Robert Malley on Umma: advisor to Clinton and Obama, special envoy under Biden, he recounts from the inside thirty years of failures on Israel-Palestine

Robert Malley: a lucid dive into thirty years of failures of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process

Guest of Umma, Robert Malley is a major figure in American diplomacy in the Middle East. He held leading responsibilities in the region under three Democratic presidents: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, notably as Clinton’s advisor on Arab-Israeli affairs, White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf under Obama, then US special envoy for Iran under Biden.

A brilliant specialist in international relations, a talented academic, an experienced diplomat and a keen expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Robert Malley is also a privileged witness to several decades of negotiations. This experience at the highest level of the American administration gives particular depth to his analysis.

With Hussein Agha, he signed Tomorrow is yesterday. Life, death and the quest for peace in Israel/Palestinepublished by Max Milo editions. There are books that we consult, others that we quickly forget. And then there are those that you must read, keep and have in your library. This one undoubtedly belongs to the latter category. It is an exceptional and essential work, which must be read to understand what really happened behind thirty years of negotiations, diplomatic failures, missed opportunities and stories sometimes reconstructed after the fact.

Rarely does an interview on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict give such a feeling of hearing from someone who was really at the heart of the events. Robert Malley does not comment on this story from the outside: he participated in some of the most sensitive negotiations and observed the mechanisms of American diplomacy from the inside.

A two-state solution that was never obvious

The first interest of the interview lies in its questioning of the simplifying narrative which has imposed itself around the failure of the peace process. Robert Malley explains that the two-state solution has never been a natural conclusion, neither for the Palestinians nor for the Israelis. The Palestinians saw it as a historic compromise, while a large part of Israeli society has long rejected the very idea of ​​a Palestinian state. The process initiated from the 1990s was therefore based on profoundly divergent expectations.

Robert Malley insists on an essential element: adherence to the peace process did not mean that the two peoples shared the same vision of its outcome. On the Palestinian side, the acceptance of a state in the territories occupied in 1967 already represented, according to this reading, a considerable concession compared to historic Palestine. On the Israeli side, the idea of ​​renouncing conquered territories and accepting Palestinian sovereignty remained deeply contested.

Camp David: deconstructing the “generous offer” narrative

On Camp David, in July 2000, Robert Malley mainly returned to an idea that had become almost a dogma: Yasser Arafat alone would have refused a “generous offer” from Israel. He does not deny Palestinian errors, but recalls that there was then no final text, no detailed maps, no proposal allowing us to speak of a formalized offer. His aim is not to absolve one side, but to show how political stories reconstructed after the fact can lastingly shape public opinions.

This Camp David story is not, for Robert Malley, a simple historical dispute. He believes that it had a profound influence on the course of events, in particular by helping to establish in part of Israeli and Western opinion the idea according to which the Palestinians refused peace on principle. An interpretation which, according to him, does not take into account the complexity of the negotiations nor the concessions expected from each party.

The disastrous record of American mediation

The harshest criticism, however, is aimed at the United States. Robert Malley, who served several Democratic administrations, draws a particularly gloomy assessment of their role: biased mediation, lack of real pressure on Israel, marginalization of other actors and artificial maintenance of a peace process which no longer corresponded to the reality on the ground. It also reports Barack Obama’s doubts about the American inability to translate its declarations into action.

This is one of the strongest passages of the interview. Robert Malley questions the paradox of an America which, at the height of its power, had considerable diplomatic influence but was not able to transform this power into political settlement. According to him, Washington has maintained the illusion of a peace process while refusing to truly change the balance of power between Israelis and Palestinians.

Barack Obama and the limits of American politics

Robert Malley also returns to Barack Obama, whom he presents as the American president with whom he worked who best understood the Palestinian question. Not that Obama necessarily shared all Palestinian positions, but he perceived, according to him, their historical and political roots.

The former American president would thus have understood one of the central contradictions of Washington’s policy: claiming to want a two-state solution while refusing to exert sufficient pressure to make this solution possible. For Robert Malley, a policy that does not impose any costs for maintaining the status quo is unlikely to cause a change in trajectory.

October 7 and the failure of a strategy

The interview becomes particularly enlightening when he discusses October 7 and the war in Gaza. Malley refuses easy explanations. He instead insists on Israeli strategic blindness, convinced that Hamas would remain contained thanks to a few economic concessions, while, according to him, numerous signals announced a possible explosion.

He is nevertheless cautious about the information according to which Benjamin Netanyahu was precisely warned of the imminence of an attack. For Robert Malley, the essential question lies elsewhere: in the inability to understand that a policy consisting of keeping Gaza under lasting pressure while occasionally granting some easing measures could not constitute a viable political strategy in the long term.

When military victory becomes a strategic failure

One of the main threads of the book then appears clearly: the difference between military victory and political victory. Israel can achieve major military successes without resolving the political problems that caused the conflicts.

Robert Malley and Hussein Agha observe this mechanism over several decades, from Lebanon to Palestine and up to the most recent regional clashes. Military superiority can win a battle or weaken an adversary, but it is not enough, according to their analysis, to build a lasting political order.

In the United States, a profound change

The former American advisor also observes a profound change in the United States. In the Democratic camp, unconditional support for Israel is more contested; among certain Republicans close to “America First”, it is the cost of the alliance and American involvement in regional wars which are called into question.

Robert Malley particularly highlights the evolution of younger American generations, whose outlook on the conflict has been profoundly transformed by the war in Gaza. For the first time, he believes, Democratic leaders must also take into account an electorate likely to criticize them not for a lack of support for Israel, but on the contrary for a lack of attention to the rights and suffering of the Palestinians.

On the Republican side, the phenomenon is different. Part of the “America First” movement questions the extent of American aid to Israel and refuses to allow Washington to be drawn into new conflicts in the Middle East. Robert Malley, however, takes care to distinguish this isolationist current from other fringes whose speeches may relate to anti-Semitism, which he unambiguously condemns.

Imagine other forms of coexistence

The book thus places Oslo, Camp David, the failure of the two-state solution and October 7 in a long history. It does not propose a miracle solution, but invites us to imagine other forms of coexistence.

It is also one of the most stimulating tracks in the book. After three decades of failure of the two-state solution as it was envisaged, Robert Malley and Hussein Agha refuse to consider that any political perspective is definitively dead. They raise the possibility of thinking about other architectures: federations, confederations, forms of shared or more flexible sovereignty. Not as a turnkey program, but as an invitation to break away from patterns that have so far failed.

A rare testimony from the inside

What is striking in this interview is above all the precision of the subject, the refusal of Manichean stories and the desire to recognize the responsibilities and errors of the different protagonists. An approach that contrasts with the often superficial and spectacular debates on television sets.

Above all, Robert Malley possesses a quality that has become rare in public debate: he talks about negotiations in which he himself participated and about political leaders with whom he worked directly. He does not only comment on diplomatic history: he was one of its actors and privileged witnesses. This obviously gives his analysis a particular depth.

Tomorrow is yesterday thus appears to be a major work for understanding thirty years of diplomatic failures and current impasses. A fascinating and essential book for those who want to go beyond the slogans and understand what really happened behind the scenes of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Tomorrow is yesterday. Life, death and the quest for peace in Israel/Palestinepublished by Max Milo editions.