Original subtitles

I have experienced a fair amount of the danger of Israel.

I've been there when bombs have gone off,

I've been there when a wedding was blown up,

I've been there in the aftermath of a bus explosion.

And I've seen some really ugly things.

I've never, ever seen

a rampage as brutal and horrendous.

October 7th has defined a new set of traumatic hurdles

that have to be overcome in order to find a way forward.

The October 7th attacks

and the devastating war they sparked in Gaza

have brutally reopened scars from decades of conflict.

The Bible says that there is a time for peace and a time for war.

This is a time for war.

Now, with lasting peace as elusive as ever,

those at the highest level tell the story of how, time and again,

they tried and failed to end the deepening conflict,

as strained relationships reached breaking point.

What Netanyahu did to Vice President Biden was outrageous.

It was like the biggest slap in the face.

I said, "If you're going to do this next week, look at this face,

"this will be the last face you will see of any Palestinian official."

We'll see how two decades of failed negotiations

helped Hamas's power grow.

Ad we'll hear from their leader,

who was killed a month after our interview.

In this episode, Donald Trump, in his first term as President,

tries to make peace his way.

He wanted President Abbas to be in the crime scene

both as a victim and a witness.

I had to ask, "What do we do about Gaza?" The answer that I got -

"Sh! Don't talk about Gaza or Hamas."

The whole Middle East changes.

And Netanyahu presents his new Middle East.

Erasure of Palestine, erasure of the Palestinian people.

Then...the 7th of October.

Believe me, if I was 20 years younger,

I would have picked up an M16 and gone down to Gaza myself.

In July 2014,

Israel launched a major aerial bombardment of Gaza

after a series of Hamas rocket attacks.

Then they discovered Hamas militants entering Israel through a tunnel.

A huge ground invasion followed.

Around 2,000 Palestinians and 68 Israelis were killed,

before an uneasy ceasefire was agreed.

With the threat of another war ever present,

Hamas decided it was time to try a bit of diplomacy.

I got messages back through various people

that Hamas wanted to write me a letter

and set out...

..potentially a change of position for them.

I was in favour of encouraging that.

And whereas I understood the narrative from the Israeli side

very well, it was important to hear

from all sides of Palestinian politics.

To me, you get to the stage where you need to actually sit

with the people and look them in the face

and have that conversation direct with them.

Morning.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair

was the Representative of the Quartet,

a group set up by the UN, EU, America and Russia

to mediate Middle East peace talks.

He travelled to Qatar to meet the head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal.

I said to Khaled Meshaal that, "You've got to stop activity

"that's going to give the Israelis the sense that you are still

"utterly hostile to them." So, you know, the building of the tunnels,

it's hard to see what the purpose of that is

unless it's to be used for something that's aimed at the Israelis.

My response was, "Well, OK, but if you want

"to get to a different place,

"you've at least got to state a broad outline of your position

"that allows us to say, 'Well, you should be part of this negotiation

"'because you're now prepared to accept what we're negotiating for.'"

Less than a year later,

the Israeli military uncovered a new tunnel,

more than 40 metres deep,

going under the Gaza border into Israeli territory.

People became really, really obsessed with the tunnels,

and there was a lot of thought around

how to neutralise the tunnels.

There was 14 Cabinet meetings about the tunnels.

I know because I prepared those papers.

14 meetings that the Cabinet talked about the problem of the tunnels.

Netanyahu had a solution -

an underground barrier, dozens of metres deep,

along the entire border with Gaza.

He'd need his Cabinet's approval

for a construction costing up to a billion dollars.

Everybody were very enthusiastic about it.

I... I was the exception.

I said, "This is... This is not the main problem with Gaza.

"The main threat is a massive eruption,

"massive guerrilla campaign from Gaza into Israel,

"and they don't need the tunnels for this."

Yuval definitely highlighted, if we invest, if we over-invest

in technology that helps us detect things underground,

they're just going to come above the ground.

But the vast majority of the security establishment

viewed the tunnels as the enemy

and that's what the Security Cabinet approved.

The barrier would take four years to be built.

The government cut the budgets of health, education

and even security to fund it.

The Israelis had even more reason to feel that their security

was well looked after.

They had a new ally - the new American President,

one whom the Israeli Prime Minister counted as a family friend.

