Q&A: Robert Malley’s new book explores ‘history and emotion’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The ongoing war between Israel and Palestine remains a central concern in public debate, even amid mounting crises elsewhere in the world. It’s a conflict that has endured for generations, but it reached a new level of brutality in 2023 with Hamas’ attack on Israelis and Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign in Gaza.

And yet, all of what has transpired, said Jackson Senior Fellow Robert Malley, is quite familiar. “What we’re seeing today,” said Malley, “is very much reminiscent of patterns and dynamics that were witnessed in the past. We are not witnessing a rupture so much as a reenactment.”

This is the central theme of Tomorrow is Yesterday, a new book co-authored by Malley and Hussein Agha, which aims to make sense of why this recent conflict happened and create a just path forward for both sides. In the book, Malley, a veteran advisor in the Middle East under multiple U.S. presidents, and Agha, an activist and researcher who has served as a negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks for decades, provide an inside look at past attempts at peace from multiple angles and share their personal opinions on how to move forward — not with continued occupation or a two-state solution, but with a creative new idea that satisfies both sides.

Malley recently took part in a Q&A to discuss the current conflict, the role of the U.S. in brokering peace, and how his own personal beliefs have changed through the course of his life. The interview has been edited and condensed.

What was your approach to writing this book?

We write at the very outset of the book that it’s an essay about a whole host of things: emotions, betrayal, yearning, life, death, religion. At a meta level, it really is about all of the elements that, often neglected in official negotiations, really matter. Hussein and I, when we were in negotiations, would see these things swept under the rug in the name of quickly reaching an agreement; indeed, we were among the most arduous of sweepers. But in fact — as we discovered through the failures of decades of peace negotiations — there is no such thing as the conflict on one side and history, emotions, or passions on the other.  The conflict is the history, it is the emotions, the passion. I think that’s at the heart of our book, it’s at the heat of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, indeed, of many unresolved conflicts today.

At another level, the book is the story about how we went from the Oslo Accords in 1993, which had such high hopes, to the current horror we’re experiencing. The two themes are interrelated, of course: History has a way of avenging and resurrecting itself, however much individuals may have believed that they were embarking on a different path, a path to peace. That path turned out to be as thin as air, evanescent. When confronted with the stronger currents and pull of the past, it was no match.

In the book, you write, “If all that mattered was to find a place in which to live, not to recover a lost history and repair injustice, Palestinians might just as well be settled elsewhere.” How do you find resolution when dealing with history and emotions?

Having been inside these peace negotiations, we’ve seen solutions approached like a mathematical puzzle. What percentage of land will be allocated to one or the other? What are the precise security arrangements? How should Jerusalem be divided? Pen to paper and drawing lines on a map: That’s what we did, but that is not what the struggle is about; it’s about something much deeper. That misdiagnosis of the roots of the conflict goes a long way towards explaining the inability to resolve it.

Emotions, fears, aspirations: those are much harder to compute, to quantify and, therefore, to address. And that’s why people — ourselves included — have often looked for the easier way out. The search for an arrangement that deals with those deeper emotions is a harder one, but it’s a necessary one if some form of peaceful, sustainable coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians is to be found. There are historical examples; for example, the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa which required dealing with the past in order to address the present and the future.

This book doesn’t offer a specific blueprint because we don’t have an exact answer. For one, we’ve been associated with a quest that has failed for decades, so it would be the height of hubris for either one of us to say, “Trust us, we now have the answer.” Also, we’re so far from peace between Israelis and Palestinians that any such blueprint or proposal would be nothing more than abstract ruminations, untethered from reality, and ultimately useless. It’s going to take a long while before people on both sides are in a position to discuss a possible shared future. Now is the time to be creative, to try to explore all manner of paths that have been discarded in the past in favor of a two-state solution, and try to see whether something could emerge that is more likely to satisfy the desires and address the fears of Israelis and Palestinians.

The Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and Israel’s response have caused repercussions around the world. What made this moment different?

Part of the central thesis of this book is that, in fact, it’s not all that different. Obviously, events matter, and the horrific character of Hamas’ attack on October 7 and Israel’s unspeakable onslaught in response have struck many people at a very deep, emotional level. But what we write is that these actions reflected much older and persistent Israeli and Palestinian dynamics and attitudes. Hamas or Netanyahu — they did not come from another planet. They are not one-offs or aberrations. They are deep reflections of their respective communities.

