What have you learned since arriving to Stanford as a visiting fellow in Israel Studies about the need for education about Israel and the Middle East more broadly?

The twentieth-century English novelist, L.P. Hartley, once observed that “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Well, the Middle East is a foreign region; they do things differently there too. The Middle East is an enormously diverse, vibrant, and exciting part of the world, but it is not a mirror image of America. And that is something that, frankly, very intelligent, well-educated and well-meaning members of elite American institutions often find rather difficult to acknowledge. The notion of difference is uncomfortable to many of us. We fear that pointing to differences will paint us as judgmental and make us vulnerable to social opprobrium, or worse. But grappling with places that “do things differently” is essential if we are going to understand a complex and contested world. Grappling with places that “do things differently” is crucial if we are going to fulfill our duty of preparing our students to become leaders that face the world with truth, moral courage, and sound policy. We need more and better education about Israel, the Palestinian people, and the Middle East because we want to strengthen our capacity for deep empathy, and effective interaction with actors that are guided by different worldviews. We also need more and better education about Israel and the Middle East so that we both appreciate what we have here in the U.S. that the Middle East lacks, while respecting the things that are prevalent in Israel and the Middle East that can benefit the rest of the world. 

What will you be teaching this academic year, and what do you hope students gain from it?

This year, FSI’s Israel Studies program offers a rich set of educational opportunities, both inside classrooms and outside, in various conferences, panels, visits and webinars. If there was a truly special ray of light for me in the last academic year, it was our amazing Stanford undergraduate students. I taught my course "Israel: Society, Politics, and Policy" last spring quarter, and will teach it again this coming spring. I find that our students come to the subject with curiosity, openness, critical thought, and the capacity for historical and comparative political thinking. In a class exercise we did, some of them even managed to put together a plausible Israeli coalition government, which is more than can be said for most Israeli politicians.

The program recently hosted two events with Tzipi Livni, who has held several senior leadership roles in the Israeli government, including as opposition leader to Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. In your discussions with her, what did she say that resonated with you? What are some of your takeaways?

It was a tremendous joy to host Tzipi Livni here at FSI and have her interact with so many of our faculty and students. No one alive today possesses the depth and breadth of her combined experience in domestic Israeli politics and constitutional debates, international peace negotiations, and post-war diplomatic settlements. Given the current situation in the Middle East, her visit could not have been timelier.

What really struck me in the set of conversations Tzipi Livni held with faculty and students, was her emphasis on two related points. One is her insight that tactical military successes – even spectacular ones – do not in themselves translate into strategic gains, let alone long-term changes in geopolitical realities. If war, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, is politics by other means, then military victories only matter if they are then leveraged for constructive changes in economic, social, and political conditions on the ground. Otherwise, tactical successes dissipate quickly and make little long-term difference. And second, the United States and its allies in the region – notably Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, more tentatively, Saudi Arabia – currently lack a positive, forward-looking strategy for the future of the region. That vacuum will continue to be exploited by Iran, Russia, and increasingly China, at great cost to the peoples of the region and American interests. The blow of the October 7th massacre, and subsequent multi-front war faced by Israel at the hands of Iran and its proxies (based in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) has derailed the broadly positive pre-October 7th dynamic of Arab-Israeli rapprochement and regional cooperation represented by the Abraham Accords. To counter what Ambassador Dennis Ross has called Iran’s “Axis of Misery”, we urgently need to articulate and pursue an alternative vision of peace, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East – what we might call a Middle East Peace and Prosperity Pact. Barring such a positive, forward-looking agenda, we are virtually guaranteed to continue on a downward spiral of war, instability, refugee flows, and state disintegration in the Middle East. This will play into the hands of the radicals in the region and serve Iranian and Russian interests, undermining American ones.        

How do you think the events of Oct. 7 and the ensuing wars will shape Israeli society and politics into the future?

