Between Gaza and Tehran - with Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal
On Saturday night, in an attempt to address two of Israel’s most critical concerns - the hostage crisis in Gaza and the US-Iran nuclear negotiations - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a pre-recorded statement, in which he said that Hamas has formally rejected Israel's offer for a new deal. And, against the backdrop of a report in the New York Times that President Trump had headed off Israeli plans for a military operation against Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu emphasized: "We are committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons."
With both Tehran and Gaza in mind, we turn to two of Israel’s leading journalists: Nadav Eyal, senior analyst at Yediot Achronot, and Amit Segal, senior political analyst at Channel 12 - to understand Israel’s standing on these two critical fronts.
Full Transcript:
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: What Prime Minister Netanyahu did last night was trying to prepare the Israeli public to the possibility of the big plan that includes a full military occupation of the Gaza Strip, or trying to pressure Hamas to this intermediate deal, according to the vision of Steve Witkoff.
AS: If you want to do something that has never been done before, to send the highest number of soldiers ever sent to a front in a war that Israel has fought since 1948, you must convince Israelis that you have had no other choice.
DS: It's 10:00 PM on Sunday, April 20th here in New York City as we come out of the Pesach holiday and resume eating chometz, bread. It's 5:00 AM on Monday, April 21st in Israel as Israelis get back off of vacation and back to work. One housekeeping note before we get into today's conversation. Tuesday, May 13th, I'll be delivering the State of World Jewry Address at the 92nd Street Y. I have been told that there are still seats available for those who want to register. I am not certain of that, but we will post the link into the show notes for those who are interested. Now onto today's conversation. Last night in an attempt to address two of Israel's most critical security concerns, the hostage crisis in Gaza and the US-Iran nuclear negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a prerecorded statement in which he said that Hamas has formally rejected Israel's offer for a new deal. More than 18 months since the outbreak of the war, and with 58 hostages still being held in Gaza, Netanyahu said that “we will increase the pressure on Hamas and complete the missions.” Close quote. And against the backdrop of a report from the New York Times that President Trump had headed off Israeli plans for a military operation against Iran's nuclear program. Netanyahu emphasized, and I quote, “we are committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons” close quote. With Gaza and Tehran in mind, we turn to Nadav Eyal, Senior Analyst at Yediot Ahronoth and Amit Segal, senior political analyst at Channel 12 in Israel to try and understand Israel standing on these two critical fronts, Gaza and Iran. This is Call me Back.
DS: Nadav, Amit, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
NE: Thanks for having us.
AS: Thanks for having us.
DS: Alright, Nadav, I wanna start with you to just better understand the background to Saturday night’s statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu. What has the IDF been able to achieve in Gaza since the last ceasefire collapse? So there was that ceasefire, then it ended or it collapsed. That was a little over a month ago, and my sense is there's been a lot happening in Gaza, and yet we, at least outside of Israel, know very little about what the IDF has been accomplishing in Gaza.
NE: So Dan we can speak tactically about this and we can speak strategically. Strategically, Israel always had two basic plans. It's actually three plans, but two basic plans as to what's gonna happen in Gaza after the cease fire ended. And the ceasefire ended because Israel wanted the ceasefire to end in the sense that it didn't believe that it can achieve the type of phase two it was looking for in which Hamas won't control Gaza and the hostages will be freed. So it was a decision by Israel and there, there were two main plans. The first plan was to try and squeeze out of Hamas, some sort of an interim hostage deal, a small or medium sized hostage deal. I remind the people listening that unfortunately, there are less than 25 hostages alive in Gaza right now, and what Israel was aiming for was to get about half of them, which is not a small deal, right? To get at least half of them in a sort of a hostage and ceasefire deal that will release Palestinian prisoners too, but will extend the time of the ceasefire. In order to do so, what the IDF has been doing at the Gaza Strip is encircling Rafah, building another corridor, which we call the Morag corridor, named after the settlement that was there and it's actually encircling Rafa.
DS: And is there still a Netzarim corridor?
NE: Yes, of course.
DS: And to be clear, these corridors, just so people can visualize it, they are basically geographical space that the IDF can base itself from, operate freely from. So it almost like breaks up Gaza into different sections so that the IDF can operate inside Gaza, but have like a space that they dominate. Then they can manage population flows. They can conduct operations from those corridors. I just want people to understand what we mean when we say a corridor.
