The IDF advocates for an end to the war - with Nadav Eyal
In recent days, while we have all been consumed with the U.S. presidential debate, less international attention has been on Israel. But during this time, Israel’s security apparatus has proposed and advocated for a formal end to the war in Gaza. This is in part because the IDF is closer to achieving its military objectives in Gaza by having dismantled Hamas’s capabilities – and in part because they believe it’s the only way to get some calm on Israel’s northern border, at least for now. The security establishment argues that there is a connection between the two fronts. Whether or not the Government will accept and implement this proposal, is not yet clear.
To help us understand what’s going on here, our guest today is NADAV EYAL, who returns to the podcast. 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.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: The IDF is telling the Israeli cabinet, if you need to say this war has ended, and this is the only thing that separates you from a deal, we are telling you that we are very close to achieving our military goals, and once we achieve them in a few weeks, you can say that the war has ended. If we need to go in, we'll go in, but it doesn't need to be part of a war.
DS: It is 11:30 PM on Tuesday, July 2nd, here in New York city. It is 6:30 AM on Wednesday, July 3rd in Israel, as Israelis get ready to start their day. In recent days, while we have all been consumed with the U.S presidential debate, well, everyone was consumed with it, including Israelis, they especially, I guess, needed a distraction. And so, while everyone has been captivated by the minute to minute post debate aftermath, less international attention has been on events in Israel. But during this time, Israel's security apparatus, The IDF, the Military High Command, the Domestic Security Agency, which is the Shin Bet or the Shabak, and the intelligence community spanning the Mossad to IDF military intelligence, they have proposed and advocated for a formal end to the war in Gaza. This is in part because the IDF is closer to achieving its military objectives in Gaza by having largely dismantled Hamas's capabilities. And in part because, they argue, it's the only way to get some calm on Israel's northern border, at least for now. The security establishment in Israel has been arguing that there is a connection between these two fronts, the war in Gaza and the increasing war fighting with Hezbollah in the north. Now, whether or not the government in Israel will accept and implement this proposal from the security establishment is not yet clear, but to help us understand what's going on here, Nadav Eyal returns to our podcast. As our listeners know, he is a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth. Eyal has been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print, and television news. Nadav Eyal on, the IDF advocates for an end to the war. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Nadav Eyal, who joins us from Tel Aviv. Hi Nadav.
NE: Hi Dan. How are you?
DS: I'm hanging in there. You know, things have been kind of sleepy here in the U.S. American politics, not much going on.
NE: That's why I'm asking.
DS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's uh, it's been otherworldly. It makes your politics seem kind of sane and conventional.
NE: I have to tell you that this stole the headlines in Israel for at least 36 hours and we're a country in war.
DS: What I have been paying attention to are two events, one of which got some coverage in Israel and one of which has gotten very little coverage. The one that's gotten less coverage than I would have anticipated is that there continue to be more day after planning than is being reported. We had Netta Barak-Corren on our podcast last week. You were helpful with that. You had just written a piece about the day after plan that she had worked on with her and her colleagues. And we had an exhaustive discussion about that topic, which I want to revisit today because there's some more action on the day after planning than is being reported. But first I want to talk about Minister Gallant's trip to Washington, D.C. Defense Minister Gallant was just in Washington. It seems to me, Nadav, that he/the government have more credibility, just based on what I'm seeing from afar and what I'm hearing from folks on the DC side, he has more credibility now in Washington than Israel has had in a while for a variety of reasons. Can you talk a little bit about that trip?
NE: Yeah, Gallant came to DC and he actually, and I published this on my Friday column, he didn't know he should go. if he should travel to Washington and this was because of that short video that was aired from the prime minister's office just a few days before Gallant was supposed to go as a defense minister in which the prime minister accused the White House and actually accused the president of not sending or at least delaying some armed shipments to Israel and he was calling for those shipments to be released. That was seen by Gallant and by Gallant's people as an attempt to sabotage his trip. So this was not a coordinated element of the Israeli leadership.
DS: Or as others have pointed out to me, an effort to distract from domestic politics that had nothing to do with the war, much more about this bill, this effort in the Knesset to implement the appointment of rabbis, give the shah's party the power to implement, decide who the chief rabbis were, local municipalities and towns. And it became a huge political headache for the prime minister. So this was a way to throw press attention back onto foreign policy.
NE: But let me tell you what we know about this video. We know that the people traveling to D.C, there were two sort of delegation traveling to DC that week. The first delegation was a delegation of Mossad IDF people that were supposed to meet their US counterparts for a strategic dialogue and that was immediately canceled by the administration as a punitive measure against the Israelis. The second delegation was much smaller and more exclusive, and that was, of course, of Tzachi Hanegbi, the National Security Council leader of Israel, together with Ron Dermer, who's actually Israel's foreign minister, at least for the prime minister, the active foreign minister.
DS: Foreign minister for all practical purposes.
NE: Yeah. And both of them were traveling to D.C. And what I can tell you is that, you know, at least one of them didn't know that the prime minister is going to air this video.
DS: So I actually think neither of them knew.
