One proposal, which you and I have discussed in the past, is that the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, but Fatah, moves into Gaza, that there will be some elements of Hamas who will still be in Gaza, that they will be supported to try to establish Palestinian control in Gaza, maybe supported by Egypt or UAE or Saudi. Can you talk to me a little bit about this scenario? What is this vision? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Do you think this is practical? What are the political challenges around it? Just so people can understand what options you think there are for Gaza now.

need for action by leaders and by people capable of affecting action. And there are many, many possibilities. And they're all extremely complicated because of the microeconomic or the micropolitical difficulties that each one has in terms of practicality. But on the whole, in very simplistic terms, there is a course of action which would be positive. And that is, possibly through the benefit of other actors from the Middle East, a process would be put in place in which order would be restored to Gaza. A leadership that would come and be responsible for the Gazan interest should come from the Palestinian Authority, whoever the Palestinian Authority elects, hopefully responsible people who do have national positions and aspirations, of course, why not? But they should not be Hamas, not because the Hamas is some kind of a label, but because Hamas by its very principle does not call for a resolution of the conflict. It calls for the destruction of Israel. They do not see that their being there would be as part of a party that would do anything but call for action to bring about Israel's destruction. So you're not bringing into the leadership a kind of a poisonous pawn. But if they renounce, for example, if they just did the neat thing that leaders have done in history, you know, former terrorists who employed terrorism and were brutal and everything, then upon the changing circumstances and came involved, said, OK, the role of violence has ceased. Now I'm part of another process and I do not renounce, but I'm in favor of peace. What kind of peace? Suppose it is the long formula, the old formula, which is two entities, which is the one of partition. That has always been, since the British in mandate and since the UN decision, always, whenever they came to finding a formula, how to settle the issue between the rivals for sovereignty over Palestine or the Holy Land, it was one of partitioning along the lines of demography. Sometimes, and that has been the case, today this is called the two-state solution. Today it rests on the United Nations Security Resolution 242, which said essentially that one should go back to approximately the 67 borders. But let me add you a very creative idea that had been injected, that if there would be some Israeli who would hold on to territories that we occupied in 67, there would be a swap, so that if we take some land, we'll also give some land. That principle had been inserted by Clinton and is a possibility. So essentially, there would be this. One could adjust the borders to the current realities. One could arrive at all the stages that the Oslo process in its various configurations, as late as Annapolis about 15 years ago. To have final borders declared, to have a peace between the two parties, and to have a normal relationship. That is not a pipe dream. Now, one should work towards that possibility. I think that the Israeli government would go for it. Yes, we have some extreme fringe in Israel, which is always less than 10%, which have either messianic ideas that they believe that they're not really influenced by realities, and they would like to annex. Okay, so, but they've never been the majority, far from it, and they've never been even seriously considered. At this moment, they emit some voices, but when reality comes in, Netanyahu himself, throughout his career, when he dealt with certain efforts, he talked about another entity. He called it a state minus, and he meant that the Palestinians would have a state, but possibly demilitarized. But there is open-mindedness, and this is what we ought to do. So, Rory, I think that first, on the inclusion of Hamas, it would be self-defeating. That's the point. We should not take that as a reality because it would ruin the process from the start. It should be the Palestinians, and they should be as demanding as they can, and they should feel as nationalistically as they can. And we know some of them. And they do have people who care for their own interests, and this should be nurtured. The creativity should come from the fact that now we have a constellation in the Middle East in which other participation could assist that process, ranging from the local partners in the Middle East who have normalized their relationship with Israel, all the way to involvement of other interested parties, which often involve the United States, Europe. We've had such international involvement throughout because of the significance of the Middle East. So all help would be welcome, I think. Thank

you so much for your time, Uzi. And I want to, my final kind of little set of questions. First of all, are you reasonably confident that this current ceasefire agreement can and will hold? Do you think we will get anywhere near that two-state solution that you talk about in your lifetime? And my final point, if there presumably does have to be an election eventually in Israel, who would win it? Well, no, I'm not sure that

