Hostage Deal? Iran Attack? And Tisha B’Av - with Haviv Rettig Gur & Nadav Eyal
Against the backdrop of a possible Iran/Hezbollah attack, as well as international criticism of an IDF operation in Gaza City, there have been new developments in the hostage negotiations. This past Thursday, a multi-party statement was issued by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, declaring that the framework of a hostage deal was nearly complete, and urging Israel and Hamas to finalize the deal without further delay. Soon after, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office issued a statement that Israel would send its team to the now scheduled August 15th negotiations. Hamas had indicated its intention to participate as well. Now, suddenly, Hamas is reversing its decision. Although, at least according to some sources, this reversal may be last minute posturing by Hamas. Either way, the sudden acceleration of the process does make this dynamic seem different from previous rounds.
To discuss all of these issues, we are joined by Call me Back regulars:
-Nadav Eyal 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.
-Haviv Rettig Gur has been a regular presence on this podcast since October 8. He is a senior political analyst for the Times of Israel, and has been an important interpreter for Western audiences of how to understand this conflict in broader historical terms.
To register for Call me Back Live featuring Amir Tibon at the Streicker Center: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
HRG: A good argument by Netanyahu would be, and he will make that argument, ‘if I would have agreed to a deal a month and a half ago, when you pressured me to do so, after we got our achievements, we wouldn't have killed these people who are really very much important. Mohamed Deif is strategically important, Ismail Haniyeh is not strategically important, but Mohamed Deif, the chief of staff of Hamas, he's important. And it's a historic win for Israel. And it's one of the things that we need to achieve.’ Also, Netanyahu would make this argument that ‘if I would have agreed, caved into the pressure coming from the United States, not from the defense apparatus, I wouldn't even have gone into Rafah because the U.S. didn't want me to go into Rafah. ‘
DS: It's 9:45 PM on Sunday, August 11th here in New York City. It's 4:45 AM on Monday, August 12th, in Israel, as Israelis start a new day. A day that will end with the commencement of Tisha B'Av, which is Hebrew for the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. A day of mourning and fasting in Judaism for reasons we will discuss at the end of this episode. A day this year during which Israelis are anticipating a military attack from Iran, or Hezbollah, or both. An attack that we're being told is imminent, perhaps even on or around Tisha B'Av. Before we get into today's conversation, I have one housekeeping note, a reminder to our listeners that Call Me Back will be hosting its first major large audience taping at the Streicker Center on September 24th. This recording of an episode in front of a live audience will feature Amir Tibon on the official launch date of his new book, The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands. The book tells the gripping story of the Tibon family's ordeal at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7th and the heroic rescue of Amir's father, retired General Noam Tibon. The book is also being developed into a feature film by my friends Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, the creators of Fauda, who've been on this podcast. To register for this event you can go to the Streicker Center website, https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor. Or you can just Google my name and Tibon and Streicker and I'm sure it'll come up. We will include this link for the event in the show notes. For today's episode, we are discussing a new development in the hostage negotiations. Just to recap, this past Thursday, a multi party statement was issued by the governments of the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, declaring that the framework of a hostage deal was nearly complete and urging Israel and Hamas to finalize the deal without further delay. Soon after, Prime Minister Netanyahu's office issued a statement that Israel would send its team to the now scheduled August 15th negotiations. Hamas had indicated its intention to participate as well. Well, now, suddenly, Hamas is reversing its decision. As in, this evening. Although, at least according to our sources in Israel and in Arab capitals, this reversal by Hamas appears to be last minute posturing on the eve of what could be the final round of these negotiations. Either way, the sudden acceleration of the process does make this dynamic seem different from previous rounds. We will analyze why. All against the backdrop of a possible attack on Israel from Iran or Hezbollah or both, as I said, and also we'll discuss international criticism of an IDF operation in Gaza city. To discuss these issues, I want to welcome back to the podcast my longtime friends and regulars on the Call Me Back podcast, Haviv Rettig Gur of the Times of Israel and Nadav Eyal of Yedioth Ahronoth. Gentlemen, good to be with you.
NE: Hey Dan, good to be here.
DS: I'll leave Nadav's location as undisclosed, but I see, Haviv, you are in where you normally are when we record, which is in your office, just outside of Jerusalem, at your desk, with your computer gear, surrounded by guitars and books, which also doubles, our listeners do not know, but know now, doubles as your mamad, your safe room, that God forbid there is an attack. This is the room where your family will huddle to stay safe, right? Which you regard as a gift.
HRG: Yeah, yeah, it's very important, uh, to have the gadgets already here, you know, if, if the rockets land. Uh, but no, seriously, uh, yeah, every Israeli home built of late in the last two decades, I believe, uh, but many also built before. One room in the house is required to be, uh, a bomb shelter spec room and towns in the north and in the south, the state has actually spent billions and billions building, uh, towers of safe rooms attached to old apartment buildings so that, uh, those who live there and they didn't build them safe rooms, uh, actually now have an extra free room given to them by the state that is a safe room for the family. It's my office in our apartment. It happens to just be my office.
DS: Yeah, my sister's home in Jerusalem, not far from where you are, the mamad is one of my niece's bedrooms and so it doubles as a safe room. This experience of dual use rooms is quite common in Israel. All right, so I want to start with the IDF operation, the subject of a lot of headlines in the international press right now. And Nadav, can you tell us exactly what we know happened at least in this operation at a quote unquote school in Gaza City?