NE: Yeah, I wanted to be careful about that. They woke up in their hotels knowing that there's a huge crisis with DC and they didn't know if their meeting, which was supposed to happen on Thursday, is going to happen because they saw that the administration and the president are so angry at the prime minister for that video. Now, I'm not going into the fine details of facts, but I should say that the U. S. is delaying a shipment of weapons. And I'm talking about specific heavy duty bombs. This was delayed by the administration, and this is a result of the Rafah operation. So, holding back some of the ammunition, these bombs, was a tool of the administration to try to monitor the way that Israel will act in Rafah. And the argument made by Israeli officials in the last few weeks is we did what you asked us to do. You asked us to employ different means when we operate within Rafah, and we did that. You asked us not to use the type of bombing that we used in other places, although we do think they were discriminatory. We do think they were targeted. We did that. Now we want you to release these bombs and these munitions because we need them for the north. If God forbids, there's a war there and we need them generally. The IDF does need them. So the Israelis were getting slightly frustrated and the decision within the defense apparatus in Israel and to their understanding also with the prime minister was that this argument with the United States is not to be made public. And the reason for that is strategic. Israel did not want this to be seen as a public fracture with the White House about weapons, because it's such a sensitive issue during war, and it's sensitive as to the Israeli deterrence. And suddenly there's this video and then the Defense Minister Gallant really asks himself, and I know this from good sources, he asks himself; should I go if the doors in D.C. are shut right now, if they're canceling this strategic dialogue, if, you know, there's no chance that they'll hand over the release of these ammunitions to me? And one of the theories in Israel, the political theories in Israel, and I think it's the strongest one, is that one of the reasons for for Netanyahu to have this video out is first because he was frustrated with the Americans, but also because he was to an extent fearful that the Americans, and this goes to your question, are going to give Gallant what they didn't give to him, to the prime minister, which is a very American way to try and show the Israeli public and Israeli politics who really can bring back some results from D.C; i.e. the defense minister who's working with D.C. and not the prime minister who has an adversarial approach towards the White House or the White House has an adversarial approach towards him, whatever you want to choose. So then you have this video and everything blows up and then Gallant can’t come back with an achievement and Gallant's people think that this was the case. So the defense minister's people think that Netanyahu was trying to blow up the entire trip and then Gallant decided to go anywhere. So he, he traveled to D.C. and it was a relatively successful trip, I think. And I say this not only according to Israeli sources, but also according to American sources. And on the table was, first of all, the release of the ammunitions, basically he was told at a certain point, look, this has become a personal issue. The president has been attacked by your prime minister. It's up to the president to decide what's going to happen with this. Let's not waste time on this issue because right now it's not going to happen immediately. And after he returned, my colleague, Barack Ravid, published that 1,500 bombs out of this shipment will be released by the decision of the White House. So this is one issue. Another issue that was super important is the future of the Gaza Strip. So there, Gallant brought the news to the Americans that Israel is ready to proceed at long last towards a day after plan in the Gaza Strip. And there is a specific plan being deliberated between D.C. and between Jerusalem for a long time now. Sometimes it's called the Humanitarian Islands Plan. Sometimes it's called the Zeytun Pilot. Sometimes they say it's not Zeytun, it's a place called Tel Atatra. But basically this is a specific plan in which you have some local forces, you have Arab moderate forces on the ground. You have some international presence. The IDF has still an overreaching security responsibility for these regions, and you have some control of the Palestinians on those neighborhoods or small towns, and you want to concentrate the services, the humanitarian services, such as medical services, food supplies, education, into specific areas in which it would be defended by the hospice of these international Arab forces, with some sort of an international or American patronage to these projects. And what Gallant said to the Americans, basically, is this. We're seeing that the moderate Arab countries are not willing to cooperate at this point. And the reason they're not willing to cooperate, we think, said Gallant to his American counterparts, is because they don't see enough resolve from D.C. that you're really going with the plan. So this needs to go from the top down. You guys in DC need to say we're committed to this plan. This is how it's going to go. And then the Emirates, the Egyptians, you know, the Bahrainis, the Jordanians, they're all going to follow suit. But first of all, you guys in D.C.
DS: But follow suit means be supportive, issuing communiques and public statements and providing funding, I guess? Or follow suit means those Arab countries providing military personnel on the ground in Gaza to help implement it? And the reason I'm asking that is because at the end of the day, is this really about Israel implementing it? Israeli forces, Israeli personnel working with these local Palestinians, and we'll talk more about that. Or is somewhere in the mix, does it involve the personnel from these countries, from the Emirates, from Saudi Arabia, from Egypt, from Jordan, from wherever?
