would be a separate problem because of the military and political relationship between Iran and the Arab Gulf, and with Israel. And that’s—so that’s a separate—it’s very, very secular when it comes to organized religion. And that’s an opportunity if smart diplomats and smart democrats are serious about moving the world in a better direction. And I—David’s concern about Hamas’s charter is absolutely on target. These are very risky things. But they’re very risky for Palestinians too, to lose everything that they’ve never had and loved in terms of their country and of their background. So it’s a high risk for everyone, but I’m arguing that with shifting you put pressure on the extreme wing of any religion party. The more accommodating, the more that we had a serious plan for majority-minority relationships in Palestinian areas, and majority-minority relationships in the more—in the Jewish majority areas, if that plan was more serious you would see a withering away of some of the rejectionist arguments that are so current in certain sections of Ikhwān, or Muslim Brotherhood, around the world. And we’ve already seen evidence of that. The very Islamist leaders in Israel who were doing peacebuilding, they’re Ikhwān too. They have a Muslim Brotherhood approach. But their approach is evolving based on relationships and based on what they feel is possible. And I believe that we wouldn’t have a new government. We would still be under Netanyahu if it weren’t for the evolution of Islamist thinking in portions of Israel, that decided to join the government. I’m not saying that that solved the issue. I think we still need serious conversations among Jews about reparations and about—and about apologies, and about some people coming back. And I think that the Islamic community needs some serious conversations about truly sending signals for the Jewish right to exist as a majority state in their portion. And the more we do that, the more I think that we could see evolution. But we need the secular global leadership to embrace this approach. COOK: Zaha, you want to get in on this? I think you’re muted. HASSAN: Sorry, yeah. No, I don’t have anything to add to that. COOK: OK, well then let me weigh in for just one second. I think that the tenor of some of the questions that I’ve asked imply the instrumentalization of religion. And I think that comes from both my—the work that I’ve done on Middle East politics, the work that I’ve done on Islamist movements, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood—which has clearly instrumentalized religion, spoken in a religious vernacular, in order to advance an inherently antidemocratic agenda. But this is obviously not an issue just in the Middle East. Let’s look at the way in which religion has been instrumentalized in the United States. And it’s not just a phenomenon of the last four years, the last ten years, the last twenty years. This is something that happens in which religion—it is easy to use religion, because it’s an important cultural touchstone, to advance political agendas, whether for good or for bad. But I think that the idea that religion is instrumentalized should not surprise us. I think what is interesting about the efforts that Marc is involved in, the efforts that—the things that Zaha is talking about, coexistence, is trying to instrumentalize religion for purposes of coexistence. That has been much, much, much harder to do over a period of time. We have more questions. I’m going to go to John Krysko. Can we unmute John? KRYSKO: There we go. OK, thank you. Rousseau famously said, “man is born free but everywhere he’s in chains.” One of the chains is the context that we view problems. Suppose the problem is not what man wants, but what God wants? That suppose that the concept of all the political things that are the human conditions are the very chains that keep us in there, and that religion, amongst others, spirituality, offers opportunities to transcend our own partisan, our own backgrounds? Building on what Marc was saying about the groundwork of what’s happening at so many levels—I know people in Palestine. I was a board member of the Interfaith Center of New York for eighteen years, have an organization on dialogue in Westchester between the three Abrahamic faiths. There’s an awful lot going on. It doesn’t reach the level of immediacy and the media. Is it possible to create—here’s the question. Long-winded opening. Is it possible to have a kind of a Camp David, a Parliament of World Religions focused on this particular topic? Because  honestly, humans are not doing a particular great job at solving this. And the odds that they’re going to do better in the future are not particularly great. So suppose we would get  some of these minds to say, well, this is what’s happening, and have a kind of a Jacob’s ladder—develop a process to find that stairway to peace? But right now there is no real process that is not purely—that is so colored by the political and the ideological differences. Is it—do you think that would have merit to consider something like that? COOK: I was hoping you’d say stairway to heaven, John. I’ll— KRYSKO: It’s OK. It’s— COOK: Marc and Zaha—Mark, Zaha, do you want to respond? HASSAN: I’ll let Marc take that one. GOPIN: OK. Well, I agree with the sentiment. And to understand the world of interfaith peacebuilding in the last fifty years, there’s very high-level work that’s very public, and it’s sort of nice interfaith work. And that’s necessary and good for diplomacy. And then there is secret work in order—in terms of problem solving with major leaders. And then there’s grassroots work. All of those are necessary. So I think what you’re suggesting is