Jonathan Adler
+972 Magazine / November 5, 2025
Install a caretaker government, abolish unjust laws, disarm militias: a new book lays out a roadmap for a democratic future in Israel-Palestine.
It was difficult to imagine, in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, the utter scale of genocidal devastation that Israel would unleash on Gaza, and the extent of the world’s failure to intervene for two years. What was already painfully clear, though, was that the status quo that had preceded the attacks — of permanent Israeli occupation, apartheid, and siege — could no longer hold.
“Israel’s policy of separation and containment is failing before our eyes,” Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, +972 Magazine’s former editor-in-chief, argued soon after October 7. “The international community will need to urgently and explicitly acknowledge that [this policy], in which it was complicit, is a broken paradigm.”
A fragile ceasefire has now reduced, if not stopped, the relentless pace of killing in Gaza. But as Omer-Man predicted, Israeli leaders are moving quickly to entrench control over the enclave while accelerating ethnic cleansing across historic Palestine.
If Israel’s government seeks a return to the pre-October 7 status quo, and the Jewish-Israeli public has no interest in reckoning with the Gaza genocide, the rest of the world has gone through drastic shifts over the past two years, leaving Israel more isolated than ever. However, Omer-Man and Sarah Leah Whitson write in a new book, “even if Israel faces international prosecutions, isolation, and crippling sanctions, the international community is still unable to articulate any positive policy demands or a vision for a just peace and rights-respecting governance.”
“From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine” aims to do just that. Published weeks before the ceasefire took effect, the book offers a detailed roadmap of what a transition from a one-state reality of occupation and apartheid to a democratic future would require: from abolishing unjust laws to merging security forces and disarming militias.
Omer-Man and Whitson — who serve as the Israel-Palestine director and executive director, respectively, at DAWN, a U.S.-based nonprofit research and advocacy organization — spoke with +972 Magazine about the failures of past peace-making efforts in Israel-Palestine, their vision for a transitional three-year caretaker government, and why they believe there’s a window of opportunity for transformative change in the near future.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To start, can you provide a basic overview of the blueprint? What do you see as the problems with previous failed approaches to diplomacy and policymaking in Israel-Palestine, and how does your plan address and invert them?
SLW: Our starting point in writing the blueprint was that we are at an impasse. The decades-long commitment to the two-state solution under the Oslo process has failed — and everybody knows it’s failed. We are currently in a one-state reality of permanent Israeli military occupation and apartheid rule from the river to the sea, which is also widely recognized and acknowledged.
The breakdown of Oslo had left a void, which is very convenient for Israel, because there is no pathway to any solution. Yet policymakers continue to talk about the Oslo process as if it’s still alive. So we decided that we needed to come up with an actual detailed roadmap that would replace the failed Oslo process with a new approach to ending occupation and apartheid. We knew that there are a lot of people who have ideas and campaigns of where they want to end up — whether one state, two states, a binational state, or a confederation — but no one really had a path to get there.
There are two critical elements to the blueprint. The first is that it prioritizes ending Israeli occupation and apartheid ahead of issues of governance. That is a break from the Oslo process, and even from the current ceasefire negotiations, which make the ending of Israeli occupation and apartheid conditional on a governance solution. Crimes can’t be negotiated — they must end immediately. That’s what the International Court of Justice and UN General Assembly have ordered.
The second key feature of the blueprint is that decisions about future governance should be democratic, without designated representatives for the Palestinians as one bloc and Israeli Jews as another. We are proposing that at the end of a three-year transition process — to deconstruct apartheid and occupation and create the conditions for democratic rule, based on principles of equality and human rights — the people between the river and the sea can then democratically decide how they want to configure their state.
MSOM: Sarah Leah and I have both been working on this issue for decades, and we came to the same place: Very few people are selling hope of a different future, which feeds into the resilience of this zombie two-state process. But even when there is hope, as Sarah Leah said, with the one-state or confederation advocates, the lack of a vision of how to get there really impedes policymakers, not just in Israel and Palestine, but around the world.
One of the reasons that we set out to do this is to increase the chances that some policymaker, that some state leader, whether in Europe or the United States or in Tel Aviv or Ramallah, sees a realistic pathway forward that is not the same failed recipe for occupation and apartheid.
In broad strokes, could you describe the three-year transition plan and what it ideally lays the groundwork for?
SLW: Our blueprint starts with the appointment of a transitional government that takes over the powers of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to govern all the territories between the river and the sea. And this is done with the consent of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
This is probably the hardest part to envision because it is so far from the current reality, and raises the question of what would get the Israeli people, who have all the power, to agree to such a transition. [In the book,] we look at examples of what has led other peoples to agree to effectively give up their power voluntarily, just as the white South Africans did. We’re not answering the question of how you get to that point, but we’re providing an off-ramp toward something outside of permanent war, endless casualties, and the ostracism of Israelis all around the world, [offering a vision] that respects the human rights of Israeli Jews as much as it does Palestinians.
