SPECIAL EPISODE: Gallant Strikes (Again) - with Nadav Eyal
Last night, Israel time, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant took the exceptional step of publicly declaring his view that the current war trajectory is leading to one of two scenarios in Gaza: Hamas rules Gaza OR the IDF rules Gaza - both, Gallant says, are catastrophic outcomes.
Gallant set an ultimatum for Prime Minister Netanyahu by saying that he would oppose Israeli military rule in Gaza, signaling that this is his red line and he blamed Netanyahu for what Gallant believes is a lack of a post-war plan.
In this special episode, we asked Nadav Eyal to: A. Analyze Gallant's dramatic speech. B. Discuss what this means for the war, and C. Where this could lead politically.
NADAV EYAL 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: What Gallant is showing in these actions is a lot of political courage, and he gives the impression of a person that has no political calculations because he knows to an extent that his career is over. This kind of person in the political sphere can be extremely dangerous for the leadership of the Prime Minister.
DS: I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Nadav Eyal from Yediiot, for a special time sensitive episode. We are dropping this outside of our normal schedule. Earlier this morning, really early, we released an important episode with Dr. Tal Becker. And I just want to urge everyone who hasn't listened to that episode with Tal Becker to be sure to do so. It's an extremely insightful episode in its own right. In fact, Nadav, you know Tal.
NE: Tal Becker is really one of the finest people who ever served in the Israeli foreign office, and he did an incredible job in The Hague, talking with the ICJ, as you discussed in that chapter, Dan, and I think it's an incredibly insightful piece and I urge everyone to listen.
DS: Thanks. I agree. He's an incredibly thoughtful guy and look forward to having him back on. Nadav, the news broke yesterday with Defense Minister Gallant's speech. It was last night, Israel time, that he dropped, you know, it was a little bit of a, uh, a political earthquake. We can discuss, debate whether or not it actually is, at the feet of the Prime Minister, saying that the current trajectory that Israel is on, with regard to Gaza, is leading to one of two scenarios. One is: Hamas continues to rule Gaza, so it is, you know, kind of Hamas-stan, some version of what existed before October 7th, or, Israeli military rule for the near medium term, perhaps even long term, some form of military occupation or reoccupation, which is what I was pressing Prime Minister Netanyahu on in our conversation that we recorded on Sunday. And according to Gallant, both of these are unacceptable. And both of these scenarios would be catastrophic politically and would be catastrophic from an Israeli security perspective. And so it appeared that Minister Gallant said an ultimatum to the Prime Minister by saying that he, Gallant, would oppose Israeli military rule in Gaza, and signaling that it's his red line for him. He was quite critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu for what he argues is a lack of a post war plan. So what I want to do with you Nadav is A, analyze Gallant's dramatic speech. What did he actually say? And B, discuss what it means for the war. And then obviously, what all this means politically. So let's begin with setting the table because I think a lot of our listeners don't know much about Minister Gallant. So who is he? And can you explain his relationship with the Prime Minister and inside the war cabinet?
NE: So Yoav Gallant is a known general in Israel. He began his military career serving in the Israeli commando unit, an elite unit, and he continued on to be in senior positions within the chiefs of staff, including the general responsible for the southern part of Israel, including the Gaza Strip. One of his most important jobs was to be the military secretary for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time. So he spent a lot of time with Ariel Sharon, and I think that it influenced Gallant in his strategic mindset. At any rate, he wasn't nominated as the chief of staff, and then he retired from the army naturally, and then he became a politician within the Likud. In December 2022, he was nominated as the defense minister of Netanyahu in this government. And this is probably one decision that this Prime Minister really regrets. Because almost immediately after, it came clear that this new government by Netanyahu is going to engage with the judicial overhaul, or what many would say the judicial ‘coup’, would change the nature of Israeli democracy. Some would say would destroy the three branches of government the way that we knew it since the establishment of Israel. And almost immediately after, he objected to the plans that were suggested by the government to the judicial overhaul. And in a famous speech, in March 2023, he said to the Prime Minister that he thinks that this jeopardizes Israel's security, going through the judicial overhaul. And the reason for that was the protests that were seen within the reserve IDF people, and the way that these demonstrations were being seen by Israel enemies. So one of the things that happened during those months is that the Israeli intelligence branch warned the Prime Minister that, looking at these demonstrations in Israel and the way that the Israeli society was torn, Israel's enemies are seeing a historic, that's a quote, a “historic opportunity” to strike Israel and they are seeing it as exceptionally weak. This puts us in danger. These are three or four letters sent by the intelligence branch, directly and only, to the Prime Minister. Now Gallant saw these letters because he's the defense minister. He's the minister responsible for the army. Then in March, 2023, he gives a famous speech, part of Israeli canon history right now, in which he tells the Prime Minister, tells the public, that we should pause with the judicial overhaul because it might risk Israel's security and our enemies might take advantage. Now, this speech was, of course, in direct negation with the policy of the government and of Netanyahu himself. And the result of that speech is that 24 hours later, the Prime Minister fired Yoav Gallant from his position as the defense minister.
