A proposal to end the war? — with Haviv Rettig Gur
Today during one of our regular check-ins with Haviv Rettig Gur, we had some big questions:
I) How is the war actually going? What do we know?
II) Following President Biden’s announcement last Friday, was the proposal he revealed the official proposal that Israel is offering Hamas? And if it is, why did the war cabinet approve it?
III) As for Egypt, do we now have a clearer picture of why Egypt was so hysterically opposed to an IDF operation in Rafah?
IV) And, finally, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been invited to address the U.S. Congress? What’s likely to happen when he comes to the nation’s capital?
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
HRG: It's a problem, this speech. And it's a fascinating problem. Because in theory, Biden has just made the case that the war can't be won. And since the war can't be won, it's time to cut losses and get the hostages out. And Hamas will remain in Gaza. And Qatar and Egypt and America and Europe and who the heck knows who else will come into Gaza, rebuild Gaza, war’s over, Hamas is gone, but is it really gone? We have no idea. We don't know how to get rid of it. Militarily, it's impossible. It's just too much. Let's get it done and let's move on: That seems to be the Biden version of the Israeli offer.
DS: It's 9:30 PM on Sunday, June 2nd here in New York City. It's 4:30 AM on Monday, June 3rd in Israel as Israelis get ready to start their day. I've been long overdue for one of my regular check ins with Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel. So it's a good thing that we spoke today because my questions have been piling up. The big ones are, one, how is the war actually going? What do we actually know about it? Two, following President Biden's announcement last Friday, was the proposal he revealed the official proposal that Israel is offering Hamas? And if it is, why did the War Cabinet approve it? Three, Egypt. Do we now have a clearer picture as to why Egypt was so, seemingly, hysterically opposed to an IDF operation in Rafah? And four, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been invited to address a joint session of Congress. What's likely to happen when he comes to the nation's capital? Haviv Rettig Gur on: A proposal to end the war? This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, a long overdue regular check in with my friend Haviv Rettig Gur. Haviv, how are you?
HRG: I'm good. A little bit on the road, so a little tired, but doing okay. How are you, Dan?
DS: I'm good. I've been busy, but not as busy as you. I'm feeling, I'm getting reminders of, you know, that I'm aging, you know, which I'm sure you're experiencing when you're on the road. The most significant one was, I was at a bat mitzvah a couple weeks ago for some close friends of ours. And I'm always the guy in the Horah who gets the chair and is involved with lifting the chair with, like the bar/bat mitzvah. And putting them up on the chair and I get the chair and they get the whole thing to go. And my two sons come in and say, Hey dad, we got this. And they, and they kind of edged me out of the way, and they lifted up the chair, and I kind of watched. I'm like, wow. I may not think I'm aging, but other people think I am, so.
HRG: You turned a corner.
DS: Yeah.
HRG: I'm so sorry, Dan.
DS: So here we are. Okay, Haviv, I want to - we have a lot to talk about, and we've been talking over the weekend about this Biden speech that occurred last Friday, which we will get into, and the significance of it, and what we actually know about it, and some other news developments. But before we do, I think it would be helpful to just set the stage by describing where we are in the actual war. And then we'll talk about where the Israeli proposal slash Biden proposal, or the Biden telegraphing of the Israeli proposal, whatever we want to call it, we'll talk about where that fits into the bigger picture. But first. Where are we? Where's the war in Gaza?
HRG: The war in Gaza, again, irrespective of the hostage, potential hostage release deal that would bring some kind of a ceasefire, is right now basically happening on two fronts. One is in the north, Jabalia, biggest refugee camp in northern Gaza, massive Hamas fortress, basically, that the Israeli army, as it moved south, just bypassed because it was a, you know, month long battle to clear it out. It's very densely packed with civilians. And now the army has gone back up north to go in. And of course, more famously, the world's not really reported on Jabalia, but more famously, the battle in the south in Rafah, which is really two separate battles. It's the Israeli push to the sea along the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the Gaza Egypt border. And the east to west attacking of Rafah itself, which is to move into the city, clear out the Hamas forces, Hamas tunnels, that east to west push through Rafah is the, I think would be, it would be right to call it the most delicate, dangerous part in terms of Palestinian civilians. That's the piece that you have to move a million civilians to get to. And so that was the part that was a four month debate, basically between the Israelis and the Americans. And that is now in its second week, third week, something like that. And with the exception of two incidents, the fire that the whole world learned about, that killed something around 50 civilians, and one other incident that it's not even clear the Israelis did, but there were some deaths that again, I don't know where the, where the details landed there. It's basically gone well. It's basically, the Israeli army is moving in very, very slowly, building by building, room by room, and pulling up tunnels and detonating them and finding people, Hamas people - that's basically the war. It's Rafah and Jabalia right now.
DS: And just staying on that for a moment: one, for months we were told that Israel can't move a large number of Palestinian civilians safely. We were told that Israel doesn't have a plan, they don't have the capability. No army in modern times has moved that size of civilian population that was so concentrated, so dense, you know, out safely. And the administration kept saying ‘Israel can't do it, Israel can't do it, Israel can't do it’. And then Israel does it. And they move, something like 900,000 people in a matter of 10 days. So, what actually happened there?
HRG: Yeah, it's now over a million. American officials, in their warnings about Gaza, unfortunately, I don't know how else to say it, have demonstrated real lack of knowledge and lack of competence. The Americans and the Israelis, the two national security councils, and, you know, I think you've talked about this recently. They met about six weeks ago and they had this discussion. And in the discussion the talk was, the Americans said, ‘to move, you know, a million people out of the way so you can fight in Rafah will take you four months’. And the Israelis said, ‘it'll take four weeks’. And it turned out the Israelis were padding the time, and just, you know, Rafah is five square miles. In American terms, you would talk about it as a small suburb. How - four months is just an astonishing amount of time to, it felt like, you know, American officials have on their wall a map of Russia and a map of Gaza. And since the maps are the same size, they maybe, in their mind, sort of unconsciously developed a sense of size for Gaza that just doesn't make sense. It's not four months, and the deed is already done. Not only that, but on the issue of moving civilians, one of the really remarkable things in Rafah, everybody's focused on whether the Americans are right or the Israelis are right, and of course it turned out that just logistically the Israelis had a much better sense of how Rafah will go than anything the Americans were saying. By the way, I think that this is a profound critique of the Israeli leadership, because if they'd just gone forward with it three months ago instead of pussyfooting around and waiting while Palestinian civilians live in tents, reliant on foreign aid, and while the soldiers are sitting there in Gaza motionless, and while everybody's, you know, hand wringing and not getting the job done in Rafah so we can turn that page and move on and get to better times. Those three months of delay had no reason, no cause. They were massive American pressure based on deep American misunderstanding. And that's very frustrating to me because the Israelis should have cut through it, you know, four months ago. Putting that aside, one of the really interesting things to come out of this is how willing Palestinian civilians have been to move, to get up and walk, which means two things. First of all, it means they believe that there will be aid where they're going, because the aid has come, and it's massively coming in. The push down the Philadelphi Corridor, down the border -
DS: Just for our listeners to understand, the Philadelphi Corridor is at the border between Egypt and Rafah.
