Is Israel headed for a two-front war? - with Nadav Eyal
First, a housekeeping note: many of you filled out the survey we published in our previous episode, and we are very grateful for that. If you haven't filled out this 2-minute survey we would greatly appreciate it if you took 2 minutes to fill it out. It is extremely helpful to us in thinking through ways to improve the podcast and understand our audience.
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As for today's episode - I've been in Israel for the past couple of days, for my 4th visit here since 10/07. Something that has struck me in my conversations with Israelis is the degree to which a war with Hezbollah is not discussed in terms of IF, but rather in terms of WHEN. And as for the WHEN, some are suggesting quite soon. In fact, Defense Minister Gallant said that the goal should be that for those Israelis evacuated from the North, they should be back in their evacuated communities and homes in time for the next school year. This would put to the test the IDF’s capacity to fight a multi front war. In other words - while the IDF is getting closer to the point of defeating Hamas in Gaza - it might also be at the early stages of a war with Hezbollah.
To help us understand what’s going on here, our guest today is NADAV EYAL, who returns to the podcast. I sat down with him today in Tel Aviv. He is a columnist for Yediot. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.
Nadav's latest column, which we discussed in this episode: https://tinyurl.com/msk43n53
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: I'm all for international settlements and sums of understanding, but nobody can explain to the Israelis - why should they have any sort of an agreement as to the Gaza Strip, or any sort of political compromise with the Palestinians if they have left South Lebanon, after years of maintaining a military presence and occupation in the southern part of Lebanon? Six years later, they got an attack from Hezbollah that led to the second Hezbollah war. And now, when Israel was attacked by Hamas, it's also attacked by Hezbollah in the north on October 8th. And nobody in the international community, including France, for instance, who's supposed to be some sort of a patron of Lebanon, historically speaking… all the United States - nobody really cares about those dozens of thousands, and actually hundreds of thousands, of Israelis who, their lives have become, they've become displaced persons. They are being subsidized by an economy that is being overburdened by the war in the south. And nobody has a clear solution to what does Hezbollah actually want from Israel? Nobody's asking this question. And the answer is, they don't want anything beside Israel being eliminated. This is not about occupation. This is about the alliance that wants to wipe Israel off the map.
DS: It's 1:40 AM on Thursday, June 20th, here in Tel Aviv, where I am, which is why I'm starting with the Israel timestamp this time. And it's 6:40 PM on Wednesday, June 19th in New York City. I've been in Israel for the past couple of days. It's my fourth visit here since October 7th. And among the things that have struck me in my conversations with Israelis here is the degree to which a war with Hezbollah is not discussed in terms of if, but rather in terms of when. And as for the when. Some are suggesting quite soon. In fact, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the goal should be that for those Israelis evacuated from the north, well, they should be back in their currently evacuated communities and homes in time for the next school year. That's pretty soon. This would put to the test the IDF's capacity to fight a multi front war. In other words, while the IDF is getting closer to the point of defeating Hamas in Gaza, it might also be at the early stages of a war with Hezbollah. To help us understand what's going on here, and the trade offs for Israeli decision makers and military planners, our guest is Nadav Eyal, who returns to the podcast. I sat down with Nadav today in Tel Aviv. As our listeners know, Nadav is a columnist for Yediot Aharonot, and he has been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli print, radio, and television news. Before we move on to the episode, one housekeeping note. If you haven't filled out our survey yet, please do so. There's a link to it in the show notes. It will just take you two minutes, and it is extremely helpful to us in thinking through short and long term planning for this podcast. Many of you have already filled it out, and we are grateful for that. For those who haven't, please do. And now on to our conversation. Nadav Eyal on, ‘Is Israel Headed for a Two-Front War?’ This is Call Me Back.
DS: And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Nadav Eyal, my friend who I normally have conversations with while you're in Tel Aviv. So I normally say Nadav Eyal joins us from Tel Aviv, but now I say, Nadav, welcome - well, I don't know what to say. You should be welcoming me to Tel Aviv.
NE: Exactly. But we're speaking from Startup Nation Central.
DS: Right.
NE: The place that you co founded.
DS: Well, not just because of me.
NE: Not just because of you -
DS: But many cooks in the kitchen, proverbially speaking. Speaking of kitchen, we just ate at Asif upstairs above the podcast studio, which is excellent. I highly recommend this culinary project here, a restaurant in Tel Aviv for people who are visiting. Nadav, we have a lot to cover. I guess where to begin is increasing tension on Israel's northern border. So at a time when it feels like, from afar, that Israel is making increasing progress in Gaza, and the war is not necessarily over in Gaza, but at least after a two to three month stall or pause, there seems to be new momentum. The two or three month pause before Israel went into Rafah. As Gaza may or may not be winding down, something is winding up in the north. So to paraphrase Churchill, we're not at the beginning of the end, but we could very much be at the end of the beginning. And the end of the beginning is Gaza, and now these multi fronts could open up. I want to get into that and what the north looks like. But before we do, can you just update us on this deal that was being negotiated between Hamas and Israel, via Egypt and Qatar and the U.S., it seems all but dead. It seems to me that it never actually had real life. Where does it stand, the deal and the implications of the deal not actually being consummated, from the perspectives of all the key parties? The U.S., Hamas, and Israel. Now what? What are the implications or the lessons of that process that left the negotiations stillborn?
NE: So first of all, I just talked before our conversation with a senior official here in Israel, close to the prime minister, and he still had some sort of hope that the deal is not completely dead and that Hamas would say yes to the deal as it was presented by President Biden. That means that the Israelis don't see those different suggestions, corrections, or requests for reform of the initial suggestion as something that is other than a completely different proposal made by Hamas, and actually Hamas saying no to the deal that was proposed by Israel, then was carried by President Biden. Now, it's true that there was daylight between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden as to specific clauses and things that were said in the president's speech. But generally speaking, multiple Israeli sources confirm that what the president proposed is actually the Israeli deal. And this senior source that I just spoke to said, ‘this is our proposal, and if Hamas says yes tomorrow morning, we're going to accept this’. And that official even said, ‘we understand that if Hamas says yes to the deal, this government is going to fall apart. The far right is going to withdraw from the government. It's going to lead to an election, but the prime minister has made up his mind that he's willing to pay this price for a deal with Hamas that would probably get between 18 to 22 Israeli hostages back at the first stage, and then the rest, if we are going to advance to the second, third stages of that deal.’
DS: I just want to stay on that for a moment.
NE: Yeah.
DS: You, and a number of my other Israeli guests on this podcast have, for the past few months, made the point that this prime minister would never do a deal that risked his coalition falling apart and having to go to elections. It's the first time, really, in real time, I've ever heard you say, even in our offline conversations: ‘Netanyahu is ready to take that risk.’
