DOV WAXMAN (HOST): Welcome to Israel in Depth, where scholars authors artists and leading experts come to discuss topics about Israel in depth. You're listening to a podcast from the campus of UCLA. I'm Dov Waxman, the director of the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA and the chair of Israel Studies at UCLA, and the host of your podcast. The topic of this podcast is the Trump administration's recently released 'Peace to Prosperity' plan, ostensibly aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We're also going to be talking about the challenges of peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians and the role that the United States can take in advancing the cause of peace. To discuss these timely and important topics with me, I'm delighted to introduce Ambassador Dennis Ross, who is the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is also a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow at the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. A graduate of UCLA himself, Ambassador Ross has had a long and very distinguished career in Middle East diplomacy. He's advised every American President on the Middle East since the Carter Administration, except for George W Bush and Donald Trump. For more than 12 years, he played a leading role in shaping US involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process. During the George HW Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, he was the US point man on the peace process dealing directly with both sides. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 interim agreement, often referred to as Oslo 2. He also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, and intensively worked to try to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. So when it comes to Arab-Israeli peacemaking, he has a lot to teach us. I'm delighted to welcome Ambassador Ross to this podcast.

AMBASSADOR DENNIS ROSS: Thank you. Good to be with you.

WAXMAN: Thank you. So I wanted to talk about the Trump administration's recently released peace plan. But before we get into the details of the plan itself I'd like to hear your thoughts about how the plan was produced, the process that led led to the the plan. Let's begin first of all with President Trump's decision to task his son-in-law Jared Kushner with leading the team that formulated the plan. Many experts - myself included Ð derided this decision pointing to Kushner's lack of diplomatic experience and his lack of knowledge about the conflict. I'm wondering whether he consulted with you when he worked on this plan. And if he did what advice you gave a novice such as Kushner.

ROSS: Let me make two points first. One, I was not someone who necessarily criticized it because I understand one thing about the Middle East. In the Middle East, the first question every leader has is: Am I dealing with someone who's authoritative. And he never had that problem; he had a built-in authority because of who he was in the connection to...

WAXMAN: He had the president

ROSS: Yes and that's significant. And I always say, in the Middle East they can smell within seconds, do you have authority do not have authority. If you don't have it they're not going to listen to you; and if you do have it, it doesn't matter that you don't necessarily come with a huge knowledge base. So I didn't necessarily have a problem with that. Did he reach out to me? Yes, on multiple occasions. There was...I was asked lots of questions by him, by Jason Greenblatt over the...over the three-year period. They reached out to me a great deal. Unfortunately, I have to say I don't see too much evidence that they listened to what I had to say. But they did reach out to me.

WAXMAN: Can you give us a taste of what advice you gave them?

ROSS: I can, because I... I gave them a substantive advice. I said that no one will take this seriously if you don't cross the threshold of providing for a state and for a capital for that state in at least some significant part of Arab East Jerusalem. And I said there's the process that you have to go through is...you have to share the details of the plan with the key Arab leaders. There is a new reality in the Middle East right now. And it's a...it's a positive one in the sense that Sunni Arab leaders see Israel is a major bulwark against the threats that most concern them. Those threats they're much more preoccupied with than the Palestinians. And so Israel becomes for them a kind of natural partner, even if it's largely below the radar screen. Doesn't change the reality that they see in Israel, someone who is more reliable as it relates to the issues that matter to them than the United States is in their eyes right now. So I said that creates a context for you where they're not going to automatically run away from the plan, and they even have...you even have the potential with them of getting them to say this is a serious basis for negotiations. And if you get them to say it's serious basis for the negotiations, and then you can get the Europeans to say what the Arabs are saying. That will put Abbas in a position where it becomes very difficult for him to say no.

WAXMAN: So this is the so-called 'outside-in' approach to peacemaking, using Sunni Arab states as the conduit to the Palestinian leadership and hoping that they, in turn, might encourage Palestinian flexibility. Do you think though that this 'outside-in' approach..I mean succeeded in the sense that Arab states, and particularly the Saudis, really did follow through on this, or was there, in particular, the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US Embassy there. Did that not undermine this 'outside-in' approach from nearly the very beginning?

