Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 46: The Trump Plan - Hope for Israel and Gaza

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Trump's 20-point grand bargain to end the Gaza war is a remarkable document. It offers Israel much of the Israeli cabinet's formally declared war goals, not least the summary release of Israeli hostages from Hamas hands. It seems to enjoy broad Arab backing, and it puts Hamas in the position of having to refuse not merely an end to war, but the beginning, now backed by the US and the Arab states, of Gaza's great rebuilding and rehabilitation.It's a remarkable achievement for the US administration, and may well mark the turning point in the war, the beginning of the end.Today’s episode is sponsored by Unpacking Israeli History, a podcast from Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand, which I’ve had the pleasure of joining several times as a guest. Hosted by my friend Noam Weissman, the show dives into Israel’s most fascinating and sometimes controversial moments. It’s smart, nuanced, and never afraid of complexity, taking the headlines we think we know and uncovering the deeper story of how we got here.If you want more of the kind of thoughtful conversation we have here at AHA, go follow Unpacking Israeli History at https://www.unpacked.bio/havivUIH.And if you like what we do here at AHA, please join us on Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a special flash episode of Ask Javeh Anything. I wanted to get this out real fast. My take on the Trump deal, the deal to end the Gaza War. I haven't been this optimistic in 24 months. This is an extraordinary achievement. It's probably the smartest cornering of Hamas ever achieved. And it was achieved by an American administration, which is super strange for me because traditionally the least likely place to find real strategic wisdom on the Middle East is the American administration on both sides and both parties. I think I echo President Trump's own frustrations with ever dealing with the Middle East when I say that. This is an extraordinary moment. It might be missed. Everybody might do the wrong thing,

but it's an extraordinary moment. And I want to get into why and explain that and lay that out. But first I want to tell you that today's episode is sponsored by unpacking Israeli history, my very good friends over there at Open Door Media. It's a podcast from Unpacked, an open door media brand. And when I've had the pleasure of actually joining several times as a guest, they dive into the most controversial, the most fascinating, the most difficult sometimes. Issues in Israel's past. It's hosted by my friend Norm Weissman. and it is smart, it is nuanced, it is unafraid of complexity, and it takes the headlines we think we know,

and it covers the deeper story. So I love, frankly, just reading out their ad because I love what they do. I'm a proud partner of Open Door in many, many ways, the team behind unpacking Israeli history, and this is a project, this podcast, it, among other things, tries to reach young Jews and their peers in their world.

with powerful and creative media that deepens their understanding of themselves, of their story, of Israel, of Judaism, of the Jewish experience. If you want more of the kind of thoughtful conversations

that we try to have here and ask to leave anything, go follow unpacking Israeli history at unpacked. dot bio slash Haviv UIH. That's unpacked. dot B-I-O-H

H-A-V-V-U-I-H. I want to also tell you you should join our Patreon because you give us ideas of what to talk about and join us in conversations. And once a month, there is a live stream that is in which I answer live questions thrown into the chat for two hours, the last one, two hours straight of me talking, basically just for Patreon subscribers, everything else we do. All the other content is outside a paywall. Everybody gets it. These couple of things

where we talk in the Patreon chat and where we have this live stream is the only thing that we reserve just for Patreon subscribers. We also try to shape the podcast episodes to answer those questions. So join us. Today, I actually, what triggered me to have to have this response episode and to get it out fast, was two people, subscribers, Adam Gross, who said, why would Chalas agree to this peace plan? And Daniel S, who said, do you think there's a world where they say yes to it? And I was starting to write them an answer on the Patreon and realized, wait a second,

This is a big question and a big thing that needs to be explained and laid out, and so why don't I just do that? So here we are. I'm doing that. Left to its own devices, okay? Hamas, in an ideal world from Hamas's perspective, cannot possibly accept Trump's deal. It has Israel's fundamental victory conditions contained within it. It frontloads the release of hostages before an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and before an Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners. Israel's victory conditions are the disarmament. of Hamas, this demands the disarmament of Hamas. And we know that Arab governments were trying to actually remove it to say Hamas needs to lay down its weapons in the final text and not that Hamas actually needs to disarm. Not only does it in the final text say it has to disarm, it actually

says that it has to destroy all possible offensive weapons and all the infrastructure of war, including tunnels, as part of the deal, as part of the great rebuilding of Gaza. Arab states have signed on Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, crucially, Hamas's chief patron on the world stage. And many, many other Arab countries all came out and said, you know, we're on board, we're with it. And what the deal actually creates, and, you know, if you don't have the text in front of you, that's fine. I'll try and walk through the pieces that are relevant. But read it. It's incredibly, it's 20 points, but each point is basically a sentence.

