The Rise and Fall of a Hostage Deal - with Nadav Eyal
What exactly unfolded in Israel over the past 72 hours? Details are still emerging, but at one point it appeared that all sides may have been close to reaching a hostage/temporary ceasefire deal. Except that we now know that Israel had made major concessions in one deal, while Hamas was agreeing to an entirely different -- and new -- deal, so there wasn't actually any kind of agreement to speak of. All against the backdrop of the IDF commencing its operation in Rafah. And, what is Israel doing at the Rafah border with Egypt and what are the implications for Israel-Egypt relations?
Our guest is NADAV EYAL, who is a columnist at Yediiot. Eyal is one of Israel’s leading journalists, and a winner of the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s most prestigious journalism award. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. He received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: The Israelis are saying, “we want to stop the war, to pause the war, to get our hostages back, we'll make some concessions, and then we're going to come and kill you.” It's a problem convincing the other side that this is a good way to go. He's saying to the mediators, and to the US, “why should I agree?” And what they're saying, the US is of course denying this, but I guess that what they're signaling is, you know what, after this phase of the war, it's going to be over. So, everyone is trying to cheat the other people in this negotiation to think that the end scenario will be different.
DS: It is 10:30 AM, on Tuesday, May 7th here in New York City. It is 5:30 PM on the 7th in Israel, where I'm joined from Tel Aviv with Nadav Eyal, from Yedioth Ahronoth, to get his latest reporting and analysis, and try to make sense of what has happened over the past very tumultuous 72 hours. Nadav, thanks for hopping on.
NE: Thanks for having me again, Dan.
DS: Nadav, an intense drama has been unfolding in Israel over these, over these past 72 hours. Uh, hostage negotiations off, then hostage deal maybe on, and then it seems like the deal is off, or maybe it was never really on before it was off. And while this story is unfolding, Israel formally commences its operation into Rafah, but now I'm being told that maybe it wasn't - it was informally, already happening, so there's a lot of twists and turns, and we will want to focus on where events go - but before we do, can you just take us through the past 72 hours? We just need to understand how we got, we'll get to where we're going from this moment, from Tuesday, May 7th on, but can you just explain, or try to - a lot of fog for those of us following from afar as to what's been happening over the last 72 hours.
NE: Yeah, so as you said, Dan, it's been very hectic and still there's some sort of fog of war, and fog of negotiations going on, so I'll try to do my best in explaining what we know right now. So we were expecting a Hamas answer in the last week or so, and we knew that a Hamas answer to an initiative that actually began with Israel this time, to somehow reignite the negotiations for a hostage deal. The defense minister Yoav Gallant convened about two weeks ago a meeting, it was near Passover, Pesach, and in that meeting, you had the chief of staff, the chief of the Shabbat, the head of the Mossad, Nitzan Alon, the general responsible for the hostages, and others. And in that meeting the Israelis said, “we need to make an offer to Hamas that they cannot refuse. We just need this offer to be the best we can do. Because, strategically speaking, a hostage deal would be for the advantage of Israel. And if we don't get it right now, the hostages, their lives would be lost. And we're not going to get anything better in the future, in the near future.” And I can start explaining why. I'll just give you one example: Israel is right now starting to be pressured in the international arena to allow the return of Palestinian citizens to the north and to the center of Gaza. Now, the reason that Israel evacuated these people in the first place is the argument that it has military operations there, and during these military operations, it doesn't want to risk their lives. But if Israel doesn't have military operations in central and northern Gaza, and it doesn't in the last couple of months, uh, even three months, or at least not intensive, so what's the argument for keeping them in Rafah? It cannot be punitive, according to international law. It cannot be uh, “no, we're using this as a bargaining chip” and one of the things that were addressed within the Israeli system is that, either you're going to use this as a bargaining chip with Hamas right now, or the international community in the US is going to pressure you anyway to do it in a month or two, and then you lost that routing chip and you're back to square one. And I'm taking this point in to return to where we began with - Israel was waiting for a Hamas answer, and it was waiting for a Hamas answer because the Israeli defense apparatus made a very generous offer to Hamas. But Netanyahu, as always in big decisions during this war, he was very skeptical about the possibility of this offer to pull through, at a certain point he tried to derail it.
DS: Can you just summarize the offer? Can you summarize just briefly what the offer was?
