In a recent Haaretz opinion piece, leading Israeli security expert Chuck Freilich wrote that it’s time to give up on the “mindless ‘two-state solution’ mantra.” There’s no way that Israel will get the security guarantees it needs in a two state solution, so it’s time to get honest and to move on.
That, he believes, is the main contribution of the Trump “Riviera” plan—it’s likely not realistic, but it shakes things up and will now get people to think outside the tired, old box.
In our conversation which covers a lot of territory and a host of issues, Freilich explains the new idea for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, what land Egypt gives up, what Israel gives up, what Jordan gives up.
And, he shares his thoughts about the future of Israel, even in these very troubled times.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, prepared for our paid subscribers.
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Prof. Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security advisor in Israel and long-time senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, now teaches at Columbia and Tel Aviv University. He is the author of three books on Israeli national security affairs, as well as numerous academic articles, policy studies and op-eds. A frequent commentator on TV and radio, he is a riveting speaker, with a lively and at times irreverent approach to the foibles of Israeli life. A New Yorker by birth, Freilich made aliyah (immigrated) to Israel in his early teens. For a more comprehensive bio, click here.
To read his recent Haaretz article, click here.
To view Chuck’s books, click the images below.
I'm delighted, especially in these confusing and intellectually titillating to have back someone who's been on the podcast many times, someone from whom I always learn and whose appearances on the podcast always elicit many positive responses. Chuck Freilich is a former Deputy National Security Advisor in Israel, a longtime Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, who now teaches at Columbia and Tel Aviv University. He is the author of three books, which we've discussed in the past here on Israeli National Security Affairs, as well as numerous articles, policy studies, op-eds.
We're going to speak actually today about a more recent op-ed of his, which appeared in Haaretz just a week or two ago, which is called "Israel won the war. This is how Trump can help it win the peace," but we're going to come back to that. Chuck's full bio is on the notes for today's session. He is also now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies here in Israel and is really just one of the most highly regarded experts on Israeli security and related to that, diplomacy and so forth. Delighted to have him back on the program to help us understand what's going on. Chuck, I want to talk about two basic things. One of them is, they're related, but one of them, of course, is the Trump plan. You were quoted in the New York Times a few days ago saying that it's never going to happen, but it's actually a good thing that it's in the mix.
I'd like you to explain at greater length to us today than the New York Times was able to do why you think that is. Then I want to talk about your broader vision for the region. You wrote in Haaretz that it's time to stop, and here's the quote, "a mindless two-state mantra." A two-state solution is not going to happen, but you have in mind something else. I'd like to hear what you think that is, what it would take both on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side for that to even be remotely possible. We have a ton to talk about. Let's get started. First of all, thanks again. Tell us what a thoughtful, moral, Zionist, hopeful person should think and feel as they watch this Trump proposal for Gaza unfold?
Well, first of all, it's good to be back on this program, and thanks for having me. Let me say it's hard in the current political climate in the US to say anything positive about either side because the people on the other side just won't countenance it. Of course, most of the Jewish community is on the democratic left. If Trump comes up with a new idea, people are instinctively against it. I'm not saying that to support the idea because I don't think it is in any a way, a realistic one. I don't think it was thought out. As the President's spokesperson said, it was written as he was speaking.
Do you believe that, by the way? I mean, do you really think he was standing in front of the podium and he, hu shalaf et zeh, as we say in Hebrew, just pulled it out of his pocket?
Well, he was reading at least part of the time from a prepared statement, so it wasn't totally ad-libbed. Trump has the advantage and disadvantage of not really knowing a great deal about what he's talking about at any given moment. Now, two million Palestinians are not going to be transferred from Gaza. It's not going to happen, and nobody's going to support forcibly doing that.
And they don't want to go on their own, right? So you're not voluntarily removing-
I think a fair number actually would like to. Would you really want to go home to a pile of rubble?
Well, No. But let me just say, are you talking about a permanent move or a temporary move? Because if you were going to say a temporary move and I'm going to go somewhere else while the United States and other international forces rebuild Gaza, fine. But I think sometimes we tend to underestimate their attachment to the land and assume that our attachment to the land is a deeply held thing. This is, by the way, Jabotinsky pointed this out more than a century ago or about a century ago. But their love of their land is, I think, as powerful as our love of our land. So, yeah, nobody wants to go back to rubble, but do you think that they would voluntarily move out for good, even a substantial number of them?