The October 7^th massacre was not just another large-scale terrorist attack. It was what Anna Rebecca Levenberg and I described as a “Transformative Tragedy” that has already indelibly altered Israel and the Middle East, and will continue to reverberate for decades to come. On that day Israelis experienced their worst nightmare. Finding themselves defenseless for a few hours in their homes inside Israel (not settlements) they were attacked with a cruelty and glee reminiscent of the worst pogroms of the 14^th and 19^th centuries and the Holocaust. For one day, every single Israeli – and every single friend of Israel around the world – saw exactly what would happen to 10 million Israelis (Christians, Druz, Jews, and Muslims) if Israel was ever overrun by its enemies. The trauma has already produced five main outcomes:

Firstly, the social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel was broken on October 7^th and that fracture has been compounded over the past year by the excruciating failure to free all the Israeli hostages – 101 of which, alive and dead, are still in Hamas captivity. The breach of trust was also exacerbated by the Israeli government’s abysmal performance in the delivery of emergency public services in the weeks and months following the shock of October 7^th. Domestically, Israel will spend the next years, possibly decades, trying to restore or renegotiate that social contract and rehabilitating trust in the state. I don’t expect radical change in the next elections (scheduled for November 2026) but politically the Israel of 2030 or 2034 will be very different. Just like it took four years for the 1973 Yom Kippur War to bring about a transformation in Israeli politics and society, so will it be with October 7^th 2023 and the subsequent war, which is still ongoing.

Second, public outrage at the murder, rape, and mass kidnapping perpetrated by Gazans on October 7^th has moved the Israeli political map further to the right, though mainly to the center-right. It also makes Israelis less sympathetic to the real suffering of the Palestinians, the majority of whom are civilians caught up in the fighting in Gaza and anti-terror miliary incursions in the West Bank. The notion that Hamas’s massacre should instigate a process towards Palestinian statehood is now broadly seen by Israelis as an unacceptable reward for terrorism. This will make negotiating a two-state solution even more difficult than in the past, unless a credible new regional initiative addresses the Palestinian issue within a compelling broader package that would include normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, disarming of Palestinian militias, deradicalization of Palestinian education, and massive investment in economic development projects that would help ensure the stability of Egypt, Jordan, and a future Palestinian State. We must not permit the creation of yet another failed state in the Middle East that serves as a safe haven for terrorism.

Thirdly, October 7^th convinced the vast majority of Israelis that deterrence failed and that living in close proximity to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hezbollah is no longer a tenable proposition. October 7^th turned a disastrous Israeli strategy of concessions and accommodation into a strategy of active dismantlement of the “ring of fire” built by Iran around Israel’s skinny neck. A year after the massacre, there remain over 100,000 Israelis internally displaced from their homes and communities in the south, on the border with Gaza, and in the northern part of the country, on the borders with Lebanon and Syria. Anyone who knows how small Israel is, is aware that “on the border” means literally within hundreds of feet of a fence, with Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah fighters waiting on the other side. The number one priority for the Israeli government right now is to restore enough security on those borders to persuade the 100,000 displaced that it is safe to go back home and that another October 7^th massacre will not take place, despite the repeated promise of senior Hamas officials to replicate the massacre again and again until Israel is annihilated . Reassuring the displaced is a tall order when trauma is fresh and trust is low. Israel is close to achieving that goal vis-à-vis Gaza, where Hamas and PIJ have generally been dismantled as a fighting force. As long as Hamas and PIJ are not able to be resupplied with Iranian missiles through the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border, the risk of large-scale rocket fire from Gaza has been greatly diminished. Similarly, but much more challenging, in Lebanon the aims of the current Israeli campaign are to: (1) dramatically degrade Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of missiles, rockets, and drones; (2) find and blow up the extensive terror tunnel system built by Hezbollah on and across the border with Israel; (3) push back Hezbollah’s elite fighting force – the Radwan Force – from the border with Israel, and; (4) prevent Iran from resupplying Hezbollah.