NE: So the offer was, uh, Israel will allow the unscreened, unchecked return of Palestinians from Rafah in the south of Gaza back to their old neighborhoods, and towns and cities, in the center in the north. So they won't be, you know, screened in checkpoints, these people. And if Hamas wants to infiltrate these convoys or these marches of people coming back from the south of Gaza to the center in the north, basically, it can do that. And Israel understood that this is a risk that it's taking by this offer. Secondly, Israel will evacuate almost all its forces from the Corridor, we call it the Netzarim Corridor, that is cutting the Gaza Strip into two, between the center and the north, in which Israel again allegedly cleared out Hamas regiments, and the south. And it will do so in a way that the only thing left would be to say that the war is over. And Israel will not say that. So in that offer made by Israel, Israel said, “we're not going to give assurances and we're not going to say that the war is over because it isn't.” Now, this made the White House and the Egyptians and the Qataris extremely happy. And you heard that in statements made by Secretary Blinken, by the White House, all of them were saying in the last few weeks, specifically in the last two weeks, Israel made a generous offer. Uh, the ball is in the court of Hamas. Hamas got everything it wanted. So nobody was putting pressure on the Israelis, and the Israelis were thinking, you know, “that's the best we can do.” So, Israel with a prime minister that doesn't necessarily want a deal, because it might lead to the downfall of the government. Let's, let's be very clear about that. It's very obvious Smotrich and Ben-Gvir said that, that they're not going to support a deal right now - made an offer to Hamas, uh, through Egypt, through Qatar and through the Americans. They're all very surprised by this offer. There's a consensus within the Israeli defense apparatus, “let's get the hostages back. Even if we surrender these posts within the Gaza Strip, even if we allow the population to return, you know, we can always beat Hamas in a few months, or in six weeks. But these people are dying now.” That was the logic behind the idea within the defense apparatus. And I have to be frank about this. It changed. You know, if you would have talked with the chief of staff Herzi Halevi three months ago, he would have told you, no uncertain terms. We will never leave the Corridor in the center of the Gaza Strip unless the war is over.
DS: I met recently with someone, uh, as you and I were talking offline, I met with someone involved with the hostage negotiations, debriefing the hostages when they returned from, from the, at least from the last deal. And he said two things. He said their view, the consensus view is Sinwar is not going to agree to a deal that falls short of formally ending the war and there being an enforcement capacity for enforcing the end of the war. Which means Sinwar and whatever remains of Hamas still intact, A, B -- that for the Israeli Leadership political leadership within the war cabinet, there's no deal they can accept along those terms. Meaning, that they can give and give and give, they can be generous and generous and generous - but there is a line. And the line is, “we cannot say the war is over.” You know, at the end of the day, if you had to boil it down, that is the um, fault line.
NE: Okay, so Dan, let me pick up from the points you just made and summarize what was on the table. And what was on the table was for Israel to release a thousand or more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. To surrender its posts within the Gaza Strip almost completely, to evacuate almost all of the IDF soldiers within the Gaza Strip, to withdraw from the Corridor that it has taken in the center of the Gaza Strip to allow the return of the displaced persons in the Gaza Strip, from Khan Yunis and Rafah, back to their neighborhoods and towns in the north and in the central Gaza Strip without screening them specifically, you know, in checkpoints. And, in return, 33 hostages, Israeli hostages, were to return back home. This is the first phase of the deal. And that was the Egyptian, American backed, Israeli coordinated offer to Hamas, and we were waiting for their answer. What Hamas did is basically delay, delay, delay, delay, say they have trouble communicating with Sinwar, he is underneath the ground. They always do that, then spread the rumor that they're going to say yes. And then, uh, we're talking today, and last night, they basically said to the world, triumphantly, that they have agreed and they have said yes. And this was aired immediately in Al Jazeera and, you know, across international media and the news bulletins and Reuters and everything. And then the Israelis were just sitting and waiting to see what the answer, you know, how does the answer, is it a yes? And the answer was published, and we know that these are pages and pages of actually a counter offer of sorts. So, they said, in terms of media and communications, we said yes, but what they did is send a new offer that is significantly worse for Israeli interests and for the lives of the hostages. I'll just give you one example. Hamas would not acknowledge that all of the 33 that we're talking about are alive. So what they were saying is, “we're going to get every one of these 33”, but, if they're not going to be alive, some of them, “we're going to return bodies,” but they're not willing to say who's dead.
DS: And they're going to, and they're going to count, they're going to count the deceased as a substitute for someone alive. So it's basically 33 dead or alive.
NE: Yeah, but, but it's, it's even more than that because they're saying “we're going to have, uh, three back each week for five weeks. Then the other 15, we're going to give you back only after we agree on the beginning of the second phase, which is the end of the war. Yeah. You agree to the end of the war, then we get you the 15, then at the end of the second phase, we get all the rest back.” So it's actually 18. And I can go on and on and on. They're negotiating.
DS: And by the way, these phases, these three phases, so the first one, my understanding, was like 40 days, the second day of pause in fighting, the second phase was 42 days, the third phase was another 42 days. So you're basically talking about almost four months that they want to string this out across the phases of a pause in fighting while they were delivering what was much different than what was originally discussed.