NE: The most important corridor you mentioned is of course the Netzarim corridor, cutting Gaza almost right in the middle between east and west. And this is the bargaining chip that Israel has given Hamas in the previous deal and after this collapsed, the Israelis are now looking at sort of limited operations across the Gaza Strip. A lot of usage of fire from the air of the Israeli Air Force, less so of infantry usage than we saw before. But this is also going to change. So tactically, what Israel was trying to get was what Steve Witkoff was trying to get to was a limited hostage deal right now with an extended ceasefire, and then see what happens. Now, there's also the big plan. The big plan for Gaza is basically occupying the entire Gaza strip. Evacuating the entire Palestinian population into a small enclave on the seashore, or not far from the seashore in the area of what we call the Mawasi. Basically, it's to do what Israel has not done all through the war, and I think people don't know that the IDF has never taken, actually taken Gaza City. Gaza City was never taken completely by the IDF. And the idea is that this time, if this happens, there will be a full occupation of Gaza City. And this is important because this is Hamas last stronghold. And by the way, it's in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. There is a regiment Commander, Abdelaziz Hadad, who's probably as important as Yahya Sinwar’s brother. This man is now heading at least six brigades of Hamas in the Gaza City area. He held onto many Israeli hostages. He's responsible for October 7th as much as the leadership of Hamas. He’s the most senior military figure of Hamas right now, and he's still holding Gaza City as far as we know. He's still there and evacuating all the population from Rahaf, all the other places, everything, and everyone will be evacuated to this humanitarian zone where people will be provided with humanitarian aid and food and medical assistance. And from there, according to the big plan, the Palestinians would be offered the possibility of voluntary immigration according to the Trump vision, introduced in that famous press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now, this big plan is actually two plans. I'm not gonna go into specific tactical details, but there are two plans there. It includes massive Israeli reserve enlistment, and this is very important politically across the country. There would be an attempt not to send the reservists back to Gaza, or most of them back to Gaza, but some of them would be sent to Gaza, but to use them at other more quieter fronts. Right now, for instance, the West Bank is less challenging militarily than this operation in Gaza or the North in order not to strain too much the reserve army because the reserve army in Israel right now, and we know that Amit's TV challenges published an expose this evening and exclusive about how the Israeli Commission for Security and Foreign Relations of the Knesset got a report or a letter and how worried they are as to the situation of the reserve soldiers and their ability to actually come and report. And we know that reporting levels have dropped in many reserve units. So I'm saying that the IDF is preparing these plans and is trying not to strain too much the reserve Army in actually fighting, and that's a, but at any rate, if the big plan will be implemented, Israel will need to go through, I don't wanna say full reserve call, but very nearly what we saw in the first periods of the war. What Prime Minister Netanyahu did last night was trying to prepare the Israeli public to the possibility of the big plan being implemented. That includes a full military occupation of the Gaza Strip, or trying to pressure Hamas to this intermediate deal according to the vision of Steve Witkoff.
DS: Amit, what is your understanding of what's behind Israel's strategy in Gaza?
AS: Some argue that we are at the dead end in Gaza, but the truth is that we are at a dramatic crossroads, and the reason is because what we see is just a preparation for a bigger step. What the IDF has done over the last month is just preparing the ground for either a huge military offensive on Gaza or pressing Hamas, so it would be willing to release half of hostages AKA, the Witkoff deal. Because it might feel pressured en route to an extinction, et cetera. Well, this hasn't happened so far, and we can speak later if you want about the less famous and yet infamous son of the Sinwar family, Muhammad Sinwar. He's very stubborn. But at the end of the day, the situation is as follows. Israel is heading towards something dramatic, but if you are looking for something clever, for a clever twist, something that might change the picture. I think that in truth, what Israel is going to do is exactly the other way around. It's the oldest play in the book. Stay and sever the supply lines. What Israel used to do over the last 18 months was trying to do something which has never been done before, to have raids to Gaza and then to evacuate it only to see Hamas recovering. To fight Hamas militarily, at this very same time providing him with a billion shekels disguised as humanitarian aid, which help Hamas to actually preserve its control in Gaza, paying salaries, train terrorists, et cetera. So what Israel is going to do is the oldest trick in the book, the good old fashioned or the bad old fashioned war. Conquer, stay and choke the supply lines.
DS: Okay. There was something else in this statement that Prime Minister Netanyahu gave last night in which he laid out, for the first time I've heard in detail, why this proposal that's circulating out there, it's not a fully thought through proposal, but just this idea that one often hears that Israel can cut a deal with Hamas. Give Hamas the impression that it can stay in power. Give Hamas the impression that the war is quote unquote over, get all the hostages back, and then Israel can resume war fighting and finally have the last battle with Hamas once all the Israeli hostages are out. Now we've on this podcast with you guys touched on this before, but it was a very speculative discussion. I think it's a little less speculative today because Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to have felt the pressure to really address this head on. I've heard this proposal from a lot of people. I hear people in Israel make this argument all the time, and I guess my first question for you guys is what did he basically say? And then, but the more important point is why now? Why did he feel compelled to address this right now? Amit, I'll start with you and then I'll go to Nadav.
AS: So he's compelled to do it because if he's to recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are now citizens, he must convince them that he had no other choice and that's why he cannot allow himself to do what he has done gradually over the last few months, which is to have a war that at least a big proportion of the Israeli public thinks it's political. You can’t do it, barely, when you are based on the regular Army. But if you want to do something that has never been done before, to send the highest number of soldiers ever sent to a front in a war that Israel has fought since 1948. You must convince Israelis or the vast majority of Israelis that you have had no other choice. And here's the thing. Netanyahu's weakest point when it comes to the war is the hostages. Because people gave 18 months and they don't care if it's Biden to be blamed or the former IDF Chief of staff or the former defense minister, they think that the attempts have failed. So they say okay, let's release all the hostages and let's fight another day, and Hamas would give us an excuse.
