- Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart discuss the Israel-Gaza conflict
- Listeners requested an explanation from Rory Stewart
- Stewart provides a brief history of Israel, including displacement of Jews by Romans, formation of Jewish communities in various countries, Zionist movement, British support, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948
- He mentions the displacement of Arab-Palestinian communities during this process
- Stewart discusses the 1967 war, the division of territories, the emergence of Palestinian authorities, the presence of Israeli settlers, the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in 2004-2005, the rise of Hamas in Gaza, and conflicts between Israel and Palestinian groups
- He also mentions recent internal Israeli issues and the relative peace in the region before the recent attacks.

- The Palestinian perspective is that Gaza is a prison camp with limited resources and an Israeli occupation that denies them full civil and democratic rights.
- The Israeli perspective is that they face serious enemies, including Hamas, and have been marginalized and unfairly attacked at international forums.
- The recent attacks by Hamas involved rockets, military targets, and a violent attack on a festival crowd, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
- Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by some countries but not by others.
- There is widespread condemnation of the attacks and support for Israel's right to defend itself.
- There are concerns about Israel potentially launching a ground offensive in densely populated Gaza.
- Jews around the world are feeling fear and anxiety about the situation.

- Jewish people around the world are feeling fear and anxiety due to the ongoing conflict in Israel.
- Hamas, an Islamist organization, emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood and has conservative social codes.
- Israel controls most of the border crossings, air access, sea access, and utilities in Gaza.
- Gaza's economy collapsed due to blockades and relies on support from Turkey, Qatar, and Iran.
- Israel cannot reoccupy Gaza due to the densely populated area, but pressure will be put on countries to cease support for Gaza.
- The two-state solution and focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict have diminished over time.
- Internal Israeli politics may be affected, with tensions between those advocating for tougher measures and those pushing for peace.
- Internationally, Iran's association with Hamas may lead to retaliatory actions, and the attack could disrupt talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
- There is criticism of Netanyahu's government in Israeli newspapers, and there needs to be a return to a political process to address the ongoing conflict.

- The speaker discusses the difficulty of finding a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, comparing it to the troubles in Northern Ireland.
- They mention the deep anti-Semitic rhetoric and hate speech coming from Hamas, making it hard for Israelis to imagine any kind of conversation with them.
- The speaker believes that a two-state solution is still possible, despite the current challenges.
- They question whether Hamas is trying to be considered a player in finding a resolution or if they are too hardline for a peaceful end.
- The speaker acknowledges that Hamas has both extreme terrorists and individuals seeking a political settlement within its ranks.
- The standoff between the two sides is due to their irreconcilable visions of the conflict, particularly regarding the 1967 borders.
- The speaker expresses the need for a serious, grown-up political process involving major world powers to establish coexistence.
- They highlight the polarization of the debate and call for a more nuanced approach to finding a solution.

- Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart discuss the Israel-Gaza conflict
- Stewart provides a brief history of Israel and mentions the displacement of Arab-Palestinian communities
- Stewart discusses the 1967 war, the emergence of Palestinian authorities, the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, and conflicts between Israel and Palestinian groups
- The Palestinian perspective is that Gaza is a prison camp with limited resources and an Israeli occupation
- The Israeli perspective is that they face serious enemies, including Hamas, and have been unfairly attacked at international forums
- Recent attacks by Hamas involved rockets, military targets, and a violent attack on a festival crowd
- Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by some countries
- There is widespread condemnation of the attacks and support for Israel's right to defend itself
- Concerns about Israel potentially launching a ground offensive in densely populated Gaza
- Jews around the world are feeling fear and anxiety about the situation
- Hamas emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood and has conservative social codes
- Israel controls most of the border crossings, air access, sea access, and utilities in Gaza
- Gaza's economy collapsed due to blockades and relies on support from Turkey, Qatar, and Iran
- The two-state solution and focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict have diminished over time
- Internal Israeli politics may be affected, with tensions between those advocating for tougher measures and those pushing for peace
- Internationally, Iran's association with Hamas may lead to retaliatory actions and disrupt talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel
- Criticism of Netanyahu's government in Israeli newspapers and the need for a return to a political process
- Difficulty in finding a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, comparing it to the troubles in Northern Ireland
- The speaker believes a two-state solution is still possible, despite the current challenges
- Questioning whether Hamas is seeking a peaceful resolution or too hardline
- The standoff between the two sides is due to their irreconcilable visions of the conflict
- The need for a serious, grown-up political process involving major world powers and a more nuanced approach to finding a solution.

