A new U.S. president and the Middle East - with Tal Becker
Today, we are taking a step back to discuss many of the new opportunities across the landscape for the U.S. and Israel, as a new president takes office.
Our guest is Dr. Tal Becker, who serves as Vice President and Senior Faculty of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Tal was the former Legal Adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams and, most recently, represented Israel before the International Court of Justice and played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the historic peace and normalization agreements (the "Abraham Accords"). Tal earned his doctorate from Columbia University in New York City, and is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including the Rabin Peace Prize, and the Guggenheim Prize for best international law book for his book "Terrorism and the State".
Full Transcript
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TB: We didn't create Israel to kind of concentrate Jewish anxiety in one location, right? That isn't the purpose of the, of the enterprise. It's not meant to be a really well armed shtetl. It was also about Jews returning to history, Jews creating an exemplary society, and also using our sovereignty to make those around us thrive as well, right? Israeli society now has a much harder time doing that because it's so battered and it feels like we tried and failed. But the moment is there, and we can't allow the trauma to define the outer limit of our aspirations.
DS: It's 7:00 PM on Thursday, January 23rd, here in New York City. It's 2:00 AM on Friday, January 24th in Israel as Israelis transition to a new day, as they prepare for Shabbat, as they prepare for the release of four more hostages this weekend. Please God, as this hostage deal continues to be implemented. If you follow the news minute to minute, you'd think there are a thousand things going on. To name a few in Israel, General Herzl Halevi resigned as the IDF Chief of Staff. His formal resignation will take place, meaning his separation from the IDF, on a date set for March. Speculation is already running rampant as to who will replace him. Itamar Ben Gvir and his Jewish Power Party which consists of six seats in the Israeli Knesset, which is a part of the coalition government, Ben Gvir and his party have exited the government over Prime Minister Netanyahu's agreeing to the hostage and ceasefire deal. And the Netanyahu led coalition voted against a proposal from the Israeli opposition in the Knesset to launch a state commission of inquiry during the ceasefire. We will discuss these last three internal Israeli political issues with a special guest in our next episode. The events in Washington this past week also made us feel like there were a thousand things going on, in which we had a new president, a new vice president. Their teams at the White House taking office, a new Secretary of State, Secretary Rubio, was sworn in. Look for additional cabinet secretaries to be sworn in in the days ahead as they are confirmed. A flurry of executive orders were signed, too many to chronicle all of them here. But, I think I'll point out a few. President Trump, via executive order, reversed the Biden administration's sanctions on 33 Israeli individuals and organizations in the settler community in Judea and Samaria. President Trump initiated the process for the United States to withdraw from the UN World Health Organization, and he renewed sanctions on the International Criminal Court. The president suspended foreign development aid, which will have direct implications for UNRWA. And this will all be evaluated by Secretary Rubio when he develops a plan for U.S. foreign aid and specifically development aid. The president re-designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. The previous outgoing administration had delisted the Houthis from foreign terrorist organization listing. And Elise Stefanik went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and that was a quite heated hearing at some points, specifically related to issues around Israel. But today, we want to take a step back with a new administration in the U.S. and a new hostage and ceasefire deal, all against the backdrop of a new reality in the Middle East. Iranian backed proxies have been decimated. The Syrian regime has collapsed. Iran's air defenses are exposed, or at least are much weaker. And there's revived talk from Washington and perhaps even Riyadh about a path to Saudi Israel normalization. Our guest for this conversation is Dr. Tal Becker, who better to take us on a tour of the new opportunities in this moment, which also at the same time, as the hostage deals being implemented, feels fragile. Dr. Tal Becker serves as the senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and was the former legal advisor of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He's a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams, and most recently represented Israel before the International Court of Justice and played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting historic peace and normalization agreements such as the Abraham Accords. Tal Becker on a new U.S. President and the Middle East. This is Call me Back. I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Tal Becker, who is with the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and is a longtime diplomat, legal advisor to the Israeli foreign ministry, served in governments of many parties over the years and has been on the front lines of many of Israel's most important diplomatic and international battles. Tal, thanks for being here.
