Professor Robbie Sabel, thank you so much for being my guest. You were a professor of mine at Hebrew University while I was doing my my master's in law, and I credit you with giving me a foundation of public international law. Your classes have carried through until today with my understanding of international law and the issues surrounding Israel, Palestine, Hamas, all those complicated issues which I'm looking forward to discussing with you as an initial starting point, if you will.

You had an incredible career as a lawyer for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I'd like you to touch upon that. But before you get there, you open your mouth. Here, you have a British accent and you're an Israeli lawyer. If you can just talk us through how you landed up in Israel and why. When did that come about?

Well, I've been trying to get rid of the English accent for many, many years. I lived in Israel at age seven, but apparently since I spoke English with my parents at home, I didn't manage a bit of the accent. So my children say I speak Hebrew with an accent and an Englishman will say I speak English with a Hebrew accent, the worst of both worlds.

Fair enough. OK, so you came here as a kid and you grew up in Israel?

I grew up in Israel. I did. I studied in England as well, which may account for some of the English and I my law degree and university then army service. I was in the regular army and practiced law as a private lawyer. I don't think I was as successful as you appear to be, but I was a patriot like two years and then I got the bug foreign and so maybe 30 years in the Foreign Ministry.

So how was that process you got in as a young lawyer and what kind of work did they throw at you? Tell me about your 30 years, if you can sum it up.

I started off in what is called the claims department, dealing with little little legal issues and workers who fell down and sued the office and that's wills and so on. Then I went into law, international law and deputy legal adviser. I served as the legal counsel to the embassy in Washington, which is a fascinating period given the weakened administration. And then I came back as legal adviser for nearly nine years, nearly ten years.

Wow. So what kind of issues come across your table as a legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry? And what is the role of a legal advisor, if you will, in such a position?

A legal adviser has to stay in your position because he has to give legal advice and it's got to be absolutely straight, correct. In other words, from foreign ministers, in my experience, don't like to be told we can't do things. And they. But the legal adviser must say, look, if you do such and such a thing, you'll be regarded by the world community as illegal. And foreign ministers want to tell me why it's legal and you can't do it.

You've got to it's very tempting just to tell a minister an opinion that he wants to hear.

But it'll it won't in the long run. He won't pay off because even if he hears from you that it's a wonderful position, you can do it the moment he goes abroad and here some other friendly governments, that it's illegal, you'll be angry with you. So you have to give them the unvarnished legal opinion, I think. I mean, this is true even when you meet with a client, isn't it? You've got to tell you. You've got to tell you first, what are your chances?

What is the law? Then you act as his as his advocate beforehand. You must give a legal, unvarnished opinion. And legal advice is often not popular. Because they say, yes, but and I remember many times the foreign minister of a country said, look, I've reached an agreement with some other minister from a different country, it's OK. And I'll say I didn't want to tell him that he is tied to your that he may no longer be the foreign minister.

And the only thing that will be left will be the paper in the cold light of dawn. The only thing you look at is the actual agreement, not the wonderful atmosphere. And the fact that he drank whiskey with Egyptian foreign minister is irrelevant. So you have to try and persuade your ministers it's important what is actually written down and not the wonderful atmosphere that you had.

So what years were you there? You said you were there for another 30 years. What what time period did you go through? What were the main issues that you had to deal with, whether it be peace negotiations or foreign foreign relations matters? Is there anything that you can talk to? And a lot is confidential, possibly. But any insights and stories you can share?

A legal adviser to the foreign ministry is a jack of all trades. You seem to be knowledgeable about the laws of war and maritime law and aviation law, and you're expected to know the answer all the time. I remember being called up one time, I think it was three o'clock in the morning and being told that we knew that there was a terrorist, dangerous terrorist on board a scam in any Scandinavian ship in the Mediterranean in the high seas. And the Israeli navy want to know, can we go and intercept him?

You have to us. And they're not they're not interested in where I got the information from or what for us a lot about what they want to know is illegal. If not, what would be the consequences of doing it and you have to go down in real time? It's it's tough.

It's absolutely I spoke to Daniel Reisner about a month or so ago, and he left me with this message that he was very disillusioned. And I'm not sure if that's the word he used, but something like that with international law, because it could be used as a sword and not a shield and it may have been perverted in recent years. What's your take overall on the field, public, international law? What's what's your feeling, if you will, about it?

