The former prime minister of Israel discusses why he believes Israel’s war in Gaza can no longer be justified.
This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
I don’t think it’s possible at this point to overstate how hellish life in Gaza has been over the past 20 months. The death count is above 50,000 people, more than 15,000 of whom are children. At least 1.9 million of the 2.1 million Gazans have been displaced — and displaced and displaced. Some have been forced to flee their homes, shelters and camps 10 times or more.
Starvation is everywhere. Some 500,000 people are in a catastrophic condition of hunger. For 11 weeks, Israel allowed no aid into Gaza, and 171,000 metric tons of food for Gazans just sat there. Almost half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been destroyed or are not operational. Many of the rest are barely holding on. There are only 2,000 hospital beds available for more than two million people. About 60 percent of physical structures have been damaged or destroyed.
It has been 20 months since Oct. 7, when this war began, and Israel has no plan for the day after it ends — no theory of who should govern Gaza — and is instead weighing escalation. The plan being considered would herd more than two million Gazans into a small fraction of the strip. The argument is that this would isolate Hamas, further break its command and control structures. To the extent such structures still exist, it’s really quite hard to see how more devastation would degrade them.
In May a poll found that 55 percent of Israelis said they believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main goal is to stay in power. Not to have the hostages returned. Not even to win the war.
At the end of May, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, published a searing opinion essay in Haaretz. The headline read, “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes.” He joins me now.
