Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - A Deal on the Verge of Collapse – with Nadav Eyal
Episode Date: August 23, 2024*** Share episode on X: https://tinyurl.com/p5dfbxxw *** As Israelis continue to brace for a kinetic strike from Iran, or Hezbollah, or both, this long-anticipated attack may have been put on hold b...y Tehran while Israel and Hamas were negotiating the last details of a hostage and temporary ceasefire deal. Now, as we learn today from our guest Nadav Eyal, that deal appears to be slipping away. Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. Register for Call me Back Live at the Streicker Center in New York: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
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Part of the Biden administration, and by the way, parts of the Biden administration that we'll see in the next administration, if Harris wins the elections, are convinced by the Israeli arguments that you cannot allow Hamas to rearm itself.
And it's gonna, if you're not going to be at the Philadelphia corridor, they got convinced.
And I didn't hear this after the bridging offer. I heard that
before they made the offer.
It's 7 o'clock p.m. on Thursday, August 22nd here in New York City. It's 6 o'clock p.m. on August
22nd in Chicago as Democrats convene for the fourth night
of the Democratic Convention. It's 2 o'clock a.m. on Friday, August 23rd in Israel as Israelis turn
to a new day preparing for Shabbat. And as Israelis turn to this new day and as they continue
to brace for a kinetic strike from Iran or Hezbollah
or both, this long-anticipated attack may have been put on hold by Tehran, while Israel and
Hamas have been busy negotiating the last details of a hostage and temporary ceasefire deal.
And what exactly was this bridging proposal we've been hearing so much about from the U.S. side?
Well, based on officials and journalists I'm talking to in the Middle East and elsewhere,
one objective of this U.S. bridging proposal, at least an unstated objective of the proposal,
was simply to play for time, keep things relatively quiet during the Democratic Convention. Nothing more distracting from the good vibes in
Chicago than a military escalation in the Middle East. A regional war was unlikely to happen while
Secretary Blinken was shuttling around the region. I think we'll be hearing more reporting about some
of these objectives, albeit not all of the objectives of this bridging proposal in the
days ahead. But either way, as we learn from our guest today, the deal does appear to be slipping
away. This guest, Yediot Akhranot journalist Nadav Ayel, who has been in touch with his sources from
the Israeli security establishment and Israel's political leadership, while he is also on the
ground in Chicago covering
the Democratic National Convention and where Israelis Rachel Goldberg and John Poland,
parents of American-Israeli hostage Hirsch Goldberg Poland, who is being held by Hamas
in Gaza for what seems like very soon will be one year since he was taken hostage on October 7th.
One year.
Unless there is some kind of deal that frees Hirsch and the other hostages.
Before we move on to today's conversation, one housekeeping note.
As I've mentioned, we will be holding a live podcast recording at the Stryker Center in New York City on the evening of September 24th.
Our guest will be Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon,
who will be sharing his gripping and fascinating October 7th story,
and also his perspective as a kibbutznik from Israel's south.
And he'll also be discussing where he thinks Israel goes from here,
where it goes from here in Gaza, where it goes from here in Israel's north and beyond. The event
will take place on the day of the release of Amir's new book, which is riveting and insightful,
and I highly recommend it. We'll include a link to the Stryker Center event so you can register
in today's show notes. But now on to today's conversation. Nadav Ayel on a deal on the verge of collapse.
This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast Nadav Ayel from Idiot Akhranot, who normally joins us from Tel Aviv.
But today he's joining us from the belly of the beast from Chicago, reporting from the Democratic
National Convention while still staying close to his sources inside Israel on the latest
negotiations or lack of negotiations over a hostage and ceasefire deal.
Nadav, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me again, Dan.
I want to talk about what's happening on the ground in Israel.
Can you tell me, based on your reporting, what the latest is with the hostage negotiations, or as I said earlier, the lack of hostage negotiations? So first of all, the deal
for the hostage release is dying. I think it's acknowledged now by U.S. administration officials.
It's acknowledged by Netanyahu's people. Everybody knows that negotiations are at a critical point and nobody thinks right now that
it's going to happen unless there's a dramatic and very surprising breakthrough. The US has put
forward a bridging offer to Israel and Hamas. Israel accepted that bridging offer. Secretary
Blinken has said that Israel accepted that bridging offer. The prime minister did not publicly negate that.
So he's probably on board.
But what he did do is have a conversation with the families more associated with his opinions, the Gvora Forum.
And he said there again.
Can you explain what the Gvora Forum is, what the Tikva Forum is? So within the families of the hostages, you have two basic groups.
You have the main headquarter of the families.
And they are sort of the majority.
And they're very critical of the government and of the prime minister.
And they want to see more activism by Israel to release the hostages.