How did Hamas launch one of the largest invasions on Israeli territory in recent history? What happens now? Will this conflict have geo-political ramifications throughout the Middle East?

Join Rory and Alastair for this emergency episode of The Rest Is Politics.

The CNN interview Rory mentions was with Palestinian National Initiative leader Mustafa Barghouti.

Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me Alistair Campbell.

Rory we've been trying for a couple of days now to get together and do something on what's been happening in Israel and Gaza and we put out a question to listeners this morning saying, what would you like to ask us about what's happening in the Middle East right now?

And I can tell you the single most asked question was asking Rory for 1 of his explainers.

Now, so take us from the beginning of time to where we are now in 2 minutes.

Yeah, without getting in trouble from every side.

Well, that is the problem, you know, I've noticed that already.

Twitter is the worst place in the world to debate this issue.

I've discovered that, which is why I've stopped debating it on there.

It's virtually impossible to say anything that is nuanced, that is not black and white about this situation.

And the truth is, as you know, and as we'll hear from you very, very shortly, you need a bit of nuance in this because it is so steeped in difficult history and very, very complicated.

So why don't you just try and give us a bit of a background.

I'll give it a go and with apologies to people because there's a lot of sensitivities here.

So essentially going back 3,000 years, the state of Israel was dominated by a Jewish community and they were displaced just under 2000 years ago, basically by the Romans, and large Jewish communities formed then in places like Iraq and Yemen, but also in Europe, Central Eastern Europe, and in Spain and Portugal, and in many other places too.

And then at the beginning of the 20th century, end of the 19th, beginning of 20th century, there was the beginnings of a Zionist movement pushing for a homeland for the Jewish people, driven by the fact that Jews had experienced appalling discrimination and brutal pogroms and murder murderous Attacks on them over many many hundreds of years, but mounting particularly in Central Eastern Europe in the late 19th century The British got behind this with the Balfour Declaration about the time of the First World War and there was increasing Jewish movement back to the former state of Israel.

But of course during the nearly 2000 years, this had become very much a place dominated by Arab Muslim communities.

So the Jews were moving back into a populated place, and The British, initially after the First World War, set up a mandate where they were trying to balance the interests of Arabs and Jews, found themselves in the middle of an increasing civil war, and the Brits were actually targets of terrorist attacks from both Arabs and Jews.

And then of course, the defining horror of the Second World War, the Holocaust in which 6000000 European Jews are killed, and which absolutely demonstrates to the world the extremity of the threat that Jews face and the requirement for a Jewish homeland, which then drives into large numbers of Jews moving to Palestine after the war and

led by David Ben-Gurion, the setting up of the State of Israel, driven by actually an Israeli military assault that takes a lot of the territory Previously held by arab communities and involves many many arabs being displaced From their homes and that state of israel that 1948 state is then recognized largely by the international community Although not by many palestinians And that remains the situation until 1967 when it then faces a simultaneous attack from Egypt, Syria, and then belatedly Jordan.

After the Second World War, Britain gave up the mandate And the Jews in Israel fought to create a state, which they created in

And that state involved, the creation of that state involved the displacement of quite a lot of the Arab-Palestinian communities who were living in those areas.

That state was then recognized by the United Nations.

there was an attack on Israel by Egypt, Syria, and belatedly Jordan.

And in the 1967 war, Israel won a very, very rapid victory, about 6 days.

And it took a lot of territory which was outside the 1948 borders.

So it took Gaza, which we're going to be talking about today.

It took the West Bank, which had previously been controlled by Jordan, Gaza had previously been controlled by Egypt.