I think a substantial number, yes, and I'm not in any way taking away from their commitment to their cause, to their land. I think it's just human nature that at least a certain and not insubstantial number of people would want to dramatically improve their quality of life. Much to my regret, I'm trying to think of a much stronger word, 80,000 Israelis left Israel last year.
And you think that's part of the same thing? They think that they can find a better way of life given that Israel is facing what it's facing now?
Our situation is infinitely better than that of the Gazans. But let me step back for a minute. Trump, in his just shoot in all directions, free-thinking manner, did identify a very, very serious problem that no one has really paid attention to in all of the talk about the two-state solution. Gaza has a population of just over 2 million today. Its population doubles approximately every 20 years, meaning that in 2045, there will be 4 million people there, and in 2065, 8 million, et cetera, et cetera. Gaza is tiny. It isn't viable. It's not a place that people can live in in any semi-decent way in its current borders.
So if one wants to reach, whether it's a two-state solution or some other solution, but a viable one, you have to address that problem. And you can do that either by decreasing Gaza's population, as Trump was indicating, or by expanding Gaza's size. And I'll come back to that. There are ways of doing that. But I think by raising the problem, throwing it out there, and raising an idea which really enraged the Arab world, as anyone who knows anything about the Arab world would understand that it would do, and the Palestinians, first and foremost, he is forcing them to think about the issue and maybe to come up. And he said himself, by the way, at one point, They don't like this, so come back with a different proposal. So from that point of view, I think there is something positive in what he did.
Now, so what you're saying is, look, we're not going to... The current situation is untenable. And as you say in the Haaretz article, what you call the two-state mantra, you call it mindless. In other words, there are certain people certain groups, certain populations, a lot of them Jews, a lot of them Jews in the diaspora, who keep coming back to the two-state solution as being the only equitable way of solving this. And your point in that article, and we'll come back to it, is, come on, guys, give that up. That's just simply not happening.
What you're saying essentially is the current situation is untenable, and it's going to get even more untenable. Two-state solution is pie in the sky, not going to happen in any way as far as the eye can see. Therefore, what Trump has done is to shake things up, to try to everybody to understand business as usual is not going to work. We have to think completely out of the box. Is that a fair assessment of what you're saying so far?
It is. But it's important for me to say I've been a lifelong supporter of the two-state solution. I was coming to the conclusion in the years before the war that it was probably simply no longer a viable option. I think after the war, there's really no prospects for it. To make things simple, it's for one overriding reason. If you ask what does Israel really want in any peace agreement, its ultimate bedrock demand is for guaranteed security arrangements, its inviolate security arrangements. Well, after what happened on October 7th, I don't think anyone in Israel pretty much believes that you can get those kinds of security guarantees on the West Bank border, which abuts all of Israel's population centers. If we can't get security, nobody in Israel is going to agree to a two-state solution.
Okay, so now let's just go back now then. I want to read you something that a well-known American, highly regarded, deeply respected person, wrote on Facebook not that long ago. And I want to actually ask you to respond to it for a second. This person wrote, "Whether or not it is politically viable or just another shot across the bow in this political strategy of creating shock and outrage, I found that watching the American president casually pitching the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from Gaza as a feature of a ludicrous real estate plan to enrich himself and seeing the Prime Minister of Israel smirking alongside him to be just about the most disgraceful and embarrassing thing that I've experienced as an American and as a Zionist."
Do you think people need to feel that way, or is this not ethnic cleansing? Are you not embarrassed by it? I do want to come to your proposal in the Haaretz article in just a second. But I think this person reflected a tremendous sentiment that's out there, that this is appalling, that it's ethnic cleansing, that Israelis are part of it or party to it by either smirking or supporting it. I saw a statistic the other day, I think maybe yesterday, the day before, that 70% of Israelis in some way support this Trump plan.
I don't know what percentage of them think it actually could come to be, But obviously, the further or more on the right you move, the greater is the percentage. And I'm sure among Smotrich and Ben Gvr voters, it's 100% of people, basically, or 98% of people who support this. But do you share the sense that we, as caring moral Jews, ought to be deeply discomfited by Trump saying this at this point?
