Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy

good evening everybody um i'm tim franks i'm chairing the debate um wonderful to see the auditorium packed i have to say that when i was sent through the final wording for this debate i thought how appropriate it was not just because it was interestingly worded but because it was all in capitals israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy if settlement expansion continues israel will have no future i know from my um three and a half years reporting from the region and the abuse i'm still getting from my broadcasting that there are few subjects which lend themselves to such shouty certainty and loudly dogmatic diametric opposition as israel and the palestinians and i dare say a few of you would have come here tonight already stirred by this provocatively titled motion yes you'll say israel's settlement policy is fabulously self-defeating given that a palestinian state is in israel's best self-interest it undermines israel's own institutions its sacred institutions its army its respect for the judiciary its budget drainingly expensive and it increases international isolation and tests friends beyond patience or perhaps you'll say israel the jewish state is actually only establishing jewish homes in areas that are historically traditionally jewish a jewish settlement is actually the west's outpost against militant islam they're not facts on the ground but they're questions to be answered in any future negotiations and how about if the left was right with all their gleamingly obvious arguments why are they doing so spectacularly badly in the opinion polls all i ask is that as you listen to our top-notch panel tonight and you decide which way you're going to vote i'm i'm instructed to tell you how to vote i'm probably going to get this wrong but i think you each have a voting slip which says for or against when it comes to the moment when you cast your vote tear the voting slip in half if you know that you're going to vote for or against and put the relevant bit in the box um if you don't know if you still don't know just have the entire voting slip uh put in the box but anyway before you get to that moment unclog your ears challenge your preconceptions dare yourself only to make up your minds when you've heard all of our speakers so let's hear all of our speakers um first of all speaking for the motion is william c card william is a founder and chairman of forward thinking an ngo which works with the leadership of all parties on both sides of the divide in the israel-palestine conflict in particular forward thinking has built a close relationship with the right-wing parties in the israeli government coalition and with hamas and islamic jihad in gaza the west bank damascus and the diaspora william thank you very much [Applause] well good evening everybody um i'm so glad tim said what he said because um i was going to say that at the beginning as well essentially the israeli-palestinian conflict provokes very very strong opinions and i suppose of all the issues facing the world few will stimulate quite such a level of intensity in public debate as this one so i'm going to ask you tonight to try for a moment to cast aside your pre-held opinions whatever they may be pro-israeli pro-palestinian pro-neither pro-both um and just try for a moment to put that aside because i'm going to try and argue this motion as well as i can in in a non-political way partly because they know palestinians on the panel partly because i'm not an israeli and the other three people on the panel are i'm just a brit with the temerity to have a view and also because my job in conflict resolution requires me not to take sides but just to try and be pragmatic and to try and identify the genuine obstacles to peaceful progress i'm going to argue tonight that israel's settlement policy is deeply destructive to its own future for a number of reasons first by pursuing its policy of settling what is now over half a million israeli citizens in the west bank on land deemed by the international community to belong to the palestinians israel is making the world and even its own allies believe that it has no genuine interest in making peace with the palestinians secondly as a result of this settlement policy israel's support in the international community is weakening and it's leading to a the expression delegitimization of israel and and isolation of israel and i fear ultimately onto a path of its own destruction finally i'm going to argue that even if israel wanted to redress the situation at a future date as part of a peace agreement the larger the number of settlements built and settlers settled beyond the so-called 1967 borders the harder it will be for any israeli government to persuade its citizens to withdraw from them but let's start at the beginning with some maps i always find it helpful to look at maps as a way of illustrating what's been going on i'm sorry it's hard for you to see up there and turn your back but the map on the left hand side the first map represents palestine as it was under the british mandate which uh covers the whole of what is now uh the modern israel and the occupied territories the second map is what the un proposed as the partition plan lines that would form the israeli and the proposed arab state or jewish and arab state as they called them in those days and the white bit it was proposed for the state of israel and the yellow bit or brown whichever you like to call it was proposed to be the arab state the third map gives you an idea of what actually happened after the british withdrew and after the 1948 war of independence and the one before would have given israel i think about 54 55 percent of of the land and and the arabs about 45 after the 1948 war of independence that gave roughly 78 of the land to the israelis and 22 to the palestinians the palestinians in the west bank you can see on the right hand side of the two yellow bits the left hand side is the gaza strip and the idea would be in the event of an arab state that you'd have some kind of road or railway or something that would connect the two so that palestinians could get from one one part of the territory to the other and the final map on the right hand side is roughly where we are today in terms of the yellow bits or where the palestinians live and the white bits are where the um israelis live this is a map of the west bank and the west bank is where the settlements we're talking about tonight are they you can see jerusalem sort of quite low low down on the map so to the left of these yellow bits is the state of it is is israel and the rest of what you're seeing is is the west bank uh the brown bits on the west bank where israelis uh have control and uh the blue bits are the settlements the brown lines are the roads which connect them all up and the white so white bit white is a sort of strange color but it's a creamy color are the bits where the palestinians live and as you can see because of these roads and so forth they're sort of broken up into lots of little areas where they live this is another way of of showing you the map it's what some people describe as a an archipelago or a succession of of little bits which don't create the possibility or the easy possibility of what some people would describe as a contiguous palestinian state just as importantly if if i go back a map you can see that the whole brown bit on the right is what connects up to the border with jordan with the river jordan and that is all under israeli control so the if that bit remains so and the palestinians didn't have that the palestinians wouldn't have a an independent border so that gives you i think an idea of where we are today how people live today now over the last 25 years or so there's been a peace process in progress as you know led by successive united states administrations the process has been attempting to secure a peace agreement between israeli and palestinian leaders leading to a creation of a palestinian state and that palestinian state as i said would be the gaza strip and that whole west bank area but during the period of the peace process successive israeli governments have settled about 550 to 600 000 dani will tell us the exact amount israeli citizens on palestinian land that's in the west bank and east jerusalem land that the international community have traditionally accepted as the basis for a future palestinian state this is what begs the the serious questions if the state of israel is genuinely pursuing peace why is it intent on settling its citizens on land that it would have to return why is it spending tens of millions of dollars every year on building projects of housing and infrastructure roads and so forth that would be unrecoverable cynics would say that this is because israel is not interested in making peace it has no genuine intention of creating a palestinian state but instead intends to take over the whole of the west bank creating an israel from the river jordan all the way over to the mediterranean sea and given the nature of public debate in the current election campaign in israel this is not entirely far-fetched there are plenty of members of the governing coalition who've publicly stated their opposition to a palestinian state let alone one that would be based as the international community desires on the pre-1967 borders leading israeli politicians have in the last week advocated even the annexation of large tracts of the west bank to secure them as permanent israeli territory once and for all and this may well in fact end up being a policy of the next israeli government so settlement building is continuing a pace not just within the existing settlements new outposts are being established every year in the west bank and despite international criticism even from israel's closest ally the united states the process continues often funded by donations from the united states supported by tax breaks for u.s citizens who make these kinds of donations so given the rate of this settlement development it's hard to find any international political figure who genuinely believes in the