NE: As far as Hamas is concerned, it's not a pause in fighting, because when you reach the second phase, Israel has to agree to the end of the war. And for them, the major concession was that Israel doesn't have to say, before the first phase, that the war is over. So they said basically, “you got what you wanted, you didn't want to state that the war is over, and now we're gonna hammer you with the rest of the terms.” Now the Israelis negotiated with the mediators, and this is you know, strategically speaking, in terms of negotiation, that's always a problem. You know, basically it's like they negotiated with the real estate agent, and the real estate agent was negotiating with Israel, and Israel was compromising on the price again and again and again and again, and that the real estate agent went to the client and the client said, now I'm going to start negotiating. This is what happened here. And some of it is, is on the mediators. So for instance, the Americans here, uh, are being blamed by the Netanyahu government, that they have had some sort of a dirty trick done on Israel because they knew, argued the Israelis, that it's going to be a counter offer and not a yes or a no, and they sort of used the situation in order to pressure Israel. And now Israel has to start from an entry point in these negotiations after it basically gave, as far as it's concerned, everything that it can. It doesn't want to say that the war is over. It's not gonna compromise on the hostages, the humanitarian cases of the hostages, it's definitely not going to say, “yeah, let's discover the day of their return, if they're dead or alive.” That's a crisis between Israel, and another crisis between Jerusalem and D.C. In that sense, you know, Bill Burns, the CIA director, basically said to the Israelis, “look, you know, we got Hamas to give a counteroffer. Because until now, Hamas was just saying, “If you don't commit to the end of the war right now, we're not returning any Israelis.” And Bill Burns says, “there's a breakthrough here.” And the breakthrough is that Hamas is willing to negotiate a deal without the war ending. And that was the position of Hamas for a few months. And now the CIA is saying, “now let's negotiate.” But in the meantime, Israel has already started with the Rafah operation and preparing the Rafah operation. And Israel also thinks that maybe because of that threat of military force, Sinwar was willing to budge. So what you're really seeing here, Dan, is how the Middle East negotiates. The Middle East negotiates by talking, by not being completely frank to the other side at all times, and of course, by using force. Hamas shot, began this round, by shooting mortars with a mortar attack, a massive mortar attack against Kerem Shalom, and that's the humanitarian crossing, from which a lot of the food and humanitarian assistance coming into the Gaza Strip enters the Gaza Strip for the Palestinian citizens. So they shot, and that's, that's an extraordinary attack, uh, for, for this campaign. They shot, you know, dozens of mortars and killed three Israeli IDF soldiers. These soldiers were there in preparation for the Rafah operation. Hamas knew very well, their leadership knew very well, what they were doing, and they knew that this would warrant a response. They did that, and at the end of those 24 hours, they said yes to a deal. So they killed IDF soldiers, said yes to a deal, then it turned out it's not a real yes for a deal. Now the Israelis prepared their own response, not because of that mortar attack: it was the plan to encircle Rafah, to capture the Rafah crossing that is between Egypt and Gaza. And this is where Israeli tanks have been rolling today. In the meantime, Israel is also sending a delegation to Cairo because neither Israel nor Hamas announced while fighting that they have stopped the negotiations to a hostage deal.
DS: I just want to replay the tape, so to speak. What do you think, I just want to drill down, what Hamas was actually - I understand that there's this debate about whether the American negotiators, or the mediators were to blame that they were playing Israel, uh, or it may have just been incompetence. And let's be honest, these negotiations are really complicated to do, because as you said, Israel's dealing with the mediators that it - by the way, the mediators don't have their mediators are dealing with mediators. The US is dealing with Qatar and Egypt who's, and then Egypt's dealing with Hamas and Qatar is sort of dealing with Hamas and then, the ultimate decision maker is Sinwar, and he's in some tunnel and it's hard to reach. And I've heard the stories from some of the negotiators about the process of when, when there's terms sent, then there's days of delay because messages have to be hand delivered. I mean, so this, this is inherently, uh, complicated and, and full of friction. It's like the quintessence of that old game, broken telephone. There's huge potential for broken telephone, the children's game. And so giving the administration, the US administration the benefit of the doubt here, like it is - this is just a hard way to conduct a negotiation. So it may have also just been just complexity and incompetence rather than manipulation. That said, I do want to understand what you think Hamas's play was, in the news that broke yesterday. Because it was, one, to try to get the best deal possible and they let the mediators negotiate with Israel, negotiate with Israel, negotiate with Israel, and then the mediators came with the best deal they could get from Israel, and they presented to Hamas and they said, “okay, now we're going to start negotiating,” as you said, “we'll not, we'll now view the, whatever you squeeze out of Israel is our new floor. That's our new floor, and now we're gonna negotiate above that floor.” So that, that could have been one angle. The second angle could be a public relations play, which is that Hamas has been under pressure for the first time in a long time over the last few days because the U.S. had been saying publicly that what Israel had offered Hamas was a very generous deal, so it was Hamas that was holding up the deal. Everyone was waiting on Hamas. It looked like Hamas was, was, um, was scuttling the deal, or potential for a deal. So suddenly Hamas got to flip the page and say, “No! It's Israel! Now it's in Israel's court. Israel's holding up.” So they got to, so it was a PR play. Or third, it was all an effort to delay The Rafah operation. It - the tanks were lining up, metaphorically speaking. It was clear Israel was moving forward with Rafah. Reservists, I have friends, family, who have been called up. Uh, there was all sorts of chatter in Israel about, Rafah's happening, Rafah's happening. And I think Hamas finally believed Rafah's happening. And the only shot we have at delaying Rafah is if we say, “no, there's a live deal. In fact, we just returned, we accepted the offer.” So is it all of those three things that I just said? Is it, is it, some subset of them? Is it one of them?
