Avi Shlaim, born 78 years ago into a Jewish family in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, is one of the most respected historians of the Middle East. Arab and Jewish, as he describes himself, professor emeritus at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, where he resides, he takes great care of his measured speech. His smile tears his eyes until it draws a thin line behind his glasses. With curly gray hair, Shlaim, who emigrated with his family to Israel in the 1950s, reflects for a few seconds before answering each question during the interview, held by videoconference last Friday. Having begun his hard, argued exposition, this essayist seems to be pulling on a thread built on the fly, but of great consistency.
Author of essays such as The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab Worldand his last work, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew, Shlaim is part of that group of new historians Israelis ―as they were called in the last century― that challenge the traditional version of events. Almost a year ago, at the end of last October, a Liverpool university center canceled its conference due to pressure from the Jewish community.
Ask. On occasion he has said that he still hopes that Israel will begin to act in a rational way. Is it still like that?
Answer. Israel has changed a lot. In the last two decades, since the second Intifada [2000-2005]has been moving steadily to the right. The current Government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, is the most right-wing, xenophobic, expansionist, Islamophobic and racist in the history of Israel. There are extremists like Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security and leader of the Jewish Power Party, and [el ministro de Finanzas] Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, who hold key positions in the Government. They are messianic, Jewish supremacists. Their ultimate goal is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the actual annexation of the West Bank. The political guidelines of this Government establish that the Jewish people have exclusive rights over the entire land of Israel. But I wouldn’t dare say that Israel has stopped being rational. The Hamas attack on October 7 last year completely transformed Israeli society. Since then, the Israeli public has cried out for revenge, and revenge is not a policy. Although Netanyahu is unpopular, the destruction in Gaza was popular, and so is his attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Q. Netanyahu’s popularity has grown again.
R. After Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, Netanyahu was at his lowest ebb. 80% of Israelis disapproved. It has not achieved its stated objectives, which are the destruction of Hamas and the recovery of Israeli hostages. He assassinated Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, but then shifted the center of gravity to the northern front by attacking Hezbollah, a key ally of Iran, and assassinating its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, a symbol of Arab resistance to Israeli imperialism and US. There is no doubt that Israel has achieved a series of tactical successes, such as the astonishing search and walkie talkies. It seems that he has gone on the offensive against all allies [de Hamás] and he is doing it very well. That is why Netanyahu’s popularity has been increasing. But these are tactical successes: victories have been scored, damage has been inflicted on Israel’s enemies, but this is not a strategic achievement because Hamas is still there, firing rockets, and Hezbollah is still there, offering resistance to Israeli ground forces.
Q. Indeed, there are tactical victories, but in the midst of a very broad strategy that has also struck Iran, Yemen and Syria. What do you think is Israel’s ultimate goal?
R. Israel’s ultimate goal is to change the balance of power in the Middle East. And its main opponent is Iran, the sponsor of the axis of resistance to Israel, which includes allies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and various pro-Iran militias in Syria and Iraq. Iran has avoided a direct confrontation with Israel, but has been pushing through all its allies. Israel is trying to weaken this entire axis of resistance, constantly expanding the conflict. The United States’ goal is to contain the conflict, Israel’s is to extend and escalate it with its opponents. It fights a war on fronts in Gaza, Lebanon, against the Houthis in Yemen and attacking targets in Syria. But that’s not the end. Israel really wants to confront Iran, open that front, because it is the key. For two decades, Netanyahu has been unsuccessfully demanding American intervention on Israel’s side to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The Israeli prime minister is in charge and his objective is to drag the United States into a confrontation with Iran with the aim of destroying Iranian nuclear facilities.
Q. What role do the United States and the West play in the extension of this Israeli offensive?
R. It is a paradox: Israel is totally dependent on the United States, while the United States has very little influence on Israel’s politics. American support for Israel is unconditional. So the US supplies weapons, money and diplomatic protection. It gives Israel $3.8 billion a year in military credits. During the war in Gaza, Congress voted another 14 billion and another 20 billion. It subsidizes Israel to a very high degree. Second, he uses the veto to defeat resolutions that Israel does not like. American support for Israel is not conditional on it respecting Palestinian human rights or international law. And that is why Israel literally gets its way. We are seeing Joe Biden trying to negotiate with Netanyahu a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, but without success. He is deliberately trying to offend and humiliate Biden because he would like his friend Donald Trump to win the next US election.
Q. This conflict did not begin on October 7, 2023; There have been many wars won by Israel, which, however, has not won peace. On the contrary, the conflict worsens, why?
R. The conflict began a century ago as a clash between two national movements: Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. The Palestinian question is the heart and core of the conflict. And without a solution to this problem, there will never be peace, security or stability in the Middle East. Israel, since 1967 [año en el que se libra la Guerra de los Seis Días]has had to choose between giving up territory in exchange for peace or keeping it. With his actions, he has shown time and time again that he prefers territory to peace. It does not have a peaceful solution to the conflict, it only uses military force. There is an Israeli saying that if force doesn’t work, use more. There is the broadest international consensus on the two-state solution, but it is dead because Israel killed it with settlements, a security barrier and the annexation of East Jerusalem. Furthermore, no American administration since 1967 has pushed Israel toward a true two-state solution.
R. That is to say, like his good friend Mustafa Barguti, former Palestinian Minister of Information, he defends the one-state solution.
Q. Hamas is not a terrorist organization. It is a political party that adopted the parliamentary route to come to power in January 2006. It obtained an absolute majority in a fair and free election, but Israel and its Western allies refused to recognize that government. So Hamas tried a diplomatic route, but was not allowed to move forward. The PLO [Organización para la Liberación de Palestina] signed the Oslo Accords with Israel; he renounced his claim to forcibly liberate 78% of historic Palestine in exchange for a 22% Palestinian state. But that was not enough for Israel. It continued to expand. As we speak, he continues to confiscate more land in the West Bank and carry out ethnic cleansing. I used to support the two-state solution, but it is an empty formula. Now I defend the only democratic solution to this conflict, which is a State, of the river [Jordán] to the sea [Mediterráneo]with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion and ethnicity.
Q. What do you think of the restrained response from the region’s Arab neighbors?
R. It is surprising how silent Arab states have been when Israel has been carrying out genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and a massive military offensive in Lebanon. Some of them have signed peace treaties with Israel: the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu has always boasted that Israel can make peace with the Arab states without making concessions to the Palestinians, and these agreements justified this. There is a collective position in the conflict, the Arab Peace Initiative, which was adopted by the Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002. And it offers Israel peace and normalization with the 22 members of the Arab League in exchange of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem. This is the deal of the century. You can’t ask for more than that. Netanyahu has rejected it time and time again. The Abraham Accords were a retreat from this collective opposition and a stab in the back to the Palestinians.
One of the reasons for the Hamas attack on October 7 was that Saudi Arabia was about to sign a peace treaty with Israel. It had the desired effect because Saudi Arabia suspended the negotiations, and now repeats again and again that a Palestinian state is a precondition. Netanyahu appeared to be right in asserting that Israel did not have to make concessions to the Palestinians and still achieve peace with the Arab states. But this Hamas attack has given Arabs reason to stop and think about whether they really want to move forward.
