Anshel Pfeffer - Embedded in Gaza
It’s 5:45 am on Thursday, November 16 in New York City. It’s 12:45 pm in Israel.
Early this morning, I spoke with Anshel Pfeffer, who is just back from his second trip into Gaza embedded with the IDF. Anshel has covered Israeli politics, Israel National & national security, and global affairs for over two decades. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and Israel correspondent for The Economist. Anshel is the author of the book: “ Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.” He lives in Jerusalem.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, my friend Anshul Pfeffer, who has covered Israeli politics and Israeli national security issues and global affairs for over two decades. He's a senior correspondent and a columnist for Haaretz, and he is the Israel correspondent for The Economist magazine.
He lives in Jerusalem. I first met Anshul in 2018 when he was working on his book, his biography of Benjamin Netanyahu. He and I were on a panel together at an event in the U. S. with Anshul, me, and Amir Tibbon. Anshul, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Dan. Uh, you are fresh back from Gaza. It [00:01:00] is your second Trip to Gaza in the, in the last couple of weeks, you, you were there over the last, uh, 48 hours.
Can you just start by, I mean, we've had a number of guests on this podcast since October 7th who are intimately involved with covering the war or intimately involved with the war Israelis, but no one we've had on have have has had your experience. I want to talk about that. You've been into Gaza just. I guess maybe describe each, each visit to Gaza.
What, what, what, what, what about each one? What was the biggest impression you had from each one? How are they different? Just your general impressions. So, um, I went in both times from the same route. Israel, the Israeli forces obviously have gone in to the Gaza Strip from a number of routes. Both times I went in.
From the northwest corner of the Garza strip, quite close to the, uh, to the sea, uh, at a place called those who have [00:02:00] been to Israel and got a good knowledge of Israeli beaches at a place near Z, near z Kim, which is one of my favorite beaches. And I hope to be back there and not as a, not as a reporter, wants, uh, all the unexploded ordinances removed from there because it was the site of.
Of some major attacks on October 7th, um, that's what, that's the route in which, uh, the main unit, or the main big unit operating there is the division, is the 162nd division, which is one of the IDF's two regular, uh, mechanized armored divisions, and the Both times, but I think the second time even more that if I was there, I think on, it was day eight of the ground offensive, the first time it was there.
Uh, so that's by now nearly two weeks ago. And I was there on this week and Tuesday night. Um, both times what struck me as going in is the level of forces that the IDF [00:03:00] has employed in, in Gaza. So there's, um, I mean. And without going into numbers, it really is a, is a, a massive deployment of arm and force.
And that was really the thing that struck me in the first time is that this, the way a lot of, uh, a lot of, certainly the initial, uh, part of the ground offensive was, was being conducted from, uh, both tanks and, uh, you know, we don't call them APCs anymore and the people who are into military lingo know that we call them now IFVs, uh, Infantry Fighting Vehicles because they're much bigger than those old.
Vietnam era M113 that basically tanks just without the turret and the cannon and you've got space inside which which would normally be in a tank. So instead of all the space in the tank for storing the, uh, storing the cannon shells, you have a whole infantry compartment and these are quite, uh, quite advanced, um, vehicles.
They also have a lot of, [00:04:00] uh, a lot of screens inside, both for. It's driving the vehicle and for the gunners and thermal cameras to, to, to, to, to try locate ambushes. And it's also all interconnected. So the commander of the vehicle can also get on his screen, a map showing where all the, where all the other vehicles and other forces are and have Intel surveillance, uh, uh, feed onto his screen from drones and from whatever other sensors the IDF is in this, um, And it's, uh, and it's very impressive digital array.
And it, you get the feeling when you're in one of these vehicles in, in, in an armored convoy going in that there's a war going on, which is kind of being carried out on the screens. And then at some point you, you arrive this, I'm talking about the visit to no, it was two weeks ago at the end, but at the end, but at then [00:05:00] you arrive at an advanced command post.
This, in this case, it was of the 401st armored brigade. And you dismount from the vehicle and suddenly you're on a battlefield and there's the dust and the sand and the explosions and the soldiers around you taking cover and you go from seconds and being in this very high tech environment, which to be quite honest, 20 year old soldiers around me, but much, much, much more at home in because, you know, these are kids who grew up in the, in the era of smartphone, right?