First of all, I saw that statistic as well, but the other one was that a majority did not believe that it was a viable proposal.
That's important, by the way. I think our listeners ought to listen to that very carefully. In other words, 70% are saying, I like the plan, and more than half, which has got to be 50, 55% at least, are saying, I also know that it can't happen. In a certain way, what they're saying is what you're saying. I like this because this is mixing up the bag a little bit and it's getting us to think out of the box, not because most people here actually think it's going to happen, but respond to this notion of this very well-respected American Jewish leader who says that he found this Bibi smirking, quote, unquote, next to Trump to be one of the most morally complicated and uncomfortable moments he's ever had as an American Zionist.
I didn't see Bibi smirking, but there's no doubt that many people in Israel were very, very happy to hear this proposal. And you mentioned the statistic. I think the point is that people want to see a solution to Gaza. We've tried the two-state solution for a few decades. It hasn't worked. We have had umpteen rounds with Hamas now, and we reached the horror of October 7th. I'm not sure that people in the US are actually quite sure that they do not fully appreciate the impact that that has had on Israel. The fact that even the Jews who are very involved in Israeli affairs, but when you live in the US, you can't appreciate it. Israel is still in a state of post-trauma. If you watch television, Israeli TV, every night, both the news and all the various news kinds of programs, of which there are endless ones, weekly documentaries about the war. It's all about the war, about the hostages, about the horror of October 7th. This is a country which is still, as I said, in post-shock, post-trauma. People want to see a different outcome now. I don't think what Trump was talking about was ethnic cleansing.
He was looking at what... Look, you can make the case that it was actually, in some ways, almost a moral proposal because he was talking maybe a temporary, not permanent. He didn't really think this through, but he was going to rebuild Gaza, and at least some of the people could come back. But there have been population transfers in the past all over the world. It's not accepted today. Okay, a lot of things aren't accepted today, but the things that are accepted or more accepted haven't worked. The entire world has come to speak about the two-state solution for the last 20 to 30 years. In Europe, it's longer than that. In the US, the first President to talk about a two-state solution, to say openly a Palestinian state, was Bush, Bush II, and Clinton was really talking about it. He just didn't say it explicitly. So even in the US, it's maybe 20 to 30 years. Before that, people talked about different solutions.
There's nothing holy about the two-state solution. The only thing that, to my way of thinking that is holy is separating from the Palestinians so that we can remain a overwhelmingly, not 100%, it'll only be 80%, but an overwhelmingly Jewish Israel and a democratic Israel. The process of nation building is messy and it's painful in all cases, and it includes questionable moral things. What happened on October 7th wasn't moral either. To put it mildly. And we have to make sure that there is no further October 7th. Hamas has repeatedly stated its commitment to trying. And of course, they are already reconstituting, even before we've fully withdrawn from Gaza. So it's very easy from afar to pontificate. And I don't disagree that this is a morally questionable issue. But I think one can also try and see what positive side might come out of it.
Okay. I actually think that this embracing of the morally complex is something that has... It's a skill in life in general that the current world does not, I think, naturally tend towards. It doesn't matter whether you're a right or left, Jewish or not Jewish, Jewish or Arab, religious or secular. Embracing the world of moral complexity is just simply something that we've stopped learning how to do. I think your point here that there's no easy solution to this. There's no morally neat solution to this. We're going to have to actually now wade into muddy and complex waters. I think that's an unbelievably important point that people don't enough, and I'm thrilled that you said it.
Let's turn now to a piece that you had in Haaretz about, I guess, two weeks ago, a little bit less than two weeks ago. It's called Israel won the war. This is how Trump can help it win the peace. It's trying to revisit the idea for Jordanian-Palestinian Confederation, and the US President Donald Trump's as yet half-baked, but axiom-breaking diplomatic approach may actually help. You have a whole vision here for how this could work out very differently.
Now, a lot of people said when Trump was talking about moving to a lot of Palestinians to Jordan, a lot of people immediately said, Well, that's a terrible idea for Israel, because then the Hashemite minority will no longer be able to rule Jordan. You've got an enormous Jordanian state, which is now a Palestinian state. It's the last thing that Israel needs on its longest border is a Palestinian state with the king deposed. So moving Palestinians to Jordan is a terrible idea, people said. But you have something very different in mind. Take us through the proposal as you have it, and let's understand of how your idea might bring us to a very different vision of the Middle East?
