August 8, 2025, 3:05 PM View Comments ()

On Friday, Germany responded to news that Israel intended to take control of Gaza City by announcing it would halt the export of any military equipment that could be used there. The statement issued by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz marks a sharp turnaround in policy, and comes as Canada, France, and the United Kingdom have signaled they will formally recognize Palestine at next month’s annual United Nations summit. While three-fourths of U.N. member nations already recognized Palestine as a state, this would be the first time major European and North American powers have done so.

Even in the United States, Israel’s strongest ally, the public mood is shifting. An Economist/YouGov survey released this week showed 84 percent of Americans favor an immediate cease-fire, 70 percent believe there’s a hunger crisis in Gaza, and 45 percent believe Israel is committing a genocide.

If these shifts are real and lasting, what impact will they have on Israeli policy? Why are these shifts taking place now? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. Levy is the co-founder of the advocacy group J Street and the president of the U.S./Middle East Project. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or follow the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So I want to start with those British, French, and Canadian plans to recognize Palestine. One hundred forty-seven U.N. member states had already done so. On the face of it, two or three more countries shouldn’t change that much. But the moves have clearly angered Israel. They’ve annoyed America. What do you make of it?

Daniel Levy: First of all, let’s acknowledge two members of the P5, the U.N. Security Council, the U.K. and France. These are Israeli allies. But there is perhaps less here than meets the eye. I would suggest their intention is for this to be a gesture that does not lead to further measures. As a way to respond to public pressure for action without overly disrupting existing bilateral relations with Israel.

Their recognition of the state of Palestine is a largely symbolic gesture; I doubt they will even speak about what borders they’re recognizing that state under. The question is, having recognized it, what measures will be taken after that, given that they are recognizing a state under permanent and—according to the International Court of Justice as of July 19, 2024—illegal occupation. My guess is that they hope that there will not be further measures, and that this will be enough to stave off that pressure.

But I expect that having taken the step of recognition, the pressure will only intensify. Those who have called for recognition will say, “Wait a minute! We recognized. Nothing changed. What are you going to do next?” I would suggest that recognition almost became a piece of traffic to pass through in order to do other things. The intention may be to park in that traffic, but that may not be something they can pull off.

Inside Israel, this will be attacked and vilified. People will be angry, but they will also know that they can manage this. In that respect, it’s like the old peace process where everyone plays a prescribed role. The countries that recognize Palestine can say they’re flexing muscle. And Israel’s anger makes it easier for them to argue that they are doing something serious. The Palestinian Authority, which has no real independent strategy, will feel good for a few days. And that’s where we’ll leave things.

RA: Daniel, you mentioned the public pressure from people, which may have influenced [President Emmanuel] Macron in France and [Prime Minister Keir] Starmer in the U.K. But recognition without any real policy change might be seen as a form of virtue signaling, which would not decrease public pressure.

DL: There are slightly different maneuvers going alongside recognition in Paris and London. Macron co-hosted that U.N. conference with the Saudis. In September, Macron and [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman could have a big event there. And Macron is trying to use this to push forward Saudi normalization with Israel and to perhaps score some chits rather than take some hits from Washington. Keir Starmer is facing much more direct pressure coming from within his party and his voting constituency. Unlike Macron, he still has to think about his own political future. The Labour Party in the U.K., just one year after an election, is bleeding support, which wasn’t that broad anyway. So Starmer felt he had to do something.

In terms of that pressure, since those announcements, we’ve seen Israel intensify its alienation from those who have already made that decision. It feels like a cultural zeitgeist has set in here. That a Rubicon has been crossed. Therefore, the very measures that those countries are likely keen to avoid may be pushed onto the agenda. Things like a full ban on arms, limiting other elements of trade, anything to do with the illegal Israeli settlements. It’s a very low bar. What about visas? Should Israelis sign declarations that they have not been active in the commissioning of war crimes in order to enter European countries? At the moment, Israel has visa-free travel. Martin Sandbu wrote an interesting piece in the FT arguing that for Europe to be credible, it must replicate some of what was done with Russia—Israeli assets held in European banks, sports boycotts, etc. All these things will be further on the agenda once that parking space of recognition looks increasingly inadequate.

