Former government officials rarely write good books. Whatever insights they may have acquired tend to be buried by self-justifying recriminations, personal loyalties, and the fear that unsolicited candor will prove disqualifying in some future administration.
Tomorrow Is Yesterday, a new book by the veteran peace negotiators Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, is an exception. The book tells the timely story of how the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine failed, despite its authors spending much of their careers trying to make it a reality.
Both are uniquely positioned to tell that story. Agha, a confidant of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, was involved at the highest levels of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks for decades. Malley advised President Bill Clinton at the Camp David summit that brought together Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley went on to be the lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal struck by Barack Obama’s administration.
“Over time, [the two-state solution] did become something that people greeted with a yawn—and then as a joke, or a lie.”
Agha has roots throughout the Middle East: Lebanon, Iraq, Iran. Despite his acceptance into the inner circle of the PLO, he is described in Tomorrow Is Yesterday as being Palestinian “by conviction,” rather than blood. After growing up in Beirut, he attended Oxford.
Malley was born with radical bonafides, but went on to obtain degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Harvard Law School. His mother is a Jewish woman from the Bronx who worked for the Algerian National Liberation Front at the United Nations in New York. He is the son of the late left-wing journalist Simon Malley, an iconoclastic Egyptian-born Jew whose devotion to anti-colonial liberation movements was combined with an intense anti-Zionism.
The older Malley, who was granted honorary Palestinian citizenship, decided never to set foot in Israel. His ties to revolutionary movements shaped his son’s initial exposure to the conflict; Arafat was the first person from Israel or Palestine that Robert Malley met in his youth. (The former government official spoke about his father’s influence—and their many differences—in a 2008 lecture later published by Jewish Currents.)
Malley and Agha have now been collaborating for decades. In 2001, they attracted international attention with a New York Review of Books essay that eviscerated the American conventional wisdom that Palestinians were to blame for the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit. Two decades later, they argue it is well past time to move beyond the binary of continued Israeli occupation, or an eventual and still vaguely defined Palestinian state. They resist specific prescriptions in favor of a broader call to go back to an earlier time when partition was not considered the only possible resolution.
I spoke with Malley—who is now a senior fellow at at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs—last Friday about the book, his skepticism about recent decisions to recognize Palestine by Western nations, and the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
In one of the more damning passages in the book, you and Hussein write that the two-state solution over the years has “evolved from abstract idea to colonial-inspired policy to seemingly viable diplomatic venture to ambivalent hope to joke and finally big, expedient lie.” How did you come to that conclusion?
That sentence reflects the tension at the core of the book, which is that we don’t say that the two-state solution was never possible. We question whether it really would have resolved the core of the conflict, but you may have been able to have both sides agree to partition at some point. But, over time, it did become something that people greeted with a yawn—and then as a joke, or a lie.
Why do we use the word lie? Because there did come a point where a number of people—particularly Americans—would invoke the two-state solution not because they thought it was going to happen.
Let me give one example: when the Biden administration spoke of two states and an irreversible pathway to Palestinian statehood, I think if you gave them a lie detector test, they would say, Yeah, we know we’re not there. But they used it because they felt that it was an important element of a different strategy, which was to get normalization between Israelis and Saudis, or at least to placate American public opinion over their enabling and support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. It was a convenient instrument to trot out when you needed it.
You and Hussein argue that a “two-state solution is not the natural resting place for either Israelis or Palestinians.” What do you mean by that?
I think particularly to Palestinian ears—but Israeli ears as well—both of them heard things that didn’t really resonate with them when Americans spoke about a two-state solution. Beyond whatever tactical mistakes or lack of leverage that was exercised, there’s a strong sense that the two-state solution was not an idea that either Palestinians or the Zionist movement came up with.
For the Palestinians, the notion was that all the land belongs to them, and that they had been deprived of their land during the Nakba, the War of 1948, what they call the catastrophe. The Palestinian movement was not born out of a desire to get a state on the borders of 1967. The borders of ’67 meant nothing to them in 1948. If Palestinians concede that this was just about the borders of ’67, then are they conceding that the struggle they were waging before was a tragic mistake?
By the same token, many Israelis today would say Hebron [in the West Bank] is far more significant to them than Tel Aviv. For them, what matters is full supremacy, basically. The Zionist movement and its origins—and many of those who are speaking today—their attachment is to all of the land. It’s not just to the land they had before 1967. So, partition doesn’t naturally respond to the deep-seated yearnings of both sides. Both have higher aspirations. Both have deeper historical attachment.
The most dynamic elements on both sides, the ones that have generally been excluded from the peace negotiations—the Islamists, the Palestinian refugees, the settlers, the religious Zionists; those who feel most strongly and therefore have the greatest ability to undo any effort—were sort of viewed as alien because they were not really in tune with what the peace process was trying to do. But, in some ways, they reflected the core of the conflict more accurately than those with whom, I admit, I felt more comfortable talking to.
What would you say to those who look at the efforts to achieve a two-state solution via Oslo and Camp David and conclude: That was the moment. If things had just gone a little differently, we could have solved this once and for all? What are the costs of seeing it through that lens?
The cost is where we are today. This may not be a straight line, but there certainly is a line that links the peace process and the failed efforts of the peace process to the absolute, unspeakable horrors that we’re witnessing today.
It’s not as if one is completely detached from the other, and that the government of Israel landed from Mars, or that Hamas landed from Mars. And that what happened on October 7 and what happened afterwards are completely disconnected from everything that’s happened beforehand.
“At the end of the day, on this issue, the US is not prepared to put its foot down.”