It's actually a three-part proposal, and it's a combination of existing ideas. None of these is a novel idea of mine, it's maybe putting it together that makes it a new approach. The first part is to say that there would be a confederation between the Jordanians, all of Jordan, and the Palestinians. That would be on 90 plus percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Now, if Israel has to keep, depending on which expert political figure you wish to speak to, between 4, 5, and 10% of the West Bank. Then we can keep 80% of the settlers and have greater security margins.
Let me just make sure that everybody understands. What you're saying is that if we wanted to keep 80% of the Israelis who now live over the Green Line in the West Bank in their homes without moving them, all that we have to hold on to is about 4 to 5% of the actual square kilometrage of that area. That's your basic point, right? The Confederation would be Jordan. It would be, let's say, 90 something % of the West Bank. I'm assuming basically 100 % of Gaza, except for a security area that we would hold here or there, right?
Correct. All right.
Now, what does this Confederation mean?
Okay. It means, in essence, two independent states, except that they share foreign and defense policy. Now, for Jordan, this is an idea is a total nonstarter. They will be against it vociferously. And so what I also did is to try and propose a number of ideas so that it would not constitute a threat to the Hashemite Kingdom. Just to the opposite, it would guarantee its future.
How's that?
Okay. People have been forecasting the demise of the Hashemite Kingdom ever since it was established 100 years ago, and paradoxically, it's turned out to be the most stable Arab state. But Jordan's population is well over half Palestinian. The king's wife, Queen Rania, is Palestinian, meaning that the king's heir is half Palestinian. Jordan's future, I believe, is a Palestinian future. And the kingdom is, from their perspective, rightfully worried that they don't have a long-term future. So if we went with this Confederation idea, the Constitution would state that the Jordanian component, the Jordanian substate, remains the Hashemite Kingdom forever. It would give the King various emergency powers. It would give him a veto power. And there would be other, we don't have time to fully develop, there would be other measures taken so that it would ensure Jordan's future as Jordan.
If Jordan does not accept a proposal as being something which is favorable to them, then it's not something we can do because Jordan's long-term existence is a fundamental Israeli interest. But if we can convince them, okay, then we can go ahead. For the Palestinians, it just about gives them a fully independent state. They would have full responsibility over domestic affairs, and they would just have to agree to joint governance with the Jordanians on foreign and defense affairs. I think for the Palestinians, this isn't easy to accept, but it's certainly far easier than for the Jordanians. It certainly is no doubt that it's far better than anything else that may get in the foreseeable future.
Now, in this picture, is Gaza economically independent? In other words, they have to raise their own money and spend their own money. The budget is entirely theirs, or are they sharing a budget with Jordan?
Well, they certainly share a budget with the West Bank, with the Palestinian State. No, the two states have their own budgets, I would imagine. Of course, there are a thousand and one details that would have to be worked out between the sides. But I imagine that their budget would be a joint, or a Palestinian one, it would be joint with the West Bank.
And is there any way the way people can get from Gaza to the West Bank?
Yeah. That's one of the accepted ideas ever since the Oslo days is that there would either be an overhead highway or an underground highway crossing Israel. It's about 30 odd miles, the whole thing, and it can be done. Okay. It's not cheap, but it can be done. That's the first part.
A cynic could say, We have a lot of tunnel building experience in this region anyway.
Certainly, Hamas does, and that can be their contribution to this. That's the first part, is the Confederation. But getting back to what I was saying before, that Gaza is simply not tenable as a place to live in the long run in its current borders. This brings me to the idea of a multilateral land swap. Here it may get a little bit complicated for listeners.
This is the second part of the proposal, right?
The second part. The idea would be that Egypt gives Gaza additional land, maybe doubles its size.
From Sinai, presumably, right?
Correct. Yes. Along the Gaza-Sinai border. Now, Egypt loses territory, so why would they do that? Okay, so Israel compensates them with equal-sized territory from the Negev. So now the Gazans have gained territory. Egypt has given and received, so it's a net exchange for them. But Israel has lost territory. And here is where the Palestinians would then compensate Israel by giving it territory in the West Bank, equal in size to the territory that Israel gave to Egypt, that Egypt gave to Gaza.