So it's very, very quick. it may box Hamas in to actual implementation of the deal with an actually astonishingly clever pincer movement created by Trump and I want to lay it out and explain. The deal, for me, puts in a whole new light Trump's

bare hug of Qatar. Ever since, well, for a long time, but ever since especially the Israeli strike on Qatar in an attempt to get at Hamas's leadership, the strike, the airstrike that failed, Trump has embraced Qatar. has hugged it close. He hasn't come down too hard on the Israelis,

but he made sure that the Qataris felt protected by the Americans. And to people like me who think Qatar has been one of the problematic elements, one of the problematic actors in this war, the people telling Hamas, you can survive this, keep fighting, don't end the war. That's been frustrating. It is starting to look like in this deal, that American, I don't know what,

I felt it was coutowing to Qatari money. I mean, I felt there was tremendous Qatari influence. in the Trump administration was a lot more clever than that. It was a lot more like a good cop, bad cop routine with Netanyahu. I'm not even sure Netanyahu and Trump were coordinated on it. It's just how things worked out because the Trump administration took the situation it had and dealt with it the best it could.

What do I mean by a good comp, bad cop routine? Netanyahu's airstrikes brought the Qataris closer to the Americans, forced, the Trump administration forced out of Netanyahu, an explicit promise to President Trump himself, Netanyahu promised Trump publicly, no Israeli pursuit of Hamas leadership in Qatar itself, and in doing so, it made Qatar the only actually safe place on earth for Hamas leadership. Trump increased Qatar's own leverage over Hamas.

Hamas now needs Qatar more than before, because it's the only safe place. It's the only place when Nizania was committed to Trump not to pursue them. And why would he strengthen Qatar's hand in its dealings with Hamas? He turned the Israeli failure to kill the Hamas leadership into a guarantor of Hamas leader's safety under Qatar's wing. That's going to make Qatar more able to influence Hamas on the deal. In other words, now that Hamas was pushed deeper into Qatar's hands,

it's the only safety they possess. They are literally protected by Qatari guards. in a Qatari safe house, it's harder for them to say no to Qatar. And so if Qatar signs on, and Al Jazeera, therefore, signs on, and therefore tones down its running constant defense for Hamas throughout the war,

Hamas is from that side under massive new pressure that it hadn't been under before to sign this deal, to go ahead with this deal. The deal also contains, and this is the other side of the Pinser movement, the other side, the other pressure that it puts on Hamas. It also contains the one fundamental element that has been missing from Israeli rhetoric and planning.

To my own infinite frustration, and we've talked about this many times on this podcast, including last week, it contains an Israeli promise and commitment to the American president in public to Gaza's rebuilding. Israel's refusal to put on the table the promise of Gaza's rebuilding of a better day as a result of the extrication of Hamas

and the end of Hamas' religious forever war, has been disastrous for the war. Netanyahu has been unable to say this is like World War II, where the destruction of Germany was catastrophic, but it wasn't about destruction. It wasn't to destroy. The destruction was driven by the simple task of denotification.