ROSS: Look, I think the key to understanding the 'outside-in' approach is what it was and what it wasn't. There were those who were describing the 'outside-in' approach as a way of getting around the Palestinians as opposed to getting to the Palestinians. If you want to move the Palestinians, you have to be able to show that their historic supporters are saying there's a serious approach to peace, and therefore they can't really say no to it. That's not the same as saying they will deliver the Palestinians. They were never going to deliver the Palestinians, but they could have created a context that made it very difficult for the Palestinians not to be responsive number one. Number two, I think the the Saudis were prepared to go along in private for a while. But the key...and for all the key Sunni Arab states were - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates - they had to be put in a position where they could realistically themselves publicly stand up and say there's something serious in the plan. Now, for that to be the case, the plan had to cross some thresholds; that's what I was describing before. But it also had to put them in a position where they knew what was coming; and they weren't going to be surprised by it. And they had a chance...is one of the things I suggested, share the details; take some of their comments. So they also acquire some ownership. And then work out with them, word for word in advance of you unveiling anything, exactly what they will say publicly. And then share that also with the Europeans. Once you have that in hand, then you have quite a bit.

WAXMAN: So why..I mean going back to the Berlin conference and the rollout of the first part of the peace plan, the economic dimension. At least publicly, the administration presented the economic aspect of the plan while remaining very secret about what was to come in the political dimension where many people said, you know how can you expect buy-in from the Arab states on the economic side when they don't even know the second part of this. What would...I mean, was it just a wariness about leaks? Was it just a desire to keep that under under wraps for as long as possible? Why were they so willing to that consultation.

ROSS: Well, there was a combination of reasons, and you touched on both of them. They were worried about leaks; therefore, they wanted to keep it under wraps as long as possible. But one of things I said to them was, yes, there's a risk of leaks, but there's a higher risk of forcing them to say no or to be negative if they're surprised by what comes. So they would talk to them only in broad-brush terms; they never shared any of the details with them... and when I say this, I know this, because I was talking to many of the same Arab leaders. And I still push for it, and I said, if you share it only with the key Arab leaders, it's not going to leak. These are not.

WAXMAN: They're pretty good at keeping secrets as far as these regimes go.

ROSS: That's right. So you really don't have to fear that. My...I think there was a fear of leaks but I also think that they understood that if they really showed them the details they were going to be told what they didn't want to hear. Look, this isn't credible; we can't stand up and say this is serious. And in the end, what they did is they coordinated only with one party, and that was the Israelis.

WAXMAN: Right

ROSS: And you asked the question about Jerusalem. Even Jerusalem could have been handled. Bear in mind; West Jerusalem is in the Arab Peace Initiative as part of Israel. So if you...Before you did the...before you made the decision to say Jerusalem is Israel's capital, you could have gone to the key Arab states and to the Palestinians and said, the president said he was gonna do this; It's actually in your interest to have an American leader who does what he says he's going to do. But he doesn't want this to be something that is destructive to you from a political standpoint; he doesn't want to deny you

your political space So let's talk about what he could say at the same time that would make it less destructive to you from a political standpoint. I mean, that wasn't done.

WAXMAN: Doesn't that point, going back to my original question about the lack of diplomatic experience. I mean it almost seemed at times from the outside that there was a disregard, almost a disdain, for experience. It wasn't just like he lacked the experience or that the entire team that was assembled ... that there was a kind of dismissive attitude toward the experts and towards people such as yourself who had played such a key role in American diplomacy. They were like we're going to do everything differently, and we're going to disregard the advice because it failed in the past. Well, it was Jared said that pretty much publicly and his rationale was it failed in the past, so that's a failed paradigm, so we're going to try something different. And what's the concept...what's the cost of us trying something different? The worst that can happen is we'll fail too. The only problem with that is, you can fail in a way that makes things worse. And you could argue, okay, we didn't succeed in producing peace in the end, but in the case of the Palestinians, we also created a Palestinian Authority that to this day works with the Israelis on security cooperation.