Okay, The point here is that nobody actually gains or loses net territory, but the Palestinians and the Israelis gain the territory that is of absolute critical importance for them. It's not as if the Palestinians don't need territory in the West Bank. They, of course, do. It's not that big. But where they really need territory is in Gaza. This is an idea, by the way, that was raised to them a couple of decades ago in the negotiations, and they said, Yeah, interesting idea. The place that Israel needs territory is along the border in the West Bank so that we can incorporate the 80% of the settlers. Here is a way of doing that. So that's the second component.
Now, I just want to ask you one question before you get to the third part. Palestinians are very, very sensitive about the proportion of land that they thought that they were getting before, let's say, even the Balfour Declaration or whatever. They're very, or certainly Peel Commission, et cetera, the Partition Plan in '47. They've always watched and saw what percentage of the land they're getting. It's not exactly the case that nobody's losing land here because net, the Palestinians in the West Bank are losing land. In other words, unless they think of themselves as being one and the same as Gaza, they're saying, So Gaza gains land, Egypt loses. Egypt gets the land back from the Israelis along the Negev side. The Israelis make up the land by getting part of the West Bank. Where do we on the West Bank get the part that we're giving up? What would you say to them if they said that?
Well, the question here is whether there is a Palestinian people or whether there are two Palestinian peoples, a West Bank and a Gazan people.
What do you What do you think the answer to that is, by the way?
Well, I think there are differences. The West Bankers are more like, I don't want to say rich uncles, but they're at least the better off ones. Look, this idea was raised the Palestinian negotiators, and they found it quite interesting. I mean, nothing was agreed, so this wasn't agreed either. But they understand the issue certainly as well as I do, probably far better. And I think this is a proposal which....It's obviously problematic because they don't want to give up an inch of the West Bank. And as you're indicating, this conflict has been going on for over 100 years over territory. But there is a very important net gain for them here.
Who came up with this? You said this was originally proposed to them, and the negotiators said it was worth talking about. Who proposed it to them, and when was this?
Well, there were two people who were particularly associated with or came up with the idea. The original one was Professor Ben-Arieh from Hebrew U. Then, Giora Eiland, who was the head of the National Security Council in the early 2000s, picked up the idea and expanded upon it a bit. I believe that he raised it before the Palestinians, and certainly others did, so that it got an airing.
Okay. Now, Let's go to part three.
Part three is, I don't think that any of this is feasible for the moment. We're going to need a change of leadership in Israel. We're going to need an even greater change in leadership on the Palestinian side because we're going to need them to reunite, to have one West Bank, Gaza, one Palestinian leadership. And it has to finally become a pragmatic leadership that's willing to make some of the hard decisions and not just leave it to Israel to make hard decisions. In the same way that we're not going to have a two-state solution for the foreseeable future, the Confederation idea and the land swap is not going to happen tomorrow either. I think that, and again, the Israeli population is so shocked by what happened on October 7th. This has had such an impact. The entire public has moved to the right, the left is further to the right than it was two years ago as well, and for good reason. The most that I can see anybody really being willing to do for the foreseeable future is the idea of civil disengagement. Here, Israel would again decide what percentage of the West Bank it intends to keep, somewhere between the 4 to 10%, and it begins withdrawing the settlers from the remaining 90 something %, but the IDF remains deployed as it deems necessary and for as long as necessary throughout the West Bank.
And this is a way to begin the process of separating from the Palestinians and of preserving our Jewish and democratic character. That's its real importance. The other thing is, I just think it's the most that the traffic may possibly be able to bear.
While that's happening on the West Bank, what happens in Gaza?
That does not solve the Gaza problem. In the meantime, we have to try and....I mean, we withdrew from Gaza already once. That didn't work.
Yeah, we've been there, done that.
Exactly. That didn't work. The solution to Gaza, pending a permanent status agreement....The question is what the solution is, and I'm not sure at this point. Obviously, we're going to need... I don't think there's any alternative but to bring the PA back in, the Palestinian Authority, for all of its corrupt and incompetent nature. But that is the only recognized semi-legitimate Palestinian leadership. They're going to need a great deal of backing from Arab countries, from the international community. I'm not sure that anyone is really going to ante up when the time comes, because are you willing to send troops into harm's way to help Gaza? I don't see anybody really doing that. The UAE claims that they're willing to, okay, maybe. But beyond them, I don't really see anyone else. We'll have to see. Certainly, in the end, Israel is going to be responsible for security in Gaza, one way or the other.