DS: But then never really fired him.
NE: He never really fired him because that night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in a public show that was never seen in the history of Israel since probably the UN decision in 1947 - you have never seen so many people in the street, not called for by any party. People were just - I was there - people were just drawn to the streets. I remember that feeling, I wrote about that feeling, about looking at my children sleep at night, hearing that the Prime Minister just fired the defense minister for voicing his professional opinion, and this person is a general and Israelis just streamed to the streets and by morning, by dawn, it was clear that the judicial overhaul is dead. Because this was a civic mutiny of sorts. So even Aryeh Deri, the leader of Shas and others said, ‘pause it. You need to pause it right now.’
DS: Deri is a key ally of Netanyahu in the government. He also has a role in the war cabinet and the fact that he even said pause it.
NE: And of course the general union in Israel, Histadrut, together with the employers, I think it's the first time in any Western country … the employers, the banks, the factories and the union, that night, decided on a general strike. So this was, you know, a revolutionary moment. And the reason I'm mentioning that is that every time that you have Gallant, that now Netanyahu had to cancel, you know, firing him because of this amazing response.
DS: Gallant, when Gallant speaks, people pay attention because he has this - and it's also important that even though he fired Gallant, then I understand, according to Israeli rules, when a minister is called to step down, there's a letter that the Prime Minister has like 48 hours or something to actually sign the letter of him stepping down. And then Netanyahu never signed or issued the letter, which was his way of kind of keeping Gallant in his seat because he knew that could kick off a whole set of steps. So the point is, Gallant has a lot of stature, and it's sort of an outsized role, let's say, at least in this government. Which is, I just want to explain why him speaking out is so much more significant than another minister speaking out.
NE: Of course. And one of the things that happened with him is that he showed something that doesn't exist within the Likud, and that's the ability to resist Netanyahu. And to do that, in a very, an extremely politically efficient way. Although he doesn't seem or talk like an experienced politician, he is an experienced politician. And he gives the impression of a straight shooter, which he is. And he's also very aggressive, militarily speaking. So nobody basically can say, ‘Oh, he's a lefty.’ And that's a powerful position within the Israeli cabinet. Now, Gallant again, and again, has different opinions about the war other than the Prime Minister and now he's the most powerful minister in this government because he is responsible for the entire defense apparatus, and the defense apparatus is the most important thing when you run a war. Now the defense apparatus is also, to a large extent, it has this animosity between generals of the IDF, between the Shin Bet, sometimes between the Mossad, and between the Prime Minister. And these feelings are mutual from both sides. The Prime Minister blames the IDF and the Shin Bet for not warning him, not waking him at night, at the night between the 6th and the 7th of October. Uh, he blames them for not trusting him. And on the other side, you know, the IDF, the defense apparatus, see the Prime Minister as being completely extorted for political reasons. And because Gallant is managing to consolidate the defense apparatus opinions on things such as a hostage deal, or should we or shouldn't we accept the first deal that Israel had with Hamas, or how the operational plan to beat Hamas will actually be handled. And he manages to do, you know, to have their consensus. Then when he comes to the cabinet, when he comes to the Prime Minister, there's not much that the Prime Minister can do. And I think I explained this on your show. In Israel, the Prime Minister is not the chief of staff of the army, unlike the President of the United States. In Israel, the Prime Minister cannot nominate generals. And in Israel, you don't have a powerful National Security Council. So you don't have those really smart people that you always had in the United States, either in the Pentagon or the RAND Corporation or people like Robert McNamara. This can never grow in a country like Israel. Everything is based on the army, or people who served in the army, in top brass positions. And because of that, Gallant is extremely powerful at this point of his career. We're running a war for a long time. He seems independent. He's responsible, of course, for October 7th. And he himself gave the impression that he would take responsibility for that, that he's not going to stick at his position after the war. That's, that's the kind of signal that he's been radiating. And now comes the entire argument about the fate of Gaza and the day after. And this is where we are at last night.