NE: So, uh, the IDF has attacked a compound in which there's a school and other civilian establishments. And this was an attack against what the IDF described as, uh, Hamas and Islamic Jihad headquarters. And they didn't only describe this, they issued a notice with the names of the operatives, the terrorists that they killed there, and even their pictures, their ages, and their positions within the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas. Immediately after this Israeli aerial attack happened, the Palestinians claimed that, at the beginning they said a few dozens, then they said about a hundred Palestinians were killed in this. There were terrible pictures, very graphic pictures coming out of there. You couldn't understand from the pictures who exactly was killed. The Palestinians said this was against civilians, and of course, they use again and again, this line about Israel attacking a school. You saw condemnations coming from various Western countries. You didn't see the United States condemn this. The White House response was, uh, we're talking with our Israeli colleagues, they say that they've attacked, you know, Hamas operatives. There are too many civilians that got hurt and killed during this conflict. Which is in White House terms saying we're not impressed by the Palestinian announcements. And also the IDF came to this very much, I think prepared. So it didn't have this like 48 hours later in the social networks, the people who died there, it had the names immediately. They knew immediately.
DS: So the IDF, meaning they came out right away with the names of the Hamas operatives and leaders that were killed. So just to completely disabuse anyone of this idea-
NE: Absolutely.
DS: that it was anything but a Hamas facility.
HRG: And those lists are also circling around Gaza in Arabic. Gazans are mourning the people who are killed. And so on Arabic social media in Gaza are lists of these same names. In other words, it's not even if journalists covering Gaza knew Gaza, this would be a much easier story to actually get right.
NE: The argument of the Palestinians is that, of course, schools aren't operating in Gaza, the entire education system in Gaza isn't operating since October, but that this was a safe place for displaced people within Gaza. And to this, the IDF is basically saying, it's not true as to the specific place that we attacked. And before this attack, the IDF made several or numerous steps to reduce the number of civilians harmed during this attack, including using very precise ammunition and using intelligence sources to make sure that civilians won't get hurt. This, of course, will convince no one of those who published these immediate intuitive condemnations of Israel. This is, uh, something that we see again and again, but I would underline the, the level of response that we're seeing in international media and generally speaking with the audience compared to the beginning of the war or even April and May. And I can tell you that this is something from intelligence brought before Israeli decision makers as to Hamas, this is something that depresses Hamas extensively, that they're not getting the type of response that they were getting before from the West, in the streets, their demonstrations. It's not happening anymore. And this is something that's pushing Hamas, and we're going to discuss this, to a possible ceasefire. The fact that they can't really count on the same kind of what they label as the resistance in the West, the resistance, meaning those demonstrations, this globalized intifada, those pro Hamas, sometimes pro Palestinian, but occasionally, and more than occasionally, just pro Hamas demonstrations and vibes that we've been seeing across the West. Right now, during this summer, this is not happening as before. This is not the major story. We have the Ukrainian attack in Kursk. We have, of course, the U.S. elections and the drama of the U.S. elections. And this, to an extent, makes Hamas extremely worried as to their strategic future because the Arab world isn't rising, the Arab streets remain relatively numb during the summer, and the West is also not as involved as it was before. That's substantial strategically when they think about their future in Gaza, because they were thinking that the world will save them, either the Arab world or generally speaking, and that's not happening right now. And this specific attack and the people who died there, and the fact that there is not the same level of rhetoric that we've seen before, that's something that we should take notice of.
DS: Haviv, how much of that, though, do you think could be a result of the fact that, A, the U.S. colleges, campuses are empty right now, so the encampments are not intact, but they could very easily be intact in a few weeks, in September, and it's brutally hot in the streets of the Arab world, the Arab Middle East, right now, here we are in the middle of August, and the potential for protests and riots and, you know, other chaos in the hot streets of Cairo or Amman or some of the Gulf states, although it'd be less likely in the Gulf states, I guess, is just not the same as it may be in October and November.
HRG: I think that Israel has managed to convince a great many ordinary people just watching the news that it is, uh, implacable. And therefore that Hamas miscalculated and destroyed Gaza for very little. That sense is something that you hear from Gazans, and you hear it in polls. My newspaper has conversations with different kinds of people in Gaza. You see it pop out of different polls depending on how you ask the questions. A real profound dissatisfaction with Hamas. And it's a dissatisfaction that has a lot to do with the question, did you do this for nothing? You started a war, October 7 was carefully calibrated to draw the Israelis in, 17 years Hamas built a tunnel system that made it impossible to get to Hamas when the enemy comes in without cutting through cities. And so Hamas's fundamental strategy was to produce the images of Gaza's destruction. And the question now is, what for? In other words, it was going to be Gaza's destruction as the down payment for Israel's destruction. Israel's destruction looks far off. The emergent conclusion that we are beginning to See, and maybe it's really only a smell at this point, but it's beginning to come through is that Hamas miscalculated and miscalculated in a strategy that is so profoundly cruel because it is the destruction of Gaza that was its fundamental calculation. And so the desire to dump Hamas, the desire to distance from Hamas is growing. I hear it in Qatar statements from the Qataris who are ideologically there with Hamas, but It overextended, it miscalculated. One of the frustrations very early in the war from Hezbollah was that Hamas ruined their surprise. They had planned a similar kind of attack and Hamas did it on a much smaller scale than what Hezbollah would have been capable of had it had the element of surprise. So there's a sense even there that how much are we going to drag Lebanon, how much is Iran going to suffer in a direct confrontation with Israel over this Hamas miscalculation, I think that the tipping point has been reached and I think that no lovers of Israel, you know, in the Iranian regime, but nevertheless, they're now asking themselves as they prepare a great, uh, you know, response against Israel retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh, how much do they really want to go to war more and destroy more and lose more for these Hamas guys who can miscalculate so spectacularly.