NE: No, the idea is that the Palestinians, the local Palestinians that are going to use these services or be part of these islands or bubbles or whatever you want to call them, they're not going to see Israeli soldiers there. The idea is that they're going to see Emirates and Egyptians and Jordanians and some international forces and the IDF is going to be in the background, okay, because it's in the Gaza Strip, but the idea is that these people will be able to defend themselves and just going to give you one example. You know that there is a certain hospitals operating within the Gaza Strip. For instance, there is an Emirati hospital operating in the Gaza Strip. And when they need supplies, medical supplies to go in, they'll sometimes take a private security firm that will secure those convoys. So the IDF might give assurances that it's not going to jeopardize or hurt these people. But these people actually carry weapons. And they're not Israelis. So this is how complex this has become. And the idea is that there needs to be a support of some actors in the region, because if Israel is going to present a plan for the Gaza Strip, the local population in the Gaza Strip is not going to accept an Israeli presence there because then it's occupation then. This is the meaning of real occupation. You know, if you have an Israeli soldier and he's handing over the food, he's taking over, you know, medical supplies for Palestinian civilians, then Israel has, you know, complete and full responsibility for that area. And Israel doesn't want that responsibility.
DS: Nadav, one question on this Israel's credibility in dealing with the Biden administration, there have been many points since October 7th where the Biden administration has made with some in Israel's leadership regarded as hysterical forecasts and projections as to what would happen with the war in Gaza depending on how Israel responded. They predicted that Israel, the IDF, would experience 10, something like on the order of 10 times the casualties that Israel has suffered, that Israel would be be sitting on a situation akin to the U.S. being bogged down in Iraq or Afghanistan. The administration, you know, forecast a complete catastrophe in Rafah if Israel proceeded to go into Rafah, that it would be impossible for Israel to move that many Palestinian civilians out of Rafah in anything less than three or four months. Turns out that Israel removed something on the order of a million Palestinians in a 10 day period. And, You know, Biden's famous line, take the win, when there was a multilateral defense against the Iranian 300 projectile strike against Israel and Israel should not respond, Israel responded. And then most recently, and you and I were talking about this offline, there's a new report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Organization, which is the organization that works with the UN in determining where there are food crises and famines. And it says here that all the talk several months ago that was echoed by the administration, the talk from the UN, the international community, that there was a coming famine in Gaza, turns out to have been way off. It says here, I'm reading in the Times of Israel, the data demonstrates that the IPC's projection in March, that some 1.1 million Gazans would be suffering from the highest level of food insecurity possible by sometime in July, was wildly wrong according to its own new study. It was more than three times higher than the actual number of people in that category as of June 15th. And it goes on and on and on. So, you know, that was another situation where Israel was saying, there's not going to be a major food crisis. There's not going to be a famine in Gaza and nobody was listening and everyone was hysterical. And it turns out Israel was right on that as well. Now, I'm not suggesting here that Israel's been right about everything, but there are some pretty big issues that Israel had strong views on that were in conflict with where the administration was in terms of how things would go, and generally speaking, Gallant comes to D.C. on the back end of Israel having been right about a lot of those things.
NE: Yeah, and I think that this is a lot to the credit of the Israeli defense apparatus. And I know the people who presented the plan to Secretary Blinken and to Secretary Austin and said, this is what we're going to do in Rafah and it's going to work. And this is how we prepared the humanitarian plan to evacuate more than a million people from Rafah. And actually, I think I said that on the show, I saw the plan. And I was amazed by the amount of time and effort that was put into this so that it would not be the humanitarian catastrophe that was foreseen by some in the US administration. I do want to say that the administration did get many things tactically wrong, but they got two things right strategically. The first thing was that if Israel encounters a humanitarian catastrophe or a humanitarian condition, or this was going to be the, you know, the main talking point about Gaza, then Israel's actions in Gaza are going to be limited. And therefore, Israel needs to take care of the Gazan population from day one. And the Israelis had all kinds of utterances and statements and, and things that they now, you know, to be frank, they now regret. I'm sure that the prime minister, if he could turn the clock back and say, order his ministers not to talk the way that they did talk and not to try and sort of play with the idea of supplying food to the Gaza Strip as a sort of leverage, at least talk about this as sort of leverage, he would do that. And the American said, from day one, look, if you want to be successful in this war, make sure that people are fed well, make sure that there is no humanitarian crisis. And that was a good assessment of what's going to happen as far as they were concerned when Israel was still in the grief and in the anger right after October 7. And the second thing that they did say is if you don't have a day after plan, you need to plan ahead so that you won't make the mistakes that we made. Now, the jury is still out. You know, we have a guerrilla warfare against the IDF in the Gaza Strip. And only today we learned of another two Israelis reserve soldiers that were killed in action in the Gaza Strip. And this happens almost daily now, Dan. So the jury is still out and we do see reports by the IDF and also by the U.S. intelligence that Hamas is gaining strength in some parts of the Gaza Strip. We also see reports, by the way, by Secretary Gallant, by Minister Garland himself, saying this is not the case. And I've spoken with IDF commanders and they have been telling me, and I think I've been telling you, that every time we return to a neighborhood, that we once fought against Hamas at, yes, we need to operate there again, but then these forces grow weaker and weaker.
DS: Meaning the quality of the militants, the terrorist combatants that Hamas is recruiting each time Israel returns to an area are declining. You've said to me, it does seem like they're having a little bit of a recruitment crisis, that they now have like kids serving in RPG squads rather than like seasoned, well trained combatants that they had been grooming through their whole terror infantry organization.