TB: Good to be with you, Dan.
DS: First, just your reaction to the news of the hostage deal.
TB: Well, it's such a confusing and conflicting moment. You can't help but feel relief, uh, for the hostage families. Relief for Israeli society as a whole, because of the anguish and the agony that the families and the society has been through. But you also have concerns, like there are questions. What will happen with the terrorists who are being released as part of the exchange? Is it clear still that we are able to ensure that Hamas doesn't reconstitute itself in Gaza? How will we prevent that from happening? So those questions hover and I think it causes a very bittersweet kind of moment in that sense. But we have a supreme obligation to the hostages and their families. We failed them on October 7th as a society. And so I think, you know, broadly to see them coming home will be part of the healing process.
DS: You told me one story about your son when he was much younger, when he was like seven years old from when you were in government with the hostage negotiations in pursuit of the return of Gilad Shalit, which ultimately happened in 2011. And this was a deal that is, I think, somewhat controversial at the time, very controversial today in retrospect, given that Israel exchanged 1,027 prisoners, Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons for one Israeli hostage, and among those prisoners were people like Yahya Sinwar, who was the architect of October 7th. Can you just tell us, tell the broader Call Me Back community, the story about your son and what it tells our listeners and our viewers, what it tells them about how Israelis decide. Because in a sense, these hostage negotiations to many can seem impractical or illogical or we're going to be having a conversation about strategy and strategic opportunities. It could seem from afar very unstrategic.
TB: Well, I mean, there are legitimate views on all sides of this issue, but there's something really important to understand about the national ethos within Israeli society around this issue. I hope my son doesn't mind me telling this story, but I was involved on the margins of those negotiations, and I remember one night, he was seven years old, and he came into me and he said, Abba, Dad, I've made a big decision. I said, what's the decision? He said, I've decided to swap myself for Gilad Shalit. Gilad is a soldier and we need him. I'm already seven. I'll be fine.
DS: Already seven.
TB: Already seven. It was a very kind of poignant moment, and it speaks to this idea that there is an understood willingness to sacrifice, an understood kind of view of a solidarity of a society where individuals are required and expected to sacrifice for the whole. I often think of parents who send their children to the army as engaged in their own act of the binding of Isaac, their own willingness to say there are things more important than the safety of my children, which revolve around requiring you being willing to enable your children to sacrifice for the collective good. But that comes as part of a core social contract. I'm willing to make that sacrifice for the collective because I know that the collective will be willing to do everything it takes to protect me if needed. And on the hostage issue, it can, for an outsider, drive people a little crazy. But ensuring that the fabric of Israeli society remains and the resilience of Israeli society remains is tied to that feeling of ultimate responsibility for those who are willing to make that sacrifice. An ultimate responsibility as of the society as a whole for each individual. In Hebrew we call this, kol yisrael arevim zeh lazeh (every Jew is responsible one for the other). And when you begin to break that, we are a society that is going to need to continue to ask sacrifice. And knowing that the rest of the society has your back is critical to that.
DS: Some critics of any kind of deal, they think, well, Israel has sent a message to its enemies that it will expend, it will make enormous sacrifices in order to get a hostage back, and this therefore rewards terrorism and incentivizes terrorism. And so all you're doing by a deal like this is sending him, Sinwar’s message 1,027 to 1 from 2011. Sinwar’s lesson from that is, wow, think about what kind of leverage we'll have if we get 200 plus hostages, 250 plus hostages as they got on October 7th. But I think what you're saying is that's not the only audience. Unfortunately, Israel has the burden because of the social contract and because it relies on largely universal conscription. It has another message, which is equally strategic, which is to its own people, which is we are asking you to serve, and boy, have they been asked to serve over this last 15, 16 months, but God forbid if they are captured, these are the kinds of ends of the earth we will go to to get our people home.
