Last October, a surprise attack on Israel by the Islamic group Hamas triggered a new war.

Hamas murdered at least 1,200 people in the attack and took 240 civilians hostage.

We continue the war until the end,
until total victory, until we achieve all our goals:

the elimination of Hamas, the return of all our abductees.

After almost four months of conflict,

Israel's retaliatory attacks on the Palestinian Gaza Strip have killed more than 26,000 people,

according to the health authorities in Gaza.

The humanitarian crisis, meanwhile, becomes ever more severe.

Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

When, and how, might this war end?

We discuss the humanitarian crisis and ask - what is the path to peace?

Welcome to GLOBAL AGENDA. I'm Ebara Miki.

Soon it will be four months since Hamas launched its gruesome attacks on Israel

and the start of Israel's large scale military retaliation.

The war in Gaza has claimed thousands of lives, unleashing a humanitarian crisis.

Has peace in the region become unattainable?

To discuss this question and many more,

today I'm joined by a panel of distinguished guests who have devoted their lives to promoting peace.

From Tel Aviv, Dr. Yossi Beilin, Israel's former Minister of Justice and the initiator of the Oslo Peace process.

From Jerusalem, Dr. Hiba Husseini, a Palestinian lawyer.

She served as legal advisor to peace process negotiations from 1994 to 2008.

Mr. Charles Dunne, a former US diplomat who served in the Middle East,

currently a non-resident scholar at Arab Center, Washington DC.

And joining me in the studio is Professor Tanaka Koichiro of Keio University.

He's an expert on the Middle East.

Welcome everybody. First off to Dr. Beilin, I would like to start with this question.

What does the current conflict in Gaza mean to Israel?

Well, first of all, we are a country in mourning.

It's a collective mourning for the last three and a half months.

I don't remember Israel in such a situation ever.

It of course hurt not only the people, but also kind of a feeling of confidence I would say, not to say hubris.

People understood that with all the modern technologies in the world,

eventually other people could quite easily break the defense and get into Israel,

which was not ready to defend itself that Black Saturday, October the 7th.

Another thing is the understanding that there is no real substitute to the PLO,

to the Palestinian Organization, because this is the one organization, one Palestinian organization,

which is recognized by the whole world as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

And the efforts of the right in Israel to somehow I would say help

or sustain the rule of the Hamas in Gaza was a huge, huge mistake.

Dr. Husseini, what does the conflict mean to Palestine?

Well, the conflict and the current war have been a tremendous devastation for the Palestinians.

All of us who are not in Gaza feel the impact of this war in one way or another and feel the pain and the sorrow.

And like Dr. Beilin, we are also in our own mourning and in our own sense of disbelief

as to the extent of the collective punishment that Gaza civilians are under.

Israel has a right to defend itself, but within proportion.

And the escalation for the numbers that have been killed and the numbers that have been injured

and the devastation to the infrastructure is really, really devastating.

Mr. Dunne, what are the implications of this war for US foreign policy?

Well, the Biden administration I think came into office hoping for a much more congenial Middle East.

Letting countries of the region solve their own problems through negotiations so that the United States

would not have to come in and maintain such a heavy footprint to maintain stability.

Well, the horrific Hamas attack on October 7th essentially blew that policy out of the water.

The Biden administration's policy is now in tatters.

Instead of pivoting away from the Middle East,

it is more intensely involved militarily and diplomatically than it has been in many, many years.

The administration is trying some productive formulas to suggest,

to move things off the stalemate where they are now, but has so far been unsuccessful.

I think it sees its entire foreign policy legacy, the administration's entire foreign policy legacy at stake,

and there are serious worries about a broader war

that could draw the US in even further with very unpredictable consequences.

Professor Tanaka, what impact is the war having on the rest of the Middle East?

Unfortunately, the major concern that we hold here in Japan,

and I believe also in Washington and other Western capitals,

are that the war in Gaza or over Gaza would have a sort of a spillover effect,

and it's going to involve other countries or other non-state actors.