NE: So I want to be as straightforward about this as I can. We have here two arguments, and factually it's a dispute. One argument would say, no, we're managing to actually erode Hamas substantially. And the other argument is, no, Hamas is recruiting, it's reorganizing, it's building itself as a guerrilla movement, and it's very successful as a guerrilla movement. And these are two opposed arguments as to what's happening in the Gaza Strip, and it's a fog of war situation. But one thing is clear, Israel has taken this entire vast area of the Gaza Strip, vast for us, of course, in the Middle East, very small in any American term, and almost all of the population now is living in a very specific part of land and you can cross the Gaza Strip from north to south or from east to west in the areas controlled by Israel, which is most of the Gaza Strip. And you can do this basically in a pickup truck, an Israeli pickup truck, and you won't be short there. And you couldn't do that, of course, a few months ago. And you have military experts on, on urban warfare. I think you interviewed those in your podcast, Dan, that are saying that this is extremely quick for the IDF. And I'm basically, to be frank, I'm more of the camp that says the IDF had significant military success in the Gaza Strip. That doesn't mean that the local population, the civilians, were not hurt, that we don't have a terrible amount of civilians that have died in this war. It doesn't mean that Israel will get its strategic aims off the war, for instance, replacing the regime of Hamas. That's a different issue. But if we talk about military success, I think that the IDF has been relatively successful. And I know this because towards Israel's incursion of the Gaza Strip, there were deliberations within the war cabinet in which the prime minister, the prime minister himself, was very hesitant as to go into the Gaza Strip. And by the way, I think it's to his credit. And he said in those deliberations that we might have thousands of casualties of killed in action, of Israeli killed in action soldiers as a result of, of occupying the Gaza Strip. And we are in the hundreds. This is where we are at today. So it's, it's a very different scenario than people thought about of Gaza, if you and I would have talked, you know, a few years back, and I would have told you, look, we're going to occupy the entire Gaza Strip. You know, I don't think that anybody would have said that this would be the casualty rate of the IDF, but still the prices of are extremely high for the IDF. And also I should say that we usually count here in Israel the killed in action. So you, we always report people who have been wounded in action and severely wounded in action. But when you talk about a military force like the IDF and you talk about its divisions and regiments, you need to take into account, as you need to take into account with Hamas, not only the people that are killed in action, but also the people who cannot serve anymore because they are so badly wounded. And if you take this Into account, you see that Israel's casualties during this campaign are substantial, and they are influencing the force it might employ in the Gaza Strip on an operational level. This is very significant as to the war aims and how much time you can maintain the war. And another thing is, of course, that the entire defense apparatus of Israel, Dan, has been built on the idea that was materialized in the doctrine built by David Ben-Gurion, that Israel needs to have short wars. Nobody in the history of Israel had this long of a war. These generals, their officers, the reserve army, the way that the IDF operates mainly relying on a reserve army when you have an economy the size of Israel. This is impossible. I just spoke yesterday with a friend of mine that returned to his business, Dan, after 240 days of reserve service.
DS: I hear this all the time. They were pulled out of their companies for a long period of time and then they returned to their company and then they're called back up again. So it's just like in and out. It's very disruptive.
NE: So this to the larger question of how do you continue this war? How do you win this war? This is extremely substantial.
DS: I want to talk about that specifically the New York Times has an article just out reporting that Israel's military leadership recommends a ceasefire with Hamas and they are basically reporting what you had reported. To our listeners, don't bother with the New York Times. If you want to stay ahead of what the New York Times is reporting, you should read Nadav about a week before whatever you see in the Times.
NE: It was two weeks ago. We're always happy to give tips to the New York Times.
DS: Exactly. So what exactly is the security apparatus in Israel proposing here?
NE: What they're saying is one of two things. And this is the position of the IDF that has been brought to the cabinet and to the prime minister. The prime minister knows this well. We have two alternatives here. The first alternative is getting a deal in the Gaza Strip with Hamas, releasing the hostages, probably not all at once, unfortunately, but at two main phases. And during this deal, you have a ceasefire, and this ceasefire is going to take long. It's not going to be a two week or three week ceasefire. And during that time, the IDF will probably pull out of most, if not all, urban areas around the Gaza Strip. At certain areas, it will withdraw to the border, as it was in October 6. It will maintain a presence in the Gaza Strip. The withdrawal would not be complete. But for all intensive purposes, during these weeks, there will be no war in the Gaza Strip. Our hostages will be released. Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli jails. I'm talking about the terrorists, the Hamas terrorists, the Islamic Jihad terrorists in prison there. And of course, Hezbollah will be able to say that the war is over and stop its attacks in the north. And that's extremely important for the Israeli defense apparatus.
DS: So Hezbollah wants to be able to say Israel is no longer fighting its war with Hamas as a basis for it, Hezbollah, to stop striking Israel and Northern Israel. And that's an interpretation that Israeli intelligence believes, I take it, Hochstein and the team around him in the U.S. also believe that.