TB: So, I would tell you a couple of things about that. The first is, I think there are legitimate views on either side of this debate. How much are you willing to negotiate about this, the problematics of the signal you send? That's not an irrelevant consideration. It's a hugely important consideration. I have to say, in the context of this particular war, I'm not sure that it's easy to conclude you get away cost free by taking Israelis hostage there were, I mean, I think, uh, Hamas and Gaza and in Lebanon, they may think differently about the cost of that. Like we're in a different place now in that sense. So part of this is to understand, yes, there is a cost. Right. That there's a cost on the other side. As you said, I think it's also, it's not just soldiers. I mean, we have civilian hostages, of course, right. But all of Israeli society, we live in a society that's vibrant, that's resilient, but that's also a society that faces a lot of threats. And to know that you have a society that together is dealing with those challenges is critical for everyone, not just for the soldiers.
DS: Okay. So I want to, this now is directly relevant to what we initially agreed to sit down and talk about, which is this geopolitical moment, perhaps unprecedented. I can't think of another time in my view that Israel has been as strong and as well positioned from a security and military standpoint and from a geopolitical standpoint, at least in the region and perhaps beyond the region. I mean, you have to go back to the end of the six day war to think of another moment where Israel has been in this position. So can you start by just talking about what has Israel actually accomplished in the last few months?
TB: Let's zoom out. I think, um, Henry Kissinger famously said that you can't achieve at the negotiating table that which you haven't achieved on the battlefield, right? A good example of this is to look at the comparison between 1701, Security Council Resolution 1701, and the ceasefire deal. 1701 was very important aspirationally. It laid down the norms, but the ability to translate that into reality was limited because of what happened on the battlefield. And now we have a different situation on the battlefield and as a result of that, a different situation in the political reality and the legitimacy that you've created. So if you zoom that out and you ask, what has the battlefield achieved? What are the Israel's military, um, successes achieved? So fundamentally, I don't think, uh, Sinwar would have imagined that he was lighting the match for the end of Iran's ring of fire, essentially the setback of a, you know, multibillion dollar investment over time to encircle Israel. That's a, a massive change. There's also been a kind of fundamental change, maybe even not spoken about or not noticed, in something, it's maybe a bit simplistic to say, but basically Israel's security doctrine has shifted from threat deterrence to threat removal. That's a very significant shift. The threat deterrence model is to say, I'm going to allow enemies to build up their capabilities around me, but I'm going to try to affect their mindset so that they don't use those capabilities. And October 7th forced Israel essentially to shift that into we are no longer going to tolerate the buildup of this kind of threat around us and hope that we can affect the genocidal intentions of our enemies. We are going to take away that capability and you saw that play out in Lebanon, in Gaza but also in Syria, where it isn't a question of waiting to see what developments will be when there are capabilities that can threaten us. And it's obviously a key issue with respect to Iran. The point is though, that because we have shifted from deterrence to removal, we have also succeeded in the removal, right? In other words, there is now a reality where the Shia axis has been set back fundamentally. And the question that we really are asking ourselves, I think, or need to ask ourselves, is how do we translate? Those military successes into something more sustainable politically, and that will play out in all different arena. And it begins, I think, from a broader kind of look at the geopolitical picture first, like where is the world and how does the Middle East play into that?
DS: So walk me through it.