And you have two smaller forums that are very much associated with the positions of the prime minister and the Likud
that are saying that the only way to get the hostages back is to show more force
and to be more involved actively, militarily in the Gaza Strip.
And they're not pushing the prime minister to make concessions, but the other way around.
And between these two groups within the hostage families, there's a lot of bad blood.
There's a lot of mutual criticism.
And the prime minister tends to meet more people from the forum that he agrees with.
And this is also very much criticized by the families saying that he, you know,
he should give equal share of time, of his time to different families,
even if they disagree with his positions as to a deal.
Anyway, so he met that forum, the Gvurah Forum,
and he told them that Israel will remain in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the border with Egypt. It's the area where Hamas smuggling
was at its peak. So it's about a 14 kilometer area where there are tunnels underground,
these big tunnels that you can fit vehicles, vehicular-sized tunnels that Hamas
was smuggling in weapons and supplies and people.
Yeah.
And at the same talk, he talked about the need to somehow make sure that people who
are armed won't go back with the Palestinians that are returning to their houses in the
north.
I remind you, Darren, that Israel agreed to surrender, to redraw the Nitzarim corridor. That's the corridor that separates Gaza north to south.
And this is one of the main achievements of Israel during the war.
It basically took effective control of the northern side of Gaza.
Then it built a corridor.
It's not allowing civilians or anyone else to go back to the north of Gaza. And over a million
people were called to evacuate and evacuated from northern side of Gaza, Palestinians,
and they live in refugee camps, you know, new refugee camps in the south or in central
Gaza Strip. And the prime minister has made a point that when people return
back home, they need to be checked so that Hamas terrorists won't be within them together with
arms. This is seen as something that can blow up the deal because you can't really search a million
people unless you're in the corridor and Israel already agreed to leave the corridor. The prime
minister has agreed that this is the Biden proposal at the time that was actually the
Israeli proposal of the negotiating team. And we discussed this at length in your podcast.
At any rate, the fact that the prime minister said that in a meeting with the family,
something he knew will be quoted, talked about Israel's red lines in such a way is also a
sign that the deal is in trouble because the prime minister saying this is not going to push the deal
forward. But the US itself is saying that Hamas has not agreed to its bridging offer. What's
happening is that within the Israeli society, we're seeing a huge, huge rift and a very
bitter rift about this with the negotiating team of Israel, mainly comprised of security officials,
off the record blaming the prime minister for not having a deal. And what they're saying about
the US bridging offer is that this was dead on arrival, that the Americans from their
own reasons bought into some of Netanyahu's points. But the bottom line is that you're not
going to have a deal and everybody knows that you're not going to have a deal with the fine
details of that bridging offer. They're blaming off the record Netanyahu for that. So these are the Israeli negotiators themselves
who are briefing the Israeli media.
Then the prime minister, and it's not himself doing that,
but it's like senior officials in Jerusalem,
are attacking the negotiating team,
the Israeli negotiating team,
saying you're actually helping Hamas not get a deal because you're sort of disclosing the rifts within the Israeli side.
And why are you briefing off the record?
And absurdly or ironically, this brief of the senior officials in Jerusalem is also off the record.
So you see that the Israeli society is really being torn about this issue. You see the demonstrations in the streets. You see the distress of the families and the distrust of many families. and I acknowledge this, of course, but it's a minority, their disbelief with the prime minister.
And they're really torn, you know, between what security officials are saying,
what senior officials in Jerusalem are saying.
The bottom line is that Hamas is not on board with the deal here.
And that many people within the Israeli defense apparatus distrust the prime minister,
and that the prime minister
accuses them that they don't know how to negotiate and that they're ready to give everything in and that he's standing for Israeli interest and I hope that in the last two or three sentences
I just presented the rift in an objective way because because this is a complicated issue. This is a complex issue,
because I don't know if Hamas really wants a deal right now. Not having a deal now, Dan,
means probably that the region is going to escalate to the verge of a regional war.
We're still waiting for the Hezbollah response. We know that Iran is also planning some sort of
response, although they
say that the wait can be forever. I'm quoting Iranian officials. And everybody knows that if
we don't get a deal now, this could very much escalate to war. And the way that the Israeli
society is going into this situation, and I'm not going to sugarcoat this, you have a growing
distrust with the political establishment and with the government and with the prime minister.
But you also have the base of the prime minister, and you have this side of the political spectrum,
even if it doesn't win the polls right now, saying, what do you want? Why are you criticizing Netanyahu when the U.S. itself is
saying, Secretary Blinken is saying, that Israel accepted the bridging offer? How can Israel
be more lenient towards Hamas than the U.S. is willing to be lenient towards Hamas?
And I see you smiling, Dan, so I know that I represented that view in an accurate way.
No, no, I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
I feel that no one wants a deal more other than the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
No one wants a deal more than the Biden administration.
