Divergent reactions to BiBi’s address & its impact — with Nadav Eyal
Fresh off viewing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, Nadav Eyal sits down for an analysis as we debate the impact of Netanyahu’s speech in Israel, in the U.S., on the hostage negotiations, and on Israel’s geopolitics.
Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.
Full Transcript
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NE: Politically speaking, for him, this is a celebration. This is a bump in the polls. He's in a very serious condition. Some would say, to an extent, terminal. I would not say this about Netanyahu because he's such a survivor in Israeli politics. But more than 60% of the Israelis don't want to see him serve as a prime minister. And it's a split screen. On one side of the screen, we're retrieving bodies of the caretaker of the kindergarten of Nir Oz. They're bringing her body back. And what a difference it is between that Israel, that's still fighting to retrieve bodies of its citizens from October 7, and what we saw, which was a tremendous show of advocacy for Israel and the best kind of orator that we could have for the American audience and many Israelis were saying, you know, that's bollocks.
DS: It is 8:00 PM on Wednesday, July 24th here in New York City and in Washington, D.C. where my guest is tonight, it is 3:00 AM in the middle of the night on Thursday, July 25th in Israel. I am joined now by Nadav Eyal from Yedioth, who is in Washington, traveling with Prime Minister Netanyahu, covering the Prime Minister's visit this entire week. This extremely important visit. Nadav, lots to unpack. Thanks for being here.
NE: Thank you for having me again, Dan.
DS: Nadav, when we spoke before this trip, not, not when we spoke on the podcast, but we, when we were talking or anticipating Prime Minister Netanyahu's address before Congress, uh, that occurred today, that just wrapped up a few hours ago, you had conveyed that at least the chatter in the Israeli press was that this was a speech as much about bolstering the Prime Minister's political position, popularity or lack of popularity in Israel than anything else. It was a speech to an international audience. It was a speech to an American audience that was really focused on the domestic audience. And I'm not sure you or the Israeli press or the conventional wisdom in the Israeli press was right about that, because I will tell you as an American Jew, as someone who's involved with American public life, the debates about Israel, I felt very much that this was a speech that was, delivered to help us, uh, not just the Israeli situation and not even just Netanyahu's own situation inside Israel. But let's, let's get into all that. So first of all, can you describe the context from an Israeli perspective, the political context, the policy context, the war context, whichever one you want to tackle, that was the backdrop for Netanyahu's arrival in the U.S. this week and this speech.
NE: Netanyahu has been working on, on being invited to talk to both houses of Congress for a while now. And the general backdrop, to be frank, is, is always political with these speeches. And by political, I mean domestic politics. Look, if Netanyahu wants to get stuff done vis a vis the U.S. administration, giving a speech in Congress is not always the best way to go. Specifically, considering his friction with this administration, with the Biden administration. And actually, you know, with every single administration he has worked with, you've seen this kind of tension that relates to Netanyahu's control of the Hill or the way that he sees himself as having political power in the United States that is not totally connected to the person who is serving as the President of the United States. And that's a remarkable achievement for a foreign leader, politically speaking in the U.S., to have this kind of clout with American lawmakers, with senate members, with, with being a household name in the United States in certain parts of the American society, and also having relations with, with the White House. So, you know, there's a famous quote of Netanyahu during the Clinton years in which he was threatening talking with Israeli press, not a completely on the record conversation, saying something like ‘the hill will burn’ if this and that will be done by President Clinton and giving a speech to Congress is not something that American presidents tend to see, in the case of Netanyahu, as something that is part of the relationship with the White House. And of course, by making this speech, Netanyahu has become, you know, the Israeli leader who gave more speeches to the houses of Congress than any other leader. And this is great in terms of domestic politics, because Netanyahu is probably Israel's best orator in history. Without a doubt, he is top of his game when he gives this kind of speech to the houses of Congress, uh, you know, he has this tremendous American English, but it's not only that. Netanyahu has this capacity to deliver short messages that are really tuned to, I think, the American public, and you're American, Dan, you know this better than I do. This guy is a genius in terms of how he presents every aspect. So, um, I, I think that to an extent Netanyahu really is, um, profiting from this politically because Israelis are saying, you know, he's the best at making these speeches, an appearance in politics today is really everything, right? So nobody's talking about the actual stuff that you get done. It's all about image. It's about how you present yourself. It's about your style. And in that sense, Netanyahu is an extremely modern politician for the West and very much successful. And I know that many American politicians are very envious of these Netanyahu qualities and the way that he conducts himself in front of the camera. So politically speaking for him, this is a celebration. This was a celebration. I was there at the press gallery, and what I saw was a celebration. This is a bump in the polls. This is going to lead Netanyahu to be presented in Israel in a much better way. He's in a very serious condition. Some would say to an extent terminal. I would not say this about Netanyahu because he's such a survivor in Israeli politics, but more than 60% of the Israelis don't want to see him serve as a prime minister. Most of them, about 60% or more than 60% didn't want the prime minister to go to the United States and they wanted him to stay in Israel and focus on the hostage deal. This was a poll conducted just this Friday. He's losing every poll that was made in Israel since March, 2023. So about a year and a half of losing in basically every single poll. And, and he's held responsible by most of the Israeli public for the October 7th. And he's held responsible more than the army, the chiefs of staff, the defense minister, the head of the Shabak and any other element within the Israeli public sphere. So for him coming to DC, getting this standing ovation one after the other, getting this kind of honor and respect, mainly from Republicans, but basically from the American political sphere. This is a win-win situation. And I saw the responses in Israel. And of course, some of these responses came from people that were critical about the difference, such as myself, the difference between this kind of rhetoric and between the reality that we're experiencing. And I should mention that this evening, the IDF managed to take out of Gaza five bodies of Israelis that either died on October 7 or were killed or murdered since October 7 and were held hostages. And this is going to be the main headline tomorrow morning, not the Netanyahu speech in Israel. And what a difference it is between that Israel is still fighting to retrieve bodies of its citizens from October 7th, and what we saw, which was a tremendous show of advocacy for Israel and the best kind of orator that we could have for the American audience.