NE: It's just one and two. Hamas didn't think they're going to delay Rafah. Let me explain. Hamas knew that in an hour, Israel will discover that they can say yes. It's not number three. It's not that Hamas thought that it's gonna stop a Rafah operation. I think it's much worse in that sense for the Israelis. I think that Hamas wanted for the operation to begin. With these headlines, “Hamas said yes to a ceasefire, Israel attacked in Rafah.” And I think that they got that. I just, I don't think - I saw big news organizations, uh, carrying this headline, and that what Hamas was aiming for because as you said, Dan, Hamas was blamed for not having a breakthrough for weeks now and suddenly Israel is attacking. So instead of Israel saying, “look, we have made them the best offer possible and now we have absolutely no other choice,” which is by the way, what they said to the Americans, and what they were saying to the public, uh, but they were not saying this as clearly enough, I think to the international community and definitely not publicly to the media. They got a spin. Hamas was spinning this. Now, is this a yes, but that is intended to kill the deal? I don't know. Nobody knows. And that's one of the problems with Hamas. And there's also a difference of opinion sometimes between the foreign international Hamas, uh, Ismail Haniyeh, and between Sinwar -
DS: Um, Nadav, in the few minutes we have remaining, what is your analysis of where things go from here?
NE: Well, first of all, Israel is going to continue the Rafah operation, and it's going to escalate if Hamas is not going to agree to some kind of deal. I don't know if that is working as leverage on Hamas, but Israel doesn't have any other tools within its power. So it's using this one. So at the beginning, this operation right now is encircling parts of Rafah. It's still not a total blockade of Rafah. Secondly, Israel will allow civilians to leave Rafah to the north and to the west to an area called the Moassi, where I have to say, I've seen the humanitarian plan that was presented to Secretary Blinken. I have to tell you, Dan, you know, I don't think that people appreciate the amount of time, money, and effort put by international organizations, by the U.S. government, by the Israeli government, by the Emirates, by the Egyptians, and by other groups - in order to, to have there some sort of a solution for possible displaced persons coming from Rafah. But it's a huge undertaking there. Uh, you know, from water pipes and, uh, over 200,000 tents that entered the Gaza Strip. And Israel making sure that hospitals will be rebuilt, including the Nasser Hospital there. And many other things that have been happening in the last two months, all coordinated with international aid groups and with a daily meeting of the U.S., Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority sometimes, in order to coordinate this kind of areas for humanitarian Corridor for Rafah, displaced persons that are going to come there because of the Israeli operation. And now, the Israelis will continue their operation. They have the Philadelphi Corridor. They have the encirclement of Rafah, and then they have places that are strongholds of the Hamas within Rafah. One of them is called Tell es-Sultan, and there are others that are direct ends. These are urban areas. Coming into these areas, will most definitely would be much more difficult and it will be difficult defending the local civilian population. And what the Israelis are saying is that: “this Rafah operation is ongoing until we get a deal. Whether or not we do get a deal, that really depends on Sinwar.” I've spoken with some Palestinian sources in France, and people that also speak with Hamas, almost everyone thinks, including the mediators, that Hamas should just have taken the Israeli offer. Because the Israeli offer was surprising even for the U.S. administration that is very critical of the Netanyahu government. The Israeli offer basically said, you know, you're going to get everything you bargained for, just not a formal declaration that the war is over, and, uh, you're going to have a victory, uh, photo, of the civilians returning to the north. The IDF pulling back from the Gaza Strip, and we're going to get our hostages. And the fact that Hamas decided to play with this and give this kind of counteroffer and start negotiations all over again, that might lead you to the conclusion that they don't want a deal at all, which is what the person you spoke with earlier and you quoted, Dan, was saying to you. And to an extent that is because many Israeli sources, intelligence sources are saying, look, uh, Sinwar is looking at this condition. What is he seeing? He's seeing that the Israeli society is now divided. It was once, you know, four months ago, five months ago, it was united in support of the war. Today, I just saw a new poll by a think tank in Israel, the JPPI, saying for the first time, majority of Israelis don't think that we're winning or going to win this war. So hope for a victory is to an extent fading. They saw five months ago, the US administration in full support of Israel. Today, it's not the case anymore, and he sees the American election in the way that they're influencing the Biden administration's policy, and of course, my friends in the Biden administration would say, “no, you know, there's no connection between the elections and what we're doing in the Middle East,” and people can choose to believe that or not believe that. Then he sees that there's Saudi Arabia, in the corner. So he gets promised by the U.S. administration and again, I have no idea why it's made so public that if we'll have a ceasefire, then there's going to be a Saudi initiative and there might be normalization with Israel.