DS: Meaning the argument is even if the war ends and there's a quote unquote permanent truce, Hamas will give Israel the pretext to go back in because Hamas will fire rockets.
AS: Exactly.
DS: Or do something and Israel has the grounds to go back in and finish them off.
AS: Or try to smuggle rockets again from Philadelphi corridor, et cetera. That's a very strong sentiment, or not even a sentiment. It's a very strong argument against Netanyahu’s plans. So Netanyahu tried yesterday, in my opinion, to explain why it won't work. It won't work to cheat the whole world, and especially Hamas, and then to come to fight again in a few weeks or months. And Netanyahu didn't fully explain it, but you could hear the scent of the Security Council of the United Nations. What Hamas demands is that the Security Council would have a resolution that actually ends the war. So Israel relaunching the war would be exposed to severe dramatic steps, even more severe than the ICC decision in the last winter.
DS: Because he's arguing that if Israel goes back in, it will be in violation of a UN security council resolution.
AS: Exactly. Now, the counterargument would be that if Hamas gives excuses, it might be like what Israel is doing as we speak in Lebanon, that we signed a ceasefire agreement, but, uh, and yet the idea attacks on a daily basis. The situation is similar, but it's not identical because Hezbollah is only one part of Lebanon and Hamas is Gaza and vice versa. But Netanyahu, in my opinion, has a long way to go in order to convince Israelis that he has no other choice.
DS: Nadav.
NE: I think that what Netanyahu was starting to do last night was to prepare the public for the possibility that the hostages won't be returning back home. I'm saying this frankly, because if he's gonna go for the big plan. And Israel is gonna try and take the entire Gaza strip. The meaning of that is that the possibility that you'll get Israeli hostages back alive, you know their life is gonna be, they, they are in dire risk, but the chances are absolutely smaller. And you just need to look at, you know, his tweets and the interview he gave, the interview his spokesperson gave last night. They were saying stuff like, we got 80% of the hostages, about 80% of the hostages back. Of course, in this calculation, the Prime Minister also included the bodies that we got back. I think this was about preparing the public. I agree with Amit. I have to say that as to the argument about international guarantees, I find it a bit odd because the Prime Minister himself always says that we shouldn't trust international guarantees and that we will never entrust our security with anyone else. Now, Hamas is known to be what it is, a fundamentalist, genocidal organization. If it's gonna become during this agreement into a peace loving kind of folk music festival or something like that, we know about that. If they'll try to gather weapons again, if they'll try to incite to violence, even inciting to violence, again, this would be a clear violation. What's really happening here, Dan, is that we are in the midst of an election year. The elections have already begun, and because of that, there's a clock ticking and here's the clock. You can say, and I think that many of the opposition leaders and I guess even Bennett, you know, behind the scenes think that Israel should aim for Hamas not to control the Gaza Strip and win against Hamas. This should be a strategic aim of the state of Israel. Hamas should not be allowed to govern the Gaza Strip full stop. But the lives of the hostages are in dire danger right now. This clock is ticking much louder and much quicker than the other clock of getting rid of Hamas. The only problem is that there's a third clock here. That's the clock of the elections, which will be held probably in the next 12 to 16 months. I think Amit would agree. And that means that if you are looking to have a strategic plan to kick out Hamas in two years, that's not good enough for a coalition that wants to survive in power, right? So actually, if you are gonna now go for a ceasefire and say, we're gonna fight Hamas another day, we're going to leave some of the IDF in the Gaza Strip. This is not gonna be a sort of victory for Hamas, but we want to get the hostages out, which is what most of the hostage families are now demanding. The meaning of that is that then the elections will happen before Hamas is kicked out.
DS: Nadav, I just wanna just, so if people understand the timing of what you're referring to, elections. According to the timeline governed by Israeli law, an election must be called by October of 2026. But the assumption, I think what you're saying, and I think is the assumption held by many analysts, is that it's gonna be much sooner than that. There'll be an election, who knows when, but we are now in the zone where people are keeping an eye out for possible elections.
AS: But especially, Dan, if the war ends, then the coalition falls apart. That's what Nadav means, I think.
NE: Yeah. If he goes now for a deal that isn't a very limited deal, if he goes for a full scale deal, even if this deal includes, for instance, some sort of an agreement with Saudi Arabia, the coalition will crumble. And the hard right and the far right in Israel will say to Netanyahu, maybe Amit disagrees, but I don't think so. We'll say to Netanyahu, you know, you betrayed the cause of winning this war. Because of that, he has only one viable political option, which is to either maintain the war as it is or expand the war substantially while having a small time deal. He can still have a small time deal. I don't think Smotrich or Ben gvir are gonna go for an election over a small time deal.