DS: Yeah, but, but Nadav, Nadav, but you're basically saying Israel is at best stuck or losing. I would differ with both of those characterizations, but nonetheless, it's a fair characterization for debate. If either of them, either of those characterizations are accurate, Israel is in no worse a situation than when Ukrainian President Zelensky came to address a joint meeting of Congress in 2022. And Ukraine was losing the war. And I didn't hear anyone saying it's a mistake for the president of Ukraine to go before the most important democratic body in the most important democracy and the most powerful democracy and the most powerful nation in the world that has Ukraine's back. And basically saying, thank you, America. Here's why this war matters. And we need your continued help. So the idea of a, of a, of a, of a war leader that depends on America coming before America, even if their country is that it's not all sweetness and light back home, as was the case for Ukraine in 2022. And as if you, if I accept your analysis, Israel's case today, and yet for some reason, when it comes to Israel, or when it comes to Netanyahu, people say, no, no, he can't go. This is a bad use of his time. This is a bad use of his capital, so to speak, his political capital. How dare he go? Whereas to me, it's so obvious that he should have come here.
NE: So first of all, I don't think that Israel is losing. I think that the government is missing a lot of opportunities. to get the hostages back and a lot of political opportunities for Israel to have a clear victory, a true victory, uh, in Gaza and in the Middle East. So this is the first point I would make. The second point is that comparing this to Zelensky is missing the real element that infuriates many Israelis, those Israelis who are the majority of the Israeli public who wants, want the prime minister to go. And that is that Unlike Zelensky, Mr. Netanyahu has not managed to do the one thing that a leader in war should do in order to win the war, to win it really clearly. And this is to somehow have a large basis of unity within the public and consolidation. And he has not managed to do so because his government is comprised of far right politicians that have tried to sabotage this trip to the United States. So in the morning-
DS: You're saying he should only, he should only, so then a prime minister of a country at war should only go to that country's most important ally, the United States, and present its case to the United States if they're polling high at home?
NE: First of all, I wasn't making the case. You're sort of, uh, attributing to me the case that he shouldn't have gone.
DS: No, no, no, but you're saying that he's failed at solidarity, but I-
NE: It's not, it's not about solidarity. It's about consolidation. You need to consolidate a country in order to fight a war so you will have clear aims, and that people would be able to sacrifice sometimes their lives in order to get to these goals set by, by the government. The point that I'm making is not that he shouldn't have gone. I can understand why he wanted that. The point that I'm making is that right now, there are much bigger fish to fry in Israel that he's simply not tackling with the intensity that you see and the seriousness that you see as to a speech to the houses of Congress. And that's my point. I'm not saying he shouldn't have gone. I'm saying, where is this intensity? Where were these speeches and these conversations, for instance, with the families of hostages? You know, Dan, that in the last week and a half, the prime minister has seen more families of hostages than he has seen in months. Why? Because he's taking them to Congress. So he wanted to have this kind of portrayal. But these are people that sometimes have either not seen him, didn't get a phone call from him, And we also saw that he had a meeting with the families in D.C. the night before the speech, and they left that meeting, many of these families, just devastated by the things that he was saying there. Look, in Israel right now, and this is a clear majority that was building, they want to see this hostage deal pulled through, not at any cost. But the whole defense apparatus is saying, the defense minister is saying, look, the deal is on the table. Hamas has caved in. Now is the time and this opportunity can escape us. And my colleague Ronen Bergman, who's on your show often, has just published that Netanyahu has decided to slow walk on sending the Israeli delegation to have negotiations on that deal. And in the meantime, what Israelis keep hearing is about bodies being retrieved and all of this terrible condition in which Israel is in, that it doesn't control its northern border. It has huge problems in the south. It's being attacked by the Houthis. And what you see is the primers are focused on the weight that has been given to this speech. It is only a speech, and it is not about something that has happened in reality. It's an advocacy speech. So, okay, go ahead.