Donald Trump came to office promising that he would

quickly succeed where his predecessors had failed.

So President Trump is a deal junkie, right?

I worked for him for 20 years, I've never seen anybody like him.

He's always heard in his life that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

is sort of the Holy Grail, if you will, of deals.

Although many people cautioned him it was not achievable,

he didn't want to hear it. He wanted to try to do it his way.

So I'm looking at two-state and one-state,

and I like the one that both parties like.

I'm very happy with the one that both parties like.

Trump was unexpected.

No-one thought he would talk about two states, one state.

"Let's solve it.

"Let's do business." This is always... "Let's do business."

Why to go to bother with all the details?

That's President Trump's way of saying, "Let's figure it out.

"Whatever it's going to be, the parties have to do it,

"they have to do it together."

If Trump was to get his deal, he'd have to get Mahmoud Abbas -

the man recognised by the international community

as the President of all Palestinians.

President Trump really made sure

to make President Abbas feel welcomed.

Usually, Presidents stop a few metres away

until a Marine comes and opens.

No, President Trump charged towards President Abbas.

I was still sitting in the car,

so I was looking at the face and the body language of President Trump

and I could see how much he was trying to welcome...

Extraordinary welcome President Abbas.

We're going to have lunch, we're going to have discussions,

and hopefully something terrific can come out

between the Palestinians and Israel.

Thank you for being here. Thank you.

President Abbas played his part very, very well.

He was warm, he was friendly.

President Trump, I think, almost viewed him as a statesman,

a grandfather figure, almost.

President Abbas presented our logic,

our vision, which is two states, a state of Palestine,

a state of Israel that is secured,

with good neighbourly relationship with its neighbours,

and I remember President Abbas,

he showed President Trump all the countries

that would recognise Israel.

And after all that discussion,

he invited the two delegations to lunch.

TRUMP: Details...

And he looks at us and he said,

"Guys, guys, you have a great President,

"you have a great President, you have...a great President."

I could not believe what I heard from him.

"I think you're going to make peace. I think things will be OK."

Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat

had accompanied Palestinian Presidents to the White House

for more than two decades.

This is the last interview he gave.

He was in poor health and died only weeks later.

He said, you know, "I will give you a year with Israelis.

"I will not do anything that may pre-empt or pre-judge issues

"for President Abbas' negotiations, but after a year,

"I will see the side that's putting obstacles

"and then I will take action.

"The US is paying so much money to this region

"and I'm not going to pay those who are obstructing the peace process."

CAMERAS CLICK

Thank you. Thank you.

To deliver his deal,

Trump set up a small team in the White House

headed by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Jared's view very much was, "Go study this. What are the issues?

"What have been the parties' positions over the years?

"I'm learning from everybody -

"State Department, National Security Council, think-tanks."

It wasn't that long before I had to ask the important question,

which is, OK, let's just say we get Bibi Netanyahu

and Mahmoud Abbas and Donald Trump in the room, and they all agree.

What do we do about Gaza,

the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza

who are subjugated by Hamas? What do we do about Hamas?

The answer that I got - "Sh!

"Don't talk about Gaza or Hamas.

"Let's just figure out the two-state solution,

"and then we'll figure out Gaza."

UNTRANSLATED SHOUTING

Hamas hoped the new American President would change things.

No US administration had ever agreed to talk to the group,

which had called for the destruction of Israel

and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state.

The political wing of Hamas, based in Qatar,

arranged a press conference

to announce it had re-written its founding charter.

The original document had been widely condemned

for using anti-Semitic language.

The press conference was broadcast live into Gaza,

where Hamas's top brass had gathered.

The new local leader, Yahya Sinwar, brought his son to watch.

The 1967 borders was diplomatic shorthand for a two-state solution.

It could imply that Hamas was ready to move in this direction.

But the document made clear

that they were still committed to armed resistance

and would not recognise Israel.

There is not a distinguish

between the military wing and the political wing.

There is no moderate and not moderate in terrorist organisation.

And they can speak very nice in the TV and things like that.

But, basically, at night,

they're preparing missiles to penetrate to Israel.

Trump ignored the Hamas relaunch.