WAXMAN: And cultivated a relationship between the United States and the PLO and the PA. Whereas, in many respects, the approach that the Trump administration took, which was largely punitive toward the Palestinians - I mean it was all vinegar and no sugar - has had the effect of not only leading the Palestinian Authority to completely boycott the Trump administration. But also the Palestinians, in general, to really no longer see the United States as the essential intermediary, as the address to go to. And that may have long-term consequences.

ROSS: It could. That's what I say; you can do something that makes things worse. And there are different points. When I asked him, I said, are you going to do this even if it makes it worse? And the answer from at different points was we're not sure.

WAXMAN: Well, now, I mean. You know obviously, the counter-argument is that not that this pressure campaign was misguided. But that there wasn't enough pressure. You know this echoes some of the arguments about Iran as well - you know, the maximum pressure, which seems to be part of the Trump administration's approach to diplomacy. The argument that you know had the United States, for example, curtailed funding for Palestinian Authority altogether - not just, you know, stopping it's aid to the UN agency dealing the Palestine refugees, or for other Palestinian Authority programs. But particularly the security assistance which some wanted. And correct me if I'm wrong, the current budget or the future budget that the Trump administration's put out effectively promised to end all US assistance.

ROSS: They had pretty much ended all of US assistance anyway because the Taylor Force Act put them in a position where we couldn't be providing it. I think the problem here is that maximum pressure works if you also provide the other side a way out. When you put someone in the corner diplomatically, you rarely get them to be responsive. You can apply leverage. There are no negotiations that ever work without leverage; the question is how do you figure out how to modulate it in a way that also gives the party that you're trying to move away out - and give them an explanation. In every negotiation, each has to have an explanation. If they don't have an explanation, they're not going to act; they're not going to make a decision.

WAXMAN: Was it that what the Trump administration were offering the Palestinians - and still are

ROSS: yeah

WAXMAN: Were economic incentives, financial benefits, not any sort of concessions or any movement on the things that were of greatest concern to the Palestinians in terms of the political demands. So they hope that essentially the Palestinians would trade way some of their long-standing political demands for the prospect of economic benefits.

ROSS: Yeah, look here I want to...I want to say that some of their instincts were not wrong instincts. For example, they wanted to get the Palestinians to adjust their expectations, which is necessary. They wanted the Palestinians to realize if you say no, you actually will be worse off, which is also necessary. Because

there's been this kind of presumption, we can say no one will get a better offer. And up until now, in the past, that happened.

WAXMAN: That's true.

ROSS: So there's something quite legitimate about that. But if you really wanted to make that approach credible, then you had to offer enough that everyone would look around it internationally and say: okay, look that's a serious offer. Maybe it's a little less than what was offered before, but just - if you say no - there actually is a cost when you say no. But this is easy to say no to because nobody looks at it and says, well, that looks like a state. Because it doesn't look like a state. You know I was sitting with a senior Arab official. We looked at the maps and I'll tell you he came from one of those - I won't say which one - but he came from one of the Arab states that wanted to find a way to be positive. And this person with me looks at the map and says, how can we say that looks like a state. No one thinks that looks like a state. So I actually referred to their plan as "The Alone Plan Minus." For those who know about the Alone Plan from 1970, this was not about a state. People weren't talking about ... statehood. But it was about the issue of Israel not governing, occupying the Palestinians.

WAXMAN: And it ensured the Jordan Valley under Israeli control as well.

ROSS: It did. But it also created a corridor to Jordan for what was supposed to be a Jordanian-Palestine state. Now this...that provided 70 percent of the West Bank; this provides 66 percent. The difference, the reason I say minus, is two reasons: one, you didn't have 128 settlements then. The reason the state offer is broken up into small clusters of territory is because 62 of the 77 settlements outside the blocks are given space, and that space breaks up the Palestine state. And there isn't geographic contiguity. There was geographic contiguity with the Alone Plan. There isn't that here, and the Alone Plan left a corridor to Jordan. This leaves none. So all movement into and out of the state is controlled by Israel.