DS: So let me say a few things. First of all, I do believe there is geopolitical interests in the prime minister of Israel, whoever it is, uh, coming to give a speech like this, especially at this time. I think back to 2015, the last time Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke before Congress, which was when he laid out his case against the JCPOA, against the Iran deal. And it was a very controversial speech, and it was panned by the Israeli press. And when I talked to friends and officials in the Gulf and the Gulf governments, when they talk about the origins of the Abraham Accords, they say, you want to know the real turning point? And I've heard this, including from very senior officials in the Saudi government, the real turning point of the, where the Abraham Accords and the path to normalization began; Netanyahu's speech in 2015. By the way, when I've spoken to Netanyahu and people around Netanyahu, they, and I've made this point, they have said, even they didn't realize when they did the speech in 2015, when they made the decision to do the speech before Congress, they didn't realize the impact it would have. Gulf officials say in 2015, at a time of growing concern about Iran, Iran's threat to the region, Iran's threat to the Sunni Gulf, and the Obama administration's seeming bet on normalization with Iran, they were so freaked out about it. And they felt that they didn't really have an outlet in the United States. They didn't really, no one was listening in Washington. And then there comes the Prime Minister of Israel and he is able to convene a joint session or a joint meeting of Congress and have a national platform and drive a conversation in the United States about that issue. Now it ultimately failed. Right? Because Obama got his way and some could argue that the speech to some degree backfired. But what these Gulf states saw was the leaders of these Gulf states said, wait a minute, we could never do that. A, we'd never be invited to come speak before Congress. B, if we were, we would never be able to deliver an address with such a moral framework for our position, for our geopolitical interests. We just could never do this. And they watched the prime minister of Israel do this. And they said, We need to piggyback onto that, that strength, that's power. There aren't many leaders that can connect with the American public the way an Israeli prime minister can, and we want to be part of it. And I feel the same way today. I think at a time when Israel is basically fighting with as close to a seventh front war as one could imagine, at the time when there's a sense that the walls are closing in, to have the Prime Minister of Israel come to Washington and, and first of all, knock down some of these absurd misconceptions at best and outright canards and lies, uh, at worst. Knock them down and force people to listen and force the press to cover what he's saying. And even if some politicians boycotted the speech, I guarantee you they read the speech and I guarantee you they heard the speech. And for people who support Israel's case, but are worn down, they're tired, right? It's been, obviously it's been a long 9-10 months for you, for Israelis, but I'm just, so what we're experiencing is nothing like you, you're experiencing, but I gotta tell you, in the United States, for many American Jews and many supporters of Israel, it feels pretty damn lonely. Okay, and the image, I can't get out of my head, Nadav, and I think about it. There's one image more than the encampments on the college campuses, more than students marching, holding up photos of Sinwar, and chanting, you know, pro Hamas slogans, more than any of that. What freaks me out is the image from about six or seven weeks ago on a New York campus. It was on the New York City subway where a bunch of pro Hamasniks get on the subway with their masks and their, you know, and their flags and all the rest. And they say on the train, if there are any Zionists on this train please raise your hand.
NE: Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
DS: Yeah. And get off. This is your chance to get off. And that had like a Holocaustian, kind of pogrom like feel to it. And what was so chilling to me, and I, and I've, I've talked about this a lot. I've talked about it with my wife and my children. Like, what would we do? I asked my kids, what would you do if you're in that subway car? You know, would you raise your hand? Would you confront these protesters? Who knows if they're armed? I mean, it's just a lot of issues, which is what's chilling is everyone stays silent. Everyone stays silent. Everyone's uncomfortable. They look down, they look away. Now it's one thing for the Jews to do that, which is both tragic. And haunting, and yet maybe understanding, but all the non Jews. I'm looking, I'm matching all these non Jews who are like indifferent, ambivalent, and that scares the hell out of me. And I just want to say that I, American Jews and supporters of Israel are not only dealing with this incredible wave of antisemitism, but I think we've never felt more alone. And I think at a time, especially when we know the arguments, not the, the arguments arguments you and I often discuss on this podcast about, you know, what, what should they do about the Philadelphi corridor and whether it should do with the Netzarim corridor and are enough humanitarian trucks getting in? I'm talking about the, the big issues. Israel's right to exist, Israel's right to defend itself, Israel's right to wage a defensive war against the genocidal actor, Israel's enemies making a mockery of the international justice system by, by the inversion of accusing Israel of genocide, when in fact had Israel not actually stopped Hamas in the days after October 7th, they would have kept moving up through, all the way through the north of Israel, and there would have been a real genocide of the Jewish people for the first time since the Holocaust. For those of us who believe those things and want to make those arguments, and these are not people who are pro Netanyahu or anti Netanyahu. It's bigger than that. It's exhausting and it's lonely these days in the United States. And to suddenly have someone who can command the stage that this prime minister can, however unpopular he is in Israel, to command the stage that he can, to convene the people he can convene, to force the national meeting in the United States, to cover the speech, to listen to the speech, to analyze the speech, to have the prime minister of Israel point to the diversity of Israelis, to take on this idea that it's a settler colonial country, a white privileged country, whatever you want to call it, by some of the Israelis he was able to introduce and bring with him to Israel. And you may say it's propaganda and it's a gimmick. It's important for supporters of Israel who try to make this point to have the point made the way it was made and to force everybody to listen. So Israel depends on its friends in America who are making the case for the U.S.'s relationship to our own government every single day. And we need some bucking up sometimes. And I, I think the prime minister's speech helped in that regard.