a great idea. But if it was hijacked by just state representatives of religion from around the region, I think that it would—I think it would not ring true with the average Palestinian or the average Jew. I think they would see it as kind of fake. But if the high-level work was accompanied by serious embrace and engagement between grassroots workers, who honestly confronted the real issues of employment, of safety, of security, of evictions, et cetera, then there’s a lot of people who, I think if they were given permission and allowed to meet and greet and negotiation, I think there would be a lot to be accomplished. But not if it’s just the mufti of so-and-so and the chief rabbi of so-and-so. Even though  David Rosen—Rabbi David Rosen and others have done very heroic work of keeping the channels open to many countries, I think it needs that plus some very serious private negotiations in the way that Sheikh Darwish, and Sheikh Falouji, and Rabbi Melchior and others have done in Israel in order to really build a serious political shift, and a shift that affects people’s lives and jobs. That’s where the money comes in. We have not had enough money that focuses on real improvements in human life, in dignity, that come out of religious coexistence. There used to be that. Even in Tiberias two hundred years ago, there are Hasidic-Muslim relationships that people don’t know about. There used to be a lot of wonderful Muslim-Jewish relationships in various countries, and we need to recreate that, even with the most conservative people on both sides. Then we will have to deal with militancy and with violence in the name of religion still. But I think we will be in a better position to create a better middle for coexistence and for equality in this region. COOK: Zaha, do you want to get in on this? HASSAN: Yeah. I just—I think that it’s really hard for many Palestinians to think about these kinds of conversations, because after Oslo there was a lot of these kinds of conversations taking place, not among religious leaders but among Palestinians and Jewish Israelis to understand each other. And the minute there was a challenge to that—it was in the Second Intifada that all of that dialogue blew up. And it hasn’t really come back online. And there’s such a negative connotation around these kinds of dialogues these days in the Palestinian community, because it’s seen as normalizing the occupation to have conversations while this power differential exists. And things are happening on the ground which change the status quo. I almost feel like  even as important as these conversations that you’re talking about at the religious-leadership level are taking place in Israel-Palestine, they need to be taking place in the U.S., because I think so much of what’s happening there is driven by a lot of our own politics here. And I think that having—if we can’t get it right among American Muslims and the American Jewish community here in the U.S., it’s hard to imagine, in a state of conflict, being able to make really big strides towards coexistence abroad. And I’ve seen it’s incredibly difficult in the U.S. to have a conversation, because a lot of times folks don’t really know what’s going on on the ground in Palestine and they don’t understand what the occupation really looks like. They haven’t seen it. It’s only when people actually go and have an opportunity to see what’s happening that they can come back and then have really meaningful dialogues across religious—I don’t want to say divides, but along religious lines. The kind of interfaith dialogue that is successful in the U.S. that I’ve been a part of has always kind of put Palestine-Israel to the side, like we’ll talk about any subject that you want to talk about, but don’t talk about this because that gets us into trouble. So I don’t know. I haven’t studied this issue. And I leave it to Marc to kind of enlighten us. But it’s been really challenging for me personally to try to engage in this kind of dialogue in the U.S. because it’s always—Palestine-Israel has always been marginalized in the conversation. GOPIN: Yeah, I agree with that. COOK: Thank you. GOPIN: Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Steven. COOK: No, no, no. I just—quickly, I wanted—we have a number of questions in the queue, and I just want to make sure that we get to folks. GOPIN: Sure. COOK: So go ahead, Marc. Make your point, and then we’ll— GOPIN: You’re absolutely right that the Jewish-Muslim conversation in the United States is a social contract not to talk much about Israel. And I understand that. And that’s why I don’t see it as much of a solution. I’m much more interested in people in Umm al-Fahm speaking with people in Tel Aviv. I’m much more interested in people visiting in each other’s homes and working out real problems; say, police and security. I think that’s where the answers lie, in basic needs, in real needs, and narratives, and stories. And that’s—it can’t be dialogue. No, the dialogue in the Oslo period was terribly elitist and it really wasn’t affecting people’s lives nearly enough. But I think that’s where the answers are is real effects on people’s lives through solidarity of common needs. COOK: Riki, can you go ahead and read the next question in the Q&A queue? OPERATOR: Absolutely. Our next question comes from David Leslie, who’s the executive director of the Rothko Chapel in Houston. He asks, in this country how do we address the influence of Christian Zionism, characterized by pastors such as Reverend John Hagee, as well as more mainline Christian churches that seem to hold a Jewish exceptionalism which relegates Palestinians either to a secondary class or totally unknown? COOK: