Welcome to the Middle East Centre lecture series. So it is called No Political Options following the Gaza Conflict. And for those who don't know me, my name is Ismail. I am a professor of contemporary Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and I'm also based at the centre by the Middle East Centre. And last week we invited Professor you to come here to discuss Israeli public opinion and political options after seven over seven.
And this week we are very delighted to have Professor Hug, of course, with us today. And she is a professor of political theory in the Department of Politics and International Studies. She currently works on a project on torture and bureaucracy in Israel Palestine in collaboration with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. Her recent book, The Colonising Self Home and Homelessness in Israel Palestine, was published by Duke University Press in 2020.
This book looks at the construction of political belonging and territorial attachments in settler colonies. And it's amazing because the colonising self won three awards, Rockin Eve through the Year Ferguson Award and the Spitz Prize in Democratic theory. It also received honourable mentions at the May 20 Summit Mrs. Polk Award, the Sussex International Prize, and the IPC International Political Sociology Section. ICE is a book award. We're so lucky.
She has many other publications, including another book published by Duke University Press titled Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, that was published in 2004. So before joining Suez, she held positions and fellowships at the Minerva Humanities Centre, Tel-Aviv University, the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Columbia University's Society of Fellows and also Position, University of California.
But where I did my Ph.D. Oh, you did. When I was, there was a position that I took. So I'm someone who has travelled extensively and has been to so, you know, been part of many institutions. So we are so very fortunate to have had her with us today and we'll be tackling an important topic. The title of a talk is The Settler Movement Political Impasses and Beyond. Without further delay, I will invite Professor Gupta. Thank you. It was the best introduction I ever received in my life.
Thank you. And thank you for inviting me here and giving you this opportunity, especially for asking me to talk about this. So now we need to figure this out, you know? So I should have practised before. Do I get these areas up and down? Okay, now we're getting almost all of those. Oh, you know, some people think. Okay. So let's talk about three moments in the settlement movements today. Very quickly, we can think about them geographically.
We can think about them temporally. The first would cover three repeat of the period of Oslo, 1993 until the eve of October 7th. It would focus on the West Bank. Even though it is a problematic choice because a lot of what is going on in the West Bank, the peace since 2005 has to do with a disengagement from Gaza that has shaped a lot of the drives of what's going on in the zone in the West. In the second part of my talk, I will talk about the war currently taking place over Gaza.
I would maybe say a few things about how this war has shaped settler violence in the West Bank and then move to Gaza. And then I will talk a bit about what's going on in Israel itself, the debates there, and maybe thinking further about the future. But before I start, I want to say two things. First, I'm going to talk about the settlement movement, but I'm not going to talk about all sectors.
There are settlers who object the type of ideologies and political projects that are going I'm going to outline today. I'm also not going to talk just about settlers. There are growing segments, alarmingly growing segments in the Israeli public that embrace this ideology and concrete political plans. So not just settlers and all settlers. And the second point has to do with the relation between this group and this state. So I will organise my talk among three figures.
If you would like to give faces to the more general comments I'm about to give. The first is, is someone who is in a complete agonistic relations to the state. His entire rationale of operation is anti-state. These people starts in prison for a few times. The second is a minister in the new Netanyahu government. Yet someone who is a marginal figure. Some would say she's a bit crazy. And then the last one is kind of a rising superstar general in the Israeli military.
So presumably we're moving from that margin to the centre. But we must remember two things. First, that this movement to the centre has to do also with the movement of the centre to the right. So so Israel is moving further and further to the right. What allows this movement of these figures to the centre. And second, and this is something I'm going to return to several times in my talk.
And this is where the point of the beyond may come from, is that the relation of the state to all of these figures is much more ambivalent that watch me see. So even the anti-Zionist figure gets a lot of support from the state, and even the rising superstar general may not serve the interests of the state to the extent that there are. Okay. So already in the 1980s, the London police came out with a irreversibility thesis.
The idea that the settlement movement makes any two state solution completely impossible. Now, when he talks, he published this for the first time, I think in 1983, there were roughly 23,000 settlers in the West. Now we're talking about roughly 450,000 settlers in the West Bank, an additional about 230,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. And I separate those because the legal status is different. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem.