DS: Okay. So let's start with Gallant and why he believes that the war is on track to produce some kind of reoccupation, militarily, of Gaza.
NE: So, what Gallant did is basically, as you said, Dan, make an ultimatum to the Prime Minister, and he knows that the Prime Minister is not going to fire him during the war. Because he's so powerful and because the Prime Minister is very fearful of the public response to that. That ultimatum was: ‘make your position clear as to the day after in Gaza and make clear that you do not support a full occupation and governing of Gaza, and the Gazan people, the Palestinians living in Gaza.’ And the reason he did that is basically to take a discussion that's being held behind closed doors, or not held at all, because the Prime Minister would not, would not have that discussion. He talked about that in your podcast, about what's going to happen afterwards in Gaza. And he made that discussion public. And that was the aim of his speech. He basically said, ‘Hey, Bibi, you're not willing to have a cabinet meeting about the future of Gaza? You're not willing to discuss the proposals that we at the Defense Ministry or the IDF are proposing, to what's going to happen in Gaza after we occupy the neighborhood of Zeitoun, at the second time, or Jabalia at the third time? You're not willing to make these kinds of conversations within the government? Let's make them public.’ And then he actually laid down an accusation, and that accusation is that the road that the Prime Minister has taken is either leading us to Gaza controlled again by Hamas, because there's no vacuum and they would not be replaced by any other force. So they'll be resurging all across the Gaza Strip. And actually we've seen evidence of that. And the other option is that actually, and that's to an extent very much a conspiracy theory, that the Prime Minister is actually aiming to renew the government, the occupational government of Gaza, that we have seen, until the Oslo Accords, until the beginning of the 1990s, that's a major accusation to be made by a defense minister against his Prime Minister: that you either want Hamas, or you want us to stay in Gaza and rule the lives of Palestinians there, supply them with education, make sure that the garbage is being disposed of, make sure that food is there. And of course, there is a window that if you actually want to govern Gaza, what you really want to do is maybe build, or rebuild settlements there. Now, the Prime Minister has made clear, on November 9, in an interview in Fox News, that Israel has no intention, and I'm quoting, ‘to occupy, conquer, or govern Gaza.’ So he already said that. He said what Gallant is asking him to say. But in recent months, something has changed, and there are some hints that Gallant is right that this idea of actually occupying the Gaza Strip for a long time or for a couple of years, that this is beginning to expand within the Israeli mindset. One of these hints is the fact that the new military secretary of the Prime Minister, a general called Roman Gofman, wrote a document saying that there is no other way to supply security to the Southern parts of Israel. No other way to dispose of Hamas - if you do not rule that territory, at least for some time, and by ruling, I mean, governing it and governing its people.
DS: Now, just Roman Goffman, just, just to be clear, is a general in the IDF. He wrote this paper before he was chosen as military secretary by the Prime Minister.
NE: That's true. And by the way, today he was made general in the Prime Minister's office. And the fact that he is to be the military secretary of the Prime Minister and that he wrote that paper. To an extent tells us that this idea is being talked about. And then, after Gallant made his speech, another Likud minister, Amichai Chikli, wrote a long post basically saying that we should actually consider having, governing Gaza for a specific time. So, what worries Gallant and the defense apparatus is that the reason that Netanyahu doesn't want to talk about the day after is not because he doesn't have a plan, but because he does. And that plan, they fear, is for Israel to reoccupy parts of the Gaza Strip. Maybe not all of the Gaza Strip, only the northern side or the central side of the Gaza Strip. And in these areas, to have full military government like you had until the 1990s in Gaza. And that means that Israel will be responsible for everything in the Gaza Strip. And the reason they suspect, Dan, that this is the true intention of the Prime Minister is because A, He's not advancing any thinking process, any planning process within the defense apparatus as to the future of Gaza. And B, because this is what his allies within the government, who are far right, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, are actually demanding. This is not a rumor or anything. The people who are most important for Netanyahu's political career and survival - their on the record position is that we should be occupying Gaza and reestablishing settlements there. That's the reason that Gallant made that speech.