We envision a three-year process under a caretaker government that has representation in the ministries, judicial system, and security forces on what is effectively a consociational basis. The task of the caretaker government is to abolish all the laws that undergird apartheid and occupation, to merge the security forces under one central command, to disarm irregular militias and provide them with opportunities for reintegration, and to create a Justice Ministry that continues to operate the courts in various parts of the territory as they exist.
MSOM: I want to emphasize here that while we were both very knowledgeable about the systems of oppression, looking at how to dismantle them without leaving anarchy was a very interesting process — to consider what ministries and what laws need to be changed or reformed.
A big one that I spent a lot of time thinking about was the population registry. You have these different population registries [for Palestinians and Israelis] controlled by one person. What does it mean if you merge them? Can you leave identifiable information so it can still create the quiet discrimination that exists within ‘48 [Israel] today?
The transition is to change an undemocratic one-state reality into a more democratic one. I’m not sure we both understood at the beginning that it necessitated changing the regime so comprehensively to end occupation and apartheid, but it’s a conclusion that was inescapable once we got into the technical details.
Could you say more about the process of devising the blueprint and writing the book? I’m curious to hear more about the methodology, but also how you thought about some of the most thorny issues and compromises: for instance, the decision to maintain checkpoints — perhaps the clearest symbol of apartheid’s restrictions on freedom of movement — as a security measure during the transition period, while “codifying the right of everyone to pass through them.”
MSOM: Our process began with research into the systems of apartheid and occupation and the laws that regulate the lives of Israelis and Palestinians from the river to the sea. That’s something we were both very versed in doing in previous chapters of our careers, Sarah Leah at Human Rights Watch, myself at +972 and elsewhere.
The second stage was seeking ideas and input: I was still living in Israel-Palestine when we started this project four years ago, and Sarah Leah flew out and we scheduled as many meetings as we possibly could, from Ramallah to Haifa to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We spoke to almost a hundred Israelis, Palestinians, and other experts elsewhere, asking, where would you start? What do people not understand about the apartheid regime? How would you go about dismantling it? Where do you see the biggest ways it could go wrong?
Then we did comparative research into places that had undergone both democratic and post-colonial transitions, looking at everywhere from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Northern Ireland, South Africa, and East Timor. The idea was that none of them will provide a ready-made blueprint, but we can learn a lot from past successes and failures.
We were most insistent on making sure that every single thing that we propose is practical. Because that’s really the void that we’re trying to fill: Lots of people have ideas, very few are proposing practical steps.
With checkpoints, we understood this will leave everybody slightly dissatisfied. On the Israeli side, I would imagine most people would be shocked that we’re creating freedom of movement for everybody [while still keeping checkpoints in place for security screenings] on day one. That was one of the compromises that, in consultation with lots of people, we decided was the best way forward.
DDR — disarming and demobilizing regular and irregular military forces — is a process. You can’t do that on day one, but you can say that the military is no longer going to operate within the territory between the river and the sea.
Transitional justice was the other area that we took a very deferential approach to, in consultation with lots of experts and engagement with the literature and talking to Palestinians and Israelis. You can’t impose a transitional justice program from the outside. And just as importantly, you can’t design one without knowing what the political framework is going to be.
We felt that we could insist on laying the groundwork for such a process, but that we couldn’t decide its outcome, which leaves a lot of things wanting if you’re looking for a resolution to the entire conflict. But our goals are a little bit smaller: We’re trying to end the crimes of occupation and apartheid and give all the people the ability to determine their own future.
On the theme of compromises that end up perhaps leaving all parties dissatisfied, Sarah Leah, could you talk a little bit about how the blueprint addresses the problem of militant spoilers? I’m thinking about this especially now with the proliferation of private weapons across Israel under National Security Minister Ben Gvir, and the issues with disarmament of Hamas that we’re seeing play out now within the ceasefire.
SLW: We have a lot of sections in the book dedicated to the issue of spoilers. There’s a way of disarming irregular militias, and it includes reintegrating them into society and giving them other jobs. It also includes the option of having them join the regular security forces.
We do have a lustration policy, but it is very narrowly designed to exclude only the very worst offenders. Other approaches around the world that have taken broader approaches at lustration and disarmament have utterly collapsed, like the de-Baathification process in Iraq. We took a much narrower tack — light on complete exclusion and strong on giving alternatives to being armed.
