Amanpour Prods Israel to Surrender to Two-State Solution Despite Hamas
Journalist Christiane Amanpour’s eponymous international affairs show (airing on PBS and CNN International) is obsessed with getting Israel to back down from its war on the terrorist group Hamas and make potentially dangerous concessions to Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Thursday’s Amanpour & Co., devoted almost entirely to anti-Israel points, featured not one but two guests in a row who together with the host pushed and prodded the Israeli government to accept a two-state solution, even while Gaza continues to be ruled by terrorists. (A third guest, president of the Jesse Jackson-founded PUSH Coalition, made the left-wing argument for a ceasefire that would benefit Hamas.)
None of those concerns made the cut with Amanpour.
Her next guest was a member of the British parliament, Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Party politician with a pro-Palestinian outlook. Each pushed the hazardous, pro-Palestinian two-state solution.
Amanpour gushed: “It’s really interesting because it seems to be almost coming to a head in the last couple of weeks. The Americans are talking about it. Now Cameron has advanced it. You’ve had the Europeans, and even Israelis who are not in the government. You just heard former Shin Bet chief, Ami Ayalon….And the only thing that is going to make Israel and Palestinians safe, secure, and eliminate anything like October 7th again, is a political resolution and a two-state solution. So, that’s also gaining quite a lot of traction in certain quarters in Israel.”
Kearns, a conservative MP, bashed the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu as “ultra-orthodox, far-right.”
At the end they discussed the atrocious scandal within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), many members of whom participated in the October 7 massacre. Kearns hemmed and hawed about UNRWA’s presence in the region, then tried to compartmentalize the killers from the good the group does.
PBS Amanpour & Co.
2/1/24
1:32:51 a.m. (ET)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Meantime, heavy fighting continues in Gaza’s Khan Younis area. Forcing nearly 200,000 Palestinians to flee, according to the U.N. My next guest knows the security and diplomatic maze there very well. Ami Ayalon was head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and he’s been pushing for negotiations for a two-state solution. And in a rare interview, he joined me from Haifa. Ami Ayalon, welcome back to our program.
AMI AYALON, FORMER CHIEF OF ISRAEL’S CHIN BET: Thank you very much.
AMANPOUR: So, from your perspective, as a long-time military and intelligence, you know, chiefs and operatives and experience, is Israel winning this war?
AYALON: Well, it’s very, very difficult to give you a short and clear answer because since we do not discuss the day after, meaning we do not discuss the essence of victory. So, if I cannot define victory, I’m not sure that anybody can tell you that we are winning something that we don’t know exactly where we are heading. So, we have great achievements on the ground, in the battlefield. But there is a huge gap between winning the battle and winning the war. So, unless we shall decide exactly on the day after, or what is the meaning of victory in this war against Hamas, I cannot give you a clear answer.
AMANPOUR: OK. Well, that’s important to hear from you, because, you know, none of us have that answer, and it hasn’t been stated by your government. So, what I want to then ask you is, the mission, according to your government, is to defeat Hamas on the battlefield and to rescue the hostages, the remaining hostages. My question is, can that be something that happens at the same time? Can a military operation rescue the hostages and defeat Hamas at the same time?
AYALON: Of course, there are two views. One is the only way to persuade Hamas to give back the hostages is to create a military pressure. And the other is that they will choose, in this case, what we call a Samson Option. And we shall lose all of them.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, let me put it another way then. Let’s just talk about this ceasefire negotiations. As far as we can gather and — or pause hostage deal. I don’t know. You know, there are many different ways to describe it. As far as we can gather, the idea would be to get all your hostages, the remaining hostages, out in return for some formulation of releasing a lot of Palestinian prisoners, plus some kind of pause. They’ve What is your opinion on a pause? What would that do on the ground?
AYALON: I don’t have any view about it, unless I know where are we going on the day after, if the package is exactly what you said. And on the day after, we shall create a framework of future of two-states. I will vote for it.
But if, you know, the future or the later day after will be, you know, ceasefire for one month, three-month, whatever, I know exactly that without a framework of two-states, Hamas will not be destroyed. Hamas will flourish again. And of course, they’re all — the major goal of bringing back all the hostages.
But we have to understand this war is on two fronts. One is the battlefield, but the other is a war of ideas. And Hamas will be defeated only on the second front, the war of ideas. The major defeat for Hamas is a future of two-states. And unless we shall discuss the future of two-states, there is no way to defeat Hamas and to create a better political horizon for Palestinians and for Israelis.
AMANPOUR: But your prime minister, even yesterday, was out in the field saying, no, no, no. We will not, you know, agree to a two-state solution, even though the United States, his main ally, is saying this must be, and all the Arab states who he wants to normalize with say this must be. So, who’s going to win this battle on the exit strategy and the day after?
AYALON: It’s a great question. Of course, I believe and I hope that we — when I say we, is the people, is the majority of the people of Israel.
Netanyahu today do not represent more than 20 percent of the Israelis. But you know, in democracy, we shall have to go to elections. So, today — and we know it, because we have polls, and this is the most that we can do — 70 or 70 percent of the Israelis would take the package that you offer if all the hostages will be brought back and we shall have a ceasefire or whatever you call it, and we shall have to, you know, release Palestinian hostages, but again, they will accept a future reality of two- states. My prime minister do not represent the Israeli people. And unfortunately, you know, he’s leading us, and we should have to wait until reserves will come back. And we shall take to the streets and we shall explain in many, many actions and words what we, the Israeli people, do really want. And hopefully, we should have elections in a few months. And we should find the right the right way to a better future.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you what you think — because you’ve written about this and you’ve talked about it. What is the biggest misconception that your government has, and maybe a lot of Israelis have, about Palestinians? You’ve talked about misconceptions.
AYALON: Right. There are two levels of — first of all, on the political level, the misconception was led by Netanyahu during the last 14, 15 years when he was in power. And we call it managing the conflict or shrinking the conflict, whatever you call it. The idea was that we have to rule and separate, meaning we have to make sure that Hamas will stay in power in Gaza. And in order for — to do it, he increased or he empowered the power of Hamas letting Qatar to send money and, you know, doing everything in order for Hamas to stay in power. And on the same way, to decrease the power of Abu Mazen, because Abu Mazen do not believe in violence. So, Palestinians — the perception of Hamas, in the eyes of Palestinians, although most of them do not accept the theology or the religious ideology of Hamas, they see Hamas as the only organization who fight for their freedom.
So, most Palestinians, you know, left Abu Mazen. Today, Abu Mazen will not get more than 15 percent of support among Palestinians. And this was a misconception because the idea that we can control the level of violence by Hamas is something that we do not understand. We — you know, it’s not understanding the idea of Hamas.
Hamas is an organization, it’s not only a military organization. Hamas leading an idea of a greater Palestine from the Jordan to the sea during the ’90s, they did not get support from more than 15 percent of the Palestinians because, finally, Palestinians want a better future and they
accept the reality of two states. So, this was empowering Hamas, decreasing the power of Palestinian Authority on the political level.
On the intelligence level, again, the idea that Hamas is deterred was a huge mistake, because I used to say, we measure hardware and they measure software. Meaning, we saw, after May 21, that when they suffered a major defeat on the military ground,…
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