HRG: Right, and that border is perforated by 40 tunnels at least, that have been used by Hamas throughout the war to smuggle weapons.
DS: In the lead up to the war, in the last 15 years, presumably some parts of the 15 years leading up to October 7th - to build, to get infrastructure in, to get cement in, to get supplies, to get RPGs, to get everything.
HRG: Right, well a lot of that came in legally, in agreement with all the various parties and came over the land. But anything that didn't come over land could just come through the tunnels for a little bit of a bribe to the Egyptian officials. And as Israel's moved down to take the Philadelphi Corridor and start to destroy those tunnels, the Egyptians had an apoplectic fit in which they joined the South African ICJ case against Israel for genocide, all kinds of these just, ways that they wanted to make - Egypt, which sat quietly for eight months, now believes there's a genocide, because of the, probably the gentlest and also lowest death toll part of the Gaza war yet, right? It's about them showing Israel their displeasure that they're shutting down those tunnels, which are a major source of corrupt money to the Egyptian military elite. And not just the Egyptian military elite, but also the tribal confederation that the Egyptians have established in Sinai, that basically run the Egyptian side of Rafah. So -
DS: Well, but Haviv, it's not just shutting down that commerce. It's also, I think my sense is what the Egyptians were flipped out about was it also exposed, Israel going in there exposed, what's been going on in the years leading up to October 7th, because Egypt has eluded a lot of the pressure and scrutiny since October 7th of their working relationship with Hamas. They just, they just haven't gotten that much, hasn't gotten that much attention, and makes me now wonder whether or not what Egypt was really worried about was, once Israel shows up in Rafah, it's going to put a spotlight on what's been going on at that border. And again, not just over the last few months, but what's been happening at that border in the years before October 7th, and Egypt suddenly would - it's not a good look, shall we say, as my kids would say, it's not a good look for Egypt.
HRG: I don't know if that's the problem for the Egyptians. I don't know if they care about the look. First of all, because you know, Egypt's not that well run and hierarchical and disciplined of a state. It's basically a failed state at this point in all kinds of really important ways. Economically, the military is living off of an economy, it's basically robbing an economy that's in full collapse. The Egyptian population is growing faster than the food supply can grow with the closure of the Suez Canal to a lot of foreign shipping because of the Houthis. A huge source, something like 40 percent of all foreign income to the Egyptian economy, or at least through the Suez, which was the major foreign currency income to stabilize that economy has disappeared. Egyptian society is slowly Islamizing, female genital mutilation is up to something above 80 percent of the population now, which is a deeply conservative, sort of desert tribal ritual that has moved in from rural Egypt into, into urban Egypt, riding the Islamist sort of infiltration into urban society. We're talking about a country that in every measure is in full blown collapse on the way to becoming like Somalia. And so, the Egyptian anger at Israel overtaking the Philadelphi Corridor has a lot to do with the fact that Egypt is turning into a failed state and the forces that be on the other side are watching their main source of money. Qatari dollars go to Hamas. Hamas buys things through those tunnels. If we're, we take Philadelphi, we cut that source off. The point is that in their anger, the Egyptians did something much more important than accuse Israel of genocide suddenly. The Egyptians actually stopped all aid from coming through Rafah. It's a curious thing that not a single pro Palestinian protester, or government, or official thought that was a problem. But to punish the Israelis, the Egyptians stopped aid to Palestinians. Because the world will come down on Israel, and so the way you punish Israelis is through Palestinian suffering. What's interesting about that is, and shows you how well the war has gone on the ground now in the last few months, or certainly this month, is that that did not affect aid. There's so much aid coming in now and coming in from so many places. There are actually brand new border crossings between Israel and Gaza to facilitate the aid, that Palestinian civilians are absolutely convinced that if they go somewhere, the Israeli army tells them there will be aid there.
DS: Okay. I want to get to the Biden Israel proposal or the Israel Biden proposal. But before we do, just one caveat on that. Everything you're saying makes sense to me except for the reality that we still think there's something like 350 miles of tunnels underground. There are still Israelis being held hostage underground. Hamas knows how to maneuver within these tunnels and can get from one part of Gaza to another part of Gaza in twists and turns underground that the IDF, so far from my understanding, can't really keep track of or make sense of or navigate. So on the one hand, there's this incredible progress that you're describing. On the other hand, there are these structural issues, literally this underground labyrinth, that Israel really doesn't understand and is probably booby trapped to the nth degree, and, you know, Israel doesn't want a situation like it's had, like in Protective Edge, Operation Protective Edge in 2014, where they go down into a tunnel and a lot of IDF soldiers get killed.
HRG: Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers have gone into Gaza, walked through buildings, walked over tunnels. Many thousands, I don't know how many, have gone into tunnels at this point. You have an example from Jabalia, from two weeks ago, as they first went into Jabalia. Very quickly, there were some elite units that went deep into a tunnel. And there was one running gun battle in which the battalion commander of the Khan Yunis Battalion, Hamas doesn't have a whole lot of battalions with command infrastructure still in place, was killed in a running gun battle inside a tunnel. Israeli forces have shown over the last eight months that they are an incredible learning organization. They began the war basically without any clue how to fight it, and that's one of the reasons that Gaza City was such a terrible battle, had such a terrible death toll for Palestinian civilians. Um, and we've talked about this. The Israeli army for basically 40 years has solved every military problem it faced with the air force. And so it tried, it saw these tunnels and it saw the Gaza city problem and it's tried to solve it with the air force. And so you, you had massive bombardment to try to reach those tunnels, at great cost to civilian lives. Civilians also didn't yet understand the Israelis meant it when they said they're moving in. There hadn't quite been an example of the Israeli army moving in, so they weren't quick to leave like they are now. And so, a lot of Palestinian civilians were killed, and the tunnels weren't actually destroyed, because Hamas built them to withstand Israeli aerial bombardment. Within about three weeks, that became clear to the Israeli high command. And a whole new doctrine began to be built in real time as the forces moved through Gaza. So that by the time you got to Khan Yunis, it was a whole different kind of war. These soldiers are maneuvering brilliantly, just in tactical terms, through cities. It's much more of a ground war than it is an air war. Civilian deaths of Palestinians are way, way down. I mean, an order of magnitude lower. And so if you have in Jabalia in the north, over the last two weeks, running gun battles inside tunnels, in which the booby traps don't work, the soldiers know how to maneuver through the tunnels, around the booby traps, through Hamas's traps. We're eight months in, and the IDF has shown how much it can improve, facing a new kind of, you know, battlefield built by an enemy that's very clever and very smart and tried to deny it freedom of action. And it built out a whole new way of acting and operating in order to deal with that. So yes, we still have all these challenges, however many tunnels still exist. We think that we've probably destroyed 40, 50%. So it's just a question of time. Because the IDF is so good at what it does, has shown that it can accomplish the tasks given to it in Gaza, I think that a lot more of the attention now in the Israeli high command, even though now we're going to have a whole hostage release, and that's going to dominate Israeli politics and media. And President Biden spoke about it. The Israeli high command is now focused intensely on the North. The north of Israel, on Hezbollah.