That's what it required denotification, because the Nazis were so dug in. That's what it takes to uproot a regime as dug in as the Nazis. It's the precondition for the rebuilding, for a new and better Germany that will come after. Israel's critics throughout this war suspect have suspected, and they no longer suspect, this is now conventional wisdom,

that the war wasn't about the rebuilding, it was about the destruction itself. But Salas Smoltry, Chinatimir, Netanyahu's far right, kept declaring to the world that this is so, that the goal is the destruction, and then the expulsion and then Israeli settlement in Gaza. And that's at the same time that a lot of people, Israeli friends, even enemies who are seriously trying to deal honestly with this issue,

have grudgingly acknowledged that any war to actually kinetically extract Hamas from Gaza would look like this, this mass demolition. You have to get to 500, 600 kilometers of tunnels, buried under every city and town in Gaza. You have to remove 17 years. years of fortifications to prevent a Hamas rebuilding and reconstituting in Gaza the day after. The war to uproot the Nazis looked this way, except that Hamas is vastly more and comprehensively dug in than the Nazis ever were.

That's what the tunnel network is. That's the cost Hamas set for its removal purposefully, thoughtfully. That's the great Hamas strategy, that this cost be visited on Gaza as Israel tries to remove it. And nothing can move forward in Gaza. no end to the endless war, no meaningful rebuilding can begin until Hamas is gone

because Hamas will turn any new day, any end of war into a rebuilding of the means for the next round of war. It says so. Razi Hamad said it to CNN this week. It says so. The adorable thing was watching

pro-Palestinian activists around the world on social media, angry at CNN for airing the interview with Hamas's chief spokesman saying so. So hating Israel isn't enough. There is this problem called Hamas, and it's not going away just because you hate the Israelis and convince the Israelis are evil and terrible and genocidal and apartheid and every word under the sun,

colonialist, imperialist, all of them. There's still this problem of Hamas. Now, the critics of Israel say, you know, the really angry critics, the ones who are genuinely convinced the Israelis nevertheless want the destruction of Gaza, that the Israelis are using the fact that Hamas is this dug in, that this is how this war was. going to go. The Israelis are using that fact as cover for the real goal of wanton destruction of Gaza, that the purpose is the destruction and everything else is cover. Here's the thing. Suspecting that the Israelis actually want what Smotritch and Ben-Gvir say the Israelis want and not what Kaviv says the Israel wants is not an unreasonable thing to suspect if you

don't happen to know what Kaviv knows about Kaviv's own country. Many, many Israelis are convinced of it. And if you talk to them, they will convince you of it. You can argue for Hamas remaining in Gaza because the cost of removing it simply isn't worth it. But you can't argue that if Hamas is to be removed, there is another path that will accomplish the removal of Hamas that anybody serious has yet proposed. There's no getting around it. By the way, we just saw an attempt to get around it. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany made this point almost accidentally or on the side of another comment. He was asked by a Spanish journalist, I believe it was last week,

why Germany doesn't declare Gaza a genocide, as Spain has declared. And Chancellor Merch said, and this is a quote, Above all, we see the immeasurable suffering of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. We share the assessment that this is disproportionate in view of the goals rightly expected by the Israeli government. In other words, that the sheer suffering of Gazans is disperienced. He, by the way, is referring what caused him to pivot on Gaza was the hunger crisis in July. The sheer suffering of Gazans is not worth the Israeli war goal of removing Hamas.

And I want to say it again, he continued. This war will end immediately if Hamas releases the hostages and the weapons fall silent. Hamas has it in its power to end this conflict within hours. Now here, Mertz is saying, that's his answer to the genocide question. What kind of genocide is it when the victim? of the genocide could end it at any moment. And the answer is that it isn't one. You can have, by the way, you know, genocides are not determined by death tolls. They're genocides with small death tolls, Yazidis, Shrebernitsa, and their vast death tolls in catastrophic wars that are not genocides.

They're wars. The Second Congo War back in 98 to, I think, 2003. You had a multi-front, multi-nation, multi-ethnicity, multi-trib war with five million dead possibly. The death toll went way past 3 million and everybody lost count and we're never going to have a final count. But it wasn't a genocide. It was a war with just atrocities and unimaginable horrors. But its purpose wasn't wiping out groups. Its purpose was basically over resources and territory. And so the genocide question is, are you wiping out the group?