NE: I'm not doubting that at all. And I, I'm not saying that it's not important. I'm just saying that the function of the Israeli prime minister is not only public diplomacy. And what I am saying is that this prime minister excels in public diplomacy, and he's not excelling during this war in diplomacy. And this cannot be handled only with slogans and promises. The country that he was speaking about in this speech, Dan, is an empire that has never failed. Not only it defends itself, it's also defending the United States. And the prime minister has said that. Well, you know, there are many, many Israelis today, they are afraid for their lives. Very much like the experience that you just described with antisemitism in the United States, but many Israelis feel that the state wasn't there. And many Israelis were saying, you know, It's a split screen. On one side of the screen, we're retrieving bodies of caretaker of the kindergarten of Nir Oz. They're bringing her body back. And in the U.S., the prime minister's office is sending to the media pictures of the prime minister sitting with his wife on a couch, looking extremely happy after delivering a fantastic speech. The Netanyahu supporters and many other Israelis would say, You know, that's bollocks. We're so happy with Netanyahu giving this speech, showing the world, making the argument for Israel. No one else can do that. So many Israelis would say that. But I talked with Yonatan Dekelkhen, who's the father of Sagi Dekelkhen. Sagi Dekelkhen is being held by Hamas since October 7. They are from Nir Oz. And, and he called that political theater. And he said this, this brought Israel nowhere close to getting the hostages back or winning the war. By the way, did you notice, Dan, that the Prime Minister said we have more than 130 hostages back and we're now working, there are efforts to get the other hostages back, but he never said the word deal during his speech, right? He wouldn't even say that. Do you understand that when the families heard that, that he wouldn't even say the word deal. For them, every word counts at this point. And, and, and another question that I want you to, to address, look, I, I went back to the hotel. And I opened up, you know, CNN, Fox News and the rest, MSNBC. There was nothing about the speech an hour later because everybody was talking about President Biden's speech.
DS: Oh, you're saying did Biden purposely stiff nothing?
NE: Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm asking if you see that there's a, an assassination attempt, uh, against Donald Trump and you see that the president has just left the race for the White House, maybe coming to DC when you have to negotiate a hostage deal. Maybe you can do this in three weeks. I don't know. Maybe it's impossible.
DS: So let me, let me respond to that.
NE: I don't know. I'm really asking this as a question mark.
