Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaks during a rally to protest the Israeli government's judicial overhaul plan, in Tel Aviv on June 24, 2023
ith a full-blown war unfolding between Israel and Hamas, it’s hard to imagine a new dawn of peace. The body count in Gaza is rising daily, a month after Hamas stormed southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking hundreds more hostage. It’s a cycle of violence that threatens to paralyze the moral and political imaginations of Israelis and Palestinians alike, deepening the impression that an accommodation will remain forever out of reach.
For Barak, who was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001 and Defense Minister from 2007 to 2013, it’s personal. In Israel’s 75-year history, no Israeli leader came closer to securing a peace deal with the Palestinians. Through a series of negotiations in 2000, brokered by President Bill Clinton, Barak made Israel’s first ever offer to establish a Palestinian state. The proposal included roughly 97 percent of the West Bank; all of Gaza, where Israel still had settlers; and a capital in East Jerusalem.
It was immediately clear that it's the most severe blow that we suffered since the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel was established to create one place on earth where Jews can live and go to sleep in their own quiet. Babies burned, opening the tummy of a pregnant woman, shooting parents in front of their young children. Shooting a whole family just hugging each other and burning them. That's a picture that we've never seen.
We cannot and will not pretend to be able to do it without any collateral damage and civilians being killed. We are committed to make all possible efforts to minimize it. We warn in advance. We use everything from radio and pamphlets. We even took over the Gaza Strip TV network for a short time to broadcast it directly to all of them. .
So I approached Mubarak and asked him: Next time that we clash with Hamas, we can crush them fully if we have someone to which we can pass control of Gaza. My proposal was that, after the next round, you will demand that we withdraw with no conditions. We will insist on crushing Hamas and then, once we complete the mission, we will withdraw about two months later under one condition: someone responsible take it from us.
So the key for Netanyahu might be a sustained war because the Israeli public won’t want to destabilize the government while the war effort is ongoing?
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