( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – “We need to generate a whole new culture of peace within our political systems,” claims Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. The co-founder and co-director of the Alliance for Two States, Baskin is one of the most well-known figures in the Middle East peace process, especially due to his involvement as the initiator and negotiator of a secret back-channel between Israel and Hamas that led to the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. Furthermore, Baskin was deeply involved in back-channel negotiations that produced the fragile ceasefire deal that currently exists between Israel and Hamas. In this interview, Baskin delivers crucial insights on a variety of topics, from the limitations of the current ceasefire deal, to the importance of creating the State of Palestine.
Richard McDaniel (RM): You were involved in back-channel negotiations that led up to the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Apart from the fact that the ceasefire came about, is there anything about the ceasefire negotiations or the implementation of the ceasefire that really surprised you?
Gershon Baskin (GB): Well, that didn’t surprise me because I knew that whenever Trump decided that the war should end, it would end because he’s the only person in the world who can impose it on Prime Minister Netanyahu and on the state of Israel. So, I knew that was eventually going to happen. It took longer than it should’ve.
What was surprising, I suppose, was a couple of things. Already by September 7, [U.S. envoy Steve] Witkoff had received a green light from President Trump to meet directly with Hamas. That didn’t happen until a month later when they did that in Sharm el-Sheikh. But we were trying to organize a meeting between Witkoff and the Hamas negotiating team in Istanbul, which never happened because Israel decided to try and kill them in Doha. So, that didn’t take place, but that was surprising. It was also surprising, and not reported, that when they signed the agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh at 2 am, the Israeli negotiating team was in the same room as the Hamas negotiating team. [They were] sitting across them on opposite sides of the room. That’s also something that never happened before.
What is not surprising and notable, and no one’s talking about it, is that this agreement—even though President Trump talked about lasting Middle East peace—this agreement that put an end to the war [and] created a hopefully sustainable ceasefire, has no impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still alive and kicking, and nothing has changed in terms of the parameters of the conflict. That is still on the table and needs to be dealt with. The can is just being kicked down the road for a better time, hopefully, to deal with that, when there are new leaders in Israel and in Palestine.
What’s also surprising, not totally unexpected but nonetheless positively surprising, is that the U.S. government is keeping the Israelis on a very short leash. They are monitoring the ceasefire. They have made a steady stream of visitors from President Trump to the vice president, to Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and now Marco Rubio’s coming here. There’s a four-star admiral, Brad Cooper, who is now based here in a U.S. command center that the Americans built in a week with 200 American military personnel. They are bringing in other nationals.
What will be expected and hopeful and surprising, if it in fact does happen as it’s supposed to, is the United States sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution this week to embody the agreement in international legitimacy and providing a UN mandate for the deployment of the multinational security force that’s supposed to be deployed to Gaza. What’s surprising also is that we have no idea, or I have no idea at least, how the new temporary Palestinian government is going to be formed, announced, and who it’s going to be made of. That is extremely urgent.
RM: I know that you and [Palestinian activist] Samer Sinijlawi gave a list of names to the Arab countries and to the Americans about who might be part of the future administration in Gaza. Was one of the names that you gave the former Gaza head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Force, Mohammed Dahlan?
GB: No. Dahlan is not coming back. Dahlan lives in the Royal Palace [in the United Arab Emirates] together with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. He helps the Palestinian people a lot. He advocates for them within the UAE, but Dahlan is not coming back to Palestine.
RM: Do you think that Trump has the stamina or the political will to actually make a substantive change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
GB: I’m not sure that it’s a question of stamina. I think that Trump will remain engaged because this is [by] far the most important thing he’s ever done, and he knows that. The people that he works with knows it, and both Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner know it. The question is whether or not Trump will come to the political realization that the solution to this conflict is the two-state solution. He made a step in the right direction in the 20-point plan, and in his public statements when he spoke for the first time about Palestinian rights. He never did that before. Once you begin to speak about Palestinian rights, that has to lead you to the idea that the state of Palestine is how that’s translated into reality.
So, I don’t think Trump is there yet. I think that there are a lot of people around him who will try to influence him never to make that conclusion, including evangelical Christians, some people in the Republican party, certainly the Israeli lobbyists, and the Israeli government. But if you take the step forward and you talk about Palestinian rights, the conclusion has to be Palestinian freedom, Palestinian self-determination, [and] a Palestinian state.