DS: Okay. There's a lot to unpack here. First, just to inform the discussion, so we can actually understand what is being talked about. How would military rule over Gaza differ from, say, Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon? After the first Lebanon war in the early 1980s.
NE: So first of all, we're talking about much more of a population there in Gaza than we're talking in Southern Lebanon. Secondly, in Southern Lebanon, there was a population that, to begin with, was supportive to Israel. People don't remember that, but when Israel entered Southern Lebanon and Lebanon in the beginning, it was seen as a liberator. I'm talking about the first Lebanon war, because the Palestinian terror groups were taking control of southern Lebanon. So back then, Hezbollah and Amal were not as big as they are now, or became big during the 1980s. So when Israel came in 1982, many local southern Lebanese, including Shia, who were supportive of the Israeli invasion and even threw rice at the Israeli soldiers coming. So, the Gazan situation is completely different, Dan, in that sense. So, you would have to, first of all, make sure that Gaza is a place that you can actually live in. Israel will have total responsibility for clearing the rubble, rebuilding these areas in Gaza, supplying children there with schools and education - do all the things that the military government does. And you know what I'm talking about better than anyone else, because you were involved at the time with the U.S. operations in Iraq, in a senior position, and you know that that's the meaning of international law. You know, if you're occupying this territory, you're responsible, and it's not that you can't collect taxes.
DS: You're responsible for governing it.
NE: Yeah, and governing it in a civilian way. This is very different from Operation Defensive Shield, because in Operation Defensive Shield back at the beginning of the 2000s, because of the Second Intifada, during Ariel Sharon's reign.
DS: So that operation, just for our listeners, was the operation that was conducted in the West Bank after a wave of suicide bombings in major cities throughout Israel, the Second Intifada. And Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister for Operation Defensive Shield. And it was deemed a successful operation.
NE: Yeah. And one of the reasons it was successful is because the Americans basically said, ‘you can fight those Palestinian forces that are fighting you, whether they're Fatah or Tanzim or Hamas or Islamic Jihad, we don't care. And you can go into Nablus, you can go into Hebron, go, go wherever. But the Palestinian Authority stays.’ And the Bush administration was very decisive on this point. And Sharon didn't want them to stay. At the beginning, Sharon, as Prime Minister, wanted to destroy the Palestinian Authority. And they said, ‘no, you want to take out, Yasser Arafat, you can't kill him. But if you want to isolate him,’ which Israel did in the Muqata'a, if people remember that time, ‘you can isolate Arafat, but you cannot destroy the Palestinian Authority.’ And this, in retrospect, was great advice, or actually an order, by the Republican U.S. administration, by George W. Bush, because at the end of the day, Israeli soldiers came into Palestinian cities. They tackled terrorists, then they came back home, then the Palestinian Authority, now weakened, but also to a large extent very much dependent on the United States and Israel, took care of all civil matters. And this is one of the reasons, by the way, it's being accused by many Palestinians in cooperating with Israel and being a vessel of Israel. Something that, for instance, Netanyahu will never agree to, because he says it's a hub of terrorism. At any rate, you can't do that in Gaza for a very simple reason. The government of Gaza is Hamas. So if the IDF comes in and fights the terrorists, then it goes out. All civil operations are held still by Hamas. The only way you can do that is by having a different power within the Gaza Strip to control civil issues - such as education, such as health, everything that is related to the daily life. Collecting taxes - this is crucial, by the way, collecting taxes, and we talked about this on this podcast. And since Israel doesn't have a coherent vision right now to what's going to happen there, it's very plausible that Hamas will remain that power. Because Israel is having, and I wrote it in my column a few days ago, Israelis decided to have a defensive shield in Gaza. They just, to an extent, forgot that in Gaza you don't have the Palestinian Authority to rely on. And when you pull out from Khan Yunis, Hamas reemerges. When you pull out from Gaza City, Hamas reemerges. And one of the arguments made by the Prime Minister, on this podcast, was, ‘first we take out Hamas, then we can have someone else, because no one else will come in if Hamas is not tackled.’ And to that, Gallant is saying, in closed conversations, he's saying, ‘this has to happen in tandem. You can't wait until you take out Hamas. Hamas is not held up only in Rafah. Hamas is everywhere. Hamas is in the Palestinian society. So you need immediately to have, at any place that you took control of, you need to have a different force there.’ And as far as Gallant is concerned, what he actually means, Dan, is to have Fatah and Arab forces in Gaza, trained with U.S. Generals, General Fenzel, who's responsible for the coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. It's a U.S. American general. And he wants basically to have Palestinians and maybe an Arab force there in the northern and central parts of Gaza, heavily trained, armed with weapons, supplied by the United States or other countries sanctioned by Israel, to fight Hamas. This is basically what Gallant wants. Many people in Israel, by the way, not only Netanyahu, think it's a fantasy. They're saying, you know, ‘you try to do that? The best case scenario is going to have a Palestinian civil war there. The worst case scenario, Hamas is going to kill them. And, and you're going to be left with, with nothing and nobody's going to cooperate with that.’ Anyway.