Which leads me to my next, which is exactly the question I wanted to ask you. We've seen sickening, cynical, gut-wrenching displays of all sorts of things with the hostages being released. We saw a couple of cases where hostages literally thought they were about to get killed by a mob. The look of terror on their faces was just... It was beyond. It was beyond disgusting. Israel laid down the line and made it clear that that could simply not happen again, and so far it hasn't. But we've seen emaciated people basically pulled up onto a stage who looked nothing like the people that they were when they were taken in almost 500 days ago. We've just seen horrible displays. But one of the things that we've seen is a Hamas that looks very much in charge. The Hamas fighters don't look emaciated, and the Israeli broadcasters always like to say, Look at all these Hamas fighters. These are the cowards. These are the ones who sat it out during the war, knowing that that way they wouldn't be killed. They were waiting for this moment, but you're looking at is Shfanim, rabbits who went and hid, et cetera.
I find that a little bit interesting and a little bit irrelevant. In other words, what we are seeing is a huge show of force by Gaza. Israeli sources are saying that Hamas is actually rebuilding itself and recruiting people, albeit younger, recruiting thousands of people on an ongoing basis. My question to you is, has Hamas been defeated? Can Hamas be defeated? How long are we going to be at this, if you had to guess, obviously, nobody knows. But a large part of this presumes, a large part of your proposal, which is fascinating, presumes that somehow the Hamas problem goes away, that we're not still at war with Hamas. That Hamas is still not digging tunnels. Hamas is not trying to destroy Israel. Where are we with Hamas and where can we get with Hamas?
That's a really tough question that everyone in Israel is thinking about, and I have yet to hear the brilliant solution to it. Look, did we defeat Hamas militarily? I think the answer is yes. Did we eradicate Hamas? No, militarily. Did we defeat them politically? No, they're still in political control. And to the extent that we weaken them politically, they're building back again. They're going to need it back again. I'm not impressed by the big displays that they're putting on. This is propaganda. Yeah, they've recruited a few thousand young, untrained fighters who certainly don't have the equipment that Hamas had a year ago.
They don't have the entire tunnel system. They still have some of it, but they don't have most of the tunnel system that they had a year ago. They don't have the rocket capability. They've got a fraction of it. If from any traditional standard of military victory, Hamas has been defeated. The problem with organizations like Hamas and like Hezbollah is that for them, there is no such thing as defeat. As long as one of them is still alive, the idea is still alive, then they'll continue the fight. Because remember, this isn't a war between two normal states, where in the end, everybody knows the wars are going to end. There's going to be some peace agreement, better or worse. For Hamas and Hezbollah, the only end game is Israel's destruction. So can we eliminate them? Can we achieve what the Prime Minister calls a total victory?
The answer is no. On the other hand, where we might have been able to do considerably better is had we agreed pretty much from the beginning to start talking about a new alternative government in Gaza, and it's not going to be great shakes no matter what happens there. It's probably going to be the PA. But had we been willing to do that, then there would be an alternative. Today, there is only one political force in Gaza, that's Hamas. People are still living under the same threat of the gun that they did before the war. So even those who want to speak out, and there are many of them, some have, but obviously, people are terrorized. It's not just that we're not the only ones who face terror. The people who really face Hamas terror are Gazan civilians. So that was a huge mistake on Israel's part. And that's the difference between being able to really achieve an overall victory, it would never have been 100%, and a limited military one. And in the end, it'll take them a long time to rebuild to what they I don't know if they'll be able to ever to get back to what they had before the war.
But we're not going to let them, are we? We're going to try to make sure that doesn't happen, obviously. That's why I'm thinking. That's just not going to happen.
Right. But in the end, was this war, this long, painful, really horrible war for everyone, was it, in the end, just another bigger round in this endless series of rounds, or was this something that really changes things? That's largely up to us. I don't think it's completely too late to change the situation. Maybe it could still be done, but the Prime Minister doesn't seem to be willing to change his approach. And in the end, this victory may not look like that at the end of it. By the way, the question is, there's the other question is, will we be able to take advantage of the victory over Hezbollah in Lebanon and the defeat of the Iranian Axis, the Axis of Resistance? Iran itself was greatly weakened. These are, in some ways, even bigger questions.