DS: Israel's northern border with Lebanon.
HRG: Right. The military problem of Gaza is basically solved. It's going to be a long time of a long game of whack a mole, like the war against ISIS in northern Iraq was for five years. But we know how to do it. And Hamas has been unable, frankly, you know, we talked about how the Americans thought it would take four months to move the civilians out of Rafah. The Americans also thought there would be something like 10 times the number of Israeli soldiers killed at this stage of the war. It's kind of amazing that there's so few. That doesn't help close friends of mine who lost a son, you know, in the war. But nevertheless, the Israeli army has proven that it can handle the Gaza war tactically and strategically. And so that's a problem that you just have to put the people who know how to do it on it and they'll figure it out and it'll take time. And it's a whack a mole with insurgents of the Hamas type, but it's a whack a mole game that can be won.
DS: Okay, I want to talk about last Friday. President Biden, late afternoon, parenthetically, during Shabbat, goes out with a speech, which he rarely does, about what is happening between Israel and Hamas, and does something I thought quite perplexing, which he gives a speech, not to announce a deal, but to announce a proposal for a deal. It's just interesting to me. I rarely see U.S. presidents use their bully pulpit to make a plea publicly to the parties to consider a deal or to get momentum behind a deal. Usually the president uses his bully pulpit to put the final touches, if you will, to tie up a deal that's been worked out among the negotiators, to tie it up with a bow and make it public to the world. This to me is a political problem, actually for President Biden, that he looked a little desperate and out of control of events by using his bully pulpit in this way, but be that as it may. Let's talk about the proposal. Can you walk through, Haviv, what actually we know of that was announced by President Biden on Friday? And then we'll get into who's for what pieces of it, and which parties have different equities. But what is, just so we can establish, so we can talk about it, what is the proposal?
HRG: Well, I urge people to just literally read Biden's speech carefully, line by line, because a lot of its internal contradictions become clear when you actually read it, and also a lot of the politics become clear, and a lot of the confusion becomes clear. In other words, you know what you don't know. Biden gave a speech in which he said that there is a hostage release deal offered by the Israelis, which would have tremendous benefits. One of those benefits was that it would create a better day after in Gaza, quote, ‘without Hamas in power’. It's a speech that opens with a promise that Hamas will be gone after this deal or as a function of this deal. And then within about five sentences it becomes clear that in fact it's a deal in which Hamas apparently remains in power in Gaza. The deal has three parts, according to President Biden. Part one is a six week period of quote, ‘full and complete ceasefire’. It involves the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza. Again, that's a quote, ‘populated areas of Gaza’. Apparently that means the Israeli army doesn't have to leave the Philadelphi Corridor, which is quite significant, or the Netzarim Corridor, which is this piece of land in central Gaza that the Israeli army holds and that bisects, that it has not withdrawn from like it has repeatedly from population centers.
DS: And it divides the north and the south of Gaza. Right? It's how Israel sort of stays in Gaza without going into the population centers. It just, they can kind of base operations for the North or the South in the Netzarim.
HRG: Right. So a full and complete ceasefire while the Israelis can still hold those areas. During phase one, Biden said, Israel and Hamas would negotiate, quote, ‘a permanent end to hostilities’. How is Hamas gone if Hamas is there to negotiate with the Israelis a permanent end to hostilities? The permanent end to hostilities would be phase two, right? It would go into effect. There would be a hostage exchange with a full and complete ceasefire for six weeks. According to leaks from Israeli officials that I have seen, 33 Israeli hostages would come out. Biden seemed to hint that some of them could be dead bodies and not actually living hostages. If that's an Israeli concession, it's a big one. But 33 hostages, six weeks, full and complete ceasefire. While apparently the Israelis can stay in the militarily relevant, unpopulated areas of Gaza. Then comes phase two, which is a permanent end to hostilities negotiated during the six weeks of phase one, an exchange of all hostages. And as part of phase two, Biden says there would be, quote, ‘Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza’. Then comes phase three, the war is over. The Israeli army is gone. Hamas is still there. There's nothing that Biden says other than the original promise that Hamas wouldn't be in power to tell us how it wouldn't be in power. Phase three is a major reconstruction plan for Gaza and any final remains of hostages would be returned. He seems to mean all hostages supposed to come out of phase two. He seems to mean any remains that can't be found in the reconstruction order returns to Gaza and the last remains can be found. It's really important to him to say, ‘Hamas has effectively been destroyed’. Which is how I know that he thinks that the main Israeli opposition to this deal is going to be that Hamas is not in fact going to be destroyed. Quote, ‘the people of Israel should know Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7’. He says that a continuation of the war, quote, ‘will only bog down Israel and Gaza, draining the economic, military, and human resources and furthering Israel's isolation in the world, and it will not bring an enduring defeat of Hamas.’ That's to people like me, I guess, who think that the military can bring an enduring defeat of Hamas. But if it won't bring an enduring defeat of Hamas, the military, then why would this deal do so? Which gives Hamas an out, Hamas negotiates, Hamas is still standing in Gaza the day after. And when you ask, you query the text of the speech and you say sort, sort of what will bring about an enduring removal or a defeat of Hamas? There is no word about it in the speech. Then he says there will be guarantors, in other words, not to worry. Quote: ‘with the deal, a rebuilding of Gaza will begin with Arab nations and the international community, along with Palestinians and Israeli leaders to get it done in a manner that does not allow Hama to re-arm. And we can trust the world. Egypt and Qatar have assured me they are continuing to work to ensure that Hamas fulfills its commitments. The U.S. will help ensure that Israel lives up to their obligations as well.’ And finally, he says, ‘Hamas should come to negotiate.’ Which to me is the sort of the last nail in the coffin, because it's telling Hamas openly, here's the quote, ‘If Hamas comes to negotiate ready to deal, then Israeli negotiators must be given a mandate, the necessary flexibility to close that deal.’ Or in other words, everything I have just presented is the Israeli opening position. Not even the deal, that the Americans actually want to see actually implemented. Now, I have presented this with all of my skepticism all along the way, people, if they want a Haviv skepticism free version, they should just read it. It's online. It's on the Times of Israel website, the full text of the speech with no commentary. It's a problem, this speech. And it's a fascinating problem. Because in theory, Biden has just made the case that the war can't be won. And since the war can't be won, it's time to cut losses and get the hostages out. And Hamas will remain in Gaza. And Qatar, and Egypt, and America, and Europe, and who the heck knows who else, will come into Gaza, rebuild Gaza, war's over, Hamas is gone, but is it really gone? We have no idea, we don't know how to get rid of it, militarily it's impossible, it's just too much, let's get it done, and let's move on. That seems to be the Biden version of the Israeli offer.