TB: So I think it starts by, by recognizing essentially the American led order after world war two is being threatened in three key arena. It's being threatened in Asia from China. It's being threatened in the European theater with the Ukraine issue and into Europe. And it's been threatened in the Middle East from Iran. And to simplify things a little, I would say that one of the things that shaped the geopolitics of the world in the last years, like the, if you ask, kind of what was the dynamic that kind of shaped it. A huge part of it, I think, was the consequence of the way in which the Afghanistan withdrawal took place at the beginning of the Biden administration. The sense is, and I think it's a widely held view, that the way that withdrawal took place, the impact of it was a sense of opportunity that America's adversaries had in China, Russia, and Iran about what the moment has suggested. Now, I think the picture is more mixed than some people say. The Biden administration did make efforts to kind of correct that. The NATO alliance established against Ukraine was important. Uh, hugely important measures taken to deter Iran and help Israel following October 7th. That was important. But the general message of de-escalation was essentially interpreted, I think, by the U.S.’s enemies or adversaries as an opportunity to expand. And the moment we're in right now, or the question we face right now is what is the message the Trump administration can send? What is the message that Israel can send working with the Trump administration to almost do a kind of a reverse Afghanistan moment? How do you set the tone and set the stage that enables you to deal with these challenges in an effective way. How do you lay the table, so to speak, so that engaging on the Ukrainian issue, engaging on the Chinese issue, and engaging in the Middle East, will be done in a way that is favorable. The challenge of signaling that you want to deescalate is problematic for people who want to take every advantage of that. And I think, you know, uh, Secretary Brinkley even spoke to this issue in the way that Hamas and Sinwar in particular, uh, read the daylight between Israel and the U.S. and the desire of the U.S. to restrain Israel in certain ways as a reason not to do a hostage deal, for example. But quite paradoxically, and I don't think this was deliberate, in the Lebanon, uh, arena, the signal that the U.S. sent that there should be restraint and de-escalation probably helped Nasrallah never become convinced that Israel was actually going to go to the extent that it went to. In other words, we talk a lot about the conceptia, the concept that Israel was trapped in, thinking that Hamas was deterred, right? That triggered October 7th, but paradoxically, it could be that Nasrallah was under a conceptia, a conception of his, that Israel was restrained and deterred, and that actually helped.
DS: We talked about this with Ronan Bergman on, on a previous episode of our podcast, where he said something to the effect of that his reporting showed that the Iranian leadership had tried to get Nasrallah to leave Lebanon and come to Iran because they were worried that Israel was going to take a hit that was going to try to hit him. And he said, I'm not going anywhere. I mean, that was his conception.
TB: The question is now, what are we going to broadcast out to take advantage of the these strategic successes that can also help the broader challenge of advancing American interests. Very interestingly, I think that Russia and Iran have just had their Afghanistan moment in Syria, their kind of rushed withdrawal from Syria as Assad fall raises real questions about what kind of a partner they are in ways that we can also capitalize on.
DS: Meaning they are sponsors of a whole lot of other proxies and powers within the region who now are wondering, wait a minute, the moment things get hot, are they going to bail on me the way they bailed on Assad?
TB: Right. You have a moment here where the question is how do we cement that moment and hopefully create dynamics as the Trump administration enters that can last a lot longer than the four years of the Trump administration but really make the Middle East a place where there's more prosperity and more coexistence and more, more stability and that the forces of chaos and extremism are on the back foot for a long time.
DS: Can you go country by country? Take us on a tour through the region, what it would mean, just at a high level, what it would mean country by country to take advantage of this moment.
TB: Yeah, so I think first it's, it's worth realizing that the dynamics in the region as a whole, traditionally kind of shaped by three axes. There's the Shia axis of Iran and its proxies. There's the Sunni Islamist axis, the Muslim Brotherhood axis. Which has a Turkey component and obviously Hamas and others and then there's what you might call the Sunni pragmatist component the Gulf States Egypt and Jordan to a certain extent and for those purposes Israel is kind of a Jewish Sunni country, right? It's the Jewish Sunni pragmatist country, right? What you're seeing in the region, I think, is a major setback for the Shia axis and a kind of moving to the foreground of the rivalry between the Sunni Islamists and the Sunni pragmatic forces. And that's going to play out in some places. The most prominent that we're seeing at the moment is in Syria. A lot of questions as to the direction Syria is going, but it all potentially raises challenges for Jordan, potentially raises challenges for in, obviously in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. Um, where is it going? So if we go kind of broadly speaking, if you're thinking about Israel's opportunities or the way in which there is a shared opportunity for the U.S. and Israel to shape a Middle East that is more stable and more prosperous and more secure, we begin with the Iran challenge, right? Which is obviously going to be a huge issue both for setting the stage, as I described, that kind of reverse Afghanistan moment. And also for enabling the Middle East to move away from that, that conflict. And there, as you can see, a real dilemma is between the, the diplomatic economic approach, a kinetic approach, the combination of credible threat and, and sanctions and negotiations and how to navigate that. A lot more complex, I think, than people acknowledge those set of decisions. There are some indications where the Trump administration may be headed, but I don't want to get ahead of that. But that is one component, of course. The second huge component is the issue of Saudi normalization. Um, which we've talked about before, but essentially Saudi normalization is a way in which to legitimize in an Islamic sense, coexistence with Israel and the acceptance of, uh, the Jewish people as part of the Middle East, which they are, but it's a, it's a kind of counter narrative to the Iranian narrative and what that normalization may unleash in terms of potential, both on the economic side and on the security side, right? How can we translate the kind of cooperation we had, for example, dealing with the Iranian missile challenge into something more concrete? You know, people talk about the Israeli Arab NATO or something. I don't know if we're going to get there that quickly, but the role of CENTCOM and the way in which we can use that to create a really shared interoperable alliance-
DS: Which we started to see versions of in April of last year when Israel was responding to the Iranian tech. And a lot of that did flow through CENTCOM for the first time.