WAXMAN: So I mean we hear a lot about the issue of geographic contiguity and that's one of the main criticisms of the plan. That it has these kind of fragmented patchwork territory with Israeli enclaves within a future Palestinian state. Palestinian enclaves surrounded by Israel. I think it'd be useful to explain for listeners why the issue of contiguity is important for a Palestinian state. Why you know not just have bridges and tunnels and various high-tech solutions? Why does it matter so much that there is a contiguity for Palestinians?

ROSS: Look, at one level there's never going to be contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, going back to what we had in mind with the Clinton parameters, we were going to build an elevated high-speed train to connect the two. But there you have a built-in understanding that Gaza and the West Bank, they're not next to each other.

WAXMAN: And they've always been quite ...in many ways.

ROSS: So that...that is part of a part of the psychology. Here you're talking about trying to end a historic conflict that is as much psychological as it is anything else. If you're going to offer what you can then defend as a state, it has to look like a state. When it doesn't look like a state, even if you're creating all sorts of, you know, tunnels and overpasses to create a kind of technical continguity, that doesn't overcome the psychological problem here. You know ....once said about the conflict, it's 99 percent psychological. And that may have been a bit of an exaggeration. But what isn't an exaggeration is you're asking both sides to take on their historic narratives about who they are, how they define themselves. Now when you ask them to do that, it has to look like they achieve something. And in the Palestinian case, you show that map and just a psychological impact of that map immediately suggests they're not achieving anything.

WAXMAN: And one aspect of it was that the map itself - and the small amount of territory that the Palestinian state would control. The other aspect that's been widely criticized was the very limited powers that this Palestinian state would have. And many people argued that effectively you know it was what Netanyahu once called state minus. But it doesn't really have... If it doesn't control its borders, it doesn't control its airspace, it does not have ultimate control over its territory, because according to its plan, the Israeli army could come and go at will. So really, it wasn't even a state in terms of the actual powers and such.

ROSS: one of the things I've often said to the Palestinians: the concept of sovereign... sovereignty itself has changed over the years.

WAXMAN: which is something I think that they noted in the...in the Trump plan itself.

ROSS: That's right; they did and then part of the discussions that we had over time. I like to say to them...do the British when they host a NATO base, are they not sovereign? Or Germany, are they not sovereign? They certainly see themselves as sovereign, and the rest of the world sees them sees them as sovereign. There are certain limitations on sovereignty; you can accept that it doesn't make you unique. You know, look ...under no plan were they ever going to control their airspace. Not under our plan, not under Clinton parameters, they wouldn't have been able to control air space. But the imagery that Israel controls all movement into and out of the state means that every Palestinian is still basically having to go through Israel. You know there are ways. There were...there are ways to address Israel's security needs, which by the way are completely legitimate. One of the criticisms I have of some of what I call some of the progressive side of the Democratic Party is, they simply dismiss Israeli security concerns. Well, 130,000 Hezbollah rockets are not imaginary. The tunnels that Hezbollah dug into Israel, 80 meters underground through rock, more than a kilometer long. Designed to actually go past where the forward Israeli military positions were so they could go directly into Israeli communities - civilian communities. Yeah, that's not imaginary. What Iran is doing in Syria to build, not only basically a quarter but a precision-guided capability to put on Hezbollah rockets and rockets in Syria. That's not imaginary. ISIS in the Sinai is not imaginary. So Israel has legitimate security needs. And to be fair to the people shaping the Trump plan, they took those into account. And they were serious about it. But you also have to always look for ways to reconcile what are legitimate security needs in a practical way. While you give the other side what they need to present themselves as having a state. For example, you know when I did a back-channel for a couple of years after I left Obama, we came up with the idea of leases. A 99-year lease for the Israelis and Jordan strip. But a parallel lease for Palestinians on a part of Ashdod, a port on a part of Ben-Gurion on territory next to Haifa for desalinization plant. So you create a sense of mutuality, and you give the Palestinians an explanation even as you practically address what has to be addressed from a security standpoint for Israel.