DS: And a small time deal. You mean something like we just saw where some hostages get back, get up and not all of them.
NE: Exactly. And I think that one of the risks here, Dan, is that my sources are saying that the Trump administration might be considering all kinds of avenues as to the conflict in Gaza. And the idea that is very widespread across the Israeli right wing, that Israel has time, that Israel has the credit to do whatever it wants in Gaza. I'm not saying that this administration isn't giving Israel much, much more open hand to operate in Gaza. It's much more supportive as to what happens in Gaza. Definitely not downplaying it, but I do see a situation in which the administration says we have had enough, and we know that President Trump is on his way to the region, to Saudi Arabia and to Qatar. I don't expect the Qatari or the Saudis to tell him, yeah, the war in Gaza can last forever, and he's coming for a reason. President Trump is, I think, still very much resolved as far as I know from my sources to get a unique peace deal in the region. He aims to be a Nobel peace laureate. By the way, I think that President Trump would be a Nobel Peace laureate by now if he would be credited both for the Abraham Accords and of course for the hostage deal. And the Trump administration needs to be credited for that hostage deal. But I don't think that's over yet. And as Amit mentioned earlier. The problem now is that if you look at the polls at Israeli public, and if you look at the number of people reporting to reserve service. You see that there is a real problem developing in the legitimacy of the war. I don't think we need to sugarcoat it. There is a problem there.
AS: I beg to differ when it comes to the reason. I think that the reason is not because of the war, but because of the never ending service required from people who are on their daily lives, high tech engineers, drivers, et cetera, and they have to leave their house, their home for the fifth time or the sixth time, and they don't have the resources, both emotional and financial to do it. So the government needs to give them a plan that would be both convincing and that will give them a reason to think that this time it's not only different, but it might be the last time because we're going to conquer Gaza. And I don't know, to be honest, if Netanyahu still has it. Netanyahu’s standing in the Israeli public calls that everything he says is perceived as political by half, at least half of the country. So I think the solution would come, if any, when the new IDF Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, would say here are the plans. It's inevitable, it's short, it's squeezed, and we're going to finish the problem once and fall. This is one thing, and when it comes to the hostage deal, I have to say that for the first time in my life, I don't want to speak about politics, but about the essence. And the essence is as follows. Nadav says what many, many Israelis say. He says that we'll end the war. We'll get back our hostages, the 59, 22 alive, 37 probably unfortunately dead, and then we'll get the excuse to relaunch the war if Hamas attacks us again. But now I want to raise the question, what happens if Hamas relaunches or launches an attack on Israel, he kidnaps or he takes two hostages. So then again, we are in the unbearable situation where we have hostages in Gaza. So Hamas gets the get out of jail card, the permanent one that says, take one Israeli hostage, and you can get away with every crime. And the second thing is the message and the message that would be conveyed to the rest of the Arab world is that Hamas defeated Israel. We can explain ourselves, we can claim that something else happened, but that's what every person in the Middle East would think exactly like that. Every person in the Middle East understands that Hezbollah was defeated in the North in November, no matter what Hezbollah might say.
NE: But this is exactly the example that you just brought, Amit, is exactly the right example because Hezbollah wasn't destroyed by Israel. Hezbollah exists. It has a Secretary General. He speaks, he has speeches. What really is happening is that there is a new political order in Lebanon while Hezbollah exists, although Hezbollah is a much more mortal, or was a much more mortal enemy than Hamas. Anyway, as to my opinion, first of all, I didn't present my op-ed here at all. I just analyzed what people are saying from both sides.
AS: I, I read you on a daily basis, Nadav.
NE: I hope you do, but I didn't write this article yet.
DS: He reads you so much he can anticipate what you’re going to say.
NE: He can anticipate what I didn't write yet.
DS: Exactly. It's a special superpower.
NE: So first of all, I never said that we should wait for a Hamas attack. I don't think that Gadi Eisenkott, that was the chief of staff who's pushing this narrative, thinks that Israel should wait for a Hamas attack. Now as to what's gonna happen in Gaza, even at all the plans that are on the table right now, and I don't think that they're good enough. I think that the Trump administration might be working on a better plan as we are speaking right now, the Emirati plan, the Egyptian plan, all the Arab plans that exist right now, even before the Trump administration put his foot down and made them even better. They don't include Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip. So the only question here is not whether or not Israel is gonna allow Hamas to control the Gaza Strip as a government. It is about what kind of governments will be in the Gaza Strip. So even if Israel goes now, now, right now and says, you know what? We want the full deal. We wanna end the war, and we're accepting the Emirati plan or the Egyptian plan that is very relevant and on the table. President Trump in the Oval Office with Prime Minister Netanyahu said, I like my plan, but there are other plans. I like what I don't like, I'm paraphrasing, is what's happening right now. So the only question is, will that operation, which will most probably lead to the deaths of many hostages, improve substantially your situation? And to what extent, and you raise that Amit yourself, to what extent can you go for such an operation when you have this level of mistrust of the Israeli public with this coalition? And one of the problems is not only the heavyweight of a reserve soldier that has spent 300 days, it's not about his business, it's about his wife fearing the knock on the door. His kids fearing the knock on the door. This drama of going into war again and again, knowing that the same coalition, the same government, is refusing to advance with equality as to conscription, as to the ultra Orthodox. And this is one of the reasons that the coalition is growing weaker with the sector that has given so much during this war and has sacrificed more than any other sector, and that is the religious Zionist sector in the Israeli society. There is no doubt about this.