DS: Any leader, as I said, any wartime leader, given what Israel's dealing with and given how much Israel depends on the United States for weapon supplies and coordination and multi level, multilateral defense, like we saw in the middle of April with regard to Iran, like we even saw with the Houthi attack, uh, this past weekend, uh, any wartime leader given the opportunity to come to Washington would take it, A. B, scheduling. I know a little bit about the scheduling that went into this and scheduling for this was hell. They actually, everyone, the congressional leadership and the prime minister's office wanted to do this a while ago, but there was a problem with the Jewish holidays. Uh, then there was a problem with the conventions and then there's a problem with congressional recesses. So when you throw all three of those in, that's why this happened as late as it happened. It should have happened a while ago, but they, this was the only date that they could kind of shoehorn in. So the idea that after all of that, and then, you know, then you're going to try and delay it again, to when? I mean, you have the democratic convention in a few weeks in August. Congress then is, is basically going to be out of session for most of August. Congress is going to be out of session more than it usually is this fall, because the presidential election, I mean, you just start losing windows. So my view is you go when you can go, uh, A. B, I want to ask you, and I know you talk to many in the intelligence community in Israel, I have heard from three different sources from intelligence officials in Israel from a very senior, uh, intelligence official here in the United States. That Yahya Sinwar fancies himself as a real expert on international affairs and a, and a keen observer of what's happening politically and in the media in Israel and also abroad in the United States. And one senior official from the, from the CIA said to me, at the peak of the college protests, of the encampments and all the rest, they said that their intelligence was showing that Sinwar was over interpreting what was happening on the U.S. college campuses, as to say that they, they wished he, that Sinwar wouldn't, wouldn't interpret what's happening on the college campuses as somehow reflective of American public opinion and public sentiment more generally, that like, you idiot, don't think you've got Israel cornered because there's a bunch of nutcases waving your flag and your, and your photo on American college campuses. That's not where the American public is, and that's ultimately not where the American government is going to be. This is what this intelligence community official, um, told me, back in the spring, but they, but I've heard this over and over that he over interprets what's, what's happening over here. And there's no sense that somewhere between kind of late December, January through March, April, there was a sense, A, that Israel was not pushing that hard militarily in Gaza. B, Israel was under more and more pressure from the Biden administration and to some degree of the campus protests and the, and Senator Schumer, as we heard about, and the international community and different European countries, you know, putting pressure on Israel through myriad ways. And there was a sense that the pressure was mounting on Israel, not on Hamas. So Hamas was in no rush to do a deal. And I wonder, Sinwar, if he's such an observer of events, there's no doubt he didn't miss this speech today in, in Washington. And I wonder what he's thinking now. Is the pressure really mounting on Israel? And, uh, senior official from the Gulf, from a Gulf state, I won't say the name of the official, uh, name of the country, but let's just say it's a, it's a It's someone who's working closely with the administration now has told me that they have channeled to the extent that they can through their intermediaries to Hamas and the Hamas leadership and to Sinwar do a deal now. Because A, the Biden administration is going to be really distracted over the next few months. And the idea that they're going to be able to give you and this negotiations process as much attention as they have been giving it is fantasy land. B, Donald Trump is probably going to be the next president of the United States. And be careful what you wish for and be care, be careful for how hard you bargain, cause you may wind up with the Trump administration and God knows what that's going to be like to have to negotiate with the, with president Trump in the White House versus President Biden and, and Harris. And, against all of that backdrop, Nadav, don't you think the value of Hamas and the people who are speaking to Hamas, seeing Netanyahu in Washington, commanding the room, getting the kind of reception he's getting, getting meetings with Biden, Harris, Trump, sends a pretty powerful message. So much for Israel being isolated.
NE: First of all, I'm familiar with the intelligence as to Sinwar's hopes to Israeli isolation. And I'm familiar to these demonstrations igniting the hopes of Hamas that they could actually survive this war. Whether or not this means that this speech changes something, I think that what really changed things was that Israel made an extremely serious and generous offer to a hostage deal. And then the U.S. administration, the Biden administration, did something, and I've been highly critical of the Biden administration and the way that they've been criticizing Israel in order to get a deal or a ceasefire, then criticizing Hamas and completely, you know, not having a strategy to tackle Iran and all the rest. But then the fact that President Biden said, look, this is the Israeli offer. And he managed to moor this to Netanyahu and say, this is the Netanyahu offer. And then the white house blamed Hamas and put the responsibility with Hamas. So I think, first of all, it's the, probably the only brilliant thing that I've seen that the U.S. has done since the beginning of the war. And the first week of President Biden saying ‘don't’ to Hezbollah and sending the aircraft carriers. So here you had a real sophisticated tactic. On the one hand, yeah, we're going to take this offer really made by Israel and we're going to make it public what the Israelis won't do because of political reasons. We're going to take it on ourselves and present it as an Israeli offer, which it is. And then if Netanyahu wants to deny it after he made the offer, let him, and on the other hand, we're going to blame Hamas. And we're going to say, now it's up to Sinwar. And who are they saying this to, Dan? They're saying this to the demonstrators in the United States and to the progressive part of the Democratic Party. They're saying, hey, you know, you want an end to this war? Because in that speech by President Biden, it was the first time nobody remembers that, that he said this war should end. He was talking about the hostage deal, but he said the war should end. And he was actually saying to Democrats, you want the war to end? You know, there's a great offer on the table and now it's up to Sinwar. And, and by that, he was lowering the pressure coming from the left wing in this country, in the United States. And on the other hand, putting some pressure on Israel saying, you need to live up to your offer and putting most of the pressure on Hamas. And together with the Israeli military pressure, which I thought, and I still think, from the beginning of the war, is critical to getting the hostages released, we are starting to see results with Hamas and Hamas backing down from its previous position, which I should remind our listeners is, we're not going to have any sort of hostage deal without a clear end to this war. And they have caved in on this, on this issue. And that's, that's a tremendous achievement.
DS: They Hamas.