Fourthly, the October 7^th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza and Lebanon, has put Iran and Israel on the path to direct military confrontation. For two decades, Iran’s strategy against Israel – pioneered by the late Kassem Soulaimani – was one of “annihilation by attrition” through proxies. The strategy was simple: if little Israel (economically open and dependent on Western support) could be made domestically uninhabitable, economically weakened, and internationally isolated, it would be gradually worn down and eventually become defenseless. And while Israel was busy fighting an endless war on multiple fronts – its people and high-tech economy suffering, and its international legitimacy undermined by images of dead children in Gaza – the Ayatollahs would be free to continue oppressing the Iranian people and building a nuclear bomb. Defeating Israel would be achieved not by one decisive blow, but by a million cuts from multiple proxies nurtured by Iran and housed in failed states across the Middle East. But sacrificing the lives of the proxy fighters – Afghans, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni – is so much cheaper for the Iranians than risking the lives of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Attacking Israel via Hamas or Hezbollah also happens to play much better for the Iranians on the BBC. Israel is made to look like Goliath fighting plucky “resistance movements” with exotic names in Arabic, not Persian. October 7^th triggered a process that would remove the veil of plausible deniability from the Iranian puppet-master. As Israel began to dismantle Hamas, the wizard of Tehran stepped from behind the curtain. The night between April 13 and 14 was pivotal. On that night Iran launched 350 projectiles – drones, cruise and ballistic missiles – at a range of miliary and civilian targets in Israel. And on October 2^nd 2024, as Jews in Israel and around the world were preparing to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, Iran launched at least 180 ballistic missiles at Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. We are now at the beginning of the Iran-Israel War.

Lastly, Israelis, like Jews all over the world, were horrified by the ghastly scenes of celebration and “exhilaration” that exploded on elite university campuses in America, Canada, and Europe from October 8^th onwards – before Israel fired one bullet in retaliation. To witness some of the most privileged, liberal, and free young people in the world openly side with some the most barbaric, oppressive, and cruel terrorist organizations in the world, was no less shocking than the events of October 7^th itself. Israelis know that these displays of ignorance and bigotry are at odds with American values, and that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of college students, want nothing to do with a worldview that pretends mass murder and rape is “legitimate resistance.” But they also know that shockingly few influencers came to their defense as their hostages were being brutalized in Hamas’s tunnels and as they were facing a multi-front war. The silence of human rights activists and feminist organizations was particularly deafening. The moral inversion of accusing, not Hamas, but Israel of “genocide,” simply serves as proof to most Israelis that they can only rely on themselves. The consequence of the last year is that virtually all Israelis – and the majority of Jews around the world – now understand the world to be far more ominous, far more callous, and far more antisemitic than they ever suspected before October 7^th. This will make Israel wearier of efforts at outside intervention and more determined to become more powerful and strategically self-sufficient. 

Estimated $18 Billion Reconstruction 

To begin with, projected reconstruction costs to rebuild Gaza currently total $18 billion, said Galit Cohen, director of the Program on Climate Change at the Israel Institute for National Security. She has experience identifying and analyzing risks and opportunities for Israel’s national security in the field of climate change.

Water, sewage, waste, food and air pollution risks abound in Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, Cohen said. At least 57 percent of water, sanitation and health facilities in Gaza have been destroyed so far, including desalinization plants, and only 3-7 liters of water is typically available per day for each person, which is well below the recommended minimum of 50-100 liters.

“In the current situation in regard to the environmental issues, it's about the water security and about the sewage, sanitation and construction waste – all the list of those issues that need to be mitigated and also dealt with,” Cohen said. For example, “there is no active wastewater treatment facility now in Gaza,” and the many unclaimed dead bodies deep in the rubble pose environmental risks as well.

As for solutions, she said, “Trying to build the institutions and the government that can undertake the responsibility of the civil society there” is the first step to working together on a rebuild of Gaza. The goal should be to create a new coalition with the U.S. and countries such as Egypt, Jordan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia (and others) that can undertake a reconstruction of Gaza so Palestinians can live there without enduring an environmental catastrophe.

“This is the only way we can survive here – Israel and all the rest,” Cohen said.
 

Coalition Building

Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, described the sensitive environmental interdependence of countries in the region.

“The streams and rivers originating in Israel and the West Bank originate in Jordan, and in Israel the vast majority of the aquifers of underground water in our region is shared between Israel and its neighbors – between Jordan and its neighbors, and it’s shared between Palestine and its neighbors. That means if there’s an environmental challenge or an environmental issue with the water that we have, one country alone cannot deal with it. Regional cooperation is a must,” he said.