TB: Yeah. And the capacity to, to concretize that is very important, but also the incredible opportunity we have from an economic perspective to create trade routes. And we know under the Biden administration, it was discussion of the IMEC corridor, which connecting kind of Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and, and using, essentially, I know it sounds ambitious and difficult to talk about for some, and I think Israeli society here is not yet there in its mindset, but there is a pathway to imagine the kind of end of the, of the Arab Israeli conflict, not the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but the elements of. You know, the Arab Israeli conflict. If I had 30 seconds with President Trump, I think he's already there, but the foundations were built with the Abraham Accords. We have a chance to build a palace, right? Maybe put the Trump name on top of that palace, but essentially to create conditions for those who are not just aligned with the U.S., but committed to a Middle East that is based on stability to dictate. There is a huge challenge, I think, on the Palestinian issue, which we can talk about because it feels like a place where there is a significant gap. And the path to a day after in Gaza, for example. Or the path to a normalization with Saudi Arabia involves resolving differences about how Israelis feel about the challenge of moving progress on the Palestinian issue to the way we often hear from the West or from, from some other country.
DS: So then where does the issue of the Palestinians fit into that? Because there are some who would argue that Israel has to move beyond quote unquote, dealing with the Palestinians, not move in concert with a plan to, to address the Palestinians. Just move beyond it. The history has passed the Palestinians by and October 7th demonstrated it. And so there's no, there's no more dealing with Palestinians and others argue you can't really move on and all these wonderful directions of opportunity and paths to opportunity without dealing with the Palestinian issue. Whatever dealing with the Palestinian issue means, by the way.
TB: Yeah. So, I mean, we're at a moment now, and I think also it may change and there are different dynamics, but we're at a moment now where I think at the kind of practical policy level, there is a question about the Palestinian component on the Saudi normalization deal. There is a question about how we get to a day after in Gaza without addressing a kind of vision for the Palestinian future, which is important, I think, for a lot of our partners. And of course, there's the challenge of how do we make sure that Judea and Samaria, the West Bank is more stable. So there's, there's the policy level of this, but there's also, I think, the moral question of what is our obligation to moving towards peace, to encouraging both Jewish and Palestinian self determination without it being a suicide pact. And here, I think it's important to point to a gap that we're going to have to think about very carefully. We know how important saying a commitment to Palestinian statehood is for many, many actors, right? Just because we know how important it is doesn't mean that it's easy for us to say it, right? It doesn't mean that it's easy to give expression to that because for most Israelis following October 7th, especially, talking about Palestinian statehood sounds like you're talking about creating the conditions for October 7th to happen again. Or you're rewarding Hamas. To some extent, beyond that even, to talk about the response to what happened in October 7th is Palestinian statehood tells a story about the conflict that most Israelis think is not the way to understand this conflict. It doesn't explain the genocidal, uh, threat that we face. It doesn't explain why statehood was rejected. It doesn't explain why there wasn't, uh, the issue of Palestinian statehood when Egypt and Jordan controlled, you know, the West Bank and Gaza. And it ignores the fact that there has been this constant rejection of Jewish self determination in any boundary as a core part of the conflict. So we're kind of in that place where articulating a vision for the future is not only hard because we're traumatized, it's hard because it feels like to many Israelis, you're being asked to create the conditions for it to happen again. But for lots of other countries in the West and in the Gulf, I think as well, and those who are looking for us to offer a hopeful