NE: It's not exactly an interpretation because according to the Biden proposal that was upheld by the Prime Minister after he gave a TV interview in which he said he's only offering a limited deal, then he needed to walk back on this, then he went to the Knesset, and from the Knesset he said, we are committed. And that's actually the first time he said that himself. We are committed to to the proposal that we made to the administration. They actually, that was the Biden proposal. The Biden proposal talks about actually ending the war, but it's not completely clear, Dan, how this will materialize. For instance, between the first phase in which we will have the release of between 18 to 20 hostages. So between this phase and the next phase.
DS: And the first phase is six weeks.
NE: Yup. Israel is going to demand that in order for us to move up to the second phase, Hamas will disarm. This is going to be one of the demands made by Israel, and Hamas is not going to disarm. And because of that, there is a good chance that this thing will blow up after 18 hostages are released and, you know, the number of Palestinian prisoners released. But the whole idea there, the thing that Hamas is so insistent on, is that Israel commits to the end of the war and that there are assurances that the war is going to be over. And if this is the case, this is the perfect ladder for Hezbollah to climb off the tree that it got on. On October 8, when it started its assault on Israel, saying we are attacking Israel because of the war in Gaza. Now, they have a sort of a declaration or an agreement that both sides can interpret, or at least Hamas can interpret and presents as an end of the war. Now, will Hezbollah buy into this? Nobody knows. But what you get through this deal is you get through actually the U.S. elections because everybody thinks that these deliberations are going to take more than six weeks. I'm talking between phase one and phase two, and it's going to take a long time. And Israel has no interest in having the war in Gaza continue before the elections. And also you have time because actually, and that's what the IDF has been telling the Israeli government, has been telling me. Look, we are out of targets. We are hitting the targets that we have. We'll continue to hit them anyway. We're gonna hit Hamas any place that we see, Hamas officials, Hamas terrorists organizing, building up. It doesn't matter. Even if we have an agreement, nothing in this agreement can infringe on our right to defend ourselves. So. the IDF is telling the Israeli cabinet, if you need to say this war is ended, and this is the only thing that separates you from a deal. We are telling you that we are very close to achieving our military goals, and once we achieve them in a few weeks, you can say that the war has ended, and we are going to continue operating against Hamas even after a formal declaration of the end of what you might call the enhanced military operations in the Gaza Strip. So there's a lot of playing with words here. To be frank, but what the IDF is saying is we have an interest right now in a hostage deal It's not only about the hostages much of it is about the hostages But it's not only about this because we want to focus on the north. We want hezbollah to stop arguing to its own people and to Lebanon that it's in solidarity with gaza We want to stop this we want to reorganize and, to be frank, we have disintegrated, we have destroyed the structure of almost all Hamas regiments in the Gaza Strip, and there is no reason to pay the high prices that we're paying right now in terms of the economy of the army, ammunitions, the risk for a regional confrontation for the operations that we are having right now in the Gaza Strip. If we need to go in, we will go in, but it doesn't need to be part of a war. Okay. All I said right now is the position of the IDF. And by the way, it's even more extreme than the New York Times wrote this morning. The headline of the New York Times said that the IDF is saying we want a truce. No, they don't only want a truce. They are saying we are close to achieving our military goals in the Gaza Strip. You can say this war has ended. If this is what's going to bring the hostages back and take Hezbollah off the ladder, we, the army, are saying to you, the decision makers, go and do that. Now, the decision makers, after I published this headline, were really pissed off. To cut a long story short. They were extremely angry, from the prime minister down. And the army was accused in defeatism. They were accused that they don't see the picture clearly. That they are sugarcoating their results in the Gaza Strip. Smotrich had a response. Smotrich is the far right politician who's the Israeli finance minister. Smotrich was taking a screenshot of my headline saying, what is this? You know, why is the IDF saying such things? We know that Hamas is still there. We know that these are the aims of the war. And this was viciously attacked by politicians from not only the far right, I want to be as clear as possible, but also the central right, the prime minister didn't like it at all.
DS: Who are politicians on the center right that also had problems with it?
NE: Oh, the prime minister himself had problems with it and his ministers too. And I didn't count all the comments and responses to that story. That was our main headline of on a Friday. That's the, you know, our busiest kind of a weekday. So it got a lot of traction. And then, If you look at the responses the week after, the IDF didn't walk back on this. So, yeah, this was not on the record from IDF officials with their names, but then the spokesperson of the IDF, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Hamas is an idea and you can't destroy an idea. That got, again, the right wing politicians in Israel, you know, furious at him because they were saying, and that's, by the way, that's a valid point, they were saying, we're not asking you to destroy the idea.
DS: It's a valid point. What Hagari said or the response to Hagari?
NE: Both points are valid.
DS: It is true, Hagari's right that you can't destroy an idea. That's not the Israeli government or the IDF's position on what the goal is with Hamas. The goal is bad actors with a bad idea that have territory to wage war on you and a whole military regime on your border is the problem. So we need to eliminate the capabilities in the territory, and then the idea can only have so much influence.
NE: Exactly. The Nazi idea, unfortunately, Nazism isn't it.