And just so we're clear, that is why when people talk about the occupied Palestinian territories, that is what they're talking about.

Absolutely, When most people talk about the occupied Palestinian territories, they're talking about those bits that were taken by Israel after 1967.

Now, there's a detail here, which is that there are also parts of the Palestinian movement who reject the original state of Israel and the 1948 borders.

But broadly speaking, when people talk about the occupied Palestinian territories, they're talking about these areas.

There was then another war, which is important to us because it was the anniversary of that war that triggered these recent attacks.

Almost exactly 50 years ago, a Yom Kippur War, where there was another attack, which Israel again beat off, but with much more difficulty.

Fast forward, and in the 1990s, we're now coming into stuff that you began to connect with person in your professional life.

There were then a series of peace talks, particularly around Oslo, and the conclusion of Oslo was that territories would be divided into categories A, B, and C.

So there would be Palestinian territories, there would be territories under mixed control and C, which were going to be Israeli territories.

And the idea was to push ahead with a two-state solution.

A Palestinian authority emerged on the West Bank with its capital at Ramallah.

And in Gaza, another form of Palestinian authority emerged.

The challenge there was that these territories are not contiguous, they didn't form a joined-up country.

In fact, increasingly because of Israeli settlers who've been putting houses and settlements in beyond the 1967 boundaries, it actually is a series of tiny enclaves, over a hundred little enclaves divided by checkpoints and walls.

and Israel withdraws from Gaza and that's the first big move.

They actually remove a few thousand settlers who are there, forcibly remove a few thousand settlers, and hand it over to Palestinian control.

Not long after that happens, a movement called Hamas, Which is a much more radical Islamist group much more strongly associated with terrorism Takes over the Gaza Strip, which is this bit that runs basically from Egypt along the coast along the edge of Israel And the Palestinians are then divided between this Hamas-controlled area, which is the Gaza Strip, and the rest, which is controlled by the former PLO, the Fatah government.

Then there were intifadas, There were Israeli attacks, both fights in reprisal against attacks from Hamas out of Gaza, reprisals about attacks from Hezbollah, which is another group which is based in southern Lebanon.

And fast forward To where we were about a week ago and a week ago Jake Sullivan the US National Security Advisor was on the record saying the Middle East had never been so peaceful and the reason I think he thought that is that Israel had developed a Special missile protection shield which meant it was increasingly difficult for these Palestinian groups to fire either from Hezbollah or Hamas rockets into Israel and do damage.

There hadn't been that number of attacks.

And most of the focus in Israel, as we picked up on the pod over the last few months, has actually been not about Palestine, it's been an internal Israeli fight between liberals and conservatives to do with challenging the way in which the Israeli government is moving in a populist direction has brought in far-right people like a man called Smotrich, the finance minister, pushing to overturn the independent judiciary in Israel.

And that was broadly the situation when on early Saturday morning the attack started.

Well, I thought it was a very, very good explainer.

And there will doubtless be some people who will object to some exclusions and some inclusions.

And I'm afraid that's the that's the nature of what we're talking about.

So, look, I don't want to ventriloquize for people, but broadly speaking, if you want to see the view of, I suppose, a pretty middle-of-the-road Palestinian politician, There is a great interview, which you will share in the links, which has just been done on CNN, 9 minute interview, in which a Fatah politician gives his views on the situation.

But broadly speaking, from the Palestinian point of view, they would say, yes, there's been a terrorist attack.

And most of them would say they would not in any way condone the killing of civilians.

And then what would then happen is they would then say, you need to understand that Gaza is from their point of view, a prison camp with really no ability for people to go in and out.

It's a humanitarian disaster where people lack basic supplies and that at the root of this violence is an Israeli occupation, which Palestinians will then explain and you'll see it better if you're interested in this interview on CNN, explains involve breaking Palestinian territory into tiny enclaves, checkpoints, and what they experience as an apartheid state.

And they call it an apartheid state because they feel that they are not being given full civil and democratic rights.

And if they were given full civil and democratic rights, the situation would be very different.