And. International law is important, it's relevant, it's relevant, whether in different, different, different forms. When I say you're a consultant, sometimes I wasn't consulted. I remember one particular incident. I was called in in 1976, called into the office of the director general at all hours of the morning and with some other colleagues and told us to close the door. And I'm not allowed to use the telephone.

Then when the doors were closed and you probably to use the telephone, he told us that there was an operation on the way to rescue Israelis who had been kidnapped and hijacked to Entebbe. I don't know whether you remember, of course, Yoni Netanyahu and the director jumped directly. Don't turn to me and said, Bobby, you prepare now a legal argument. Why it's legal. You didn't I wasn't asked for. And he turned to my other colleagues, head of the African desk, the pound note to the African states that were not of any end to the UN.

So we all sat there, I remember. But two hours later, he said, OK, they're on the way back. You can now tell your family. And I phoned up the phone. He told the well, the exciting news is sometimes you're not consulted in advance, but often you are. Once you are, once the government has taken the action, you then change your hat. You become the advocate for the government, even if they acted against the advice, which is, again, you know this as a lawyer, I think all of us know it.

Tell your client, don't do it. If he does it, he's still entitled to be represented. You've got to warn him not to do something illegal. If he does it, he's entitled to have the same is true of a government and the Israeli government. So many times I would give my opinion we should do something to do the moment the government decide to do it. It was my job to present the legal defense and have international law play a ball because the moment something is seemed to be illegal, you've lost international support.

Even friendly governments won't support Israel on an issue which they seem to be legal. To give a counterexample, the settlement issue, I think, is what has made strong arguments to the settlements, illegal and immoral war crime. To be honest, we've lost the PR battle on this. Except for the United States, no state supports us on this issue, it's it means it gives a tremendous advantage to the other side. We will have to negotiate and we'll have to negotiate the issue of settlements in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria.

They can stop saying it's illegal. Let's talk about. So it's awfully important to make a point that what you're doing is legal. It doesn't mean you'll get support. The reverse is true. The moment you manage to brand something as illegal, you've lost you've lost the battle. And Israel needs international support, but they're all states do. I remember when the United States was did something that was illegal on the on the way he treated Taliban prisoners of war and torture, things are clearly illegal the moment the allies of the United States, the closest allies, felt that the United States was doing something illegal.

They lost support. You may recall that Germany and Italy and Great Britain, close allies, refused to cooperate in what they called, I think, euphemistically, extraordinary rendition that was flying people to be tortured in other countries. By the way, they didn't send them to Israel and USA would not do it, just that they said the other neighbors, not to Israel. So the moment you lose support the most, something that is branded as illegal, you're in trouble.

It's awfully important to put the case in terms of international law.

It sounds like a quasi political, even if public opinion PR, there's so much that goes into international law that you need the other pieces working with you, the PR machine and, you know, other such public support to support your position because it could go either way. It's a it's an argument that could be used and abused international law. And that's kind of what we've seen.

You're absolutely right. However, the language is that of international law, and it must be it only in international law to use the language of, let's say, to go back to the settlement issue. Is it a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, etc.? You got to use legal language. Yeah, because every prime minister of every country would consult his legal advisor and say, is this legal? And you may have the most wonderful arguments, but it's the whole world thinks you're wrong, you're in trouble, right?

Yeah, the settlement is a good example of how the public opinion is against Israel. And I mean, now what's going on with the whole Hamas Israel conflagration? That's, you know, the rockets going back and forth. People frame it as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I know after having lived there, that there's separate issues Israel, Palestine and Israel and Hamas and their different legal regimes that apply perhaps in different issues on the table. So, I mean, maybe let's put the Israeli-Palestinian legal issues aside and focus on Israel, Hamas, because that's more contemporary right now.

It's what's going on for the most part. And if you can start just by legally differentiating Hamas and the Palestinians, if you could do such a thing and then we can talk about more about Hamas.