DS: Right. ISIS, Nazism. These are all ideas that are still out there. They just lack governments, militaries, and territory.
NE: I have to say to Daniel Hagari’s defense, and not that I need to defend him, he's the most reliable spokesperson in Israel to the Israeli public, with the highest ratings, and also, I think, internationally speaking,
DS: With the highest credibility.
NE: You know, if we check credibility in our polls, and we see that, but also, I could only wish some ministers or any minister in the Israeli government will have half the credibility that Daniel Hagari has, but he wasn't specifically asked about the military goals. He was asked about Hamas and he answered that question. Then he was attacked by these politicians who, again, I say, you know, to be honest, have a point saying, we didn't ask you to destroy the idea, we asked you as an army to destroy their capabilities, and that's what you're tasked to do, so please do that, and make any remarks as to the idea. And then, Dan, Tzachi Hanegbi, who's the head of the Israeli National Security Council.
DS: So he's the Prime Minister Netanyahu's National Security Advisor.
NE: Yeah, and he said exactly the same thing in the Herzliya Conference. He said, you cannot destroy Hamas as an idea. He wasn't attacking Hagari. He was saying exactly the same quote, that you can't destroy an idea, that you'd still have Hamas. So I saw this as a way to try and start preparing the Israeli public to the fact of the matter that Hamas is going to be there. You do not want it to control the Gaza Strip. You do not want to have a Hamas army. And to the question, Dan, did Israel achieve the point in which Hamas cannot have another October 7? Or it cannot have even a tenth of an October 7th? The answer is yes, and I think there will be a consensus within the Israeli political sphere that they do not maintain the capabilities, you know, a tenth or even 1/50 of the capabilities that they had on October 6th. All I did right now is talk only on the first option that is really preferred, also by the Prime Minister, by the way. He still stands by this option of having a deal, ending the war, quote unquote, playing with words here, in the Gaza Strip, and going forward. Now, a second option, which is much less preferred by the Israeli political class or by the IDF, and this I published this week, is that Israel would say, look, we have eliminated these Hamas regiments command and control in the area, we have achieved our military goals, and now we go into what was labeled in the cabinet plan for this war, phase three. In phase three. The IDF has no operational maneuvers within the Gaza Strip. It has ceased to occupy areas. It only goes in and out to areas in which it knows that there's security challenges and problems at. And the idea right now, within the defense apparatus, is we need, again, Hezbollah to climb down the tree. We know that Sinwar doesn't want a deal right now. And this is a quote by Secretary Blinken in the last 24 hours. He said, you know, the only person that doesn't want a deal right now is Sinwar. This is what the U.S. administration has been saying. And I would say to its credit, and I don't compliment this administration about the way that they've been handling their public position as to a deal in recent months, but at least they've maintained this position for quite a long time that Hamas is to blame. Now, if Sinwar understands what you and I and the defense apparatus in Israel understand, that Israel has an interest, a vested interest in a deal right now, this might be the reason he's actually refusing a deal. So, say the IDF generals, in this case, announce that we have ended our phase two operation, which is the intensive war in Gaza, say that it has ended, and then maybe consider a truce and say that this truce is intended to begin a new phase in the approach of Israel to the Gaza Strip. Allow the Palestinians to say, the war has ended, the Israelis are. pulling back, do not only pull back but also say that there is a truce and then maybe Hezbollah is gonna decide that it's stopping its attacks on Israel and this is going to be a de-escalation route even with no hostage deal. And that's option two. These are the two options. One is de-escalation with a deal, and the other one is de-escalation without a deal. Now, of course, Dan, the problem with de escalation without a deal is that we don't get our hostages. And that's a big thing. And Gallant in private conversation has been warning about this. This is the reason he's been pushing for a deal because he said in those private conversations, which I've quoted on your show, if we do not get a deal right now and pause the war, we'll have to pause the war in the South, maybe because of the North, and we're not going to get our hostages back. So let's get our hostages back and have this paused. At least that.
DS: Meaning if there's going to be a pause anyways, we might as well get hostages back as part of it.
NE: Exactly.
DS: You said that you've been critical of the U.S. in terms of how it's conducted itself in the public discussions about a hostage deal and ceasefire. Can you just, you think the administration's public posture, not what they've been doing behind the scenes, but their public posture has been in its own way an impediment to getting Hamas to move?