There’s no way to eliminate the threat of spoilers. But given the broad base of the representation within the transitional government, seen as an entity that represents the interests of everyone, we hope people will be on their best behaviour because the outcome of the transition may well be something that they prefer.
MSOM: This doesn’t work if we don’t get buy-in from the people controlling most of the guns, whether to disarm, to cede some authority, or to integrate. Obviously, full buy-in is never going to be possible, and there will always be spoilers that need to be mitigated. But our biggest approach to mitigating spoilers is to get them to be a part of the process, and to give them a political future that hopefully outweighs spoiling the process.
While it’s not directly addressed in the book, I’m wondering how you thought about the feasibility of changing Jewish-Israeli attitudes right now toward conciliation, given decades of movement in the opposite direction — and given that the transitional government involves integration of Palestinian and Israelis in governance, security, and the judicial system, when that feels less practical than any other point.
MSOM: I mean, it doesn’t come voluntarily. It has to be a place that people reach on their own, but international pressure is key to making the occupation unsustainable. It’s been more sustainable than any of us hoped, and that is because Israel has not paid any significant price for it.
It’s a very heavy lift to ask Jewish-Israelis to abandon the narrative that security [through] ruling over another people is so intrinsically necessary for survival. However, there are lots of ways that could happen, including through the international isolation we see growing in the wake of the Gaza genocide.
Tipping points can come very quickly in ways that are not always expected. I was listening to a podcast on Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, a few weeks ago, with two prominent Israeli economists. They were talking about tech companies starting overseas instead of Israel. The tax revenue that this would deny the Israeli government would make the current reality unsustainable in a very short amount of time. It’s almost like a bank run: Once enough people see that there’s not an economic future for themselves, their families, or their companies, they make different decisions.
Israeli society was really divided before this war over the future of the country: are the settlers going to be in charge, or is this going to be a secular state? Do the ultra-Orthodox get to do this? Do the Arabs get to do that? And while those discussions tended to ignore the occupation and apartheid, and certainly Gaza until two years ago, they come down to what kind of state and system of governance this is going to be, and what type of rights the people have.
The idea that Jewish-Israelis will willingly give up on Zionism as they understand it seems incredibly far-fetched. But there’s “ripeness” if people believe that Zionism as it exists today is going to lead to a worse-off situation, and can start to question whether a certain political system — in this case apartheid and Jewish supremacy — can deliver their actual core interests and values.
On that question of ripeness, now that the book is published, how do you envision or hope the blueprint will be used? After two years of genocide in Gaza, do you see a window of opportunity now?
SLW: Well, it depends on how you define “now.” Today or next month, I don’t think there’s a window of opportunity. This ceasefire is a capitulation for Hamas, and I very much doubt we’re going to get to phase two.
Simultaneously, however, there is a growing international movement to end occupation and apartheid that has resulted in unprecedented arms embargoes and sanctions against Israel. Countries are now blocking Israeli ships from docking, and a number have cut off diplomatic relations. And Israelis traveling the world know they are ostracized because of the government that they have democratically elected; at some point, the Israeli populace no longer wants to be a country that is globally reviled.
Knowing that there’s an alternative path could encourage further sanctions, boycotts, and divestment. Part of the problem with the sanctions regimes now is they do not clearly state what they want instead, and more importantly, how to get there. So we see that as a missing link.
MSOM: As the world watched in horror as the genocide grew over the past two years, everybody except Israelis suddenly came to the conclusion that something has to change. That’s the window of opportunity for injecting new ideas or starting new conversations, and that’s where I hope our book can fit in.
Everybody we’ve presented it to has had a similar relief that there’s a fresh idea they can engage with. That said, we’re both very aware of the world we live in today. Whereas even a year and a half ago, it may have seemed like there might be somebody to present this to in the White House, that’s an absurdity today.
A big part of our theory of change is in normalizing new ideas within the broad spectrum of foreign policy. Even if we don’t convince today’s leaders that this is the way forward, we can reach a lot of people who may be in power next year, and we can reach the think tanks that affect the ways that foreign policy is formed. And we can reach other Democratic leaders and elected officials who have a say and have an audience with where these decisions are made, and to put the idea into that world.
We both strongly believe that the world will come to a point where there are serious policy discussions at the highest levels about how to end this — whether that’s as an off-ramp for a sanctions and isolation regime, or simply a positive vision where there isn’t one today.
I’ve been writing about this in +972 Magazine for more than 15 years: If anybody in the mainstream Israeli political world had a vision for what to do differently, Netanyahu would probably have been voted out a long time ago. If the opposition actually provided a positive vision that people could wrap their heads around, it would be a lot easier to start to change minds and to start to change the reality.
Jonathan Adler is an editor at +972 Magazine, based in New York
