‘Lack of political will behind Palestine-Israel face off; West has failed to take Global South along’

As the world grapples to find a modicum of hope amid ongoing death and destruction caused by Ukraine and Russia on the one hand, and Israel and Hamas on the other, two veteran global statesmen came together at the Firstpost Defence Summit to hammer out, at least, broad strokes of building global trust and order.

Ehud Olmer, Israel’s former prime minister and Djoomart Otorbaev, former chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan, pitched for greater global understanding here in New Delhi while in conversation with Palki Sharma, Firstpost’s managing editor.

On whether the world has lost the Peace Dividend that accrued for decades after the end of the Cold War, Otorbaev said, “All talks are meaningless if there is lack of trust. Every morning we must think how to contribute to building trust, in family, nations, world at large… little by little how to build trust. My advice: we must do everything everyday to try to build trust in the world.”

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Olmert, on the other hand, went down the memory lane as Israel’s premier to reminisce an incident to underline the need for political will when it came to strike peace.

“Oct 7 Hamas attack seems to have shattered Israel’s peace dividend… still we have a shot… In 2008 there was an historic opportunity to resolve issues between Israel and Palestinians. I presented to Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestinian Authority, a peace plan on the basis of the two-state solution. This was presented at the end of 2008 and the beginning of ’09 officially by the PM of Israel, on behalf of the State of Israel.”

“An international trust of five nations without exclusive sovereignty of any nation, unlike now when Israel is exercising exclusive sovereignty, was to govern Jerusalem. The refugee problem too would have been solved. But PA could not say ‘Yes’.”

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In this context, Olmert proposed that it would take political will on both sides to have lasting peace in the region.

“How can we achieve peace… if the Israeli leadership—I have to make it obvious for the sake of transparency I am not the spokesperson of Israeli government and I am actually their sharp critique—if the Israeli govt relents and allows formation of a Palestinian state within an agreement…if Palestinians can come through too. The problem is lack of political will on both sides.”

Otorbaev, though delved into ‘deglobalisation’ as the direct cause of global fragmentation. “We are facing deglobalisation. It started efficiently after USSR and Berlin wall went down. There was a chance to make friendship between nations. Now, what is going on is that the world is divided in a bad way. Now, Global South is migrating out of the most important values of the Western civilisation. I am a democrat, but for some reasons the Western civilisation was not able to attract societies in the Global South. So west is isolated since there is no dialogue.”

“Rise of China is most important reason for deglobalisation; US is not happy and Europe doesn’t do anything to bring Eurasian continent on terms of cooperation. They just listen to what people across the Atlantic are saying,” he added.