Now, Merit says that the Israelis have a goal of destroying Hamas. And Hamas could end it tomorrow. But it doesn't end it. And that's not what a genocide. is. And then he continues. Nevertheless, we view the means employed as critical. We do not share the Israeli government's assessment that it can achieve its goal of permanently defeating Hamas in this way. In this respect, we share the criticism of the approach. We do not share the description of this approach as genocide. Merz made the decision six weeks ago to stop selling Israel offensive weapons

and ammunition uses in Gaza. Germany has genuinely committed itself publicly. to standing against this war because it is being fought, it isn't worth it and it won't succeed. But what Mertz never managed to say, never gave Israelis, never said in any speech that I could have found, is how yes to remove Hamas, what is the war to actually achieve the legitimate goal of removing Hamas look like?

Now, this, again, this was a response, I think, to the hunger disaster that I talked about at length in episode 32 back in July. That's what changed Mertz's view, The Israelis were, you know, the worst-case scenario is that they intentionally tried to starve people. The best-case scenario, and I argued this at length, and if you want to understand the argument, episode 32 is the argument, is the catastrophic incompetence and the just callous playing of games with the food supply, thinking that there was still a lot of food left, but not understanding the inefficiencies inside Gaza caused by the war. but either way the Israelis were playing fast and loose

and can't be trusted to actually get the job done and that makes the entirety of the war just fundamentally unjustifiable. That's the German, that's Chancellor Merz's position as I understand. The point here is that Israel's silence on its own goal, Netanyahu's refusal to explain what the day after looks like

how good the day after will be but it cannot come as long as Khashmas stands in the way of the better future for Gaza and can't pretend to be standing in the way of a destruction of Gaza, which is what it claims to Ghazans. That statement Netanyahu has been unable to utter because of his political problem with the far right and his fear for his coalition, and that silence convinced even good allies and friends of Israel that Israel's goals aren't the defeat of Hamas but the destruction itself.

And on this very question, the Trump plan gives us maybe the most optimistic statement, optimistic development, since the start of the war. It forces Netanyahu to actually commit to that goal, to that better future, and he did it, even at the risk of a great schism that he has very desperately tried to avoid with the far right, the schism that kept him silent. that the goal of the war is not ethnic cleansing, even if Itamur Ben-Vir claims it is. And that the goal of the war, the goal and the purpose and the task before us is the great project of a post-Hamas de-notification and rebuilding. And Netanyahu signed on.

And he signed on officially, and he signed on wholly. And he said he was signed on. And Smotritch was livid. Smatritch himself said yesterday, It's a surrender to America's bear hug. It's going to end in tears. It's terrible. It's awful.

It's all these things. Well, that's an excellent signal that Smotrich calculates the Netanyahu really has signed on. Israel has formally agreed. I think willingly. But I expect Netanyahu now to come home and say in Hebrew that he had no choice because he's trying to hold on to Smotritch and Benfir. I think this was Netanyahu's intention all along. I've been arguing it for two years. and it'll be a damn tragedy if I'm wrong

and it's not the purpose of the war. But I'm not wrong. And Trump has just given him the one thing that Netanyahu actually needed to do what Israel needs him to do, what the defeat of Hamas requires. It gives him the political cover to present that World War II style understanding

at the heart of the Israeli strategy from the very beginning, of Galant's strategy at the very beginning, of Netanyahu's own vision of the war, defeat at any cost and then a de-radicalization and a rebuilding that is true and big and has a future of prosperity. That new dawn.

Trump just gave Netanyahu the political cover. And what's that political cover? All the hostages come out in 72 hours. It's over. The 66% of Israelis who want to end the war, according to a poll yesterday, because it'll deliver that big hostage deal. They will now back him to go to this deal.

And they will probably some of them come back to his camp if elections are called anytime soon. And it's so quick, those 72 hours, that Hamas will struggle to have all the games it usually likes to play with hostage releases and torture and starvation videos, that constant drumbeat of radicalizing Israelis, even as the world radicalizes against Israelis,

that crash that Hamas sustains purposefully, in which Gazins are trapped, not Israelis. 72 hours the hostages come out. That's Netanyahu's political cover. And that's why he has the political room for maneuver to do this, to go to this. And it also completes the pincer movement on Hamas. Qatar is now on Trump's side, pushing this.