israeli government's intent to seek peace with the palestinians based on the 1967 borders maybe with some land swaps with a capital in east jerusalem and the rhetoric of the current israeli election campaign combined with these maps uh tell a story and i think you'd have to be peculiarly credulous individual to believe a different story which brings me to my second point israel's waning support in the international community in november mahmoud abbas the palestinian president apparently frustrated with the lack of any progress with the peace process because as he puts it of israel's continued settlement policies went to the general assembly of the united nations in order to try and secure observer status for a palestinian state now in the vote some 138 countries of the world voted in favor 41 abstained and only eight countries of the 187 in the voting process apart from israel voted against these countries were the marshall islands palau nauru and micronesia four tiny island states in the middle of the pacific ocean panama the czech republic canada and the united states this is what is left of the international support for the state of israel when it really needs it it's hard to think of a more isolated country in the world apart from iran and north korea and for israel to be able to rely on the support of rely neither on the support of the uk france or germany or even the netherlands on this issue is a rather dismal sign so when netanyahu announced the building of further settlements as a punishment for the palestinians going to the un for observer status condemnation instantly appeared from none other than the u.s canadian and czech diplomats who felt that their support in the un vote had been betrayed so where does this leave israel well if it continues its settlement policies and refuses to accept the international parameters of the peaceful two-state solution then i believe the process of israel's de-legitimization moral political legal the thing it fears the most will continue to develop a pace what are the alternatives well there's a plausible alternative to a two-state solution and it's a one-state solution where everyone jews and palestinians live together and are equal citizens in the same country but this leads to the jews being in a minority an outcome unlikely to be plausible to jewish israelis and advocates of a jewish state some israelis are now advocating a one-state solution but they would rather like to leave gaza behind so they can ensure the jewish majority which is not likely to appeal to the outside world or obviously the palestinians so if it's not a two-state solution or a one-state solution what do we call what's left the current status quo if israel does not allow any prospect of statehood freedom genuine self-governance for the palestinians and with israeli citizens having markedly different rights and standards of living to their palestinian counterparts and with israel running out of friends on the international stage the situation i'm afraid will inevitably lead to accusations from some countries in the world that this situation is one of apartheid and that means that those countries will call for israel's increasing isolation in time it will mean no more world cups no more olympics and my final point should be just as worrying for israel there are now so many settlers in east jerusalem in the west bank that even if an israeli government wanted to make peace and withdraw hundreds of thousands of settlers back to israel it looks almost impossible to do every year more and more settlers are becoming army officers policemen judges politicians the very people who will if the time comes have to supervise orchestrate and legitimize the withdrawal of settlers from their home and their lands the more settlers there are the harder it will be to do and it'll be harder for an israeli government to be elected who advocates a withdrawal turkeys do not vote for christmas as they say in britain so that's my conclusion it looks straightforward i think it's pretty obvious when you look at the maps that the two-state solution is disappearing the one-state solution is hardly going to be popular in israel and the support for israel is going downwards not upwards i think in the long term this leads tragically that israel is heading towards its own destruction and that's why i support this motion thank you very much um thank you very much william i should have explained that the reason i was tapping at my glasses i'm under strict instruction there's one thing i have to do tonight um apart from cleaning my teeth when i go to bed is and that's um to limit uh excellent speakers to 12 minutes and they get a two minute warning after 10 minutes so that's the gentle tap on the glass and then i get more vigorous after 12 minutes anyway our next speaker is danny dyan he's chairman of the yeshua council of jewish communities in judea and samaria previously he served on the steering committee that reconstituted the yeshua council after its failure to prevent the 2005 gaza disengagement and during his tenure as chairman appropriately enough a greater focus is being placed on what in hebrews called hasbera public diplomacy both in israel and overseas which is why happily danny is here danny thank you very much first of all i would like to apologize for my less than perfect english with the heavy argentinian accent when i came to heathrow yesterday the guy at the immigration told me what's the purpose of my visit pleasure or business i told him to give a lecture so he told me you can go in but you have to promise you won't talk about the falklands i suspect i am going to speak about a much more inflammatory issue than the falklands um i beg you to put aside all the stereotypes you may have and all the demonization you have been exposed to in the media and all the prejudices and think everything doubt everything i could choose the easy way to prove that the motion is wrong the easy way is that should it be right that israel is destroying it say itself with its settlements policy i would expect an over overwhelming support for settlements in arab countries but we don't of course but that's that is too easy look if it were right you can justify emotion like that on two grounds on the moral ground you could suggest that israel is eroding its moral standing and i hear that argument with its settlement policy or on strategic grounds israel is making itself more more vulnerable with its settlements policy but the fact is that neither of those two arguments is true i would like to start with the moral one because in my opinion is the more important in and that in which more disinformation and defamation is being spread the israeli-palestinian conflict the jewish palestinian conflict call it whatever way you like is a peculiar one you cannot compare it for instance with the israeli egyptian dispute the israeli-palestinian conflict is a conflict like not no other one in the world in the sense that there are two ethnic groups jews and palestinians that have their beliefs their historical narratives and i dare to say even if i'm criticized by some of my colleagues that both are sincere i'm not saying they're i i don't want to judge if they are right or wrong both are sincere i feel that zionism is the national liberation movement of the jewish people i am deeply touched by hebron in judea and by suffering in galilee in the preyna in the first one in the post-67 israel the first one in the pre-67 israel ii and mahmoud abbas is deeply touched by both by hebron advisor he too is deeply touched by both i see zionism as the national liberation movement of the jewish people and they see it sincerely as the 19th century colonialist and evil israel not the settlements because they consider themselves the natives and us the africanus that came to usurp that their land now how do you resolve such a dispute there is no other dispute like that in the world you could suggest that partition the so-called two states is the just solution maybe but what happens when one side accepts partition and we saw the maps that the partition proposed in 1947 with improbable borders for the jewish state and without jerusalem we and we we i i wasn't born that that time but we the jews went out to the squares of tel aviv and jerusalem and to dance to dance horror in the squares and they attacked us dead that very same night not in order to get a better partition in order to annihilate us until 1967 from 1947 to 1967 the arabs the palestinians had the opportunity to sign a peace treaty with israel along the green line but instead in 1964 they established the plo the palestine liberation organization to liberate tel aviv not to liberate hebron and then they attacked in order again to annihilate israel now i want you to listen very attentively to what i'm going to say now because in my subjective opinion it's sheer logic and ethics you cannot go to square one after such an act when you deny when you reject partition and attack the other side in order to take it all by force you lost the moral ground to demand partition by the way it was done again in the year two thousand when our prime minister heyud barak proposed partition in camp david to yahshua rafat with president bill clinton and kim david yasser arafat as the leader of the palestinians not only rejected it but three months later he launched the most vicious terrorist attack of the modern era the so-called second intifada so from a moral ground we came back to our land rightfully we were ready to relinquish the most sacred parts the most important parts of our patrimony of our national patrimony but going but the palestinians rejected it they could have a state they could part divide the land they decided that the rule of the game is by force and that we prevailed using the rules of the game they decided upon from a moral point of view our presence in judea and samaria and the so-called west bank erroneously called west bank is morally impeccable yes in a 100 year war we made mistakes and we made injustices yes of course you cannot make it you cannot in a 100 year so bloody conflict not make any injustice we did our