But the issue at stake is not just the numbers, which, as you can see, make that university irreversibility thesis even more valid today. The issue is also land. And in the first type in the first part of my talk, I want to talk about the project of land grant of what is often referred to as the new settlement movement or the Hilltop Youth movement. And I wanted to do this by talking about this guy. His name is actually one of the is the founder of this place.
You've all collapsed. This is the largest organic farm in Israel. It is situated here. So as you can see, it's kind of south east to Nablus and it creates some people to land. I have this exciting point here, Right. And you can see how it creates. We'll talk about this movement later, how it basically bisects the Palestinian areas and separates them. He falls on his feet. By far the largest producer of anything in history.
Now we can talk a lot about organic agriculture and its relations with the occupation and monetisation. I want to talk about space. So free range eggs require more space, right? The chickens need to be in larger coops and they need to have extra space to roam freely outside so that they will qualify as equivalent paycheques.
And if you look at this map, you can see how Run has used the chicken coops he built in order to basically spread out over more and more territory and take more and more land. Now, when I conducted my research on this particular farm, it was roughly 2018. At that point, Farm began building another chicken coop over there. This is kind of a twisted ish area. It's called the Three Seasons Lookout.
And the fact that he was building a chicken coop, there kind of was a big outrage among other centres. And when I pulled out this new satellite image for today's talk, I realised there are no more choices for that coop over there. So the other centres, one that he built two new chicken coops over here that were not there in 2002. Now, if you look at the topography of this, you can see and maybe it's actually clear from the pictures themselves.
So this is the one that this three sea lookout that was in the process of construction in 2018. You can see how one basically positions the chicken coops on the hilltops in a way that allows them to create look out into the Palestinian villages that are situated beneath these areas. Now what started as a tent and then a few mobile home became a nucleus farm.
So this is the area of the nucleus farm that spreads over 220 acres, and the green areas are about 100 more acres of land that one cultivates outside of the nucleus for. No excuse from this now estimates that rather than rather than the constructions of new houses or new settlements, the fastest growing land problem is in the West Bank today is agriculture. This is how settlers take over more and more lands.
Now, let me give you a bit of a history. One move to Itamar, which is the settlement over here. In 1993, in response, he said to the Oslo Accords. So this was an act of protest moving to a city. Two years later, 1995, in response again to the second Oslo Accords and specifically to Rabin's decision to put a freeze on new construction, new settlements, one moves to the outside of the fence. So he built the first unauthorised construction outside the official fence.
This was a chicken coop. He then brings one mobile home and another mobile home and thus basically was established the first outpost in the West Bank. Over the next few years, one is moving basically from one hill to another. So from here to here to here. In each of them. They were not there before. He built all of them. He would move out of them whenever there would be enough people to separate them. Usually that would be walkers or its family members.
He has like 15 or 17 or whatever, infinite number of children. And then in 1997, he started being able to. Today with more than 200 outposts that have joined the 146 regularised settlements in the West Bank. We can say that if Too Land was the forerunner of one of the most significant political movements in Israel in the last several decades. And and suddenly, I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the distinction between settlement outposts.
Do I need to say something about this? Okay. So basically, all settlements are illegal according to international law. However, Israel does recognise the legality of some settlements as long as they follow three basic conditions. So first, they need to be built on state land, that is land that has been officially taken from Palestinians by the state. Second, they need to be constructed according to approved, approved municipal plan, like any construction.
Other places unfamiliar with, and they need to be constructed within the municipal area of wherever their homes are. Outposts are illegal, according to Israel itself, because they violate at least one of these conditions and usually at least two of them. So almost all of them are built on privately owned Palestinian land. Actually, this is the rationale to take land that the state is unwilling to take in a way.
And all of them, and this is what defines them, are built without any central planning. Right. So someone brings a mobile phone. Now, this has created a history, a weird history of illegality in which the state presumably talks about evicting these spaces, but actually very rarely do so.