WAXMAN: Isn't the challenge when it comes to trying to kind of reconcile Israel's legitimate security needs with the Palestinians national aspirations and desire for sovereignty. If meeting Israel's security needs is understood in terms of controlling territory.

ROSS: yeah.

WAXMAN: Um there is some would argue an inherent contradiction. Is not going to be a way...or it's almost impossible to have any kind of sovereign state in real terms while Israel understands that its security needs are best met through controlling territory. In the Jordan Valley is obviously central in that. Either Israel is allowed long term or indefinite military presence in the Jordan Valley, or at least to determine by itself whether it would ever withdraw its troops from the Jordan Valley. Or they're there because the Palestinians give them permission to be there and the Palestinians can ultimately take that permission away.

ROSS: That's why the idea of the lease...because it's sovereign Palestinian territory. But they made the decision to lease - and by the way they are able to lease territory in Israel as well.

WAXMAN: But would a future Palestinian government, and the concern obviously among Israelis would be, you can't predict what a future Palestinian government would do.

ROSS: If you write it in for 99 years, and you

WAXMAN: You build in some

ROSS: If you break the lease, that's considered breaking the agreement. Then you have a hedge against that. There are ways to deal with a lot of these issues. Look, a lot of. If you really want to reach an agreement, there are technical fixes. There is...But again, I come back to the psychology of the conflict. You have to do this both in a way and in a circumstance, where the potential for the kind of trust that you need to be able to conclude an agreement is there. The context for this plan was terrible.

WAXMAN: Given that and given how seemingly one-sided it was in terms of meeting and going to great lengths to try to address Israel's not only security needs but political needs as well. For example, allowing outlying Israeli settlements to remain in place, which does deal with the serious political challenge that any future Israeli government would have. But poses an insurmountable political challenge for any Palestinian government to allow these settlements to remain there. Given that many Palestinians believe, according to the polls that come out since the plan. That this was never a really a peace plan in the first place. That really, in their eyes, this was an annexation plan. This was simply designed to provide the Prime Minister Netanyahu, or at least Israel in general, with a pretext by essentially putting a plan that was designed to elicit a Palestinian rejection - and that Palestinian rejection, in turn, could be used by Israel to then move forward.

ROSS: Yeah.

WAXMAN: And the way in which the plan is rolled out...has been rolled out, particularly the comments of US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and even Kushner himself, seem to reinforce this impression. That it was really not taken seriously as an attempt to achieve peace. ROSS: There's an irony here because it's easy to understand why that's the perception. But I think you also have to look at who are the people who were the architects of this plan; and what has their experience been. It's real estate. And how do they approach real estate deals. You put maximum position - a maximum proposal on the table to start with. And you expect to get a counteroffer. And again, Trump said this was a vision; Trump said that there was a four-year window here for the Palestinians to negotiate. This notion that you get a counteroffer I think, was part of the psychology that they had bringing this to bear. The problem is - and you pointed out - there's a built-in contradiction. You can't have it both ways. You can't say okay, look you got a four-year timetable; you can say no now. But, oh, by the way, the Israelis can go ahead and preempt and just start annexing. The two are not consistent. Either you were serious about saying: this is an initial offer, and we want you to make a counteroffer. Or this was a pretext for annexation. My feeling is they had both in mind, and they never resolved the contradiction.

WAXMAN: So they were misguided rather than cynical.

ROSS: I do not think they were cynical. I don't think that was the case. I think they honestly felt, and I believe it from talking to them...that they also felt this is...this is a deal that would make life much better for the Palestinians. They believe that. The problem is they were so determined to accommodate all 128 of the settlements. That's what made this so difficult...That's why you have these enclaves that are fragmented, divided up to accommodate the Israeli settlements.