Dr. Hamed has served as the Israeli Ministry of Science’s Deputy Chief Scientist, and later the Acting Chief Scientist, and was the highest ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government. About his current position at the Arava Institute, he said, “We use the environment as a tool. We use science as [a] diplomacy tool to bring people together. We use science to build bridges, to build trust, and to build understanding.”

The regional effects in climate change could be exacerbated by the war in Gaza, he said. “The region that we live in is a hotspot when it comes to climate change, the heat waves, and the sea level rise.”

The warming of the Eastern Mediterranean is increasing, and it is already much higher than any other place in the world, he said. On top of this, climate change often produces migration to other areas, creating possible instability effects for existing populations in the new areas, and statistics show people already have been moving out of Gaza and other countries in the immediate region, likely due to the worsening climate, and in addition now, to the conflict.

He said the intense bombing of Gaza has significantly damaged farmlands, infrastructure, including apartment buildings, the roads, water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants and water wells. “What happened on Oct. 7 happened because of the lack of knowledge of the other side.” 

He added, “This is a great chance for us to rethink what happened and to rebuild a better future for all of us.”
 

Renewable Energy Concerns – or Opportunity?

The war in Gaza seriously affects the prospect of green or renewable energy in the immediate conflict area, said Dorit Banet, who co-founded the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative and has been Israel’s leading government official in the area of renewable energy for two decades.

More than 100,000 Israelis were estimated to be displaced from their homes in southern Israel after Oct. 7. Banet has noted in prior media stories that some in Israel are eying a push to “build back better” by transforming the region into a more sustainable area. Israel has committed to reaching 30% renewable energy by 2030, though that may be difficult.

Banet said at least another 2 gigawatts of solar renewable energy could be immediately produced in one particular Israeli area based on the existing infrastructure – and eventually as much as another 8.5 gigawatts of solar energy. 

This would offer people in the area much more energy resilience, she said. “In such areas, this needs to be totally agreed upon with totally new regulation in Israel.”
 

Promoting Resilience

Victor Weiss, director of sustainability for the Israel National Security Council, said the ongoing war could have a negative impact on the global economy, the availability of budget, and the willingness of countries to allocate resources to climate issues.   

“A regional war is expected to affect fuel markets and lead to damaged supply chains” and the general instability of markets, said Weiss, who was a senior military officer and founder of the Israel Defense Force’s Environmental Unit.

“We have to build a new relationship and partnerships with the other regional countries to promote resilience,” he added.

Weiss said that Israel’s National Security Council recently defined climate issues as a strategic threat to that country’s national security. “The climate chapter was written in the National Security Council Risk Assessment and the main threats were mapped. We are working to define the threats, to formulate the national response to those threats,” he said.

An opportunity exists for Israel, Gaza and every population affected by this conflict to “go forward on the hope of an optimistic future to our region,” he said.

‘Powerful, Informative’

In closing, Prof. Diamond described the discussion as “very powerful, informative and in the end, also moving” for the audience. “There’s going to be a staggering challenge of reconstruction when this war is over, and hopefully we can get started on it as soon as possible.”

Alon Tal added, “We’ve only begun this discussion about the reconstruction. Let’s hope that very quickly we can end the destruction, the death and the suffering, and move forward to a time of renewal.”
 

The full webinar of "Environmental Lessons and Implications of the Gaza War" is available to view below.

You have firsthand experience working on policy as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. What success did you see there, and what challenges remain in addressing environmental issues? 

Israeli politics is quite polarized, not unlike the U.S., but issues relating to the environment generally enjoy support from all political parties. I did a lot of work with partners on the Israeli right and amongst religious politicians to engage them and receive support for a green agenda. The press made a big deal about this “bi-partisan” orientation, but it feels very natural to me. Regardless of people’s political orientation, everyone wants their children to breath clean air, drink potable war, and live in a planet with a stable climate.

That being said, I worry that public awareness of these issues remains deficient in Israel even though we are considered a “climate hotspot.” Other issues, particularly those involving security, don’t leave our citizens very much bandwidth to think about other matters, even urgent ones like climate change.

