Daniel Seidemann is an Israeli attorney specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem. He spoke to The New Bengal Gazette editors Syed Abubakr and Sumit Singh on the Israel-Gaza ceasefire deal, the new Trump administration in the United States, Netanyahu’s presidency, possibility of the two-state solution and the way forward. Seidemann is the founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an NGO that works towards a resolution to the question of Jerusalem that is consistent with the two-state solution.
Question: The Israel-Gaza ceasefire is in effect. Hostages and prisoners are being exchanged as part of the truce deal. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who was recently sworn-in as the US President said that he’s “not very confident” that the ceasefire would last, saying “it is not America’s war, it is their war.” How do you view this statement and do you think the deal will last long?
Answer: Well, I am not surprised that I’m surprised by Trump. He’s very inconsistent and very
unexpected, and I don’t think we can really understand what his intentions are. I think it’s likely that he doesn’t understand what his intentions are. It’s clear that his position as expressed by his envoy, was critical in moving this along, in sealing this ceasefire. It was clearly a pivotal moment but there are many reasons why this will be the only stage of the ceasefire and the hostage agreement and we will find ourselves back in the middle of a war in 40 days.
Now, that’s not because of Trump. That will likely be because of the forces unleashed in Israel and the fact that Netanyahu seeks to perpetuate the war for his own political survival. And there are clear indications that he is sabotaging this in a way that will make transitioning to the second stage extremely difficult. In addition to that, there are the forces on the streets.
An overwhelming majority of Israelis support the ceasefire and returning the hostages alive or regrettably dead. But there is a minority which supports Netanyahu, and they’re in power and they are hell-bent on disrupting this. So, you will be seeing demonstrations. You’ll also be seeing attacks by settlers in the occupied West Bank. It’s not that they’re willing to risk the outbreak of violence. They seek an outbreak of violence because this will provide the pretext of not maintaining and following through on the ceasefire. Now, it really very much depends on the resolve of the people of lsrael, which until now has not proven to be sufficient to influence Netanyahu. But there are millions who are opposed to his policy, and a lot of it depends on Trump.
Trump stated before he came into office that the war has got to end. He has great ambitions for a Nobel Prize, and he sees normalization as the path forward. A continuing war in Gaza doesn’t serve his purposes. If he acts as if he has acted until now, Netanyahu will have no choice but to move on to the second stage. But if he is given a small opening, there is a very real possibility that the ceasefire will fall apart in 40 days time, and the hostages who have been released in the first stage will be the last hostages, and the others will die in captivity
Question: The war in Gaza has stopped. Israel has launched major military campaigns in the West Bank. As per media reports, at least 10 Palestinians were killed on January 22, 2025 in the city of Jenin. Do you see this move which has been termed as “Operation Iron Wall” by Israel as a means to shift goalposts from Gaza to the West Bank as the former is under ceasefire right now?
Answer: The situation is not entirely clear. There are those within the Israeli government, and certainly within the supporters of Netanyahu and the radical religious right who would welcome an outbreak of violence and are seeking to ignite the West Bank and you see that on a nightly basis in the attacks by settlers on Palestinian villages. Bear in mind, though, that Jenin is pretty autonomous, meaning it’s not under the control of Israel or the Palestinian Authority.
In the areas that have effective governance by the Palestinian Authority, the security situation is very good. It’s not widely acknowledged in Israel but there’s a good deal of cooperation. There have been two terror attacks over the last few days in Tel Aviv and the autonomous area of Jenin does pose a threat. So the question is, is this a response to a really problematic, dangerous situation or is this playing with matches in order to derail the next stages of this ceasefire and hostage release process.
Question: The death toll in Gaza has crossed over 47,100 deaths as for the Hamas-run Health Ministry. A new Lancet report published recently and carried out in the New York Times states that the toll may have been underestimated by over 40%. It goes on to say that around 25,000 deaths have been under counted. Do you think that the world turned its eye away from the genocide that’s happening in Gaza?
Answer: I think the answer is yes. If I look at the way the leadership particularly in the United States, particularly the President, Secretary of State and others and many of the countries in the European Union say Israeli lives matter, Palestinian lives matter less. That has been my experience in dealing with my country’s occupation. I’m an Israeli of the West Bank for the last 30 years. There was very little press access to Gaza, and it was always embedded. So we saw only what the lsraeli government, IDF, wanted us to see. I must admit to you that I, as an Israeli, came very late to the recognition of the war crimes that we were carrying out in Gaza.
I think there are people now, journalists and press, who are going into Gaza and looking at this landscape and are learning for the first time. The press in Israel, the electronic press certainly, there are exceptions in the printed press, don’t report this. And it’s not well covered in the international press at times, at the fault of Israel, at times of the fault of the press itself. Now that things are opening up, we’re being exposed to the scope of the carnage and the devastation.
From my personal experience, the reason that I came late to recognize the scope of the devastation wasn’t the press, and I can’t blame anybody. It was just very difficult for me, and I believe others, to believe that this is what has become of us. We didn’t believe that we were doing this because we never saw ourselves this way. And today, I say this with great regret that the genocide in Gaza is going to be a stain on Jewish history and the history of Israel that will never be erased.
Question: How do you assess the presidency of Benjamin Netanyahu under whose watch the entire Gaza has been razed to the ground?
Answer: Netanyahu wants to prolong the war and because that’s the only way he will survive. The day he leaves office, the danger of concluding his life in a prison cell will increase significantly. In many ways, he still supports Hamas. He doesn’t want an alternative to Hamas because the only alternative to Hamas means bringing in the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian Authority means negotiating and negotiating means two states. He would prefer Hamas. He did. That’s one of the major contributing factors of this war. So even with all of the violence unleashed by his government, in government, my government as well, regrettably, I don’t think he wants to see Hamas completely disappear.
Question: Do you think that the two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict will be viable?
Answer: Most people talk about the two state solution or the one state solution and it’s based completely on mood. You get up in the morning and the two state solution is dead, and then it comes back after sometime. The two state solution is in grave jeopardy. It may be dead, but I can tell you this, there is no alternative to the two state solution. The goal of negotiations is to end occupation in a way that is compatible with the interests of both Israeli and Palestinians. The only way that can be achieved is the border. Thirty years after the border goes up, it may dissolve and it may become one state, but there will be no coexistence until the divorce is completed.
I may not live to see it but we will come back to two states because the alternative to the two state solution is perpetual war, perpetual occupation. The one state solution does not exist in nature. It may exist thirty years after agreement, but it does not now. So I think it is correct to persevere in moving resolutely in some way towards two states, even if we know that it is not immediately available. I would hope that the normalisation process which, in large part, ignored the palestinians and the palestinian rights, will be pivoted and will be leveraged in order to move significantly in the direction of the two state outcome.
Question: In your personal opinion, how do you think the normalcy and peace process can be intensified?
Answer: You have to deal with this both at the humanitarian level and at the political level. At the humanitarian level, there’s an imperative to address the real needs of the people of Gaza and not as supplicants to begin to rebuild Gaza, and that will require difficult decisions. You cannot rebuild Gaza without the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and if you shut down UNRWA, you are saying we are not going to rebuild Gaza.
There will be a day after when the ceasefire is stable. And we’ll be looking at a lunar landscape, both symbolically and literally. And when we say, we have so little to work with, what the hell do we do? And I would hope that the belief of the Trump administration and regional players for regional peace will be used in order to address the underlying devastating effects of occupation. I think that’s possible, but it will require political will. I can say one thing with authority. None of this will happen as long as Netanyahu is Prime Minister. This only begins to become possible the day after he’s gone.