He remained intent on a peace deal between Netanyahu and Abbas

and decided that his first foreign trip would be to the Middle East.

FANFARE

Only hours after his arrival in Israel,

Trump visited one of the most sacred sites for Jews

in occupied East Jerusalem,

which Palestinians claimed as their capital in a future state.

The Western Wall was a very controversial place.

You know, there had never been a sitting President

who had visited the Western Wall.

The visit had been arranged by the new US Ambassador, David Friedman,

Trump's lawyer and personal friend.

He was also a fervent supporter of Israel

and believed that all of Jerusalem should be its capital.

We insisted... They said, "Look, this wall,

"this is the story of the Jewish people and it's the story of Israel.

"If he's going to go anywhere, he's going to go to the Western Wall."

President Trump understood that

something like that visual

can communicate more than any speech could possibly give,

that this is a President who is committed to Israel

and doing something important for the country.

The Palestinian government wasn't unduly worried.

They believed Trump had promised that the status of Jerusalem

would only be settled in the deal they were negotiating.

Six months later, this would be put to the test.

During President Clinton's presidency,

the Congress passed a law

requiring the President to move the American Embassy

from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But they also allowed every President to sign a waiver

that would allow him not to move it.

And every President since President Clinton signed the waiver.

On the campaign trail, Trump had promised to change this

and recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

With the deadline to sign the waiver coming up,

David Friedman was determined to make the President keep his promise.

To me, moving the embassy was the most important thing.

There were a lot of people in the State Department

and the Defense Department who were against it.

So, Chief of Staff said to me, "Look, if you want this done,

"you better stick around because no-one else is going to

"fight for this the way you will."

Less than a week before the deadline,

Trump called a meeting in the White House Situation Room.

I'll tell you candidly, I was a little bit nervous because,

you know, I am making a case that is rife with national security issues.

There were a number of warnings that there would be uprisings

in capitals all over the Arab world,

and that it could also lead to our embassies being stormed

and diplomats being taken hostage.

Then the president said to me,

"David, how do you read the situation?"

And I said to him, "Mr President, why wouldn't you keep this promise?

"Because of the threats of who? The Palestinians, Islamic Jihad?"

And I said, "The whole world is watching.

"All the countries that are trying to size you up to see,

"'Do you have the courage of your convictions?"',

"they're going to see that you do because of this move."

Trump's team called in the Palestinian negotiators.

Mr Kushner had asked for a meeting

and I went to see him in his office,

which was adjunct to the Oval Office.

You could hear President Trump in the background.

With him was Jason Greenblatt.

We knew it would be upsetting to the Palestinians.

We had respect for them. We didn't want them to be caught flat-footed.

Dr Saeb Erekat asked Jared, you know,

"Signing the waiver to make sure that the Embassy is not moved

"from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is tomorrow," to which Jared said,

"OK, we're not so sure if we are going to sign it or not."

I said, "Seriously?

"If you're going to do this next week, look at this face,

"look at this face - this will be the last face you will see

"and encounter of any Palestinian official."

Erekat left Washington and returned to the West Bank.

The next day, Trump asked to speak directly to Abbas.

President Trump, of course, felt the need to let President Abbas know

why he was moving the Embassy

and how it wasn't going, in his mind,

to stop our efforts to try to achieve peace.

So, they got President Abbas on the phone.

He told him, "It's going to happen,

"but it's not going to affect your position,

"it's not going to affect your rights,

"it's not going to affect anything." He said, "How...?

"If you're going to recognise Jerusalem as its capital,

"how is it not going to affect this? This is a pre-empting,

"I have an agreement with you.

"You told me that you will not take any action, Mr President."

President Abbas told President Trump,

"You promised us not to do it,

"and if you do it, I cannot but disengage."

We were all listening in on different extensions.

I think I was in the National Security Advisor's office.

But the line went dead.

It seems there were issues with the line

and our President was not really interested to hear all the,

you know, "Wait with me, I'm going to give you much more

"than what I gave Israel."

And I remember hearing President Trump saying, "Hello? Mahmoud?

"Hello?" And nothing. But I remember thinking,

"Did President Abbas hang up on the President of the United States?"

President Abbas immediately instructed us

not to have any contact with the US administration

until further instruction.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

After the President announced that we are moving the embassy

to Jerusalem, Arab leaders around the region

had prepared for the worst, but then, in fact, nothing happened.

