Ross: Right. Look, I’ve said it before—one of the mistakes we made in the Clinton administration was not holding the Israelis accountable enough on the settlement issue, because it was something that was going to make the Palestinians feel powerless. Another mistake was not holding [Palestinian leader Yasir] Arafat accountable enough on the security issue, because of the impact it would have. Again, I don’t mind being prepared to be open and tough if we’re open and tough with both. It’s a mistake to be critical only of the Israelis because they’re the stronger party. My own position consistently has been this on the settlement issue: Israel today should make their settlement policy consistent with a two-state outcome. The only way they’re going to shift the onus onto the Palestinians and blunt the delegitimization movement is to make it very clear that the boycott movement is against the international consensus on two states. You know, Bibi Netanyahu goes to the UN and he says, “We’re for two states for two peoples.” And if he would make the settlement policy consistent with that, this would expose the delegitimization movement.

Goldberg: When I hear you say this, it makes me think that you’re saying that Obama should have cracked down harder on Israel for its settlement policies.

Ross: He framed the settlement issue completely incorrectly at the beginning of the administration. Instead of insisting on a settlement freeze with no natural growth, the position should have been that there needs to be a limitation on settlement activity. That should have been the position. It should have been consistent, it should have been in public. A limitation on settlement activity would have created a standard we could have defined. When you created, “We need to freeze settlement activity including natural growth,” you did something—you were asking Bibi to do something that none of his predecessors had done, nobody to the left of him had done. How’s he supposed to explain that? And we gave the Arabs and the Palestinians an excuse to sit back and do nothing until we delivered this. What I’m saying is, on these kinds of issues, if you have an objective, have the means to carry it out.

Goldberg: One more thing. You write of the Israeli government, fairly directly, that they often project a kind of, “What about us, what about us?” attitude. And then when the U.S. says, “Hey, what about us?” the response is like, “Oh yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it.” In other words, the Israelis take and take and don’t give.

Ross: One issue here is that the Israelis actually do a lot for us. The question is, the kind of things that they do for us, we kind of take for granted. We get a lot from them in the security-military area. A lot of innovation; doctrinal stuff; counterterrorism stuff. The issue with the reciprocity has been: We want them to pay in a coin that they view as existential for them. I think there are ways to have a different kind of dialogue with them. When you have someone like a Tom Donilon in a dialogue with them, they are much more sensitive to our concerns. The real issue you’re raising is: Are the Israelis sensitive enough to our concerns? Not just what are they doing, but are they sensitive enough to our concerns? There’s been a pattern historically where they would act unilaterally and it would be perceived as if they did things without regard to how it would affect us. When we have had people they believe understand their predicament who are asking things of them, they take that seriously. When there are those who they believe are just pressing down on them no matter what, then it moves them in the opposite direction.