DS: I would just add to that, It's not clear to me that Qatar is ideologically in sync with Hamas. I think there have been other geopolitical, realpolitik interests from their perspective. I'm not saying I'm sympathetic to this, but I'm just saying from their perspective as to why they have had this relationship with Hamas, it's less ideological. That said, I've heard from leaders throughout the region who are involved with these negotiations from Qatar to Egypt, and then less directly from Saudi, that their counsel to those involved on the Hamas side of the hostage negotiations is, don't underestimate the unpredictability of American politics. You may wind up with a Trump presidency, and the idea that you can bank whatever deal or negotiations you've had so far with the Biden administration and that those will just extend into the Trump administration is fanciful. It's wishful thinking. You have no idea what you'll be dealing with with the new administration. Now, with Biden out, the race has gotten much closer. We'll see. It's volatile. It's unpredictable. And that's their point. Their point is things in American politics can change and change really quickly. You have no idea who you'll be negotiating with. So do a deal now, do a deal that's in front of you. And Nadav that's where I want to go with this conversation now. There is momentum, it sounds like, behind the deal. There was this joint communique issued last week by a number of governments involved. And can you tell us a little bit about that communique and what's happening this coming week in Cairo as the parties meet to negotiate.
NE: The White House late last week issued at night time, Eastern time, an announcement of a summit that will deal with a possible hostage deal. And that is to happen this week on Thursday. And at the beginning, it wasn't clear if it's going to be in Qatar, in Egypt, it's probably going to be in Cairo, as you said, Dan, and this is going to be a summit of the moderating countries, that's Qatar and Egypt, and of course the United States, and representatives of Hamas and Israel, which would of course not be sitting in the same room, probably from Israel, the person leading the team is going to be Dadi Barnea, the head of the Mossad, and Khalil Al-Hayya, who's the, I don't want to say the chief negotiator, but the representative, at least the only man standing from the Hamas leadership.
HRG: Sinwar's number two, right? Basically.
NE: Yeah, well, it really depends how you see it because he's not there physically, right? He's outside of the country, but-
DS: Where is he based? Do we actually know where he's based?
NE: Basically, it was Turkey, but now it's Qatar. Most of these days are spent in Qatar. And now this summit is going to be the summit of all summits as to a hostage deal and ceasefire. So there was a briefing with a senior American official. Basically what they're saying is we're going to try and set things up and try to close the gaps as they are between the sides. So the first question is as to the general perception of the deal between phase one and phase two. I remind our listeners that according to the deal, the first phase Hamas will release the humanitarian hostages, and that's women, that's people who were injured, and that's people above a certain age, although most of these people, if not all of them-
DS: You mean above a certain age, meaning very old people in their 60s, that's what you mean by above a certain age. And you're saying a lot of them are-
NE: Are not with us anymore, are probably dead. And that's going to count to, as far as the Israelis are concerned, any number between 18 to 25 people. Hamas would say less than that, Israel would say less than 18 we're not ready to accept as the first phase of the deal. And the people who will be left for the second phase of the deal are the soldiers and Israeli civilians of age, you know, a certain age that Hamas sees every Israeli male as a soldier. It doesn't mean, you know, even if they weren't caught as soldiers, they were just civilians. I know these people specifically, people who were captured in a kibbutz and they were civilians and they had nothing to do with the army for many years, but they're in their 30s. So as far as Hamas is concerned, they're not freeing them, they'll be remanded until the second phase of the deal. Now, Israel will release Palestinian prisoners, basically terrorists with blood on their hands, from its prisons according to a specific scale that's still to be determined of how many, but you can certainly count that this is going to be approaching 1,000 or slightly less than that. And one of the big questions is what's going to be their names? For instance, one of the ideas that was floating this week is that Israel or that Hamas is going to demand that Israel release Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti was convicted for planning a series of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada, is responsible for the deaths, probably dozens of Israelis. And he's not a Hamas persona, he's a Fatah persona, but very much regarded in the West Bank and also in Gaza as the future leader of the Palestinian people. He's sitting in Israeli jails.
DS: Serving multiple life sentences, right?
NE: Yeah.
DS: And Hamas, just to be clear, even though he's Fatah, so he's of a rival faction to Hamas, Hamas wants him released because they believe he's the closest they can get to their man to run things post war, quote unquote.
NE: No, it's more strategic than that. The reason they want him out is not because they think he's going to serve them when he's leading the Palestinian Authority and threatening Abu Mazen. By releasing him, Hamas is actually saying to the Palestinian people, the people protecting and defending the cause for every Palestinian, not only for Hamas, is us. We are the people who are releasing not only Hamas officials, we are also releasing the leader of Fatah and the person coming from Fatah. So there is no hope in negotiating with Israel. There is hope with military struggle because Fatah is right now, Dan, preaching for negotiations with Israel. Fatah is not preaching right now, on the record at least, to have a military struggle. And this, this is the major dispute within the Palestinian society that people don't talk about enough between Fatah and Hamas. And one of the reasons for how the region looks like is because Fatah and Hamas are engulfed in this kind of historic struggle on the fate of the Palestinian people and what kind of country and what kind of society they want to live in. And by releasing Barghouti, Hamas is saying, you know, that's a final checkmate for Hamas. Anyway, Israel is not going to agree to that, Dan. So there's a question, and that's a question that's going to arise in that summit of veto. Will Israel get the power to veto some of these names? Now, as far as the Israelis are concerned, of course, Israel will not agree to any deal that it doesn't have a veto power on the names passed by Hamas in order to be released by Israel as part of the deal. It's not you just choose whoever you want from the Israeli prison cells and we'll release them. No, we get veto.
DS: The point about the veto is, so Hamas says, these are the list of people who aren't released. Israel can say, this one, no, this one, no, this one, no. And that the idea is in the context of the deal is that that veto is final. It's not like you negotiate over the veto.