DS: Meaning the non Haredi religious Zionist. So you, you're drawing a distinction because the Haredi get the exception.
NE: The community that Amit comes from.
DS: They're disproportionately carrying the burden, serving at a time when there's a whole other segment of Israeli society, which is Haredim, the Ultra Orthodox that are not serving.
AS: You have an institution from which 31 graduates died in the war like Ali.
DS: Meaning schools, seminaries, yeshivas schools, yeah.
AS: Yeah. Yeshivas, et cetera. So 31, 12, 21. Crazy numbers. So this is basically the perfect storm as Nadav described, and that's why I think there is a problem in fulfilling the plans. Now, I understand the frustration of the government because I guess Netanyahu would tell you, listen, I tackled a president that demented me to provide for the first time in the world's history, my enemy with money and food and supply. So now there is a change. Here is a change like what Nadav asked for a few minutes ago or something else. Now we can actually let them go. Every day there is a flight from Ramon Airport in Southern Israel to far, far places of 200, 300 Gazans, allegedly only the injured.
DS: The Ramon Air Force Base. So this is an Israeli Air Force base?
AS: Not Air Force base. An airport, an Israeli airport.
DS: An Israeli airport, I'm sorry. An Israeli airport where Gazans are leaving every day.
AS: You can actually see it. I saw it in my eyes when I took a flight from Eilat to Tel Aviv.
DS: And these are who are quote unquote injured, but you're saying quote unquote, because you think there are some who are volunteering to leave.
AS: Yeah, exactly. Or they leave with their families and they leave only, they do not leave permanently, only temporarily. But at the end of the day, I don't see a situation in which they return from Malaysia or Indonesia or Paris back to Gaza which is reduced to ruins as we speak. And that's why there is something else in the air, unfortunately for the government, unfortunately from the country, in my opinion, it comes after 18 months and Israelis are tired of fighting a never ending war, and that's why Netanyahu would have to convince them that this never ending war is going to end at the end of the day.
DS: But Amit, I wanna push back on that because I have said repeatedly on this podcast for many months from the early months, and I didn't mean this, that I was wishing for this, but that I was highly skeptical that we would see any medium term, not long term, but we would see any medium term end or solution that didn't involve some kind of Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. Now, when I say an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza, I don't mean rebuilding settlements, and I don't mean bringing Israeli life back, civilian life back to Gaza. But I just meant, I'm very skeptical of all these plans. The Emirati plan, the Saudi plan, the, and we could go on and on all these plans, the Egyptian plan, that any of these governments would send their sons into Gaza for the continuity of Palestinian life in Gaza. I don't think these governments really care ultimately. They may have to pretend they care for political reasons in their own respective countries, but at the end of the day, they don't really care. And so any commitment they would make to any kind of plan would never be serious enough for Israel to be comfortable with, which meant that the only solution would be a long-term Israeli presence in Gaza. And listening to you now, it feels to me like that's where this is kind of heading. And when I combine that with what both of you seem to be saying, which is the Israeli population can't sustain that. That this is a country and a military that was designed to fight short wars, preferably wars, not on its borders, but away games, not home games. And suddenly you're saying it's gonna have to live for a long period of time in large numbers. Right on its border. As someone who worries about Israel, it scares the hell out of me.
AS: That's exactly what happened from 1967 to 2005 with smaller numbers because terrorist organizations weren't that strong at the time, but still at a heavier cost on a yearly basis, and that what caused Israel is to support in 2005, the unilateral disengagement from Gaza. So it's like a revolving door. And we are now entering yet again the same revolving door after we're trying to get out of it. But here's the thing, I think that when you take a look at what Israeli politicians say for both the coalition or in opposition, save from the far left, the vast majority basically say the same, that there won't be Jewish settlements in Gaza, but there would be an Israeli army in Gaza. Now the scope, the number is in the eye of the beholder, but yes, you have to be worried. But unfortunately, I have to admit the alternative, what we saw that, you know, we just shut the door, drop the keys to the sea, and hope that something good might emerge from putting 2 million pro-Hamas Gazans.. I don't think the alternative is that good.