DS: So you're saying Sinwar is looking at this saying, “at the end of this process, Saudi could normalize with Israel. That is one of the reasons we launched October 7th. So the last thing we're gonna do is seal the deal to complete a process that will result in the one thing, or one of the things, we wanted to obstruct.”
NE: Well, that's one of the reasons. I'm not saying that he's gonna not go for the deal for that, but if you sort of measure what's driving him, what could drive him to get a deal… so there's some pressure from Qatar, and that's, that's meaningful. But the things that really worry Sinwar are these - for instance, the PA taking control of the Gaza Strip, the PA and Fatah becoming much stronger in the Palestinian society, Israel getting a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, of course, him getting killed. Okay. And the Hamas leadership gets killed somehow by the IDF forces. These are the things that he really fears, or he should fear. And all of these things are right now not on the table. Till now, the Israelis have failed in finding him. I'm not blaming our security services. It's, it's a tough, it's a difficult job and every American knows that. The US had tremendous resources in order to find and kill Osama Bin Laden, and it took many years to do so. But because of all these parameters that I mentioned, for him, the war is going better today than it did a few months ago. So as far as he is concerned, why should he go for a deal now? Unless he knows that this would be the end of the war, and that's the only driver, Dan. And that's the crux of the matter, because the Israelis are saying, “we want to stop the war, to pause the war, to get our hostages back. We'll make some concessions and then we're gonna come and kill you.” It's a problem convincing the other side that this is a good way to go. And I'm for, of course, I'm an Israeli. I want us to convince him to do that. But he's saying to the mediators, and to the US, “why should I agree?” And what they're saying, the US is of course denying this, but I guess that what they're signaling is, “you know what? After this phase of the war, it's going to be over. They're not going to go to a full blown operation. Let them climb off the tree. Let them, let the Israelis climb off the tree, release their hostages, let them pull out of the Gaza Strip, and everything's going to be different.” And the mediators and the U.S. might give him the impression that the war is over without Israel saying that. So everyone is trying to cheat the other people in this negotiation, to think that the end scenario will be different. But now, let's be frank about this, because we're talking in a podcast, and we're not the mediators. Basically, no Israeli government will allow a Hamas regime to return to the Gaza Strip, the way that it was in October 7. There's not going to be a return to the normality of a Hamastan in the Gaza Strip with Netanyahu.
DS: But nor will there be with Gantz or with, or with Gallant or Lapid.
NE: I tend to agree. It's, it's going to be like, look at Nasrallah, Nasrallah is there.