There were no uprisings or chaos or violence or bloodshed.

And that was an indication to us

that a new Middle East was coming into existence.

And it was a Middle East that was tired of the old conflict

between Arab nations and Israel.

But one place did erupt.

At the border with Israel,

protesters clashed with Israeli forces

and dozens of Palestinians were killed.

For weeks, Palestinians had been demonstrating in what they called

the Great March of Return.

This was to remind the world that millions of their people

had been made refugees through decades of conflict.

They were also protesting against Israel's blockade of Gaza

that was suffocating its economy.

The humanitarian crisis was compounded

by the Palestinian Authority restricting the money it supplied

for salaries and electricity in Hamas-run Gaza.

Hamas turned to a Gulf state that had been supporting them for years.

International bank transactions to Gaza were impossible.

The easiest way to get the money in was as cash,

carried in suitcases through Israel.

Surprisingly, Israel's Prime Minister was happy to allow it.

In the summer of 2018,

Netanyahu called in his Cabinet to ask them to endorse

what would be one of his most controversial decisions.

Although we knew for sure that Hamas is taking 20% or 30% of this money

in order to build rockets and tunnels and things against us,

on the other hand, you cannot ignore

the 2 million people that are sitting there.

Although they supported Hamas, and most of them voted for Hamas,

there are many children also there.

You have to provide them with minimal conditions.

The decision to funnel money to Hamas

was a decision made in that spirit, "Let's maintain the status quo."

The status quo was that Hamas ruled in Gaza...

..and if we can give them economic prosperity,

life will be better for them.

Therefore, they won't want to kill us.

The deal remained secret

until this photo of the suitcases filled with cash was published.

In the West Bank, the leadership of Abbas's Fatah party

were in no doubt about Netanyahu's motivations.

It didn't come as a surprise.

Of course, the appearance was surprising

because we didn't expect, really, a bag of cash to be carried,

but we knew that there was Israeli support

and we knew that the... It was in the Israeli strategic interest

to maintain the split and to keep the two regimes.

With the help of the money coming in from Qatar,

Hamas was building its popularity with the people of Gaza.

And they were getting support on the military front

from another very powerful ally.

The Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei,

invited a top-level delegation of Hamas to Tehran.

General Qasem Soleimani was in charge of military support

to Iran's proxies in the region.

Badran and his colleagues asked for help building new rocket systems.

In the years ahead, when Hamas needed military support,

its leaders knew they could count on Tehran.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It had been three years since Trump had promised a peace deal

between the Palestinians and Israel.

Now, with America entering an election year,

the President decided to announce what he called

"the deal of the century."

A top Israeli delegation flew in,

but there were no Palestinians in sight.

Today, Israel takes a big step towards peace.

My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides,

a realistic two-state solution

that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood

to Israel's security.

Israel is a light unto the world.

The document claimed that Palestinians would be able

to achieve an independent state, but only under stringent conditions.

It confirmed that Jerusalem would remain Israel's undivided capital.

..they want peace and they want peace badly.

It also talked about bringing major international investment

into the West Bank and Gaza.

I watched on television,

as did the rest of my colleagues,

and it unfolded, I think, exactly as we anticipated,

that it was the American President

delivering to the Israeli Prime Minister.

I saw Netanyahu in every word and every letter,

I was just seeing Netanyahu's face popping out, peace for peace,

economic peace. There was nothing in it about rights, not once, nothing.

"Israel should have an overall security control

"over the entire territory of historic Palestine,

"from the river to the sea.

"In exchange, we will just give Palestinians some cash."

That's his logic.

And therefore, our main assessment and decision

was just to reject it outright.

..recognise Israeli...

I had served as an adviser on the Trump peace plan.

It was a plan that had probably the best chances of success

that I'd seen.

By the way, it was the only peace plan

in which Israel accepted the idea of territorial swaps.

Swapping territory was a key part of Trump's plan.

Israel would get 30% of the West Bank.

In exchange, the Palestinians would receive a comparable amount of land

in the Israeli desert far from the West Bank.

The details would have to be agreed by both sides.

..should not be symbols of conflict...

