The Deal and its Political Fallout - with Amit Segal
Over the past couple of weeks, our focus on “Call Me Back” has been on the hostage deal and its implications.
Today Amit Segal returns to the podcast to discuss the perspective of those inside Israel opposed to this deal.
Amit Segal is the chief political correspondent and analyst for Channel 12 News, and for Yediot Ahronot, the country’s largest circulation newspaper.
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
AS: In the past, Israel held a very staunch position towards even negotiating with terrorists. 48 Israelis died during the ‘70s and the ‘80s in military operations to rescue hostages due to Israel's refusal to negotiate with terrorists. Later on, Israel gradually began to pay heavier price, one for one, then five for one, then a thousand for one. But now there is an amazing precedent in which Israel gives up its military successes in northern Gaza, therefore giving up major assets.
DS: It's 3:00 PM on Monday, January 27th here in New York City. It's 10:00 PM on Monday, January 27th in Israel as Israelis continue to observe the implementation of this hostage deal. And joining me today, to discuss his perspective on the hostage deal, its implementation, and some news flowing from it over the next days and weeks, I think, is Amit Segal of Channel 12 in Israel and Yedioth Ahronoth. He has been a regular on Call Me Back. Amit, thanks for being here.
AS: Thank you for inviting me, Dan.
DS: Amit, you, just to set up where you're at on this issue, you have not formally articulated a position for or against the hostage deal, even though you have mentioned to me offline, that if you had to vote for it, if you were forced to have to make a vote one way or the other on it, you would have probably voted for it, but you, in your reporting inside Israel, have been giving a lot of oxygen for those voices that have concerns with the deal or are outright opposed to it. So I guess my first question is, how do you reconcile those two? Like, why would you have probably voted for it? And that, why do you feel compelled to give voice to those who are opposed to it? AS: So first of all, I think every Israeli should thank every morning God and himself for not being a cabinet member because I think this hostage deal is like most crucial decisions during the war is something which is unbearable. It's choosing between the bad and the worst and there is no right choice. Having said that, I guess I wouldn't have voted against the deal. I have polls on my Telegram channel with, I don't know, 50, 60,000 votes. And this was the first time that I voted the I don't know option, because it's complicated. The reason I articulate the opinions that are against the deal is because I hate this cancellation, um, policy. The fact that, you know, in many debates in our days, people don't try to fight you, but to prevent you from articulating your opinion, to make your opinion illegitimate, tagging you as racist in the States or in Israel as a messianic fascist death eater, national orthodox voter. And I think I have to give a voice for people who are very worried because I remember when I was much younger, 13, 14 years ago, when the Shalit deal was signed, the decision to actually release a thousand terrorists in exchange for one Israeli soldier, that I was very worried, but I, to be honest, I didn't dare to articulate this opinion. Because there was a sentiment that said, no, it's great. Don't discuss the costs of the deal. We want Gilad home now. And Gilad returned home. We are very happy about it. But the cost was terribly great. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the October 7th massacre, was released back then. And now the terrorists that are released had not been released in 2011 because they were the cruellest terrorists. So Yahya Sinwar was considered less cruel than them. He didn't have a Jewish blood on his hand when he, when he was released. So I have to provide the Israeli public with food for thought, in my opinion.
DS: And I want to get into the concerns with the deal that you feel like you're reflecting, but when you yourself say you would have probably voted for it even though you seem to understand the concerns with it, why would you have voted for it?
AS: Because we are locked in a situation in which the Israeli government had offered the deal prior to the acceptance by, by Trump and Hamas. And we have a terrible situation in which we have more than 40 live hostages with women in Gaza, held in Gaza, and we have those soldiers, those female soldiers, they had been warning against this disaster for months. They saw Hamas practicing towards this terrible massacre, and no one heard them, and they should not be punished.
DS: These are the IDF soldiers that were serving in southern Israel that were reporting up to the chain of command, there's something going on here. Hamas is up to something, and according to the reports, they were ignored. And you're saying those are the soldiers that were taken hostage.