NE: I'm quoting one of his associates.
DS: Okay. I know who that associate is, so I know it's a good source.
NE: And to that extent, I can only quote the things that the prime minister has been saying in off-the-record conversations with some of his political associates that I've spoken to in recent weeks. And he said, and this is a quote, ‘There’s not going to be a deal. Because Hamas will never agree to this deal. We know the offer that we made. But let me join, you know, the hope that Hamas would say yes. Then we have a deal. We might have a political crisis in this country.’ The chances for Hamas to say yes to the proposal made by President Biden and by the Israelis are very slim, if you just consider what the prime minister himself assesses. So, he wants to take credit, and maybe you should be given credit for taking this political leap of allowing this proposal to go through the Israeli defense apparatus, because this is not a proposal that stemmed out of the prime minister's office, right? This came from the negotiating team. It came from the defense apparatus that it is much more willing to compromise with the other side, because it doesn't have, you know, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as coalition partners. So yeah, people can credit the prime minister for his political courage for making the offer. People could also say he doesn't mean this offer to be ever accepted in his toiling to make sure Hamas will never accept it. The jury is still out on this. But one thing is for sure, at this point in which we speak, your assessment that you began with, that it's stillborn, that this deal is virtually dead. This is something that most parties to the negotiating table, whether it's Qatar, Egypt, you know, the United States, Israel, and Hamas, they would say that would be an accurate description of the situation. And then we can say who's responsible. And the first party responsible for this, I want to be extremely clear about this, is Hamas. Hamas, of course, can stop the war in five minutes. We talked about this before. They just need to return all the hostages. They will get immunity to their leadership to leave the Gaza Strip, although they have ordered multiple massacres with Israeli citizens. They're going to get a deal that the U.S. has never given any terrorists before, has never even considered giving terrorists before. Arch terrorists are going to get a deal of immunity of leaving the Gaza Strip alive, although they have ordered the October 7 attacks. And if they do that, the war could be over in five minutes. And I have said this on your show multiple times, but does the Prime Minister attempt to actually have a deal? Is it his political will? I don't know.
DS: Everything you said is accurate just there, and at every round of these negotiations Hamas rejected the proposal, like eight or nine times or something. I stopped counting. With each rejection, Israel has made more and more concessions.
NE: That's true.
DS: So if you think of where Israel is today, where this government, where this prime minister is today, relative to where they were in the negotiations - go back to May 31st, go back before May 31st, Israel initially wanted to have a veto over individual names that Hamas wanted on its list of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, violent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. It was willing to concede on it.
NE: It's willing to concede somewhat, but to your remark here, I can only quote someone from the Likud, not from the centrist parties. And he told me the last time that Hamas made an offer to us was at the first Paris summit, of the mediators.
DS: And when was that?
NE: It was like four or five months ago?
DS: Okay.
NE: And at that proposal, we were arguing with Hamas on the number of Palestinians that would be able to cross through our checkpoints from the southern part of the Gaza Strip back to their homes in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. And we were actually arguing on these numbers, how many thousands would be able to return per day. And right now we are proposing a deal in which we don't have these checkpoints to begin with, and everybody can return back. And that source within the Likud, who's a senior source, told me, the only person in government who saw this coming, and who told us, in real time, ‘you should go for these offers that we have right now, because Israel's position and condition, internationally and vis a vis Hamas, is going to worsen.’ The only minister who said that was Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff who just left government. And he told us we should accept that offer.
DS: He left the coalition. He left the war cabinet. He’s still in the Knesset.
NE: Yeah. And Eisenkot, who of course lost his son in the war -
DS: Son and nephew.
NE: Yeah, so Eisenkot said, ‘look, you need to go for this now, or you'll negotiate for much less in the future.’ And that Likud senior source told me, ‘you know what, Eisenkot was right. And we were wrong. And he saw the things we don't see right now.’ So it's really a big question that you have just raised in a sense. If Israel, as you opened up, is succeeding in the Gaza Strip in dismantling Hamas, why is Israel willing to have more and more concessions for Hamas, as we go along in these negotiations? And the only explanation to that is that, while militarily speaking, Israel might be eroding the military force of Hamas, at the same time, its condition politically, internationally or internally is significantly worsening. There is no other rational conclusion but this, and this is the paradox in which we live. I've just heard reports from the Gaza Strip. We're hearing that children are starting to shoot RPGs in some parts of the northern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. By children, I mean teenagers. And that means that Hamas is having trouble recruiting new fighters because the IDF has been killing its operational units and regiments. Of course, this is bad news for everyone, that teenagers are starting to be part of the combat, but it also says that Hamas is in a distress in these areas. So you've got this, some sort of an evidence to Israel's success, to an extent, in really destroying parts of the Hamas infrastructure around the Gaza Strip. But on the other hand, you also have these negotiations, and you said, as you said, Israel coming closer and closer to the Hamas positions. And right now, what the Prime Minister has directed the team is that he's willing to compromise on everything but one subject. And that is a formal declaration that the war is over. This is the only thing that he's not willing to give away, and the Defense Apparatus, and this is my latest column in Yediot that I know you read, the Defense Apparatus is saying, ‘if all that we have left is this card of ending the war, we are close to destroying most of Hamas infrastructure. We are close to what we see as a military victory in the Gaza Strip. Fear not if you're actually deliberating this. To say, if this is what separates you from bringing the hostages back, we,’ the generals, are saying, ‘don't worry about it. Say that the war is over, and if we need to attack again, we will attack again. So if it's a declaratory matter, if it's just a formality of sorts.’ Now, this is, of course, not a formality of sorts. This is a big thing to say, that the war is over. Because then other parties, for instance, Egypt, Qatar, and of course, the United States, that hasn't been too supportive of this war to begin with. And I'm saying this, this is an understatement, right? The US has said, ‘Israel has a right to defend itself, Hamas shouldn't control the Gaza Strip.’ But then when the Israelis said, ‘Oh, we want to enter the Gaza Strip, we want to occupy parts that are controlled by Hamas, or if not occupied, at least take effective control. And we would need to do this through an incursion,’ basically, the White House has said that any junction including entering Gaza City, including entering the Shifa Hospital, including entering Rafah, Khan Yunis, every junction, the White House tried to deter, to an extent, Israeli operations within the Gaza Strip.