And then you're back on. Yeah. What could it be a battlefield of any in any major war in history or right? Yeah, it could have been the Lebanon war could have been it could have been the Yom Kippur. It's like a world war you know it it the level of a noise and and firepower and just any kite, you know, almost any type of of kinetic weapon being used was was almost overpowering and [00:06:00] And even though, you know, I knew the numbers and had an idea more or less of the, of the type of force that the idea f was employing it, it only really comes home to you when you're actually there and you see the tanks and the, uh, and the armed vehicles and what they're firing and what, and, and the incoming, this was still a relatively early stage of, uh, of, of the ground campaign.
And Hamas was still putting up quite a fight. And we, we, we, we, we saw. Incoming mortar shells, uh, trying to, trying to, uh, you know, try, try to find where, where, I mean, this was a very small command post and it was sort of hidden, you know, where we were and there were buildings around where, uh, where the soldiers we were with thought that there may be snipers or, or, or some kind of, uh, missile ambush, uh, coming from, that was, that's something you, you immediately feel and understand when you're, when you're there.[00:07:00]
Um, so that really was struck me the second time was just that level of both on the one hand, very high tech advanced interconnected kind of, uh, uh, fighting force, but still having to employ these old, the old school tactics once you, once you're out of your vehicle and on the ground, um, in the second time I went into on, on Tuesday night, I went in.
With, uh, another force, which belongs to the 162nd division, but they were, they didn't go in with, they were not one of the advanced units. Uh, I went in with a battalion of the Nafal Brigade, which is an infantry brigade. They went in, uh, initially about two or three days after the beginning of the ground effect that they've been in that now for two and a half weeks.
So it doesn't, you know, the times are pretty similar, but they went in on foot, classic infantry. Um, after, but obviously after the tanks and the, and the, and the [00:08:00] heavy fighting vehicles had already, uh, broken through, uh, and it was, uh, first of all, you know, I'm myself right. Many, many years ago, I was, I was in IDF infantry.
So for me, it was kind of a bit of a throwback to the past. Um, but what really struck me on this visit, and we went, uh, we went into the, to the battalion command bus. This is with the nine. 931st Infantry Battalion, uh, in Al Shati, which is one of the largest neighborhoods or refugee camps, as it's called, but it doesn't look like a refugee camp.
It's been there for 70 odd years and it's just a, a very dense residential neighborhood. Uh, what struck me then was just the level of destruction. And once again, this is something I knew about from having been in briefings and having been to, to headquarters behind within Israel and seeing on the screens what the IDF was doing.
Once again, this is something that you only fully grasp when you're on the ground and you see around you the, [00:09:00] the amounts of buildings which have either been destroyed or severely damaged. And you talk to, to, to the soldiers and the, uh, and the officers, uh, on the battlefield who are carrying out these search and destroy, basically search and destroy missions, going from house to house.
Most, most of these houses have either been pinpointed by, uh, IDF intelligence or surveillance, or they themselves have seen something which, uh, Uh, causes them to be suspicious that their house may have, uh, a, a tunnel shaft or, or some kind of Hamas stronghold or weapons store that they go from house to house.
And this is an area which, uh, until six weeks ago, 90, 000 people lived in. It's, I think the second largest neighborhood of, uh, of Gaza city. And now it's totally empty of its, uh, of its residents. They've all fled south. So there's very little. Uh, um, the, the, the, the limits of using firepower are mainly at this point, limits, which [00:10:00] are, uh, are there to prevent friendly fire, to prevent, uh, harm to, to the forces because there are under no civilians there, there is no real concern of collateral damage at this point.
And if there's a, uh, when they have a house that they're, that they're suspicious that has something in it, they don't immediately go in. There's, uh, either either a tank firing, uh, a couple of shells at it, may or an airstrike. Then they'll go in and usually they'll go in with, uh, combat engineering troops whose job it is to, uh, to detect any booby traps, any type of explosives left there, they'll search the building, uh, when they find, uh, what looks like a tunnel shaft or weapons left behind or any kind of, uh, signs of Hamas presence, the building will either be blown up or they'll bring in heavy, some kind of heavy equipment, uh, usually a D9.
Uh, to, uh, to basically to level it. And this [00:11:00] is one battalion of dozens, which is currently in the process of doing that in various sectors of Gaza city. And you know, they talk about the objective of, of this campaign. And the main objective that the Israeli government has said is to destroy Hamas's, um, military capabilities.
And when you see what that means, you realize just what a level in the 16 and a half years from mass of Hamas's rule in Gaza. They have built those military capabilities to the length and breadth and depth of, of the civilian fabric of Gaza City. Um, so it's And can I, uh, uh, uh, when you, when you see all that, are you, are you thinking Wow.