AS: As Winston Churchill said, no good deed goes unpunished. Those were the only figures in the Israeli security establishment to warn that Hamas is preparing something monstrous. Neither the prime minister nor the defense minister or the IDF chief of staff of the or the commander in the southern border. No one warned and they did. And no one took them seriously because they were, you know juniors in the army or because they were female or all of the above. So this is one thing. And the second is the fact that Trump was elected and I trust Trump way more than I trust Biden or that I trusted Kamala Harris. I know that for Kamala Harris and for former President Biden, the hostage deal was merely an excuse. They wanted the hostages back home, but the main purpose was ending the war that actually caused the Democratic Party to lose ground in Michigan and in Florida, on the other hand, and they wanted the war to end. Although they promised Israel that it could relaunch when the ceasefire is to end, I don't think we should have trusted them. And I trust Trump not, I don't give him carte blanche for fulfilling my fascist dreams, but I know where he stands, where he stands when it comes to the very existence of Hamas, the very idea of the Iranian axis and his obligation not to threaten Israel by cutting its lifeline ammunition supply in order to get his policy done. He wouldn't have done it to Israel like Biden did. And this is why I half hearted, I would have, I guess, supported the deal.
DS: From a strategic perspective, Amit, I think there's two ways. The way I've rationalized it in my you know, media appearances I've made over here in the US is I've said it's a bad deal that Israel should do and one of the reasons, it's a version of what you're arguing, but what I've argued is, because I get this question, why now versus the summer. And that's fair, Trump versus Biden is one big difference, but I think the other, and I think there are other differences actually between the two deals, or what we understood of the deal in the summer, but I did never articulated a position against the deal in the summer. I'm just saying there are some differences. But to me, the biggest difference is not what's in the deal, but in Israel's strategic situation in the region, which is this time when Israel is negotiating versus last time, Sinwar is dead, Hamas appears, at least as a professional fighting force, to have been largely degraded, Hezbollah seriously degraded, Nasrallah gone. Iranian air defenses completely exposed the Assad regime in Syria fallen. I mean, Israel's whole strategic posture has changed in the region. So there's no question there's risk in doing a deal now. But if Israel is ever going to take a risk, now is the time to do it from a, you know, it's strategic, like expending some of its capital from its stronger strategic position.
AS: I couldn't agree more. So this is one fact, the second is that Hamas no longer possesses an existential threat on Israel. It was degraded from being a terror army containing two or three divisions, depends how you count divisions. It was reduced to a guerrilla terrorist organization within the borders of Gaza, which means it's still very disturbing and it can cause damage, but it's no longer, as long as we keep an eye on it and not neglecting it or ignoring it or feeding the monster, it doesn't have a chance to possess a threat against Israeli citizens and villages. This is second thing, and the third thing, in my opinion, is that when you take a look at the deal, the danger is not the very existence of Hamas, but the message it conveys to our neighbors. I'm afraid that this message is quite dangerous because as long as Hamas is still on its feet, it's still delivers the message that Hamas has the upper hand, but the most important thing is that we had this crazy chess game between ourselves. The only reason why there wasn't a deal in May, even according to President Biden, former Secretary Blinken, and Sullivan, and Kirby, and all the administration, the former administration, is the fact that Hamas had refused for months to the very terms of the deal. So, it's not about Israel. I mean, we can discuss for years to come, what would have happened had we signed the deal in May, but it wasn't on the table because Hamas refused. So I think in this case, I prefer Biden's version over, you know, the political analysis that Israel refused because it doesn't meet the facts.
