Israeli journalist and political analyst Amit Segal rejected accusations that Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounted to genocide and argued against Palestinian statehood during a virtual conversation hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School last Tuesday.
The event, the latest in the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy’s “From Pain to Hope?” series on Israel and Palestine, brought Segal into discussion with center faculty director Mathias Risse. Segal, the chief political analyst for Israel’s Channel 12 news and a columnist for the newspaper Israel Hayom, described the Israeli public’s outlook as one defined by physical proximity to threats.
“No matter where you are in Israel as we speak — be it in Jerusalem, like me, or in Tel Aviv, in a cocktail bar, or in the desert near Eilat, or in the far north — you are always up to 80 minutes at most of driving from someone vicious who wants to kill specifically you,” Segal said.
That threat, he said, underpins what he called a posture of “cautious pessimism” toward peace among Israeli citizens.
Segal claimed that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was the lowest in the history of urban warfare, a characterization that is disputed because Gaza death figures do not typically distinguish between civilians and combatants.
“I find it rather ridiculous to claim that Israel committed genocide,” Segal said, adding that Israel had provided humanitarian aid and evacuated hospitals before military operations.
Risse pushed back, pointing to the death toll and to the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. He said a recent Lancet report had estimated roughly 75,000 deaths in Gaza through January 2025 and cited what he called the systematic targeting of hospitals and universities.
“If you can have a war only at the expense of inflicting a genocide, then that is an illegitimate war,” Risse said.
Segal rejected that argument, saying Hamas had embedded military infrastructure beneath civilian buildings and arguing that Israel had few alternatives.
Segal and Risse also discussed a death penalty law Israel’s governing body passed last Monday that would make it easier to impose capital punishment on Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis. International rights organizations have condemned the measure as discriminatory.
Segal said he supported the death penalty for those who carried out the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, but called the new law counterproductive, describing it as a political maneuver by far-right leaders ahead of Israel’s October 2026 elections.
“There isn’t going to be a single terrorist who is going to be hanged as a result of this law,” he said. “This law will only harm Israel’s image.”
Segal also argued against Palestinian statehood, claiming that many Palestinians have been hesitant to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and that past concessions — including the 2005 disengagement from Gaza and territorial offers during the Oslo Accords — were met with violence.
“The vast majority of Israelis were for it,” Segal said of the Oslo process. “The vast majority of Palestinians, however, never recognized there is a Jewish state, and that’s the main problem.”
Risse challenged that view, arguing that both Israelis and Palestinians have human rights that can only be effectively protected through state structures.
“Wouldn’t the statesman at this moment say there is not ever going to be peace unless they both have a state structure protecting them?” Risse said.
Segal responded that the Palestinian Authority was not a credible partner for peace. He proposed that Israel build new, demilitarized cities on the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza where displaced Gazans could relocate.
“As long as Hamas is there, I wouldn’t spend a cent,” Segal said. “I wouldn’t put a dime on rebuilding in Gaza,” he added, “because after each and every conflict, all the money, all the concrete, all the iron was used first and foremost for building tunnels, and only then to build houses.”
Risse called Segal’s proposal “a recipe for disaster,” saying it would amount to telling Palestinians “we are thinking of you really only as people who will attack us in the future.”
Segal said that, in his view, allowing reconstruction in Gaza under Hamas would be worse.
“It’s not my desired outcome,” he said. “This is the lesser of evils.”