It's impressive that Hamas built all this infrastructure. They basically built like a, uh, a military base effectively in North Gaza, uh, or Northwest Gaza. Uh, they built, basically built a military base disguised as a civilian [00:12:00] community. Are you impressed by it? Or do you say to yourself, this could only have happened?
With the Israeli leadership kind of letting it happen, meaning, meaning sort of turning a blind eye or, or, or not knowing about it, like let it happen by, by accident, but are you just sort of struck that they were, that they were able to do it? Is it that impressive? I mean, just to be accurate, it's not, they didn't build a military base disguised as a city.
There was a city there and they took over that city and they threaded their tunnels and, uh, Um, bases and headquarters of every, at every level through the city. I mean, Hamas is built on, uh, the military structure of Hamas is built on a regional scale. There is, there are, you know, the, but every neighborhood is a battalion, every town or city is a, is a brigade that, that there are significant difference between them and an organized military.
But in many ways they are, they're an organized military with, [00:13:00] with, uh, uh, with Gaza as its base. And. Look, this is not something that Israel did, if we zoom out, Israelis knew about this. You know, I've been hearing about this over the years, briefings, it's something that Israel fought against in, in other rounds of warfare.
So once again, you never fully grasp it until you're on the ground seeing it, but it was there, it was known, there was no, Hamas doesn't put out the figures and names of its, uh, of its military personnel though. I think Israelis had a pretty good idea of, of the scale of it to go out, to zoom out and ask the question of.
What, why did the Israeli leadership not act against it all those years? That's, that's the kind of question Israelis have been asking since October 7th. And there aren't any easy answers for that. And I mean, I'm, I'm, I assume at one point we'll want to, we'll have to make this about one [00:14:00] man. Uh, and Netanyahu, when he came, when he returned to power, he had his first term of office in the late 1990s.
When he returned to power in 2009, there was a situation already there. Israel had left, uh, the entire Gaza Strip in 2005 in disengagement, carried out by another liquid government in which Netanyahu was a senior minister voting for, voting for disengagement over and over again until Just, I think, uh, eight or nine days before the disengagement act began resigning, um, two years.
He, he resigned. He resigned. He resigned because he did not want to. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause he wanted to be, he did not, he didn't want, want to be part party. I mean's now designation. He wanted, I mean, he wanted to break with she run on it. I mean, by now it's the, it's almost this history. Um, yeah. But yeah. No, no, no, no.
I know. But I mean, you know, the timing and the circus as in the hour's, [00:15:00] uh, resignation are. are interesting, but probably for another discussion. Um, but anyway, he came back, he came back to the prime minister's office four years later. In the meantime, in 2007, the Palestinian Authority, which had taken over all of Gaza, uh, after this engagement, before this engagement, and after the Oslo Accords in 1993, that they'd controlled all the towns and cities of Gaza after, Disengagement in 2005 that they were already in control of the entire territory two years later Hamas takes over in a bloody coup and then the outcomes to power a year and a half after that in early 2009 shortly after Israel's fought its first ground campaign of that of a series At the end of 2008, early 2009, Operation Cast Lead, and Netanyahu, uh, was saying in that election campaign in late 2008, early 2009, [00:16:00] that the government, at the time it was the government of the now defunct Kadima party, he will be very different to what they're doing.
He will go in all the way. He will destroy Hamas. He won't allow Um, as to remain in Gaza and cast lead ended in a sort of stalemate, it all went in, not as deep as it, as it's gone in now, but it went into the outlying neighborhoods of, uh, of Gaza fought what was a short war against Gaza, against Hamas on the ground.
And that's took a lot of hits, but it wasn't nearly enough to, to destroy their capabilities. And Netanyahu comes to power promising to, uh, destroy Hamas in Gaza. He doesn't do that. Um, since then, with the, with one sh short break of 18 months, which ended a year ago, he's been in power. And Netanyahu's Strategy, which he's set out, uh, not exactly in the open, but in enough meetings [00:17:00] and events, which have been leaked out and we know we have verbatim, uh, comments of his, he said, this is the best strategy.
Keep Hamas in Gaza because as long as Hamas are in Gaza, the Palestinian leadership is divided the world. Most, sorry, the Western world sees Hamas as a terror organization, doesn't really expect Israel to have to negotiate with them, and they can't really expect us to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, which still controls the West Bank, because, uh, how can we make a deal with, with an organization which doesn't control a Palestinian area?