DS: You repeatedly say, and as do some of my other guests, and I think the general commentary here in Israel, the political commentary in terms of analysis is, ‘Netanyahu would do X, Y, and Z, but for Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, he would do this and do that.’ And I, by the way, I think that may be true on certain issues, but on a topic as sensitive as quote unquote “ending the war”, and declaring an end of the war, which could in fact leave Hamas still in power. So, it's basically allowing Sinwar and Hamas to climb out of the rubble and say, ‘we're still here, and Israel's saying the war is over.’ I know that it's not exactly the way I'm saying it, but it's how it could be interpreted. It's certainly how it could be interpreted among Israel's other enemies in the region, and I think that's a bigger deal, not just for Netanyahu's management of Ben-Gvir Smotrich, it's a big deal for the Israeli public. I know the security establishment has all these views, ‘Israel should do this, Israel should do that’, they're not the one that has to go before the voters. Netanyahu, and Gantz, and Yair Lapid, and anyone else who has ambitions to run for Prime Minister, have to go before the Israeli public and say, ‘we are for this.’ And it's a different standard. It's a higher bar, you know, given where the Israeli public is these days, as you and I have discussed, and I know there's a sense of war fatigue among the population. On the other hand, the entire electorate seems to have moved a few clicks to the right, across the board, so they're not all where Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are, but they're not where Yair Golan is. Most of the public is somewhere to the center or to the center right. And so I think declaring the war is over with Hamas still in power is a tough sell for the Israeli public at large. And I think that's probably weighing on Netanyahu as well.
NE: Absolutely. And we are in the midst of a very complicated and uneasy situation, to say the least, for Israel. Because of the pressures that we're seeing in the north that we're going to discuss, but also things that are developing quickly at the east, with Iran. And these are huge questions. And I'm not gonna come here and say that there is an easy answer to how you tackle this kind of very difficult war that we've been fighting since October 7. Here's the things that I've heard from the defense apparatus, and I can only quote these and present them. And I should say that I also publish things that present a completely entirely different view. The defense apparatus is saying this, ‘you cannot destroy every Hamas operative in the Gaza Strip. You cannot kill every Hamasnic in the Gaza Strip.’ And the reason for that is because you have much more than half of the population supportive of Hamas. And, as it is sometimes presented by an international media, there isn't a clear separation between military wing and between the political wing of Hamas. So these stories about soldiers finding, in every house, a Kalachnikov hidden, or some sort of material of the military wing of Hamas, the involvement of the population with Hamas. It's because Hamas is seen as a grassroot popular movement of the Palestinian street, of the Palestinian people. Most of the Palestinians today support Hamas. So, the security establishment in this country and the IDF is saying, and even in a regular war, ‘we're not going to kill every soldier of the enemy. That's not how you win wars.’ And in military theory, if you have killed 30 to 35 percent of the other side’s fighting force, that means that you have another dozens of percentage of people that have left the arena as fighters because they are afraid or they're injured or anything like that. And if you have destroyed about 60 to 70 percent of its military infrastructure - that means the places in which they used to produce rockets, their tunnels, their inventories of ammunition, their source of ammunition through the Philadelphi or the border with Egypt.
DS: So the Philadelphi Corridor, just for our listeners, that's where Gaza connects with Egypt and where a lot of the above land and underground smuggling of weapons and other resources -
NE: Yeah. And this is the route in which much of the Hamas ammunition was smuggled over the years. And what the IDF is basically saying to the government, is ‘we have done all this. Now, we have come to you and said, what's your plan for the day after? It's not about the Biden administration. It's about us. It's about the IDF. What do you want us to do? We have taken control of what's going on of Gaza City. We have taken control of the northern parts of Gaza. What do you want us to do in these areas? Do you want us to have a military occupation on the local population?’ ‘No,’ said the government. ‘We don't want that.’ So what do you want us to do? The Israeli government, and I think we can agree on this, this is not about Bibi, or not Bibi - the Israeli government at no point, including the national unity government, at no point said, ‘we have a plan for these areas after you have taken effective control.’ I'm talking about areas like Zeitoun, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Gaza City. ‘We have brought you really to the point of almost a military victory.’ Now, here are the challenges. We have in the north, we are seeing that we are increasingly isolated in the region, and we're having more and more trouble in security coordination with the moderate Arab countries that are our allies in the region. We are seeing the influence of Iran in the region rising. We're seeing the prospects of normalization, or some sort of a moderate alliance, with Saudi Arabia and other countries decreasing. And at this kind of condition, together with the reserve service erosion in this country, what's happening now to regular Israelis, they can be, you know, my age, 45, they can be 35, they have businesses, they have work. And Dan, some of them have served 200 days in reserve service, risking their lives with three and four kids at home.
DS: Two of my nieces have boyfriends who have been in and out. It's just this constant - I'm struck by it, Nadav. Every time I'm here, it's like, it's hard to explain, to describe, to people in the West how disruptive and exhausting it is for average Israelis coming in and out of reserves. We were supposed to record an episode here in Jerusalem and our technician, who was supposed to record it, canceled late at night, the night before we were supposed to record. Why? Because he was called up. I mean, these people are trying to run their lives, run their businesses. Now, on the one hand, it's war, this is what happens. But Israel has never fought a war this long since the War of Independence. And it looks like there's another war that's going to start. So Israel could be in a permanent state of war, on multiple fronts, one way, various levels of intensity for the foreseeable future. That is wear and tear on the Israeli public. And without a clear articulation of where it's all going, is your point.
NE: Everybody's talking about how many people died. So hundreds and hundreds of Israeli soldiers died in the Gaza Strip. I'm talking after October 7, sacrificing their life in this war. But we have thousands and thousands of people who are injured and cannot return back to battle, and we're talking about physical injuries and we're talking about a lot of trauma. This is a generation that has never seen this kind of military action and activity. My wife and myself, we went out three times to restaurants since this entire war began. The last time was last night. The young man sitting next to us lost his leg during the war and you could see he was injured during the war, and this is something that you can see across the Israeli society, but this is not about trauma. This is about our capabilities.
DS: I have also been struck by the high, high number of severely wounded. I visited Sheba Medical Center on one of my more recent visits, and the number of young people - when I say young people, late 20s, early 30s. You know, people, they were working at a high tech company right around where we are sitting right now, two or three kids at home, living their best life. They get called up to fight in Gaza, and then they're sitting at Sheba Medical Center. I have a vivid memory of one gentleman I met with in January who had a missing leg, basically one of his lungs destroyed. And the hearing gone from one of his ears, and he's sitting in a wheelchair. And just, the difference between what his life was and what it is now. And that's another thing I think people don't appreciate. You have thousands of people, thousands.