And here to say, I could say that Hezbollah of Lebanon,

militias inside Syria and Iraq, or Ansar Allah the so-called Houthi rebels in Yemen,

and maybe others that are possibly going to, well,

show their force in a way to say to the world or especially to the United States and the supporters of Israel,

that they are there to, well, support the Palestinian cause and also possibly Hamas.

And that sort of a spillover is not welcomed by the United States and also, but not by Japan, certainly.

Because we fear that sort of a repetition of the 1973 Yom Kippur War may lead to another, kind of,

energy crisis for us in the West, and especially in Asia, East Asia.

We should be mindful that anything could happen in the future.

Thank you. I also had separate interviews with two other experts,

James McGoldrick, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine,

and Mr. Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council,

who mediated secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO in the early 1990s.

Their views will come up throughout the program.

The conflict has led to a deepening crisis in the Gaza Strip, home to over 2 million people.

UN agencies and international aid groups are struggling to provide emergency relief there

as the situation appears to be deteriorating day by day.

Alive! Alive! And not in a coffin!

The Hamas attacks stunned Israel.

Families of the remaining hostages demand the government prioritizes their return.

Yet Prime Minister Netanyahu continues the military assault, calling for the annihilation of Hamas.

Eighty-five percent of Gaza's residents have lost their homes.

And with the area blockaded, there is nowhere for its 2.2 million people to flee.

The UN Security Council failed to adopt several resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire

and barely managed to pass a resolution for more humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

James McGoldrick, Jerusalem-based senior UN official explains his concerns.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is really dire.

If there was 700 trucks a day before the conflict going in, and there's now only 200 trucks going in a day,

there's no way possible that we are serving the population properly.

So, we will see some serious illnesses and we'll see some serious people dying because of these diseases

that are breaking out respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, you know,

waterborne diseases are very very rife at the moment.

We can't bring in some medical equipment.

We can't bring in material that's used for the water and sanitation delivery

and the spare parts needed for generators to keep the pumps and the pumps in hospitals

to keep the electricity going so people can do operations.

So that's something we keep bringing to the attention of the Israelis.

Dr. Husseini first. You must know many people in Gaza.

What are they telling you?

I know a lot of people. I also have family in Gaza, distant family.

I mean, people don't have shelter, they don't have food.

Everybody is in terrible fear.

They have no ability to even process the psychological devastation that has occurred.

All of them, when I speak with them, they want an end to all of this.

When we hear statements coming from both Israel and Hamas that they don't want to stop this war,

except there are conditions and preconditions and so many conditions, also for the release of the hostages,

as if the people are secondary, tertiary, they don't count, and that's really, really horrific.

Dr. Beilin, how about Israel?

The current situation is not just retaliation or revenge.

Israel cannot live with a government of Hamas in Gaza, cannot.

Now, the way is to tell them, "Get out of this place.

Don't govern Gaza anymore."

Had it happened today, yesterday, it would've ended the war.

Of course they should return the hostages.

They should release them and should stop governing the place. That's it.

Since it doesn't happen, what is left for Israel is to try to find them and to eliminate the leadership,

not the people there but the leadership.

The problem is that the citizens of Gaza, the civil society, became a shield for the perpetrators of Hamas.

And the innocent people in Gaza are paying a crazy price for it.

The suffering of the civil society in Gaza is heartbreaking.

But you ask yourself, what should we do?

To stop the war today is a victory for Hamas and a defeat for the free world, really.

I'm telling you, I'm the last person in the world who would like to see an ongoing war anywhere, but I need an answer.

If it is not just the removal of Hamas from the leadership in Gaza, what should Israel do?

To accept it is impossible, totally impossible, and shouldn't happen.

I can't believe myself saying it, but this is the only answer I have right now.

So far the Israeli assault or retaliation has not really reached the Hamas leadership

nor the Hamas tunnels effectively to uproot them,

to eliminate Hamas or to eliminate the government.

Clearly, today Hamas is not governing Gaza.

That governance has come to an end by the sheer impact of this war.

What you're witnessing is almost a revenge and a desire to kill as many people in Gaza as possible,

and not to mention the fact that also the Israeli military is going into the West Bank refugee camps as well.