I want to end with this. Look, you made aliyah as a teenager. You've been here for a very long time. This country and its future has been your life's work. This is really the passion of your life behind your family. This is the most important thing to you. But you have pointed out over the course of our conversation that some 80,000 people have left, that there is a sense of fragility to the social contract. This government is not going anywhere in the near term. Hamas is badly damaged, but it's not defeated. The two-state solution is not viable, but this plan that you've proposed in Haaretz, which is not, as you said yourself, not entirely only your plan, but it's pieces of a puzzle that you put together, may be a very good idea, but it's not happening anywhere in the immediate future. When one puts all of this together, Chuck Freilich is Israeli, Jewish person, moral person, so on and so forth. How optimistic are you about the future of this country?
In the end, I'm quite optimistic. Look, we're going through a very bad period. There's no doubt about it. We've gone through bad periods in the past. We had a couple of decades when for all of the... In some ways, they were very painful, but in some ways, they were good in the sense that we came to take Israel's existence for granted. And that's a nice thing to be able to do it, but it was a little bit early. We thought that the conflict was behind us for all practical purposes, and we got a rude awakening. The fact is, Israel is a regional power. We are stronger than we ever were. I think we've restored our confidence, by the way, after October 7th. We have an economy which is just a marvel. And despite everything, we will continue to grow and become stronger, I believe. I am very worried about the issues that you mentioned, the social contract, with the impact of what the next elections may be, but I do believe it looks like Naftali Bennett is going to run, and all the polls show him totally changing the picture. I certainly do not agree with some of his basic policies, but there's no doubt that he would be a very welcome change. And I think he can begin the healing process that we will really need. It's healing way beyond October 7th. It's a national revival, a national renaissance that is necessary. I believe that it can happen. I always rely on the yihiyeh tov element of it, the old Israeli solution to all problems. Yihiyeh tov, it'll be good. It'll work itself out one way or the other. I think in the end, we have a good Israeli and Jewish future here.
It's not, I think, an accident at all, but one of the songs that's come out of this period that everybody's singing these days is Yihiyeh Tak Tov, and it's going to be tov yoter, It's going to be okay, it's going to be better than okay, it's going to keep getting better. There's something about that that is as basic to Israel as is the social contract that we've been talking about. I think that despite all of the evidence to the contrary that you quite rightly adduce, there's nothing actually totally inconsistent about both looking at that evidence at one the one side and believing in a bright future on the other side. As you point out, in 1945, there was no real reason to think that you and I would be having the conversation that we're having now. In 1945, this country would have been unimaginable. I'll just end with perhaps one little curiosity that I was reading about yesterday for reasons that don't matter right now. In 1945, Louis Finkelstein, who was the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, was asked by students at JTS, which is the intellectual academic cornerstone of the Conservative movement. He was asked, this is in May '45, four months after Auschwitz is liberated.
He's asked for the seminary to play Hatikvah in 1945 at the graduation ceremony, and he absolutely refuses. It causes a whole brouhaha. At the end of the day, what they did is they went across the street to Union Theological Seminary where the Christians students were, and the Christians played Hatikvah on the chimes that could be heard outside across Broadway on 121st Street, so that Hatikvah was played only by Union Theological, not by Jewish Theological. But when Finkelstein was interviewed by Time magazine at that time and asked why it was that he did not want Haktivah played, what he said was there is not a chance that a Jewish state is going to be created at any time in the foreseeable future. This was 1945. Obviously, here you and I, it was created three years later. Here you and I are in 2025. Not all that much later. It's 80 years. The world is entirely different. I think, again, we have to have the capacity to see that even in dark moments, there is potential here that is unlimited, that the Jews have always somehow managed to pull that proverbial rabbit out of the proverbial hat. So for your explaining to us both the realities on the ground, but to say to us, in spite of all of that, that you're deeply optimistic about the future of the state, I think is really the quintessential Zionist combination of looking very carefully at facts and challenges, and at the same time, believing that great things are still to come. It's always a privilege. It's always a pleasure to learn from you and to be the beneficiary of your expertise. Chuck Freilich, thank you very much once again for joining us on Israel from the Inside.
Thank you. It's a pleasure being here.
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