After President Trump announced his vision,

Prime Minister Netanyahu got up and announced his vision.

Exceptional peace plan, Mr President.

And, unfortunately, Prime Minister Netanyahu

described conditions that were not captured in our vision.

Mr President...

Netanyahu took the proposal of the land swaps as license to declare

that he would annexe huge swathes of the West Bank.

Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley,

to all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria

and to other areas that your plan designates as part of Israel

and which the United States has agreed to recognise

as part of Israel.

APPLAUSE

I like that.

President Trump was surprised with the substance

and by the tone of the speech,

which was far more about the sovereignty than about peace.

This decision will protect Israel's security,

ensure Israel's national interest.

If Israel annexed land without negotiating,

it could kill off any possibility of a two-state solution.

President Abbas needed his allies to stand with him publicly.

He requested an emergency meeting of the Arab League.

Netanyahu's plans for the West Bank

were due to take effect at the start of July.

Only few days before the deadline,

the Ambassador of one of the Gulf's most important states

made an unexpected move.

Towards the very end of June, Yousef Al Otaiba,

the Emirati Ambassador to the United States,

approached the White House, saying,

"We are prepared to normalise our relations with Israel

"if this step doesn't move forward."

And, you know, and he says, "Look, you know,

"we've always wanted to find a way to normalise with Israel.

"We also need to find a way

"to provide some something for the Palestinians, some cover.

"So how about you give up this idea of annexation

"and we will normalise?"

Normalising relations meant recognising Israel as a state.

It was something most Arab countries had always refused to do

unless the Palestinians got a state of their own.

In fact, Israel and the UAE

had been working for years on normalisation, in total secrecy.

Back in 2006, Israel had opened an undercover mission in Dubai.

The authorities there knew about us.

It was by their consent. They said to us,

"We will host you, but you cannot say that you are Israeli."

We were trained like...not robots, but, "No. No talking about it.

"No-one else, no friends, no... Of course, no media."

Here we are building the infrastructure for the peace

in the future, Inshallah.

When we spoke about peace,

the authorities were not shy of telling us,

"Listen, you have to have the Palestinian issue being solved.

"It will enable us to go for full normalisation."

The cancelling of Netanyahu's annexations

could be a step in the right direction.

And the Emirates had another reason

to push for normalisation with Israel.

They'd been lobbying Trump's team

to get America's state-of-the-art F-35 jets.

US law stated that no enemy of Israel in the Middle East

could buy the latest American weapons.

Normalisation would help get round that.

Jared Kushner told me that he had had meetings

with senior Emirati officials.

They were very interested in F-35s. And he said,

"The Emiratis are thinking about normalising relations with Israel.

"What do we have to do in order to sell F-35s to the UAE?"

A deal to sell the F-35s was agreed within a couple of weeks,

subject to normalisation going ahead.

But the Israelis still hadn't committed

to their part of the bargain.

The Emiratis wanted this application of Israeli law,

what is often called annexation,

permanently to be taken off the table.

We were not willing to do that.

I was looking at a thesaurus, you know, for different words that,

you know, that would mean putting something off.

I'm looking for a word that makes clear

that it's temporary versus permanent.

You know, we came upon the word suspend.

You can suspend something for a day, for a week, for a month, for a year,

or for a longer period. And we could both say full-throatedly

that it has been suspended,

and the question of how long is a separate question.

The normalisation would be signed off in a phone call

between Trump, Netanyahu and the Emirates' Crown Prince

Mohammed bin Zayed.

Only minutes before the call, they decided to give a name to the deal.

As soon as the phone call was over, we let the press in,

and the first thing the President did was to say,

"Well, let me explain to you, you know,

why it's called the Abraham Accords,"

and says, "David, why don't you explain?"

David. Thank you, Mr President. Abraham, as many of you know,

was the father of all three great faiths.

He's referred to as Abraham in the Christian faith,

Ibrahim in the Muslim faith and Avraham in the Jewish faith.

I wanted it to be called the Donald J Trump Accord...

LAUGHTER

..but I didn't think

the press would understand that, so I didn't do that.

The Abraham Accords were officially signed a month later,

with Bahrain also a signatory.

Netanyahu suspended the annexations in the West Bank,

although Israeli settlements continued to be built there.