I think the major issue here, what are the laws of war that apply? And Israel has taken, I think, a very principled position that whenever we're in an armed conflict, you live with boom, Israeli forces are subject to the rules of war, of international uncomfort. We don't we don't do any quibbling. Oh, well, it's it's a terrible war. It's the guerrillas, like the Israeli army, must abide by the laws of war. The problem is that some of the laws of war seem to have been brought against Israel and the laws of war have been invented that apply only to Israel, for instance, proportionality.

You hear a lot about proportionality. And there was a rule of war which we comply with, that you must not cause disproportionate civilian casualties. In other words, in any case where you attack military targets, you must take into account what are the possible civilian casualties. And if they're in excess of the military advantage, you shouldn't do it. And this is what this Israel does. It's the decision of the commanders, not a legal decision. And was the legal adviser will say, look, you commander, must decide.

And it's very difficult, for instance, if you have a look at. Next to a school.

The commander must take into account. Look, it has that block had been fired if it's been fired already, the military advantage of taking out the the team is not if it's about to be fired, there's a very high military advantage in knocking it out. If it's going to be fired at your civilians or even your soldiers, you've got to take into account the possible casualties you will have. Then how many civilians are there if there's one civilian next to a police dog?

It is a lot. And all this has to be weighed by the military commander in real time, often under fire, and the other side doesn't care damn about it. They're aiming deliberately as civilian targets and putting their rockets deliberately next to their own civilians. For them, it's a win win situation. If we don't attack them, they've got away with it. If we attack them, then we call civilian casualties immediately. CNN and the whole world will say, look, civilian casualties have been caused by the Israeli former president of the Israeli Supreme Court said army in a democracy fights a war with one arm tied behind his back.

And he's correct. But thank God we are in a democracy and our military commanders must and do take into account every time what unforeseeable civilian casualties. But when I say international law has been what they base, the claim that Israel uses disproportionate force. Now, it sounds bad, but the the the reality is that in every military conflict, you want to use more force than the enemy. There's no rule which says that the enemy forces you with a rifle.

You can only shoot back with a rifle. Clearly, every military commander would like to be more force better weapons against the enemy, so there's no rule of disproportionate force, but this has been invented as well. You may have read that Israel used disproportionate force. Imagine accusing the allied armies in the Second World War of using disproportionate force against the German army. They've be laughed out of court because you use you want to be more tanks against the enemy.

But for Israel, with its disproportionate use of disproportionate force, by the way, another thing that annoys me is civilian casualties. If civilian casualties are cause deliberately, it can be a war crime wave that killed negligently. But civilian casualties, civilian casualties as such are not proof of the war crime. And again, going back to Second World War I read that in the D-Day when American, British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, it was the first day of killing, the first day of fighting.

40000 French civilians were killed, French civilians. Clearly, this is a war crime. It's a whole lot of war. Which is what makes more effort than any I think any other state has ever done to avoid civilian casualties, the some old mesons and to be honest, also practical reasons, civilian casualties is a bonus for the other side. They said this to the world. It's not an interest to cause civilian casualties. Therefore, we've taken steps that I don't think any other army has.

We dropped dummy bombs on a building before we bomb it. We send them SMS messages, get out. We can't always do this. If it's a moving target, you've got to hit him while he's moving. But if it's a building, we can do it. And of course, it causes us loss of supplies. It means the enemy can run away from the building, which they do. You've seen this in the recent things. On the other hand, we're trying to avoid civilian civilian casualties.

But nevertheless, the moment the civilian casualties was accused of being a war crime, committing war crimes. So if we're slightly paranoid, there's some good reason for it.

Right? Understandably. I mean, I've interpreted that word proportionality as a bit of a curse word because how do you compare apples and oranges, Israel and Hamas terrorist organization versus democracy? You know, is there a way to properly apply the concepts of proportionality to the Israel Hamas situation where it's just so different? You know, what is the correct application of proportionality?

The correct application is civilian casualties or expected civilian casualties as against the military advantage. And this is the command of us. And it's a world war which we don't argue with. And we apply, I think, more than other states. Mm hmm. You have when you're attacking military targets, look, the civilians next. To give an extreme example, if you have a military headquarters and one civilian there, clearly it's proportional because if you have a civilian vegetable market guarded by a soldier, you can't attack that soldier because the harm to the civilians will be disproportionate.

