At the 22nd Economist Summit held in Nicosia, a former Israeli prime minister and a former Arab League chief called for a two-state deal.
The sharpest criticism of Israel at a Middle East peace panel in Nicosia came from a man who once led it. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel’s next government should put an end to what he called terrorism against Palestinians. Beside him, Amre Moussa, the former Egyptian foreign minister and Arab League chief, applauded.
It was a striking moment in a discussion that brought two veterans of Middle East politics to the same stage at The Economist’s Cyprus Summit on Monday. They came at the conflict from different directions, but their appeals went to the same person. U.S. President Donald Trump, they said, could use Washington’s influence to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the table and push for a deal that would give Palestinians a state of their own.
“No one can predict Trump, not even Trump himself.” -Ehud Olmert
Olmert put the appeal in terms he thought might get Trump’s attention. He told the president that his “last chance” to win international recognition and a Nobel Peace Prize was “to force Israelis to come to a comprehensive political settlement” with the Palestinians. Olmert argued that only Washington had the leverage to make Israel take that step and that Trump might have to reverse course to do it.
An opening after Israel’s election
Olmert said Benjamin Netanyahu’s departure was long overdue and predicted that Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, would become prime minister. Israeli President Isaac Herzog gave Eisenkot the first chance to form a government on Sunday after the October election. Eisenkot still has to put together a coalition.
For Olmert, the prospect of a change in government raised a more immediate question about what Israel was prepared to do differently. He said he was ashamed of the violence against Palestinians and urged the next government to stop it. He also warned that Israel risked deeper isolation abroad and was losing goodwill among Americans. He framed the case for a Palestinian state as a matter of Israel’s own future.
Moussa, who referred to Olmert as his friend, said he agreed that Trump could and should intervene. He warned that years of peace talks had been used to buy time and said a fresh effort needed to lead somewhere concrete. Palestinians, he said, should be able to elect their own leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and decide their political future.
He also appealed directly to Jewish communities to take part in the effort, pointing to young Jewish protesters in New York who had spoken out against Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Arab governments and societies were watching to see what Israel would do next, he said. In his view, Israel’s long-term security depended on a peace that would also protect Palestinians and give them a state.
The exchange came more than three years after the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the wars that followed. With fighting continuing despite fragile ceasefires, Moussa argued that a new round of diplomacy needed to tackle the political questions left unresolved. For him, that meant Palestinian self-determination. For Olmert, it meant an Israeli government willing to negotiate the terms of two states living side by side.
Olmert’s pitch on Iran
When the discussion turned to Iran, Moussa warned that another war would destabilize the region and that the consequences would extend well beyond the countries doing the fighting. He called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, including Israel and Iran. Olmert said he thought a major resumption of hostilities was unlikely, then joked, “No one can predict Trump, not even Trump himself.”
Olmert called Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement a historic mistake. The 2015 deal, reached under President Barack Obama with Iran and other world powers, limited Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Olmert said Israel had gained access to Iranian archives. “We didn’t find a shred of evidence that they violated the agreement,” he said.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in May 2018, a day after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal, that Iran was implementing its nuclear commitments under the deal. In July 2019, more than a year after the U.S. pulled out, inspectors confirmed that Iran had exceeded the agreement’s limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Olmert’s suggestion was to go back to the deal Trump had walked away from and give it a name the president might like better. Call it the “Great Trump Agreement,” he joked.
Then Olmert returned to what he said was more urgent for him as an Israeli. The next government could act to end violence against Palestinians, he said, and in doing so change the atmosphere inside Israel and abroad. That was the point at which Moussa applauded.