Israeli point of view, there are many Israeli points of view, but they would start by saying, listen, understand that these are very serious enemies out there, that Hamas back in the 1990s had a founding charter dedicated to the complete elimination of the state of Israel, that states like Iran were committed to the elimination state of Israel, that the 67 war and the Yom Kippur war were designed basically to wipe them off the face of the map, that they feel that they have been marginalized and attacked unfairly at united nations forums for decades While other countries like china and zimbabwe and cuba haven't been attacked in the same way They feel it's an existential threat They would emphasize that the Israeli army warns civilians before it attacks buildings.

They will emphasize, and again, there are many different views on this 1967 territory, but some Israelis would say the territory they took is essential for protection of the state of Israel, that the Golan Heights, for example, were artillery positions from which the Syrians rained rockets down on them and that Israel's right to defend itself involves being very realistic about the significant threat that Palestinians pose.

So somewhere there are those 2 positions and there will be 500 other positions.

Just on Oslo, by the way, we had lots and lots of questions, as I say, but 1 of them was about good books to read.

And there is actually, there was a brilliant play about the Oslo Accords.

And I think from memory, it was called Oslo, it was by somebody called Taylor, but it was published as a book.

And it's worth getting hold of that absolutely amazing play.

And it's 1 of those plays that you can read and get a sense of the drama.

And just before we go on to what's happening now, coincidentally, and I didn't know that Jake Sullivan had said that, that is pretty remarkable.

And Just before these attacks, literally the day before the latest attacks by Hamas, which have been bigger and more violent and more deadly than anything we've seen from them before and anything the Israelis have endured before, which is why they're calling it 9-11 plus Pearl Harbor in 1.

But our good friend, the New European had a five-page spread in last week's paper called 18 Days That Shook the World about the Yom Kippur War that you mentioned, and I think you're right that that was 1 of the key moments in the history.

When you said there Rory about the people feeling that this was never been safer and that Israel felt secure, When there finally was a ceasefire after this, after the Yom Kippur War, which went on for 18 days, there was little rejoicing in Israel.

The failure to foresee the attack was the greatest failure in Israeli history.

1 analyst blamed arrogance, lack of understanding of the abundant intelligence and disregard for the enemy.

The ministry historian John Hughes Wilson described it as a classic example of confusing political aspirations with hard fact.

For good or ill, Israel would never make the same mistakes again.

So to remind people of what actually happened.

So 6.30 in the morning, Hamas out of Gaza, which is this coastal strip adjoining Egypt, fired perhaps 5,000 rockets.

And then about an hour later, they tore through the barriers, through the fences that divide Gaza from Israel.

Some coming in from boat, 1 person coming in from air, bulldozers ripping down the Erez crossing, and simultaneously drove, in some cases, 20, 30 kilometers into Israel, and began the most violent series of terrorist attacks.

Some of them were directed against military targets, so you'll see images of commanders, Israeli commanders being, 1 of them I think in his boxer shorts being kidnapped and taken into a car, tanks being seized.

And Gaza, Gaza divisional headquarters being stormed and the Zikim base.

So, you know, a big military frontal attack, but also the real horror at the center of things, which people will have focused on, which was that there was a, a festival taking place and people had been dancing up all night and 7 30 in the morning, sun was rising, just coming to the end of the festival and into the middle of the final stages came a group of terrorists on bikes and trucks and began opening fire on the crowd, killed something like, it's difficult to know,

And then went back across the border, taking over 160 hostages.

And some of the fighters remained on the ground, continued to fight, holding police stations in border towns.

The Israeli military then mounted a counter-strike, which has probably killed about 400 people so far.

And I mean, I think that the thing to say, obviously, before we go any further on this, is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, very clear terrorist organization.

This isn't the first time they've done this.

Some people are saying, you know, why did they hit women and children?

The truth of the matter is that Hamas has been behind indiscriminate suicide bomb attacks.

They had an explicit policy of targeting civilians since the mid-1990s.

And they are recognized as a terrorist organization by the EU, by the US, and actually much more recently by the UK, 2022, I think, and Australia,

But much of the rest of the world does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization.