NE: And by the way, Israel has, now in this war, the most amazing success rate of saving people in the battleground and getting them, in a matter of minutes, superior medical attention. So one of the reasons we have so many injured - luckily, we have so many injured people, is because we have changed everything in our perception as to trauma and critical help during battle. And this has been extremely successful for Israel, but it also means that we're having entire units and regiments and divisions that are suffering from erosion. And this erosion is twofold. On the one hand, you have people who have died, you have injured people that will not be returning to service soon, if at all. On the other hand, you have reserve soldiers that are telling the army, ‘we can't come’. And it's not that they don't want to come because they don't believe that you need to win against Hamas. It's because their children, and I've met these children, their children can't sleep at night because they live in a society in which they open up a radio, they open up a phone, there's push notifications on almost a daily basis on Israeli soldiers that have died in the Gaza Strip. And this could be their father. Usually, their mother needs to run the house - the amount of help, I'm talking about now, financial help, given to these people - some of them are small business owners, and really heart wrenching stories, terrible stories about people who have lost their careers and their life. And by the way, also their employers are starting to say - they shouldn't, right? It's illegal. But they're starting to say, ‘yeah, you're going to go onto a reserve service again?’ And of course, I condemn that. You hear this from these people, and some of them are my friends. And the question is, how much can you - you know, the reason David Ben-Gurion said ‘short wars’, he understood the size of the society, he understood the position of Israel in a globalized world at the time between two superpowers, now with one superpower. And he saw that a long war of attrition, the sort that we are starting to have here, in the North and in the South, is really problematic. And because of that, let me just quote to you someone who is a member of the Israeli cabinet, not the war cabinet, that was discontinued by the Prime Minister after Eisenkot and Gantz left the government, but the cabinet. And he told me this: ‘For us, a hostage deal is an excellent way out. An excellent way to save face, because we need this war in the south to have some sort of closure. Not because we want to stop fighting against Hamas. We're going to continue on fighting against Hamas, and making sure they cannot have another October 7. But we need to have this hostage deal because it's a way out from this war in the south because we have huge challenges ahead of us, both in the north and in the east and within Israeli society. And we cannot maintain this for long.’ Now, I can't tell you who was this guy who spoke with me. He's a minister in the government. But really, he doesn't come from the center left. So the military establishment has said, and is saying in these conversations with the government, and with Netanyahu himself, ‘we have come so close to what we call a military victory. To have a full time, full pledged, absolute victory, you need to have another political alignment within the Gaza Strip.’ Right? That's the only way you don't have a Hamas regime there. You need to have a different power there. Now, says the Israeli military, ‘do you want us to have a military occupation, the sort that the United States had in Iraq? Or the sort that the US and Britain and other allies had in Germany? Or the US had in Japan? Is this what you want?’ The answer by the Prime Minister is ‘no, we don't want this.’ So the IDF is saying, ‘Our job is almost done. In three weeks, in four weeks, it's over for us. We don't see any other targets. End this war. Get the hostages back. And if you need, go to a 2.0 war against Hamas, you know, in the next cycle after the U.S. elections.’ And that's really important because the U.S. elections are pressuring Israel. And another senior Israeli source with a lot of influence on this war has told me, ‘look, if we do not end this war with getting the hostages back, we might need to end the war anyway, and we're not going to get the hostages back.’ And that's a remarkable quote, and he said that, meaning, we might need to end the war because of what, Dan? Because of the north.
DS: Okay, so that is a perfect segue. We might as well get to the north and talk about the north. It does seem like Israel is headed for a full fledged war with Hezbollah. It does seem like things have been certainly heating up, literally and figuratively, over the last couple of months. What are your sources saying about the potential for a near term full on war with Hezbollah?
NE: The last person I spoke with said that the countdown has begun to a war with Hezbollah and that there is no other choice unless Hezbollah is willing to climb down the tree. And what is that tree? So, everybody remembers that on October 7, Hamas attacked Israel. And many forget that on October 8, Hezbollah attacked Israel, and launched a war against Israel in the north. Now, at the IDF defense strategy, if Israel is attacked on two fronts, and this is the IDF strategy that was authorized by various Israeli cabinets over the years, the IDF can't actually employ an attack on both fronts after it was attacked. It needs to stop at one front and go to a defensive position, and at the other front, move from defense to attack as quickly as possible, according to the basic principles of the security strategy built by Ben-Gurion at the time. So, the IDF said, ‘at the beginning of the war, our main front is Gaza.’ That was debated. There was a cabinet meeting. We talked about this on this show on October 11. It was a dramatic meeting. Defense Minister Gallant came to that meeting together with the chief of staff, and they recommended the Israeli cabinet to have a preemptive strike against Hezbollah. And that preemptive strike, said those who supported it, would change the Middle East for the better. They assumed at the time that it would have destroyed much of Hezbollah's infrastructure.
DS: Gantz and Eisenkot, were they supportive of Gallant on this?
NE: No, not only were they against this, Netanyahu made sure that they will join that cabinet meeting. And Netanyahu, who didn't support the army and Gallant on this, Netanyahu made sure that Gantz and Eisenkot, former chiefs of staff, both of them, military experts of the highest order in this country - that they'll be able to be part of the cabinet meeting. So they entered the government, they signed the agreement, and immediately they were virtually pushed into the cabinet room, in which they just heard that there is a plan, and there are planes in the air, so to speak. And by the way, it's ‘so to speak’ because they weren't on the air, but they were on the runway, waiting for the cabinet to say a green light for a full preemptive strike of the sort that we have not seen since the Six Day War. And the IDF thought that it had a tremendously successful card at its hand. And in that meeting, Gantz and Eisenkot are just struck - this is how they described it: they are amazed that this proposal is being brought by the defense apparatus. They're saying to the defense apparatus sitting by the table, ‘you are traumatized by October 7. You are not thinking clearly. You are operating against the strategy of defense in this country. Our main front is the Gaza Strip. If you attack now, we have a regional war that we have to run. And the people who are going to escape punishment because of the war with Hezbollah are going to be Hamas, because you're going to focus on the north while your war is really with Hamas at this point.’ And Gantz and Eisenkot pushed through that cabinet meeting. While the prime minister, he makes sure that they'll fight for him because they're the military experts. Right? And he has a phone conversation with President Biden, during that cabinet meeting, in which the president is pressuring the prime minister not to go for any sort of strike of this sort. And at a certain point, a dramatic point during the meeting, Eisenkot stands up. He's the former chief of staff. He's a newly appointed minister in the government. He goes to the head of research in the Israeli branch of intelligence. And he stands up and he goes to him physically, and he tells him, ‘you should say your opinion right now because the IDF is supportive of this operation.’ And he's demanding of, you know, an officer that is much less in rank than the chief of staff, is demanding him to say what his professional opinion is to a preemptive strike against Lebanon. And that officer says, ‘I have opposed it. I oppose this. I think it would be a mistake.’ And Netanyahu, together with Gantz and Eisenkot, managed to tilt the cabinet against attacking Hezbollah, Lebanon on October 11. After this meeting, the Prime Minister goes into a fury of briefings with media figures here in Israel, in which he explains that if we were to go to a war with Hezbollah, the results for Israel would have been tragic and dramatic. He basically feels the need to explain to senior figures in Israeli media why he was against this preemptive strike proposed by the defense apparatus. And all I'm saying was already published. All I'm saying is, these are not, you know, theories. These are not sources. The October 11 meeting was very much, you know, detailed, and they already gave interviews on. At the beginning, the Israeli censorship tried to stop reporting on that. And the funny thing about this is that Nasrallah himself, the leader of Hezbollah, didn't believe that Israel was ready to do so. But he was basically, you know, 5 to 10 minutes away from Israel launching a surprise attack against Hezbollah. And the reason I'm talking about this is because many people within the defense apparatus would say to you, Dan, today, that this was a mistake, this was Israel's biggest mistake. Because, yeah, they surprised us on October 7, but we could have hit the Iranian major proxy in the region, with them completely exposed at the time, thinking that we won't dare to do that. And that the clear Israeli choice at that point would have been to go to that frontal assault in the north and spare ourselves from this kind of Iranian led alliance rising in the region in recent months. And here we are, eight months later, and this is the condition in which we are at. Israel is employing what it calls a ‘lethal defense’ in the north. That means that it keeps on attacking Hezbollah. And this is something that I should say, and sometimes it doesn't translate into news that people see either in America or back home here in Israel: it's Israel that is being super aggressive against Hezbollah in the north. It's Israel that is continuously raising the level of its response and attacks against Hezbollah officials all across South Lebanon. And it has a lot of successes, first of all, in terms of how many people died. So, you have the entire Israeli north evacuated on the border, dozens and dozens of thousands of people. You have another at least 100,000 people that can't live a normal life there because they are having sirens and attacks all day long, you know, unmanned aerial attacks. And it's really, it's a scary place, the Israeli north and higher Galilee right now. And I know because I travel there all the time and I speak with the mayors of these areas all the time. And at the same time, you have about 400 Hezbollah operatives, and if you count in also Palestinian factions, about 500 dead on the Lebanese side. On the Israeli side, you have less than 40, since the beginning of the war. Just that we'll understand how it seems. Israel keeps attacking. Hezbollah keeps, as far as the Israelis are concerned, responding, but it's responding in a very clever way, strategically, and also in terms of media. It managed to get a huge win, and here's the win. For the first time in Israeli history, you have an entire part of the country that's been evacuated by the order of the government, for now eight months. So the people living in Metula have been ordered by the government, ‘leave your homes.’
DS: Metula, a major residential area in the north, just at the border.
NE: And also, a history of Zionism. Metula is, you know, Tel Hai, Trumpeldor, Kfar Giladi. These areas are areas that the Zionist movement has fought for well over a hundred years to control. And these areas, right now, are evacuated by order of the government. Qiryat Shemona, the main residential area, is also evacuated. And because of that, Hezbollah can register, I don't want to say a historic win, but for them, it's a sort of a victory that Israel itself evacuated part of its citizens. Now, the reason this was done by the Netanyahu government is because after October 7, people up north said, ‘Wait a minute, you know, the Nukhbah of Hamas did that, and we didn't expect them to do so, but we know that the Radwan force,’ that's the elite force of Hezbollah, has been training for years to occupy parts of the Galilee and to enter Israeli residential areas, the way that the Nukhba of Hamas did in the south to abduct people and to kill as many civilians. And we know these, they have these plans because we've been reported that this is what they have. And I should remind you, Dan, that just in the weeks ahead to the October 7 attack, Hezbollah actually built a tent within Israeli sovereign territory, within Israel. And this tent became a matter of friction between Israel and Lebanon and the rest of the world. People in Israel were saying in the north, ‘why aren't you bombing the tent? It's in our territory. Hezbollah is basically intruded into Israeli sovereign territory. They built something, just take them down.’ And the government didn't want to do that. And that was seen as a show of weakness, and for the people in the north right after October 7, they were saying, ‘if this is what Hamas can do in the south - my god, what can the Radwan force of Hezbollah, a much more trained force, much more ammunition, more sophisticated, much more supported by Iran?’
DS: Much more sophisticated weapons, too. They have the ability to do real precision -
NE: Guided missiles.
DS: That Hamas doesn't have. Not only better trained, but better experience, is a point I've often made, that they have real battlefield experience recently. Hezbollah doesn't, fighting to prop up Bashar al-Assad's regime in the Syrian civil war. So they've got real experience fighting over basically the better part of the last decade in a way that Hamas doesn't. And Hamas didn't.
NE: And then the government felt pressured by the population to allow the evacuation from there. And I need to underline that when the government says ‘evacuate’, that means that the government is responsible to find, for you, education and rent and pay you compensation. So the local municipalities started saying, at least some of them, ‘our people are moving out anyway. You need to give the evacuation order so that the government will be held responsible for the fate of these people. Because they're going to be refugees or displaced persons in Israel.’ And then Hezbollah attacked on October 8th anyway. So this became a war zone. The government at this point, I would say - unstable, fearful to an extent because of what happened in the south. Thinking, ‘what could be next?’ Knowing that the IDF in the north isn't ready for a surprise attack by Hezbollah, as was the IDF not ready for the surprise attack by Hamas. The government was pressured - or pressured itself, it really depends on who you talk with, to have these evacuations in the North, and do something, again, that no other Israeli government has ever done since the War of Independence. And even in the War of Independence, the government was very hesitant to say to people, ‘yeah, you can evacuate because of the advancing Egyptian army.’ The whole point in Zionism is, you stay there and you fight. It's not all about the Alamo, but it's not far from that, at the ideas of Zionism. And then an interesting thing happened after the government ordered this evacuation, actually allowing the population to leave, and granting compensations to these families who now live in hotels. In the last eight months, some of the fathers are enlisted as reserve soldiers. So they're serving in Gaza. The family is living in one hotel room with three kids. It's only the mother because the father is in Gaza. I met these families again and again and again. And you see children that have teary eyes and they have lost their homes. The father is in Gaza. They're worried that he'll be killed in the war, and they don't know when they're going to be back. And this is because Hezbollah has opened, you know, a war against Israel. And nobody in the world, by the way, cares. Nobody in the international community cares. So all of these people that keep on preaching Israel about, ‘this did not happen in a vacuum,’ I'm quoting Guterres, right? The UN Secretary General. And are saying, ‘it's all about the Palestinian Israeli conflict, it's all about occupation’ - while Israel left Lebanon, back in 2000. It withdrew from Lebanon, unilaterally. It got a UN Security Council saying that it has returned all the Lebanese land back to Lebanon. It has got 1701, Security Council decision, saying that Hezbollah needs to be North to the Litani River.