DS: But the counter to what I'm saying though, which is Israel's geopolitical position has never been better in the region and so now's the time to take some risk and expend some capital The counter to that is Israel's position's never been stronger and now you're about to weaken it. So the images of Hamas, even though it may not look like a sophisticated professional terror organization, it's still, as we've seen with these hostage releases, the way they create that float, a little bit of a ceremony, parade, all the guys in the Hamas uniforms with their weapons, and they, they're projecting that they're still there and in fact are re emerging. Then today, literally today, the images of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians moving back up to northern Gaza, I'm not saying they were never going to move back to northern Gaza, but acting like they've reclaimed their territory, they've survived. And of course, presumably most of them are civilians, but even with the best of protections, you've got to assume some of sympathetic to Hamas, shall we say, are going to slip through and suddenly be back in northern Gaza. And the images of these horrendous terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, Palestinians serving multiple life sentences, some of these stories are really, some of the people being released are, to say they have Israeli blood on their hands, it's like times a hundred. I mean, it's like each one of these stories are responsible for maiming and slaughtering Israelis. And so their sense of triumphalism as they return to wherever they're returning. Israel's taking that strength in geopolitical position, and is it starting to look again like a lot weaker than, than it has looked over the last few months. Isn't that a major risk?
AS: It is. And to put it even in a more bluntly, this is the first hostage deal in the world's history in which a country pays a strategic price in exchange for its people. I'll explain. In the past, Israel held a very staunch position towards even negotiating with terrorists. 48 Israelis died during the ‘70s and the ‘80s in the military operations to rescue hostages due to Israel's refusal to negotiate with terrorists. One of them, Netanyahu knows firsthand because it was his brother Yoni Netanyahu in the operation in 1976. Later on, Israel gradually began to pay a heavier price. One for one than five, for one than a thousand for one. But now there is an amazing precedent in which Israel gives up it's military successes in northern Gaza, thus allowing Gazans to actually reinvade the former city of Gaza, therefore giving up major assets. We'll discuss later, I guess, whether it can be redone or reoccupied. But the interesting thing and the dangerous thing is that when Yahya Sinwar planned his, his war, he had three options. I know it from intelligence, I read. One, destroying Israel. Hamas would invade from the south, Hezbollah from the north, Iran would join and Israel will be destroyed. The second was invading part of the Negev of southern Israel. But the third option, the default was we would kidnap enough hostages in order to end the war in return for those hostages. Now, he didn't live to see this deal, but this is the closest that Sinwar got to fulfill his dream. I think he died while not believing his eyes that Israel has fought for more than a year. And something went terribly wrong in his calculation. He thought that the U.S. would stop Israel, that the Western public opinion would stop it. But he had an insurance, a get out of jail, or get out of Gaza ticket, which is the hostages. Now, if in order for 33 hostages, we give up Gaza and we evacuate in the Netzarim axis, the axis that divides between northern Gaza and southern Gaza. It necessarily means that in order to get the other 65 hostages, we would have to end the war. And this is a junction Netanyahu refused to get to, because it means a collision between the two aims of the war, one, defeating Hamas, second, releasing all the hostages. So yes. This was one confession too much.
DS: I want to come back to that, but before we do, just there have been reports in recent days, both from the U.S. intelligence community, but my understanding is also some of it comes from the Israeli intelligence community. It's obviously hard to quantify these things with any precision, but I'll cite the reports that something, the estimates are somewhere between 10 and 15,000 Hamas operatives, terrorists, combatants, whatever, Hamas members, sympathizers. I don't know what you call them, have been recruited. Let's call them professional Hamasniks, since the war. First of all, do you think that's accurate?
AS: No. There are two, um, exports that, uh, Gaza would never run short of. One is anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish mail between 17 and 35, and the second is Kalashnikov rifle. And therefore, to be honest, I'm not very worried about it. I'm worried more about what we did over the last generation, in which we neglected Gaza, thus allowing those youngsters to become soldiers, they were soldiers, they had battalions, they had brigades, they knew exactly what they should do. There was an analysis in a great book by Guy Hazut, a former general in the Israeli army, claiming that the Hamas warriors were better trained and equipped than the Israeli soldiers. Now, this is no longer the situation. Yes, you can take someone, give him a patch and a green ribbon and a non-functioning Kalashnikov, but it doesn't make, doesn't make you an army and doesn't make you a threat to Israel. The only threat is the image, the image of Samud, uh, in Palestinian Arabic, uh, sticking to the, to the ground of existence of standing up against the Israeli occupation. And I think Israel should fight the image. I have a few ideas I have to do it when, when the ceasefire ends. But from a military perspective, I don't think it's, it's the same Hamas. It's broken. It's tunnels are mainly destroyed. He has no option. He has no way to actually rebuild it without us noticing.