They treat them as the legitimate government because they're the elected government in the Gaza Strip.

No, I think what we're seeing is beyond anything that the Israeli people have seen.

As you say, within the Palestinian context, there has been a lot of bloodshed, there's been a lot of anger, it's been building.

I do think that once this thing hopefully calms down, hopefully settles down, though I think this could be a long, long, long time, but there are some massive questions for the Israelis.

They have perhaps the most vaunted intelligence agency in the world.

They really will be asking themselves some very, very hard questions about as to how this happened.

Because when you watch the scenes that you described there, with the fences being attacked, with people arriving on hang gliders, with the levels of armory that were available.

It seems to me remarkable that the Israelis literally did not seem to have a whiff of this.

Or if they did, they were certainly not very well prepared.

And I think what's happening now, quite rightly, there's been massive widespread condemnation, a little bit like Ukraine, though we should be careful not to imagine that it's universal.

I think we saw in the debate of the United Nations last night that the straight divide in that body was on display again.

But generally a sense of absolute outrage and condemnation and support, certainly in most of the countries where most of our listeners are, support for Israel's right to defend itself.

But now, slightly into unknown territory, because the hostages, which we should be taking of civilian hostages, taking many hostages in this situation of war crime, which they, that does complicate things further.

A lot of talk already about whether there will be a ground offensive by Israel into Gaza, which is 1 of the most densely populated places on earth, by the way.

2000000 people in a strip, roughly 25 miles long, very narrow strip of land.

So the fear that there must be in that place will be horrendous.

And meanwhile, Jews around the world, I mean, this was brought home to me in the very calm and peaceful setting of my morning swim this morning, talking to some Jewish people who are regular swimmers there, who are feeling that sense of fear, anxiety, real concern and dread about what's happening.

And not least because they know people there.

Yeah, and with reason also, not just because the horror coming out of Israel, but also because an Egyptian policeman opened fire and killed 2 Israeli tourists.

So Hamas is a something that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood and different to the PLO and Fatah, it was from its beginning an Islamist organization, very much sort of, I mean it's a misleading way to put it, but it's in the broad tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood and even the Taliban.

It's a group that very much prides itself on religion.

It has very conservative social codes, but it's not imposing them entirely.

I mean, there's been some examples of it, but it's not legally imposing them on the population there.

Their brand was being cleaner, less corrupt than the previous government, but from the moment they've taken over, they have faced a blockade.

So although Israel withdrew from Gaza, it controls 6 out of the 7 of the border crossings It controls all the air access and sea access to Gaza it provides all the electricity or the water supply or the telecommunications for Gaza and The Israeli army reserves the right to enter Gaza whenever it feels it has a security reason to do so.

The trade from Gaza, the economy of Gaza really collapsed after these blockades were put in place because people didn't want to do business with a terrorist group.

It's kept afloat with support from in different ways, Turkey, Qatar and Iran.

Iran putting the support more into the military attacks.

Qatar very focused on humanitarian support for people.

poorest country in the world now in GDP per capita, you know, real shortage of water supply, sewerage.

And 1 of the questions going forward is, I suppose, 2 questions.

1 of them is your point about the potential Israeli response inside Gaza because It's not going to be possible for Israel as it were to reoccupy Gaza if you think about the fighting mosul where The iraqi army tried to retake Mosul from the Islamic state.

That was a multi-year operation that involved destroying most of the city.

And I don't think we should be expecting Israel to be attempting to try to do house to house fighting in a place of 2.2 million people.

But there's going to be a loss of pressure now being put by Israel on countries to cease all forms of support for Gaza.

But that of course will also mean that you're on this knife edge between providing support, development support, which keeps the Hamas government alive, but also preventing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Qatar is criticized often by Israeli politicians for providing support to Gaza, but then often says that behind closed doors, they're encouraged to continue to provide support to Gaza by factions within Israeli government because they don't want a humanitarian crisis there.

And on the point of the humanitarian crisis, a couple of points.

First of all, When the Israelis are saying to the people in Gaza, essentially advising them to move out, it's very, very hard to know where they go in such a densely populated place where they can't come and go freely.