share of injustices but in the moral balance between jews and palestinians we go we have the upper hand by far and we have a inalienable right to be and to live in judea and samaria now you could say okay it is just you have any you have a moral justification to live and to build houses and gardens and wineries in judea and samaria but it is not wise it's a stupid policy that will bring even if you you will die you will commit suicide with justice but no the contrary is the truth i heard mr zigart talking about the fair the the in what will happen if the two-state solution does not crystallize and this is the second preconception i beg you to free yourself off the two-state solution the two-states formula does not solve the conflict in the middle east on the contrary it will aggravate it i live in a small community in western samaria named maleshomron from my home in malaysia omron every morning i look at tel aviv as if it were in the palm of my hands the azrieli towers i see that the azrieli towers the icon the new icon of tel aviv are in its place in their place and then i'd go to work knowing that everything is okay in tel aviv the thought that if instead of my wife my daughter and myself in malaysia in that very same window an independent palestinian state will be looking and yearning for jaffa looking and yearning for the places that they consider their national patrimony from high above because in the map you also you don't see the the topography by the way much closer than the distance from heathrow to london much higher than hydro of course to london completely dominating the the landscape the thought that that will bring the palestinians to accept partition as a feta complete it will not tempt them to launch a new aggression to wipe out israel from the map is in the best case naive in the worst case i prefer not to characterize it without juden samaria without the high hills of judea and samaria an uninterrupted islamic fundamentalist territory that starts in kabul afghanistan and ends in tel aviv israel without any natural barrier exists only a a offense will will separate tel aviv from the ter from the islamic dominated territory that ends in kabul afghanistan that is suicide that is suicide now we did that experiment why should we guess we did that experiment in the summer in the infamous summer of 2005. i think it was albert einstein that once said that if you do the same experiment twice and expect different results then you are no scientist maybe he used the a more offending word offensive world the experiment was the withdrawal from gaza we evacuated every single jew from there civilian or military a de facto independent palestinian state was established in gaza and we all know the consequence the consequences that every single penny every single cent every single euro and dollar and pound that was contributed to the newly formed de facto independent state palestinian state in gaza was used to amass armaments against israel to form a new launching pad for an aggression against israel and not for highways not for schools not for hospitals not for universities the difference and this is my summing my concluding remark the difference is that israel can survive an iranian proxy state in gaza because the surround because the limit the the surrounding areas are not very densely populated of course it's not a good situation but because we can't somehow cope with it the same thing in judea and samaria and it will be inevitably the same thing inevitably by coup d'etat by gun or by ballot the hamas will take control of the new palestinian state will endanger the very physical existence of the status israel therefore the settlements do not endanger israel israel's existence but guarantee it thank you thank you very much danny uh next speaker is daniel levy levy i do beg his pardon i was i was so impressed with my pronunciation of hasbera just before with um danny diane that i decided to give you the full hebraic pronunciation daniel levy he's the director of the middle east and north africa program at the european council on foreign relations he's also the senior fellow at the new america foundation uh he's a member of the board of the new israel fund as well as a former advisor in the israeli prime minister's office and a member of the israeli team that was at one point negotiating with the palestinians daniel thank you [Applause] thank you very much tim and i'd like to thank the organizers of intelligence squared and everyone here for joining us tonight monty python's meaning of life a film it contains a scene there's an obese chap really a caricature of obesity mr creosote he walks into a restaurant apparently it's his regular local he orders everything on the menu and a jeroboam of champagne after all this the waiter offers him just one wafer thin mint to round off the meal he momentarily hesitates then mr creosolt consumes said mint he promptly explodes for me that is the danger that settlement overreach poses to israel eventually it will explode in our faces just one more waffer thin outpost just a little e1 i will now devote my remaining remarks to those of you not familiar with monty python's the meaning of life look there is a certain powerful logic to the idea that israel as we know it simply cannot coexist with the relentless continuation and expansion of settlements in contra mention of international law let's look at it like this imagine there's a triangle made up of three sides of the basic choices that israel faces one is a state with a jewish character drawn amongst other things from a clear majority of its citizenry being jewish the second outline is in israel that is democrat recognizably democratic observing democratic norms respecting democratic rights adhering to the international conventions it signed investing that democracy with meaning and the third is an israel that has all the territory the territory of the biblical home if you like the territory now under its control the territory across which settlements are spread as those previous maps showed but in fact israel can only have two sides of this triangle it can be democratic and jewish in character but not have all the territory or it can have all the territory and choose to give up either its democratic character or its jewish character for with the territory comes its inhabitants and they can either be accorded democratic rights or denied those rights it's a relatively simple equation i prefer to say it's irrefutable and send us all home early but let's dig a little deeper there are those who accept this basic premise who accept yes two states i'm not sure we'll hear that position tonight but you hear it often but they then say chill out about settlements the chill-out camp they're just not a big deal you exaggerate their significance they can always be removed there are bigger problems if you want to do two states what about the historical narratives what about rejectionism on both sides security really the settlements i would argue the opposite if you're arguing from a two-state perspective the single most prohibitive factor to achieving a two-state outcome i would say is the settlement enterprise the single biggest practical on the ground driving force toward the indivisibility of this land is the settlements even if the built up area of settlements takes up only a small area the truth is it's about one percent of the west bank but the area under settlement jurisdiction the municipal and regional settlement councils control the zoning and planning that's 42.8 percent of the west bank settlements help define palestinian access or actually lack of access to land to resources even to quarries and palestinian freedom of movement and this picture becomes even more stark if one factors in patterns of set patterns of settlement and land expropriation in palestinian east jerusalem making the viability of a future palestinian state all the more impossible and settlements define a cognitive map in people's minds encouraging the world and the palestinians to give up on a two-state outcome or at least consider it a vanishing prospect there is a variation on the chill-out crowd which is this that the two-state model is okay with settlements because it can accommodate any amount of settlement growth the palestinians can swallow any deal their territory can shrink to whatever enfeebled island it is willing to be offered whatever infringement on their resources and sovereignty let's not delude ourselves the palestinian leadership accepted the idea of a mini state on 22 of the land not the 43 percent of the partition plan if you want to go along with the idea of some element of victor's justice and rejectionists remorse i don't think there's much room for further retreat there is a point at which the aspiration for palestinian statehood under such limited circumstances becomes less attractive attractive to palestinians and the appeal of a one-state democracy carries the day this is true already for many palestinians and settlements bring that day closer for many more thanks very much tim what if no no i'm finished i'm going to use my 25 minutes now thanks a lot but you could say what if you look beyond the traditional two-state paradigm is that the only solution you can come up with not one where there's no israel but one maybe there's a confederation maybe something like belgium maybe something involving jordan i think it's clear that settlement policy reduced the reduces the prospects of all these alternatives why would a palestine that's part of a confederation or part of something to do with jordan be any more willing to base itself on atomized islands of land without resources surrounded and with security arrangements dictated only by one side you know there is a reason that two former israeli prime ministers and israel's i guess cultural icon amos oz have have spoken of an approaching reality of south african style of python but i as i said i'm not sure these are going to be the main arguments we're going to hear tonight so let's not make it easy on ourselves let's step out of this comfortable paradigm what if i am getting it all wrong what if