DS: Okay, so I want to try to understand what's going on here because when I spoke to American officials after this speech, first of all, depending on which American official you talk to, administration official, they had a different take on the speech and its intent, which is interesting, but they kept coming back to, ‘we're trying to pressure Hamas, we're trying to prevent Hamas from trying to retrade at the 11th hour, we want to let Hamas know that this is the last opportunity they have to enter some kind of negotiation. That's our major message.’ Obviously, the Israeli audience is also part of the message, which we'll get to, but we really want to send a message to Hamas. And I, my reaction to that, Haviv, is if you look at the difference between now versus the first hostage deal, that was done late November of last year, when Hamas was under enormous pressure, militarily, diplomatically, there was a sense that pressure was mounting on Hamas in every way. Versus the last few months where it has seemed, sort of pre Rafah, that all the pressure was mounted on Israel. Growing tensions between the U.S. administration and the Israeli government, increasing international action against Israel at the UN, different governments around the world, particularly in Europe, recognizing a Palestinian state, US college campuses on fire to the point that both Khamenei and the Supreme leader of Iran and Al Qaeda are issuing statements of solidarity with American college students, which is bizarre on so many levels and deeply dark. And so all the pressure was mounting on Israel. And if you want to change, one could argue it peaked with this, you know, the U.S. is now conditioning the transferring of offensive weapons to Israel unless it does what the administration wants it to do. It's not going to send offensive weapons to Israel if Israel is going to go forward with Rafah. So, Hamas is not incentivized to negotiate because time is on their side and the world, actually, is on their side. If you want to change the dynamic and truly get Hamas back to the negotiating table, then you don't just say what Biden said, which is basically, ‘this is the last chance for Hamas to negotiate’. This is Hamas's last chance to negotiate, and if it doesn't reach a deal, we, the U.S., are out, meaning we are out, we're done trying to restrain Israel, we're done trying to moderate, we're done trying to modulate. We are out. We will continue to supply arms to Israel. Israel will have a free hand, free reign to do what it needs to do in Gaza. Goodbye. That sends a message. That would be new. That would say to Hamas, this truly is your last chance. And the U.S. didn't do that. It was more like begging Hamas to come to the table rather than conveying that there are real consequences for Hamas leadership if they don't come to the table.
HRG: And we talked about incompetence. Back in November, Hamas released over a hundred hostages because the Israelis had moved into northern Gaza fast, surrounded their northern battalions and threatened to decimate them. And it was a way to buy seven days of quiet and rescue what it could rescue. When Hamas has been up against a wall, Hamas released hostages. For months and months and months the Americans have pressured Israel - and been shocked and surprised and dismayed that Hamas walked away from the table. Apparently the people who run American policy on this stuff have never negotiated a deal of any kind over anything. If you negotiate a real estate deal, if you buy a house, if you think the other side is sweating and under tremendous pressure to sell, you wait. And so pressure on Israel pushes Hamas away from the table. I don't understand why this - that is so obvious and basic. It's a little bit like saying it'll take four months to move a million people out of a five square mile town. It's just a complete misunderstanding of what's happening on the ground. I'll say, in America's defense, that if you're the national security council of the United States or the state department of the United States government, you're worried about Taiwan and Venezuela and North Korea and Ukraine, and a thousand other places and a thousand other issues. And maybe they just literally don't know that much and just kind of work off a simple playbook, maybe. But yes, in that, this idea that pressuring Israel and the fact that you then in the speech, Biden asked Hamas to come and now negotiate what he essentially presented as an Israeli opening position. What a catastrophic way to open negotiations. I don't understand - Hamas will force some concession if you lay out a deal. Now, I think what's happening here, and others have said this over the last 24 hours, is that Biden doesn't trust Netanyahu and believes that even though Netanyahu presented this offer or something like it, this is an American articulation of some Israeli offer, which the Israelis have been very cagey about giving us those details. But Biden wants it out in public so that Netanyahu can't deny it, so that Netanyahu can't then torpedo it because of political pressure from Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. He's trying to create for Netanyahu a political trap. Netanyahu has been unable to move forward because Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have told him, you know, ‘we're finishing Hamas off militarily no matter what.’ He won't give up these two right wing allies because his coalition would fall and he wants to stay in power. Netanyahu has been unwilling to join with the centrist parties in signing a hostage agreement because he'll lose that right wing support and become politically vulnerable. And he's also been unwilling to double down on the right wing policy, push through the American pressure, and get the job done on the ground in Gaza, as the right wing argues. Now, there are basically two arguments. One is, you can't win the wars, cut your losses, get the hostages out. By the way, It leaves Hamas in power in Gaza, which is a terrible thing, but it's much more terrible for Gaza than for Israel. And it's Hamas. So we're definitely going to be back at this war in three years, and then we can finish the job. And it's our job between now and then to make sure there's no hostages taken next time. That's the essentially centrist, center left Israeli argument. It's not incoherent. It's not stupid. Let's go with that policy or the right wing policy, which says, you can finish Hamas militarily. It's painful, it's hard, if you don't get the job done, that's vastly more suffering and longer suffering for Gazans. No Israeli is going to go back to the Gaza border to live there as long as Hamas is still in power. And the entire Iranian axis finds out that we can't even defeat the weakest member of that axis, which is Hamas. So it emboldens Hezbollah to new war. So if you want to avoid war, avoid pain, not just for Israelis, also for Palestinians, you have to establish massive Israeli deterrence by taking out Hamas militarily. Those are the two options. And we have a Prime Minister who has, I'm going to get emails. Every time I talk about Netanyahu, I get emails. I'm dissatisfied with the war. He's the Prime Minister for the last 13 years, including in this war. So most Israelis tell us in post, they no longer trust him. I'm going to criticize him. Let the emails come. We have a Prime Minister who refuses to go to the center and refuses to go to the right, and he's trying to hedge his bets in every direction. He has negotiated a hostage deal and then not actually follow through on it. He releases these hostage deal proposals, but then doesn't go in one way or the other. I think that this speech by Biden was to try and publicize his offer so that he's trapped in the offer. One of the reasons I think that now, and I think the people who have said that are correct, is the Israeli response. The Israeli response to the Biden speech was this statement, by the way, in English, that some of the statement was not translated into Hebrew, which tells you something about Netanyahu's political delicacy that he's trying to tread here between the raindrops, was that Israel reserves the right to resume fighting at any time if Hamas violates its obligations in the agreement. In other words, ‘if Hamas violates it, we're going to war, and we're not waiting on the Americans and Egyptians and Qataris to agree with us that they violate it’. That's a response to Biden trying to internationalize the question. Or if Israel, including by not releasing the number of hostages agreed upon, or if Israel gets the impression that the negotiations on phase two of the agreement are fruitless and are used by Hamas to buy time. I think this is the important point. The phase two part is the end of the war. And what Israel is saying is, ‘the first part we have agreed to, the second part is a question of negotiation, and if we get the impression Hamas is not going to give us what we need for phase two, which is the dismantling of Hamas, then the war is back.’