And I will say something about this in a second, but before that, I want to say that this distinction between settlement outposts, which is really important, is also completely fictitious because most settlements are illegal. According to these three criterias, most of them are at least partly built on private, you understand? And so to mark the settlement we started with is entirely that according to is when most of them started as outposts.
In a way, they started without any central planning and then some. At some point we'll bring you to that state. But this distinction that that doesn't exist is nevertheless important because it allows us to explain something about the relations between the state and this movement and the outposts. So I said before that the settlements are not a unified entity. Neither is distinct, but there is no such thing as this state, as a coherent state.
Decisions are made in various locations, some local, some central. We have attorney generals, we have commanders on the ground. We have the civil administration. In the case of the West Bank, we have the prime minister, the finance minister, we have the housing or transportation ministers that sometimes enforce with more or less enthusiasm the decisions of the Prime Minister and the minister of security.
And sometimes they have their own enterprises. We have a Supreme Court justice, local council heads or Bible parts and many, many, many others. And all of these often make different decisions and implement different policies in regard to the outposts and actually also in regard to the settlements in this state. We should note also, oh, these are some of the unified entity in regard to its own interests.
But the state is composed of groups, and different groups may have different interests in what may be a disaster for some may be a great outcome for someone else.
And this is where we want to end with at the end. For now, what is important for me to emphasise is that we have state actors and non-state actors that nevertheless operates in collaboration with the state, or they serve the interests of the state to the extent that it has won, and that over the years, even though these pull in different directions, we see a more or less of a consolidation into one one place, there is a push to a certain direction, we can call it for now expansion.
Later we will see that there is more to this. And in this regard, we should also note that over the years we have a change both in the rhetoric and in concrete legal apparatuses in relation to these outposts.
So if at the beginning, right after Oslo, the rhetoric and the legal processes were that of illegality and eviction in a way that allowed the current government to walk the reality of expansion with a discourse of eviction, allowing the state to continue this expansionist project, but not in the state's name. What we seen, of course, is that starts roughly in 2012 with the live report and kind of culminates in 2007.
There is a shift towards a rhetoric of you love this station and legalisation and a further integration of this project into the Israeli legal system. So basically what I'm saying is that even if we cannot talk about this state, when we talk about the outposts, we also are not talking about a group of vigilantes, why there are more ambivalent relations there. And with this, I want to return to violence. So I conducted my research on the forum I set around 2008.
At that time, why wasn't Notorious figure in the West Bank? He was known to be one of the most violent people around. Testimonies are too many to count. He fought to fight is situated right above the Palestinian village where only. Here in Union and Union is actually part of a village that is here, and there's no chapter here which continues.
So, you know, has two parts, you know, where, you know, you post the parts of the village suffered a lot from gun violence, but then, you know, much more violent. These fellow settlers would would kind of walk and strolled the streets of and generally alone with dogs like big dogs to our walks destroy property. Yanan has been disconnected from the electricity grid because run destroyed a generator that was installed by the u.n.
He also destroyed a water pump installed by the U.N. and the rationale, as he conveyed it to the villagers was that they did not ask for his permission to install it. There was also a lot of physical violence clubbing people with with m-16 rifles until their legs shorter. Just fine. Broken shooting, live ammunition of people. At least one man died. So basically violence. Fellow men were driving and they they shot the guy who was 24 at the time.
Shot him in the leg. He kind of run away and then they shot him in the back as he escaped. And then he fell to the ground and bled to death. At that time when they did that and when they did one of the other things, they were the war Israeli soldiers nearby. And it is important to say that because it shows that this is not a group of completely outlawed people. This is part of a wider project status project in a way.
One after the other. The families of Albanians left the village, which was there from 1596, has been emptied. On 2002, the last six families left to the Palestinian village Akobo, which is nearby in lower. You know, there are still some Palestinians today. They basically told me that what they do is, is they stay away and make sure they do not know what. Today, however, nearly five years later, once all news. Partly because, like the occupation itself, he grew older and more normalised.
So today you can go to do more to learn and have like enjoyed tasting menu with like great cheese and yoghurts and whatever. But also since settler violence became so much more widespread, so much more out in the open, so much more severe, so much more integrated into the governments project, that one is no longer the an ordinary figure who used to be.