So there is doubt. Palestinians, we are doubting whether Israel is capable.

With all the tons of bombs that have been dropped, with the air strikes, with the destruction,

they have not been able to reach that goal to eliminate the government of Hamas,

so there has to be a different route.

I would like to ask you, Mr. Dunne, what is your view on how the U.S. has been reacting to this war?

Because many people in the world are wondering why the U.S. would even veto a ceasefire.

Well, the U.S. is taking a very traditional position,

when it sees that Israel has been threatened and feels it needs

to undertake even severe actions in its own self-defense.

In the sense that it is trying to give Israel space to defend itself,

to possibly end this conflict currently by military means,

while protecting it from censure by the international community and particularly the UN Security Council.

I do think it's clear that that diplomatic strategy isn't working anymore.

The United States has come under very heavy criticism for its diplomatic approach to this,

because the rest of the world sees what we're all talking about here,

the immense destruction that's going on in Gaza,

which seems to many people disproportionate to the terrorist attack by Hamas.

They don't see an end game here that will lead to a diplomatic solution that can be considered,

that can be considered reasonable.

This is the thing that the Biden administration now has to wrestle with,

how its support for Israel initially seems to have changed into support for an end state

that is abhorrent to a lot of people in the world and a huge diplomatic problem for the United States.

Professor Tanaka, as this war prolongs, how concerned are you about the risk of regional spillover?

Well, I am very concerned, because first of all,

the level of the escalation that is happening between Hezbollah and Israel in northern Israeli territories,

the devastation is totally widening, and we see more destruction on both sides of the borders.

When it comes to target killing or target strikes,

Israel has a remarkable record of getting to what it needs to be done.

Here, I am sometimes really puzzled by myself to see why the destruction in Gaza has to continue,

with all the capabilities that they have shown even as of today, that they can target-kill these unwanted elements,

but still in Gaza, they're still in search for these senior Hamas leadership.

What happens is, what we are seeing, witnessing,

is that it's the total destruction of the city or the total entire Gaza Strip.

Now going back to your question,

the idea or the possibility of spillover in the region is greater than ever because

Hezbollah and other Iraqi or Syrian militias are likely to be connected with Iran,

all connected to Iran, and then the question arises.

Eventually, would this lead to a war between Iran and the United States, or even involving the British as well?

And sometimes I see and also talk to a lot of the Iranians that I know of,

and they have got this idea that it is the side of the Israelis that want this kind of spillover,

to bring in the Americans... on their side, of course...

and then have them take care of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon or elsewhere in Lebanon,

and also eventually wipe out Iran and its nuclear capabilities.

Iran considers that this is sort of a trap, entrapment, and that they're not going to take the bait.

I did want to agree with the professor's remarks.

There is a real danger of regional spillover.

And the point I want to make here is that it's already occurring.

By my count, there are some nine countries who have already been involved in hostilities,

This is not unrelated, and a strategic miscalculation or a minor miscalculation,

an incident, I think, could set off a much larger conflict much more quickly than we imagine.

Thank you. Now I want to look back at the 30-plus-year effort to achieve Middle East peace.

Peace negotiations began following the 1993 Oslo agreement,

but then the process stalled for more than a decade.

Enough of blood and tears, enough!

The Oslo Accord was signed at the White House by Israel and the PLO in 1993.

Israel and Palestine for the first time recognized each other as partners for peace.

Jan Egeland, then a Norwegian diplomat,

helped mediate negotiations in secret that eventually led to the historic accords.

He recalls what happened.

What drove the two sides at that time was, I think, two things.

One, a sense that continued stalemate and confrontation was not good for either of the two sides.

And the other thing was.

Real courageous leadership, which is not there at the moment,

neither on the Israeli nor on the Palestinian side.

With the accords, and the "two-state solution" in mind,

negotiations began on issues such as Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugees.

However, the two sides continued to be at odds with each other.

Peace talks have effectively stalled since the last attempt in 2014, during the Obama era.

Some say the current conflict has set Israeli-Palestinian relations back to before the Oslo Accords.