But life is not that clear. It's always much more difficult because you don't have any information. Mealtime, you can't nobody no army has perfect information. Civilians can suddenly move in while the civilians in the hospital live there. Mm hmm. Well, what we think is, is a small target turns out to be a rocket barrage of rockets being fired at Israeli town. It's vital for a military commander to take those rockets out. By the way, during the previous fighting in Gaza, we found that the Hamas had put a military headquarters underneath a hospital.

And we decided, I think correctly, not to attack it and they got away with it. So, again, we all fight all democracies, a fight with one hand tied behind the back, so be it. I don't want to live in a society that's not democratic, right.

I mean, there's so many issues that arise based on the circumstances there. Can you talk about also the combatant non-combatant distinction and how blurred that is in Gaza without formal combatants, if you will, or how to even make that distinction?

The wall is another way. Most international law is common sense is that enemy combatants are legitimate targets. So civilians should take an active part in hostilities. In other words, the civilian who's acting, who's obviously firing at you but is gathering intelligence is a legitimate target. This makes the problem in Hamas is none of them wear uniforms. How do we distinguish between legitimate targets so we have certain rules of them, children are never legitimate targets, whatever they're doing.

And we assume that if we warn people and they don't run away and they can following us, they are combatants, but it's very difficult inside. And of course, they take advantage of this. They use hospitals, so they use abilities to convey rockets. What do we do? Do we take every ambulance? We don't know what's inside of an ambulance would happily move the rockets inside. And they don't you know, I mean, talking about Hamas and international law is irrelevant.

It's like talking about Al Qaida, Al Qaida and international law. They don't consult.

Yeah, that's why I'm in a bit of on a different note, is the ICC probe into Israel's actions in Gaza, which makes it almost humorous. And obviously I'm very against it and the Israeli position is very against it because, again, apples and oranges, how do you judge one side when they're fighting against terrorists for lack of a better term? I mean, what's your take on that whole international law, trying to judge, you know, ultimately a conflict which is just so complicated here again, apply a special international law to Israel.

I know it sounds paranoid, but we all know every other country that investigates its war crimes. That's the end of it. The ICC doesn't need to be only with Israel because it by the way, when you're fighting a war, you're liable to get soldiers who violate the laws of war. That happens in any and but every Democratic county prosecutes the soldiers. Canada is old as the United States, the U.K., Germany, them do it, why?

Because it's in our interest for soldiers to comply with the laws of war. We don't want them committing war crimes. And we've investigated every case where it was claimed that the Israeli soldiers fired civilians unnecessarily in every other country dissatisfies I.C.C.. Hell, we're not satisfied with the Israeli occupation. And the other issue that raises settlements is a purely political issue. There's no there's nothing intrinsically criminal about the Israelis living in the West Bank, it's a political issue who's the sovereign that wants the territory and so which they have to be solved by negotiations.

But the ICC is treating this as a criminal since I I that the preamble to the international, quote, talks about the crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, and that's what they're talking about. Settlements is a difficult political issue. It doesn't shock the conscience of humanity. Israeli goals lives in the West Bank. It may be politically wise and but that's not the issue. But to is this is suddenly become a war crime. I think the reason they're doing it, they've been looking for a Western state to prosecute.

They tried to prosecute US soldiers and British soldiers, and they dropped like a hot potato. And they've been accused so far, you've only prosecuted Africans, so I I suspect they were looking around west of the state, but is not a superpower. And they picked on Israel and they're doing it for purely political reasons, but it's wrong.

Mm hmm. So if you had an hour to spend with the I think it's Gabi Ashkenazi, the minister of foreign affairs or whatever it is, whoever it is at the specific time, what would you tell him? You know, regarding the international law issues on the table, whether it's to do with the ICC or the situation in Gaza. What's your advice, Mr. Counselor?

My advice is defend yourself in international law, because Israel's record is good. It's not perfect. No state has a perfect record, but Israel complies with international law. Well, one of the reasons we do so is the Israeli courts enforce international law. And you may remember from your studies, the Bogucki really High Court of Justice has ordered the government, the Army Security Service to do things which they don't want to do if it feels it's it's complies with international law.