DS: Over the last year, I've interviewed Prime Minister Netanyahu, I've interviewed Ron Dermer a couple of times.
AS: It's a pity I didn't. He never gives interviews in Hebrew.
DS: You can take that up with him. That's not my beef. But I do think you're pretty well sourced, so I'm not worried about you. But one of the arguments they have made, when they've gotten pressure about why they, quote unquote, don't have a day after plan and why they haven't done more to create a different political reality on the ground in Gaza rather than just clobbering Hamas, they would make the argument that no alternative Palestinian political leader or prospective political leader is going to emerge unless the Palestinian public, Palestinian society writ large believes Hamas is gone and is not coming back. That this is a society that is traumatized by this multi decade rule reign by Hamas over Gaza, over the Gazan Palestinians, and they live in total fear of Hamas and retribution. Yahya Sinwar, as we know, was serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for slaughtering Palestinians, not for slaughtering Jews, because he was the butcher of khan Yunis. You know, as we know, Sinwar was called the butcher of Khan Yunis. He implemented this very intense and aggressive and formal system of retribution against Palestinians for quote unquote collaborating with the Israelis. So everyone lives in fear. And until Hamas is totally wiped out, there's no point in having a discussion about who could be the alternative. And now, from what I understand, Hamas, as their images are re-emerging in the context of this hostage deal, Hamas is sending messages to Palestinians like, we're back, and we're gonna hunt down anyone who worked with the Israelis, and we've already started to see images of Palestinians being murdered by Hamas in their last week. So, in that sense, was, are they gambling away that thesis? The thesis being you have to destroy Hamas, and until Palestinians believe Hamas is gone and not coming back, only then do you have to see a path to the day after. And are most Palestinians now not so sure Hamas is gone and not coming back?
AS: Let's admit, there is a contradiction, an explicit contradiction, between fighting Hamas in order to finish it, and negotiating with them in Qatar. it doesn't work together. I mean, if you negotiate with Hamas, it means that you can't destroy him and vice versa. I don't think that the reason for Gazans not to support Hamas emanates solely from the fear to be executed on the basis of collaboration. I think it emanates from pure natural support for this fascist neo Nazi sentiment that demands the killing of every single Jew. You know, Liri Albag, who was released from being a hostage in Gaza three days ago, told her father this morning that there are two million Hamas supporters in Gaza. She said that there wasn't a single Palestinian, even an eight year old child, that felt sorry for her. I mean, just imagine the fact that in order to move them, the, the female soldiers from the tunnels or the, the apartments where they, they have been held during the last 15 months, they had to be dressed as Muslim women because had Palestinians seen them, they would've lynched them like they lynch each and every Israeli, they catched on October 7th. I mean, Hamas was the most moderate component in Gaza because they, they actually prevented, you know, innocent Gazans from, from lynching female former soldiers. So to be honest, I don't think it's merely about collaboration. And I think that the Israeli/Western idea of trying to unseat one popular party and to, to be the kingmaker of a new moderate Palestinian or a new moderate Arab, it's doomed to fail because that was exactly the case in Lebanon 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon in order to unseat the PLO, the Palestinian organization. And then Begin and Sharon tried to cause the election of a new moderate Christian president and it ended up in a bloodshed. And I think the conclusion, by the way, that was a conclusion by the Israeli left, not by the Israeli right, but, but I think the left was right in this case, that we should be humble. We cannot decide for our neighbors who would lead them. And if the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, want at this current step in 2025, a murderous regime or a terrorist sympathizer regime in Ramallah, in Judea and Samaria, I think we should respect it and accept it. And we should fight it, of course, but we shouldn't, I mean, imagine that somewhere there, there is a moderate Palestinian authority. The most popular, moderate Palestinian that we would accept that does not support paying murderers has 2% in the public opinion in Judea and Samaria. Hamas enjoys something like 40-50%.