I want to fast forward to a year ago, roughly a year ago in December two, 2022, Netanyahu established his government, which is the most right wing government in the history of Israel, including his one party, two parties which were outlawed before racism.
With Itamar Ben-gvir, who is declared supporter of Kahana as the Minister of Internal Security, and Marcellas Smotrich, who was at least as racist as not just the Minister of Finance, but also a special minister in the Minister in the Ministry of Security who is in charge of the civil administration. So basically, everything that has to do with settlements and with these two people in power and many others.
Basically Israel's Israeli security forces, which have always worked in close collaboration with the settlers, have been completely integrated into the settlement movement.
Again, we can discuss the details of this integration later, but this includes the recruitment of of settlers who would not be recruited to the army before because of their history of violence into special military support units whose role is to protect the settlements, a war that they perceive as approving to go into proximate villages and engage in acts of violence.
So for this official integration by the settler settlers, violence into the Israeli army, to the army, a vast army of settlers to explicit instructions to not enforce the evictions of outposts and to more or less explicit instructions to not operate against settlers settlers by then, something that rarely happens before anyway. Right. And I did not say anything about the government's support of the continuous continuous violations of destroying Al-Aqsa.
But I want to move forward. So in February 2023, when hundreds of settlers rioting in the Palestinian village Honiara, which is also next to not new, so very close to before I showed you before burning house on the houses, on the people in them, burning and breaking cars, destroying shops and property, shooting live ammunition. The army was there. He was the army was there and did nothing.
And if he did something, it was to protect the settlers. The following day, when settlers were still strolling around the streets of koalas, making sure that no Palestinians feel free enough and safe enough to go outside of their homes. The army was still there and still did nothing other than protecting the settlers. We should bear in mind that smug Leech 44 has a plan, an explicit plan for a transfer of most Palestinians from the West one.
But we should also bear in mind that this is not a new thing and it's not a function just of this current government. Like from 2005, almost 94% cases of sexual violence ended without any any charges being pressed and only 3% the war convictions of some sort. So this is it has, you know, become worse and more since the new government. But it's not just the outcome of this new government. All of this brings us to the eve of October 7th.
This constant stirring up this escalation of violence in the West Bank meant that the Israeli army was quite occupied in the West Bank on the eve of October seven. 26 battalions were deployed in the West Bank, which is 2 to 4 of the numbers are under contestation. 2 to 4 battalions were deployed on the Gaza border.
On October six, the night of October six, from these 2 to 4 battalions in the Gaza border, 120 special commando soldiers were deployed back to the West Bank from the Gaza border, because this, of course, was one of the parliament member from the from Smart. Which party decided he wants to build a suka in how to commemorate that You get Jewish holiday support. So on the morning of that Saturday of October seven, when Hamas militants were crossing the border to Israel.
So there were very few combat soldiers on. Yes, there were very few combat soldiers in the south, even in the southern border. Often after making sure there is no possibility of a territorial solution in the West Bank, the settler movement has thus created conditions of radical insecurity for the rest of Israel. And once the war started, they have pushed for it to take the form of a genocidal war that would prepare the infrastructure for renewed occupation in Gaza.
And I don't want to discuss the question of whether this is or is another form of genocide. So you have an entire lecture about it next week. But what is important for me is that is that this is the plan of this movement. Whatever form the war takes, these the plan and the desire of this movement is that it will become. A form of genocide or transfer to kind of clear the way for more civilians. So let us move to the war itself.
I don't have time to really talk about what happened in the West Bank since the war started, but this may give you a sense. So since October 7th, until this state opens up until early January, we have at least 11 new outposts that were built. We have at least 18 new illegal roads that have been paved. We can talk later about the importance of roads and what they do. And we have 1200 Palestinians accused, 1200 Palestinians who were deported or transferred.
These are the areas from which communities have been either completely or significantly transferred. More than 400 cases of such violence were reported in a third of them. There was use of live ammunition. More than 340 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. 84 of the minors, at least eight were killed by settlers. At least 116 injured by soldiers. The numbers are not really certain because often you cannot know. Also because often, as I said before, there is no difference. Right now.