And the focus on the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine question has been negligible from a time when it used to be 1 of the most dominant issues of global debate.

Yeah, I think a lot of things changed in it.

So the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, who'd been instrumental in bringing together the Oslo Accords, so this actually very famous Israeli general, national hero who made a very radical step to try to reach out towards peace with Palestinians and was then assassinated by a extreme extremist Jewish nationalist who was against him, then led to a period where the Israeli left largely vanished and a lot of the politics we've been talking about in Israel reflects the fact that the Palestinian supporting two-state solution supporting Israeli left largely lost confidence, partly because of that, partly because they felt that Palestinians weren't making the progress that they were hoping for, partly because the Palestinian authority has proved to be very useless and corrupt and has lost a lot of support.

But it's also that, as you say, as Israel's become economically more and more powerful, And Saudi and UAE and others have developed confidence.

Trump drove through the Abraham Accords, which effectively normalized relations between Israel and some of the key Gulf states, meaning that Palestinians had very much been marginalized.

And definitely, as Alistair Burt says, you know, when I was in Jordan, there was a palpable sense that people felt it no longer was anything that anyone was concentrating on.

And the two-state solution felt increasingly implausible.

It's more and more difficult to imagine that it would ever happen, partly because these figures like Smotrich, Ben-Gavir, who were the far-right Israelis, made very, very explicit statements about essentially providing no acknowledgement for the Palestinian territories at all.

I mean, Smatric was on the record saying that he wanted to retake those territories and the Palestinians would have to either be subjugated or leave or be killed.

I mean, Guy was the finance minister who was saying this.

So I think there are 2 things that we maybe, before we close, that we need to look at.

1 of them is what does this mean to internal Israeli politics and what does it mean to the international picture?

I think internal Israeli politics, there's going to be 2 opposing tensions.

1 of them is it will strengthen some people on the right who will say, we always told you, you needed to be tougher on the Palestinians.

Hamas has revealed as they always have been as terrorists dedicated to the complete extinction of the state of Israel.

And that will undermine some of the voices pushing for peace and some of the remaining voices on the Israeli left.

On the other hand, it's an incredible humiliation of the Israeli government to total intelligence failure.

And there will be a push for a national unity government to say, well, let's bring in a broader coalition, get rid of the far right, get Israel together again, very important to mobilize the reservists who were essentially on strike because they were so horrified by the judicial reforms.

And that then moves us to the international picture.

And I think internationally there are going to be 2 things we have to watch.

1 of them is that Iran is very closely associated with this Hamas attack and is boasting about the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei met with the leader of Hamas, that Iranian funding is going in, so you can expect a risk of the Israeli government and others taking retaliatory action against Iran.

You can also see this as a deliberate attempt to break the talks that were going on between Saudi and Israel, that Hamas has done it in order to deepen the divisions again within the Middle East and draw attention in the most horrifying way through this terrorist attack to the ongoing situation and hope that that begins to move people more into talks again.

There's an awful lot of stuff in Haaretz's newspaper, 1 of the main Israeli dailies today that is very, very, very critical of Netanyahu.

The sense that the Israeli government, he's had to essentially do a deal with people even well to the right of him to form the government that he did.

And this has been so far down their list of priorities that you do sort of have the sense that for the more militant end of the Palestinian population, that they can see no way out.

And that is not by the way, I can even as I say those words, I can feel people go into their tweets to say this is attempting to justify it doesn't justify it in any way at all.

But I think that unless what has happened, the reason why Hamas became as powerful as they did within the West Bank was because they felt that the Palestinian Authority under the Fatah party would were going nowhere, were giving a lot recognition of Israel etc without getting anything in return and that that having been done, that they saw no sense of progress at all.

I'm not talking about progress towards a 2 state solution.

I'm talking about progress in any shape or form in the reality of their daily lives.

And that is not going to be addressed between this government and the Palestinians.

It will for now be entirely seen, I suspect, as a security situation.

But at some point, there has to be a return to a political process.

Otherwise, this thing just goes round and round and round.