DS: So you're suggesting, A, because this has been a conundrum for me, why Netanyahu and the war cabinet would agree to this proposal, agree to send its negotiators to Paris, and to negotiate this proposal - if it in some way leaves Hamas in power. And then of course, once the statement comes out, as you said, the prime minister's office puts out the statement saying that under no circumstances can Hamas still be around militarily, politically, in any context, when this war ends and the war doesn't end until they’re gone. So why would Israel agree to this? You're saying that Israel would agree to this because they actually - the war cabinet, obviously it didn't go to the security cabinet, but the war cabinet believes that they could agree to this because they don't actually believe it's going to get past phase one?
HRG: So, you know, there's the security cabinet, which is a real institution in Israeli law and it's made up of the heads of all the parties in the coalition, including the far right.
DS: But this proposal, from my understanding, this proposal never went to the Security Cabinet, it went to the War Cabinet.
HRG: Right.
DS: Which, just for our listeners, the War Cabinet is much smaller, it's supposed to be temporary, its existence was for the duration of the war, and it includes Prime Minister Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, Defense Minister Gallant as voting members, and then observers Deri, Dermer, and Eizenkot. So that's the War Cabinet, which, yes, it doesn't include Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, but it does include some pretty hawkish members of the government, not the least of which is Gallant, when it comes to this more hard headed view of how the war needs to be waged in Gaza. And it sounds like the War Cabinet signed off on this proposal, which is pretty shocking to me.
HRG: Here's the thing. Over the last day, Gallant gave a briefing, a statement, and he says, ‘in any process in which the war ends, we will not accept Hamas rule. We're advancing an alternative government to Hamas within the framework of which we will isolate areas of Gaza, remove the Hamas members from those areas, and bring in other forces that will enable a different government.’ And so there is a growing sense that Hamas will not survive - on the ground, on the ground because of how the Israeli military is functioning. But this political deal will essentially allow Hamas to survive. So Gallant came out and said, ‘there is not going to be an end to this war in which Hamas rules.’ On the one hand, military action. And on the other hand, the ability to change the regime in Gaza will achieve two of the goals of this war, the dismantling of the Hamas government and its military power and the return of the hostages.
DS: When did Gallant go to the Southern Command and say this?
HRG: Sunday.
DS: Oh, so it was after the Biden speech.
HRG: Sunday morning, after the Biden speech. It's Gallant's response to the Biden speech.
DS: Okay, so Gallant responded - I mean, just take a step back and imagine how this looks from over here, okay?
HRG: Okay.
DS: So, according to the public reporting, Israel crafted, blessed, whatever you want to call it, signed off on, this proposal. It maybe even initiated this proposal.
HRG: Yes.
DS: Biden makes this proposal public.
HRG: So Netanyahu can't squirrel out of it.
DS: Right, but why would Gallant, given what he's saying Sunday, at Southern command, two days after the Biden speech - why is Gallant saying those things if Gallant signed off on it? My understanding is the war cabinet signed off on this proposal. Then you have one of the three most important members of the war cabinet contradicting it, lay out the case for me in reconciling how one on one day could support this proposal and two days or three days later, seemingly undermine it.
HRG: Yeah, so let me go, first of all from a quote from the prime minister's office. ‘Israel's conditions for the end of the war have not changed to destroy the military and government capabilities of Hamas’, which is just a quote from the October declaration of war of the cabinet. ‘To release all our hostages and to make sure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel. The outline for the release of the hostages, meaning the deal, allows Israel to make sure that all these conditions will be realized before a permanent ceasefire takes effect.’ So according to the Israelis, the permanent ceasefire takes effect, the phase two that Biden talked about, Biden said phase two is complete and total ceasefire and release of all hostages. And the Israelis are saying that's exactly correct, but your sentence flips the order. Release of all hostages and then permanent ceasefire. Now, two reasons the deal is good for Israel, even as presented by Biden. And we've talked about the bad things in the deal. The internationalization, the fact that Hamas remains intact. There's nowhere where Biden says, ‘and this is the moment where Hamas is no longer intact.’ Point one. During the first phase, the six weeks, in which we negotiate the second phase, Israel must withdraw from only ‘residential areas’. Nobody quite knows what that means, and the question is ambiguity. Who does that serve? Hamas will say, well, it has to withdraw from everywhere. Everywhere where there might be a village, or a house, or a farm, is that residential? Israel, of course, is going to say, the Philadelphi Corridor stays, we stay in the Nitzanim Corridor, we stay in the one kilometer buffer zone that we've created along the border. We stay in all the places where we need to find tunnels. Over those six weeks of negotiation, the army destroys the Gaza tunnels, the Philadelphi Corridor tunnels, any tunnels it has in the Nitzarim Corridor, and any tunnels that it finds that enter Israel, it has the ability to stay and do that strategic thing. Because if you can cut Rafah off, if you can cut Gaza off from Sinai, then a slow moving future counterinsurgency can be much, much more effective. Well, what if we're buying six weeks of time in which we can work freely in the Philadelphi corridor to destroy those tunnels into Egypt, into Sinai, while also getting out 33 more hostages. And it's the humanitarian stage. That's what we're talking about in the first phase. Meaning these are going to be the wounded, the women, the elderly, various groups defined for various reasons as humanitarian. They come out. And then after those six weeks, when we cut Hamas's supply lines, even though it's a ceasefire because it doesn't involve battles, it's just destroying tunnels. Then, whatever happens, happens. In other words, a return to the war could very easily happen if Hamas doesn't agree to release all the hostages before the full and complete ceasefire. Hamas won't agree to it. So, Israel has an out between phases one and two, and it can ensure huge amounts of humanitarian aid, and it can keep going everywhere it's going. It has to finish a Jabalia operation before the six weeks begin. That's about it. It has to be able to finish Rafah. Israel should, probably wants to, drag out for another 3-4 weeks the talking about this deal, and then it can sign this deal, get out those hostages, and spend 6 weeks focused on tunnels. Point 2. It buys domestic political maneuvering room for Netanyahu. Here's the deal. Most Israelis want the hostages out. As the priority of the war, even at the cost of ending the war, we have polling on that consistent again and again, different pollsters, different methods, right wing pollsters, left wing pollsters. Most Israelis no longer think we can win the war and therefore they want the hostages out. And that's it. That's the war. It's the end. ‘We get the hostages out, the war doesn't matter.’ When you ask them why they say, because they no longer believe the Israeli leadership, primarily, but not only Netanyahu, is actually fighting to win the war, they think that he's fighting to survive, to delay an election. And therefore the hostages are waiting out into his indecision, his political indecision. They're sitting in dungeons in Gaza, waiting his political indecision. So no, we locked down a hostage deal. The war can come back later. It doesn't matter. We don't trust Netanyahu to even want them out anymore or to prioritize them over his own political survival. Well, if the hostages are coming out over the course of those six weeks, Netanyahu gets more rope from the public, he gets more time, and he can use that time to prepare the resumption of a focused, proper war that will see through the demolition of the Hamas regime. Or, he could use that time to continue to hem and haw and drag and politic, right? But there is a, it buys a domestic political window in which Netanyahu can, instead of achieving neither the center left, you know, strategy, nor the right strategy, can achieve potentially both, or some piece of both, by getting some hostages out, showing that that's a priority for him, while also then having the political space to resume the war down the road.