DS: UN Security Council Resolution 1701 passed after the second Lebanon war, so after 2006.
So the first resolution was passed after which Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and then the second resolution in 2006, after the second Lebanon war, where Hezbollah was required to move farther north, as you said, above the Litani River, so that there was clear space.
NE: For the Lebanese army, that was supposed to take control of these areas together with an increased UNIFIL force.
DS: UN force, a UN peacekeeping force. And it's been completely violated. And Hezbollah is back south.
NE: Hezbollah is basically when you travel in the north of Israel, up until October 7, you see the Hezbollah operatives, the Hezbollah terrorists, the same organization that is responsible for the death of hundreds of U.S. Marines, a designated terrorist organization - sitting physically on the border, watching you on the Israeli border, meters away from the Israeli farmers, planning their invasion of Israel.
DS: And I just want to stay on this point, Nadav, it's important. Because we're often told, in dealing with how to deal with Gaza, Israel is often told, ‘Oh, we can get multinational forces. We can have the UN. We can have this group, we can have that group.’ Okay. Maybe, but the track record isn't so good. What you just described was supposed to be the solution, a version of the solution, for Israel's northern border, and despite a UN Security Council resolution, despite a UN peacekeeping force, despite all these entities saying, ‘don't worry, we got this,’ the reality is it's been completely violated. Hezbollah is sitting there on Israel's northern border, staring into Israeli homes.
NE: And of course, and digging tunnels. During Eizenkot's tenure as chief of staff, they discovered those huge tunnels, and we're not talking about the Palestinian tunnels in Gaza, built into Israel, discovered in 2014, 2015. We're talking about huge tunnels that you can basically use, sometimes, vehicles, that they built into Israel, and with clear drills, military drills, in which they say, on the record, Dan: ‘Here, we are occupying the Galilee, and we're occupying Israeli towns and villages.’ Now, I'm all for international settlements and some sort of understanding, but nobody can explain to the Israelis, why should they have any sort of an agreement as to the Gaza Strip, or any sort of political compromise with the Palestinians, if they have left South Lebanon, after years of maintaining a military presence and occupation in the southern part of Lebanon, they have left. Six years later, they got an attack from Hezbollah that led to the second Hezbollah war. And now, when Israel was attacked by Hamas, it's also attacked by Hezbollah in the north on October 8th. And nobody in the international community, including France, for instance, who's supposed to be some sort of a patron of Lebanon, historically speaking. All the United States - nobody really cares about those dozens of thousands, and actually hundreds of thousands, of Israelis, who've their lives have become, they've become displaced persons in this country. They are being subsidized by an economy that is being overburdened by the war in the south. And nobody has a clear solution to - what does Hezbollah actually want from Israel? Nobody's asking this question. And the answer is, they don't want anything besides Israel being eliminated. This is the Hezbollah agenda. It's an Iranian Shia fundamentalist agenda to destroy Israel. And this is what is happening in the north. They have attacked us on October 8. Israel is responding, very targeted, it has been preparing itself to a war in Lebanon, not a war in the south with Gaza. That's the truth. So the Israeli IDF is constantly saying to decision makers in this country, ‘just give us the chance to operate in the North and see what happens because we're ready for a war in the North.’ And the Israeli decision makers are saying, ‘can we have this?’ Considering the amount of people that have been influenced by the war in the south, considering what's happening in our economy, considering what I said about reserve soldiers and our international arena. Now, how do you break this bond that was built by Hezbollah between the Gaza Strip and between the north? Because what Nasrallah is saying - this is really important to understand. Nasrallah is saying, ‘as long as you fight in the south, in Gaza, I'm going to continue on attacking you in the north, because this is part of our alliance.’
DS: And they're squeezing Israel.
NE: By saying that, what he actually says to those people who analyze the entire Israeli situation through the lens of occupation, he's saying, ‘you are dead wrong about this. This is not about occupation. This is about the alliance that wants to wipe Israel off the map, and this is -’ I'm not putting words into Nasrallah's mouth. This is the on the record position of Hezbollah and of its patron, Iran, and of Hamas. And he's saying, ‘this is an alliance here, and we're going to continue attacking you as long as you're going to continue at your war in Gaza.’ And Israel's problem is, how do you disconnect this? How do you break the bond in a way that Nasrallah will understand that he has to pay a price for these attacks? And these attacks are also eroding Israeli deterrence, because he's attacking important military installations in the north. And he's recording this, and this is being run through the media across the region, and you see anti tank missiles. You see, you know, drones attacking - suicide drones, within the sovereign state of Israel. You see entire towns like Metula and Qiryat Shemona being bombed. And he's allowing himself to bomb them, Dan, because Israel evacuated the territory. So Israel evacuated the residents by saying to Hezbollah, ‘This is fair game.’ Hezbollah is very careful not to have too many Israeli civilians killed. It's not trying to kill as many Israeli civilians as it can. And let me tell you how we know that, and this is not me saying that Hezbollah is, you know, an NGO of sorts committed to world peace. If you look at Hezbollah abilities, it can hit places that haven't been evacuated, almost at the same effective control that it can hit Qiryat Shemona or Metula. But it continuously hits the places that Israel evacuated. Why? Because Hezbollah knows that if it passes a threshold, Israeli public is going to say to the Israeli government, ‘That's it. You know, now they've killed too many people, now you need to act,’ and because of that, they're playing a very sophisticated game of erosion and attrition against the Israeli defense system. And now the IDF is basically saying this: ‘Either you get a deal that breaks the bond between Gaza and the North, either you get this deal right now, and this deal should be enforceable,’ and this is what Amos Hochstein is working on, ‘or we would need to fight a war in the North. We want this to be a limited war. We don't want to have a never ending regional war. We don't want Hezbollah to shoot all the missiles and the rockets it has, including on the Tel Aviv area. We don't want to have this level of destruction in Israel, we want to make this as limited as we can, but we need to have our deterrence regained as far as Hezbollah is concerned. And Lebanon needs to pay a price for the war it launched.’ And now, this is an excellent point that somehow is not being made by the Israeli decision makers. Look, Lebanon is a sovereign country. Everybody knows that Lebanon is a failing sovereign country, but it is a sovereign country. On October 8th, this country launched a war against Israel. And Israel has been so specific to target Hezbollah. But no, you know, Hezbollah is represented at the Lebanese parliament. Hezbollah is not a fringe organization of Lebanon. It's a major part of the Lebanese society. Lebanon has an army. And Israel - you know, internationally speaking, people are talking about international law - is well within its rights to say, ‘this is a war, it's an act of war, if you don't cease and desist immediately we will attack Lebanon, and by attacking Lebanon we can attack virtually every infrastructure in Lebanon that is also used for military capabilities, for both military and civilian capabilities.’ And the reason that Hezbollah is allowing itself to do so is because Hezbollah knows that Israel won't do that, and also because Hezbollah knows that the United States pressuring Israel. When Biden said, ‘don't,’ yeah, he meant Hezbollah, but he also meant, and I wrote it down, as I'm saying it right now. He also meant, ‘don't’ - to Israel. ‘Don't go for that war. I'm going to send -’
DS: Aircraft carriers, Marine squadrons -
NE: Going to deter them. ‘It's on us, right?’ You don't do that. That was because of the October 11th cabinet, Israeli cabinet meeting.
