What Diplomats in Israel Really Think About the Palestinians

“They don’t want to talk about the conflict. They want to talk about investments, business, and economic opportunities, bilateral relations between Israel and their countries.”

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A few weeks ago here in Israel, I spent some time with an Israeli diplomat and accompanied him to his meeting with a Brazilian government official stationed in Israel. I asked the diplomat, on our way to this meeting, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: How do you perceive the current situation? What, if anything, is your organization doing with regard to the Conflict?

His answers were customary of many mainstream Israelis: We absolutely want a two-state solution, two states living side-by-side, in peace with each other; we believe the Palestinians should have their own sovereignty, rights, and liberties; just not at the expense of Israel’s security. Until we can get to this point, the current situation is what it is.

After the hour-long meeting between this executive and the Brazilian government official, which I sat it on, the executive pulled me aside and said:

“Did you notice how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never came up? This is basically how every meeting goes when I sit down with other diplomats in Israel and around the world. They don’t want to talk about the conflict. They want to talk about investments, business, and economic opportunities, bilateral relations between Israel and their countries.”

Though I failed to observe the conflict’s absence during the aforementioned meeting, I was unsurprised that the subject did not arise. In 2020, when the Abraham Accords came to fruition, I realized something, especially as it relates to the United Arab Emirates: It became better to be “in business” with the Israelis than with the Palestinians.

I would venture to claim that many Israelis, by and large, see this as an and/plus scenario, meaning: You can “do business” with us and with them, the Palestinians. I would also venture to claim that many Palestinians see it as an either/or proposition; they cannot possibly understand how other countries can engage with both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

This outlook has turned into an unfortunate reality for the Palestinians, whose economic and financial value propositions are essentially nonexistent. In other words, this is an overly complicated way of saying: The Palestinians are not “in business” and therefore cannot really “do business” with other countries (unless that “business” is terrorism, in which case they have a few overly willing partners in Iran and Qatar).

What’s more, we know that the word nepotism has been tied to longtime Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas has created an Islamist fortress in Gaza with all the international aid that floods into the Strip, plus cash payments from the Iranians and Qataris.

We also know that money, fortunately or unfortunately, makes the world go round, and creates compounding opportunities. A lack of economic and financial value propositions, therefore, makes the everyday Palestinian plight increasingly unappealing, at best, and exponentially irrelevant, at worst.

In fact, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that social and economic progress function together. During the 1300s in Florence, for example, a “reciprocal credit system” was created which rewarded those who supported each other. As a result, their society flourished. Diminished self-interest and elevated trust and trade superimposed a commercial revolution.¹

“Many people assume that social and political progress ultimately controls the economic progress a society makes,” according to Matt Ridley, international bestselling author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. “In reality, economic progress is the greater force pushing society forward.”

The question, though, is not necessarily if the Palestinians want to develop a legitimate economy and improve their value propositions to others around the world. The issue boils down to if enough of the Palestinians want to develop a growing economy in their own state, side-by-side with Israel.

Many Arab Israelis (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who live within the State of Israel) and Palestinians believe Jewish history started with the State of Israel in 1948. Seriously. Several weeks ago, I sat down with the owner of an Arab Israeli-owned restaurant in the ancient port city of Acre (Akko in Hebrew). He told me that he feels like a second-class citizen in Israel, that he does not feel like he belongs to the hardcore Arab extremists nor to mainstream Israel (Jewish Israelis, essentially).

Certainly, no one should feel this way in a country they were born into, which I said to him. But I also said that we must ensure this country (Israel) continues to remain a Jewish state for the Jewish People, because it is the only place I as a Jew truly feel safe to be unabashedly Jewish and express my Judaism. Then he said something that really caught me off-guard:

“You know why people don’t like the Jews, right?”

Surprised by his question, I casually said, “Jealousy?” — totally unsure what he was implying.

“No,” he replied with a smirk. “If there was peace with the Palestinians, the Jews wouldn’t be hated.”

I didn’t reply to this “interesting” remark, but what I really wanted to say to him was:

“My man, you know that antisemitism didn’t start in 1948, right?”

I took this uncomfortable story home with me and proceeded to share it with some of my Israeli friends, who told me that this viewpoint is common among Arab Israelis and Palestinians, although not all of them, to be sure. I have also met Arab Israelis who love living in the Jewish state and would not trade it for a thing.

It seems, however, that the amount of personal, interpersonal, collective, and intergenerational trauma on both the Arab (i.e. Palestinian) and Israeli (i.e. Jewish) sides is just so great. The result is a grave erosion of trust and faith between the two groups (assuming that there was any level of trust and faith to begin with).

One time, U.S.-born Dov Lipman told me that he did an anecdotal survey of Arab Israelis (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living within Israel) when he served as a Member of Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) a few years ago. What he found, generally speaking, is three groups of Arab Israelis:

1. Those who believe in terrorism and the fight against Israel and the Jews

2. Those who believe in peace with Israel and the Jews, with the State of Israel and a Palestinian state existing side-by-side 

3. Those who could be swayed either way

It is hard to say if these three groups break down evenly, but we can probably make an educated guess that a significant portion of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza (who are not Israeli citizens) — with all the built-up, multigenerational animosity towards Israel and the Jews — do not belong to the second group, and are more likely to be swayed toward the first one.

Ultimately, though, I tend to side with Nassim Nicholas Taleb — a Lebanese author, essayist, and mathematical statistician whose been included three times on the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute’s list of the most influential 100 thought leaders in the world. In his book, “Skin in the Game,” Taleb wrote:

“Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, it will destroy our world. So, we need to be more intolerant with some intolerant minorities. Simply they violate the silver rule. (Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.) It is not permissible to use ‘American values’ or ‘Western values’ in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other people’s right to have their own religion). The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.”

As long the Palestinians, whether the minority or majority, are intolerant of Israel and the Jews — to the extent that they prevent (or refuse to participate in working toward) a true, lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — we must continue to fight their bonfires with conflagration.

One thing I love about Israelis, when it comes to self-defense of our country, is that they do not play the “eye for an eye” game. If you try to take one of our eyes, we are coming for your entire face.

But self-defense is only one side of the coin. The other, more advantageous side, is that we (Israel) must continue developing and strengthening relationships in the Middle East, as we did with Egypt and Jordan, more recently with the Abraham Accords, and perhaps now with Saudi Arabia.

We do this by progressively upping the ante of our value propositions — economic, financial, security, and otherwise — to all those who want to “do business” with Israel.

For there are many.

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1. “The Rational Optimist (Matt Ridley): Summaries — EP35.” Medium.