My name is Chuck Freilich. I used to be in the government in Israel. I was the
Deputy National Security Advisor and for the last decade I've been an
academic teaching both in Israel and here in the United States. Well there's
a deep national conflict here that's been going on for the last hundred years.
There are two sides who claim sovereignty over the same piece of
territory. I understand the Palestinian position. I believe that they have for
the most part rejected any compromise proposals. Now I don't want to put all of
the blame on the Palestinian side. There's a right-wing government in Israel today
and Israel hasn't accepted all of the Palestinian claims of course. There's the
settlements issue which is considered to be a big problem by the Palestinian side
and of course it isn't one of the obstacles to an agreement. But I think
Israel has put some dramatic proposals on the table which unfortunately the
Palestinian side has rejected. They've never put a Palestinian proposal on the
table. I think we have to see change in the government in Israel. I think we have
to see some more fundamental change on the Palestinian side before we can reach
an agreement. Well I think that the only realistic solution is the so-called two
state solution. In other words a Palestinian state which would hopefully live in peace
and security next to Israel. I don't believe that people throw out some other
ideas. I don't think they're realistic. Unfortunately after 20 years of ongoing
contacts between the sides we haven't reached that solution yet. But I don't
think that there is any alternative. And as I was saying we need change in terms of
leaderships on both sides before we can potentially reach a breakthrough. I don't
think that there are various programs to promote understanding between the
peoples between Israelis and Palestinians between Jews and Muslims as a whole. And I
think they're very important. But I think the real change has to be at the
level of national leaderships.
So we have to change the ideas of the leaders themselves.
The ideas and the political parties in power. The Palestinians are split between the West
Bank and Gaza. Gaza is ruled by Hamas which is a radical fundamentalist organization. The
Palestinian Authority does speak about peace with Israel. Hamas does not. First of all
they have to reunify and become one unified government again before they can reach a final
deal even if they wanted to. Mr. Abbas the Palestinian president cannot sign a final deal
because he doesn't speak on behalf of all of the Palestinians. He doesn't speak on behalf
of Gaza. And then as I was saying we need a change on the Israeli side as well because
this government is not one that wants to make concessions. There will be elections sometime
in the next year maybe even sooner. And we'll see which government is elected next time.