DS: Okay, two questions. One, the reason Gantz and Eisenkot were so strongly against, and it seems like Netanyahu too, launching a preemptive quote unquote “preemptive” strike against Hezbollah in the north in the days after October 7th was in part, to quote you, quoting Gantz, ‘you're going to take your focus off Gaza.’ There's simply no way to do both at the same time. When we deploy manpower, there's a focus on the manpower. Sure, we could deploy some manpower to the south, but the reality is, if we're fighting a major war in the north, that's where our manpower is going to be deployed, focused, and ultimately depleted. What you're describing now is, Gaza's winding down, but not totally done. Hezbollah war potentially winding up. We are back in a version of what Gantz was worried about in the days after October 7th. And at the beginning of this conversation, you're talking about how exhausted these Israeli reservists are who are going in and out and in and out and in and out, and then suddenly they're thrust into a two front war. Does Israel have the military capability? You talked about this point. You said it's not about trauma. It's about capabilities. Does Israel have the capabilities to do a version of what you're describing - which is turning into at least a two front and perhaps even more than that, multi front war. We've even talked about increased radicalization, and threats from the West Bank.
NE: We're not talking about Iran.
DS: That was going to be my next question. You keep talking about Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Does he want to do this? Does he want to do that? He's not exactly an independent actor. Iran is a factor in this. So there, you've just jumped ahead to my final question. But before we get to, does Iran join the war? Which is really where we want to end. Was Gantz's concern - and Netanyahu’s, and Eisenkot’s - fair? Is Israel walking to the same trap where it's suddenly going to be overstretched?
NE: That's a huge question and that's exactly the problem. How do you tackle these challenges? And the answer that the defense apparatus is right now giving, and I'm not saying that there's a right answer, I'm not saying that I condone this, that I support this - is, look, most of the threat coming from the Gaza Strip has been handled. We have tackled this. We have managed to destroy most of the Hamas regiments. Hamas cannot have another October 7. That is the message coming from the IDF. We have destroyed their capabilities. And also, if you look at the South, people can return back to their houses on those kibbutzim and towns - if they're not, of course, destroyed physically, and some of them are. But people have returned back to Sderot and to other places in the south, on the border of Gaza, they can go to school. Hamas doesn't have enough rockets and missiles. It has lost more than 95% of the rockets and missiles that it had. It either shot them or lost them. It cannot produce any new. And therefore, the threat coming from the south is not as important as the challenges that we have in the north. I really want to stress that this is not a discussion between people who are weak intentioned, that are not resolved to have a clear victory against Hamas, or people that want a never ending war, like sometimes the Prime Minister is being accused of - and this is, by the way, not an accusation that I ever made. I think that Netanyahu doesn't want a never ending war. He wants to win the war, and if he can kill Sinwar tomorrow morning and end the war, and say that the war is over, that would be the best case scenario for him. I think it's a stupid approach. But what I want to stress is that this is a real dilemma. This is not a dilemma for Twitter and for trying to sketch the other side as being weaklings of sorts. No, this is a real dilemma. And here's the problem. We may have tackled most of the threat in the South, but if we move everything to the North, indeed, can we stand a challenge bigger than the one that we have had in the last eight months? And people need to know this, the missiles and the rockets that are going to be shot by Hezbollah and the abilities that Hezbollah has are much more threatening to the Israeli society, to the Israeli economy, and are going to take many, many lives in this country. The entire Northern border, towns and cities on the border, are going to probably be destroyed by Hezbollah rockets. About 80, 85% of their rockets and missiles are relatively short range, but high fire is going to be hit. And it's going to be hit very hard. And Tel Aviv will probably be hit too. And this is the kind of war that we have not seen. We're going to see scenes of destructions in this country that we haven't seen, probably ever, if a war in the north ensues. And because of that, the Israelis don't want a war. You know, nobody wants this war in the north to develop and escalate. But then what do you say, Dan, to those civilians that we have, that are fourth and fifth and sixth generation, working, farmers working that land, and they cannot go back to those agricultural areas, they can't go back to their homes. I have a friend that was in a military reserve service, and he had a suicide drone, you know, and there's a camera, I'll send you the camera from his car. He was almost bombed to death on his way to Qiryat Shemona. So what do you say to these people? These people have children. They need to open the school year, September.
DS: Defense Minister Gallant is saying, the goal is to get the schools back open by September. Which means basically they have to be in a sufficiently secure position within two months.
NE: I would say this. Knowing Gallant, I don't think that the Israeli defense apparatus will lead into a war while the other side knows that we want to end it by September because we want students and elementary students back in schools. Because this gives you a ‘hard stop’, strategically speaking, that actually compels you to stop by a certain point. So you need to think this through. And the answer to your question, ‘can Israel do this?’ Well, much of it depends on the United States. That's the truth. And I would bounce back the question to you. Can the Biden administration support Israel defending itself against Hezbollah, after everything else has failed? If you ask Amos Hochstein, for instance, he'll tell you, ‘I think that at the end, Hezbollah is a Lebanese organization, and if push comes to shove, they'll choose to climb down the tree and not have this kind of a destructive war.’ And this is going to be destructive for Israel, but I should say, and quote someone at the political establishment in this country, a senior source who told me, ‘these areas in Lebanon, they're going to look like Gaza. When we're finished and over and done with them, they're going to look like Gaza. And we know that we're going to get our fair share of international criticism for that, but we're not going to budge’ - because there is no claim to this area. By the way, there is no claim to Gaza. Israel has left Gaza in 2005. Israel has left Lebanon in 2000. People in Israel are asking, if you can't live on these fronts, of places that you have redrawn from, at the demand of the international community - if you can't do this in the north, and you can't do this in the south, in both cases because of fundamentalist organizations devoted to destroying the state of Israel, how can we maintain our position in this region? And what kind of fair criticism can be leveled against Israel for defending itself, either in the north or in the south? So this is a huge dilemma for Israelis. And the answer that I'm hearing from decision makers is that they are very hesitant, very, very hesitant to have a full fledged war in the north after these eight months. And many people in the defense apparatus would say, ‘No, you need to reorganize, you need to pause, you need to think through, and if you want to have this war with Hezbollah, you need to prepare yourself for the next two years.’ Okay, now what happens with those dozens of thousands, more than 100,000 people that have left the north? What does it say about the entire Zionist project called the State of Israel if we cannot have these people back at their homes? What does it say about our regional security, about our deterrence vis a vis Iran? These are critical questions and what they really require is not an answer by Israel, but an answer by the only superpower around. And one of my arguments as to the Biden administration is, it's not only that the Biden administration doesn't have a policy to this region if there is no hostage deal. I quoted, you know, the American ambassador in an interview with me saying -
DS: The American, Jack Lew.