Marc, I think that’s probably directed to you. GOPIN: No, I’d like to hear Zaha’s opinion first. COOK: OK. HASSAN: Thanks. And first let me say hi to David Leslie. I think I know you, David, from Portland, Oregon. Thanks for that question. I wish I had an answer to that question, because that to me is the most critical question if we want to think about how to impact U.S. policy in all of this. And  I don’t know. I don’t know how you start to engage. As I said earlier in my remarks to the first question, I think things are changing in the evangelical community as well generationally. And so that kind of gives me some hope that this—the current situation, the current situation where you have  really conservative-minded Evangelicals really pushing the Republican Party in a direction that  is going to entrench what is today an apartheid situation, it’s very real. And I don’t think we’re going to see much change there, because there’s nothing challenging it. The hold that this passionate segment of the Republican Party has on the party is making it so that U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine is going to swing wildly from one administration to the other as it changes from Democratic to Republican hands. And that’s not going to be—that’s not going to bode well for sensible Middle East policy and one that’s going to support Israeli-Palestine peacebuilding. So I’ll leave it to Marc to kind of come up with—(laughs)—some ideas about how, in the short term, we can change. But I think, at least trend-wise, in the long term this might be—this might change just because of the generational shift that’s taking place. GOPIN: Very quickly, the apocalyptic intentions of a John Hagee in buying Palestinian forests and turning them into Christian outposts, which he’s done in concert with radical settlers, I mean, that’s going to go on until the younger generation says, well, what kind of Christianity is this really? Is it a repetition of the Crusades? Is that really the focus of my religious life? And we see—as Zaha said, we see that changing among younger Evangelicals. The problem is that progressives don’t have much of a better solution. There isn’t really a serious approach to how to embrace both Jews and Palestinians at the same time instead of proxy warfare of choosing one side or another side. So part of the Christian community is choosing the Palestinians, and part is choosing the radical settlers. And that’s a mistake. It means that it cancels each other out. So what we need is a more visionary approach of a complete Christian embrace of both communities and of the holy land that leads to actual equality and dignity that would embrace the Sermon on the Mount for all people. I mean, that’s the kind of thing that we need that would be a wonderful Christian American contribution. But like I said, most of it is instrumentalized. And in the last administration it was a horrific shift towards a rather apocalyptic approach to ending Palestinian identity in a terrible way, which fits certain very radical approaches to the religious future of radical Christianity. We need an alternative, because otherwise people keep slipping into very destructive forms of polarization and instrumentalization. And I think that the peacebuilders in all three communities can do that together—the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Abrahamic community. But they have to have much more serious cooperation than just nice words and conferences. It needs to mean something to the Jew who’s looking, is this going to be a safe country in the future for Jews forever? And it needs to mean something to Palestinians, say am I going to be finally recognized for my country and our right to exist? COOK: OK. Riki, we have time for a number of other questions. And so far I have—most of those are in the chat. So can we get another one, please? OPERATOR: Yes. Our next question comes from Jim Brenneman. Hold on one moment. I’m so sorry. There was a technical issue on my end. He asks, could both of you speak to the next generations about the hope for a confederated or one-state solution? He’s from the Berkeley School of Theology. COOK: Zaha. HASSAN: Yeah the confederation is a really interesting idea that I think is getting a lot more attention these days, because the one-state and the two-state look so impossible at the moment. And that would basically involve allowing refugee return, which is a really important issue to Palestinians. It’s like the core issue for Palestinians. But it also allows for settlers to stay as well. But there would be—the Palestinians would vote for national elections for the Palestinian-state candidates, and then you’d have the Jewish Israeli citizens voting for the candidates in the national elections for Israeli candidates. So basically you would have a shared country but two separate communities living there and with voting accordingly. So this is an interesting idea because it doesn’t allow for displacement of people and, in fact, allows for refugee return. The problem is it’s—it isn’t the Zionist dream of a Jewish-majority state and it doesn’t satisfy, for many Israelis their attachment to the West Bank in particular. So, I mean, at the end of the day there has to be a rethinking, I think, of what it means to  live together and what it means to—what self-determination means for each community and how can we reconcile that in a way that allows both people to enjoy the land with dignity and with respect. But I do think confederation is a very interesting idea. I just don’t know that we have a constituency for that any more than we have a constituency for one state with equal rights or a two-state solution. So it’s