DS: You know, when we had Ron Dermer on the podcast a couple months ago, he made the point that the hostage deal late last year was important, not only because of the need and urgency, the moral urgency of getting hostages home. But it also had strategic benefits, because - I don't know how, quite how to articulate, what I’m about to articulate, sensitively, but I will just do the best I can. Ron explained that a large number of hostages coming home bought the Israeli security leadership time and confidence from the Israeli public. I think he said some version of this, to keep going, because there were results. Military progress, results. And so I think what you're saying here is the phase one of this deal is could be another version of that. Again, it addresses the moral priority of getting the hostages home, and it also has real strategic value in terms of taking this war to wherever Israel thinks it needs to go.
HRG: Right. And then if that's what Israeli leaders are thinking, if that's what Netanyahu and Gallant, at least, are thinking, then they're using Biden as much as he thinks he's using them. And then the first phase is an important phase. It's an important phase for expanding aid. It's an important phase for everybody taking a breather, for letting some soldiers go home. It's an important phase for massively destroying the tunnels, which is a strategic advance of the war effort militarily. And it's an important phase for shoring up Israeli public morale, which is desperately low right now, because essentially of politicking. Then comes the bigger question. And that's a question Israel is going to need to answer. If the war resumes, it's going to need to answer to the Americans. I have to say, you know, we talked a lot about the weapons shipments that were frozen by the American administration, what was it, a month ago? And what it means and what they're thinking and how they're thinking. Well, the weapons shipments are back and that's something we've heard from Israeli officials. And so, we're moving forward. There is this terrible danger on the northern border. There's a desire to solve some of the danger on the northern border, which could mean tremendously painful war. There's real economic troubles in Israel right now. The defense budget has to increase by 20 billion shekels a year. Something like -
DS: 5 billion dollars approximately. Five US billion.
HRG: The defense budget for 2024, it looks like it's going to be about 117 billion shekels. That's $31 billion. That's almost double the $17 billion annual defense budget that was projected for 2024, and it looks like going forward, it's going to be about 5 billion dollars more than it would otherwise have been, which is like a 30 percent increase, permanent to the defense budget. We're going to need more soldiers. People are going to do a lot more reserve duty. That has a tremendous economic cause. It was actually a Bank of Israel report, in the last three weeks, I think it was - that said that even a 10 billion shekel, a two and a half billion dollar permanent annual increase in the defense budget is a risk to our fiscal stability. It's a risk of inflation. It's a risk of the currency weakening on the international markets. We're going into an economic problem, economically difficult times. Now, we can afford it as a country if it's an existential war. We can afford to fight a war in the north in the sense that our debt to GDP is actually much much lower than America's for example, we can borrow for a few years, but it hurts our credit rating. It hurts our companies. It hurts our workers. There’ll be unemployment. There’ll be real economic pain. We're heading into a period where a war in the north is quite likely. We can talk about why. We're also heading into a period in which the economy is going to be pretty bad. And what we need is public resilience and willingness to face the challenge. And so, if this brings that, it solves a lot of really profound, you know, obstacles that lie in the way of a successful conclusion to the war from Israel's perspective. I do think that if we get there, to get to that good place, the Israelis are going to have to reframe the question of the day after. We're looking for all kinds of people who would be willing to run Gaza the day after. And we're asking the wrong question, right? Because we have to have a very clear goal. The goal is the removal of Hamas. It's not about who we can trust to run Gaza that will still let us occasionally come in. It's about who we can trust to run Gaza and allow the goal to be achieved.
DS: At the same time, there was just a lot of news pouring in late Friday, at the same time that the Biden speech news was coming in, there was other news, connected or maybe not, that the leaders in the U.S. Congress, Speaker Johnson, Minority Leader Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McConnell, had jointly - four of them jointly doing anything these days is a rarity. Had jointly invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to come address Congress. The last time an Israeli Prime Minister had addressed Congress was in 2015, which was very controversial. I think there was a very reasonable case for him doing it, but nonetheless, it was very divisive in Washington when Prime Minister Netanyahu came to address a joint session of Congress to express and make the case against what, at the time, was the emerging Iran deal, the JCPOA. And since then, another Israeli leader has come to address Congress, which was President Herzog, who's a less polarizing figure, clearly. It was before October 7th, parenthetically. And still he received, he was on the receiving end of a lot of heat from Israel's critics, particularly on the left in Congress. So one can't imagine what a Netanyahu visit would look like. So I have some thoughts on what's actually going on in the implications, but I just, from your perspective in Israel, what's your sense of what's going on here with a Netanyahu speech before Congress right now?
HRG: I truly don't feel confident speaking to it in a conversation with you. I definitely shouldn't go first. Um, what are the Americans thinking? I mean, obviously this massively helps Netanyahu's own reelection campaign, which most Israelis feel is Netanyahu's overriding priority at this stage. And it seems to be the guess among Israelis that it is a carrot, right? After a few sticks from Biden over the last month, to get Netanyahu to, you know, hook on to, like, they're fishing, right? To hook on to the American policy and run with it. Biden is taking, I mean, the Democrats are taking a risk here. They have a convention coming in August. There's going to be a response on Capitol Hill of protesters. Wow. I mean, all those energies, you know, the college campuses are all empty. So, you're going to have these focus, place to focus their energies now to create this massive, you know, million man march on Washington. Why wouldn't they? I would do it if I was them. Why create a target? Why create a Netanyahu reelection campaign? I struggle to understand - is it about helping Israel? Is it about the carrot and stick? I am confused.