NE: I think that we are revolving around the same issue, which was there since the beginning of the war. And that is what's the plan? I quoted this so much. Eisenhower said that plans are worthless, but planning is everything. At the time, Prime Minister Netanyahu didn't even allow a planning for the day after. Simply Israel doesn't have a plan for the day after in Gaza. What's the plan? And suddenly this vision of President Trump was raised at the Oval Office and it became the vision. So first of all, if during a military operation, the Palestinian population is squeezed into immigrating from Gaza, this is not voluntary. But let's say that's not gonna happen because I don't know a lot of people in Washington right now, maybe Dan, you do, but I don't think you do, that believe that a million Palestinians or more are gonna leave Gaza. So this is not gonna change the situation strategically. So what's the plan? I think that if Israel would've come and said to the world on October 7th, we're gonna occupy with a military occupation, Gaza, and we're gonna take care of the population and we're gonna do basically what the US did with Iraq, and then we're gonna hand it over in a mandate to the international community or to any force that we believe would guarantee security, and we're gonna maintain a security presence in Gaza. Was something that I said right now. Doesn't sound logical. Doesn't sound- of course it does, but Israel didn't have a plan. Now as to the raids, I think that one of the problems that was there is that the Israelis were thinking about Operation Defensive Shield in operation defensive shield. And Amit, I'm pushing back on what you said earlier. Israel managed to defeat the terror attacks coming from the West Bank during the second Intifada.
DS: So this is the early two thousands.
NE: Yeah. And this caused Israel's biggest trauma to date between then and October 7th. Of hundreds of people who died months, all months in suicide bombings in Israel. It was terrible. It was a very difficult time, but this operation and the years after that operation, it lasted two, three years. It wasn't one operation led and of course the forming of the wall, the separation barrier between the West Bank and between the sovereign state of Israel, this all led to a dramatic decrease and the disappearance of this kind of activity. Now, was terror still there? Yeah, of course. The problem is that Hamas, and this is a tragedy for Israelis, it's mainly a tragedy for the Palestinians I guess, but Hamas is a grassroots movement within the Palestinian society. So now knowing this, what do you do? This is what leadership needs to do. It needs to have a viable and realistic vision. It's not about principles. You'd ask the Israeli public, do you think that Israel or the IDF has to have some sort of presence in Gaza? The answer is yes. Is this a consensus today, you know, with Yair Lapid too, that Israel should have an overreaching security responsibility for Gaza? The answer is absolutely yes. So what are we really talking about? What we're talking about is what's the plan now, even if you reduce the entire dozen population to that humanitarian area in Gaza, which means squeezing 2 million people into a very limited territory. What's gonna happen there and how's the future going to look like and who's gonna rule that humanitarian enclave? Does someone know? Right now I'm hearing that the Israelis are considering the IDF is considering allowing American companies supplying Gazans with food so that Hamas won't supply food. Yeah. You know what? I'm gonna make a prediction here. I don't think it's gonna work from several reasons, and the experts I'm speaking with as to the Palestinian Street and Hamas don't think it's gonna work either. If you wanna have a full-time military occupation of Gaza. You can do that. Of course you can occupy the entire Gaza strip, but then you need to control the population. And amid this is what Israel did in 1967. It had a governor for each city. It went through the texts in schools. It had a military occupation. Sometimes, maybe you need to have that. Maybe the US definitely needed to have that in Afghanistan, that harbored the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and maybe you need to have that, but then you also need some sort of plan. Hezbollah was beaten. Did we manage to have a bigger success against Hamas than we had against Hezbollah?
AS: I'm not sure, and I'll explain you why. I'll try to explain my position. Hezbollah is a very significant part of Lebanon, but it's only one fraction of the country. One part of the population. So there were other forces depressed, but at the end of the day, we can negotiate with them. It's not the situation in Gaza. Unfortunately, Hamas, as we speak, is still the only significant power in Gaza. So we have three tools before we fully take over Gaza. One, we can foster immigration. You see the beginning of it, it's like a drizzle, but it can be a flood, and I think there are very interesting negotiations with various countries, both Muslims and non-Muslims. This is one thing. The second is that the humanitarian shortage might create an upheaval in Gaza. We see protests. In my opinion, it's the most interesting phenomenon in the Middle East as we speak because it's the first time in the history of Gaza that you see protests against the regime, against the oppressor save against the Israeli regime in the seventies and eighties. And the third thing is that when you provide the humanitarian aid, be it with the IDF or American companies, then you cut the chain of supply, the cash flow to Hamas, and I think Hamas is very fragile. Very fragile. So I would give it a few weeks, a few month before I, I write the obituaries for this attempt.
DS: Can I ask you guys a question about these protests? Because I've been following them. We had a Palestinian-American on recently who's been following them closely on the podcast and they've gotten started. And people, observers, analysts would say, oh, that's interesting, but they'll die down. And then they kind of went quiet for a little bit and then they reemerged. And analysts said, international analysts said, oh, that's interesting, but they'll die down. Here we are now weeks later, and these protests don't appear to be going anywhere. I have enough humility to observe that we, they could easily be gone tomorrow, but that said, they so far have seemed persistent. How closely is the Israeli security establishment monitoring these protests?
AS: We're monitoring it, but-
NE: Why should we use the word monitoring?
AS: Exactly.
DS: You mean egging them on. Is that your point?
