Fmr Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister: Our latest idea is a Palestinian-Israeli confederation called the Confederation of the Holy Land

N1: If anyone has knowledge about negotiations and how to try to resolve this situation, it is you. Not only that, you worked on Oslo one, also two, but also on a separate job with Mahmoud Abbas. How do you see this situation between Israel and Hamas and around Gaza today?

BEILIN: The background is really awful. What happened to us, our September 11, and October 7, was really unimaginable, unimaginable for us. We are still trying to digest the information and understand what exactly happened, who should be to blame for it from our side, and why were we not prepared for such a disaster. But, on the other hand, I can say that the current situation can, I'm not sure about it, but it can still shorten the path to peace. Why? Because we used to talk to world leaders. I'm talking about Israelis and Palestinians from peace camps. Most recently, our last idea was announced almost two years ago, which is a Palestinian-Israeli confederation called the Holy Land Confederation, which would allow the Israelis to stay. Those who live in the territories and do not want to live when they are in a Palestinian state would be invited to be there, to live there as permanent residents, and the same number of Palestinians would be allowed to be in Israel in the same status. So, these and other ideas were accepted by the world leaders with whom we spoke, with a kind of, I would say not cynicism, but almost. How can you come up with peace ideas now when you have such a right-wing government in Israel, like never before? You have a very weak and divided Palestinian side, divided between Hamas and Fatah, etc. This can now change. If Hamas no longer runs the Gaza Strip. Not that Israel is going to kill all Hamas people. This is not realistic, because you are talking about hundreds of thousands of Hamas supporters. But I'm talking about the leaders, the people who led Gaza and brought it to disaster. In fact, the situation in Gaza was poverty, dictatorship, and ultra-religious domination in mosques, people were really far from free. If they are no longer running Gaza, then I believe we only have one address. It's the PLO. The PLO is the organization with which we signed the Oslo agreement. And there it is, it's the Palestinian Authority, which is the legal baby of the PLO. There you have a president who is weak, who is not young, but who stands for peace. As you mentioned, I already had an agreement with him in 1995 regarding all the parameters of a permanent contract. So, I can testify that he not only supported the two-state solution but also supported an agreement in which there were compromises from both sides. So this is something that, first of all, today's conflict has put the conflict between us and the Palestinians back on the international agenda.