DS: That's true. For our listeners, he's the leader, Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of the, of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
NE: Well, basically he is still in a bunker. Ever since, you know, 2006, the second Lebanon war, Nasrallah is living in a bunker. He's not showing his face, you know, outside of the bunker. It's no scenario, because he knows that Israel is going to kill him. The idea that these things will change and the war will be over and Hamas will rule the Gaza Strip. It's very difficult to convince you about Sinwar, because Sinwar understands, he, he reads Israeli press, you know, he, he goes on our websites, he understands Hebrew perfectly, he, he knows the Israeli culture, he served time, years on years in Israeli jails, uh, he studied there. He understands the Israeli society and he understands that Israel has no intention to do so. And because of this, this is a war of attrition for him. It's going to take a very long time until the Israeli public will say, you know, enough with this. And that's his hope. And because of this, it's a difficult set. It's a difficult set. You know, Israel is saying, “First phase: get our hostages back, and six weeks of quiet. Second phase, we're gonna kill you. Or, we're gonna release the rest of our hostages, and thousands of Palestinian prisoners, then we're gonna kill you.” And there's a way out. And the way out was discussed in the War Cabinet, and Netanyahu is open for that way out, and I'm saying this again in this podcast, again, because that's the only way out that I see. Israel or Israeli senior officials are willing to offer the Hamas leadership a safe exit of the Gaza Strip as long as the Israeli hostages come back home. So these people are going to get, unlike Osama Bin Laden, an immunity, and they can go to a third country, a country that was, by the way, offered is South Africa. Uh, I think the South African government would probably be really happy to have the Hamas terrorist organization leadership staying there because they've been so supportive of Hamas since October 7th. And the Israelis are willing to make that offer, with assurances, for the end of the war. The war can be over in five minutes. Hamas leadership needs to leave the Gaza Strip. Hostages are back. Palestinian prisoners will be released. That's the end of the war. This was discussed in the war cabinet as far as I know. The Prime Minister is not ruling this out. And I would say more than that, the Prime Minister would be happy, I think, I believe, to have this kind of solution. But other than that, it's a problem getting a deal. So you can get a half baked deal in which Sinwar believes it's the end of the war and Israel believes it's just a phase, a stop in the war, to get the hostages back. And that's what everybody is trying to convene the parties, the two parties, into. And whether or not the two parties will believe that, that's a big question.
DS: My last question for you, Nadav, just because it's gotten some - we've talked to, we've sort of alluded to it, but I just, I just want to put a fine point on it, because it is new and in the flurry of news, what Israel is doing in Rafah right now in terms of cutting off the crossing from Egypt, it's the first time that we've seen, obviously Israel have to be very careful about the conflicting with Egypt and the Egyptian military as it goes right up there against the Egyptian border, but it is really trying to shut off at least the above ground passages, pass, uh, corridors from Egypt into Rafah. Can you just explain why this is so important? Because Egypt just has not gotten, I believe, sufficient focus and attention during all of this.
NE: Well, uh, it's, it's important because most of the smuggling into the Gaza Strip and most of the buildup, the military buildup of Hamas, has been done through the Egyptian border. And one of the things that most people abroad don't understand is that Gaza is not encircled by Israel completely, but has its border with Egypt and the Rafah crossing. And when Palestinians from Gaza, under the Hamas rule, wanted to travel abroad, they could do that, and they did that through the Rafah crossing, which is controlled by the Egyptians. Now, any operation in that area, in the border between Israel and Egypt, or Gaza and Egypt, is sanctioned by the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt. Nothing in these areas happened without Israel talking with Egypt. And Egypt, although most of the smuggling to Hamas came out of Egypt, much of it was during the time of the Muslim brotherhood controlling Cairo. Okay? After the the Arab Spring. And Hamas enjoyed those for many years, and it enjoyed smuggling routes along the border, and one of the ideas, from the beginning of the war, is that, in order to strangle the power from Hamas, you need to take these areas and to control these areas on the border of Egypt. The only question, Dan, is why didn't Israel do that before? The fact that it has worked its way from north to south was something highly criticized by members of the war cabinet, by generals within the chiefs of staff, and from without the chief of staff, former generals, because they said there's nothing surprising about the Israeli operation. And one of the things that they said from the beginning: you need to capture the southern parts of the Gaza Strip towards the Egyptian border, the Philadelphi Corridor, the Rafah Crossing, in order to make sure that, for instance, they don't smuggle out hostages. That was always an option, that they'll smuggle out hostages, somehow to Egypt, then transfer them somehow to Iran, and then you'll never know where they are. This is something that worried Israel at the time. At any rate, this is the reason that Israel is acting now. It should have done so probably much before that but it was complex, and it was complex because Egypt is Israel's most important ally in the region, and it's very reliable. And I think this is a take home, it's, it's a very important take home message, um, about Egypt. Look, yeah, Egypt is not an easy counterpart. It's not an easy ally of, of Israel, but it is a true ally in the sense that Israelis and Egyptian officials and military, uh, officers, they speak every day. And a few times a day they coordinate everything and they have the same aim. The Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy to the Egyptian regime. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. This basically sums it up, and the Egyptians, no one in the region, would be happier if we would have ridden Gaza of Hamas during this war than the Egyptians. The Egyptians would be overjoyed. Of course, they would not say that. They would attack Israel for the humanitarian crisis. They actually condemned the Israeli operation in Rafah today. But, as always in the Middle East, what people say is not what they think, and what they think is not how they usually act. It's completely separated, and that's the case in the Israeli Egyptian relations that are really - it's a honeymoon, in the last three years, with this president, and the security coordination between the countries is almost perfect at this point. Now, if Israel makes a mistake during the operation vis a vis the Egyptians, they'll be held to pay, because you don't mess around with Egypt. And the Egyptians have made sure that Israelis know that they will not allow one Palestinian displaced person from Rafah to cross the border. And the day that will happen… so there are very clear lines. We are frank with each other. And at the same time, you know, in Cairo, there's the negotiations. And there, the Egyptians are playing their games in order to, to get what they want. And what Egypt wants is what the region wants is what the White House wants. There is a coalition here, an international coalition, that wants to stop the war. That's the truth. The White House wants this war to stop, Egypt wants this war to stop. The Emirates want this war to stop. Now, of course, they want Hamas beaten, or all of these elements that I've just mentioned. But all of them are saying the same thing, they're saying, you know, “you got your time, you got what you got. And now we need to somehow move on, and if you have a plan for Gaza, let's see the plan for Gaza. But, right now we don't want this to continue and sort of pollute the air of the region” in a sense of leading to Jihadi and other resistance rising against different moderate regimes across the region. In the case of the United States, of course, it has tremendous meaning for its standing in the world, standing in the Middle East, and the US 2024 elections.