like the toy store settlements are us there's no difference between pre-67 and post-67 one side of the green line and another side of the green line but far from destroying israel settlement policy simply encapsulates the very essence of what israel is after all ra matavir tel aviv university is built on the ruins of the palestinian village of sheikh munus and there's the list can go on i can certainly understand that from a palestinian's experience such distinctions might well appear to be rather arbitrary and not very relevant green line not green line and a palestinian might have rather less interest in whether israel is destroying itself or not as compared to say whether palestinian rights and freedoms are able to be exercised but we don't have palestinian speakers with us here today i can't be an advocate for palestinians william khan mrs diane and glick may enjoy settling palestinian land but i don't know if that makes them advocates for the palestinians i hope a future debate will invite palestinians but and there is of course such a perspective held in the israeli zionist discourse that israel equals settlements which could render our debate meaningless and i admit that to some such a definition of israel may sound more coherent more compelling even more honest but there's a problem here because that is not how israel has defined itself israel calls itself a democracy a jewish and democratic state it enshrined these principles in its declaration of independence it is a signatory to international charters that enshrines these principles the israel that has embedded itself in the community of nations and in the hearts and minds of jews and others across the world is the democratic israel that carries the legitimacy that is the israel that is also on the 67 lines been recognized by the plo itself so unless and until israel redefines itself let's say we call it the jewish empire of greater israel until then that is the standard against which one has to measure whether israel is destroying itself with settlements or not there is a democratic recession going on in israel i would argue that the settlements drive that democratic recession it's impossible to sustain a democracy on one side of a green line if you're managing a norton democracy on the other there could be an opening maybe this can just be a bi-national democracy it's the 21st century percentages of jews percentages of non-jews really this is what we have to bother ourselves with but again would that be called israel does it not answer the definition of this debate i want to finally say the following and i want to be careful not to turn the oive dial up too high but i think one can argue that settlement policy is a driving factor in israel endangering itself not just in the sense of defining what israel is but also in a very real physical sense that settlements constitute a high risk strategy for the security and well-being of israelis and israel that settlements are the greatest barrier between israel and pragmatic policies between israel and realistic policies especially in the reality we face today let's just look at it a new arab reality in which democratic enfranchisement has come to the fore a reality in which technological gaps including israel's qualitative military edge are narrowing over time a reality in which israel is so dependent on the us sorry and the pacific islands states in which palestinian non-violent civil disobedience gathers steam but also in which armed uprisings against depression have received regional and international support in syria libya and elsewhere and in which israel is losing its legitimacy and experiencing a brain drain at home in that reality are settlements not the greatest manifestation of overreach the reason why we have an israel without borders are settlements the way forward do they contribute to israeli security or do they threaten to push israel over the edge and is this our only future is it really a viable future to live by the sword in perpetuity i'll close by saying this i can see them there are some speech bubbles coming out of some people's heads naive naive naive the man's a defeatist if we ended the settlements with the arabs really except us they opposed us before 67 after 67 with them to live in peace to me that's the defeatism to believe that there is no better future are the palestinians uniquely intolerant uniquely impossible to make peace with are we uniquely destined to be enemies forever i'd argue that that view is a historical is a misreading of reality and it's a more than a little bit prejudiced unique permanent unreasonableness does not apply to palestinians or muslims it does not apply to jews or israelis if we remove the casa's belly the burning humiliation of today and tomorrow will everything still be dictated by the humiliations of yesterday and history both peoples can be forward-looking and to support this motion is to send a message that settlements are taking us to a point of no return not a smart strategy for israel's future thank you [Applause] thank you very much daniel um caroline glick is our final speaker she's a senior contributing editor at the jerusalem post newspaper she's director of the israel security project at the david horowitz freedom center and she's the senior adjunct fellow for middle eastern affairs at the center for security policy she's the author of one book shackled warrior israel and the global jihad she was also saying before we came in to this room this evening that she's taking a very precious day off writing her next book which is due at the publishers in march so i hope you will give her a sympathetic audience tonight caroline thank you very much thank you thanks it's really a pleasure to be here in london i think the last time i was here was in 95 and i think that daniel might have been my soldier then i can't remember but i i find i find the whole resolution rather curious i did just fly in here from israel where i live with my children and i i think that i'm pretty pro-israel but this resolution essentially tells me that in order to be pro-israel i have to support the establishment of a jew free state for the palestinians i have to say that i support the establishment of a state that is going to be that must be ethnically cleansed of all jews before the people who are supposed to have that state will agree to independence i find that crazy the presence of jews in judea and samaria the west bank of the jordan river has nothing to do with prospects for peace or lack of prospects for peace israel has two peace agreements with two neighboring arab states it's that have been respected the one with egypt for nearly 30 years one with jordan since uh it was signed in 1994. um and we signed six agreements with the palestinians with the plo all six of which they have been in material breach of uh since the very beginning but none of those agreements that we signed with the plo nor the agreements that we signed with the jordanians or the egyptians war impacted one iota by the presence of jewish communities beyond israel's 1949 armistice lines not one of them was contingent on the absence of those communities and nobody made that a condition for negotiating with the jewish state or for recognizing it um so if you think that throwing 500 000 jews 350 000 jews 650 000 jews 720 000 jews out of their homes and their communities is the magic bullet through which we are going to achieve peace with the palestinian arabs um you're living in fantasyland this has not been the case in the past it has not been the case with our arab neighbors it has not been the case with our palestinian neighbors and there is no reason to to accept the view that it is the case today the other argument that we've heard today is that if jews keep living and building in jewish in in judea and samaria we're going to end up with a one-state solution in which jews are a minority so let's think about this for a second you're saying that by keeping jews in judea and samaria and in jerusalem that somehow or another the palestinians are going to inc and the israeli arabs within the 1949's armistice lines are somehow going to magically bridge the 3 million person gap between the 6.1 million jews and the 3 million arabs inside of 1949 armistice lines israel and judea and samaria you don't know how to count you don't know how to count were israel to absorb judah and samaria tomorrow and offer citizenship to all of its arab residents israel would still have a two-thirds jewish majority so the very notion that there is a demographic time bomb on israel's hands is simply untrue the central bureau of statistics of israel came out yesterday with its latest data they found that there is convergence between jewish birth rates and arab birth rates and the jewish birth rates are trending upwards and have been since 1995 and the era of birth rates are trending downwards and have since 2000. in fact this is not just among the palestinians or among the israeli arabs this is throughout the arab world there is a collapse in the muslim world infertility rights and there is a massive increase in jewish fertility rights israel has three children per woman among jews and it has 3.5 children per woman among muslims inside a pre-1949 armistice lines israel and 3.2 children per woman in judea and samaria among the arab population in the area so that the whole trend of the demographic model is completely the opposite of what all of these uh experts on israel's demographic dire circumstances would have us all believe it's simply a matter of not counting properly now the truth of the matter is none of this is important because the whole issue of whether or not the settlements in judea and samaria are somehow or another going to destroy israel or not is not about demography and it's not about peace it's about civil rights it's about jewish civil rights what they are saying essentially is that jews should not be allowed to live there just because they're jews now why should jews be allowed to live in london live in germany live in san francisco but not be allowed to live in judea why and in jerusalem where does this come from they