DS: And I might add, it's pretty hard, I think, to persuade those Israelis who have not yet moved back to their homes and communities in southern Israel, to move back a mere kilometers from the Gaza border and telling them, ‘well, we have some third party Arab/Palestinian security force that is in Gaza that will secure the place against Hamas's reemergence.’ I mean, that's, that's not very -
NE: Very true, no not very reassuring.
DS: “But move back two kilometers from Gaza!”
NE: Yeah. To that, I have to say that there is one consensus between Gallant and Netanyahu. Overall security responsibility remains with Israel, at any rate. So what Gallant is saying, ‘let's duplicate the model that we have actually in the West Bank. We have Palestinian police in the West Bank. And we have some sort of a coordination between the Palestinian Authority on a security level and the IDF. Let's have that in Gaza with the Fatah. Maybe not with the Palestinian Authority…’ because the Prime Minister is saying, ‘you know, not with the Palestinian Authority’, and even the President, President Biden is talking about a revitalized Palestinian Authority, although he stopped, you know, making that point in recent months. But he's saying, ‘let's have Fatah still.’ Fatah is, of course, the other party who's fighting Hamas. And every time that the IDF needs to come in, exactly like he does, raid Nablus or Jenin, it will raid in the center part of Gaza. It doesn't matter.
DS: So freedom of movement to go in and out, which is what Israel, as you said, has, that's the, that's the range relationship it has had with the West Bank. It has not had that relationship in Gaza, between basically 2005 and October 7th, 2023 - did not have that freedom of movement in and out of Gaza.
NE: No, it actually didn't have that freedom of movement since 1994, since Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza. These areas were areas that Israelis and Israeli forces very rarely came into, including in military operations, and there was a concept in Israel that, you know, Gaza is completely booby trapped and that you can never do that. Now, Gallant is saying, ‘look, the IDF solved that issue. And now we have that freedom of movement in terms of security. If we know, about, you know, the Hamas regiment that's building up in Khan Yunis or in Gaza city, we're not going to let, you know, Fatah take care of that. We're going to take care of that. But we need a different power governing in a civilian way, Gaza, that’s not us.’ And to that, the Prime Minister again is saying, ‘not now. This is not the time. First, we need to win this thing, then we do that.’ And to that, again, what the Israelis are saying, the Israeli defense apparatus is saying, ‘what does it mean, not now? What are the parameters that you can say, we have won the battle against Hamas?’ So, of course, if Yehya Sinwar comes out of his bunker and he says, ‘I surrender,’ and he gives all the hostages, or he gets assassinated and we free the hostages. Yeah, we have won against Hamas. If he agrees to an exile, uh, as was mentioned, a headline that came from your podcast, by the Prime Minister, that's, again, that's a win for Israel. But if this doesn't happen, until when will we fight this war? And one of the questions that Israelis are starting to ask is, ‘what's the point in coming into Rafah, in the first time, if in a couple of months we'll need to go into Rafah again and again and again? Because we don't have any plan for what's going to control Gaza. And why should we sacrifice the life of our soldiers to do that, if we know that most of the Palestinian population supports Hamas to begin with? Uh, they're not going anywhere. And we don't have a plan.’ And this is something that you see in our letters of mothers to combat soldiers. I'm talking about hundreds of mothers are signing letters: ‘I don't want my son to go into Rafah because I don't understand what's the end game.’ And this is one of the points that's being made by the United States. Now, the reason that the U.S. made that point to begin with was because they thought that they could have a regional political process if Israel would make clear what its intentions are. It's not because the Americans were so steadfast on just beating Hamas. They wanted to have this kind of, a happy end to this story. And one of the things that, you know, the U.S. did do in Iraq, is label this as an operation, Iraqi freedom, right? And Israelis didn't do that. They said, ‘we're going to come and we're going to take care of the terrorists and we're going to kill as many terrorists as we can.’ And they did that. And then what? And this question is, it's just an enduring question that I've spoken about in your podcast, I don't know how many times, and I've been hearing this question since October. And nobody has an answer to. And the Prime Minister is seen as the person blocking the discussion. It's not about him having another plan. It's about him not allowing a discussion to happen. And what Gallant did, he just blew it up.