As for the F-35 jets,

they were never mentioned publicly as part of the deal.

I mean, it was a momentous occasion in one sense, and, of course,

because the Palestinians were not supportive of it,

there was, in a sense, an empty chair in the room.

The Palestinian Authority basically opposed the Abraham Accords.

APPLAUSE

After several weeks of negotiations,

Abbas's Fatah party and Hamas finally said

they would hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

Hamas agreed not to run a candidate for the Presidency,

leaving Abbas unopposed after 16 years in office.

Three weeks before the parliamentary elections,

the opinion polls were looking bleak for Abbas.

Even members of his own party

were now running against his chosen candidates.

Abbas decided he had to act.

Abbas said the reason for postponing the elections

was that Israel had failed to confirm

it would allow voting to take place in East Jerusalem.

Abbas cancelling the elections

meant the deal with Hamas was off the table and, with it,

hopes to bring the militant group into the political fold.

That year, Ramadan and Passover came at the same time.

Fighting broke out, as both Jews and Muslims

gathered in the narrow streets of East Jerusalem.

Tensions came to a head

when Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque,

the holiest place in Jerusalem for Muslims,

only metres away from the Western Wall.

From Gaza, Hamas's military wing,

the Qassam Brigades, decided to intervene.

When you launch a missile through Jerusalem in order to say,

"I'm the man, I will call the shots over here,"

it's not a good idea to mess with a state like Israel.

You are trying to cause damages to civilians.

There is consequence to that.

Israel used all the might of its air force to target Hamas

and other militant groups in Gaza in an 11-day bombing campaign

they called Guardian of the Walls.

This time, Hamas found support far beyond Gaza.

Rockets were fired from Syria and Lebanon.

There were violent protests in the West Bank,

and Arab citizens of Israel clashed with security forces.

The Al-Aqsa Flood

would be the name that Hamas chose for the 7th of October attacks.

But for the Israelis,

the Guardian of the Walls was their victory.

The operation was Netanyahu's parting shot.

CHEERING

Israel had just held its fourth election in two years,

but this time, after more than a decade in office,

Netanyahu was unable to form a government.

It was up to a new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett,

to decide whether the operation had been enough to contain Hamas.

The military explained to the incoming National Security Cabinet

the result of the Guardian of the Wall -

that there was no penetration into Israel.

The underground barrier, which Israel has built for years

before that, performed remarkably well.

There was a good feeling that, "We got it covered."

But Hamas was still holding the bodies of two Israeli soldiers

killed in the 2014 war.

They had also taken two civilian hostages.

Prime Minister Bennett wanted them back.

This is an ethos our soldiers need to know,

and the families of the soldiers need to know,

that when we send them to combat, we will get them back - in any way.

And the families need to know that

we will treat civilian lives seriously.

Negotiations over the hostages were being held with Yahya Sinwar,

the head of Hamas in Gaza.

He had been released from Israeli prison a decade earlier

in a deal that saw over a thousand Palestinians freed

for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Now, he was demanding another spectacular exchange.

I remember the convening of the group of ministers

dealing with that in the summer of '21.

It was very clear on the table that there was no way

we're going to give in to the Hamas demands

to release an obscene amount of prisoners

with blood on their hands. Our objective was

to lower the price, so to speak.

We have a lot of elderly and sick prisoners.

Hamas made no secret of its ambitions,

posting on social media videos of hostage-taking drills.

But the Israelis had their vast security fence

above and below ground, stretching along the entire border with Gaza.

And behind the scenes, Israel was working on an audacious plan

that they thought would give them even better protection.

They were trying to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia,

the most powerful country in the region.

For this, they needed the help of the new US President.

But they'd have to wait for their chance.

During his campaign, Joe Biden had called Saudi Arabia a pariah state.

Now, under pressure to deal with rising oil prices,

he finally decided to visit.

He stopped in Israel first, where he had something of a dress rehearsal

for his arrival in Saudi Arabia.

We were standing on the red carpet, it is hot as hell.

What moron decided that it was a good idea to do an arrival ceremony

at Ben Gurion Airport in the mid-afternoon,

in the middle of summer? That'd probably be me.

The President came down. And as he was walking down,

he started fist-bumping all of us down the greeting party.