WAXMAN: Look, you know many people would argue that the presence now of more than over 100,000 Israelis living in these outlying settlements - not in the major settlement blocks - is an insurmountable problem for a kind of neat separation of as envisioned in the two-state solution. And that even if you think they...these settlements are illegal under international law, these settlements shouldn't be there. The fact is, they're not going anywhere. And so finding some kind of solution to their presence that doesn't require any future Israeli government to forcibly evacuate ...is necessary. Maybe it's not going to look - this patchwork territory. But this...this is one of the main arguments to say, that the two-state solution is no longer viable simply because there's no way you can imagine an Israeli government saying, (even a center-left one) we're going to withdraw a 100,000 settlers - 20,000 or 10,000 of whom may be extremists who would violently resist.

ROSS: Right. But that presumes that there are no options for reducing the presence. So the only option is you have to forcibly evacuate. Well, the minute the Israelis would agree to what is the reality, which is to say, look within the blocks that's going to be part of Israel. And there'll be a territorial compensation for that. Outside the blocks, that will be the Palestinian state. Now the minute that would be the case when you say that's the Palestinian state and if you're living there you live under their sovereignty, you're going to get some who will immediately decide they're leaving. If you offer financial incentives, you'll get more. My guess and that the consistently the number that has been anticipated is that you know you probably have a third who wouldn't want to leave. Now there's 104,000 who are there now. You know you reduce that by two-thirds, it becomes a more manageable problem. Not a simple one, but a more manageable problem.

WAXMAN: But wouldn't the message...now I mean this goes back to the Trump administration's plan. Those settlers have got the message now from the United States that they can stay essentially, and they've been told that from Prime Minister Netanyahu. So isn't in one sense one of the consequences of this plan that the...the fact that this has reset expectations on some sides. Not for everyone. Not for the Palestinians, but certainly for the seculars, who will say: well look, we've even got the United States on board. And maybe if there's a different administration that will change. But time is on our side.

ROSS: Look - that's the reason we wrote the book. This was done before the Trump plan. That departure point of the book is that if Israel stays on the path it's on, it becomes one state for two people. When you lose the ability to separate physically, it becomes one state for two people. And then either Israel as a choice to make. Does it have one law that applies to everybody? Does it have two different classes of citizens? The minute that one state is the only option, Palestinians will say fine - one person one vote.

WAXMAN: How do we know that we haven't already reached that point? How do we know whether Israel hasn't already crossed the rubicon? That it's already politically or even technically - but at least politically - impossible to separate anymore. The two populations, because of years of government policies, and sometimes lack of policies, lack of decisions. You can't...the egg is scrambled, if you like - and you can't put it back.

ROSS: Well look, I think you raised a point that suggests that the Trump plan has made a one-state outcome more likely because, in a sense the settlers feel unlike what I was saying. If you make the decision to stop building outside the blocks, that in itself sends an immediate message then. Okay, the reason, by the way, the settler movement hated the idea of the barrier. That's because you're creating a border. And what about all us on the wrong side of that border. Now with the Trump plan, you're basically saying no, no, you can stay.

WAXMAN: You can stay - and you'll...and even the international community, or the United States which was the one in Israeli domestic politics the one bulwark that Israeli Prime Ministers could point to and say, well we can't go that far.

ROSS: That's right.

WAXMAN: Because the US is our brake. And now the United States is essentially even putting with Prime Minister Netanyahu in a difficult position, because he now has no excuse but to follow through on these promises.