DS: So, I think the risks are considerable for Israel and for the U.S. I think, generally speaking, I'm one of many views on this. My opinion on this is representative of one view on a spectrum on this, but I believe that Netanyahu was right to come in 2015 to make his case against the Iran deal. He had a specific message. He had a very clear message. You could disagree with the idea that he tried to work with the administration and couldn't get any progress in getting the Obama administration to change its policy on Iran. So, when given the opportunity to come before Congress, he decided to take his case to Congress, knowing that Congress would ultimately have to vote in some way, depending on how this agreement was finalized, trying to persuade Congress against the Iran deal. And obviously persuading a larger audience than just the Congress, because it was televised. He had a very specific message. So then you ask yourself the question, what's his message now? What exactly is his message now? Now maybe it's a moment for the Prime Minister of the state that was subjected to a Shoah-like massacre on October 7th to come reintroduce the moral clarity and the case for moral clarity and the notion of what Israel is up against. And Israel is not up against it on its own, that Israel is up against, it's fighting this fight in a sense on behalf of the civilized world. And it's a civilizational struggle. To make that case in those terms, maybe that's his message. But what is he asking for? When he came in 2015, we knew what he was asking for. And there were extraordinary risks with him doing it at that time, including, even though I believe it made sense, including that the Obama administration was so frustrated/annoyed that he was coming, they didn't grant him a meeting with the president when he was in Washington. So think about that. The Prime Minister of Israel comes to Washington and doesn't get a meeting with the President of the United States. I think that's unprecedented. I can't think of another time where an Israeli Prime Minister has come to Washington and didn't get a meeting with the Prime Minister, even when Israeli Prime Ministers, you know, used to come address the national AIPAC policy conferences, they would agree to come to speak to the policy conference and then they would alert the White House, ‘I'm in town.’ You know, the Prime Minister is going to be in town. He's going to be addressing the AIPAC national conference. ‘Does it make sense to meet with the President?’ And then the Prime Minister would always meet with the President when they were in Washington for that. So even when coming to town scheduled for something else, the President would make time, whoever it was, for the Israeli Prime Minister. 2015? No meeting. Now, what does it mean now? Does Biden meet with Bibi, when he's in town? Keep in mind, Biden has never met with Bibi since Bibi was most recently elected Prime Minister. He's never met with him in Washington. So, what does Biden do? Prime Minister of Israel comes, at the invitation, bipartisan invitation, of the leaders of Congress, and Biden doesn't meet with Netanyahu? There's risks to that. Then there are risks to Biden meeting with Netanyahu, because for all the reasons you said, all the people who are hostile to the U.S. Israel relationship with Israel right now, many of whom are going to be very active in the next few months in the presidential election, many of whom could potentially be very active in the lead up to the democratic convention. And at that moment, Biden is going to appear in a frame with Israel's Prime Minister? Again, I personally would be thrilled. But I'm just thinking how the Biden political advisors are thinking about it. Do we want Biden and Netanyahu together being warm in a photo in Washington, D.C., being greeted, being hosted by the President of the United States? Well, they could argue, if we're going to do this, our only option is to be cold to Netanyahu in the meeting, to be tough in the public statements towards Netanyahu when he visits. Now is that good for Netanyahu? So Netanyahu shows up in Washington, the first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister since October 7th, and he's in some way treated coldly in his public appearance with the president? So I think that's complicated, I think, for Netanyahu back home. And then lastly, just the image you're describing. Where you have all these encampments across U.S. college campuses. They can all disband and reappear on the U.S. Capitol. The scene of tens of thousands, hundred thousands, you call it the Million Man March, whatever it is. That scene on Washington, the fact that 25%, something like that, of the Congress could not show up. Think about it, all the squad, all the progressives, they could just not show up to the speech. Or they could go and stand up and walk away and turn their back on the Prime Minister, or you could have code pink protesters. So the scene inside the Capitol, inside the chamber, could be really complicated. Now maybe that's helpful for Netanyahu, because he's exposing, he's drawing out, he's sharpening the differences between Israel and the West, and those who stand on the side of Israel, and those who don't. Maybe that's a helpful look for Netanyahu going into the lion's den. And that's a helpful look for him back home. And I could actually argue maybe helpful for Republicans in the U.S. heading into 2024. Because Republicans also want to sharpen the differences between who's on the side of those crazy encampments on college campuses and who is not. Who's on the side of trying to restore order and who is not. And so Netanyahu showing up could dry out a lot of the crazy. I don't know. I just think it's, there's so many permutations to this that I can lay out. And I can rationalize all of them, if I understand what Netanyahu's message and ask is when he shows up here. And he may very well have one, but I knew what it was in 2015. I don't know what it is today.
HRG: All right. Here's an optimistic take. First of all, just politically, irrespective of the optimistic take, just politically, everything you just described is extremely good for Netanyahu. If he stands there on the White House lawn, and President Biden, you know, goes after him, very aggressively, because of exactly the political discomfort that Biden would be in that kind of scenario, that, Netanyahu could say in response something a little bit forceful on his own end, right? He'd have to say thank you very much for the support, for the help, for the 14.3 billion aid package. But we have to do what we have to do, and you know, he'll talk tough. That would play beautifully to his right wing base, just when he needs a shoring up of his right wing base. He's, cause he's potentially accepting an American led hostage deal. Right? If the squad in Congress or even larger group of Congress people turn their backs on him, walk away. We saw that Senator Bernie Sanders already said ‘he's a war criminal. I'm not going to attend.’ That works beautifully for him in his domestic politics. In other words, just about everything you describe here, walking, if there's a sense that he's walking into the lion's den, that's good for him in his domestic political problems. And if there's a sense that he's being profoundly embraced by the vast majority of American lawmakers, that's good for him, right? Then the question will be, would Gantz get this kind of embrace? I also have to say, I'm sure it was an Israeli ask of Congress, and Congress responded to an Israeli ask. But once the congressional invitation comes, Netanyahu can't say no, because of our concerns, right? He can't then say, ‘nope, sorry, I'm not going to this’, right? He has to walk in, and he has to, frankly, take the massive boon to his political standing, and also tread the minefield. And if this hurts Israel, that's secondary. My concern, the biggest danger for Israel in this, is that it hurts Biden. We have managed as an Israeli state, our government has managed to exact tremendous political costs from our good allies in the Democratic Party. For no reason, for just no reason, when our politicians spoke in ridiculous, insane, just cruel ways over the course of the war. People of no influence over the conduct of the war, there was one big mistake. Quote from Gallant that was, you know, ‘we're going to go into Gaza and they'll get nothing and, right in the aftermath of October 7’. Then he's 25 times said the opposite and actually done the opposite, but that one quote hurts all our supporters in the West. They want to, Biden has put tremendous political capital on supporting us and feels that we keep doing things that hurt him politically for no good reason for ourselves, right? Our politics are just so chaotic, and there's so little discipline and serious policy on our side, that we exact a cost from our democratic friends. My concern going forward, isn't that like, a future U.S. president from the progressive left is not going to like Israel. That's a concern, but I also have a concern that a future president John Fetterman, who loves Israel, and fights for Israel against his progressive voters and against progressive troll mobs or those, not progressive, there's a, progressive is a big word and many progressives love Israel, but against that far left troll mobs on Twitter. But he is now watching Biden and watching how the Israelis treat Biden and watching how the Israelis exact totally unnecessary political costs from Biden for his support for Israel and he's saying in future, ‘I like Israel, I want Israel to win, I don't know if I'm going to invest political capital in people who are going to make it even costlier for me to do so. They're just, they don't seem competent or serious enough to be allies in that sense’. I worry that an Israeli exacting of political costs from Biden will have ramifications that we don't see today. And that Netanyahu doesn't expect to be in power to have to deal with. So there is that, but at the same time, once you get the invitation from Congress, you're kind of locked into that path. Aren't you?