And, and the belief that The assumption that at least some part of Hamas was serious about governing Gaza, that they were dealing with leaders in Gaza in, I mean, they were not dealing with, but meaning that they assumed that there was some practical mindset to leadership in Gaza that viewed their job also as kind of running Gaza, not, not, [00:18:00] not a death.
Hamas had an invested interest in holding onto this space, Hamas for the first time. In 2007, suddenly we're in charge of territory. And that's until then was only, uh, an opposition movement within the wider Palestinian movement. So the first time they had power over territory, that meant that meant for the first time they had to run.
All the civilian apparatus as well. And since they see themselves also as a political organization, as the rival of FATA, which controls the Palestinian Authority, they, it was thought that Abbas would have a vested interest in some kind of stability in Gaza, so they could prove that they can run, they can run a city, they can run a territory, and ultimately they can run the Palestinian people.
And Netanyahu banked on that. as a way of dividing the Palestinian leadership and keeping both sides weak and not being, you [00:19:00] know, not being under too much pressure from the From the, mainly from the United States, uh, to negotiate with the Palestinians and to embark on any kind of diplomatic process, which he has never wanted to have.
Netanyahu's biggest strategy, and this is Netanyahu going back, and you know the man, you've, you've spoken with him many times. Yeah, yeah. Uh, this is going back basically to Netanyahu at the very beginning, not just to Netanyahu's political career. Not even his diplomatic career in the 80s in the U. S., but stuff he's been saying from the days he was a student activist in the 70s, uh, in MIT, you know, doing lectures for the consulate in, in Boston and in Jewish communities.
And after that in various local channels, uh, local television stations, um, and yeah, I was always said the Palestinian issue is not the main issue Israel is facing. A much bigger, uh, threat from the main powers in the region at the time, when he started speaking about this, he was still saying that backed by the Soviet Union [00:20:00] after the Soviet Union, uh, ceased to exist in the early nineties, then it was, they were being backed by Saddam's Iraq.
They were being backed by Iraq, which is not untrue. The flip side was that they always said that the Palestinians are not a real important issue. They're basically being used by that big Arab Muslim threat on Israel as a wedge issue to try and chip away at Israel and force it all to make concessions and put Israel in a situation where Israel will be weak and vulnerable, and then they can, uh, finally realize their ambition to destroy Israel.
So, so now there's always, I mean, I've been in, also in conversations where he's. Called the person issue a rabbit hole. Don't go down that rabbit hole. That's not the real important thing. Let's talk about Iraq. Um, and part of that strategy of keeping the Palestinian issue off the agenda has also been to try and keep this divide between Fatah and Hamas, between the West Bank and Gath, [00:21:00] between the semi autonomous autonomous enclaves, keep them divided.
it. And. In that way, ensure that, uh, that Israel wouldn't come under, uh, under too much pressure to, to make any, any serious concession or embark on any kind of real diplomatic, uh, uh, process with Palestinian leadership. So Hamas is, Hamas served that purpose. And over the years, you know, you said Netanyahu didn't deal directly with Hamas leaders.
That's not entirely true. There was a, there was perhaps not direct. Usually there was some kind of go between, but, uh, in 2011, once again, Netanyahu was the one. Who, uh, greenlighted the, the prisoner exchange in exchange for, for Gilad Shalit warning for Gilad Shalit would have been held for five years by Hamas in Gaza.
He agreed to release over a thousand Palestinian prisoners. The main figure amongst that group was Yahya Sinwar, who is now Hamas's chief in Gaza. Yahya Sinwar already then in prison was running a lot of Hamas affairs. [00:22:00] He basically. was the appointment from Hamas for the deal. He was doing this while in prison.
Uh, and Netanyahu has been engaging with Yasser Sinoir for years, including, we know, at least one case in which Sinoir sent him a note. Uh, there's a picture of the handwritten note. It's written in Arabic and in Hebrew, Sinoir. Learned Hebrew in, in, in prison. He sees himself as someone who knows the Israeli mindset.
And, you know, he's like an obsessive consumer of Israeli media, right? I mean, he learned Hebrew in prison. He would read Israeli press all the time. He follows Israeli press. He's a real, considers himself an expert. You know, I've spoken to, to intelligence officers in Israeli prison service who And just, just to be clear, just for our listeners to understand, Yehia Sinwar is, is the man.