What the centre is are big part of the army, either US, either officially or US support interpreting whatever that means. But let's move to Gaza. So I'm okay. These are words we can talk about. On the 12th of February 2023, shortly after the unit, the New York government was sworn into office amid its to Minister of Settlements and National Missions, which is an office that was created especially for her. I was interviewed to the chief. By the way, also from someone who just party.
She gave an interview to the religious channel on the seventh in Israel, and she sent there that guidelines also part of the town of Israel. The disengagement was a human rights violation. A dark time, she said, in the history of the land. And that is gone. So we we will return to. This was not a single time. On March 21st, she was again interviewed by the same channel and said that the reoccupation of Gaza would be very painful would entail many victims.
But it will happen. She promised. Now, let me be absolutely clear. Stoke is a marginal figure in the government. Her ability to actually influence decision making is quite small. In fact, once the war started, Netanyahu was brought into the government, another party from the centre in order to create a new locus of decision making that would basically push away the small reach for the smartly to benefit party. So they're not on the table making these decisions.
But also when she said that in March 21st, she did not say in a vacuum more out of her own population. She said it in relation to a new legislation that was introduced by the Netanyahu government. So so basically 2005, there is the disengagement. As part of the disengagement, five settlements are being evicted from the West. But there is the legislation saying that it's not allowed.
It's illegal to be settling these particular areas. In March last year, the Netanyahu government reversed this legislation, basically allow the return to these five places and stop said that this is an awkward medium point that would eventually allow a return to Gaza. Now, I don't think the settlers planned the war. I don't think, given all the conspiracy theory out there, I believe they have planned October seven.
But what has been the largest disaster in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust? What is then become the largest disaster of the Palestinian people ever, including 1948? What has been an inconceivable disaster for so many has been taken by the religious right as an opportunity, maybe even an opportunity to be celebrated. Extra parliamentary movements are already organising to return to Gaza. Again, these are marginal, but they are becoming more and more central.
Just yesterday there was a big conference with more than 1000 people, including ministers, including ministers from the Likud Party fights of not just the religious right parties talking about plans to return to Gaza. But above all, I guess if I even though I think this is still very much not part of the main decision making, we should bear in mind that this is an organised movement that has proven to be immensely effective in changing reality by creating facts.
The different. Now, even if this is a fantasy and the person who organised this said that this time that this was a joke, I'm not sure we can still say this today, but it is of the kind of said this was a joke. It's meant to open the conversation. But even if this is a fantasy, fantasy still have important aspects on the political reality to fight the war, to change the limits of the imagination and of the magic word.
And the suffrage movement has been very successful in changing these limits in either opening them up or narrowing them down, depending on how we want to look at it. And that universally irreversibility this is is precisely an outcome of this. And I did not speak at all about the long lasting collaboration of the Israeli governments and specifically Netanyahu with Hamas. That was all done in order to prevent a viable Palestinian partner in the West Bank, in order to protect the settlements.
But I want to move to the third and last part of my. So on October 7th, when Hamas militants were waging in the Israeli south and the military, the Israeli military, unprepared for the events, failed to protect and provide aid for people locked in their homes for hours, sometimes for days, advising generals in the Israeli military boxing on a ride that's Kibbutz daily, which is one of the few would seem to suffer the most on that day.
Now, if you like a ride to the kibbutz at 4 p.m., reminding you Hamas forces were there from before 7 a.m. and that point, the first tank, but no guns, no helicopters, just a few soldiers from the first tank also arrived at the kibbutz. Very long story, maybe slightly shorter. A complex hostage situation develops in which Hamas forces hold hostage 14 people in between. There was some negotiations on CROSSFIRE and two hostages have been taken out.
And at some point, Iran says we need to finish the event and or does the time to shoot at the house, even at the life of the hostages, the 12 hostages and all of Hamas people were killed. So one should note, leaves in a very small segment called CODA. Let's talk about one of the middle of the middle of the what's going on. Now the horrible events in Berlin. And I should emphasise again, given all the misinformation that this was an agreement, this was an extraordinary event.