DS: Yeah, I agree with that, that he's got to do it. Netanyahu has to do it now, but I would say Biden's problem with Israel is not because random right wing politicians pop off. Although that's not helpful. I'm not suggesting their popping off is helpful. But that's not his real problem, right? When political leaders in the United States make a decision that they don't like, a war policy, whether it's Israel's war policy or America's war policy. I remember in 2004, during the Iraq war, which I was very involved with, after Abu Ghraib, when it was discovered that Iraqi prisoners were being abused in some way at the Abu Ghraib prison and Ted Kennedy said, I think on the Senate floor, Senator Kennedy said, ‘what we've learned is Saddam Hussein's prisons are in operation. They're just under new management’, meaning the U.S. military. In other words, people were saying crazy things about the U.S. war effort because they were against the U.S. war effort. And so they can latch on to, not unimportant stories, but that are not core to what's actually happening. And they tune into those and latch on to those sideshow stories and try to make that the central story. And so we can complain all we want about these extreme right wing members of this government who say crazy things, but the real critics over here in the United States, that's not really their issue. Their real issue is Israel's response to October 7th.
HRG: No, I think that's, I think you're right. And I think it's very clear that you're right about that. The problem is that there's so many audiences in the middle. There's so many people who listen in very, very sort of carelessly and occasionally. And there is a paper trail that the enemies have, can build of, nevermind, you know, right wing statements of the far, far right of Israeli politics is one thing. This, by the way, they don't matter. They did not have, affect the war, except that Netanyahu really isn't political thrall to them. I mean, he really, truly has failed to pick a policy because they are, his political future depends on them. I, I don't know how to get away from that. I don't know how to -
DS: But Haviv, I wanna stay on that 'cause that's very important. So you're saying that Netanyahu, for better or for worse, I'm going to, I'm going to put a more conventional take on what you're describing, which is Netanyahu is managing coalition politics. So is Joe Biden. Joe Biden needs to pick a side. What I mean by that is it's the weirdest thing what's happening right now. These protests are directed at Joe Biden. The protests here, the college encampments. So much of the messaging is directed at Joe, ‘Genocide Joe’, they're calling ‘Genocide Joe’. So on the one hand, the protesters are protesting Biden. And yet he's not making it clear that he's against the protesters. When he did that interview with Aaron Burnett on CNN, which is when he formally announced that he was conditioning aid, conditioning the transfer of military assets to Israel, he said, she asked him something like, ‘What do you think when you hear these statements? They're calling you genocide, Joe.’ He says, ‘I hear them. I hear them. I want them to know I hear them.’ Really? How about calling them an echo chamber for the most disgusting ghoulish barbarism in the world. Not ‘I hear them’, not that they're making reasonable arguments. And I'm trying to, it was the most, and they're protesting him. Take them on, pick a side, either say, ‘I'm against these people and let me tell you why’ or say ‘I'm not for this’ or say ‘I'm against Israel. I think their policy is problematic.’ But he's weirdly trying to do sort of both and nothing. And so he's stuck politically and it comes back to what I said at the beginning with the speech he gave last week. He's, it just seems like events are out of his control. And, as a political matter, not to mention as a matter of trying to run geopolitics and American foreign policy in the midst of a chaotic war, where there are multiple wars going on around the world, that the United States has a stake in, but he just, as the Commander in Chief, he does not look large and in charge.
HRG: Okay. Your guy needs to pick a policy, pick a strategy, pick a side. My guy needs to pick a policy, a strategy, a side. It's possible that we're stuck with two guys who are not going to do either and we're going to see going forward if we're going into a six week ceasefire in which we basically get out something like five people a week, which is horrifyingly slow, but at least we're getting them out. If you can make decisions. Not just sufficiently not go left for the right, and sufficiently not go right for the left, but actually pick a policy that might work. Because what he's doing in the middle, and constantly hedging, has left us eight months in, just starting in on Rafah. And it's not okay, because those hostages are rotting in dungeons. And it's not okay, because frankly, Gazans need a future. And it's not okay because our economy is hurting. And when you look at the options facing Israel, you know, unless you believe in the massive, immense power of American diplomacy, which, I just don't have a kind of record in front of me that allows me to believe in it, we're probably going to that larger war. And we have this indecisive government that can't find its way around any issue. So, you know, good luck with Biden. Good luck to us with our guy, and who knows, maybe this deal is the beginning of a new decisiveness in which the problems they face, the left wing and the right wing, options that they have to choose between somehow cohere into one magical solution. Oh, that ends on a frustrating note.
DS: Don't worry. Don't worry, we'll come back in a week or so, and we'll, we'll have, I don't know, we'll find something more uplifting to talk about.
HRG: Yeah, says the guy who everyone doesn't turn to for optimism.
DS: Okay, Haviv, we'll leave it there.
HRG: Here's the optimism, here's the optimism. If we get a few hostages out, and if Hamas is still on its way out of history, it will have all been for the better.
DS: Okay, we'll leave it there. Thank you, Haviv. Safe travels. Talk to you soon.
HRG: Thanks, Dan.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Haviv, you can find him on X at Haviv Rettig Gur. You can also find him at the Times of Israel. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing from Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.