I mean, he was the architect. So, so it's been reported of the October 7th massacre. So, so he, and he was in prison for two decades. Released from [00:23:00] prison, from Israeli prison 2011 in the in as Anhe is saying, in the Gila prisoner exchange, and he comes back to Gaza and we're dealing with him today. I just want our listeners to have the Sure.
Soar is a very interesting figure in the sense that post in Hamas, the leadership is divided between military wing and the political wing, and RA is probably the only figure in Hamas' history. It's not very long history. Hamas was founded in 1987, so. It's not yet 40 years old, but in that period in which Hamas has been through quite a few leaders, some have been assassinated by Israel.
Some have been forced to, uh, into exile. He is probably the first leader who has actually taken control of both wings. Certainly within Gaza, and that's Hamas main power base, he is someone who is both the political and the military leader. Officially, the, the, the, the chief of Hamas military wing is Mohamed Defouz.
seen as another of the [00:24:00] masterminds of what happened on October 7th, but in reality, Sinwar is the one giving the orders, both on the political and the military side in Gaza. And there's a lot of stories going around about Sinwar. And I try not to mythologize any of the people that, uh, that I write about, but I've spoken to, uh, uh, intelligence officers in Israel Prison Service who sat with him for many, many hours over the long time he was incarcerated.
They were all Come away impressed by, by his intelligence and he wanted to speak to them in Hebrew and to kind of have this kind of dialogue and for years there was a feeling, and that's not just blaming Netanyahu for this, there was a feeling within him. The Israeli intelligence community, Israeli politics, uh, military, and so on.
Then Sinwar is somebody who has made a strategic choice to go for that, uh, civilian approach. Inga, nobody thought [00:25:00] he'd become a Zionist or anything like that. But then Sinwar had made a strategic choice to prefer Uh, building Gaza and, you know, building his, his own political power base rather than launching a war that, uh, as, as he did in October seven, that, that would, um, basically condemn him to death and, uh, and bring about the destruction of Gaza.
And I think even now, there are people who were, who were still asking themselves, did Sinuwa really I think Israel would react in this way. Did Sinuai really want October 7 to be as devastating and barbaric for Israel as it was? Did he think that they would succeed so much when they breached the border fence at so many points and so many Hamas fighters, and then followed by other organizations and just looters and crime gangs from in Gaza coming through the fence.
On that day, and at least for [00:26:00] two or three more days until they were finally all beaten back. Did SINWAR expect this, or is this basically a huge strategic mistake on SINWAR's side? And a lot of people I've been speaking to in the last few days, who are exposed to some of the intel coming in from EU's dropping on Hamas.
Uh, networks, which is still operating to some extent in Gaza, are saying that there is a feeling of disbelief amongst Hamas, uh, commanders that they never expected Israel to go all the way. The scenes you're describing sound to me like scenes from like, you know, World War Two after D Day in, you know, in, in Cherbourg, which is quite different from the footage which we've been seeing over here that's being released by the IDF when we watch.
You know, CNN or, or Fox or BBC or whatever we're watching, you're describing scenes that look like World War Two. What's the disconnect? [00:27:00] Wazza as a city is now uninhabitable. Entire neighborhoods are destroyed. And in the process of going after all the Hamas strong points and tunnels, more and more buildings will be destroyed or damaged.
And I don't, I can't say at this point when the IDF will pull out most of the ground forces as long as they're in, this is a process which is going to continue. The IDF is doing what the government said to destroy homosexuality capabilities. The IDF made it very clear on day, I think it was day six or seven of this war, October 13, they put out the warning to the civilians, citizens of Gaza City.
Go south, go south of Wadi Gaza, we're going to operate, it's going to be dangerous for you. Don't remain there. That message took some time to filter through. In some cases it seems that Hamas was also preventing people from leaving, but now almost everyone's left. We're talking about city, greater urban area of Gaza City with a million plus people.
It's now almost entirely empty. And the reason that, that what you're seeing, whether it's from [00:28:00] Israeli media and IDF spokesperson cameras or from The media, which is in Gaza, which is mainly controlled by by Hamas, whether they're Hamas sympathizers or they're simply, uh, being limited by Hamas, but what they could do, it doesn't matter.
The fact is, is that. Whatever you're seeing now from inside Gaza is either coming through the lenses of Israeli media and the IDF or through, uh, news crews who are being controlled to a large degree by Hamas and neither side at this point have an interest in showing that the level of destruction to Gaza City because as far as Israel is concerned, Israel is first of all showing Stuff to its own citizens, you know, the, the main role of the Israeli media.