NE: No, no, you don't negotiate. Although this is the Middle East and you do negotiate. So we're going to say veto for that. Then they're going to say, we're blowing up the deal. You know, you veto everyone that we care about. This is what happened with the Shalit deal. And this, it's going to happen again. But at any rate, at the beginning, Israel said, we want to have a hundred names that we can veto. And Hamas went, no way, zero, okay. So this is a gap that nobody closed, but everybody understands, Hamas understands that different to its position at the beginning of negotiations, Israel's going to get some veto power. So that's an issue. The transformation from phase one to phase two, that was also an issue that was already solved by Israel. Israel already achieved its most important goal. If you look at sections, clauses 8 and 14 in this document, then you see the difference between the beginning and the Biden administration speech, basically, the president was quite accurate in the way that he described this deal at the time. And our listeners remember, he made a speech, he committed Netanyahu to an offer, and he was basically accurate. But there was one specific sentence that he said as to what's happening between phase one and phase two that blundered for at least a month post these entire negotiations, because the Israelis were going, we did agree to the framework, but we didn't agree to this. And basically, it's this question. As long as the sides negotiate or agree to negotiate, does it mean that the war has ended? Or in other words, you know, Hamas can always say, I'm ready to negotiate. Therefore, you cannot restart the war. Now, I have to say something, this is a fake argument to begin with, because this is the Middle East. Stuff happens. You know, someone's planning to plant a bomb. Someone is planning to shoot rockets. There is intelligence coming. People break agreements all the time, unfortunately. This is how it operates. So it's not like, you know, a gentleman's agreement in 19th century England, and people will abide by the agreement because it's their honor that it stay here. No, you know, this is not a world prior to World War I or something. But at any rate, Israel didn't want to sign anything, either this was a pretext by Netanyahu, we'll say, the people who criticize him, or it's a real thing. Israel didn't want to sign anything that will mean that it is committed to the end of the war after phase one. And this sort of change in the way that it's structured and the way that it's nuanced, in the agreement, this was already achieved. Sections 8 and 14. It's not my judgment. It's the people I talk to close to the prime minister are saying it's a great achievement of Israel. It happened a month ago that we managed to restructure these clauses in a way that Israel can actually restart the war between phase one and phase two. How? The prime minister, for instance, intends to demand that Hamas disarm between phase one and phase two. It's a legitimate demand according to these negotiations in the framework, and if Hamas refuses to disarm, negotiations break down, Israel can restart the war. And the reason Israel is so focused on restarting the war is because there is a consensus within the Israeli defense apparatus and with Israeli politics beyond any argument that Hamas cannot continue to rule the Gaza Strip. That's the bottom line. And because of that, the Israelis are very much focused on getting as many hostages right now, but not committing into the future. Now, other questions beyond going from phase one to phase two is who's going to control the Rafah crossing. The Rafah crossing is the most important crossing that Gaza has to the world. Again, something that usually international media won't tell you, that Israel does not surround the entire Gaza Strip. Gaza isn't really an island surrounded by Israel. Palestinians, and more than 150,000 have left Gaza each year before October 7, through the Rafah crossing, through Egypt. And the Rafah crossing is, the gateway of Gaza and the world through Egypt.
DS: Just, just an important point here, Nadav, because we're often told, oh, Israel's blockade of Gaza, Israel's turned Gaza into an open air prison. Israel's one border of Gaza. Gaza has a border with, as you're saying, Egypt, and it's actually, it's Egyptian border, Rafah, the Rafah crossing is actually the most important border for the Palestinians in Gaza and for Hamas.
NE: Yes. And this is also the border or the checkpoints from which Hamas probably smuggled most of its weapons, either underneath the ground. or even through the crossing, maybe by bribing the other side. Now, Israel and Egypt have close relationship, but the other side of the coin is that the soldiers that are guarding this border between Gaza or the Hamas entity at the time, and between Egypt, those Egyptian soldiers from the Egyptian side are getting paid, if I remember correctly, it's like 40 a month or 80 a month, something like that. So it's very easy to have smuggling in a border like this.
DS: Wait, they were getting bribed to the tune of 40 to 80 a month?
NE: No, they're getting salaries from the Egyptian government up to 40 or 80 a month. And people who get these kinds of salaries are very easily bribed by Hamas. At any rate, this is an argument that Israel could never make on the record because it's going to offend the Egyptians and the Egyptians are already offended because Israel exposed, for instance, a tunnel, a huge tunnel in which you can smuggle pickup trucks to the Gaza Strip. It happened last week.
DS: Meaning the tunnel's that big. I saw the images of it, you can, the photos of it, you could literally drive trucks through this tunnel between Egypt and Gaza.
NE: This was a diplomatic thing with the Egyptians because the Egyptians were like, you're insulting us. You're offending us. It's a humiliation.
DS:Right. And by the way, and let's call it out. This is partly why Egypt was so strongly against Israel going into Rafah because they knew Israel would expose some of the things you're talking about here.