RA: Let’s discuss the United States, which remains Israel’s strongest, biggest ally. The administration’s opinion is not shifting, but American public opinion is. American views of Israel’s actions in Gaza are basically at an all-time low. At this point, a majority of Americans think Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza are unjustified. Nearly half of all Americans think a genocide is underway. Why is this shift taking place? And why did it take so long?

DL: These structures of permission to narrate, the structures of which signals people respond to, somehow build up and then the dam is broken. That is the story of the last few weeks. The most obvious reason is the more transparent starvation policy. Gaza has been under elements of a quite brutal blockade for almost two decades. Around 2008 to 2010, Israel actually does a calculation of how much calorific intake Gaza needs to keep people at subsistence level. This was exposed by an Israel NGO’s Freedom of Information Act request. So even before October ’23, and certainly subsequently, Israel has used collective punishment, the depriving of access to food, energy, and water. But the acceleration of that, as well as paradoxically the non-U.N. alternative aid delivery, all led to greater exposure. The images from Gaza, the cruelty of that. Now, Israel banned media from going into Gaza throughout this. Maybe that’s helped, but it also leaves them exposed to the question of why, if their spin is correct, they don’t let journalists see Gaza firsthand. In the absence of that, there’s reliance not only on courageous local journalists, but on doctors and medics who’ve gone in to treat people.

It is the alignment of the grotesque statements coming from Israeli leaders with the reality on the ground. We’re all familiar now with cabinet ministers [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir. But such statements are also coming from deep within Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s own Likud party. They talk openly about destruction, ethnic cleansing. They talk openly about the intention to deprive the general population, of there being no innocence. So it’s not just some people making extreme statements; it’s what they’re actually doing.

Then the New York Times publishes a very important piece on genocide by Omer Bartov. You have the Washington Post devoting five pages to a list of all the children killed in Gaza. Israel’s preeminent novelist, David Grossman, called it a genocide. Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights came out and made that legal designation of genocide. Now, my Palestinian friends and others will speak very legitimately and justifiably, and I strongly identify with them here, of their frustration, not to say seething anger, that what they have been saying for a long time was insufficient. It was only when these voices joined the parade that things tipped. But nonetheless it seems to be a tipping point.

RA: Not just Palestinians, but Amnesty International called it a genocide last year.

DL: Absolutely.

And how it took so long is a bigger story. Israel has been historically very effective at making its case. The success of lobbying in American politics is not distinct to the Israeli lobby, but it has been particularly effective. Add to the mix a particularly weak Palestinian leadership without credibility. So the Palestinians don’t have a unified leadership with strategy. They do have extremely effective civil society, but that’s a different thing.

To put in context how long it has taken, back in January 2024, the International Court of Justice laid down eight urgent provisional measures for Israel not to be in violation of the Genocide Convention. All were summarily ignored by the Israelis. Nearly a year ago, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants. From the International Criminal Court for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister [Yoav] Gallant for war crimes, including starvation as a weapon of war.

RA: The United States is the crucial player here. But does the shifting public opinion matter? How does it then shift policy in the United States and in Israel?

DL: Were policy to shift in the U.S., that would drive change relatively quickly. A president would have to sustain a standoff with an Israeli leader for a period of time, but not an extended period of time. It’s not only the fact that America supplies the weapons, which was of course true under the Biden administration. But Washington also is the diplomatic, political, economic half of any pressure on third parties. If policy in the U.S. changes, these horrors end.

I will be honest; I did not expect the division in the Republican consensus that has happened in the last few months. Israel has been a subject of controversy for the Democrats for a long time. But there was a Republican consensus, which meant they could play interference politics on the Democrats. But the breakdown in that consensus over the last few months surprised me. It was latent; there was a potentiality there. But Israel got used to managing American Republican politics without having to break a sweat. They could say “Holy Land” and speak to the dispensationalist wing of the evangelical community, or you could say “antisemitism” and invoke the woke cultural wars. This divide on the Republican side: Israel first versus America first, make America great again, not Israel. Are you going to be another cuckolded American president, led by the nose by an Israeli prime minister, to do their bidding against our interests? Some of it comes from a place that is deeply problematic. But Tucker Carlson having a deep-dive conversation with John Mearsheimer about the Nakba, the forced displacement of Palestinians in the creation of Israel? That is new.