want to talk so much about palestinian rights let's talk about jewish rights for a second you're saying that you so support a palestinian state that is going to be inherently bigoted and that jews aren't allowed to even live there that they have to all be ethnically cleansed first before these people can even deign to accept sovereignty what kind of state do you want to establish what kind of nonsense is this is a racket this is a racket jews don't have civil rights we're not allowed to live wherever we have property rights to build just because we're jewish and this is a moral argument this is a reasonable argument this is establishing what exactly a state based upon ethnic purity this is where we've come to in 2013 in the western world where are the liberal values that are being advanced by this cause of a jew free palestine somebody can explain this one to me because i don't understand it i don't understand it i don't understand i went to columbia i went to harvard i just can't get it and let me just say one more thing about that i can talk from now i've heard illegal palestinian land all of this i'm not going to have a discussion here about sovereignty i talk about that in my book it's out it's going to be coming out hopefully at the end of the year random house you can all look for it and buy multiple copies but if we want to we can talk about israel's national rights and our legal rights to these areas they are very strong and in fact they're incontrovertible in under international law but we're talking about civil rights we're talking about civil rights and it's not simply that it's morally repugnant to tell jews that we're not allowed to live anywhere we want to and buy property anywhere that will be sold it it's also true that this is a failed proposition it's been tried twice and it's failed twice the british tried it you tried it in 1939 and in 1940 with the white paper and the subsequent acts of parliament that denied jews the right to buy land in the vast majority of the palestinian mandate that the british government was legally bound by the mandate of the league of nations to allow close jewish settlement of throughout you abrogated that right in material breach of the mandate of the league of nations in 1939 and 1940 and how did that work out it was done at the time in may 1939 in order to appease the palestinian arabs who at that point were allied with the nazis and were conducting a terrorist war not only against the jews of the palestine mandate but against the british mandatory authorities and in an attempt to appease hajime hussaini who by that time was in baghdad stirring up an uh pro-nazi uh coup d'etat that took place in 1941 the british said that the jews have no national rights and we actually didn't mean that we supported the establishment of a jewish state when we said we did in 1917 in the balfour declaration whoops and you know what happened you know what happened there was a pro-nazi coup in iraq and britain that was pinned down in libya had to go and invade iraq in order to take it down and then they had to invade iran because in iran you had preachers in the mosque saying hey hitler is the second coming of muhammad and that's what they did and this is what they got for appeasement they got king farouk in egypt supporting the nazis they got the iraqis supporting the nazis they got a nazi party in syria it didn't work and by the way they did it at the time that what they abrogated jewish civil rights in the middle of the holocaust morally repugnant and strategically ridiculous it didn't work we tried it again as danny said in 2005 and what did we get 8 000 jews thrown out of their homes 24 communities in gaza raised to the ground and transferred to the palestinians what did we get we got hamas in charge it wasn't just an abrogation of jewish civil rights it ended up becoming an abrogation of palestinian civil rights just ask the christians in gaza just last month they went to bethlehem for the christ for the christmas celebrations and they came to israel and they said don't make us go home can we please have asylum here can we save us pretty soon just weeks from now there's not going to be any more ancient christian community in gaza but whose civil rights are being impacted here not just ours not just the jews but the arabs as well the women in gaza who are now being increasingly intimidated so you have to run around wearing a big hat over your head or how about those summer camps that are being firebombed by hamas because they have girls and boys together whose civil rights are advanced by the expropriation illegally of land from jews in the transfer of the palestinians nobody nobody i tell you what this is what we're talking about here you want to know what we're really talking about here when we talk about throwing all these jews off the lands that we bought that belong to us we are talking about trying to find common ground with terrorist organizations that are mandated to enact a genocide of the jewish people just read the hamas covenant just see what they say they call not for only the annihilation the obliteration in their words of the jewish state but they call for the genocide of world jewry and to try to find common ground with these murderers or with holocaust deniers like plo chief mahmoud abbas we have people like danny levy and mr seahart saying what oh what we can agree that there's a subset of jews that we also dislike right let's call them the settlers and say that they're destroying all prospects for peace not hamas not fatah that are throwing missiles at the homes of now 3.5 million jews are in their range from gaza no no no no no it's because jews are have the temerity to build on land that they own that's the problem we can sit down and talk to hamas because we like them hate jews now we don't hate all jews but a subset and we're going to blame everything all the pathologies of the arab world all the pathologies the palestinians on them it's their fault they're going to block peace not true again to return to the beginning at the end of my remarks israel has two peace treaties one with jordan one with egypt that are just fine thank you very much for asking and they were signed sealed and delivered and maintained while israel was expanding the jewish presence in judea and sumerian gaza we signed six agreements with the plo again none of which they've maintained or adhered to but they were all signed while we were building in judean samaria how is it that suddenly this is the obstacle to peace because you can now find common ground when you all want to delegitimize israel oh we can all agree that we hate these specific jews and they should all be thrown out of their houses this is a moral atrocity it is morally reprehensible it is strategically idiotic and this resolution should be opposed by all of you unanimously thank you very much [Music] thank you very much caroline and uh thank you to all of you for listening to the speakers in uh silence and for the most part and uh except when you laughed when you were supposed to and and also i got a sense that you were all concentrating as i was concentrating very very closely on what they had to say um it's my uh task now before i throw uh this open to the floor to tell you what the result of the pre-debate poll was i'm told that there's always a lot of don't knows um in these debates i said i was rather skeptical that in this debate there were going to be a lot of don't knows but there were a fair number anyway the number this was before the speakers began talking was uh 343 for the motion 97 against 192 don't know so uh in order to try and further uh exploration of the issues i we're gonna have a question and answer session um for those of you who've seen me do this sort of gig before you'll know that the tired joke that's about to roll over the horizon and i apologize but especially when it comes to discussing israel it tends to be an answer and answer session rather than a question and answer session just for the sake of brevity and sanity and to allow as many people as possible to get their questions in please try and restrain yourself and have a question at least a question mark at the end upwards intonation helps um if you put up your hands i will try and get around as many as possible please wait for the microphone and what we'll do is we'll take take them in uh clumps of two or three and then ask the panel for their thoughts so first of all there's a there's a very well illuminated hand actually behind you um the lady in the glasses thank you very much for the presentations i think that every site has got a valid points what bothers me is i am not for the settlements i feel that i don't understand with modern central statistics there are more arabs living in the galilee than jews the negev is very sparsely populated why don't the settlers live there and strengthen israel and from the moral point of view i am a bit baffled that israel wants the un to do justice but there seems to be one moral law for israel and one for other people because when it doesn't suit israel it does other things so it's a bit of a pity and i think thank you where's the other microphone on oh excellent there it is thank you speak can i ask for clarification the term is always used that the israelis are expropriating land in the west bank for settlements the last speaker spoke about land that was owned by the settlers that the settlers had bought i think that's quite an important point and i'd be grateful for clarification of whether the land is always purchased from the palestinians as opposed to expropriated excellent um let's see if the microphone is now working jews live in england and they abide by english laws jews living in the occupied territories abide by which law okay well i'll i'll repeat the questions um so um let me i'll i'll ask sort of one of you from from both sides you can decide among yourselves the the the questions were um why don't settlers go to the inside the green lines uh and strengthen israel uh the the state of israel within the uh green lines what is it with this land that's been bought by the settlers appropriated