NE: So for Yahya Sinwar, according to intelligence for the leader of Hamas, the fact that Israel took the Philadelphi corridor, which is how we label the border between Egypt and Gaza, okay? The Philadelphi corridor. And we took over the Rafah crossing. The fact that we did this, this is a major blow for Hamas. This is a major blow for Hamas because this is their oxygen to their military apparatus. And Israel took over this. Now, the question is, will Israel stay there? The answer by Egypt, I'm not talking about Hamas. The answer by Egypt is no, you're not going to stay there. You're not going to stay there. Now, the answer of, I would say Israel's legal advisors don't stay there because if you're staying in that corridor, this is really structurally an occupation of the Gaza Strip. If Israel does control every border of the Gaza Strip, legally, formally, but also effectively. That means an occupation of the Gaza Strip. And you're responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip, because you effectively took over the entire Gaza Strip, say the legal advisors, at least militarily. You're now controlling all the borders, including a border you didn't control before. And if you control that checkpoint, you'll be responsible for the fate of every Gazans. So the legal advisors of the Israeli government are telling it, don't hold the Philadelphi corridor, find another route. The Americans actually, and that's new what I'm saying right now, I didn't write it, there is an understanding from within the White House that Israel needs to hold some of the Philadelphi corridor because of what I just said. So it needs to have a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. And now the question is really focused on the Rafah crossing, not on the entire corridor. People understand that Israel needs to have a presence there to prevent smuggling, to prevent Hamas from re-arming. The question is, what's going to happen with the Rafah crossing? And there, there was an entire discussion. If it's going to be the Palestinian Authority controls it. And if it is the Palestinian Authority, will they be able to raise the Palestinian flag there? And the Israelis were very particular, specifically the prime minister, that he doesn't want the Palestinian flag to be raised as a banner over the Rafah crossing. And why is that? Because everything in this negotiation on both sides, I'm focusing right now on the Israelis, is very much political. If you have a Palestinian flag there. You know, that means that the PA won, but the prime minister is saying right now, every Palestinian, including Palestinian authority, as long as they don't fly the flag, the Egyptians support Israel in this demand, it's probably going to be accepted. So what you have here, who controls the Philadelphi crossing? Will there be sensors and technology there to prevent smuggling? How is this going to be guaranteed maybe by the United States or by the Egyptians or other forces? Who's going to control the Rafah crossing? And then you come, of course, to the issues that are still very much debated. And first and foremost is the entire issue of people returning back to the north.
DS: Before we get to that, I just want to get Haviv to react to what you just said so far. And then I want to come back to the issue of Palestinians returning to the north. I will say parenthetically that the issue of the Palestinian flag being raised at Rafah at the crossing there is not nothing. I mean, I don't think it's just an intra-Israel issue. I think symbolically, if the perception is that October 7th is the Palestinians independence day. I think that is, has implications for geopolitics, for the West, for Western civilization that go far beyond, has ripple effects far beyond just intra-Israeli politics, but we can return to that. And I also want to return to this issue of what to do about Palestinian civilians who want to return to their homes in the north. But before we do that, Haviv, can you just react to what Nadav just laid out? Because the last time I had the two of you together, you were quite critical of a deal that was on the table and the negotiations generally. The substance of what we're hearing from Nadav has clearly evolved from when we last spoke. And I just want to know if your thinking has evolved as well.
HRG: From where I sit, it looks like Israel got everything it wanted within the parameters of what was available. Israel demanded the ability to resume with war, right? After six weeks, Israel demanded the ability to frankly hold Philadelphi for as long as it needs to, for as long as there's war fighting, right? I mean, if we're looking at somebody else stepping into Gaza and rebuilding Gaza, nobody's going to step in as long as Hamas has serious guerrilla capacities. So that's a long time before Israel can degrade Hamas enough for that to happen. So those questions, the question of Philadelphi, is not part of this deal, and it might be in the deal, but it's not actually part of this deal. Israel will be fighting in Gaza against Hamas for months and maybe for a couple years, and then there is a chance, if things go well, that it'll be degraded enough for, you know, other parties to step in. No Arab peacekeeping force, no Americans, no Egyptians. No, nobody is going to fight Hamas for us. And so bottom line, shrink it down to the things that actually matter. They will let out some hostages. We will let out some prisoners. I agree with everything that I've said on Barghouti. Um, this cannot be a success for Hamas and Barghouti would be a strategic success for Hamas because it would be a strategic undermining of the fundamental path of Fatah. It would be Israel, if it lets out Barghouti who is serving five life sentences for mass murder. It would be Israel saying, you want to get Barghouti out? Nothing Fatah has ever done will do it. What Hamas did will do it and Israel can't afford to say that and so Barghouti is not going to get out. There's no chance. There's no Israeli political constellation or government not led by the left not led by the right there's simply nobody who's gonna let Barghouti out and, that's it. We have shrunk the question down to the only thing that matters for Israel, you want a temporary six week deal in which we get 20 give or take these numbers, right, that you want this very short term deal in which we get some hostages out, you can have that deal. In other words, dear Hamas, you'll give us some hostages for room to breathe. You've lost Haniyeh, you've lost forces, you've had battalions crushed, you've lost Deif, you're reeling, the world is not responding the way you want it to respond, your fundamental strategy is now being questioned by your closest allies, you need six weeks to breathe. That'll cost you 20 hostages. And that's been the strategy of Gallant, at least from day one, right? And my complaint, uh, and your complaint, Dan, and many people's complaints over the last 10 months is that whenever pressure is lifted off Hamas, the deal actually gets farther away and not the other way around. Well, the pressure is back on for the last three, four weeks. And Hamas is back at the table and it looks like they're willing to release on Israel's terms. All good news.
DS: And, Haviv, just before I bring Nadav back on this issue of this last piece of the deal, you've been quite critical of Israeli government strategy, as I have been at times. Do you feel that the Israeli government now at least is finding its footing in terms of a strategy for at least getting hostages back and some kind of future thinking about what to do about Gaza, and the region for that matter?