That's one flank. And Gazans now see Hamas will see Hamas, if this is sold to them properly, hopefully by Al Jazeera, if Qatar is really on board. Now see Hamas standing between them and every good thing promised in the deal, by Americans, by Arab countries, by those who side with the Ghazans.

What's Hamas fighting for now? To delay the promised rebuilding? To which eight Arab countries have already signed on according to Egypt today? To prevent the new day of rehabilitation and safety and prosperity promised by everyone and signed onto by Netanyahu himself? There's an answer, by the way.

Hamas is actually fighting for what it was always fighting for, for what Western progressives and pro-Palestinian activists cannot see because they never take seriously the religious narratives of the Middle East. It's real motive, the great Islamic revolutionary restoration that was worth this terrible war, and is worth future wars, never-ending and for all time, until the Great Redemption. Because it's not a war against occupation.

Hamas brutally and cruelly and consistently bombed peace processes over the last 40 years. It's not about occupation. It's against the very existence of the affront to Islamic dignity and obstacle to Islamic restoration that Israel represents. It's a forever war, and every Ghazan can die for it from Qamass's religious perspective. But now it's stuck because it can't say that out loud. It caused too much harm to Gazans. And so it has two choices.

It can refuse. This is quite likely. It often has in the past irrespective of cost. It loses everything here. The whole narrative. It loses the entirety of the war. Israel's victory conditions are fulfilled. And what does it have to show for the reason it drove this war?

It went to this war. The whole narrative is shattered. And it's no longer in sync with what most Gossans need right now. which is kind of now being explicitly offered to them by elements and forces in the world that Gazans have every reason to expect will see it through. And it may not even have the cover of Al Jazeera if Qatar is on Trump's side.

But there's another option to Hamas refusing. Hamas could understand that it's cornered, it could have that, you know, patiently explained by impatient Qatari officials to the Hamas officials sitting in Doha, who are eager to hold on to Trump and keep him close, and Hamas understands, and it agrees to the deal. And then implementation begins, and it can hope to squeeze out of the details.

There's an international oversight mechanism that's going to ensure they're disarmed. How effective is it going to be? The vast, vast majority of international oversight mechanisms fail almost instantly and never succeed for even a second. Unifil in Lebanon. The separation forces in Sinai before 73. You don't actually trust international mechanisms because they never have an interest to actually take on danger in order to achieve the goal.

They're foreigners trying to ride it out and leave as fast as possible. So Hamas could hope that it can survive in those pockets. And so Hamas might agree to the deal. It might actually agree to the deal with that hope that it can cheat. Ironically, a Hamas that agrees to the deal to literally every Israeli victory condition that that deal contains, will only be able to agree by declaring it a victory. It'll pretend that the goal was always what, the rebuilding of Gaza? Hamas will pretend this is a victory so that Hamas can acquiesce to the deal. Watch for declarations of victory. The louder they are, the more Hamas is committed

to the agreement, to this Trump plan. And the louder they are, by the way, they may include, Hamas may be tempted because it is so cornered to parade starving hostages in the 72 hours it has before releasing them. And that'll make it politically more difficult in Israel to open up a new chapter within Israeli politics, right-wing politics. And so it may actually slow Gaza's rebuilding

because Israeli agreement will take longer and be more difficult. Hamas, as always, can undermine and ruin and destroy for Palestinians. And it can only do that. It can never build. So it was and so it ever shall be. Watch out for it. But nevertheless, those kinds of victory parades will mean that Hamas is looking for a way to explain this deal as a victory and therefore to carry it out. We are closer to a real end to the war, to a better future for Gaza, and to every condition the Israeli country. cabinet set out back in October 2023, when

it set out the victory conditions of this war in a decision. A Gaza that is disarmed, a Gaza where Hamas is removed, a Hamas-free reality going forward, we are closer to that

than we have ever been. And the Trump White House did it. And that's extraordinary. And it should be said. I suspect this is incredibly stupid for me to do. I suspect it'll work. And that's very good news.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me. I'll see you in the next episode.