NE: They Hamas. That's a tremendous achievement to the Israeli government and to the U.S. administration, to the American administration. And I would say this, to the credit of Netanyahu. Netanyahu said, and he's saying this himself, and you know, and he's right, you know, he said, they told me not to go into Rafah. It's going to be a disaster, humanitarian disaster. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that didn't happen. We went into Rafah, although there was a lot of criticism in Israel. Many people were fearful of Israel going into Rafah against the will of the president of the United States, uh, that was doing anything in its power, including preventing, or at least slowing down arms to Israel. We went into Rafah, we increased military pressure, and we got some results. Now, I think that it's true. It's only half of the story, because the other half of the story is the political track. Having a credible proposal with the United States being its guarantor, to some sort of a deal and having the international community uniting in pressuring Hamas with the leadership of the United States. And that was extremely successful. And this is one of the reasons that, for instance, Defense Minister Gallant is so resolute that now's our chance. And that at a certain point, Sinwar and Hamas can basically retreat to their previous messianic position. And that is, you know, we don't know it, so we're going to play ‘sumud’, they say in Arabic. We're going to just stick to it and we'll see what happens. And this is why we need to take this opportunity now. And it's my political assessment that Netanyahu has a lot to gain from having a hostage deal now, because his government is not going to survive probably the next six months anyway.
DS: But isn't it important for him to get, if he's going to do a deal, at least do phase one of the deal while the Knesset's out of session, so his government can't fall, at least during phase one of a deal.
NE: That's, that's very true, uh, today, so the prime minister goes to a speech, to a dramatic speech in Washington, and in the morning, his chief of, his minister responsible for police, Itamar Ben Gvir, says, I have prayed on the Temple Mount and I am the decision makers in Israel, and I'm saying it's fine, and there is no status quo at the Temple Mount anymore, and Jews can pray there all they want. And of course, praying on the Temple Mount is, is not part of the status quo agreed by Israel. Then the prime minister, before his speech, needs to issue a notice, a press release, to journalists that the status quo didn't change. And the reason Ben-Gvir did that, is because he's fighting with Netanyahu on being part of a war cabinet that doesn't exist, and he's trying to blow up the government from within. He's extorting the prime minister, and he did three things like that in the last 48 hours trying to pressure him. So if the government needs to fall anyway, why not have the phase one of the hostage deal? And then if you don't believe that Hamas will disarm, which is basically the demand made by the prime minister towards phase two of the deal, then you can always renew the war and go to the ballots.
DS: And you'll get, and that will all happen while the Knesset's out of session. So there's a big chunk of time for the Israeli government to implement at least phase one. Test it, see what happens. It can always resume war fighting before, instead of going to phase two. And then Netanyahu can say to his partners in the, in the government, we tried, we got back a lot of hostages, but we're gonna not implement phase two, we're gonna go, we're not gonna transition to phase two, we're gonna go get back to fighting the war.
NE: And by the way, the Prime Minister thinks that the government will not crumble down, will not collapse as a result of a deal anyway, although Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are threatening him. DS: So it sounds like you think there will be a deal.
NE: Look, at this point-
DS: I won't hold you to it. My listeners might.
NE: I, I wanna-
DS: But I won't.
NE: I wanna be, um, as, as frank as I can, I have to tell you as a journalist covering this, that I want to be careful because there's so much wishful thinking about this, uh, so much psychology operating. I'll just give you one example, Dan. Look, everything that the Prime Minister has been doing the last two weeks signals politically that he's going for a deal. He's meeting more families of hostages extensively, intensively, something that we have not seen since October 7. He's laying the groundwork to being pressured. He's like inviting political pressure on him to, to go to a deal. And he's also, he has been slightly more intensive as to sending the delegations to negotiations and talking about the achievements of the negotiations so far. This all leads to a conclusion that he's, he's walking towards a deal, but many people think that he was basically doing this because of the speech, to the houses of Congress, because he wanted the families to come with him. He wanted to have some industrial quiet towards that speech, politically speaking. And this goes to the beginning of our conversation, why many Israelis are so worried, or were so worried about this speech, because it's, it's politics. And many people are thinking, including in the families, the hostage families, that Netanyahu isn't serious. And the fact that he sort of started slow walking on sending that delegation to Qatar with details and canceling. He can, he lately canceled another discussion with the chief of staff. So this could lead you to exactly an opposite conclusion. The fact that he didn't mention during his speech to Congress the world deal at all can lead you to either, yeah, Netanyahu is going to play it hard to get, or Netanyahu is actually signaling that he doesn't want us to do it. I think that the answer is as such. As usual with Bibi, he's going to take all the options to the last minute, and then he's going to make the calculus. Is he going to go for, you remember, annexation? or the Abraham Accords. Is it going to go for the Y agreement, or is it going to blow everything up, right? So this is how Bibi works. And nobody knows, including his own people, nobody knows what he really wants to do with this. And he can argue. for instance, that Hamas doesn't want a deal. A good example is the whole issue of whether or not people with weapons would be able to pass from the southern part of Gaza to the northern part of Gaza. This is the whole Netzarim corridor issue. The Netzarim corridor separates, uh, east, sorry, north and south of Gaza. It's being held by Israel right now. Basically, separating both sides of the Strip, uh, according to the offer made by Israel, Israel will evacuate this area. It's clear that the entire offer is based on the proposal that Israel will evacuate the corridor, this corridor of Netzarim. But now Netanyahu is saying we need to make sure that, uh, you know, terrorists won't be able to come back to the north, which is heavily controlled by the Israelis or effectively controlled by the Israelis.