NE: ‘That's the alternative. We don't have another alternative.’ Basically, I'm paraphrasing. This is what he said. But they don't have any strategy to tackle Iran. And Iran is Hezbollah. How do you tackle this? How do you say to Israelis, ‘Don't attack Hezbollah if you cannot, to an extent, make sure that Hezbollah in Iran are paying the price for leaving an entire area in Israel derelict, abandoned, evacuated, because it's being attacked by a terrorist organization’? I don't think that Washington is really employing themselves with these questions. I think Washington is just saying, ‘we just don't want the Israelis to attack.’
DS: Washington's view - Washington. The Biden administration, the Biden administration's view is -
NE: Get the war in Gaza over. Then the people can return.
DS: They want as much quiet as they can get between now and November. That is, honestly, as far as US policy in the Middle East is concerned. If you could say to them, ‘there are 10 paths, 10 options to getting towards quiet in the Middle East, quiet on Israel's borders between now and the November election, which one would you take?’ They would say ‘yes’. Meaning: we don't care which one. We don't care which track you take. When I talk to Biden administration officials, every conversation, it's like, all roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to: how is Israel and war in the Middle East not on the front page of the news and all over TikTok in the Fall of this election? Because that represents chaos, and one of the major political liabilities that President Biden has in his reelection campaign, which shows up in all the polling, and it shows up in all the commentary - is he looks out of his depth. He looks out of his capacity to stay on top of things, to control events. He does not look large and in charge. In fact, again, and these are, analysts are saying this across the political spectrum: he looks weak, feeble, and overwhelmed by events. Fair or not fair, that is how he's coming across, and that's what's showing up in all the polling. And that's what's even showing up in the polling among center left voters in the United States. So the more - I've talked to senior democratic strategists about this. The more chaos in the world dominating the news, even if it doesn't directly affect the US daily life, it just looks like the world is out of control, and the commander in chief has lost control, and has no plan or no stature or no energy or no strategy to get a handle on things. So the Biden folks, they just want quiet. And the idea that there's a serious conversation right now about whether or not Israel is going to open up a second front at the exact time that they're hoping Israel is getting ready to sort of wind down its first front - they're like, you've got to be kidding me. That we're going to go into the democratic convention in a few weeks later this summer, where there's potential for huge anti Israel protests. The whole campus scene that we just experienced over the last couple of months is expected to move to the democratic convention in Chicago later this summer. And then into the Fall, we're gonna get another war on another front with the Middle East back in the front and center of the news - I mean it really is akin, it's not a perfect analogy, but it has some of the feel to the hostage crisis that Jimmy Carter faced when he was running for reelection in 1980, which is just, some stories are so big you can't get them out of the news when you're trying to make the case for another term.
NE: I have a great suggestion for them. So they need to find ways to leverage the power of the world's greatest ever superpower in order to pressure Iran to make sure that Hezbollah… its only patron is Iran. Hezbollah redraws from this bond that it made between the Gaza Strip and between the North. Because right now, the paradigm in Washington is, we get a ceasefire in the South, and then Hezbollah stops shooting in the North, and Bibi doesn't want a war in the North anyway, and he showed us that again and again, that's true. Nobody wants this war, including the IDF. Then if they stop shooting, the Israelis can say again and again, you know, we don't want the Radwan force on our borders and we don't want Hezbollah there. We need a different agreement in South Lebanon. But if fighting stops at the south, fighting stops at the north, maybe we can even have some sort of gestures towards normalization with Saudi Arabia, problem is solved. And that's fine. I can understand this position. As far as DC and the administration, the Biden administration, I can understand where they're coming from. But if you don't get that deal, that is very much dependent on Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas - not exactly huge fans of the United States of America and of Israel. And they understand the state of play here because everybody's being so direct in their intentions, something that never plays well for actors in the Middle East. And I would say that the U.S. has completely forgotten, you know, how to manage things in the Middle East. It's never by being seen so obvious in its responses and the way that it's pressuring Israel and the rest. So if they don't have any other alternative but Hamas agreeing to a deal, in order to stop fighting in the north and in the south, they might be left in a situation in which they're going to have this war. A famous Churchill quote comes to mind, you know, about, ‘you had a choice between disgrace and a war, you chose disgrace and you're going to get a war.’
DS: I agree with you. By the way, that would be my criticism of the Biden administration.
NE: Maybe this is taking it…
DS: No, I felt that way with their withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I think a series of events that triggered globally. So that's a conversation for another time.
NE: The bottom line here is that the Israelis do not want this war to happen in the north, but they don't know how to make sure that the fighting stops. And if the fighting doesn't stop, they have a responsibility for their civilians to get them back home, or at least try.
DS: Nadav, we will leave it there. I wanted to also talk to you about what an Israel-Iran war could look like, but I think that's its own conversation, own dedicated episode. I think the question that is increasingly on Israelis minds here, that I'm speaking to is, you know, the reality was, how does Israel fight the war against Hamas for the first few months post October 7th? What does that war look like? How long is that war? It was all focused on the South. Now every conversation as it relates to the war here, I find, is about a two front war. It's about Lebanon. It's about Hezbollah. It just feels like it's baked into the - as an assumption that that's going to happen. And I think you and I today explored a number of the issues and trade offs that need to be considered. So thank you, as always. We went long. Ilan is probably going to strangle me. But, you know, we were in person, so we couldn't resist. And I'll see you soon. I mean, I'll see you, not soon. I'll see you here, because I'll see you this week.
NE: I hope you have a great time in Tel Aviv. And I should say, it's always a great city to be at, even in these days.
DS: I agree.
NE: And you see that it's very much alive.
DS: Yeah. Thanks.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Nadav's work, you can find him on x at nadav underscore al, or at Yediot Achronot, or at Ynet, including his most recent column, which we referred to in this conversation and is very worthwhile. Call me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. And while we're on the ground in Israel, we're grateful for additional technical help from Ofir Zelikovich. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.