This was not the logic of the day. This was one of the very few events in which hostages were sacrificed for the sake of the war. But this event could be framed as a horrifying choice amidst an unprecedented event. And indeed, the number of times when we did the report on this event, he gave it the title of a gentleman's dilemma. And this framing undoubtedly has some true stories. But I think the more troubling truth is that for him, this is part of a much more coherent ideology.
And for now, I would call this ideology preferring war over life. In an interview to an Israeli reporter called to lament the young three weeks after the events in Berlin, when the details were still not known to the public, he explained what he saw was the failure or actually the series of failures that rose to the events of the day. And I quote him. I also think he says this after he kind of.
Gives a few other reasons. I also think. That we had your failure of of the conception of the Israeli people, an illusion that failed us. We all wanted to feel that we are a high tech nation that can live the war of the past behind, end quote. Now, the lesson for him is not that one cannot be a high tech nation once while engaging in an occupation and while keeping to more than 2 million people under siege from the states border.
The lesson for him, and I quote him again, that we must not tell our stories that are easier than they're easier for us to live with, that our enemies are not there to exterminate us. But under some conditions and some adjustments in slightly better living conditions such as these would not happen in quotes.
And again, the point for you is not that the reality of occupation and siege is so magical that minor adjustments in slightly better living conditions is is insufficient to address the situation. The point is, and I quote, that I am fearful that if we return to a long ways and if we try to negotiate with the other side, we will enter a trap that would bind us and would not allow us to do what is necessary to go in. That is to go into Gaza before the ground invasion and to kill them.
He does not say to them is. When Diane asks him about the possibility of negotiation to get the hostages back, he refuses this option. When she asks him where he will be in a week's time, he says with a smile, They smile. Precisely. I hope that you can sign in in a year? She asks him, Maybe still deep inside.
He continued, smiling. Now, I caught this interview in length because I think it was precisely this ideology, this ideology that prefers killing them over any negotiation to save the hostages that had allowed the event in Berlin to take place. It was not a necessary event. It was a function of a very, very coherent way of life or perception. And I quote it because this ideology goes well beyond.
Q on our very own that Saturday, October 7th, smartly announced that now is the time to be cruel, not to take the hostages into account. And this is a very generous translation because the Hebrew formulation can be translated as it's we should not really care about the hostages. And so much has been quite consistent with this ever since. And in a way, this ideology has shaped the war from its beginning.
It has led to the killing of more than 25 900 Palestinians in Gaza due to the complete carelessness, to lives there, to the displacement of more than 1.7 million people, often several times again and again. It is what allow for the hunger to spread. And it is further linked to the killing of at least seven Israeli hostages in at least three incidents directly by the military. Probably many, many more hostages.
And it is leading to the ongoing abandonment of these people, to their the divide between the politics of life and the politics of death, of military power and territorial expansion has never been last year for creating a religious ideology that prefers the sanctity of the land of Israel, of Israel, And the Jewish people on this soil prefers the sanctity of those over the sanctity of actual life of actual people after individuals living in this land.
But more importantly, Kiran, is not a religious person. And so this ideology goes well beyond that. This politics clearly targets Palestinians and has been targeting Palestinians for decades now. But also, as I said, it fosters an indifference to the lives of the hostages, so to Jewish lives as well. And that's further targeted the liberal existence of friends.
Indeed, this willingness of the government to sacrifice its own citizens, which has become painfully clear in the last four months, has not begun. October 7th, on the seven months, on the seven months before that, this government promoted a radical constitutional revolution which basically sought to achieve two purposes first, to keep Netanyahu out of prison. I think a lot of what we need to understand about this war and politics revolve around the need for people have now risen.
And second, to remove obstacles to the annexation of the West Front. So the settlement movement needs to be out of prison, basically join forces in this judicial revolution. Already then it became clear or should have become clear that the settlements are not just the obstacle for any solution with the Palestinians. They are peace to the very existence of the state of Israel, as we know, view it as such. Maybe it's my own fantasy, but from here emerges my hope.