Simultaneously, there still appears to be a Republican consensus that Israel, and especially Palestine, can be used as a battering ram on issues like university funding and immigration. So these things coexist. Does it rise to a level where the administration, President [Donald] Trump, and the more obvious Israel firsters are uncomfortable and feel they have to do something? Way too early to tell.

But this is happening alongside two other phenomena, which should give Israelis pause. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. This controversy around Israel, now bipartisan in the U.S., is happening while Israel is more dependent than ever on the U.S. because of the extreme overreach in which it is indulging. And secondly, this is happening at a moment when geopolitics is shifting. So I’d maybe contest your comment that America is crucial in deciding where this goes. Right now that’s true, but I’m not sure how long that will be the case.

RA: I want to put to you the Israeli point of view. The enormous damage to the Israeli psyche on Oct. 7 has raised questions like, “How do we live when Hamas is pointing a gun to our head? How do we live when we have so many enemies surrounding us?” This is why Netanyahu, despite the anger and protests against him, remains quite popular. How do you square how different the zeitgeist is in Israel compared to America or Europe?

DL: I raised my eyebrows earlier on in our conversation when you mentioned that 70 percent of Americans believe that there is a hunger crisis in Gaza. Those numbers are entirely flipped in the Israeli public. In a recent poll, the vast majority of Israelis believe Israel is doing enough, is maintaining a humanitarian policy in Gaza. Israeli media has played a major role in this. And some stations have a culpability in incitement to genocide, but with others, it’s sins of omission. There’s the question of no strong alternative vector of leadership in terms of the parliamentary political opposition to Netanyahu. One has to acknowledge and give credit to those groups in civil society who are doing precisely that. You see Israelis now protesting with pictures of Palestinian children starving in Gaza, those who’ve called for major sanctions, including some significant Israeli cultural figures.

What you see in Israel today is a fault line not defined by how one treats Palestinians, but there is a fault line which has existed for a long time over pro- or anti-Bibi. That now includes whether Israel is damaging itself more by continuing with this war. Even the heads of the military and Netanyahu debate over whether to prioritize getting the hostages out, whether that’s a fundamental break in the social contract. All that matters, because if you’re trying to mobilize your country in perpetual war, which Netanyahu thus far appears to be doing, and if you want extreme zero-sum outcomes with Palestinians, and if you want to pursue a regional hegemonic project, and if you’re a small country with limited reserves of military manpower, you better hold that society together. And that is not happening.

But the zeitgeist inside Israel is not one that has any sympathy for the Palestinians. In a way, it’s unsurprising after Oct 7. But some of that anti-Netanyahu opposition realizes, under the surface, that it’s not going well. That Israel’s strategy will only make them more enemies. The claim that you can’t live with Hamas flies in the face of all kinds of things. Of course, it’s borne out by Oct. 7. But it’s not borne by the various negotiations between Israel and Hamas over decades or by the fact that Hamas has been ready to not govern Gaza for a long time. Probably the biggest problem has been [Mahmoud] Abbas’s unwillingness to do a reconciliation and have a technocratic government that brings those people into a process. By the way, any Palestinian will turn to you and say, “Whoa, you expect us to now deal with these people who’ve been genociding us?” This leads one on a very dangerous zero-sum journey. If you’re on a zero-sum path, you better be damn sure that only the other side can lose.

So it’s not like this could end if Hamas releases the hostages. This ends if Hamas offers full capitulation. No resistance does that, certainly not when the root causes of the resistance are still in place. And so Netanyahu has been the obstacle, and this is what many of the former security chiefs in Israel, many of the hostage families, and many others acknowledge and recognize. The primary obstacle to a deal is Prime Minister Netanyahu. His camp, of course, rejects that.