NE: My guess it's of course, it's a total speculation, that the Israeli Shin Bet is doing everything it can to assist this, but I'm just speculating right now, Dan.
DS: Right.
NE: So first of all, this is a point that I think we should be making about Gaza that we discovered, and I think it's very, it's the most hopeful sign that we saw as to the Palestinian society since the beginning of the war. That they are not all Hamas or even if they were, now they aren't, right. And we know that, but we also know that from polls, we know that because Fatah was very powerful there. So for some people, you know, Fatah and Hamas, it's the same. Now Fatah is in power and Hamas is in power. They will do the same to the Israelis. I tend to disagree, at least as to Abu Mazen. And as far as I know, the Israeli security apparatus is in general consensus, as are the Americans, consecutive administrations, including the Trump administration that Abu Mazen resists calls for terror. He's against terror and he's now the leader of the Palestinian Authority. He might be inept, his administration might be corrupt and worthless. I'm not saying otherwise, but what we're seeing in Gaza, I agree, are signs of change, and this is what we saw in Lebanon. Look what happened in both cases, Dan and to an extent may be happening in Iran. Israel is having these blows against these dictatorships. Hezbollah had a monopoly over violence in Lebanon. Hezbollah killed the Prime Minister and got away with it. Hezbollah was the only real armed force in Lebanon. The Lebanese army was a joke. And look what's happening right now. The president of Lebanon today has said, we're gonna disarm Hezbollah. And the process has already begun. The Secretary General of Hezbollah said last night, no, we're not gonna disarm. And this was the response of the president of Lebanon. So how did this change? Did this change internally? To an extent, but the real reason is that the IDF had these amazing blows against Hezbollah that were detailed on your show. And the same, to a large extent, has happened with Hamas. With Hamas, there is another problem, and this is the reason we're having this conversation and that problem is that we still have 59 hostages, out of which less than 25 are alive. And they are held by Hamas and they are the fabric of Israeli society and they were taken as soldiers or as civilians and are held there and it's tearing the Israeli society apart. And it came to, and we mentioned this in the conversation just before we started recording, the Tikva Forum, the forum that is relatively against the kinds of interim deals. Against concessions to Hamas.
DS: Is against releasing Palestinians from Israeli prisons. And they are, just to be clear, they are families of hostages who have not been part of the organization or advocacy group on behalf of the hostage families that tends to get most of the press attention and they, as you said, are, they have loved ones in Gaza being held hostage, but they have been against, I think, not all, maybe not every attempted deal, but generally speaking they're against making major concessions to Hamas.
NE: And this Tikva Forum met with Ron Dermer after a long time this week, who's responsible for the negotiations and is getting a lot of criticism in Israel. Mainly from, I would say, the families of the hostages. Then from the opposition from the center left, but now this tikva forum that is supposed to be the closest you can get with the hostages families to the Prime Minister. They wrote a letter, two of these parents that were there that said, we left the meeting with you angry, humiliated, confused, and exhausted. You poured heaps upon heaps of details on us, things that we have no interest in and no chance of remembering given our extremely fragile mental state, a state made worse by you, by your failures and your failed handling of those failures and of us. These are the hostage families that were lenient towards the government that we're saying, you know, don't release Palestinian prisoners, go for military pressure. And this is the frustration they feel right now. What makes this entanglement so difficult is the fact that if you go for that full military occupation through a big operation, the hostages, all of them might die and they're already, they're already dying or are tortured there. So this makes this so problematic to the Israeli society. And the Israeli government needs to convince the Israelis that it did everything. It did everything. And right now, according to the polls, I see the polls in Channel 12, where Amit works, you know, the Israelis are not convinced 60%, about 60% are not convinced.
DS: I wanna move to Iran before we wrap up, the simpler topic. We're hearing a lot from the US administration, specifically what Steve Witkoff and others have said about the negotiations. We’ve heard from the Iranians, and I guess my question for each of you really, I'll start with you, Nadav, is what are the Israelis thinking is actually going on here and what are their options?
NE: The Israelis are very worried because of these negotiations. There's no doubt about it. They're getting all kinds of signals that everything's gonna be fine, that if there's gonna be an agreement, it's gonna be far better than the JCPOA.
DS: And they're getting these assurances from the Trump administration, and they were reassured by the second Witkoff statement, not the Witkoff interview, but the Witkoff statement of a few days ago where he posted that tweet, which we read in our last episode, where he basically says, no program. It's not that they can keep their program, but no nuclear weapons. It's no nuclear program.
