Challenges of Lecturing to Israeli Youth After October 7

On Sunday evening, I gave a lecture to a group of about forty university students at Reichman University. My lecture, naturally, was about negotiations, and primarily about how to make peace between Israel and Palestine—two states for two peoples. For some reason, in the first half of my talk, I didn't pay enough attention to the fact that many of these students had spent most of the past two years in reserve duty, fighting in Gaza. Their questions and comments did not try to hide how and where their opinions were formed. It was a big challenge, because the experience of being an Israeli soldier in Gaza over the past two years leaves little room for considering alternative ideas. There is a strong need for the individual to justify what they did in Gaza for two years, and October 7 constitutes a very strong motivator to believe that what Israel did in Gaza was completely correct.
And it is also difficult to challenge the prevailing thinking (which is largely groupthink), because most of the mainstream Israeli media has become an echo chamber for statements by the IDF spokesperson and government members. It is also difficult because we generally tend to read what we agree with and listen to it, and we tend not to challenge ourselves by reading or listening to things we disagree with.
In light of that, presenting alternative narratives to what we have gone through—not only in the past two years, but over the past decades—supported by a large amount of real data, facts, and actual events, poses a new challenge for the listeners. I don't think I actually convinced any of the students who didn't agree with me from the start. But I am quite sure that I posed real challenges for those who disagreed with me—and they were the majority.
And when I presented the two-state solution as the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (because the conflict is about the land and the identity of the two peoples and the country—the same land for both peoples between the river and the sea), one student responded by saying: I don't care if there's a Palestinian state alongside Israel, I just don't want to see them anymore. Let them have a state, but we'll build very high walls so they won't cross into Israel again. Another student said: I have no mercy for them, let them rot, I don't care. Israel is not obligated to give them anything. A third student responded that the conflict is essentially a conflict between Judaism and Islam, not a political conflict. And he said: Islam is against the Jews because Muslims see Jews as heretics.
I replied that there is no solution to the conflict based on higher walls and stronger fences. True peace can only exist when there is cross-border cooperation. There will be no peace if Palestinians feel they are living inside a cage condemned to poverty. Even today, about 85% of what Palestinians buy comes from Israel, and 65% of what they export goes to Israel. Peace must be built through cooperation in every possible aspect of life—from culture to tourism, trade, and even education. We must learn from each other, and for that, every Israeli should study Arabic from the first grade, and every Palestinian should study Hebrew from the first grade.
And I said that we are not obligated to feel pity for the Palestinians, and we are not obligated to give them anything. What we need is to stop being an obstacle to their economic and political development. Most of the obstacles to Palestinian economic development are Israeli restrictions and barriers on the Palestinian economy—from the banking sector to trade restrictions on imports and exports, to the movement of people and goods, and so on. We are not obligated to show 'mercy,' but it makes no sense at all for Israel to want poor Palestinian neighbors. The prosperity of Palestinians is a national security interest for Israel.
And regarding the claim that Israel is not obligated to 'give the Palestinians anything,' I did not hide the fact that Israel will be held largely responsible—for the damages it caused in Gaza. Even now, and at this early stage, there is a demand that Israel pay the cost of removing millions of tons of rubble resulting from buildings and infrastructure that were bombed and demolished by Israel in Gaza. This will not pass without consequences.
As for whether this is a religious conflict between Islam and Judaism, I claim that it is not; rather, it is a political conflict over the land and identity, where many identity issues are strongly rooted in religion. Even Hamas, I said, is not exactly 'the Muslim Brotherhood' from which it emerged; Hamas is a Palestinian national Islamic movement, not a transnational Islamic movement. Hamas's goal was 'liberating Palestine from the Zionists,' not making the whole world Muslim. And there is something many don't know: during 18 years of Hamas's complete control over Gaza, Islamic law—the Sharia—was not made the law of the land. Gaza was governed by Hamas under Palestinian civil law, not Islamic religious law.
I presented to the students what I see as a logical, even simple equation between Israel and Palestine: Israel will not have true security if Palestinians do not have true freedom; and Palestine will not have true freedom if Israel does not have true security. It's that simple. Israel needs security, and Palestinians need freedom.
But a student asked: How can we trust them—they have violated every agreement we signed with them. So I replied: First, both Israel and the Palestinians have violated every agreement signed. No party has fully implemented the agreements they signed. Second, the Oslo process was extremely naive. There was an implicit assumption in the Oslo agreements that we would work together and build enough trust to negotiate the difficult final status issues—the Palestinian state, borders, Jerusalem, refugees, etc.
I said that we cannot allow ourselves to sign naive agreements, nor allow ourselves to repeat the same mistakes. There must be a clear, written, and agreed-upon 'endgame'—meaning that agreements should start with the understanding that the outcome will be a two-state solution for two peoples. Second, we cannot enter a new peace process that does not guarantee the full implementation of the commitments undertaken by both parties. This means that we must create a reliable third-party mechanism to monitor and verify the implementation of the agreements. There must be measurable steps with defined criteria, and a third-party mechanism that decides when to move to the next stage based on the implementation of the parties' commitments as stated in the agreements. The subsequent stages involve greater risks, so a third-party monitoring and verification mechanism significantly reduces the risks. There was broader and more interesting discussion, but since I meet and lecture to groups of Israelis and Palestinians often, there will be more to share in the future.
And I concluded my talk with the words I often say when I meet students: Don't believe anything I said! Put a question mark at the end of every sentence you disagree with, then verify what I said. But don't just go to sources you agree with—look for other voices and sources you disagree with, and challenge yourselves to confront an alternative reality to the one you feel completely safe with in your lives.
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I replied that there is no solution to the conflict based on higher walls and stronger fences. True peace can only exist when there is cross-border cooperation. There will be no peace if Palestinians feel they are living inside a cage condemned to poverty. Even today, about 85% of what Palestinians buy comes from Israel, and 65% of what they export goes to Israel