RM: Do you believe that the Trump administration is nervous about its international standing, especially considering that they bolstered Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
GB: I think that they’re oblivious to the international standing of the United States. Trump doesn’t see beyond himself, his administration, and his “greatness.” I don’t think he cares what the rest of the world thinks of the United States. I don’t think it’s on his agenda. It’s not part of his consciousness. Trump does what Trump believes in. Trump does what serves Trump’s interests, and that’s his focus. His understanding of American interest, I think, is: “What’s good for Trump is good for America.”
RM: You’ve previously insisted that the Biden administration wouldn’t “look at the deal that [you] negotiated with Hamas in September 2024.” Why was the Biden administration reluctant to look at the deal you negotiated? Furthermore, do you believe that the Biden administration ever pressured Netanyahu or was serious about bringing about a ceasefire deal?
GB: I don’t have any answer of why they didn’t seriously look at the deal that I brought on the table. It was a much better deal than the one they were trying to negotiate, that they never succeeded in negotiating. I think that the Biden administration lacked the same kind of leverage that Trump has for lots of different reasons. Two of the main ones are:
First, when there’s a Democratic administration in Washington and an Israeli government run by Netanyahu, Netanyahu always has the ability to go to the Republican party and put pressure on the Democratic president and his administration. That’s what Netanyahu did with Obama. That’s what Netanyahu did with Biden all the time, even though Biden was probably the most pro-Israel president in the history of America until Trump came along. He [Biden] never had the kind of leverage that Trump had.
Second, he [Biden] also, I think in general, projected American weakness around the world, so I think American foreign policy during the Biden administration was not very successful. Whereas the Trump administration projects American power around the world, such that almost every leader, [almost] every country in the world, with the exception of Russia and China, is afraid of Trump. They bow down to him, they lay out the red carpet, they compliment him, and they tell him how wonderful he is because they know that’s how you get in his favor. They’re afraid of him because he’s unpredictable.
Did Biden ever put real pressure on Israel? A couple of times, but it was never successful. When he did withhold some of the weapons that were supposed to go to Israel, the Israelis were able to mobilize the right-wing in America, the Republicans in Congress, and a lot of people in the American media from the Christian right-wing who criticized Biden for going against Israel, even though he never went against Israel.
RM: That makes sense. What you said about Trump projecting American power—I know you’ve written about it—is interesting, especially since most people that I talk to think that Trump is not taken seriously by anyone around the world. So, it’s very interesting to hear that the vast majority of countries around the world take Trump very seriously.
GB: They take him seriously because he’s so able to do damage. Just look at his policy of tariffs, and this is a policy where he puts out a tariff and then negotiates a deal. His style of negotiations is what he did with Hamas, what Witkoff did: They put a deal down on the table with a loaded gun, point it at them, and say “sign.” If you look up—you can probably find it on YouTube—a meeting that Trump had with the prime minister of Finland just a couple of weeks ago in the Oval Office, it was an amazing piece of political theater, of watching the prime minister of Finland kiss up to Trump, compliment him, tell him how wonderful he is, and then of course Trump returned the compliments to the prime minister of Finland. It was just remarkable. I was stunned watching it.
RM: You’ve previously argued that both Israelis and Palestinians “have educated the young generations to live by the sword, to perceive the other side as illegitimate.” What are the steps needed to jumpstart the process of reconciliation? How do we change the mindset on both sides?
Gershon Baskin.
GB: Well, I think this is going to be really a top-down process, not a bottom-up process. We need new leaders who are going to stand up and realize: “We have to change course because what we’ve been doing for too many decades is not getting us to where we want to be, which is a place of security, peace, prosperity, dignity.” It’s not working for either side. Israel will never be secure if Palestine is not free. Palestine will never be free if Israel is not secure. We need a realization for that to happen from the people of Israel and from the people of Palestine, where both societies can be going to elections over the next 12 months.
We need to generate a whole new culture of peace within our political systems. This is the focus of the article that I’m writing now, and I admit, at the beginning of the article, that this piece is coming out probably before its time because we’re still in trauma, [or] coming out of trauma maybe. But, from the trauma, we have to come to the realization that we need a change. It can come from civil society, but in order for it to have traction in the societies, we need new leaders who come to this realization. When we have a real peace process, it has to begin with things like education. It has to begin with understanding that all Israelis need to learn Arabic from the first grade, and all Palestinians need to learn Hebrew from the first grade. We need to change our curriculum. We need to open up to each other. We need to get rid of this idea that the two-state solution is built on a fence and walls. It’s built on cooperation, cross-border movement, commerce, science, research, and culture. So, we need to change the whole perspective on what peace means.
© 2025 All Rights Reserved