NE: Look, everybody knows that there would come a difficult crisis in these negotiations. And the difficult crisis didn't happen yet. It's the honeymoon right now. Right? The Iranians are saying it's extremely serious. One of the things that the Iranians are extremely happy about is that they're saying, I don’t know if it's true, okay, but they're saying that the Trump administration wants a full agreement, but they're willing to cancel or at least to pose some of the sanctions that were left even after the JCPOA for that. And that would mean that the Iranian economy can actually be part of the global economy. I don't know if that's true. The Iranians are also I think pleasantly surprised that they don't need to stop enrichment. So at no point did the US state formally that they need to stop enrichment. By program, what you quoted, Dan, truly is a question of, do you mean what the world sees as the military program or not? But here's the bottom line. The Israelis are worried that they're gonna get an agreement that will bind them and will actually mean that they cannot attack unilaterally, preemptively with the US support. If there's gonna be an agreement, it's gonna be the decision of the president. If there is an agreement, of course, the IDF and the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli cabinet, would never order an attack to try and blow up an agreement that was signed by the President of the United States. I think whatever the agreement is, and by the way, whoever the president is, it's simply impossible for Israel to do so. The Israelis are hoping that the crisis in the negotiations would be as such, that the US and the world will understand something that is a consensus within the defense apparatus in Israel. If you wanna have a good agreement with Iran, attack first and deal with them later. You need to deal with them. You need to talk with them. You need to have a new agreement. But what Israel is saying is first you need to strike them or else you're not gonna get the terms you want and they're gonna cheat. And because of that, the Israelis are extremely worried. On the other hand, people close to the Trump Circle are telling the Israeli government, people who have a good grasp of the Trump Circle, don't be that worried. Trust us. Trust the president. The president is committed to Israel's security. He has proven that before, they are speaking with the president and they're saying, don't panic and specifically don't try to derail the negotiations and don't try to do anything you'll regret later because this could be dangerous. Let this go through the course and trust the president. It's gonna be fine.
AS: I'll stick to the old proverb that says that if you are not at the table, you are on the menu and we are not at the table in Rome or in Oman or whatever it might take place. It's utterly worrying and especially it's utterly frustrating and sorry I can't give this example from football or baseball. I'll give it from soccer. We are playing against a second league group with an injured goalkeeper, with no defense, with only half of their team. And we are not allowed, or we can't score yet. And this is the time to score because as we speak, the Iranians are remaking yet another ballistic missile. We actually took many of them. They shot hundreds of them, but at the end of the day, they have a limited number of ballistic missiles, and now they're producing more and more as we speak. They don't have yet an efficient defense system and anti missile system. An entire aircraft system, but who knows what might happen in a few months. So we have a rare window of opportunity, and if we succeed, we won this war. No matter what happens in Gaza, because we win, we actually cut the head of this octopus, and if we lose, we lost the war. And unfortunately I can't be as optimistic as the people in Trump’s entourage because we have a bad experience with four consecutive US presidents, Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump himself that said, we won’t let Iran to become nuclear. And at the end of the day, Iran got closer and closer to the bomb. And this is the time as we speak.
DS: But Amit, is it your impression that the Israeli government is sort of stuck, in a sense, because they're so close with the Trump administration, that the only thing it can do is just sit tight, try to inform the negotiations, try to shape the negotiations. That's why the head of the Mossad and Ron Dermer, who were talking about earlier, flew to, I think Paris a few days ago to meet with Witkoff before the second round of negotiations so they can try to shape it. But at the end of the day, they have to sit tight and they can't do anything, which means, what do they do? They wait until the 11th hour and see if something is about to be negotiated and then try to disrupt it or let the deal get done, and then what? Learn to live with the deal?
AS: Who knows? I don't know, but I know that if Biden or Obama had negotiations with Iran, Natanyahu would have operated his, you know, well orchestrated team on the Capitol Hill with the Republican party. Who would he talk to now? AOC? The Squad? There is no opposition on Capitol Hill to Trump's position from the right. So he'll do what he can, and, uh, at the end of the day, he's just watching the show that he wanted to be the, you know, the main actor in it.
DS: Wow.
NE: I wanna be more optimistic as to the Trump team about this. I agree that the Israelis Israeli defense app is extremely worried about this. There's a lot at stake right now in the region and for the future of the region, and we're not gonna be tired. I'm not gonna be tired in saying this again. America has a lot of adversaries. Unfortunately, some of them have nuclear weapons. It definitely doesn't need another one. And the fact that the Iranians are a step away from a nuclear weapon right now, tells us a lot. So maybe it's me as an Israeli speaking right now and not as analysis of this, but I think that the point that the Israelis are making, the pitch that they're making is very, very powerful as to the ability to limit Iran first by force, then by an agreement, and not the other way around.
DS: Alright. So that's, I guess, sort of a hopeful note.
NE: Yeah.
DS: I mean that, we'll take it as a hopeful note.
NE: I did my best. I did my best.
DS: Alright. Okay, Amit, Nadav, thanks for doing this.
NE: Thank you so much.
AS: Thanks very much.
DS: That's our show for today. If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring Call me Back, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at Callmeback@arkmedia.org. That's callmeback@arkmedia.org. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who you think may appreciate it. Time and again, we've seen that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the call me back community. So thank you. To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, visit our website arkmedia.org. That's arkmedia.org where you can also find transcripts with hyperlinked resources, which will hopefully help you deepen your own understanding of the topics we cover. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Ark Media's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.