DS: If there were an election today in the West Bank and Hamas were on the ballot, do you think they would win?
AS: I have no doubt that's the reason why there aren't elections. In 2006, Hamas was elected. Hamas didn't take over Gaza, I mean, it threw its opponents from the roofs of Gaza. But, he had an argument. He won the election, President Abbas, from Fatah, from the PLO.
DS: So, Fatah, which is a faction of the PLO, which is effectively the PLO, was running Gaza and the West Bank, and Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas, is still today the president of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority governed over the West Bank and Gaza. And in 2006, there were elections for, legislative elections, right?
AS: Exactly.
DS: In the Palestinian Authority. And Hamas won a majority in the legislative body with then, they were supposed to be able to choose a prime minister. Right?
AS: Exactly.
DS: Because they won the majority of the legislative body, the Palestinian Authority, and then what happened?
AS: And those were the last elections because Abbas, President Abbas, remained in office, refused to actually give Hamas the power it deserved from the results of the election. Hamas took over Gaza in 2007.
DS: Outside of the democrat- I mean, they just forced themselves.
AS: They forced themselves, but they justified it according to the-
DS: They argued they won the election.
AS: Exactly. And the only reason why there isn't a Hamas government in Judea and Samaria and Hamas brigades in, I know, 10 minutes from Jerusalem and 15 minutes from Tel Aviv is because Israel refused Hamas to be in office. And President Abbas wanted to stay in office like yet another politician, but he doesn't make Abbas the alternative for two reasons. One, practically. If he couldn't defeat Hamas, even in the city of Jenin in Judea and Samaria, and he, the IDF had to invade Jenin again and again and again, there is no reason to think why you would succeed in doing it in Gaza, which is, I don't know, it's the political base of Hamas. It's the birthplace of Hamas. And the second thing is the ideological and moral. As long as the Palestinian Authority pays 7% of its annual budget to the murderers of babies, to terrorists, the more Jews you kill, the more salary you get, as long as it happens, we would not replace one monstrous terrorist organization in one failing terrorist organization.
DS: So it sounds like you have very little confidence in the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern.
AS: Between the lines, yes.
DS: Yes. Reading between the lines. You don't have confidence in the Palestinian Authority with Habas's ability to govern Gaza. Either he would pander, I think is what you're saying, to accommodate Hamas, or he'll get rolled by Hamas.
AS: Exactly.
DS: So, what then is the political future in Gaza for the Palestinians? And I guess that's my first question, and related is, has Israel done any planning in this regard? Yeah, Israel tried to have a pilot in specific parts of Gaza to give Hamulus, you know, it's a huge family tribes in villages, in towns in Gaza to actually provide humanitarian aid, they were shot in their heads 12, 24 hours after they were exposed. So you first have to dismantle Hamas, and only then something happen will flourish. But I'll tell you something about the war, because it's interconnected. Many people in Israel claim that the war has ended, and I agree. This specific war has ended. The war according to which Israel invades and conquers a specific place in Gaza, and then evacuates it, and coming back, and evacuating again, and coming back, while providing humanitarian aid that falls to the hand of Hamas, thus giving him a 1 billion shekel budget because he sells the commodities to its citizens and then gets the money to pay salaries. This scheme has ended. This war failed. If we want to win the war, it should be changed. And the first and foremost ingredient is changing the way the humanitarian aid is provided. You don't just send trunks to Gaza hoping that somehow a miracle would happen and it will just get to the hands of the poor and the miserable citizens of Gaza without, uh, going through Hamas. But you take an area, let's say Northern Gaza, you clean it from terrorists. Then you get citizens the approval to actually come back after they are detected. And then you provide them through the IDF or American companies, you provide them the humanitarian aid and thus you create a Hamas free zone area in parts of Gaza. And then you go to another area and another area until you end your mission. That's what Israel should do. It didn't happen. But the reason it didn't happen is because President Biden decided on the third day of the war that while Israel would fight Hamas on one hand, on the other hand, it would provide him funding and money. All this money goes to the hands of Hamas funding the salaries. That's the reason why no one even thinks about having an alternative in Gaza because they pay all the salaries. So let's imagine that Israel stops providing cigarettes to its enemies. Amazing things would happen. I hope that once the hostage deal ends, President Trump will unleash hell on Gaza as he promised, not via an atomic bomb or yet another, you know, F-16 bombardment, but through cutting the humanitarian aid and reshaping it to a level that it is given permanently on a daily basis, but not provided through Hamas in areas that are Hamas free zones.