No, as we say in the book, and it’s a painful thing for people to hear, October 7 was welcomed by a large swath of Palestinian public opinion as Israel having a taste of its own medicine. There was really a sense of, Finally, we get to do to them what they’ve been doing to us. As we say, this is nothing new. Way before Hamas existed, there were attempts by Fatah, or by other movements, to do something like this, which is to sow fear in the minds of Israelis.
And by the same token, and I know it’s painful to hear, but it is a fact that a vast majority of Israelis are absolutely comfortable with and supportive of a war that an increasing number of organizations are calling a genocide.
Neither one of those appeared out of nowhere. They are the product of years of a failed effort to chase what has ended up being an illusory goal.
If we just go back and say, Okay, we didn’t try hard enough. We’re going to try again. Whoever embarks on that effort is going to create new illusions, which is going to lead to new disillusionment, which is going to lead to frustration and violence.
The book is quite critical of Joe Biden’s response to October 7. What do you think led to the decisions he took?
As we try to explain—and that’s why we call the book Tomorrow Is Yesterday—so much of what we’re seeing today is reminiscent of what we’ve seen in the past.
When it comes to the US, the reaction to October 7 and the war that followed was an exacerbated microcosm of American habits: To say things that either they don’t believe, or they shouldn’t believe, or that they should know that others won’t believe.
So, [the US says]: We are working tirelessly for a ceasefire. A ceasefire is around the corner. We care equally about Israeli and Palestinian lives. We’re on the verge of normalization between Israelis and Palestinians. We’re going to put forward an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.
Not one of those sentences really bore any resemblance to truth.
Now, why did the administration say those things? But also why did the administration take the stance that it took?
One is just that it’s born of an American foreign policy culture, an establishment culture, about how you look at Israel and how you look at the Palestinians. It’s sort of the playbook of how the United States reacts, in general, for the last few decades to instances of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Added to that, you had a president who has been around for some time, who also has a fierce loyalty to Israel and to the Jewish people. He felt it very much in his guts. And the fact that he comes from a generation where an American politician, as a rule, could not pay a price for backing every Israeli policy, and always risked paying a price by taking his or her distance from Israeli policy.
I think it was very hard for the team to get out of that mentality, which is that we need to stick to Israel even if we have deep reservations about what they’re doing. If we’re going to deal with those reservations, it’s better to “bear hug” them because that’s the best way to get them to do what we want them to do—even though history has proven time and time again that the “hug” allows Israel to continue what they’re doing and then to dismiss the criticism that comes with it.
There has been a lot of news about recent moves to recognize a Palestinian state by Western nations. How does your understanding of the two-state solution—and the role the idea of it plays—impact how you see that?
It’s a little bit awkward because I feel more comfortable in the company of many who support recognition of a Palestinian state than those who oppose it. And I certainly don’t buy the argument that it’s a reward for Hamas, but I question the motivation and the end result of recognition.
It’s pretty clear that recognizing a Palestinian state today is not going to change the lives of a single Israeli or Palestinian. It’s not going to change what’s happening in Gaza. It’s not going to change what’s happening in the West Bank. And so it’s hard to see how it’s the adequate response to what we’re seeing today, when there are other responses in terms of putting real pressure on Israel and making them face the consequences of their actions.
Some countries are doing both, but many are choosing one rather than the other, which raises the question of the motivation. Is it to show that they’re doing something, even if it’s not something that’s going to make a difference? Is it to say, Look, we’ve done our parts?
Right now, it does look far more like a symbolic gesture that’s designed to make those who are under criticism for not having done enough to end what’s happening in Gaza feel like they’ve done something. And that’s the tendency that we described in the book: To use a two-state solution for purposes that have very little to do with its achievement.
You’ve talked about Vietnam being a watershed moment for your generation. For younger Americans, the war in Gaza may be playing a similar role. What possibilities do you think might open up in a world in which public opinion allows, or compels, the US government to use its leverage over Israel in the service of trying to resolve this conflict?
There has been a sea change in public attitudes. The polling reflects it. The position taken by growing numbers of members of Congress reflects it. Even the fact that you’re hearing former members of the Biden administration coming out in favor of conditioning or withholding aid to Israel. It comes in different shades, but all of that is a marker of those changes that have taken place.
I teach now, and I hear it in my students. This war—not just the war but also the US enabling of it, the hypocrisy, the moral indignation combined with, at best, feckless action, at worst, active complicity in the war. I think all of that is going to leave its imprint on a generation of future American policymakers. But, also, soon to be, if not already, voters.
And so what does it do to the composition of Congress? What does it do to the primaries for the next presidential election? Again, I don’t know. And there’ve been too many cases where I had hope in the past, and that hope didn’t quite pan out. But I do think we may be witnessing a different attitude.
I’m not saying that the US can impose a solution and dictate how Israelis and Palestinians are going to live. I think that would be another fallacy if we believe that we could just snap our fingers and either Israelis or Palestinians will do as we wish. But if Israel, in particular, didn’t feel the sense of impunity that it has felt, I think that starts changing something.
President Obama said in conversations with us when I was serving him, It’s hard to see why Israel will change course if it doesn’t incur the price of the policies it’s pursuing. It wouldn’t even make rational sense. So, that’s not condemning the Israeli government. If continuing with the status quo and continuing what they’re doing doesn’t cost them, then why wouldn’t they continue?
If there’s been a constant for the decades since I started working in the US government, it’s been: At the end of the day, on this issue, the US is not prepared to put its foot down. Does that begin to change? And if it changes, does it change the behavior on the ground in Israel-Palestine? I think there’s at least some reason to hope.
But again, I think that shouldn’t spare us—but mainly Israelis and Palestinians—the need to think about what are the most achievable and sustainable ways for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist. That’s a difficult conversation to have, but it needs to be had. Because even with a different US policy, you still need to have an outcome that most Israelis and most Palestinians are prepared to live with.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.