Perhaps the best example is Settlers' took private Palestinian land and built a settlement in the West Bank. The High Court of Justice ordered them to get out, and they did.

Are many countries in our area where the governments would follow instructions, the high court, luckily Israel and Israel is one of them. So I would advise asking it is still is going to be Ashkenazy. I don't know what who will be the foreign minister next month, but this is Israel's record is good, but it's going to be real international. For instance, one wall of international law that has been invented for Israel is UN resolutions are binding. This is rubbish.

The U.N. General Assembly resolutions are not binding. No state is on record as accepting the binding except as regards Israel. You may have seen claims Israel is violating UN resolutions, but they they're not binding their political statements. And since that political statement states both the things that they know absurd, I remember when I was in the in the as a junior delegate to the UN and there was some ridiculous proposals by Arab states. Israel goes viral, spreading AIDS and poisoning wells and European states would abstain.

The best I remember saying, look, you know, it's not true. And they said, of course, was to say, well, we know it's not true, but what do you care? It's not binding. And in exchange, the Arab states will vote for our proposals to support our candidates. And you get Israelis being accused of everything by the U.N. General Assembly. But this doesn't stop people loyals. Let's say Israel is violating U.N. resolutions.

Why somehow Israel, they considered to be binding, not to other states.

Yeah, sui generis, like you call it, a special regime just for Israel. It's unfair, if you will. Yeah, not fair. Each unit in the army, as far as I know, has a legal adviser, attache or whatever you call that goes along with the combat units. And you're talking about the commander having to make these real time decisions. Can can you put yourself in the shoes of a legal adviser in the heat of war?

Yes, their job is easier than that of a commander. It's not it's only at a very, very high level. I think doesn't go below brigade level kind of level. The legal adviser will say, you, Mr. Commander, until we have to wait. What are the potential military advantages against the potential civilian casualties? He'll never talk to a lethal force commander to make this decision, but because the legal adviser can't say how many civilian casualties and expect what is a military advantage, only the military command may make it.

And again, he has to worry about the safety of his own men, his own civilians. And his commanders are not easy. Again, they don't have this problem. They thought deliberately and civilians, we do have this problem, as do other Democratic states. And thankfully, we're going to continue to have this problem.

Right. So you're of the opinion, correct me if I'm wrong, that Israel should continue to engage and develop their international law and engage with the international community, defend itself, not like some commentators have said, disregard some aspects of international law just because they're blatantly biased.

The reason I say this, Israel complies with what is really international, not with U.N. resolutions when it comes to real international law, is basically common sense. Decency and respect is critical. But we have a problem with inventing international law. Things just Tailor-Made for Israel, which I talked about earlier. Yeah, we can disagree on it. But on the other hand, by the way, we had a conference of judge advocate generals. I think about 30, 40 countries came to this conference.

We talked about fighting in Gaza and they all said to us, you're welcome, Mr.. You're doing more than we can, so we said, why doesn't your government said, well, politics, but the people who are in charge of military law in their own armies, you know, army does do more than that to avoid civilian casualties. And as I said, we do it for moral reasons, but also out of self-interest. It's not in our interest, of course, casualties.

It doesn't advance our cause. It only just helps the US, despite the opinion of the Jags, the friendly governments, I don't know about the Canadian government itself. And the governments continue to condemn Israel. And it ain't fair, right?

That's right. Well, it should continue to be, you know, stand a stand up nation for the rest of the world, leading the way in international law and morality, for that matter. I mean, other countries have definitely learned and will continue to learn how Israel deals with their conflicts, at least from an international law point of view, at least, that I want to ask you more. Generally speaking, you were great professor of mine, really inspirational, bringing wrote all sorts of personal anecdotes about your experiences.

What type of advice would you give lawyers, law students, maybe if they want to get into public international law or just in general how to be the best lawyer they can be?

To be honest, my advice the lawyer wants to earn a good living is international law is not the way to get wealthy. Right. So absolutely sensible. Would you enjoy Maulavi that you will miss very few avenues you have to work with government or academia. There's a few lawyers who do some international law in private practice in Israel, and that's commercial law. But there's public international law. That is, the relationship between states is hardly dealt with by private lives.