DS: I want to ask you about a report. Ronen Bergman has been reporting on two appendices to the deal that have not been made public according to Ronen and I guess others. One of which says and I quote here “After the last hostage release of stage one on day 42 the Israeli forces will begin their withdrawal and complete it no later than day 50” close quote. Now whether or not the parties complete their negotiations over the terms of phase two, what are Israelis to make of this? Prime Minister Netanyahu made a strong case, which I thought was compelling about not withdrawing from Philadelphi back in May, which is the corridor there bumping up against Egypt, because that was a pathway through which Hamas was able to get a lot of its supplies over the previous decade and a half, and I take your point that the refusal to withdraw from Philadelphi did not alone blow up the deal and the negotiations from last summer, but it definitely became a sticking point. And if you were to believe this appendix, the reporting about this appendix, it sounds like Israel really is getting out of Philadelphi.
AS: Exactly. Now, my legal commentary as a former student of law is exactly as you read it, that, I mean, once it's written in an unconditional way, it means that Israel has to withdraw from Philadelphi Corridor up to eight days after the release of the last hostage. Having said that, the Israeli interpretation of this clause is that it was given only in order to save face for Hamas that demanded Israel's withdrawal from Philadelphi Corridor, and it's not legally binding to do it. And the proof is that the first phase of the deal is 42 days long, whereas the withdrawal is to be finished to be completed only in eight days after, which means that from a legal perspective, it's not part of the first stage. To be honest, legal perspective is something interesting, but I don't think Israel and Hamas would meet in the district court in, uh, I don't know, in Nazareth in order to settle the dispute between them. So at the end of the day, when we get to the last days of the deal, I guess Hamas would tell, would say, if you don't guarantee, if you don't give us guarantees that you withdraw from Philadelphi Corridor, I would not release the last 11 hostages that are to be released in the last day of this deal. So Israel is in a problem. I would say something different though, that while President Biden wouldn't allow Israel to reenter Philadelphi Corridor, I guess President Trump would allow. So if I have to give an excuse for this concession, maybe this is it. But yes, there is no way to settle between the prayers Prime Minister Netanyahu has devoted for the Philadelphi Corridor and what is written there.
DS: On an episode we did the day of the first hostage release of this deal with Yossi Klein Halevi and Wendy Singer, Yossi said Israel should do this deal, it should do whatever deal it needs to do to get all the hostages out, and then Israel should be done negotiating for hostage releases. That this has gotten out of control. That Israel releasing, if this full deal is implemented, something like 18/1900 Palestinian prisoners is just, given the ratio, is like, you know, 50 prisoners per Israeli hostage and then it could get up even much higher. It's only going to encourage and incentivize more and more taking of Israeli hostages. And it just, this, this needs to end. That Israel has a responsibility to get all these hostages home and do whatever it can, and then it can no longer negotiate. And I didn't push back on him in that conversation. I wish I would have. Yossi, I hope you're listening. But then, and I'm just going to leave it. And then I heard from some hostage families who were put off by what Yossi said. Because they're like, what is he talking about? Like, who is he to declare, you know, okay, so we'll get all these people home, but in the future, we won't negotiate anymore. Like, who knows what the circumstances will be? Who knows what the conditions will be? If Israelis are taken hostage, we do whatever we do to get them home. Period. Full stop. We don't, like, just make some declaration that we're never negotiating again. What is your reaction to that?