In January, Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed a negative view toward the two-state solution.

The state of Israel must have security control over
all the territory west of the Jordan River.

This is a necessary condition, and
it conflicts with the idea of Palestinian sovereignty.

Egeland is deeply troubled by the current situation.

It's more complicated now even than it was at that time.

The Palestinian side is more split, it's more leaderless,

and the Israeli side has the most extreme government in its history.

Today it's only polarization and sort of tribal kind of hatred and lust for power that is driving,

I would say, on both sides.

So Dr. Beilin, just take us back to '92/93,

recognizing the PLO at that time must not have been easy for everybody to accept in Israel.

How did that come about?

Well, first of all, we had elections and the Labor Party won, led by Yitzhak Rabin.

And Rabin promised in his campaign to have an agreement with the Palestinians within six to nine months.

This was his promise.

I believe that this was the biggest change.

For me, when I launched the process, one of the major reasons was the strengthening of Hamas.

Hamas began to become more and more popular.

It was seen by the young generation in Palestine as less corrupt than the PLO,

and very committed to the goal, beside its welfare system, which was important for the Palestinians.

And I was worried that if we are losing the PLO and are left with Hamas,

we will be left with zealots who did not want to talk to Israel,

did not put any conditions because they didn't want to partition the land between Israelis and Palestinians.

As it happened in many other cases in the world, when the leaderships decided to take a step,

which was different than what they actually educated their peoples to believe in,

the same people changed their minds.

So yes, in the beginning Palestinians were happy with the agreement

and they gave flowers to the Israeli soldiers,

and Israelis were very happy, but it did not go for a long while.

Dr. Husseini, looking back, back then,

how determined were the Palestinian leaders to give peace a chance and what has gone wrong?

I agree with Dr. Beilin's assessment,

but also I'd like to add the fact that the Oslo process started also as a result of the first Intifada,

because the situation on the ground was so difficult

and you had the major clashes between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

And there was also a change and a shift in the approach, the militant approach of the PLO,

as an armed resistance movement, which also had to come to an end.

And those were the factors from the Palestinian leadership perspective.

The Oslo process did not reach the two-state solution as was designed

over the five-year term from the 1995 interim agreement.

We tried that at Camp David, and we couldn't do it,

and we could not reach the compromises that we needed to reach.

But the Palestinian leadership has remained committed because we have no option.

And this is what President Abbas says today.

I mean, he is eager to negotiate a settlement,

but the settlement has to provide the basic minimums that the Palestinians can live with.

Territorial compromises. We have to deal with the settlement issues.

Today, there are 750,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Those are very, very large numbers, and the settlements expansion has never stopped.

We still have to deal with the issue of Jerusalem.

We still have to deal with the issue of the territorial connection between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

One of the major problems of this current war stems from the fact that the territories are so separated,

which allowed Hamas to take over and eliminate the presence of the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip.

So all of these factors remain outstanding, and we have to deal with the refugees.

Mr. Dunne, the US has been the mediator of the peace process.

From the US point of view though, what was the problem?

I think one of the flaws of the negotiating process that came after the Oslo Agreement

was simply that it left the most important issues to the very end in my view.

Jerusalem, settlements, borders, right of return and so on.

And so, much of the negotiating energy was focused on smaller issues and ever smaller issues,

it seemed to me, from my perch in Jerusalem and following it from the State Department afterwards,

so that it was becoming increasingly difficult even to contemplate negotiating the larger issues as the leadership...

situation on both sides deteriorated, political circumstances began to become more difficult and so on.

So in some ways it was a failure of imagination, I think, in the process.

Professor Tanaka, after the Oslo process kick-started in 1993,

Japan supported the process, especially in the field of economic assistance.

Can you tell us about that a little bit and how that was affected

by the stalled process and ongoing conflicts?

Well, what I have to say is that Japan politically has been sort of a bystander to the peace process all along.

But yet the government, through the ODA programs, have...

of course, using the taxpayer's money,

did provide funds for the economic development of Palestine,

both in the West Bank and in Gaza, following the Oslo Accords, as you say.