vision for the future, Palestinian statehood is a way of saying you're still committed to peace. You're committed to a, to Palestinians living in dignity, having self determination, being able to govern themselves. And one of the big challenges we're going to face, I think, is figuring out how to bridge that gap. I think, I've said this to you before, Dan, in previous podcasts, we have an obligation, I think, to articulate a positive vision for the future, even if it takes a long time to get there. We have to maintain our security imperatives. We can't agree to a failed state or a terrorist state, but I don't think it's impossible to articulate a positive vision to emerge. This is what I was talking about when I say emerging. Not allowing our trauma to limit what we're able to imagine. What is the scenario in which more Palestinian governance and dignity and so on is possible. How do we get there? What would we need to see? I think that's speaking not just about what we're against, but what we're for is a critical part of merging from this, both in a policy way to, to create the path for a breakthrough in different arena, but also for the health of our own society. We need to, we need to push ourselves in that way without it meaning that we are abdicating our ability to protect ourselves. And I think Prime Minister Netanyahu has used language that is at least the beginnings of that. When he says we need to give Palestinians all the capacity to govern themselves, but none of the ability to threaten us, that is already a platform to begin to imagine what you could offer as a vision, and work towards, even if you, you do that with skepticism.
DS: Well, it's a version of what they've, what Israel's done in the West Bank.
TB: Right. But there's more to do. There's more to do in the West Bank. And obviously in a way, a kind of opportunity in Gaza, if we can get there to build something, you know, almost from scratch that offers a vision of demilitarization, de-radicalization, or mechanisms for de-radicalization, but nonetheless Palestinian, an acceptance of Palestinian belongingness alongside Jewish belongingness, a desire to see Palestinian self governance that doesn't understand itself as in a threat with Israel. Now that may take a very long time. Because so much of Palestinian identity and so much of the Palestinian narrative is tied up with this issue. You know, there's a, there's a podcast I was watching, which is almost call me back, but the Muslim version. I don't know if you know about it. And it was striking to me how they took it for granted that the way to think about the Israeli Palestinian conflict is through the lens of the France and Algeria. Or Italy and Libya. This is just a classic case of a foreign colonial presence that needs to be removed. If that is the governing frame to think about Jews living in their ancient homeland, it's very, very difficult to imagine how we're ever in practice going to move forward. But it still doesn't stop you from offering a vision of what might be possible if you adjust your lens and realize that we are not the French in Algeria.
DS: No, I mean, we've talked about that a lot in this podcast, Haviv Rettig-Gur makes this point all the time, that this is a big problem with the Palestinian narrative generally, is that they use the Algeria model as the model and as, you know, Haviv often, the point he often makes is what they don't understand is unlike the French, Jews have nowhere to go. It's not like they can wake up one day and just like France did one day in the mid sixties, whatever it was, and say, okay, we're pulling out.
TB: Yeah. But it's not just that they have nowhere to go. It's that their self understanding is that they have come home and they belong. And it is important, I think, for us to signal that we see that Palestinian self understanding is the same for themselves, but they should not, they can't define for us our identity when you have a people that's 3,500 years old coming back to the places where its story is told. And that can't be the way in which it's framed. So on the one hand, I think, You have to offer a vision, you have to be willing to have hope, but not with this idea that it can be achieved without a fundamental shift in the way, in the stories we tell ourselves.
DS: So as we're bouncing around the region, Tal. You talked about Syria being the example of the reverse Afghanistan model. How should Israel think about Syria, I mean, at a practical level?