After October 7, a majority of Palestinians undoubtedly reacted with a sense of satisfaction and vindication; finally, in their eyes, Israelis were getting a taste of their own medicine, they were now living in fear in the same way Palestinians have lived in fear, they were being kidnapped just as Palestinians had been arbitrarily detained, their homes violated just as Palestinian homes had been conquered. And on the Israeli side, the reaction to the gruesome war that followed was one of widespread, almost wall-to-wall solidarity and support, with very few questions asked about how the war was waged.

In October 2025, the U.S. helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, though violence has continued. What is your opinion on the deal?

I think it’s far from ideal and I could spend hours deconstructing and criticizing its most distasteful elements – putting aside the fact that much of it will simply never be implemented. That said — and while it is a highly imperfect ceasefire that, in most other places in the world, still would be considered a war, with Palestinians still killed on a daily basis — compared to a few months prior, the situation has significantly improved for Gazans. That, plus the release of captives, is not something to be dismissed.

But the reality in Gaza today is of a page with how Israel is now dealing with much of its immediate neighborhood. They will preempt any threat, near or far, imminent or distant, real or imagined. They are or have been doing it in Lebanon, in Syria, in the West Bank, now in Gaza. Whatever they determine to be a potentially hostile act, they strike — a reflection both of the history of threats to the Jewish and Israeli people, and of Israel’s current disproportionate military power.

Given how closely tied Israel and the U.S. are, how can the U.S. play a role in brokering sustainable peace?

The most immediate question is not how, but whether the U.S. can play such a role. The past hardly is cause for optimism. Hampered by political and emotional bias, incapable of fully grasping the historical and emotional dimensions of the conflict, basically comfortable with a status quo that has promoted its core strategic interests — the U.S. has proven to be a wretched mediator since the beginning of the Oslo process. One lesson is that, should it continue to play a role, the U.S. will need to expand the scope of stakeholders involved in the process, including many it purposefully excluded in the past.  By this I mean Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders — Israeli settlers and members of the religious community, as well as Palestinian refugees, members of the diaspora, and Islamists, as well as Arab countries.

Ultimately, of course, this is a conflict between Israel and Palestine, and they are the ones who are going to have to find a way to live with one another. Solutions imposed on the outside sometimes work, but they often break down because they don’t reflect the real feelings of the people on the ground. We could spend infinite hours dissecting what the U.S. has done wrong and what it should change but, at the end of the day, Israelis and Palestinians are the ones on whom the burden will fall to find ways to coexist.

You share a lot of personal reflections and stories in your book. While looking back, did you find places where your perspective has changed?

Absolutely. I actually look back to something I wrote in the Yale Daily News in 1980, as an undergraduate student on what I called the myths of Zionism. Back then, I was someone who believed — for both ethical and moral reasons — that the right solution was a single binational state. Later, as I worked with Israelis and Palestinians and got to know them over time, I shifted toward believing in a two-state solution, entailing a partition between two ethno-national sovereign states. Indeed, that is what Hussein and I spent decades fighting for. Now, we both have reached the conclusion that the two-state conclusion, while perhaps realistic at some point, was never the conflict’s natural outcome, did not truly respond to the yearnings of the two peoples, and has become a diplomatic gimmick whose quest was designed to cover up for the perpetuation of the status quo. So, the challenge is to find an arrangement that is far more flexible in terms of how it defines sovereignty and coexistence and that deals more honestly with the two sides’ experience of the past. Of course, my views have changed in many other ways. It’s hard to go through a 30-year period of repeated failures and have one’s beliefs remain intact.

A final reflection: I presently teach a class at Yale on the conflict, and I always begin the course by asking the students to tell us about the baggage they bring to the issue, what personal, political, or moral experiences have helped shape their views. I also share mine. I do that because I feel we should all be aware of why we think and feel the way we do.  It may help us better ground our views or, sometimes, change them. Some students emerge from the class feeling even more strongly about their original beliefs, some emerge with slightly amended views, and some with a whole host of new questions and interrogations. What I care about is that they come out with greater self-awareness of why they hold the views they do and, ideally, a greater ability to understand why someone else may hold a very different one. And I’m unfailingly impressed by how self-reflective, open-minded, and willing to engage they all are. I derive no greater pleasure.