HRG: For some reason I find utterly incomprehensible and profoundly foolish. The Israeli government has taken its line far, far too much from the American administration. And the American administration has shown us on the big questions, not on the little ones. And I'm not talking about CENTCOM. I'm not talking about people who coordinate with the Israelis, the professionals necessarily on the ground. I'm talking about the decision making echelon, uh, has shown us that it does not understand Gaza, does not understand Hamas, barely understands the Middle East, isn't even in seriously good control of the maps of these places, doesn't understand scale and size. The Israelis went with this pressure and they held back because of this pressure. And they stayed out of Rafah because of this pressure. And they handled themselves very, very delicately and things didn't advance, and they allowed the talks with Hamas to drag and drag and drag while Hamas thought that it was in the driver's seat because of this pressure. And now that the Israelis seem to have given up, there seems to have been a pivot that didn't begin with Hamas. It began on the question of Hezbollah and Iran and it began in the military high command, not so much in the political level. And there was a pivot. And we saw the pivot, because people started dying. The killing of the Iranian general in early April seems to have been a test of an escalation, of a limited escalation, because Hezbollah can't be allowed to just empty the north for 10 months. And it went well, and now there are more tests, and they're going well, and the Iranians are now looking up for a way to respond and unable to. It's going well, and we can take out Hamas, we can take out the Hamas leadership, piece by piece. Turkey and Qatar both announced early on, and I believe in November, that Hamas leaders can't be assassinated on their soil. So he was assassinated on Iranian soil, perfect right? It was an Israeli willingness to actually be Israeli, to deploy Israeli capabilities, knowledge, and Israeli strategy, the wounded tiger strategy. We have seen repeatedly Vladimir Putin speaking to, um, I believe Khamenei, and he said to them, don't let your response kill Israeli civilians. Why doesn't he want them to kill Israeli civilians in the Iranian response? Because we took 120 missiles from Yemen without responding all that much. And then they finally got a drone through and killed an Israeli civilian and our response, taking out Hodeidah port, was a response for the 120, not for the one. And that's what happened with the Chief of Staff of Hezbollah murdered 12 kids in a soccer field. Our response was taking out their Chief of Staff of the Hezbollah military, basically. And so we have remembered that we are dangerous and we are taking that message to the Iranians and Hamas is starting to notice it and that has shifted the fundamental calculations of the enemy and suddenly there are hostages who are going to come out because of it. America has been there. It has been strong by us. It is important. It is part of this story. I wish America was much more serious, much more willing to be dangerous. If you're not dangerous in the Middle East, you'll be walked all over. We are finally acting dangerous. And yes, I think that this Israeli government has finally Because maybe it is detaching from all this American advice, they're finally stepping up and fighting the way Israelis know how to fight.
DS: Okay, so Nadav, I want to get your reaction to Haviv's macro point about the region and this idea that, you know, the language that these Israeli leadership is using now is, whatever Iran and Hezbollah does in the days ahead or weeks ahead, Israel's response will be proportionate to the intent of the attack against Israel, not just the results of the attack. Meaning if Israel is able to protect itself and minimize, as Haviv says, or completely remove the impact on civilians, just because Israel is able to do that doesn't mean Israel is not going to respond in kind to what Iran and Hezbollah intended to do. So that does seem new and I want to get to that. But I just want you to finish off the point about the potential negotiations over what happens in Gaza and then address this issue of how Hamas and the region are looking at Israel right now.
NE: So the final issue, and that's a big one, is the return north, the civilian population, and how Israel confronts the possible return of Hamas to the northern part of the Gaza Strip, very much now controlled by Israel and very much vacated. Most people who used to live there were displaced because of the war. They left their homes. The IDF told them, you know, leave your houses. This area is a combat area. And we're talking about more than a million people. And now the question is, how will they return in a way that Hamas is not gonna be there with them, you know, very much within the population with armed people, with their weapons. And the north side of the Gaza Strip, and we talked about this, is the most important side of the Gaza Strip in terms of its threat to Israel, both because there are more communities living on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. I'm talking about kibbutzim and moshavim and sderot and other places in Israel, and also because it's closer to the central part of Israel. So in terms of rocket launching, the northern side of the Gaza Strip is very important.
DS: You're talking about 40, 50 kilometers from Tel Aviv. I mean, the northern part of Gaza is really in close proximity to the biggest population center and economic heartbeat of the country. So what happens in northern Gaza really, really matters in terms of the future of Israel's security.
NE: So one of the demands made by the prime minister sort of principles was that armed men won't be able to return with the civilians returning to the north, but that's not really the issue. First of all, because the only way that you can make sure that they're not going to return is to have checkpoints across the Netzarim corridor, which Israel controls east to west in the Gaza Strip, a place I spent some time in, and in this area, you need soldiers to go one after one with a million people. That's difficult anyhow, but Israel already agreed to evacuate this area altogether. It already also agreed that the people there are not going to be inspected by IDF soldiers. This is one of the reasons that we have a breakthrough, because Israel agreed that it's not going to stay in the Netzarim corridor. And then Netanyahu made this announcement about the principle. And then everybody in the negotiating team were going, how is this going to happen? You know, yeah, we can make promises. The Hamas could say, oh no, they can commit for armed men not to go to the north, but they're not going to be responsible for that. And they're definitely not going to live up by the words to this matter. So what's going to happen? And Netanyahu was very adamant that no, no, this is a holy principle. It's very important. And this was threatening, is still threatening to blow up the deal with the Israeli security officials going we don't get it. You know, you agreed for us to actually withdraw from the Netzarim corridor. And now what do you want us to do? What do you want us to demand? For instance, people were talking sensors, smart cameras that can see if people are carrying arms. But this is, you know, I hope I can use this expression on your podcast, this is BS. You know, everybody knows that this is BS in Gaza. It's not going to happen. So this was seen basically as a poison kind of element that Netanyahu is bringing it to the negotiation. So he can always use this if he just doesn't want a deal. And, basically, that's a major question that we haven't talked about. After all, Haviv has said that Israel got everything it can get. And this is exactly the discussion with the heads of the defense apparatus. This is what they were saying in the famous meeting with Netanyahu a week and a half ago. They were telling him, this is a great deal for us. We got everything we wanted. We're going to get, you know, those female soldiers that are being abused by Hamas. We're going to get some of our people back. There is no commitments. We got where you wanted us to be at. Let's sign the deal. And Netanyahu from his own reasons, for instance, the Knesset being in session, he not wanting the government to fall over this because of the far right from other issues, maybe because of, you know, reasonable issues like coming back to the north.