DS: Nadav, I said last question, but now is really the last question. Just cause you're, you're touching on something that I have felt for some time. The U.S., and let’s call it the quote unquote “international community” has wanted this war to stop a while ago. To me, the big turning point, at least from the U.S., is early March. March 7th is President Biden's State of the Union address, where he says things, and criticizing Israel, that he had never said before. March 14th is Senator Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor, where he listed, as though they were equals, in terms of the obstacles to some kind of peace in the region - co-equals, whereas Netanyahu and his government and Hamas. March 25th, the UN Security Council votes 14 to nothing, the uh, White House, the administration does not veto it, effectively it abstains, which is equivalent of greenlighting it, a resolution calling for a ceasefire that for the first time does not condition a ceasefire on release of the hostages. And at the same time, you have European countries and Canada around this time calling for an end to arms sales to Israel. So the pressure is mounting on Israel. Pressure is mounting, pressure is mounting, and you see, and then obviously since then, we've seen the college campuses light up in the United States. And we, we can go on and on and on with, with all the, there's just actions in Congress, 80 plus Democrats writing in the house, sending a letter to Biden, uh, basically saying that, that the, the Biden administration has to make sure that Israel is complying with the laws of war, quote unquote, all the emphasis is upon Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel. Do you think that has led to Hamas and its negotiating position to be more obstinate, and that had this, this sort of almost two months of just, virtually, virtually singular pressure on Israel, not been the case, Hamas may have not hardened its position as much as it has?
NE: Yeah, I think the answer is yes. I think that I can see why the White House didn't want to sanction a Rafah operation as far, as they are concerned. For them, they don't understand what Israel is doing long term. There is no plan for the Gaza Strip. There are more than 30,000 Palestinians who have died, uh, according to what Hamas controlled-
DS: Ministry of Health.
NE: Yeah. For them, I can understand why they're saying, “Look, if we would have told Netanyahu and Hamas, yeah, go for Rafah in order to pressure Hamas to agree to a deal, Netanyahu would have gone to Rafah and not would have gone to a deal.” That's basically, uh, people in the administration would tell me that, you know, when I speak with them -
DS: That’s what they think.
NE: That's what they speculate. And the problem, Dan, is that many in the Israeli public think that too, you know, there's a wide distrust of Netanyahu within the Israeli public, within the families of the hostages.
DS: But both things can be true is my point.
NE: Yeah.
DS: In other words, it is true that Hamas's position has been hardened, and it's true that many in the administration speculated that Netanyahu needed to be slowed down on Rafah. I don't agree that he should have been slowed down on Rafah, but I'm just saying.