DS: And just, just for our listeners, the north is the area that's closest, but mere kilometers from Israel, from southern Israel, from Israel's southern border. So if Israel says never again, we can say never again all at once. But one aspect of never again is never again will Hamas be able to be in northern Gaza. And so being able to control northern Gaza or who's in northern Gaza matters a lot and that's why the Netzarim corridor is so strategic.
NE: Yeah, and and then Netanyahu says suddenly he publishes five points that are his conditions to a deal and he does this publicly to the amazement and to the horror of many people in the defense apparatus who are saying, why are you presenting during negotiations that are secret? Uh, are you, why are you presenting your red lines in public? These kinds of red lines, you know, Israel once had an Israeli prime minister called Yitzhak Shamir. You probably remember him.
DS: I did. I had met him.
NE: Shamir was one tough cookie. Let's put it this way. He was the former head of the Mossad, and he never let go, you know, of one inch of the Eretz Yisrael, right? Never made an agreement on one inch of Eretz Yisrael. And he used to say, never give an ultimatum to yourself. And, and by publishing these red lines, one of which was terrorists that have weapons on people would not be able to pass from South to North in the Gaza Strip, making this public, he was actually limiting his own maneuvering or leveraging with the Israeli public in saying, hey, you know, we've won this and this is a good deal. So why would he do that? And, and some people said, yeah, he needs to pressure Hamas, but it doesn't make sense, politically speaking. The bottom line is that today in Israel, most people will assess that we're heading to a deal that Israel has an interest with this because of the North. because of the regional situation, because Netanyahu has today talked about a regional alliance, and you don't get a regional alliance by an endless war in Gaza. That's the truth. Uh, so most people, most political players would say, yeah, he's going to go for a deal. And, but some would say, no, you know, if he's going to go for a deal, the far right is going to kill him. It's true that not during, the Knesset break, but it's going to happen. And, and he's just been playing with you.
DS: Two final questions. One, what is going on with Egypt? It seems that one, one condition for Netanyahu was Israeli security presence in control of, of the Philadelphi corridor, the corridor there between Egypt and Gaza and the Rafah crossing, and it seemed, and Egypt had been opposed to this, obviously Hamas has been opposed to it, it seems like both Hamas and Egypt have been softening their position on the IDF in the Philadelphi corridor and the Rafah crossing. Am I reading that right?
NE: Yeah, I think so. Um, first of all, the Israelis are ready to, to have Palestinian forces controlling the Rafah crossing. The Prime Minister is ready for that. The Prime Minister is insistent that these forces would not be the Palestinian Authority formally, so that there would be no Palestinian flag. So now they're basically fighting, Dan, on whether or not those Palestinian forces controlling the Rafah crossing will get to have a Palestinian flag flying over the crossing. And a Palestinian flag is, of course, the flag of the Palestinian Authority. But basically, Israel has agreed to let go of the crossing itself. As to the Philadelphi Corridor, I'm hearing really interesting stuff as to the position of the United States. I hear that the United States understands, this administration understands, that controlling parts of the Philadelphi Corridor, having some sort of security assurances, that smuggling to Hamas, uh, will not ensue immediately after the IDF is leaving, that this is very understandable and that the administration understands this so that there will be Israeli presence or very sophisticated Israeli censors, and not only relying on Egypt to stop the smuggling because they haven't been too successful. And to their defense, I would say, you know, if you're paying your soldiers, I don't know, $100 a month, your ability to stop smuggling on that border is rather limited. If you have Hamas on the other side, willing to pay any price for people who deliver them with weapons and all the rest. So it's a matter of supply and demand. So these are complex technical problems, but I think that there were huge strides made by both the Israelis, the Palestinians and, and the Egyptians and the Americans in that regard. And also we, we, we have heard, and we're hearing much more about more agreement with Arab countries as to being stakeholders with the future of the Gaza Strip. So they have different visions.
DS: Certainly the UAE.