DS: Yeah, he's forcing a discussion.
NE: And he's forcing it. Whether or not it's going to change something, I'm not sure. Is Bibi going to fire him? Most probably not. Is something really changed? I'll tell you one thing that has changed, and that's going to change everything. Benny Gantz, who's part of this national unity government, this emergency national unity government, took a hard look at that speech of Gallant, and I guess that he was thinking, ‘why isn't this me?’ Benny Gantz is running for Prime Ministership. He has excellent numbers in the polls still, although they have deteriorated a bit in recent months. He's trying to replace the Prime Minister and he is in the Prime Minister's government. He thinks exactly like Gallant. He backed Gallant publicly after that speech and he feels that he's losing his influence and power within the government. He's not a defense minister. He doesn't have a portfolio. He actually joined the government because of the war. In a symbolic gesture, to an extent, and also as a former chief of staff himself. And if Gallant is making this kind of speech and he's part of the Likud, won't you expect from the person who's running for the Prime Minister of Israel to have a different vision to actually present it to the public? And the answer, Dan, is that we're going to see in the next week or so, a speech by Benny Gantz. And that's going to be sort of a time bomb for this government. This government as a national unity government, unless something very dramatic is going to happen, or Bibi's going to change something. And the way that he talks or walks on these issues, this government is going to go down in the next few weeks. And everybody knows that.
DS: Okay. So you're, if you're advising Prime Minister Netanyahu, what are his options right now?
NE: Well, I think that the first thing for him to do is to completely disregard what Gallant said, right? Why does he actually need to change his agenda, because the defense minister called upon him to, to explain this to the public. He doesn't really need to do so immediately speaking. But if you're asking me on a regional standpoint, not on a purely cynical advice, I would say that he needs to make clear what are Israel's intentions. And the reason he needs to make that clear to an extent, for instance, ‘do you, have you changed your mind and you are actually considering military rule of the Gaza Strip?’ A leader during war has to have certain things that are critical to win the war. And the first one of those is of course, the support of the public. You cannot run this war, the longest war that Israel has ever seen since the War of Independence, without having a support, not of 50% of the public, or 60%. You need to have a sort of a consensus. His government is at risk. His defense minister is against him. This US administration, from its own maybe political reasons, of course, the November elections and everything, is very much against the policies of the Prime Minister. Egypt is threatening to downgrade its relations with Israel as a result of the Rafah operation. And nobody knows where he's going with this. So it's not about strategy. It's about having the trust of the public. And one of the things that we simply haven't seen is Netanyahu gaining more trust within the Israeli public. And in order to win a war, your enemy needs to know that the public is behind you. And the reason that we do know that Hamas is being influenced by this is that we know from intelligence gathered in Gaza that Sinwar was incredibly surprised by the resolve of the Israelis after October 7. He miscalculated the Israeli society. He thought that Israelis will never follow Netanyahu to this war. And he didn't understand that Israelis didn't follow Netanyahu to the war. What they did is understand that this is existential, truly existential.
DS: And it wasn't Netanyahu's war. It was Israel's war.
