“If solely we had a accomplice for peace.”
That’s been the chorus within the Israel-Palestinian battle for so long as I’ve adopted it. However the fact is you don’t want only a accomplice — you want two companions in a position to ship on the similar time.
So you would see it as a tragedy of historical past that Salam Fayyad joined the Palestinian Authority in 2002, on the top of the second intifada, simply as Israeli society shifted onerous to the correct.
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A Western-educated economist, Fayyad is a technocrat at coronary heart. And because the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister, after which as prime minister, he devoted himself to the spadework of state-building. His idea was that as a substitute of ready round for the peace course of to ship Palestinian statehood, he would simply construct a state — establishments, infrastructure, safety, sewers and all — after which statehood would comply with.
And by many measures, he was remarkably profitable. The financial system boomed, crime plummeted, and in 2011 the United Nations declared the authority able to run an impartial state. However in April 2013, Fayyad resigned. And immediately, the Palestinian Authority in tatters, extensively seen by Palestinians as corrupt and a failure.
Fayyad is now a visiting senior scholar at Princeton. And I needed to have him on the present to speak about his time constructing a Palestinian state. What did he be taught working with the varied factions — together with Hamas — in Palestinian politics? What did he be taught working with Israel? How did we nonetheless find yourself right here? And what, given all he’s seen and completed, does he suppose ought to occur now?
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(A full transcript of the episode shall be out there noon on the Instances web site.)
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Present” was produced by Rollin Hu. Truth-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with extra mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The present’s manufacturing group additionally consists of Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Unique music by Isaac Jones. Viewers technique by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The chief producer of New York Instances Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Particular due to Sonia Herrero.
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