AS: You know, there is a question whether God can create a stone that he cannot lift, right? So this is the Israeli equivalent of it. There was an attempt uh, made by a former president of the Supreme Court to actually write a bill. The Israeli prime ministers Olmert, Barak, and Netanyahu had asked him to do it in order to prevent, to tie the hands of Israel, future Israeli governments, so they can release, I think, only one, uh, up to nine terrorists in exchange for one Israeli hostage. The idea behind it was that if there is a legislation, Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran would know that they have no incentive to kidnap Israelis. Kidnapping is a very costly terrorist act. It's way easier to try and kill Israelis rather than to kidnap them. But they wouldn't have any incentive to kidnap Israelis because the commodity would be degraded. I believed in this idea for many years. And I stopped to believe in it. Why? For two reasons. One, there is almost always a case in which there are Israeli hostages. Over the last 50 years, I think there were only five years, four years without Israeli hostages somewhere in the Middle East. So it's always sensitive. It's always not behind the curtain. It's, you know, there is a family that says you're killing my own son. Don't implement the rules retroactively. Started from the last hostage. This is one thing. And the second, that even when Gilad Shalit was released, because the report was handed to prime minister Netanyahu prior to the release of Gilad Shalit. So there was an agreement to legislate it once he's back in Israel. And Gilad Shalit came back, and nothing happened, because governments don't like their hands to be tied, even if they tied their own hands. And you know what? I'm happy that it didn't happen. Let's imagine that there was a legislation. There had been legislation, I don't know, in 2015, and then October 7th would come. I promise you that the Israeli parliament would have convened and changed the legislation. So Israel would not have only make dramatic concessions to Hamas, but would change legislation for the demands of a terrorist organization. So it needs a deep cultural change in the Israeli society, which, in my opinion, will not necessarily happen and not the legislation.
DS: What about imposing capital punishment on Palestinian terrorists so that they're no longer valued to be traded and sought after by Hamas?
AS: I mean, according to the Israeli law, there is an option to actually execute terrorists. It never happened. For many reasons, in the Jewish state, I don't think guillotines are the best, uh, ornament. And I think there is a death penalty. Terrorists are killed at the scene, at the crime scene. It happens most of the times. There is a phrase, a verb in Israel, a saying that the terrorist was neutralized. What is neutralized? It was invented in 2015/2016, It means something in the vague area between shot and wounded and shot and killed. I think Israelis don't want to know. And in my opinion, the only conclusion from this thing is that a terrorist, it's easy for me to say, I served in the IDF radio, so I'm not a military expert. But I think that the Israeli army should encourage its soldiers to kill terrorists the moment they see them and it would solve so many problems and so many tragedies that we see these days.
DS: Two more questions for you Amit before I let you go. I know it's late there. There's News, but there's not news, there's a recording of President Trump talking about in the near to medium future depopulating part of Gaza. I mean, the wording of what he says is, it sounds like in service of rebuilding Gaza, that you just have to-
AS: Clean up, clean up.
DS: Clean up Gaza. That a lot of Palestinians need to be relocated to Egypt or Jordan. So my first question is when President Trump raises these things, it's true sometimes he, you know, articulates provocative ideas and it stirs up a lot of reaction. And then things just kind of fizzle and return to normal. And sometimes not. I mean, we're having debates right now in this country, in the United States, about issues that could have easily just been a provocative trial balloon that he was sending up that have now turned into real policy debates. So which of those, which category do you put it in?
AS: I think it's way more serious than it looks. And I, I see the fingerprints of Israeli hands on this initiative. There are two leading ideas within the Israeli right and the Israeli cabinet in order to solve the Gaza problem once and for all. One is to take a territory to annex parts of Gaza as a retaliation and as a deterrence because for fundamentalist Muslims around us, blood and suffering is not something that takes a heavy toll. Ground is.
