The traditional model of two defined states for Israelis and Palestinians is no longer realistic, Middle East specialist and former U.S. diplomat Robert Malley said during a Feb. 23 talk at Dartmouth.
The event was hosted by the Middle East Initiative, a collaborative effort of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the faculty of the Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies programs and part of Dartmouth Dialogues.
Malley, a former White House aide during the Obama administration and U.S. special envoy to Iran in the Biden administration, urged new political frameworks that would allow Israelis and Palestinians to coexist with equal rights and dignity, even if those arrangements blur traditional notions of sovereignty.
“The burden is now on people who keep saying ‘two states’ to explain how they think it’s going to be achieved,” Malley said.
Malley also spoke about his new book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine, co-authored with longtime Palestinian negotiator Hussein Agha.
The event was moderated by Ezzedine Fishere, a distinguished fellow in the Middle Eastern Studies Program and a former diplomat in Egypt’s Foreign Service. The event in a Rockefeller Center classroom was also streamed online.
“What kind of narrative do you see today,” Fishere asked, “that is not conducive to the two states?”
Malley said one centered around coexistence. He rejected the idea that trust must come before political agreements.
“I don’t really believe in trust,” said Malley, a lecturer and senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. “Trust will come once they find a way to coexist. It can be a prerequisite for coexistence, or we’re going to be at this for decades and decades and decades.”
Malley challenged the dominant narrative that recent violence stems primarily from the actions of extremist leaders or groups.
Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants. More than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza were killed in the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.
“Neither Oct. 7 nor what followed were anomalies. They were expressions, reflections, both of their respective societies,” Malley said.
The latest war reflects unresolved historical grievances and political failures stretching back to the founding of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians in 1948, he said.
“If after the peace process the U.S. shepherded all these years, this is what we get, then something was fundamentally amiss in those efforts,” Malley said.
For more than three decades, the United States has positioned itself as the primary mediator between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet Malley said the outcome of that strategy has been stark: deeper Israeli settlement expansion, fragmented Palestinian territories, eroded trust, and diminished faith in diplomacy.
“The conflict has been, in some respects, misdiagnosed when people thought all you needed to do is take a line, draw on a map,” he said.
Malley also weighed in on the latest tensions between the U.S. and Iran, calling it another result of U.S. foreign policy aimed at being the “primary power in the region.”
“Ultimately, there is a gravitational pull, a structure of interest, a structure that has led the U.S. to take the position it has, which is why even today, we may be on the verge of war with Iran,” Malley said.
He added that presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump have all said the United States needs to “recalibrate” its position in the region. “None of them have done it,” he said.
During a question-and-answer session, Malley acknowledged the bleak near-term outlook for Gaza and the absence of legitimate Palestinian political representation. He noted there have been no Palestinian elections since 2006.
People living in Gaza could go “from a situation of sheer hell to mere nightmare,” Malley said. “That’s sort of the best that literally I can expect for now. … There’s no sense of normalcy.”
But he expressed cautious hope that generational shifts—particularly among young Americans—could eventually reshape U.S. policy.
“There’s a greater moral awareness, greater interest, willingness to think, talk, and be active about an issue in which the U.S. has had such a hand in in the past, and such a weak or negative hand in the past. And I hope that changes,” Malley said.
Victoria Holt, the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the Dickey Center, said, “We hope tonight’s discussion speaks to the dual challenge of aiming for winning peace agreements while also addressing the underlying nature of the conflicts.”