But that started to change following, well, maybe the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin,

or maybe later when the eruption of the second Intifada in 2000.

And all of a sudden we see the total destruction of what we, not only us,

but the international community have built inside Gaza and elsewhere.

And one example that I can mention is in year 2001, the airstrip in Gaza that was built by Japanese,

well, assistance from the Japanese government was destroyed.

And we haven't seen any sort of an apology coming out from Israel.

We haven't made any sort of a strong demarche against Israeli government of why they had to do this.

But unfortunately, when the peace process is there,

and both parties or all co-parties are involved,

are willing to take that forward or move that forward, yes, our assistance would make sense.

But now under, the current condition, humanitarian aid, emergency humanitarian aid would be the most that we can do.

I also asked Jan Egeland how this war will play out in the long run for both Israel and Palestine.

Let's listen to this.

This is not making Israel safer.

I think this will make Israel that deserve to live in peace more insecure long term

and it has made life for Palestinians hell.

We need to rebuild and give hope to this generation of youth.

Half of them are under, 16 years old.

Uh, if not, there will be more hatred again.

More extremism, more attacks on Israel.

So this issue of spiral of hatred, Dr. Husseini, your thoughts on this?

I mean, just gauging from the polls today, I mean, Hamas is more popular than ever.

And Hamas popularity with this war has increased among Palestinians and in the Arab world

and at the public popular level and not decreased.

We are two societies that are traumatized and we are traumatizing each other.

And our group... psychological identity is traumatized as groups also

because we see each other as existential threats to each other.

I mean, there's a fear that the Gazans will be transferred to Egypt and the West Bankers will be transferred to Jordan.

So this is still part of the psychological dilemmas that we are experiencing right now.

That's why I say we have to stabilize Gaza, stabilize the situation,

and reach that ceasefire very, very quickly in order to start, in parallel,

the issues related to the core conflict.

Let's go to the new proposal that you and Dr. Beilin has proposed.

Before the current crisis, in 2022,

Dr. Beilin and Dr. Husseini had co-authored a proposal in hopes of giving peace a chance.

Let's turn to that now.

Various proposals on how to achieve peace in the region are being discussed around the world.

Among those proposals is the Holy Land Confederation.

Husseini and Beilin, along with other experts from Israel and Palestine,

have proposed this as a framework for a two-state solution.

This proposal calls for cohabitation between the two sovereign, independent states in a spirit of cooperation.

This would allow citizens of both sides to move freely and make Jerusalem an open city.

So Dr. Beilin, tell us the essence of this proposal.

What's new about this?

It is very new because the attitude towards it,

I can speak for Israelis, even Israelis from the peace camp, was we have to separate, we have to...

you should live there, we should live here, and we are not involved in each other's life.

That was, I'm afraid, an energizer for hostility.

We need a border, for sure, but the idea is something like the European Union, that there will be borders,

but the high level of cooperation, infrastructure, and other areas, health and whatever.

It is also solving the issue of the settlements.

We don't see an Israeli prime minister, future prime minister,

who will be ready to evacuate hundreds of thousands of settlers from their homes.

It is unrealistic.

The idea is that once we have a border,

those settlements which will remain on the Palestinian side of the border will remain there,

but they will live in the Palestinian state and will

continue to be Israeli citizens that become also Palestinian permanent residents.

The same number of Palestinian citizens who would like to live in Israel will be allowed to do that as permanent residents.

In that way, you don't have to move anybody from anywhere.

If you take off the table this very thorny issue, I believe that all the other issues can be solved,

so I believe that if we decide after this war, these dark days,

as it happens many times in the world after war, to sit together and to find a way for peace,

we don't need generations to negotiate if on both sides you'll have people who believe in peace.

I'm not necessarily talking on our side about our current prime minister, but I believe that he will be replaced soon.

I don't think that after the war he will remain the prime minister.

I believe that the center left may come to power, and if this is the case,

then there is a fair chance to sign a peace treaty between the parties.

And there will be a Palestinian state which will include the West Bank and Gaza,

and that will be also be the solution for the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Husseini, why did you come up with this idea to propose this with Dr. Beilin?