Nevertheless, I find it fascinating. Because there is international law, despite all the cynics states, most states most of the time comply with international law. And if you look at how international relations are in fields of maritime law and aviation law and trade and so on, most states most of the time comply with it. So it works. It's a strange creature. There's no compulsory course. There's no international police force. But it does work. And therefore, I think anybody who has the foreign policy bug, which perhaps I buy things on, have to be actively engaged.

I would advise them to deal with international law unless you want to be prosperous, in which case to do something else.

Fair enough. And and what makes a great lawyer I mean, throughout your career, you've negotiated with some of the best you've been doing at the highest level of international law and the Israeli government, even the world. You spent some time in New York. What what stands out as an outstanding lawyer, someone that really is a role model, if you will, at least in your life? And are you you're one of mine. And I try to interview my role models so I can learn from you.

But I'm always curious. What inspired you? Who inspired you?

My advice must sound strange is always speak to never deceive. If not, you can get away with it. But once you've done that, you've lost all credibility. I assume this is true of your life as a private lawyer and diplomat. You don't have to tell the whole truth, but don't lie. And it's sort of so tempting sometimes just to sort of fudge things. You've lost your credibility as a lawyer and and we were negotiating with the Palestinians in Washington.

It was called the Madrid talks, and we were negotiating, trying to reach some sort of agreement. And we started off by going into the history and the Arabs accused us of all the crimes that the Zionist movement and we talked about their terrorism and their rejection of the partition plan and going on and on and on. And I remember an American senior diplomat called me afterwards. I said, let me why the hell didn't you get down to business? And I explained to him, it's a form of catharsis.

When before you begin negotiating, you want to base your position, you're not going to convince the other side. But something sinks in after we were sitting there and hearing articulate Palestinians educated, explaining the problems with disagree with them. I think something was made and they were hitting Israelis. I hope they saw as reasonable people making arguments that we had a case in international law that the Jewish people also had a right of self-determination. It didn't necessarily negate the fact that Palestinians had, but they hadn't thought of that.

And so there was something, you know what? We were people. We have the right of self-determination. And the mandate, which talked about a Jewish national home for the first time, was passed unanimously by the council, the League of Nations. It represented world opinion well, legal opinion that it was legal for the Jews to build a Jewish national home in Palestine. Again, it didn't mean the Palestinians could build it. So it's used for going through this and the Americans could understand it.

They get down to business it now, perhaps because they didn't understand the Middle Eastern attitude. You don't go straight down to business. You talk about it. So we said session after session going through this and I said it must be done. By the way, I remember one incident. We were looking to break the ice with the Palestinians. And the first time they admit they had met with an official Israeli delegation. And thus the first time we met the people who the PLO, they pretended not to be below, but they were clearly PLO.

So we search for a common factor. And the head of a delegation, Elie Rubenstein, said, you know what, the coffee, American coffee is awful. I don't know whether you ever had American coffee, but they put it in the jug and they heated the whole day. And it's absolutely awful. And the Palestinians. Yes. Isn't it awful? I mean, what we agreed upon that we found a common factor, although there was no American in the room.

But magically the next day they that we followed espresso machine on the tables. Apparently, the Americans were aware of what was going on in the area.

So they hear everything that's that's incredible. Can you give us another few anecdotes before we let you go about, you know, your your career and experience? We've covered a lot, but I don't want to let you go without hearing one or two more stories about maybe negotiations. What in your mind tanked the negotiations? What in your mind was perhaps a successful negotiation? Give us a couple more anecdotes before we let you go.

I think I took part in the Egypt Israel negotiation. I think they were very successful. One thing that we tried to teach our political superiors is drafting is done by using international legal terms and they have legal significance. You know this from private law, if you say something must be done in a reasonable time, I'm sure that some Canadian Supreme Court decision that says reasonable time does include Sundwall does include something or something, but only a lawyer would know that.

And the same is true of international law. I remember one case at one at the late stage of the negotiations. Egypt agreed to send have an ambassador to Israel and accept an Israeli ambassador. Diplomatic relations. This is grateful. And it was achieved by personal contact between Moshe Dayan, who was the foreign minister at the time, and President Jimmy Carter. And I look to this at the dock and they said there'll be exchange of ambassadors. So I went in to see Moshe Dayan, who was who was a very bright man, but not a pleasant man.