NE: No, they just don't think that they could coordinate with Netanyahu on anything, because they don't believe him, because he's not trustworthy, because you cannot work with them, because if you try to manipulate with him, Hamas, then he'll use this against you. And you know, I know that many of our listeners, uh, might, might think, you know, Netanyahu as a Prime Minister of Israel is very experienced, but he doesn't have a good experience with any U.S. administration. And whoever wants to read more about that is more than welcome to read Donald Trump talking about Netanyahu in the last interview, Bill Clinton is talking the same and Barack Obama is talking the same. And now we have Joe Biden, the Zionist. He's saying the same things. So maybe the problem is not, is not necessarily with them. But let's leave that aside. I'm turning back to the U.S. administration. Okay, so you cannot pressure by letting Israel be more aggressive militarily. So how are you going to pressure Hamas? What's going to be the alternative? How are you going to leverage the fact that you're a superpower, in order to pressure this terror organization to release some of the hostages, some of them Americans. What's the other alternative? By saying, “we need to get a deal, you know, at any price.” They didn't say at any price, but the signal coming from DC was “at any price, we need to get that deal.” They actually said to Hamas, “you're going to get everything you're bargaining for.” And that's very dangerous when you deal with the sorts of Yahya Sinwar. And you, we just saw him saying this. Saying, “yes”, and then saying, “actually, it's a counteroffer and and no one will return if you don't accept our ultimatum,” basically. So that's the problem. The problem is not that the White House said, “No, we cannot allow you to be more aggressive. You have been, you have fought this war enough, as far as we are concerned on the ground. And you also don't have a plan.” I can see their point there, “and we don't want to play along with Bibi.” Okay, I can see their point. I might not agree, but I can see their point. The problem is, okay. And now what are you going to do? You're just going to shout at Bibi, “we need a deal?” You're going to say on the record, “we must have a deal. A deal is our only option.” How are you going to put some pressure on Hamas? And they don't, they didn't have an answer to that. They don't have an answer to that, even today. And again, to be honest and fair about this - when you're trying to pressure a terror organization that doesn't care about the death of its own people, and with its leaders hiding in tunnels, while their folks are getting killed above ground, it's very difficult to pressure them. So, for instance, one of the things that the US should have done, like months ago, is to tell Qatar, “Expel the Hamas officials,” you know, what's the big deal? They're living in hotels anyway, there. You know, just expel them immediately. They'll be able to return after the hostage deal. Nobody cares. Why not? Why not say that to Qatar, that has the biggest military base of the United States, I think, in the region, if not in the world outside of the United States. Why not say other things to Qatar? Maybe Qatar has absolutely no sway on Hamas, but why shouldn't you at least try being more aggressive about this with Qatar? Why not give Hamas the impression, not by military means, that they'll have much more to lose, if they don't agree to a deal now. And I think that to a large extent, it's because of domestic politics. That's the truth. And because this war has become superbly unpopular, within Democrats and Independents, Staffers, DC in general. And because of that, the White House wants to take a step back from this war.
DS: And I know from folks I talked to in the administration, that the camp, college campus protests have taken everything you've just described and taken them to another level.
NE: In what ways?
Ds: All the pressure that they, that you're describing, from their ecosystem: advisors, staffers, activists, activists, political activists, and key battleground states in the presidential election. And now the campuses.
NE: But didn't it backfire for them?
DS: For who? I, I, I think, I think the administration sees that, I know, I mean I've been told that the administration sees that, many of the administration, they just want it to go away. They want the protests and the chaos, which is ultimately calling on the U.S. administration to change their approach to supporting Israel in this war. Which is so ironic, because Hamas, as we're talking about, has interpreted the last two months as the U.S. backing off, to some degree, in its support of Israel in this war. But the campus protests are a hysterical voice for a complete U turn in U.S. policy. So they see the pressure on the U.S. administration growing, not quieting down. And they see that going from the U.S. campuses, to the Democratic Convention, this summer in Chicago. I mean, they just see there's no, so I'm meeting you at your point and saying, from the administration's perspective, things have only gotten worse for them on this front. In terms of the pressure they're under here.
NE: They want this to go away. And there is a coalition here that wants it to go away, and there's only one country in the world that's saying, you know, “we need to keep this war going until Hamas is overthrown.” And that country is, of course, Israel.
DS: Right.
NE: And that's a difficult spot, and I just want to leave you with one last thought about that. Um, and it's a thought, it's not really not a suggestion. I don't know, you know, if the Israelis would have said, yeah, it's an end to the war, and tomorrow morning, they would not allow Hamas officials to run out free in the Gaza Strip, but they would say, “yeah, yeah, it's an end to the war. No problem.” Then in a year, or 10 months, or after the U.S. election, they would have seen a buildup of terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, who would relaunch an operation in Gaza. Would that be, you know, a huge surprise to anyone in the region? I don't know. So how much of it, of this, is political theatrics in the region, between the two sides, you know, declarations and assurances and everything. We have seen these rounds, coming again and again, and how much of it isn't? And if indeed the idea is to overthrow Hamas, why aren't we doing this in the areas that are after Rafah, that we have taken care of, like Beit Hanoun, uh, Beit Lahia, the areas that the IDF already won over? What's the horizon there? And I think that in that sense, the lack of any other vision to the Gaza Strip, “we're going to beat Hamas and then dot, dot, dot.” That’s a deficiency in the Israeli strategy here, and everybody knows it. And that's a weakness for us in the argument that the war needs to continue. And I'm saying this as someone who thinks that Israel needs to fight against uh, military of Hamas and to disintegrate this threat on Israel.
DS: Nadav, thank you. We will leave it there. I will be calling you back, both to check in and for, uh, another online formal episode check in. Uh, but until then, thank you for the, um, the quick turnaround on this update.
NE: Thank you so much, Dan.