There was lots of anxiety

about the handshake that would come 48 hours later in Saudi Arabia.

Biden was reluctant to shake hands with Saudi royals

he held responsible for shocking human rights violations.

He tried out a new form of greeting on the Israelis.

What they wanted to show is that he was doing fist bumps in Israel

and they were going to do fist bumps in Saudi Arabia.

We understood that there is an opportunity to use that visit

to create arrangements or agreements that are trilateral -

American, Saudi and Israelis.

We knew that at that time,

reaching the full normalisation was premature, but we wanted something

that was very tangible and meaningful and symbolic.

As a starting point, Israel wanted permission for its aircraft

to fly over Saudi territory.

BIDEN: Had a good series of meetings with the Crown Prince

and basically the entire Saudi government.

We've accomplished some significant business.

First, Saudi airspace is now open to flights to and from Israel.

This is the first tangible step in the path of what I hope

will eventually be a broader normalisation of relations.

Six months later, Netanyahu returned to power.

He did so by forming the most right-wing government

in Israel's history.

One of its first acts was to push for a judicial reform

that would give him greater control of the Supreme Court.

Massive protests erupted across the country and went on for months.

Thousands of army reservists even threatened not to report for duty

if called on.

Despite the turmoil,

Netanyahu remained intent on signing a peace deal with Saudi Arabia.

Nine months into office, he travelled to New York

for the annual UN General Assembly.

As the world leaders gathered, a US news crew was in Saudi Arabia

interviewing the Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.

For the first time, he talked publicly about an imminent deal

to normalise relations with Israel.

Now, we don't have a relation with Israel,

but if Biden administration succeeded to make,

I believe, the biggest historical deal since the end of the Cold War,

then we're going to start a relationship.

Literally up until October 6,

there was a grand strategic play

that we were putting together for the Middle East.

Part of it was that there would be a suite

of US-Saudi bilateral agreements, the mutual defence treaty,

something on a civilian nuclear programme for Saudi Arabia.

And in exchange for that, or adjacent to that,

the Saudis were willing to normalise relations with Israel.

And the Americans forced them to say,

"No, you have to ask also

"for some solution for the Palestinian problem."

They didn't want to add it.

So, they added something that was very vague.

We have... Good negotiations continue until now.

We're going to see where it will go. We hope that it will reach a place

that will ease the life of the Palestinians

and get Israel as a player in the Middle East.

The Saudis weren't asking for any commitments or changes

on a specific timeline.

And, in fact, they even understood

that the structure of what could be a viable Palestinian state

in the West Bank or Gaza didn't yet exist at that time.

I have great pleasure in welcoming His Excellency Benjamin Netanyahu,

Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

I invite him to address the Assembly.

I've long sought to make peace with the Palestinians.

But I also believe that we must not give the Palestinians a veto

over new peace treaties with Arab states.

Look at what happens when we make peace

between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The whole Middle East changes.

We tear down the walls of enmity.

We bring the possibility

of prosperity and peace to this entire region.

Netanyahu's map made no reference to the Palestinians at all.

He stood on that podium and basically told the whole world,

"This is the map. These are my plans.

"This is the new Middle East."

Erasure of Palestine, erasure of the Palestinian people.

UNTRANSLATED SHOUTING

Netanyahu's speech came at an especially fraught time.

Since the beginning of the year,

Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank

had been engaged in increasingly deadly clashes...

..the worst for 20 years.

I was probably meeting with my Israeli counterparts

more than any other partner that I had

in my entire Middle East portfolio.

So the first thing that happens is an exchange of views

on what we would call the threat environment.

It starts with Iran, goes to Hezbollah,

then the militias in Iraq and Syria.

Very, very rarely was Hamas making a top five of concerns

about risks to Israel's security.

It took me hours to understand what's going on.

Our people, our civilians, that we have a contract with them,

we failed. We - I'm saying the government,

the IDF, the Shabak, everyone -

we failed to protect them.

October 7th is now a new demarcation

for beginning to talk about what's possible, what's not possible,

how do you begin to change the dynamic?

It's not that it makes it impossible,

but it raises the bar.

If you don't have a just and fair solution for the Palestinian issue,

that source of disagreement and conflict will remain.

Whether it does happen or not depends on the leadership.