NE: Exactly. And Netanyahu didn't launch the war. Nobody can say that Netanyahu began that war. And because of that, there were things that were greater from politics. And this is something that the leader of a terror organization, he will never understand there are things, you know, with the soul of a nation that are much larger than your own kind of political interest. And this is the reason that the Israeli public has demonstrated this kind of resolve, but to be frank, this has eroded substantially. And we're seeing these demonstrations and mistrust, and now a public mistrust by the person leading the defense apparatus. You need to solve this and you need to tackle this and you need to assume responsibility and say what's your vision - for Gaza, what's your vision for the region or and for Israel. And for that matter, by the way, what's going to happen in the north. And I'd say just all the time, you know, these slogans, ‘we're going to win against Hamas. You know, they're terrorists, they're bloodthirsty terrorists. Um, it's going to be difficult.’ Yeah, people have heard that, but they need more. And if your generals and your defense minister doesn't trust you, that's a problem making that case. Specifically, if you are Netanyahu. Netanyahu has been losing in every poll in Israel since March 2023, much before October 7th. And because of that, my best advice to him is to employ, uh, you know, to, to be much more frank with the public as to his plans. And if he doesn't have a plan to develop one, and if he wants to militarily govern Gaza, well, I don't think that's going to fly because his defense minister said, in no uncertain terms, that that's really important. Gallant said, ‘I'm not going to agree to that,’ which means, ‘If you want to have a military government of Israel and Gaza and control the Gazans, the Palestinians there, you need to fire me first, because I'm not going to give these orders to the IDF.’ That's a huge problem for the Prime Minister, a huge problem.
DS: Before I let you go, and I know you gotta wrap, how does this reshape the political landscape? You talked about Gantz in the next couple of weeks. So just how does this shake things up?
NE: I think that this really makes Gallant much more anxious about leaving government as soon as possible. I think it also, to an extent, makes Gallant a possible opposition to the Prime Minister. I think Gallant is much more of a problem than the Prime Minister has thought. The Prime Minister saw him as a Likud, independent thinker. No, no. What Gallant is showing in these actions is, you know, a lot of political courage. The sort that you don't really see from either side of the political aisle in Israel, or in many other places, by the way. He just - and let me tell you what he says to his friends. He says, ‘I don't care. When October 7th happened, I stopped having political calculations at all. I'm just doing whatever I think is the best thing to do for Israel. And I'm saying whatever I think is the best thing to say.’ This kind of person in the political sphere can be extremely dangerous for the leadership of the Prime Minister, because he's a right winger and because there is a new right wing party boiling and I see a scenario in which we're starting to poll the numbers of Gallant as an independent person running his own party, or maybe leading the right wing party. Nobody wants him there, by the way.
DS: Nobody wants him where?
NE: Nobody wants him as the leader of that right wing party. They're all competing, you know, Naftali Bennett.
DS: Naftali Bennett.
NE: Yossi Cohen. All the rest.
DS: Yossi Cohen.
NE: They all want to be the leaders of that party.
DS: Right.
NE: But if I need to have a calculated guess, who's gonna fetch more seats in the house? Either of these names or Gallant? Today Gallant is going to bring much more, you know, mandates than any of these other people. But at any rate, yeah, this is a destabilizer to the political sphere. It doesn't mean that Netanyahu is going to fall tomorrow morning. It doesn't change anything in terms of the vote count in the Knesset. Netanyahu without Gallant has 63 assured votes out of 120. So -
DS: He can keep his government intact.
NE: Right now, at least. And because of that, I don't see anything immediate happening because of that speech. But I do see Gantz leaving government in the next few weeks and that's -
DS: Could Gallant join Gantz?
NE: Oh, no no. Gallant is going to stay in his position until the Prime Minister fires him.
DS: I understand, but I'm just saying, you're saying he could, in some future permutation, Gallant could be the leader of or part of a new right wing party, or couldn't he also join Gallant? NE: Yeah, I think he, I think he can. Let's remember that Gallant is the defense minister responsible for October 7th. So I don't want to take that weight away from him, and he acknowledges that, and he gives the impression of a person that has no political calculations because he knows to an extent that his career is over. But, you know, politicians are politicians, and generals are generals. And when he starts to see his poll numbers, and his poll numbers, you know, he's polling much better than the Prime Minister, that could really change his mind, and the mind of other people who are saying, ‘hey, we've got this guy who gives a speech and kills the judicial overhaul, and now gives a speech and accuses the Prime Minister, and he manages to survive. He's the strongest person right now in the government besides the Prime Minister. You know, maybe we have here a real leadership alternative model to Netanyahu.’ And I think this thing is simmering right now in the political sphere.
DS: Nadav, we will let you go. Thank you for this. Thank you for your time, especially on short notice. And we'll look forward to talking to you soon.
NE: Thanks so much, Dan. Thank you.