DS: You're basically saying that the symbolism of the Palestinians actually having less land to themselves than they had on October 6th is the point. That's a policy implication that you want the Arab world and the Muslim world to understand.
AS: Otherwise, it's an insurance. I mean, you know, in 1947 Arabs declared the war on the Jewish state, the newborn Jewish state, and they ended up the war with, I think, a one third of the state of Israel lost for them, of the land of Israel. Second, in 1967, they lost, they initiated the war and they lost Sinai, Golan Heights, and the West Bank and Jerusalem. But from 1973 onwards, the international community prevented Israel from implementing its so-called occupation. So Egypt and Syria and Lebanon and Hezbollah and Hamas know that they can initiate war against Israel, cause heavy damage, maybe taking parts of the land of Israel, but if they lose the international community, will take care of the entity named as their land. So if we break it, and we see it was broken, Israel took parts of Syria, Turkey took parts of Syria. So the former borders set by European diplomats a hundred years ago are no longer sacred by the U.S. Neither by Biden nor by Trump, who for instance, declared the, accepted the, the annexation of golden rights to Israel. So if you take land from Gaza, which never existed by the way, so you don't take land from a recognized state in the UN, you symbol, you signal to the Muslim world that declaring a war against Israel comes at a cost. So this is one option. The second price that is very heavy for our enemies to pay is if population moves. I'm not speaking about forced transfer of population. I'm speaking about allowing Gazans what we allow Dan or Amit or anyone else who listens to this podcast. The option to immigrate, to find better life in a different place. Now, I'm not a big fan of the idea of moving those refugees to Gaza or to Egypt or Jordan because Jordan suffers from a big share of Palestinian population.
DS: And most of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, and it's governed by a Hashemite kingdom, which is non Palestinian.
AS: And Egypt is, you know, is an ally of Israel these days. They are terrified by the option of yet another few millions of, uh, Muslim brotherhoods that try to shake the foundations of the country. But I think, you know, President Trump is considering these days, uh, I reported this, uh, this evening offering Albania in Europe to take 100,000 Gazans, Indonesia is an option, Turkey is an option, Canada accepted, uh, agreed to accept 5,000 families, and you know, a family in Gaza is not like in New York City. You know, it's quite big. If President Trump takes it as a project, it's going to be very, very interesting.
DS: Last question. If Israel proceeds with phase two of the deal, which apparently they have to begin negotiating imminently or should be, if they implement phase two of the deal, do you think the Israeli government survives?
AS: Most chances it fails, unless there is an agreement that, I mean, unless the war is not to end. As long as the price is with terrorists, for instance, prolonging the ceasefire for yet another two or three weeks, it can barely survive. If Netanyahu actually gives the card of ending the war, his government is to collapse immediately and Israel will go to the polls. To be honest, from what I hear on a daily basis from the most senior figures in Israel, I don't think that they take it into account. I mean, they want to relaunch the fight against Hamas as long as this hostage deal ends and thus getting the hostages in different ways. Maybe give them another to hit them back, and to frighten them to death that Trump is not Biden, and he's going to let Israel go wild and do whatever it wants, thus forcing them to give the hostages, etc. But I don't think the plan is to end the war in a few weeks.
DS: So you don't think the war is ending, just to be clear, because there are many people on that date, on January 19th, that were operating, like the conventional wisdom was, this is effectively the beginning of the end of the war. And that is not your view.
AS: In my opinion, it's the end of the last war, but a new method of war would come. This is my humble opinion, but to be honest, I'm not fully aware of the X factor, which is Iran. When Prime Minister Netanyahu meets President Trump probably next week in Washington, I don't know if he gives Netanyahu permission and ammunition and an umbrella of anti air missile protection, uh, in order to attack Iran. I don't know what Netanyahu will do, but I don't think it's something we know and can take into our calculations.
DS: Okay. Amit Segal, we will leave it there. I know it's late. Thank you, as always, for taking the time and look forward to having you back soon.
AS: Thank you so much, Dan. Good night.
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, research by Stav Slama and Gabe Silverstein, and our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.