by the settlers what's the status of settlement land and why don't jews in the settlements abide by israeli law what law no no no that's not the question the question is what law should they abide by that was the question if i'm doing you justice thank you i'll um i'll go and get my coat and i'll um no no it's fine he's never forgiven me for mispronouncing his surname um caroline and danny those are quite the factual questions so they have three very short factual answers the first one regarding the galilee and the negev is that we do second and third generation so-called settlers from judea and samaria now establish communities both in the negev and in the galilee with our support and our encouragement so you know i i uh for a long time have got to the conclusion that the persons that take upon themselves zionist causes and uh and what in hebrew we call it yashvut to to to populate the distant areas of the country they do it everywhere and those that prefer the easy life in tel aviv do not not don't from the galilee are not in the negative and not in judea and samaria the second factual question from above i think was about the status of the land uh well someone i think i think it was daniel that recalled us of the fact that tel aviv university in ramadave is an under built on the ruins of an arab village of muniz so please rest rest assured that no settlement is on the ruins of of any arab village more than that no arab was evacuated from his home in order to build a settlement uh well that is a fact you can laugh as long as you can i know now daniel will say hebron and hebron is the exception that proves the rule uh uh um you can laugh as long as you know as but i i challenge you to show me one case in which an arab a palestinian was evicted from his home in judea and samaria in order in order to establish there in order to establish there will be a chance for people to intervene for the floor again but danny danny move on to the because we want to get other questions this is a fact movie move on to the last question which is and moreover since 1979 the ruling by the supreme court of justice of israel even no expropriation with monetary compensation is allowed on on in non-inhabited land in order to establish a settlement now if you do not accept the facts then it's very difficult to to to make an intelligent uh an intelligent discussion here the third one was which law we abide of course we have by the law of israel thank you very much is it going to be yeah yeah no really i don't think supporting this motion is about poking israel in the eye or how terrible israel is or even about demonizing settlers i'm going to interrupt you because it sounds almost like a summing up speech can you answer those three specific questions you can have your own arguments but you can't have your own facts and and the entire basis i mean but but but literally we could we could open the equivalent of a swear box on the exit from this hall and i just think from the combined people in this audience we could collect a hundred factually accurate rebuttals of what we've heard today and sadly tens of examples of palestinian private land and palestinian dispossession but you know i've said i've said you know i have said from the beginning we've i've said from the beginning no one on this panel is a palestinian hey could you give one you know you know the danny a liar i would like him to give one example of a lie i think it's fair okay but we'll we'll try and take it in turns to speak there is there is not there is not one palestinian on this panel there's also no one on this panel who was born in israel sorry so no one on this there are three people on this panel who have veiled themselves of the opportunity that the law of return provides to every jew around the world to move to israel i really hope that in the future there will be a debate where a palestinian a variety of palestinian perspectives can be heard but i'm not the person to provide a palestinian perspective i can correct some of your mistakes i can explain that and then you know this well that when negotiations have been serious the uh the palestinians have been willing to look at land swaps to look at land i just answered the questions you are running away to to to a completely different topic blaming me or not telling the truth without is is there expropriation okay let me no but it's just there's so much factual inaccuracy that has been shared in the name of one arab that was evicted from his home and today the name of one arab i don't carry around though i don't care i don't carry around danny we i i just want to to ask uh let me let me just put one question to you uh daniel the the one about uh which law is being uh respected here uh it's a very interesting question it's a very interesting question because the point put by danny the only way is israeli law which is being respected well it's not of course because israeli law has not been extended to the occupied territories because the occupied territories have not been annexed to israel what you have is that jerusalem has been annexed to israel something not recognized anywhere else in the world the west bank is administered de facto as an occupied territory by israel israel has not taken upon itself that de jure but in practice what you have is a hodgepodge of legislations there where the israeli military is sometimes making up the rules sometimes it's drawn from jordanian law sometimes ottoman law sometimes israeli law and almost always whatever most suits israel and sadly increasingly the case of the settlers but not always because that's where the supreme court in israel sometimes intervenes and says wait a minute this land has been expropriated from private palestinian ownership this land you can't build on but then the government has refused to implement the supreme court rulings which is why one of the things to look at and worry about next week in the israeli election supreme court was not honorable how long did it take is it still the home's there the home is still there the homestead supreme court and hold on i'm sorry look i i i i talked earlier about trolls of the game i expect i expect no no i'm sorry i expect british rules of the game british gold rules of the game are not whole organic rules of games i mean i expect to to honor the truth you are spreading life here okay well you'll be able to sorry no no sorry both of you sorry no no daniel really because we'll be able to um we'll be able to deal with some of this in the summing up speeches but i i did say that this was a question and answer session is the microphone over there now working it is hooray the very patient man who um has been trying to speak to us all evening i propose to you that um israel is not a democracy it is a ethnocracy because only one race has rights in israel and the law of return you know only grants the rights to people with jewish blood going back going to israel who have never been there and building on palestinian land and it doesn't right give any rights to the palestinians to even uh uh have extensions to their homes or it denies unbelievable things is there is there a question which do well basically it is and it's not an ethnicity not a democracy okay thank you okay um we have somebody up on the gallery um the most interesting point of her this evening is the um the argument about israel being a democracy which in principle i think we um most agree with and the comparison with the south uh south africa during apartheid now um if i may make another comparison it's a question for the panelists against the motion um i was wondering if you see any comparisons with what israel is currently doing to the palestinians with what the nazis did to the jews and specifically and uh one more down here um we've got a question at the back excuse me i haven't finished a question excuse me i wanted to i wanted to qualify my my quest it wasn't a statement it was a question understood uh but we've we've heard it thank you no no i wanted sorry i wanted to qualify it i just wanted to say it wasn't to be polemic about the holocaust it took two aspects of my comparison one is the fact that the nazis also got voted in democratically just as much as the israeli right-wing governments get voted in second all the nazi ideology was founded on fear of the jews just as much as the arguments i've heard tonight about the survival of israel based on fear of the arabs attacking okay thank you we will no we thank you very much we've we've got the tenor of your point thank you you sir i find in these difficult issues that historical context is often very helpful a question for each of the panelists which of you has read edward saeed's book question of palestine right um let's um i'm glad that it was the panelists rather than the um chairman there so i i don't have to display migrants um let's hear from um perhaps william and caroline this time briefly um is israel a democracy or not are there any useful comparisons to be drawn uh not just with south africa but with the nazis and have any of you read edward saeed well the answer to the last question is yes the answer to the first quest two questions is more complex is israel a democracy i suppose a simple answer to that question from my perspective is which israel and israel on 1967 borders or in israel that as we saw on the map covers the whole of the west bank and control of gaza if um if israel is the latter it's hard to see it as a democracy because palestinians don't get to have the vote in israeli elections now you might argue and say well israelis don't get to vote in palestinian elections but as we know palestinians when they have elections their governments don't tend to be recognized the second question was the parallel with the nazis and uh i think the parallel you were using i hope was nothing to do with the holocaust it was to do with fear and all those kinds of things i'm always very very uncomfortable with anyone making any analogies to the holocaust and the nazis i think it's deeply inappropriate and i don't like to make these kind of historical connections i hope i've answered your questions you have