That’s why having a committee that convenes regular meetings and pushes the executive branch to be more conscientious in its mitigation and adaptation efforts from inside government is so critical. While I was serving, we held hearings on increasing shading in urban areas, removing bureaucratic obstacles to installation of “agrovoltaic” systems (solar panels on farmlands), expediting sales of electric vehicles through tax incentives, and many other topics. 

Our paramount objective was to pass a “climate law,” which would provide a statutory basis for the energy transition that needs to be accelerated. This is a step many state and national governments have taken in recent years. Unfortunately, the “Government of Change” that my party was part of in Israel fell apart before this critical legislation could be passed. That’s truly unfortunate. But the cabinet did make a commitment to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.  

Ready or not, the climate crisis is here, and making these issues part of the country’s political agenda and keeping them in the spotlight is important. The younger generations know this and are speaking out, and we have a responsibility to make sure they are heard.


What environmental implications does the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel have for the region?

For me, the war is not just about personal security, but also environmental security. Extremist, Islamist forces, and proxies for the Iranian government all threaten the kind of cooperation which is critical for the region.

I am encouraged that not one of my environmental colleagues from Arab countries — including many Palestinian colleagues — has broken off interactions with me since the war began. We continue to do research with a West Bank Palestinian group from Al Quds University about exposures to pharmaceutical products from wastewater reuse. We urgently need more of this kind of cooperation if we are going to address the pressing needs being created by this crisis.

Consider, for example, the groundwater situation in Gaza. When Egypt held the Gaza Strip in the 1960s, the aquifers were contaminated by salt water intrusion from the Mediterranean Sea caused by over pumping. It is absolutely critical that the people of Gaza have desalinated water (like Israel does) both to meet their immediate needs now and as climate-driven droughts continue to change local hydrological conditions in the future. For this to happen, whoever rules Gaza will have to stop investing limited local resources in military weaponry and focus on environmental infrastructure.

The human toll of this war is heartbreaking on all sides. But I believe that when the dust settles, there will be a victory for those who want to work together on critical environmental issues.

How can institutions like Stanford help in addressing these issues?

There’s no question that higher education is evolving. Universities generally divide up their departments according to disciplinary distinctions that were germane at the advent of the twentieth century but often make less sense today. In the fields I work in, it’s common lip service to talk about “interdisciplinary solutions.” But what that actually means in practice is that students need to be given literacy in topics ranging from chemistry and biology to economics, social science, and even aesthetics. I am very impressed with Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability, which is aspiring to serve as an example of how this can be done. 

The course I am currently teaching, “Public Policy and Sustainability Challenges: Israel and the Middle East,” is designed to give the students a sense of what policies appear to work and which ones do not.  For instance, carbon taxes used to be a theoretical idea. But with 61 countries having introduced policies that monetize carbon, we can now dispassionately evaluate these interventions.

The students I see in my class are a healthy mix of MBA and sustainability scholars. They break up into groups of four and serve as consultants for a variety of climate tech companies, applying what they have learned to the real-life regulatory challenges which these promising ventures face. Stanford is preparing leaders, many of whom are committed to working in the climate space. I hope that the class provides them with valuable insights and tools to do this.


Looking to the future, what policies would you like to see put in place to precipitate meaningful action on climate-related issues in both the short and long term?

It is increasingly clear that despite increased global awareness, humanity is not meeting its goals for reducing greenhouse emissions. The population is growing, and billions of people are justifiably seeking a higher standard of living. If we are going to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the climate crisis, the world as we know it will have to change; we are going to have undergo a complete technological makeover. This means an end to the fossil fuel era, beef as it is raised today, steel, cement, plastics – you name it. And this won’t happen without effective public policies.

One of the things that we started doing in Israel is requiring every school child from kindergarten to grade 12 to take 40 hours of classes about climate related topics during the course of the school year. That’s only a start, but it’s an important one. At Tel Aviv University, ten different departments have collaborated to produce a massive online open class, or “MOOC,” to get that expertise out of the university and into the hands of people. Education, coupled with urgency and action, is crucial. These are the kinds of initiatives that I believe are needed if we are going to see any real progress.