I said to Mr. Minister, there's a problem here. Under international law, you can have a non-resident ambassador. It's perfectly legal. And he turned to me, he said, well, then go to hell, I'm not going to go back to the United States and go into the question where he's going to live. I don't care about it. He set me out of the room. Luckily for me, he consulted with our attorney general lately. Must thought about Buck, who said, you know what?

He's quite. Under international law, you can send a an ambassador. So Diana had to go back to the of the United States and say, please, at the word resident ambassador, he didn't like doing it. We learned afterwards that's exactly what the Egyptians had intended that point. The ambassador, I think it was in Rome to be ambassador and is unable to fulfill. So when you trust the only when you're drafting a document or drafting a legal document, that would be interpreted by international lawyers.

Another today, another example I remember was when we were negotiating with Jordan and I negotiated the water issue with Jordan and Jordan said, OK, we want to have an equitable share of the waters, the Jordan River and the head of political head of delegation. So. Well, that's fine equities, Phil. And they agreed to it and it was the job of the lawyer to say, hey, it's a technical term, it means the whole watercourse should be shared according to needs and other factors.

The whole watercourse includes the Lake of Galilee. The upper Jordan, so I didn't actually call him sir, but do you really intend to give the king of Jordan, Steffanie Jordan, a half share in the whole of the Lake Gallion? No. That we went back and look at the treaty with Jordan and talks about how much water we're going to give them, I said that's not a legal decision. You can decide to give them 100 or 500.

But second, quantity of water, but if you say an equitable share, it means they can come demand half, maybe more, because the need is greater than us. So you need the international lawyer as a loft in the same way that you don't do a will without getting a lawyer involved. Wise statesman doesn't have a treaty. It doesn't get involved in a treaty unless it's been drafted by his his lawyer.

Well, that's really right. You don't often think about the massive implications of not having a lawyer in the international arena, but you've just given some examples about how lawyers can really come through and save the day and change the landscape of things literally one way or another. I've had some great experiences there, negotiating and being part of the history of Israel.

Now, the presidency was not binding, but if you can think of precedent and say, look, this has been done already, it makes it much, much easier. Again, my personal experience with negotiating with Jordan, it was after the peace treaty with Egypt. They simply took blocks of the peace treaty with Egypt and copied it into the peace table. Why'd you make it much easier for Jordan, a small country, say Egypt? And it's the lawyer who knows the precedents, if you will, quotes from a U.N. principal, Egypt.

We quoted from U.N. resolutions that we knew we knew Egypt have accepted and we had accepted Resolution 242.

So it's plagiarism, but sometimes it's a lie and that's a lot of plagiarism because each of so that's OK. We accepted it in the past. They knew the government had and this is the job of the law to provide the the useful precedent and put it in the right spot.

And you think those precedents could be used going forward as well in Israeli-Palestinian conflict? No, those are neighboring states, but nonetheless certain things. Do you think they could be applied for peace going forward?

We search for it. It's difficult to find a precedent for the very difficult Palestinian-Israeli situation, is it, to people living in the same land? And it's very difficult. We talked about autonomy and there was there are a number of precedents for autonomy. But autonomy is is an autonomous part of a state. You could say that Quebec is a fairly semi-autonomous part of Canada or Greenland, part of Denmark, but they don't want to be an autonomous part of Israel.

So it's really autonomy. On the other hand, the certain issues of us fighting we can't have a military forces are not on on the western side of the River Jordan, something we can't live with. We've got to combat terrorism. So I'm not sure how much presidents can help, but we will need international laws, because, as I said earlier, at the end of the discussions, there will be an agreement and the agreement will be interpreted by lawyers and the language they use will be legal.

Legal language. So I don't think they can get away without getting away, without using international lawyers.

Robbie, I must say that you've had a great impact on the state of Israel, on many, many students, including myself. You continue to teach and be an inspiration to many. And I hope that your experience leads to some better things in the Israeli government. Use your experience, your precedents, if you will, to achieve more peace and stability in the region and continue doing what you're doing. It's it's really inspirational and great for the rest of us to learn from you.

I'll be thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it. And hopefully we can do it again soon.

Thanks.

Bye bye for now.