The credit goes to Dr. Beilin.

He came up with the idea, and I joined him because I believed,

first of all, in a need to resolve this conflict.

I grew up with this conflict, I was five years old when it was 1967, and I still carry that war with me.

The Confederation provides for the recognition of the State of Palestine.

This is essential.

Once the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state,

it enters into the Confederation with the State of Israel.

The idea, again, is that we can share this land, with a border, of course,

but there will be slowly a permeable border.

We need to separate in order to live together

and coexist on what we both believe the land to be ours.

So instead of living in hostility and in continued conflict,

the Confederation provides this opportunity to, again,

enjoy the land, enjoy an open city - Jerusalem, of course - the Holy Sites.

That's why we call it the Holy Land Confederation.

It's really to draw the attention to the fact that this Holy City can be enjoyed by everyone; Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

And so in that respect, the idea of the Confederation grew and grew more and more as an attractive idea.

And it's a step to the realization of having a two-state solution becoming...

materializing and becoming viable, where Israel is as a first economy,

and we as a third underdeveloped economy relying on international aid,

be it from Japan, the US, Europe, and the Arab states, we cannot continue to live like that.

We must have the opportunity.

And the Confederation, Holy Land Confederation, provides that opportunity.

We were presumptuous enough in order to try and write together the narrative.

Usually... I mean, it had never been done before, never.

What you have is, usually, a narrative of the Palestinians, a narrative of the Israelis, side by side.

This is the first time in order we wrote a joint narrative,

here, there were of course differences, and some of them were ideological,

some of them were factual, but eventually we could overcome them.

Because if you come with a feeling, with an emotion,

that you need badly to make peace and you cannot play games, and yet you don't have really time,

even if many people on both sides believe that time works on their side,

but this is not necessarily the case.

Both of us are losing if you're not going to peace.

If this is the feeling, you can always find solutions.

We both belong to the same land,

and we both believe in our own respective ways that this is our land.

And this... Because, I mean, this is the cradle of the three monotheistic religions.

You have the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims,

all have their association, deeply felt association, going back centuries, centuries, and centuries ago.

You feel this land belongs to you and you belong to the land, so it's very difficult to separate.

And that's why there's this deeply felt affinity with Palestine, and Jerusalem especially.

I mean, this whole conflict started with issues related to Jerusalem...

From my perspective, this is not a religious conflict, it's really a political conflict,

but it raises a lot of emotional feelings related to religion and the historic relationship to the land.

And that's where the affinity comes from.

And that's why, again, the Confederation document, as a proposal,

provides that venue for people not to be detached from the land, from their feelings, from their affinity to the land.

It provides them with the venue to say,

This is my land, but I'm sharing it.

And I recognize that there are others...

the three religions belong here.

And therefore the people can live together.

It's doable, but we really have to have the political will,

and we have to have the political leadership and the proper timing,

which I hope will become sooner rather than later.

Mr. Dunne, you had something to say?

Yes, frankly, I find it intriguing and ingenious in its approach to some of these very thorny final status issues.

The State Department is apparently considering models of governance, which include compacts of free association,

a model that might be able to govern Gaza, possibly the West Bank, in the future.

It struck me that that model that some of the State Department are looking at

bears a very interesting resemblance to the ideas embodied in the Holy Land Confederation.

The Confederation plan seems to avoid the difficult choices in a hard divorce,

if you want to put it that way, where here's a hard border, nobody crosses the border.

Here's a separation of Jerusalem, that's a final separation.

All of these issues are, I think, very cleverly and persuasively dealt with in this particular plan.

There is a return to the 1967 borders, essentially, which is a key Palestinian demand.

Yet those borders are permeable so that Israelis and Palestinians alike can cross them.

I love the idea of the permanent residency of Palestinians in Israel and Israelis in Palestine.

How that's going to work in practice, how you get the political will to bring this about, again, is another issue.

And again, I think it comes down to the question of,

at what point do both Israeli and Palestinian publics become politically, and emotionally above all,

ready for such a bold and ambitious solution?