with admiral brevity caroline so regarding uh edward saeed i didn't read his book but i did heckle him in 1990. um as for um as for the issue of uh was it uh israel and nazis oh shame on you shame on you shame on you let me just give you a little historical background which you may or may not know and actually i don't really care what you think but uh just so people know there was the founder of the palestinian nation was a guy named hajime hussaini he was the mufti of jerusalem that the british appointed in 1920 and he was a nazi agent and among other things that he did he established in 1940 the hanzhar ss division of bosnian muslims and among other things that the hanzhar division did was they liquidated the bosnian jewish community or 90 of it they killed 12 600 jews out of 14 000 jews in bosnia um this was a man as well who uh intervened with himmler and with eichmann to prevent a prisoner swap of 4 000 jewish children uh in in and yes so basically hajime hosseini was a nazi war criminal not that you care about this but it's interesting that just last week mahmoud abbas who is the moderate plo chief and palestinian authority leader hailed hajimina hosseini as the hero of the palestinian people in a speech in ramallah okay so you know i think that when you're making when you're making a comparison excuse me when you're making a comparison we need to get more questions people the people the victims of the nazis and their palestinian agents and their palestinian apologists including including mahmoud abbas who wrote a phd thesis for the oriental mu university in in moscow denying the holocaust and claiming that it was a joint plot of the zionists and the germans and you compare us to them the perpetrators the people who now they want to commit genocide against just read hamas charter you have some serious moral issues that you need to deal with yourself okay caroline thank you very much indeed can we just get one final brief group of questions and then we'll take the uh the final vote um the gentleman in the uh glasses just here in the middle william and daniel are very disingenuous in that they choose selectively to show maps of the of israel as it currently is it's it currently occupies 16 of the mandate for palestine 77 of which was given away by the british totally in contravention of the agreement the agreement still stands because under article 80 of the un all agreements adopted by the league of nations are still excellent so you're actually completely wrong why is it that as caroline alluded to it's okay for jews to be shipped out wholesale from wherever they happen to be from iraq from egypt from syria from lebanon how many jews are there now and yet transfer all and from judea and samaria it's okay to transfer a wholesale half a million people but god forbid there should be ev ever any movement of any other people's okay you know at the end of the hang on at the end of the second world war the end of the second world war germany lost i think we've i think we've got to the point of question thank you very much indeed uh we've got um somebody with a sort of blue sleeve here green um i'm a little shocked by some of the comments from caroline in particular um i just i will ask a question just for a bit i haven't heard anyone suggesting that all jews need to be removed there is a difference and i between jewish people living a place and what settlements represent in terms of um the control of the land the control of movement in terms of the expropriation of resources when i've stood on a hilltop and watched um palestinian water systems being destroyed okay do you have a question yes i do have a question my question is if it's all right for settlements in their current form i don't mean for jewish people to live in the west bank but if in their current form you think that it's all right for settlements to remain and expand and develop what is your proposal for the palestinian people who are living in area c and areas a and b we haven't talked about oslo whole other debate but in the whole of the west bank what are you proposing actually happens to them thank you very much and uh let's have a final question from the balcony i'm gonna try and be brief at the beginning of the debate i was asked to empty my mind of any preconceptions i tried to do that and as someone who is not jewish or palestinian and may have some idea about the conflicts and the problems that go on there what am i supposed to take away from this debate because i have to say franklin i'm a bit confused and i'm i'm actually i feel like i've been bludgeoned over the head because i'm not intelligent enough to understand some of the points here and i just i actually came here to learn but what do you want me to take away from here this that's an excellent question thank you okay i'm going to plead for concision um and also for us not to raise our voices but the the three questions were um why is it not okay for jews apparently to live in certain places um what will be the long-term future for palestinians if settlements stay in place and why is it i if i can just paraphrase your very heartfelt question why is it so often that when it comes to discussing israel the blood boils well it's a very um interesting array of questions and uh i can't answer the last one tim um but i think that the ladies question from the balcony is perhaps the most salient and the most important and i i speak as i say as a as a brit and as a non-jew and therefore to some extent i'm i'm i come from her state of mind or i did 10 years ago when i first got involved in this conflict and i can tell you that i have the most extraordinary privilege of anybody in this room which is i get to meet the leadership of everybody on all sides and they're not many people who are allowed to do that and the one thing i can tell you is that if the palestinian leadership were offered a two-state solution based on 1967 borders probably with some land swaps they would bite your arm off it's as simple as that that i am lucky and privileged enough to have discovered for myself it is very hard in a very shouty noisy both debate here but internationally to get people quite to understand that uh the um so that i i hope is a sort of a point of information but to the lady up there who wanted to know what to take out of this and i think that um those blue points on the map i showed you earlier along are getting in the way of that thank you very much indeed uh danny i want to ask you um what is the long-term future for palestinians if settlements not just continue but continue to expand okay first of all i apologize if in some instances i lost my temper and broke the rules of the debate i think that what makes me my blood boil is not the issue of israel but the inaccuracies of fallacies but i should have shown more restraint now and of course again i must say the the the outrageous comparison to the nazis that i i am quite surprised at stay calm by the way prime minister david cameron was also elected in democratic elections and sometimes he spread fears of the eu does it make him a nazi i doubt it um danny what is the that's it it was as absurd as that what is the long-term future for palestinians now i will answer that look you can be happy or frustrated by it but it is still a fact there is no point that reconciles the minimal requirements of israel and the minimal requirements of the palestinians how do i know it because prime minister olmert gave the more most far-reaching offer that he the any prime israeli prime minister can give to mr mahmoud abbas by the way the u.s secretary of state condoleezza rice writes in her memoirs that she couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the offer and abbas rejected it so for the don't go backwards no no no no i go forward so we have to understand that for the time being we have to improve the situation on the ground vis-a-vis human rights vis-a-vis freedom of movements vis-a-vis the fact that my daughter shouldn't be shouldn't have to go to school in a bulletproof bus and no palestinian child should be threatened the same way on the long term and now i go into speculation my i i suppose that the solution of the conflict will be peculiar as the conflict itself um i suppose that it will be original one i suppose that someday it may be tomorrow or maybe in 50 years there is going to be an inevitable change of regime in jordan because monarchies monarch is not like your monarchy monarchy in which the monarch actually rules are a primitive way of government there are going to be two nation states a jewish israel and the palestinian east of the jordan with joint responsibility and joint control of judea and samaria jews will jews will be ruled by israel and have israeli citizenship palestinians will have will be ruled by the palestinian state i suppose the last estas remark this may be a pattern of government that doesn't have yet a name in international relations in political science but if you confine yourself to conventional forms of solving conflicts and governing people you will never solve this conflict danny thank you very much indeed um uh daniel wants to say something very very very brief i mean my my takeaway and it was predicted by important israeli leaders at the time in 67 is that occupying another people for 40 plus years has a terribly morally corrosive effect on the occupier of course it's it's not a picnic for the occupied but but i do think that that has come out this evening that that the need to justify the unjustifiable the need to do those somersaults in the air when one doesn't have a grounding in being able to justify something it has an effect and it's a tragedy of israeli society today that i hope we can still turn around and that i hope this isn't the direction we're going in okay um one sentence i actually like i mentioned i'm writing a book now um and it's called the israeli solution and my solution is simply to allow the palestinians to apply for israeli citizenship i don't see any reason why that shouldn't just be the long-term future that this will be one state and the palestinians will have the right to be israelis just