I know that everyone sitting as you are in America, I think everything is just for you, but post the message and the visual messages and well, it's very, that's a very American mindset. Yeah. God bless you. That's what, that's what you are like. [00:29:00] Uh, and it's not me. It's not being tailored to you. It's being tailored.
First of all, whatever's being filmed and, uh, and broadcasting on the Israeli side is first and foremostly for the Israeli public and the Israeli public is now a mobilized society and everybody has a brother or a son or a sister or a dad, uh, in, uh, who has been called up and, and the Israelis want to see their soldiers.
They want to see that what they're doing on the ground. They don't want to see the big picture. They want to see That our brave soldiers are fighting and they are fighting and they're operating, I think, very efficiently. Um, So that's, you know, that's the Israeli perspective. From the Hamas perspective, they don't want the wider Palestinian communities and the wider Arab world to see what's happened to Gaza.
Because once that comes through, once the fact that the biggest Palestinian city ever. A city of a million people. The city that was ruled by Hamas is no [00:30:00] more. And Hamas made this terrible strategic miscalculation of provoking Israel into a response that I personally think Israel had no choice to make.
Obviously, we will disagree and say that Israel should have reacted differently. But it doesn't matter. This was Israel's reaction. The fact that Hamas misread Israel. So terrible that Yigit Sinua, who is supposed to be this genius, Uh, on Israeli affairs, as you, as you said, this, this, this, uh, uh, consumer of Israeli media and expert of everything to do with Israel, uh, has made this mistake and brought down this destruction.
I mean, how many guys, the city is, um, it's, we can almost say. And we certainly will be able to say in a few weeks, Gaza city is no more as a, as a, you know, as a place where a million people can live. Uh, Hamas is no more as a governing, uh, or a military force in the Northern Gaza Strip. There are many pockets still of Hamas fighters, but [00:31:00] there is nothing left of it.
Uh, certainly of his governing structure and its military hierarchy is some, some of the commanders and the chiefs are still alive. But it's military hierarchies has been broken. They're now disconnected. They're not that they're incapable of launching anything, certainly nothing on the, on the scale of October seven, but anything more than just ambushes.
Here and there, that's what they're capable of doing. Now, this is the destruction that Hamas has brought down on Gaza. And at this point, Hamas doesn't want the Arab world to see it's, it's terrible failure, that the only thing they want the world to see is these clashes around Shifa, because that. Fits in the ne the, the, the narrative that they're trying that, that, that, that they're, that they're working on.
So what you listen, so what you're seeing, whether from Israeli or from GA and sources is not the big picture. Okay. So I, I wanna ask you, the IDF has reported that more than 1000 Hamas terrorists have been eliminated [00:32:00] so far, which is a lot. However, the estimate is that they're. are something like 40, 000 Hamas fighters.
So it seems that Hamas is largely focused on digging and waiting. Like, how is, how do you reconcile the 1, 000 eliminated with 40, 000 left to go? And, and also related to that is how is the IDF dealing with the tunnel system going forward, assuming a lot of this remaining 40, 000 are somewhere in those tunnels?
Or have a lot of them scattered? Okay, so there's a lot we don't know. So armies are very bad at, at even the most advanced armies are not very good at doing body counts during, uh, during the fighting. But whether it's a thousand, whether it's 4, 000, whether it's 8, 000, yeah, you're right. The estimate of the Hamas is between 30 and 40, 000, uh, fighters.
Where are they? You know, Israel, so Israel has taken out 10, 20%, so you still got 80 percent left. So in other words, in the South, the beginning, we're talking about the Hamas, Hamas is fighting force [00:33:00] throughout the Gaza Strip. The cities in the South, Hanunis and Rafah, are, they're not as big as Gaza City, but they're, but they're not small places either.
So they have their battalions and brigades who were there to begin with. Those who were probably over half were originally in, uh, in and around Gaza City. Some of them could still be in the tunnels, some of them dead because the tunnels have been, some of the tunnels have been blown up, whether from in the ground operations or by bunker busting bombs.
In the more intensive air, air strikes, which were before the, uh, the ground operations began, some could be still alive then with stores of food and water and, and, and, and, uh, and yeah, fuel operating generators and hoping that Israel will, will, will withdraw at some point before their supplies run out and then they can, then they can emerge then some will have discarded their weapons and uniforms and joined the [00:34:00] hundreds of thousands, thousands.
