Interviewed October 28 on the “Going Underground” news channel, Former Israeli diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami criticized the current Israeli response to the war against Hamas in Gaza and pointed a broader strategic failure in Israel’s overall policy. Ben-Ami served as Israel’s Minister of Internal Security (1999-2001) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2000-2001), and was also the chief negotiator at Camp David.
Ben-Ami said that Netanyahu had made a “strategic blunder” when he refused Palestinians veto rights, as Netanyahu had apparently told Biden a month ago when they met. “Well they got their veto right” Ben-Ami said, when they attacked on October 7, and added this has been a problem going back decades.
He was asked by the moderator what he thinks about Israel being used by Western powers to confront a growing group of nations in the form of the BRICS and Global South, and he agreed, and said, yes, Israel “doesn’t have a clear political strategic purpose… it is a reactive war.”
In an interesting part of the interview, Ben-Ami cast doubt on the ability to have a two-state solution, and went on to say that the problems go “far beyond the problems that were created in 1967,” it goes back to “the problems of 1948… and the Israeli political system, the collective Israeli public is incapable of paying the price, it is exceedingly high. And if you have a prime minister that would be willing to pay the price, he would be toppled politically—one of them was assassinated and two others were defeated politically because they came too close to meeting Palestinian requirements for a peace deal.”
