Andrew Silow-Carroll
JTA, Feb. 18, 2024
“There was a whole roadmap for the gradual steps that would lead to the Palestinian Authority’s restored management of Gaza.”
When I reached Nimrod Novik in Raanana, Israel and asked how he was feeling, he was blunt.
“Bad,” said Novik, 77, who was a senior policy adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. “I’d say that I don’t remember such a decisive moment. We are at a fork in the road, which can take us to untold troubles or potentially promise a new horizon. I’m afraid that we’re going to slide in the wrong direction and pay the price for it before we wake up to it.”
So Novik is no Pollyanna. But with war raging in Gaza, he is looking beyond the fighting for a pathway toward a diplomatic solution that could lead to two states, Israeli and Palestinian. It’s a decades-old vision that more than one politician, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has called dead on arrival.
In 2021, as a member of the executive committee of Commanders for Israel’s Security, Novik was part of a team of former security chiefs, military brass and top government advisers who wrote a defence of the two-state solution called “Initiative 2025.” The document said that even though such a solution seemed beyond the horizon, it remained the only way to ensure Israel’s security and future as a strong Jewish democracy.
Novik is sticking to those conclusions despite an Israeli government that is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and polling showing that just 35% of Israeli Jews support a two-state solution. The Biden administration is also pressing for an eventual two-state outcome, in a plan that could potentially include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. … [To read the full article, click here]