Uh, fleeing to the South and, you know, Israel has made an effort to try and, uh, uh, locate amongst that, that, that river of, uh, of, uh, uh, of tens of thousands flowing to the South, trying to locate who amongst them are Hamasniks, but the numbers and the circumstances of how it's happening, that means that they can't inspect and interrogate every person going through.
But from the soldiers I was with just to, uh, uh, in, in Shatti a day and a half ago, they told me that a lot of the, uh, apartments that, that, that were located as being Hamas strongholds or simply apartments belonging to Hamas members, which are being used also for military purposes, they found in many of them, Kalashnikovs thrown up, just lying on the bed or on the, or on the sofa.
Um, military kit, webbing, uh, IEDs, which had not yet been put together. I mean, one of them said that, you know, I saw the whole kit in one of them, one of the guys who [00:35:00] is a combat engineer said to me, it was fascinating for him to see an IED, uh, before it, before it was all put together with all the, uh, I'm don't think I know all the technical terms, but they, you know, the explosives and the various.
Things used to set it off. Um, so there was, at least from, in, in Shatia, I think, and I've heard of it happening in other parts of Gaza, there was certainly a large number of Hamas fighters who simply fled and put on civilian clothes and left their weapons and, and their equipment behind. So, there are many, uh, places where they could have dispersed to.
Some of them probably also went towards the city center, to places like Shifa. Hospital, where there still are both a significant number of civilians, not, not significant in the proportion of Gaza's original population. We're talking about tens of thousands of people out of over a million, but that's the one place where there still are civilians.
That's like, and that's Hamas is, uh, uh, always been the [00:36:00] modus operandi by. hiding themselves among civilians. They're now much, much fewer civilians in Gaza where they can do that. Uh, I want to talk about the situation with the hostages, which I know is a fluid, fast moving situations situation. It's sometimes like hurry up and stop one step forward, two steps back.
Uh, the IDF announced that there were no hostages found in Shifa hospital. Given that the IDF announced its intentions to go into Shifa well in advance, did you get the sense Have you gotten a sense through your reporting and through your contacts and through your spending time with these soldiers on the ground, did you get a sense of disappointment on the side of the soldiers?
Is it safe to assume that the hostages may have been there, but were just moved south because, in Gaza, because they, they had all this warning, just to clarify, um. The idea have only actually been into a very small [00:37:00] part of shifa com compound. It's a few building. There's a compound. They've been in one of the buildings.
There been, there's been some work done, done in the grounds, including, I think, uh, some kind of digging work. Um, from what I know and from what I, what I've heard from Israeli intelligence officials. Already a few days ago, before anybody went into Shifa, their assumption was that there were, at some point, some of the hostages were being held or treated, both, in Shifa, and they were no longer there.
And Hamas is holding on to two, not just Hamas, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, crime groups, are holding on to 213 hostages that we know of, some, in some cases, they're holding on to bodies of hostages, we don't know which of them were alive. Uh, and they'll do everything to keep them that they're, they're bargaining chips.
And the moment Hamas has, uh, some indication that Israel's heading for, the [00:38:00] IDF is heading for Shifa, then they won't keep hostages there, they'll do everything they can to move into another location. And it was seen that that's already happened. It's still important for the IDF to, to go into Shifa. And see what they can, that what they can find there, which will give them an indication of hostages having been there.
There's DNA traces. So any, anywhere where, where people have been given medical treatment, then you, there's a chance that you can find, uh, something which will tell you who was there. Obviously anything that they find is immediately sent back to Israel for, for, for inspection and for DNA sequencing. Um, the forces are inside are constantly, Constantly aware of the need to try and locate the hostages.
Now, not every Israeli soldier or every Israeli battalion will be operating in an area where Israel thinks hostages were held. But certainly when it comes to bodies and their, you know, [00:39:00] their finding bodies of Hamas fighters, their finding bodies of civilians there. When they see a body which may, for various reasons, doesn't look like it's a body of another Hamas fighter or just an ordinary, uh, garrison, They'll, they'll try and look, look for traces, which will indicate that this may be the body of a hostage.
In some cases, bodies will be taken into Israel, uh, for, uh, for an attempt at identifying them. I think that that's, I don't want to go into any further detail because this is very sensitive. We're talking here about families who have been waiting now for almost six weeks for any type of any kind of news about their loved ones.
Beyond that, I probably shouldn't say anything, but it's certainly at the front of the mind of every Israeli soldier and commander inside Gaza. At the highest level of the war cabinet, there is a very big dilemma about how to best [00:40:00] prosecute a war, which you don't, Israel won't have the opportunity to use this level of forces and firepower in Gaza for much longer.