like everybody else thank you listen we're now um going to ask you to we're now going to ask you we're not going to ask you i'm sorry but we're running out of time we will be kicked out of here we're not going to ask you to cast your votes um while you are casting your votes um we're also going to have very brief summing up speeches um really rigidly two minutes um from each of you and we're going to be taking it in uh the reverse order if i'd be very grateful if you could just be quiet for the summing up speeches which we will take in reverse order so we will begin for two minutes and i when i start sort of hammering on my glasses the two minutes will be up uh with caroline caroline glick please thank you very much thank you very much and just keep going ahead with your voting i just want to say one thing you know danny mentioned that zionism is a jewish national liberation movement and it is and um it is based upon the proposition that the jewish people have rights we have right to determine our own lives we have a right to sovereignty in our land this like this right was was recognized under international law that recognition has never been abrogated as the young man said in the uh in one of the later questions this evening and really what we're talking about here i think in this whole idea of whether israel has a right to assert its rights or not is whether or not jewish rights are conditional on other people's approval of them and so i'm here to tell you that they're not they're not conditional on anybody else giving us approval for our right to determine our own existence as jews in our land and israel is democracy it's the only democracy in the middle east and our people will continue to determine our future as a people in our land and we hope very much that you will support that but if you don't support that that's okay that's all right that's just fine with us because the whole point of having a jewish national home and of having a jewish state in israel is for us to be able to determine our faith regardless of what others think because for two thousand years as an exiled community and dispersed throughout the world we didn't have that we didn't have that and we lived at the mercy of others and at their pleasure and that's over it's done it's done thank you very much caroline thank you daniel two minutes to to singularly say we have rights others don't it's at the expense of others only we have national self-determination not the palestinians but but the idea that we can dwell alone as a nation in the modern world the idea that all of us can live unconditionally there's a we enter into social contracts every second of the day when i cross a road because it's green i'm in a social contract with a driver who's not going to run me over to think that israel can exist outside of the real world ignoring the fact that all this great independence that we've just heard asserted is only made possible by the support of the united states which is going to which is going to which is going to turn on us with those kinds of opinions look you could say we had nothing we got balfour we got half of it in the partition plan a bit more then we got 78 and now we've got 100 we can keep it all i think it's a misreading of israeli and regional and global realities what worries me is that rather than the people with those opinions winning an election and implementing those ideas and discovering rather quickly that they can't work and allowing us to move on that we're going to continue to play a game where drip drip drip we move in that direction without ever ever stepping back and asking ourselves how does this end well what is the strategic objective where are we going that's why i've spoken in favor of this motion tonight [Applause] well the difference between daniel's words right now and mine is only one that he presents us with a new topic with an utopic a portrait of reality and i'm looking at reality as it is the fact is that the palestinian state does not does not exist even today because of the moral and the political decisions made by the palestinians themselves it's not history it's as close as 2008 is as close as 2010. i was in washington in 2010 when prime minister netanyahu chairman abbas and president obama started the negotiations a month later chairman abbas found the pretext to leave the negotiating table now how can you make do an agree reach an agreement under those circumstances the i beg you to see the situation as it is do you know who was the american president that made the most damage in the middle east the american president with the best intentions bill clinton bill clinton assumed power in 2000 in 2000 in 1993 with the stable middle east he thought had this kind of romantic vision of what can be achieved in the middle east went to gaza convened the can david the summit propose the palestinian state raised expectations and arafat the result was that yasser arafat made he the end of his administration the most chaotic middle east that ever existed that is an example of how misunderstanding the situation in the middle east with very liberal views and very i am am i liberal too by the way i i i refused to visit south africa until the apartheid regime was toppled okay yes that's a fact we'll have to leave it there in order to be fair william two minutes thank you very much more and more israelis are against making peace because it's no longer in their economic or political interest to do so already the leader of jewish home naftali bennett likely to be the second or third largest party after the election has said that there could never be a palestinian state and he wouldn't ever countenance forcing a settler out of his home where's his taking israel well you've heard you can sense it and the truth is that if the two-state solution a state of palestine alongside a state of israel does not appear or can no longer practically appear because of the facts on the ground there will be irresistible pressure from the international community for israel to accept as the south africans had to that the state of israel will have to become a bi-national state that includes all the palestinians with equal rights and in a democracy that puts the jewish population into a minority and means the end of the zionist dream and even if a future israeli government decided to surprise the world and make a dash for a palestinian state on borders that the palestinians could accept could that government organize the necessary concessions from an israeli public and system of governance that increasingly is made up of senior settlements each announcement of further settlement approvals by an israeli government removes any remaining doubts amongst the international community about israel's genuine intentions towards peace or of their intentions to the palestinians some trapped in gaza and others in that archipelago of islands i showed you on the map in the west bank that will have enormous ramifications for israel's future that is the conclusion of none other than shimon peres the president of israel only a few days ago it's also mine thank you very much thank you very much uh william uh you actually had 3.1 seconds to spare um uh i should say that um in uh wrapping up the question and answer session i was guilty of yet another filthy lie by a journalist about the middle east in that i said that the reason we had to wrap it up was because we were going to get kicked out of here actually that's not entirely true um we do have to wrap up the debate and i'm now filling for time before i get the uh results of the vote but in fact there is a paying bar here until quarter past nine and in um uh proper journalistic fashion i'm encouraging you all to go to the bar and spend your pennies uh the other thing that i would um say as well is um yes there are books to be uh had there including um many of williams um that um uh the organizers of this debate have asked me just to to say that they deliberately did not ask palestinians onto the panel because they wanted it to be a debate uh israelis and jews and those interested in israel about israel so that was the point and that has brought me to the um to the golden globe moment um where i um tell you the result of the debate but before i do that thank you all very much for your patience and your attention and your thoughtfulness just actually to turn out on a cold weekday evening to hear all this in the end after listening to the speakers for the motion israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy 517 against 99 undecided after all that 31. so thank you to you thank you also very much to intelligence squared for another very intelligent debate safe journey home you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 324,735

Rating: 4.2913303 out of 5

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, Debate, great oratory, Intelligence Squared debate, speech, top debates, best debates, most interesting debates, educational debates, intelligence2, intelligencesquared, is debate, iq2, iq2 debate, iq squared, Israel, Palestine, Two State Solution, one state, israel settlement policy, west bank, daniel levy, william sieghart, dani dayan, caroline glick, israeli settlements, Hezbollah, Hamas, etabedlearsi

Id: 6Rk60vNUJ9Y

Length: 105min 37sec (6337 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/scisslizz]

They make it sound like a bad thing because only Arabs can get away with dancing on Jews' graves-- everyone else still needs to maintain a veneer of civility with their crocodile tears.

[u/mikeber55]

(Disclaimer: the following fact is unrelated to what Arabs do or say): The entire planet earth plus 60% of Israeli citizens plus 80% of world Jews oppose Jewish settlements in West Bank. No nation (including Israel's allies) supports it. Nobody. I'll stand corrected if anyone can bring contradictory facts. (Please, no more Mufti Hag Amin al Husseini comments. These are irrelevant).

[u/JudahZion]

The Settlement policy isn't the problem. The problem is giving into the Arab Muslims narrative without applying any logic at all.

[u/[deleted]]

BBC moderator, I'm sure this was totally fair /s