NE: I don't know what happened to U.S. administrations. And I'm not talking only about the Biden administration, I'm talking about the last 15 years. U.S. administrations in the Middle East have got into the crazy idea that if they want something done, they just need to say what they want. And like in a Harry Potter movie, it's going to appear. They need to wield it or something. So if they want to deal, they say, oh, we want to deal right now. We need this deal right now. There's no other option, but a deal. And then this will actually make the deal come closer. That's the sure way not to get a deal in the Middle East is say, we have no alternative but a deal. And I don't know what happened to the strategic mindset of the superpower that I knew, and I read its history at the time. Of course, if you want a deal in the region, you need to give sometimes the impression that you have plenty of other options and alternatives. If you want to pressure Israel into concessions. It might not be the best course of action to do that publicly. I know it might help you maybe in terms of public appearances in the U.S. and I know that the U.S. has, you know, an election campaign there, but pressing Israel publicly makes the other side sometimes emboldened. And that's true sometimes as to the other side and what I told you and something that I said, I think maybe on my first appearance on your show. And that is that in this region of the world, there are three things, what you think, what you do, and what you say. And in order to be effective politically in this region, you need to keep in mind that those three things never should be the same. Now, that sounds like a very dishonest advice, and I regret that. And I regret that this is what global politics is about. But as a student of global politics, This is what global politics is about. And the fact that Americans have become so apparent, so obvious and direct in their approaches, is just to the disadvantage of America in this region of the world, and I suspect in other regions of the world. Another reason we don't have a deal is because many people in Washington, and not only in Washington, in Washington, in Egypt, in Qatar, in in the Emirates and of course with the hostage families feel that the prime minister is sabotaging the deal because he knows that this will reduce his government to rubble and it will lead him to an early election from which he will probably not return as a prime minister and that's not a happy ending for him, is it? So many people believe and many sources have maintained that he's doing his best for us not to have a deal. Now I think that this to an extent has changed, and not because of him, but because of the defense apparatus saying, look, this is the offer. He actually accused them, in private conversations, of having this ploy behind his back, of making this offer at the time. But at any rate, it doesn't matter anymore. Israel made an offer. The U.S. thinks that the offer is generous. The offer is on the table. The offer has been endorsed by the President of the United States. And the only thing the Hamas leaders need to do is say, yes. And if they say, yes, we're going to have a deal, hostages are going to be freed, and the war is at least going to be paused, if not stopped entirely, for quite a long time. So it's up for Hamas. So Hamas can stop this war in five seconds if they decide, their leadership, to leave the Gaza Strip and free the hostages. They can do this in five seconds by calling up the Egyptians and saying, we're going to agree to a deal. So I'm not going to devote the responsibility of the prime minister to this mess, but I'm not going to also increase this only because there are like 65 percent or 70 percent of the Israeli public who think that he needs to retire sort of immediately. I'm not going to put too much responsibility on him. We have, you know, two players here and basically it's Hamas who's not agreeing to any kind of solution. One solution is for them to get immunity and leave the Gaza Strip unharmed, something that the U.S. would have never offered, you know, Osama Bin Laden or anyone else, any terrorists. And Israel is willing and the prime minister was willing, and I published this, you know, from the war cabinet, is willing to do that. And that's the bottom line. It's very important.
DS: Yeah. I would also argue that it has been widely reported that Sinwar, And people around him and others in the leadership of Hamas believe that the combination of the domestic Pressure on Netanyahu inside Israel, the protests, the increasing volume of the pressure from the hostage families forum, and then the pro-Hamas, outright pro Hamas protests in the U.S., protests against Israel on college campuses and elsewhere. The combination of all of that have led Hamas's decision makers to think Netanyahu's the one who's under pressure here. He said he's under pressure internationally and he's under pressure at home.
NE: I think it's absolutely true and I think it's deplorable the fact that Hamas has discovered to its surprise, and when I say to its surprise, I'm not analyzing this. This is based on, on intelligence material captured by the IDF. Hamas never imagined, never imagined, to have this kind of an international response to its operation. This is a terrorist organization. It's a designated terrorist organization with demonstrations in the West that are supportive of this, of its cause. The best places and best Ivy Leagues in the world. So, you know, we have here a really bad set of circumstances. We have a U.S. administration set into a very difficult attempt of a re-election campaign of a president, of a sitting president, and we have just seen the debate and what it means to the function of this administration. We have here a prime minister, who was unpopular before the war, who has lost every poll before the war, who's not trusted by most of the Israeli public after October 7. And we have here the terrorist leader of Hamas, who's a terrorist genocidal organization. But we should make this clear marker, this clear line between bad and ill intentions. And this is, by the way, what's really very much missing from the demonstrations and the statements that we see in the West. You know, this differentiation between people who are very clearly targeting civilians and want to kill as many civilians as they can, and that's Hamas, and the IDF, who's really very much employed, including in the last 24 hours in fixing connecting the Israeli electricity grid to the Gaza Strip. So the water supplies to the Gaza Strip will continue to run during a war against the quasi state that is the Gaza Strip. That's the difference.
DS: This is unheard of in the history of warfare, really, that the party that's fighting a defensive war would go to great lengths to repower the electrical grid or the electrical capacity in the region that it is fighting against. It's extraordinary. And I just want to say one other point, and I know that you sometimes think I'm a little too sympathetic, shall we say, to the approach of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but I would simply say, The contrast with the administration, the U.S. administration, wanting so publicly to get a deal done and just wearing it on its sleeve. And almost at times seem desperate. Blinken's coming back to propose a new deal. Burns is flying to Paris with a new, number eight, rejected a ninth time, a 10th time. They're coming back again. I mean, it just, it looks this like incredible desperation, whereas we don't ultimately know what's in Netanyahu's head and heart. We don't know. Actually, what he really wants, but to the extent that he is projecting a little bloodlessness in his approach and a little like coldness in his approach, it's probably helpful, I would argue, for Sinwar to realize there's one person here, there's the protests in the streets of Israel, they're pressuring the government for deal, the U.S. administration and a president who's worried about his reelection, who's desperate for a deal, perhaps pretty effective to at least have one person in this swirl who says, I'm going to negotiate a tough deal. I'm going to negotiate in a way that doesn't undermine my goals of destroying Hamas. And that means I'm not desperate to get a deal if it comes at the expense of destroying Hamas. I think it's helpful for at least one player in this whole ecosystem of decision makers and geopolitical players to have that view. At least be projecting that view.