DS: There's an argument, Nadav, that Israel was in an aggressive posture and some of these principles that was, were important to Netanyahu or the government more broadly were suddenly Israel was going to win on because Hamas was weakened. And so time was helpful to Israel in that regard.
NE: The most important thing that Israel got, as Haviv mentioned earlier, is the ability to resume the war. And it basically got that even before the Biden speech, the Biden speech only blundered that. So this is almost two months old, and Israel already got that. I'm not saying that Israel's position strategically might have not improved as a result of the deaths, the assassination of Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh and others, and a good argument, Dan, and Haviv, a good argument by Netanyahu would be, and he will make that argument, if I would have agreed to a deal, a month and a half ago, when you pressured me to do so, after we got our achievements, we wouldn't have killed these people who are really very much important. Muhammad Deif is strategically important. Ismail Haniyeh is not strategically important, but Muhammad Deif, the chief of staff of Hamas, he's important. And it's a historic win for Israel. And it's one of the things that we need to achieve. Also Netanyahu would make this argument that if I would have agreed, caved into the pressure coming from the United States, not from the defense apparatus, I wouldn't even gone into Rafah because the U.S. didn't want me to go into Rafah. So look at what I've done.
HRG: But Nadav, there's a gap between the formalities about what you're absolutely correct and the realities. The fact is that international pressure, when we hit six weeks, international pressure could lean one way in an extreme way. It could be very difficult to resume the fight, unless there is an agreement ahead of time, getting that agreement in place, the question becomes, how much are you just talking about getting an agreement in place to get the Israelis to sign anything, to get Hamas to sign? How much is it really going to be possible? You know, I'm deeply critical of Netanyahu. I'm more than critical. I feel betrayed by Netanyahu's politicking over the last 10 months as an Israeli citizen. And yet, on this question, I happen to think that, um, Netanyahu holding out, holding out with the hostages in dungeons, holding out with the terrible suffering in Gaza and with everything that that means. But nevertheless, holding out until it is clear to Hamas that when the Israelis were brought to the table by the Americans, it wasn't forcing the Israelis to come to the table. It was out of an Israeli interest. Coming to the table after the death of Haniyeh and Deif is the Israelis choosing to come to the table? Coming to the table before the deaths of Haniyeh and Deif is the Americans pushing the Israelis to the table. If the last month was nothing else, it was the Israeli strategic decision making command, declaration of independence from the Americans. I don't even care if that's true. The most important thing is that that is how Hamas perceives the last month. And that's critical, because that means that over the next six weeks, not, you know, whenever the deal is signed, which could itself be in 12 weeks, but over the first six weeks of that deal, when the hostages are coming out, Hamas understands that it is buying time for survival. And it wants this time. And it doesn't have the breathing space. In other words, if it loses that time by launching a massive terror attack, if it loses that time by not releasing the hostages, if it abandons some of those six weeks, America is not going to bring it back for them. America is not going to squeeze it out of Israel again. Not a Trump America, not a Harris America. Not even if it's on election day in America. In other words, this is all about putting Hamas's actual deep interests into the deal, or there is no deal. It doesn't matter what the formalities say. So yes, you could have had a month ago, the agreement that we can go back to war. Technically you had it from day one. Israel never agreed to anything else, but to actually have Hamas believe that the war resumes and that it only has this six week window, make the most of it, get those hostages out, because if you don't, you lose even that. I do think that took massive pressure and Israel looking like it needs a deal less than Hamas. If I needed more, Hamas will keep negotiating. The critique I have of the Americans is that they keep saying publicly, we're going to squeeze Israel and squeeze Israel until it goes to a deal with Hamas. Every time they said that, the deal was pushed off another three weeks because Hamas knows English.
NE: Yeah, but Haviv, I should say, I agree with what you're saying, and this is something that we mentioned in these conversations with Dan about the White House, specifically what you just said about how the policy of the White House became sort of a Harry Potter aspiration. You know, we want a deal, so we're going to pressure Israel to have a deal, and we'll pressure Hamas on the record to have a deal, then we're going to get a deal. So it's very much not tactical, it's not sophisticated, and I agree with you completely. But this has changed since the Biden speech. And this is one of the reasons that we have this breakthrough, because basically what the White House did, and that was smart, they said, this is an offer that Israel agreed to, which it did. Now, all pressure is only, only on Hamas. Hamas is responsible. Blinken has said that numerous times. The president has said that, and they took off the pressure of Israel.
HRG: Yeah, maybe that helped.
NE: And hey, they actually did an actual maneuver in foreign policy together with power implemented by the IDF and this got results. That's an amazing perception that you can actually have this kind of sophistication in American foreign policy and get results. But this is the reason that America is the superpower it is because it did numerous times in numerous cases in history. This is exactly what it did. It thought this through, and it didn't speak out of some sort of a fake moral high ground, but it spoke out of realistic approach to the Middle East. And it really worked here. And it led to the verge of a breakthrough. I'm not saying it's a breakthrough yet. We'll see after Thursday, but I agree with what you're saying.
HRG: I don't know that that's the source of American power, but I will say this when America, I take your point. And the administration has been much more clever since then. And that did contribute or at least in the sense of it didn't ruin the potential to move forward to this deal that Israel could actually accept. But America, when it does do the right thing, clever thing, the smart thing, the tactical thing, nobody believes it. And so there's also an arc of just believing that the Americans won't actually just fall back on pressuring Israel because it's the politically easier thing to do because American foreign policy is so much American domestic politicking that we had to wait out just everyone coming to, while Israel was hammering away at Hamas. Weighed out people just coming to believe this about American foreign policy. We are not making friends in the State Department on this episode.
