Name a peace initiative aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past 25 years, and chances are either Robert Malley or Hussein Agha has been involved. So it was almost inevitable that the former United States diplomat and the veteran Palestinian negotiator would team up to write a book.

That book is titled “Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” Published on September 16 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it is the latest collaboration between the two authors, who have penned articles together over the past quarter-century.

It comes out at a particularly urgent moment — the latest iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, marked by the bloody Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing, devastating war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, recently halted by a ceasefire.

“The book is not about October 7,” Agha told The Times of Israel in a joint interview with the authors over Zoom. “It is about the processes and realities and politics that eventually led to October 7 and the Gaza war.”

“October 7, for me, is the culmination — and the Gaza war is the culmination — of 30 years of failed, futile diplomacy,” he added.

The authors bring firsthand experience from the negotiating table to the narrative. Agha, who has Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese roots and advised the late terrorist-turned-Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat, drafted a groundbreaking paper intended to facilitate a two-state solution with Israeli negotiating partner Yitzhak Molcho in the previous decade. Malley — the son of a Syria-born Jewish anti-Zionist journalist who immigrated to Egypt and then relocated to the United States — has represented the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations in numerous talks focusing on Mideast peace.

October 7, for me, is the culmination — and the Gaza war is the culmination — of 30 years of failed, futile diplomacy

Due to their professional and personal backgrounds, Agha and Malley take more than current events into account when considering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When they say “tomorrow is yesterday,” the “yesterday” they refer to might be 1947, the year the........

© The Times of Israel