"The Arabs are after our blood"

But doesn't it seem that there have been changes in the overall Arab mentality since 1948? For example, the recent Geneva accords, or the proposal initiated by the Saudis and approved by the Arab League. It seems they have left some real room for negotiation, even on the Palestinians' 'right of return.'

The Arab League said they would normalize their relations with Israel on the basis of a two-state solution -- but they also insist on implementation of U.N. Resolution 194, from December 1948, which endorses the right of return of the refugees. This is something that Palestinians and the Arab states refuse to waive. They insist on it continuously. Even in the Geneva accords, which was signed by unofficial peaceniks on both fronts, they don't waive the right of return. This is the great fear of Israelis, that this is the mechanism by which they want to undermine and dissolve the state of Israel. There are 4 million refugees out there; if they are allowed to return, piecemeal or all together, the state of Israel will no longer be a Jewish state. There will be an Arab majority here. Jews understand that this would be suicide.

You talked about the shift in the Arab attitudes over time, and there is something in that. Ultimately the vision of Ben-Gurion and [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky [a conservative Israeli leader] was that over the generations, faced with Israeli power, the Arabs would eventually succumb, in the sense of accepting the inevitable, accepting Israel's existence. It's true that Egypt made peace with Israel, and Jordan made peace with Israel, and Palestinians also entered the Oslo peace process. So in the 1990s, when I wrote "Righteous Victims" [a history of the Arab-Zionist conflict since the 19th century] it seemed to be bringing us towards ultimate Arab acceptance of Israel's existence, and peace in the area. That's what it looked like. What has happened since 2000 is that there has been a resurgence of Arab antagonism and unwillingness to make peace with Israel.

Now, it's possible that Israel has also contributed to the growth [of Palestinian terrorism]. But that doesn't eliminate the fact that these organizations, which want Israel's demise -- as bloody as possible, in fact -- do have a commanding presence among the Palestinian public. There was progress in the late 1970s and the '90s, but there has also been regression.

Why does that mean that there's no hope for an ultimate resolution?

In this generation, I think that the Palestinians are not willing, deep in their hearts, to make peace with the Jewish state. They simply can't accept that this is a just solution to what happened. They believe that the Jews are a robber state and have taken their land, with the support of America and Western Europe.

I'm willing to give it a try, leaving the territories, but I don't really think it'll work. I think we should give it a try for various moral and political reasons, but I don't think it's going to work, because I don't think the Arabs are ready for such a division of the land and such a peace settlement. They'll say, "Fine, we've got this part, let's now get Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and so on." Will they actually clamp down on their extremists and terrorists? They won't. They haven't done it until now. They won't do it in the future.

The way you talk about the failure of Oslo suggests that it was doomed from the start, that the Palestinians just weren't willing now to accept peace. Does Israel also share the blame for ensuring that Oslo failed -- for example, because of the steady increase in Jewish settlements in the territories?

I don't know if Israel did more than the Palestinians, or less. I think there probably were some Palestinians who were sincere during the 1990s, that they were willing to agree to a two-state solution, towards which Oslo was supposed to lead. I don't think this is the case in the leadership, which means basically Arafat. Let's be quite frank -- Arafat kills or jails or distances anybody who objects to his policies on major issues. Arafat, the fount of power there, he was playing us along. I am certain of this. And I think what he set out to do in Oslo was to gain a state without actually accepting Israel alongside it. Not to give the imprimatur to that settlement. And that's what happened when Barak said to him in 2000, "OK, this is the moment of decision, now you have to affix your signature to this and comply with the two-state solution." Arafat basically said no. He rejected it.

Yet you're arguing that the whole idea of creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank was merely a steppingstone to conquering the whole territory of Israel. So why didn't he sign?

That poses a dilemma. Because if this is true, why didn't Arafat in 2000 take what was being offered by Barak and Clinton -- take the West Bank and Gaza state? And then, once he had it, establish power in whatever way he could, and from there use it as a base against Israel for the next stage? One could ask that. It's a legitimate question.

But the most important thing is that he would have had to put his signature, internationally, in front of everybody, to an agreement of this sort, accepting Israel's existence. And no further claims. That was part of Barak's demands. They could not claim anything -- not refugees, nothing -- after they signed the agreement. That was to be the end of the conflict. I think simply, constitutionally, he could not put his name to it, even though tactically he probably should have.

As you've mentioned, the Palestinian refugee issue is one of the most intractable problems facing negotiators. In your Haaretz interview, you said that perhaps Ben-Gurion had made a mistake by not expelling all Palestinians beyond the river Jordan. I have a hard time understanding how creating even more refugees would actually have helped Israel.

[Laughs.] Well, this is speculation. There's no way of knowing how the future looks. What I'm saying is, if all the Palestinians had been pushed across the Jordan, or left voluntarily, and established a state in Jordan -- a state of their own in territory which used to be the kingdom of Jordan, they would have had a state of their own. They would have had independence. They would have had a uniform population, more or less, a Palestinian Arab population. They wouldn't have had to live under Jewish domination in any way. They would have felt better!

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