going to take building that constituency. And I think that’s the kind of work that Marc’s doing. And that is so important, because we need that, first, in order to start to conceive of any kind of political solution. GOPIN: Just one small addition to that. I mean, it’s our job in history to invent things that don’t exist yet. That’s how human rights came about. That’s how the ideas of democracy came about. So sometimes it seems like pie in the sky, but sometimes it’s the good motivator to consider practical steps forward. And so I think the confederation people are doing some very good thinking. They’re building relationships across adversary lines, which is good. And those relationships are hopefully building more practical recommendations. For example, sometimes you take out, to Zaha’s point—excellent point—that this isn’t the Zionist state that people dreamed of. You really don’t have to talk the word confederation. All you have to do is say all evictions stop. No more hemorrhaging from Jerusalem of a couple of thousand people a year. All Jerusalem residents stay as residents. And nobody’s going to be evicted from anywhere. But you also say nobody’s going to be settling anywhere that’s not their land. And so if you just stopped the process of trying to take and started to say, no, everyone belongs, and you do it by international law and you enforce it with a way in which we agree, you don’t have to use a big word like confederation. You just have to say we’re stopping. Everyone belongs, and then we’re going to work it out, whether that’s one state, two states, or confederation. And I think that would go a long way to building trust. But I’ve always felt—and this is not a majority view, certainly among Zionists—but I always thought some bow to repatriation and to refugee return while a Jewish majority remains is something that would be a very, very powerful gesture of reconciliation and that would recognize the four hundred villages, but without sacrificing the Jewish dream of a safe majority space. And I think that that’s possible. But it takes that sense that everyone belongs, that both peoples belong there. COOK: Thank you. Riki, let’s try for one more. If Zaha and Marc can promise to be shorter in their answers, we can everything in in the next three and a half minutes. Thank you. OPERATOR: Great. So our final question comes from Michael Fried from the Dispute Resolution Center. He asks, can you give any historical examples where some sort of long-term peace or nonviolence was reached through religious leaders coming together? How was the accommodation reached in Northern Ireland? What role, if any, did religious leaders play? COOK: You have three minutes. GOPIN: Just—there are examples around the world of—for example, in various regions of Nigeria, with almost no resources, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye singlehandedly stopped civil wars in their region. It took a great deal of education of their populations. They were warriors themselves that stopped. So we have—I can’t do it on one foot, but we have six books—Doug Johnson’s books, Joyce Dubensky’s books, my own books. We have a lot of examples, but all of them very underfunded so they don’t reach the level of whole states that were stopped that way. So, yes, there’s evidence. But there’s also evidence of the fact that this needs to fundamentally go more mainstream in the diplomatic community. COOK: Zaha. HASSAN: This is not my area. I’m going to refer everyone to Marc’s books. (Laughs.) COOK: That was very diplomatic of you. If that’s the case, we really are running out of time. And I’m afraid that if I ask for another question, we’re going to go over, which is a big no-no at the Council on Foreign Relations. So what I want to do is, in the last two minutes, if, Zaha, you want to have a—offer concluding remarks, followed by Marc, and then we can all sign off. HASSAN: Yeah, I want to thank everyone for asking these great questions and for CFR for hosting us. This is a really important topic. I think we’re going to have to start being much more creative in the way we think about Israel-Palestine moving forward. There has been a lot of dramatic change in U.S. policy that has impacted things on the ground in Israel-Palestine, unfortunately in a negative direction. And I think it’s going to take civil society, religious leaders, and anyone else that has an interest in peace to be working to help ameliorate the damage that’s been done and trying to reverse a lot of it. So I thank everyone for being with us today. And it was really good to be with you, Steven, and you, Marc. COOK: Marc, I know it’s not in a rabbi’s nature to be efficient with the words. But if you can, that’d be fabulous. GOPIN: Yeah, I just want to bless this process. I think it’s wonderful that the Council on Foreign Relations is addressing this issue, and remind everybody that leaders have a tremendous power to shift religions in either a good direction or bad direction. We’ve seen that in American history. We need more leadership embracing this process of shifting cultures and religions in the direction of serious peacebuilding. COOK: That’s perfect. Thank you all very, very much. Zaha, thank you for your time. Marc, thank you for your time. I want to thank Riki, who was reading the questions. That is harder than people might think it is. She did a wonderful job. And thank you all, and we look forward to seeing you at a future roundtable and webinar. Take care. Have a good day.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani discusses developments in Afghanistan, engagements with Palestinians, policy priorities for Qatar-U.S. relations, and broader regional concerns.