DS: Yeah, well, I would say that's a badge of honor. I just want to respond to something, Nadav, you said earlier, just it was sort of buried into your general commentary. But I do want to respond to it. You said that getting Mohammed Deif was strategic, killing Haniyeh was not so strategic. But I also think there's something to be said for how Israel did the operation against Haniyeh, not just killing Haniyeh. I think there's strategic significance in the region that Israel demonstrated to the region. Look what we can do. We can go right into the heart of Tehran. We can go right into what is the equivalent of the Blair House of Tehran, where Tehran, the government in Iran hosts, the regime hosts its foreign dignitaries visiting. And we can do this pinpoint operation right in in the heart of this building that hosts dignitaries right in the heart of the regime's capital hours after the target of this operation had been with Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, I think that was a powerful statement about the limitations of Iran, the vulnerabilities of Iran, and the strength and power and reach of Israel. And I think I've talked to people in the Gulf, in the Sunni Gulf, who were very impressed with that operation, sort of shocked by it, and said, wow, only Israel could pull something like that off. And so I think the strategic significance of operations like that go beyond just who the person is they remove from the map. I want to close, and I know we just have a few minutes here, Haviv, Monday night in Israel begins Tisha B'Av. There's been a lot of speculation, would Iran or Hezbollah strike on Tisha B'Av? Just briefly, can you explain for our listeners what Tisha B'Av is, its significance? And I just have one other question for you about that in addition.
HRG: Yeah, I'm putting on my son of a rabbi hat.
DS: Rabbi Haviv.
HRG: Yes. Aspiring.
DS: Ben. Ben.
HRG: ‘Ben Shel” son of. Tisha B'Av is the great paradigmatic day of mourning on the Jewish calendar. It is the day in the Jewish tradition when the first temple was destroyed in 586 by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, beginning the first exile. It is also when the second temple, was destroyed in 70 by Titus, the Roman general, when the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt probably is the real moment when you already have hundreds of thousands killed, enslaved, and really the second exile in a big way begins. The fall of Bektal, the destruction of the two temples makes Tisha B'Av the foundational sort of, it's a day of fasting, a day of mourning, the most significant day of mourning on the Jewish calendar. And over the centuries, over the millennia, Other things that people who didn't like Jews or wanted to oppress Jews in symbolic ways were then done on Tisha B'Av as a message to the Jews that this is part of your dispersion. This is part of your exile. This is part of your oppression. This is an old Christian idea that the Jews have to suffer. Because if they suffer from not accepting Christ, then this is something that St. Augustine talks about. And because Tisha B'Av is this day where all the bad things happen, other things were kind of attached to it. In other words, for example, the Kaiser of Germany declares war on Russia in the First World War on Tisha B'Av. Now, that wasn't a declaration on Jews, but it was a declaration by one massive empire against another massive empire. And most of the world's Jews were in the way. And in fact, huge, huge numbers were going to die in the ensuing war, and it is a day attached, especially among religious Jews and ultra Orthodox Jews, to the Holocaust. August 2nd, 1941, Tisha B'Av, was when Himmler receives the notice that the final solution is approved by the Nazi party, and they begin the official sort of Holocaust. And so, that's Tisha B'Av. There are indications over the last week and Nadav might know more or certainly more up to date, the Israeli intelligence officials have been saying things like the Iranians are thinking of timing it to Tisha B’Av. The Iranian ideological story of Israel is that of course the Jews ultimately are brought down and destroyed and exiled from the land. Right, that they are gonna be moved out, right. That is the ideal Iranian, when Iranian officials aren't speaking in English, that's how they speak. And so Tisha B’Av is the day of the Jews. Being expelled and of the day of the Jews, great destruction. And so if you're going to try to maximize the psychological impact of an attack on Jews, you wanna do it then. And that's currently, uh, one of the bubbling, sort of conjectures that any serious Iranian response is gonna be on Monday, Tuesday.
DS: And I would also note that it, it will be about almost exactly two weeks from Israel's operation in Tehran. taking out Haniyeh, which there was about a two week gap between Israel's operation in Damascus, or what is reported as Israel's operation in Damascus against this IRGC general that resulted in two weeks after almost to the day of Iran's response against Israel in mid April so the timing would work.
NE: And also the end of the Olympics, you know, with due respect to Tisha B’Av and everything that Haviv said is, is absolutely true. Iran made, uh, of the record promises to France that during the Olympics, nothing's going to happen. France, sort of pressured the Iranians to that.
HRG: Yeah.
NE: This is what my intelligence sources are saying.
DS: It's just amazing.
HRG: You don't want war in the Olympics. Come on guys.
DS: Right. Well, it competes with the media. I mean, the ratings.
HRG: Yeah.
NE: And I'm sorry that I have just brought this down, you know-
DS: To a ratings war, Olympics versus war, you know, what, what, what’s CNN going to cover? NE: Yeah. But generally speaking, that's the reason that Sunday, you know, today the Olympics end.
DS: We will leave it there. We covered a lot of territory here, some of which I intended to. I didn't think we'd bring in the ratings war over the Olympics and all embedded into a conversation that has Talmudic references. But I guess only on the Call Me Back podcast. Nadav Eyal, Haviv Rettig Gur, thanks for being here, guys.
HRG: Thank you.
NE: Thank you.
DS: That's our show for today. Before we sign off for our listeners, just one additional housekeeping note. If you want to get in touch with us to ask questions or make suggestions for future episodes. Or if you'd like to sign up for notifications on new episodes, or if you'd like to access our transcripts of past conversations, you can now go to our new website, arkmedia.org That's A R K M E D I A, arkmedia.org. That's Ark, as in Noah's Ark. Media. org. We will link to Ark Media in the show notes as well. 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.