It was a debate (to score points with the audience) not a discussion (to learn from the other side's arguments), and as a debate it was as boring and confusing as it was long.
A discussion with Palestinian advocates is intrinsically impossible anyway, because of what they are: inherently bad faith actors, who know that their position is indefensible, and who use all their deceptive skills to run circles around their opponents, who in turn look naive and foolish simply by trying to argue in good faith with a bad faith counterpart. With the main deceptive skill of the Palestinian side being the lie of omission, the Israeli side finds itself additionally burdened by the impossible workload of pointing out those omissions in lengthy explanations, a predicament also known as Brandolini's Law or the 'bullshit asymmetry principle'. In order to approach a minimum of fairness in such a debate, allotted speaking times would have to be very unequal.
The outcome of any debate, as opposed to a discussion, depends as much on the audience as on the debating partners. And here too the distinction between open minded (good faith) and prejudiced (bad faith) listeners is what counts. Prejudiced listeners will go with their side no matter how the debate went. Open minded listeners in all likelihood (1) will detect the bad faith on display in the debating style of the Palestinian advocates, and (2) will share the frustration felt by the Israeli advocates in their hopeless task, augmented by their own frustration from not learning anything definitive from the debate.
The noisy anti-Israel crowds marching in US/EU streets, who have intoxicated themselves to the point that they believe they're speaking for the 'World' and on the way to 'Victory', cannot be taken as evidence against the presumption that the large majority of US/EU electorates remain open minded and non-partisan. The real problem are the US/EU governments, who act as if they were no less impressionable than the anti-Israel crowd when exposed to the inflated civilian casualty figures and false accusations of 'genocide' spread around by Hamas's propaganda operation. To cure them of their islamophobia (i.e. fear of confronting Islamist immigrants as well as the Iranian government and its IRGC affiliates), debating bad faith Palestinian advocates is a useless distraction, and Israeli advocates must instead argue their case as straightforwardly as they can. And this not only to the US/EU governments, but also to the Palestinian people and the Palestinian political opposition, which is brutally suppressed by their self-righteous and nefarious leaders. For a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be found without the Palestinians. And for it to be the foundation of a just and lasting peace, it cannot be found without an entirely new political representation of the Palestinian people that is willing to admit defeat in this 100-year unjust war for Muslim supremacy in Palestine, and is also prepared to accept the consequences of that defeat, before entering into good faith negotiations on a peace agreement.
For any Palestinian opposition party to have a chance of success, the Palestinian Nakba victimhood narrative must be completely demolished. As long as the 'Nakba belief' of being the victims of a Zionist and Western injustice survives in the population, the thugs with guns will always bypass the opposition in the 'struggle for justice'. The term 'Nakba' must revert to its initial meaning: an accusation directed by the Palestinian refugees at their Arab and Palestinian leaders for having dragged them into a needless, unjust and disastrous war against their Jewish neighbours. Only by confronting that false victimhood narrative head-on and erasing it to the ground can the opposition impose a new and valid victimhood narrative that calls for revolt against the nefarious leaders and propagandists of the anti-Zionist 'resistance'.
There are 2 angles to this demolition enterprise: (1) Factual (easy): 'Who started the war (for Muslim supremacy in Palestine)?' Who was the first to resort to violence? It clearly wasn't the Zionists, who never broke off negotiations in search of a compromise solution that would accommodate the national aspirations of both peoples. (2) Factual and judgemental (less easy): The democratic argument of the Palestinian natural majority in the country vs the equally large or even larger constituency of diaspora Jews of the Zionists. Was it lawful for the Palestinians and Arabs to completely discount their ambitions and rights to national self-determination in Palestine? Which ties to the Jabotinsky asymmetry-argument in favour of a democratic Jewish-majority state in the whole of Palestine: the Jews had no other Jewish-majority state to which they could have emigrated, unlike the Palestinian Muslims who had a large choice of neighbouring Muslim-majority states (if they absolutely didn't wish to live under Jewish democratic rule).