So when Rwanda released, it talked about the human rights abuses, as he said. But at stake is not just the number of settlers or the amount of land taken. It is and political will. And I quote him. Theoretically, it is possible to dismantle, to dismantle the settlements and to take down walls.
But do the stocks that are being established in about one of the time passing fortified the political power, supporting the continuation of the occupation or fortify the political powers objecting to it, end quote. The answer for him and for many of us for years has been obvious. The vast majority of Israelis do not have the political will to change these facts. But perhaps the alternative power is now beginning to understand that this is not only Palestinian lives that would become.
What does it mean, right? He's not only Palestinian lives that would become impossible, disposable, unbearable, an existence, but also with theirs. At that point, the wheel made me feel stronger. And then and I guess this is the important bit for me. Maybe then the equation of us versus them would finally shift. Thank you. Well, that was wonderful. Thank you so much for your wonderful talk. And I'm only following what my colleagues often do.
They would abuse their position as the focus of questions, and I'll be doing the same. So but I will only be asking maybe one or two questions because I know we have so many questions and people just want to ask you, you know, the questions. So I'm just you know, I'm so happy that you ended your presentation, you know, and you were quite hopeful. And there's hope. And it's always great to have hope.
And I still would like to ask you about the question of whether or not it is possible to have a viable Palestinian state, because in the end, we're still talking about a two state solution. And it seems that people still want a two state solution. I think I was speaker last week. I mentioned that it would be great for Israelis and Palestinians to have a two state solution.
I've read an article by Daniel Sidon, I think, as an Israeli attorney advising David Cameron, and apparently he argues in this article that it is possible to occupy, you know, the West Bank. And in order for Palestine to have a viable state, you need to at least relocate 200,000 Israeli settlers. It sounds great. So if you can incrementally occupy, you can also incrementally the Occupy, according to him.
And I thought that was really, you know, again, hopeful. But the question is, in terms of political will, we've seen what happened. Do you think Rabin or even Ariel Sharon when he tried to occupy Gaza and people are still cursing him, if I'm not mistaken. So do you think there is hope when it comes to persuading or perhaps imposing and relocating at least 200,000 Israeli settlers from the West Bank?
So you said you're you're happier and then hopefully now you're asking me question that looks like me to go the other way. I don't feel like that. I'm so sorry. It's fine. It brings me to my more familiar place of not being hopeful. I used to say I don't mind, but I used to say I don't mind. One state solution, two state solution, whatever solution. It's very clear that that the occupation needs to end and Right.
And whatever comes out of it, a big Democratic state, two Democratic states, maybe one of the one, I don't care. But whatever is doable. I can say that up until October 7th, I thought it would be more doable to have a one state solution in some federative arrangement. And so this is where I was thinking we should push for. I no longer sure. Now, this can mean that we can relinquish all hope. But I'll tell you where my bit of a hope nevertheless comes from.
What we also saw in October 7th is that Israel cannot exist without the US. If the U.S. was not there, Hezbollah would have joined this. Everything would have looked very different. Now it's up to the Americans to take advantage of this. Right. And basically say that's it. I think the only way is to be honest. I don't think it's about political will. I think it's about what the US does.
Right. It's about Biden. But I think in this particular moment, after October 7th, if we take control over the narrative and we and I really believe in the right, I really believe that what we saw that is that you cannot defend the settlements and defend the borders of the country. At the same time, quite like it's a security question. And if we're thinking about we learn about the wills of Israelis, I think this is the card that we need to put.
And I think the Americans are the ones who should say, unless you do that, we stop delivering your weapon. So we take all of our ships away. Vital. Whatever Nasrallah does, it's fine with us. And until they do that, I don't think there will be a political. But I think now we have a chance. And and and I don't want to be really honest.
I do not understand how can Biden, who is losing the election to Trump because of this war, does not take advantage of this and becomes the president will solve the problem in the Middle East. He has Saudia Arabia with him, he has Egypt with him. There are all these forces around. There are enough forces within now the Israeli. Centre. Who'd be willing to move at least to that direction. And so and so I think it can happen, but it cannot happen just from political will of Israelis.
Fantastic. Thank you.