While trying to save a hostages, whether it's saving them by launching some kind of a rescue mission, and there's been so far one such such such mission in which a young woman saw that was saved, uh, and also continuing to negotiate with Hamas as bizarre as it is and trying to reach some kind of agreement to to release some of the hostages.
And that's ongoing. Now we know that David Baron here, the chief of Mossad was A few days ago in, in Doha, in, in the Qatari capital because the Qatari are Hamas' benefactors and, and patrons trying to, uh, uh, negotiate through them and deal. And also the CA, a director Burns was there at the same time. So there's a lot of work going on.
Most of its secret and some of it, which [00:41:00] I do know, I, I probably shouldn't talk about to try and reach some kind of an agreement. You're trying to reach an agreement with an enemy that you're fighting at the same time. It's not a silly, not a simple thing to do. And once again, this is a terrible dilemma.
that the Israeli leadership has right now of how to prioritize, of what to prioritize and how to try and both not hinder the, the war operation and, and, uh, and use it perhaps as a lever to pressure Hamas to, uh, to release as many of the hostages as possible. Final question for you, Anshul. For the military to achieve its objectives, I've been told various things from it needs a few more weeks to it needs a few more months, but the U.
S., the United States government has basically said in so many words, Israel has a few weeks at most, even though they haven't said that officially. How do you see these two time fuses playing out? What's your sense when you're spending time with the IDF in terms of how much time they think [00:42:00] they really need for this phase?
So, it's simply a matter of going from street to street, block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, and Destroying the Hamas infrastructure that there is that the more time that they have went that way, the more time that they have to do that once that time is over, it'll mean that X percent of Hamas is networks, tunnels, military infrastructure, whatever, has been destroyed in the northern, uh, in the northern sector of Gaza.
Will that be 30, percent by then? It's just a matter of time. I can't assess and even if I could, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be able to say it exactly what that percentage is, but it's simply a matter of every extra day that the IDF has in there, they're degrading and destroying another chunk of Hamas's capabilities, tunnels, weapons, and also fighters who they are, they still [00:43:00] are.
Um, seeing and killing when they see them. Uh, one thing we have to remember that we're still talking about just one half of the Gaza Strip. It's the bigger half. It's the center. It's the Capitol. It's where Hamas had its main headquarters, but. The question will be once, uh, you know, once this window, uh, of opportunity or window of legitimacy that some Israeli officials have called, have called it, that they're getting from the Biden administration and from other Western allies as well.
Once that that window closes, then the question will be, okay, what about the South? And it's quite clear now that Israel won't be able to operate in this way. In the south of the Gaza Strip, there'll have to be some different type of, more mobile, less boots on the ground operations. Both the fact that there are now twice the number of people there, there are over 2 million people in the small area of the south, and [00:44:00] there'll be less support from the Biden administration for another type of heavy fire power, uh, ground operation will mean that the next stage of this war in the south of, of the of of Ga, of Gaza.
We'll be very different. I can't predict at this point what it'll look like and they'll also have to be at the same time It'll have to also cooperate with some kind of aid relief Operations that the winters begin as already has just begun in this part of the world. You've got two million people there who need shelter need food and water and What's coming in through Egypt is is very far from?
Sufficient, and it can't really be sufficient because that part of Egypt, Egypt's a dysfunctional country. Northern Sinai, which, which is the part of Egypt with borders with the Gaza Strip, is one of the most chaotic areas of Egypt. Mounting a serious relief operation through Northern Sinai is almost impossible.
And Israel, which has so far, since October 7th, said we are not going to allow [00:45:00] supplies to go into Gaza from our territory. It's going to have to make some concessions on that front as well. I'm sure we will leave it there. Uh, thank you for this. This is extremely helpful. It's a, it's a perspective we just, we haven't had, uh, on this podcast.
So hopefully, uh, you were kind enough to call me back and hopefully we can rope you into a, uh, another conversation soon, but we will be, uh, we will be very efficient with your time. Hopefully we'll be able to talk about the, the, the war having ended and, uh, some, uh, clear idea of what's next. Next time that, let's do that next time from your lips to, to Hashem's ears.
May, maybe Michelle will come. Who knows? . Okay. I shall stay safe. Thank you, Dan. Yes.[00:46:00]
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uh, Messiah has not come. He has not come. Messiah will not be crucified. Yes, yes. Messiah will not be crucified. Messiah, Messiah
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