How can we prove that Palestinian advocates are bad faith actors, who know that their position is indefensible? By the strenuous efforts they make on the factual angle (1) not to deny, but to effectively hide their overwhelming responsibility for the war that led to the Nakba. If confronted in a way that forced them to explicitly deny their responsibility, they would already have lost: because the facts are overwhelmingly against them. By the equally strenuous efforts they make on the factual and judgemental angle (2) not to deny, but to effectively dissimulate their disregard for the Jewish diaspora constituency of the Zionists when insisting on the democratic argument of their natural majority in Palestine at the time of the British Mandate. If confronted in a way that forced them to explicitly explain their disregard for Jewish diaspora rights and to defend their refusal to become a (large) minority in a democratic Jewish-majority state, a refusal so principled that in their eyes it justified war against the Zionist enterprise, they would already have lost: because they would be forced to acknowledge that the only reason for rejecting a Muslim minority situation under democratic Jewish rule, while accepting a Jewish minority situation under Muslim rule, is their ideology of Muslim supremacism as it is dictated by the religion of political Islam.
In conclusion one can say: a Palestinian partner in good faith negotiations for peace can only be a Palestinian counterpart who renounces Muslim political supremacism; a Palestinian or Arab counterpart who does not renounce Muslim political supremacism cannot be a partner in good faith negotiations for peace.
This conclusion should have been already glaringly obvious to everyone during the entire history of the conflict since the British Mandate. That it was not acknowledged as such for all that time by the US/EU governments can only be explained either by antisemitism, i.e. a blinding prejudice against the Zionist cause, or by Islamophobia, i.e. a blinding fear of confronting Muslim prejudice. If 'never again is now' Oct 7 should be the end of that. Israel's main political effort, after defending herself militarily and making her case to the US/EU governments, should be her support for a Palestinian political opposition party that wants to become a good faith partner for peace, and thereby would pull the rug out from under the Islamist anti-Zionist cause pursued relentlessly and aggressively by the Iranian regime and its IRGC affiliates in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
The prerequisites for negotiating a 1SS or 2SS are the same
[It should go without saying that these are my opinions and that I do not expect to have a vote in the matter.]
(1) Palestinians admit defeat in this 100-year holy war for Muslim supremacy in Palestine, for which they also accept full responsibility.
(2) Palestinians are willing to prove their good faith: (i) by acknowledging that it was an unlawful war from the outset and by accepting the consequences of their defeat, such as the forfeiture of the 'right of return'; (ii) by surrendering into captivity the political and military leadership that is compromised by the unlawful war (support for terrorism and 'armed resistance') and by disarming all terrorists and 'resistance fighters'; (iii) by accepting that negotiations on return or compensation of refugees must include both groups of refugees, the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from other Arab countries; (iv) by accepting that the Jewish state is a democratic Jewish-majority state, either in the whole of Palestine (1SS) or in Israel (2SS): because there is no other Jewish-majority state to which Jews can emigrate if they do not wish to live under Muslim-majority rule, while there is a large choice of neighbouring Muslim-majority states to which Muslims can emigrate if they do not wish to live under democratic Jewish-majority rule.
The 1SS has 2 advantages: (a) it corresponds to the wish of both peoples to settle in the whole of Palestine, which in a 2SS can only be satisfied if the 2 independent states welcome as foreign residents citizens of the other state; (b) it offers better security guarantees because there will only be one defence and police force that remains under the ultimate control of the Jewish majority. It has 1 disadvantage: under the Jewish-majority constraint it offers less possibilities for the return of Palestinian diaspora refugees than a separate independent Palestinian state.
The good-faith guarantees are essential for achieving a just and lasting peace, and can only be offered by a new Palestinian political representation that has broad popular support, while the whole old leadership will have to be disarmed, imprisoned or exiled. As the war in Gaza shows, this may well be the hardest part, if Fatah and the other armed groups do not surrender.
Settlements are composed of real estate and residents: a 2SS in which both states do not welcome foreign residents of the other state is off to a bad start.
Jordan and Egypt: a 1SS will need agreements with both peace partners either to grant Jordanian or Egyptian citizenship to Palestinian diaspora refugees before welcoming them as foreign residents with local citizenship rights into Israel/Palestine; or to resettle Palestinian diaspora refugees that cannot return to the new binational state with full citizenship rights because of the Jewish-majority constraint (unless some other failsafe constitutional mechanism is found that guarantees what the Jewish majority is designed to guarantee in a democratic state - openness to unrestricted Jewish immigration (Law of Return) and Jewish control of the defence and security forces).
Lebanon: a Palestinian withdrawal from the anti-Zionist war will pull the rug out from under the islamist cause of the Iranian regime and its IRGC affiliates, and possibly encourage Lebanese Muslims and Christians to oust Hezbollah with Israel/Palestine as its ally.
Normalising Arab governments: although reluctant to say so openly, they already wish to extricate themselves from the anti-Zionist war, and may be of help when settling the Palestinian diaspora refugee problem.
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