And we'll be back in a few years talking about another war and giving it another name.

And I think at the heart of it is something you was right at the center of your working life in Ireland, which is that, understandably, Israelis look at Hamas and they say, here is a murderous, brutal terrorist group that has just gone into the middle of a music festival and mown down 260 people.

And is, and this rhetoric is effectively about extinguishing the state of Israel.

It now talks about a right of return, but there is deep, deep anti-Semitic rhetoric, hate speech coming out of Hamas and all sorts of things.

And that therefore feels to many, many Israelis as though it's impossible to imagine any kind of conversation with them at all, as I did, you know, I felt very much with the IRA that, you know, the idea of talking to people who seemed in the 80s to be absolutely committed to driving the British entirely out of Ireland, who were killing innocent civilians in hotel bombings seemed incomprehensible.

Do you think that the Israel Palestine scenario is more complex than the troubles in Northern Ireland?

Does the fact that it shares a border with other Islamic nations and isn't geographically isolated, mean that a Good Friday start agreement will always be unattainable?

I mean, there's a couple of things I'd say to that.

The first is that the Good Friday Agreement felt unattainable for a long, long time.

I mentioned to you earlier recently watching Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, listening to the people telling their stories, they felt it was unattainable, But it happened.

So right now, today, in the middle of October 2023, a two-state solution, and I saw David Lammy this morning at the conference, Labour Party conference, he made his speech and absolutely unequivocal support for Israel, but also saying that we have to keep having hope that there can 1 day be a 2 state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.

In the current contest, that sounds almost an absurd thing to say, but you have to hang on to that hope.

And you can only get there, ultimately, through some sort of political process.

And the reason why, I mean, the level of planning that must have gone into this operation of whether that where they were getting their arms from and whether Iran was directly supplying and all that stuff, we don't know.

But in a way, I think what they're maybe trying to do, a bit like when, excuse me, when the IRA sort of had the judgment, they said to themselves that we can bomb away all we want in Northern Ireland.

But unless we actually take these bombs to the British mainland, we're not going to inject ourselves into this process.

Now, so I guess I'm throwing this 1 back to you, do you think that part of what's going on is that Hamas are trying to get into the bigger picture, start to be considered 1 of the players in finding some sort of resolution to this?

Or are they so hardline militant terror organization that there is no way that this is going to end other than with a bloody long battle between them and the Israelis?

Yeah, and the truth is of course that like all these groups, They're all those things.

There are, appear to be, or have been in the past, slightly more moderate factions of Hamas.

And, you know, negotiators have dealt with them and talked to them.

And that's 1 of the reasons why Norway, for example, I think has refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization.

And then there are Hamas deputy ministers on record spreading blood libels about Jews and claiming they sort of mashed up Christian babies into matzo biscuits.

And I mean, it's, so it's a horrifying mixture of extreme terrorists with murderous intent and people who are trying to imagine some kind of political settlement and return to 1967 borders and all this kind of thing, but the standoff in the end if I sort of go back to the central explainer is That there are 2 completely Irreconcilable at the moment.

It feels like visions of what's going on For Hamas many Palestinians they want an absolute return to the 1967 borders.

And the truth is that there has been a lot of Israeli settlement beyond the edge of the 1967 borders, and no Israeli government is currently remotely considering removing all those communities.

Well, on the contrary, they've been adding to it.

Well, I think you explained that very, very well.

I actually came off Twitter just because it's impossible.

It's like it should be possible to condemn unequivocally what has happened whilst at the same time worrying about the nature of the Israeli government, worrying about the fate of innocent children and others who have had a hellish life anyway, now in 1 of the most densely populated areas of the world, fearing what is about to hit them, whilst at the same time, only beginning to imagine the utter horror if you had been at that festival or are related to somebody who was at that festival, or you're related to somebody who's been taken hostage.

But the way our debate polarizes so instantly around anything now, it was almost like, you know, well, you're either 100% this side, 100% that side.

At the moment, you have to be 100% on the side of Israel.

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Rory Stewart Attempts to Explain the History of Israel-Palestine in 10 Minutes