Thank you. I would like to continue our discussion, but time is up.

Lastly, to wrap up this program,

could you tell us your final thoughts, to share with our audience in the world? Dr. Beilin?

First of all, our conflict is soluble and talks about the insoluble conflicts doesn't refer to ours.

We know the solutions.

It needs the leaderships on both sides to be courageous enough and to go for these solutions that we know,

including the idea of the Confederation perhaps.

And the world should invite us, talk with us, come to Israel and to Palestine,

talk with the leaderships, put it high, high, high on the agenda.

Because if it is not there and we don't solve it, even if we lie to ourselves and say,

Okay, right now there is no violence, we can go on,

eventually it is blowing up in our face, and we should be very careful about it.

We should prevent it, we can solve it, and the world should return to help us as it did, including Japan itself,

which was very involved with the multilateral talks and contributed a lot to solutions.

Thank you. Dr. Husseini?

To take advantage of the global attention that this war has drawn, I think we invite the international community,

Japan, of course, and the US on top of that, to rethink of the strategy to this conflict.

The strategy to this conflict has to involve an end game.

We have to have a timeline, we have to have a settlement within a reasonable period of time.

Otherwise, if we continue to manage the conflict,

we will continue to give the extremists, the spoilers, the opportunity to sidetrack us.

So again, the message is, from the ashes of this war, from the ashes of this devastation,

the world is invited to take a different look and a new strategy approach

to the resolution of this conflict and within a very close timeline.

Thank you. Mr. Dunne?

I agree with Dr. Beilin and Dr. Husseini that solutions are possible and those solutions are known,

and not only that, the possible solutions have been known for decades.

But it requires enormous political will, not only leadership will,

but will among the populations of Israel and Palestine to make that a reality.

And for better or for worse, the United States has enormous convening power

in terms of making negotiations over some final settlement possible.

The United States has to take seriously its responsibilities to make that happen,

and it can't take no for an answer when one party or another seems to be intransigent.

I really do believe that the stability not only of the Middle East,

but other parts of the world, depend upon that.

Thank you. Professor Tanaka?

The longevity or the continuation of the war itself or the conflict ongoing,

that would decrease the credibility of the countries like the United States, the G7 members like Japan, and others as well.

So we need to be really mindful that it's not only about the physical war that may engulf the others,

the political stability and the political credibility of us are at danger now.

And one thing, yes, we need the United States to be at the center of any future deal,

but whether or not the Palestinians or maybe the Israelis consider the United States as sort of an honest broker,

as it was once, but I don't see it as that today.

Another point to add is that, 2024, we have the presidential elections of the United States.

What would happen after November? I'll leave that question open.

We'll have to follow up with that.

Finally, here are messages from Mr. McGoldrick and Mr. Egeland.

For the Israelis, the families, the loved ones who have been held hostage and the things that happened on the 7th of October

and the days of imaginable anxiety, the fear that's come with that.

But there's also the people in Gaza they're struggling to access the basic food, water and shelter

and the pain and the hunger and the helplessness.

That we have to address this humanitarian crisis.

And in parallel to that, have work going on with people who can make political mediation work

and then try to create a future for Palestine, which is a reconstruction future.

It's a physical, it's geographical, but it's also political.

We have to address the humanitarian suffering that is there on the ground.

Well, I have, uh, one message, and that is to.

Israelis and Palestinians who believe in peace and who believe in coexistence to not give up.

We need your leadership. We need your ideas.

Secondly, The United States with the European Union need to push Israel to make concessions.

And we need the Arab world, led by Egypt and Jordan and the Gulf countries,

to get the Palestinians to become a coherent, party to a peace talk.

And then we need to have visionary leadership to have two states,

living together in a cooperative agreement.

There is no other solution.

This conflict is too important for the rest of the world to be neglected any longer.

With that note, thank you everyone for participating in our program.

The Israel-Hamas War is serving as a test not only for regional actors, but for the world.

And as some of our guests have pointed out, it's too important to ignore.

Thank you for watching GLOBAL AGENDA.