this hostage issue would be fully resolved. And the built-in problems are there that even with that malice, there is a chance that it will not be consummated. And therefore, it could collapse under its own weight. So we have to brace ourselves and hope for the best and try to help this happen. But should it be concluded, then, of course, one would have to move from where we stand, and it is extremely difficult to affect this process. Much depends on the role that the United States would choose to act. Will it succeed? Well, if nothing is done, then a war would be resumed. This is the natural product of no action. You need active intervention to sustain stability and to move on a very fragile and a very thin ice to move forward, each time overcoming the complications. Now, things that have not been done before. In our history, we've done many, many frustrating experiences, but we've had some good ones. And, you know, I did not expect the peace with Egypt. You know, when Sadat was assassinated, I was having lunch with the American CIA station chief in Israel. We were both surprised. But look at the surprises. First, the peace with Egypt just a few years before came as a surprise, a pleasant surprise, an important surprise. But so was the assassination of the architect of that peace, of Sadat, Hubei, Islamicists. So all these spoilers and all these things happen, and we have them around. So we need luck and also creativity and the usage of interests and the judicious employment of leverages and enticement and all that. And we can move on to have a positive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It is in Israel's absolute interest to resolve its crisis and century-old dispute with the Palestinians. And Bibi's survival? Well, you know, there is a race here. I used to say, back in 2015, people were concerned what will happen if he'll get elected. I said, if he gets elected, that increases his chance of being reelected. After that, each time, his chances increase. And because incumbency has its advantages. So in effect, I said, prepare for Bibi as prime minister in perpetuity. So my audience was shocked. I myself, I don't take myself that seriously, but it turns out that I was coming to being close. But no, he'll depart from the scene sooner or later. There have come variations. He could withdraw out of his own volition because he would be exhausted, but he could also fight it out because he believes that he still can and even be good for the nation. He could be chased out by the criminal investigations that are afflicting him. He could lose his support from his base because the base is eroding. And it takes a Bibi to defeat Bibi. There is no opposition. One of the problems we have in Israel is deficit in leadership. None of the leaders of the opposition has the stature, the background, and the political strength of Bibi. And that's his success because he essentially neutralized them all. That's his political savvy. But he will have to leave the scene. At the moment, he is really causing more damage in Israel than good. But he's still there, and he still feels that he has other battles to win, not only the one to stay in office. He still wants to see us addressing the Iranian threat, which he believes is no less a peril to Israel than other things. So we have to wait and see. But there is an end to that story. Two

quick last questions from me then. First one, what do you mean when you say Bibi is doing harm? What is it that he's doing which is harmful in terms of Israel's direction at the moment? You

see, when he appointed as the minister for national security, this person who is called Ben Gvir, by all accounts, he knew who he was. He's really a small place. We know each other. We are very incestuous. We all know each other. This guy is a thug. He's a clown. He is a provocateur. You don't do that. It is a mark of utter irresponsibility to the nation to give the portfolio of national security to this kind of a guy. He did it only because he needed this man's votes for his own personal staying. But that is a damaging thing that he did. He knew what the man has corrupted the police. He started to appoint his own kind. He's a man who's been convicted scores of time. This is not just, you know, an omission at the margins. This is an act I would, you know, comes close to, I don't know, reckless. I think, you know, we used to refer to Caligula's appointing his horses as senators as to be a kind of a metaphor to what Bibi might do. But Caligula's horses were not damaging the state. Benfair is pure damage to Israel's interest, and he knew it. So in that sense, he's doing damage. Another thing is that it was evident that he was prolonging the war, although it could have been stopped earlier, because it served his political interest. And even the case of the method of negotiating for the hostages' release was affected by some considerations of his own political expediency. This is pure damage to Israel's national, to Israel itself, and he's guilty of that. Okay,

my final question then. Reflecting on styles of national security advisors, I wonder whether you could reflect on the difference between Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance as models of how you do the job of a national security advisor. All

these characters who have become typical bureaucrats in the modern age sometimes compare themselves one to another. All countries have those kind of guys which do the thing. And they often refer to the big examples that we know in the American case, although I take interest in the British as well. And, of course, they are different. And also my French friends and my European friends all have them. Kissinger was a certain type of national security type. He was extremely active. He was first national security advisor. Then he moved to the State Department and became minister, secretary of state. And he liked to play the game of countries. You know, he was a student of metagny and European history, and he liked all those machinations. By the way, he is the grandest strategist of them all. And when he writes, he writes historical grand history. And nobody writes like Kissinger. Cyrus Vance wouldn't be able to write even a chapter. But he was a superb lawyer, an extremely straight shooter, and very direct, very correct. The prototypical, legally trained man with defense and foreign affairs. So they're completely different. But if you ask me, I got to know many of them, but I also knew the history of. I regarded as the best national security advisor that America had Brent Scrowcroft, which was a man who was managing things from behind, doing things quietly, doing the necessary staff work, not trying to play himself, being at the margins, but doing a good service to the president and the national security machinery that makes decisions. Soscraft was my example as the effective NSC. Now, I don't know the guy who's in. That would be an interesting thing. Trump had experimented with some. And about the British, well, you know about so much better, but they are also some formidable characters whom I admired greatly.

I just wanted to just catch you on the Kissinger thing, because I don't know whether you're prepared to repeat it on the podcast, but you were very interesting about the question of being too clever by half and telling one story to one person, another to another, and why that goes wrong. This

comes into the ethics and the practice and theory of how to work with partners, allies, and so forth. Usually, assumably, partners and allies are friends of yours, not enemies. The common is greater than the different. And the thing that you share, interests, are more than the ones you have in dispute.