TB: There's a lot of uncertainty as to the direction Syria would go. I think about this as a kind of, there's what I call the miracle scenario, the meltdown scenario and the muddle through scenario. And the miracle scenario is a scenario where we, what Jolani is saying, what Mohammed Al Shara is saying, is actually what is intended and what will happen, right? In other words, a Syria that Is concerned after such a devastating civil war with so many hundreds of thousands killed and so many tortured that cares about stability and building up itself and doesn't see Israel as a threat which it isn't and so on. The meltdown scenario has a couple of versions to it. One is that no, this is the place where you know with perhaps with the help of Erdogan, but even without it this is becomes a hotbed of extreme Sunni Islamism, and we have on Israel's border an ISIS al Qaeda like force. Another version of that is a kind of chaotic Syria, where essentially different actors are able to play and threaten Israel and threaten the region from there. I think, uh, if you ask what Iran's intentions might be, Iran, if it can't control a country, will try to prevent anyone else from controlling it and generate that chaos, and I think that needs to be considered. A big part of Erdogan's ability to have a kind of client state in Syria will depend on the cohesiveness of Syria and that's a big question. So there's the miracle scenario, where Syria is a kind of force for stability in the Middle East, in that sense, and doesn't see Israel as an enemy, a meltdown scenario, and a muddle through scenario, where there are parts of Syria that are like this and parts that are something else. I think Israel, I would say, fundamentally, needs to plan for the worst, but not make it a self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, on the one hand, we need to take the security measures that we need to take in order to be in the best position possible to not just deter, but remove any threat we face and navigate our relationship with the players in Syria, the Kurds, the Druze, and the government and with Turkey in a way that makes clear that we minimize the degree of threat we face, but also offer a kind of roadmap to what might be possible if they make the right decisions in the miracle direction. And I would say that one of the things that's a little bit concerning at the moment is the, at least the indications I'm seeing, is that some of the decisions being made in the West are assuming that the promises being made are already fulfilled, right? And it seems to me that not too quickly, right? Incentivize this, lay it out. If you make these and these decisions, then these and these things will be possible so that a pathway towards a society that is genuinely committed to the respect for every different group in Syria exists, a society that isn't going to move towards terrorism and reconstruction and assistance and economic assistance become possible as those steps are taken. So I think on the one hand, you need to offer a vision of what's possible. Not just express your concern about the threats. But lay that out over time in a way that incentivizes it and doesn't suggest that you're buying everything that's being said simply because it's being said.
DS: So let's talk about how Israelis view this moment because you're speaking, you referenced Kissinger at the beginning of this conversation, you're speaking as though you're sitting there with your map and you're sitting there with your theories and you're sitting there with your news developments and it's a very analytical approach to geopolitics. And yet then you have Israeli society. Is it your sense Israeli society, do they get this moment?
TB: I think there's a really big gap between the strategic opportunity that you might see given some really courageous decisions and the success that we've had. And I think for all the political tensions there, a lot of credit is, is owed, I think, to the decisions that were taken 'cause they were not easy, to where Israeli society is, you know, I think when you're traumatized, the interest of safety and just making sure that we are, can breathe and we're secure, can limit what the actual moment is offering. I often say we didn't, we didn't create Israel to kind of concentrate Jewish anxiety in one location, right? That isn't the purpose of the, of the enterprise. It's not meant to be a really well armed shtetl. Zionism was never just about. making sure that Jews were safe. It was also about Jews returning to history, Jews creating an exemplary society, and also using our sovereignty to make those around us thrive as well, right? You know, you think about it in 1948, we were post Holocaust about to be attacked by a whole host of countries and nevertheless found ourselves capable in the declaration of independence to offer a vision for what we wanted. Israeli society now has a much harder time doing that because it's so battered, I think, and it feels like we tried and failed, but the moment is there and we can't allow the trauma to define the outer limit of our aspirations.
DS: How do you think then about the U.S. Israel relationship in light of everything you're describing, both the geopolitical moment, where Israeli society is at, the gaps, the opportunities, the U.S.'s most important allies in the world, I would argue the most important ally in the Middle East, certainly for the U.S., obviously for Israel, the U.S. is the most important relationship, so. Where does this relationship go now?