NE: I think you're right, but I think that, to an extent, it's reverse engineering. Because he is being accused, the Prime Minister of Israel is being accused by his associates, not by me. And people need to know that. He's being accused by his associates to his government. And not only his former associates, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who are both former chiefs of staff. He's being accused that this is him. who's trying to sabotage the deal. That is, it is him that is leaking this. The levels of mistrust within the Israeli government are so high at this point. And the relations, of course, between Yoav Gallant and the Prime Minister. Now, I see your point about being colder as to these positions. That's, that's very true. I still don't understand why we have hostage families that are saying that they are getting more phone calls back from the White House than they are getting from the Israeli Prime Minister's office.
DS: When you say you don't understand, what do you mean by that?
NE: I don't understand in the meaning of, as an Israeli, I feel ashamed that we have a whole scenario here of people saying a former minister who said he's a former minister of the Israeli government, the previous government, not like 20 years ago. And his son died valiantly, bravely on October 7th. And he didn't get a phone call from the prime minister. And the prime minister called him after he posted about this and said, I didn't know that your son died. So this is the kind of things that you hear here. So you don't see this as strategic coldness. Okay, let's put it this way. But this is going to go, I don't want to do the pro Bibi, anti Bibi thing. And I also don't want to give the impression as though I'm condemning the prime minister because of political reasons as to this case. In this case, it doesn't matter anymore. I'll tell you why, because there's an offer on the table. The president of the United States is saying that it's extremely generous. The region stands behind the offer, including Qatar, including Egypt and Jordan. Israel has said that it stands behind the offer made,and now it's up to Hamas. And I think we should really focus on up to Hamas to say yes to this offer. So it doesn't matter how we got here, but we did. And now, you know, it's going to be the fault of Hamas. This war is the fault of Hamas, and if they refuse a deal, it's the fault of Hamas again. And it's been a tricky road that we've been through. I think both of us can acknowledge that. But this is the bottom line. And this is where we are at today.
DS: Okay. Nadav, this conversation about the day after planning and a proposal for possible protected bubbles, I guess one would call them, that the IDF would protect for them, these areas to be self governed by non Hamas Palestinians in Northern Gaza is A very important conversation. It deserves its own episode. Let's return to that in a future conversation because I really want to focus this conversation on these pretty dramatic news developments in recent days regarding discussions and emerging consensus about the possibility of the end of the war. NE: And by the way, Dan, as we're speaking, I'm seeing that there was a speech by Nasrallah's lieutenant, Nasrallah's deputy, a man called Naim Qassem, who's the second in command of Hezbollah. And he was threatening that if Israel goes to war, the response by Hezbollah would be harsh and so forth and so forth, but he also said that if there's going to be a ceasefire in Gaza they are going to cease fire and to stop their attacks in Israel in the north. And some people in Israel see this as a message or maybe as a sign that stuff are going on behind the scenes as to the first option that we just mentioned during this chapter of having a hostage deal. And Israel is also wrapping up its Rafah operation the chief of staff was, today, the day that we are recording this, was in Rafah, and he said, we are ending, you know, or we are nearing the end of this operation. He said the IDF killed more than 900 Hamas terrorists during this operation, and they're continuing to tackle the infrastructure, the military infrastructure of Hamas in Rafah. And there are people in Israel that think that all of this might be maturing into the possibility, again, of a deal between the sides. It was a publication here in Israel that now it all rests on a single word of a difference between the proposal made by Israel endorsed by President Biden and between what Hamas wants. So we might be even closer to a deal than we think we have to be cautious and I have to say that, you know, I've reported these kind of optimistic signals to those of us who want to deal before and they didn't materialize. So we need to be very careful about this. But this public declaration by Hezbollah and the fact that Israel is really starting to wrap up in Rafah. This opens up a window, small window, might be a small window, but it opens up a window for change in the next week and a half, two weeks. And I also should mention the speech by the Prime Minister. It's supposed to happen at the end of July in D.C. to the Houses of Congress, and that's also very meaningful in the political schedule that we're seeing here. So if there is an opening, it's probably now, and we'll have to wait and see if this indeed becomes a breakthrough.
DS: Nadav, as always, thank you for your real time reporting and analysis, and we will probably be circling back with you pretty soon. Until then, stay safe.
NE: Thank you, Dan.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Nadav Eyal, you can find him on X @nadav_eyal or at Yedioth Ahronoth or at Ynet. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.