NE: Yeah, but it's not only the UAE. So they have different visions to what's going to happen. If you ask the Jordanians, they'll tell you, we want the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip. If, if you ask, uh, Saudi Arabia, they want Salam Fayyad back. They wanted Salam Fayyad five months ago. They want Salam Fayyad back today. Uh, everyone has a different model there. So, so we just saw the, the UAE clearly stating that they're willing to, to have a role in the future of Gaza. And this is something that we have not seen before. And by the way, this is related to the Gallant visit to D.C. He was warning the White House that the Arab countries that are supposed to be part of the solution are basically trying to escape the entire issue. And he asked for the United States to be much more active as to recruiting them for the day after in Gaza. So, what we're really seeing is that the war that Sinwar and Hamas thought of as something that would draw the entire region into a flood against Israel. It's simply not happening. And I think that to their horror, what they are seeing is more regional cooperation, whether it is against the Iranian attack in April, or it's now the prime minister offering some sort of a military regional alliance of moderate countries and Israel. And also these moderate countries now almost formally or formally agreeing to take part at the day after in Gaza after Gaza has been occupied by Israel. All of these developments are very far away from the bleak scenarios that were presented by some people in the Biden administration, by Western Europe, definitely by the demonstrators in the streets. We're seeing some sort of, at least for now, and I want to be careful about this, some sort of stabilization in the region in regards to Gaza and also, and that's really important, maybe the most important thing, a loss of interest. Internationally speaking, that's the truth. You have a US election. It's very dramatic. Everybody's talking about that. This would be, you know, definitely, uh, historically important for the future of the world, any way you cut it. And The Gaza Strip, uh, war is, is just another war now, and it's somewhat like what has happened with Ukraine, and I think that this is driving Hamas to be much softer and more prone to compromise, because they understand that they might have played their hand a bit too far, internationally speaking. And you were making that point earlier in our conversation. And I think, I think that's right. But one of the things that I'm hearing from the U.S. administration is that Israel now shouldn't press too much with this in getting the hostage deal. Because if it will, and it would backfire, we'll find ourselves in the same position. And at the end of the day, you know, we, it was just announced in Israel that kids up in the north, the population in the north are not going to go to school in the fall.
DS: I know. It’s terrible.
NE: So that's two years. That's, that's going to be two years that they have, you know, and that means a lot for, for Israel, for Zionism, for these villages.
DS: It's, it's, it's, it's terrible at a practical level. It's also terrible, Nadav, symbolically, the idea of Jews, it's one thing for Jews to be under siege in Israel. It's another thing for the walls to be closing in on Jews in Israel, because they can't live in their own homes. And the sense that the country, has, without giving up any of its national borders, is actually shrinking from a livability standpoint. That, that is chilling. Um, so I was impressed with Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech, but this part of the conversation actually is leaving me on a, uh, that had me a little bit of a high. Now I'm leaving on a little bit of a low. And for that, I blame you.
NE: Haha. So I, first of all, I, I, I think that there is something in Israel that's happening that is, I'm much more hopeful than I was a couple of months ago. And many of my friends would say that it's just because, um, at this point you have nothing left, but hope that this will end in a positive way for Israelis, but definitely we need a change. And I think everybody would agree about this, by the way, including the prime minister, the way that this is happening right now, in which Israel might be winning the war militarily in Gaza, but also it's constantly being attacked and more intensely attacked by players and proxies in the region and its north has become a war zone and people there and children, they can't live there anymore. This is an impossibility for Israel. And it cannot live with this, not in the long term, in the medium term, you know, even talking about two years in which those kibbutzim and villages and towns can't get back? Qiryat Shmona, are we crazy? This has never happened in the history of Zionism, uh, more than a hundred years. And I think that because of that, we are absolutely facing a decision and that decision is either going to be a deal that will allow these people to return also in the north back home, or it's going to be a much wider and more intensive conflict. And this is by the way what the defense apparatus is saying. They are not defeatist. They're saying, you, you make that choice, you know, it's up to you to make that choice. You, the government, you know, you were either going to go for a deal and we're going to have some sort of an agreement in the North, maybe Amos Hochsteins mediating it, or we're going to have our war and we're going to take it back by force. But don't have us living in this limbo anymore. And this is something that 90% of the Israelis will agree on, including, you know, Bibi supporters, people who think that Bibi is a disaster. We, when we cannot remain in the limbo of, of October 7th, and I want to hope that the speech that the prime minister has given, today in Congress, is an omen for change, not only for the advocacy. Definitely did a great job with advocacy, but is he willing and can he supply the change that we're looking for? And this is what the jury's, uh, still out with and, and we'll be waiting an answer soon.
DS: Nadav, we will leave it there. Thank you, as always, uh, for, for the analysis, for the spirited back and forth. We will look forward to having you back on soon. Uh, until then, listeners can find Nadav Eyal on X @nadav_eyal and at Ynet to find his work. 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.
NE: Thank you, Dan.