ROSS: So I guess the key point I would make is that in some ways our book has become more important and urgent. Because the Trump plan, even though in theory because it's basically saying two states. But the first time you had the Trump administration saying two states. And for the first time, you have Likud saying two states. On the one hand, theoretically, that should be good for preventing what the concern we have. The problem is, it makes it much more difficult to avoid what we see as the tipping point. And this gets to the heart of your question. Even if the Trump plan wasn't there, have we reached the point where the egg is already too scramble to be - you know - to be somehow separated? And I I would say, I don't think we have reached that point. But I don't know how far from that point we are. And the problem with the tipping point is once you pass it, then your options have been settled for you. And tactical decisions that are made now have long-term strategic consequence. I am worried that the Trump plan - especially if the administration has five more years - pretty much puts you in a position where it will be one state for two people. If the Trump plan had been more credible, then you could basically say, you know now you're in a place where basically you can have separation. But I think that the major flaw on the Trump plan from the standpoint of preserving separation was the idea that they had to preserve all 128 settlements. Preserving the 51 and the settlement blocks perfectly right. But the 77 outside is kind of what makes it very difficult to preserve two states as a possibility. And I say that as not as someone who thinks two states is available any time soon; it's not available any time soon. That's also a premise of the book. Even if you had Meretz running Israel, two states wouldn't be available any time soon. Because the Palestinians are divided, they can't make peace among themselves, or certainly can't make peace with the Israelis.

WAXMAN: It's a succession battle looming, of course.

ROSS: Absolutely.

WAXMAN: So given that, given that a two-state solution is not on the cards in the near term. And we're reaching by virtue of population growth the expansion of settlements and the political dynamics on both sides. I mean it seems despite the kind of optimism that I mean that it is possible, it seems that just time has run out almost.

ROSS: Well it hasn't run out. I don't believe it's run out. But I think it's in short supply. And I do think it becomes more urgent. Look, the title of the book is, 'Be Strong and of Good Courage.' To be strong relates to the fact that if you're Israel you don't have a choice; you have to be strong. Look at this region. You look at the threats there, and as I said before, they're not imaginary. They're quite real. If in this region, if you're not strong, you're dead. Just look at Syria right now - 900,000 people, you know, in a no-man's land completely exposed. So Israel has to be strong. But 'of good courage' means you also have to be wise. And if you don't want to become one state for two peoples, then you're going to have to make some decisions that are hard decisions. They're hard because they're hard politically. The Trump administration has made those harder. It hasn't made them easier. Now, if we have a different administration in Washington, you know, then given the pattern of what we've seen. You know so Bush comes in and reverses Clinton; Obama comes in and reverses Bush; Trump comes in and reverses Obama. Whoever comes in on the Democratic side is highly likely to reverse Trump. So you know that that clock is still ticking.

WAXMAN: But couldn't Israeli - and this will be my final question because clearly, I think based upon the arguments in your book about previous Israeli prime ministers who rose to the challenge. Made these momentous decisions, took political risks, and real risks.

ROSS: Yeah.

WAXMAN: to address Israel's real existential needs. And I think, by implication, there's no chapter in the book devoted to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is not among those leaders. And is there an Israeli leader. I mean would be would Benny Gantz be in a position even to do that. Is it perhaps that Israeli politics today - and the nature of Israel's political system and the coalition politics and the ways in which everything is focus-group... it's simply...there isn't a leader of that stature, whether it be Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon or Rabin, who could rise to that challenge. Because you know the system doesn't, in a sense, allow for that kind of leadership.

ROSS: Well, you know, we see the leadership in the Israeli military. We see the leadership outside of the political area where Israel is a cutting-edge nation. So Israel produces people who are capable of leadership. It just is a question of putting the state first. What was consistent with these four leaders is that when it was a choice between their political base and what the country needed, they chose the country. They, by the way, also - all four of them, even though these were very different leaders. Very different ideologically, very different personally, very different personalities. But they defined leadership the same way. And they also basically said our responsibility is to lead the country. Lead the public, not follow the public. So they - to them - it was we have to explain the stakes and then act on it. If it meant taking on their political base, each of them was prepared to do it. They put the country first. It's not too late for that.

WAXMAN: Well, I think that's a very good note to end on. I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom and your insights with us. And also your optimism, which I think is also very much in short supply. So thank you, Ambassador Ross, for joining us. You've been listening to an episode of Israel in Depth. Produced by the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Thank you for listening.