TB: I really see this as a moment of great opportunity to kind of redefine the U.S. Israel relationship. It's been going there for a long time, I think. The words we use to describe the relationship don't really describe it well enough. The word aid is used way too much when it in fact is an investment in a partnership. Where you have Israel as an anchor of regional stability as a force for advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East. It's not a, it's not a handout as we often say. One of the ways I think about this is there's the snowplow parent, right? Who kind of, you've got teenage boys, so you'll know. There's the snowplow parent who kind of clears the way for their child. The child is kind of helpless. They have to have everything done for them. There's the helicopter parent that, that kind of hovers over because they're worried and so on. And the child is kind of always looking, uh, we're not in those relationships, right? And we have to abandon that idea. This is, I mean, what's the best metaphor? It's kind of like the child has grown up, they're entering the family business. They're resilient, they're creative, they're innovative, and they're gonna help take the family business to new horizons. What is the family business? It is the business of advancing stability, security, prosperity, values of coexistence, things that make the world safer for both of us, right? And moving to that kind of language, the MOU is meant to kind of expire in 2028, the last MOU that was negotiated.
DS: So there's the memorandum of understanding between the Obama administration and the Israeli government. Which foresaw what was like a decade and a half out in terms of the nature of the relationship. So it's time for a new MOU because-
TB: That discussion of a new MOU is an opportunity to have a discussion, a much broader discussion of what an alliance with the U.S. could actually mean. And I think given the way the issue of alliances is playing out within the U.S. political system at the moment, like, you know, a kind of tension between America first and peace through strength, the questions about NATO and so on. I think creating a moment where Israel is an exemplary ally and the essence of what that alliance and partnership could be is really important.
DS: We are entering phase one now of this hostage deal. Is your sense that we're now in a different kind of moment than Israel was in late 2023, where the war may actually be over, at least in Gaza.
TB: So first I'm kind of skeptical about this idea of the war being over as a kind of bright line moment, because in a way there's some degree of conflict, because as long as there are people trying to target us and the threat, then, and especially since we're moving away from deterrence to, to actually acting in a way that prevents them from being able to realize those, uh, threats. Now, if we make the right choices and we take advantage of the opportunities working with the Trump administration and with allies in the region. I think we can create a reality where the enemies of peace and of coexistence may have a much harder time realizing their vision, but that doesn't mean they won't still, still be there. As much as Israeli society is exhausted, including, you know, individual families who have had their soldiers away for 300 days and more. And as much as it has been scarred. It is also unbelievably resilient, right? And I think that's one of the achievements of this war is that, you know, under our usual security doctrines, our wars are meant to be short, right? This has been a long war, but Israeli society has been unbelievably resilient in the face of that war, despite all the differences. And I hope that it doesn't create a return to a kind of complacency that might, God forbid, enable Hamas to reconstitute itself in Gaza, even after a hostage deal, to make us reluctant to do what's needed. Not just for our own benefit, but in my view for the, for Palestinian people's benefit as well. In five years time, the story we need to tell about this period was it was the moment in which those who had genocidal intentions against Israel, and those who wanted to condemn Israelis and Palestinians to conflict, failed, and we took advantage of the opportunity to set an agenda and unleash a different moment for the Middle East, even if there's a lot of security threats. We need to recognize that the balance of power has shifted. Israel is in one of the, as you said at the beginning, Dan, one of the, the, the strongest position strategically it has been in, and we can make that matter for the lives of people of the region, working with the Trump administration that I think is really keen to take advantage of that opportunity.
DS: Tal Becker, thank you as always for doing this. I look forward to having you back on soon. Until then, as always great, illuminating conversation.
TB: Thanks, Dan. Good to talk to you.
DS: That's our show for today. You can head to our website, Arkmedia.org. That's A R K Arkmedia.org to sign up for updates, get in touch with us, access our transcripts, all of which have been hyperlinked to resources that we hope will enrich your understanding of the topics covered in the episodes on this podcast. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Rebecca Strom is our operations director, researched by Stav Slama and Gabe Silverstein. And our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.