They're very committed to a deal.
So the fact that they're saying that Israel has accepted what they have asked and the onus is now
on hamas i'm just i'm agreeing with you like what are the what are the what are those advising
nathaniel who's supposed to do beyond that and what do you think is motivating the biden
administration by the way i mean they so that's a great question i first of all i think that
and i've got i know i'm going to amaze some people, I'm saying this after talking with some officials in the recent month, they actually agree with some of Israel's arguments.
So not everything is about posturing towards the election.
So one of the things, one of the perks that this president got is that...
Not everything is about...
Domestic politics. the perks that this president got is that not everything's about domestic politics it's not all
about domestic american politics and what the administration is saying so when you're asking
dan why are they presenting a view that says that israel can have some presence in the philadelphia
corridor with the border with egypt the answer is that part of the Biden administration,
and by the way, parts of the Biden administration that we'll see in the next administration,
if Harris wins the elections, are convinced by the Israeli arguments that you cannot allow
Hamas to rearm itself. And it's gonna, if you're not going to be at the Philadelphia corridor,
they got convinced. And I didn't hear this. After the bridging offer, I heard that before they made
the offer. So it was born out of the merits of what they think should be. And this is, again,
one of the perks that President Biden got by not running seeking reelection, right? So he can
actually judge things by the merit
in the few months that he has left.
So this is one explanation.
Now, they can change.
They can change their position.
Tomorrow morning, they can say,
look, you know, we made a bridging offer.
We're now making a new one that's going to pressure Israel
because if we're not going to make it,
we're not going to have a deal and we need to have a deal.
So this can change.
But right now, they made something that was much more comfortable for the prime minister to adopt.
And I should say, of course, that he never adopted it publicly.
Again, it was Secretary Blinken who said the prime minister has adopted this.
And then after the prime minister remarks were made public, he was asked again,
does Israel still stand with the bridging offer by the U.S.? And he said, yes.
Well, they said yes to our offer and they put the pressure on Hamas.
And the reason they're doing this, Dan, is also because it worked well towards these negotiations.
What they discovered is when they pressure Hamas directly, it has some sort of
achievements. Hamas said from the first deal that we had that brought hostages back home months and
months ago, that they're not going to have a deal, another deal with Israel, unless the war's going
to end with that deal, finally, and they want to have guarantees. And the great achievement
of this negotiation, an achievement to the US administration, and to the Israeli government,
is that they now understand that this is not going to be a final deal, and the war is not going to be
over after this deal. This is the main achievement. What the defense apparatus in Israel is saying to Netanyahu is take the deal. And I
want to give the respect to these people who is, this is their profession, both those army generals,
but also the Mossad, the Shabbat. They're telling Netanyahu, take the deal because you got a great,
a great achievement out of this. We can go back to the war. We're going to get about 20 Israelis,
we hope, at least 20 Israelis back alive from Gaza. We're going to keep our military presence
in Gaza. We have some guarantees from the United States. I published this story.
Some guarantees that we can actually restart the war if needed. We're going to have a letter from the U.S.
This is the best you're going to get here, and you need to take the deal. This is their point.
What they're saying is, if you don't get the deal, even if there were no hostages, then you might see
a regional escalation that will play against Israel in ways that we cannot foresee right now.
You alluded to the fact that Hamas simply may not want a deal right now.
Yeah.
And they're just stringing along the Biden administration,
they're stringing along the Israelis.
It's an argument within Western intelligence sources,
whether or not Hamas really wants a deal right now.
Why would he not want it?
Why would Sinoir not want a deal?
I think that for Sinoir, and this is,
I'm now presenting one side of that
discussion within the Israeli intelligence. For Sinoir, he would want a deal after Israel
is hit by Hezbollah in Iran. So missing the opportunity for this thing to deteriorate
to a full frontal attack of the so-called axis of resistance against Israel,
for him, he sort of asks himself, speculate, intelligent sources, why should I go for it now?
The Israelis will always be ready to have some sort of deal to get some of their hostages back,
right? Because this is a top priority for Israelis.
I can either have the deal right now, or I can get it after Iran strikes back,
after Hezbollah strikes back, after this becomes the flood of Al-Aqsa, which is the name he gave to his operations against Israel on October 7th. his vision might be materialized. So these intelligence sources
are saying, if you go through the thinking of Sinoir, things are going to improve for him
with the Iran and Hezbollah attack and a regional deterioration. And then Israel is going to be
pressured more forcefully, maybe by the United States, now presenting a more pro-Israeli view.
You know, you need to stop the war because now it's a regional war, right? And it's Israel's
fault. I just gave you the most pessimistic scenario as to Sinoir's intentions. The other
side in this discussion says, oh no, you know, Sinoir understands that Iran's response might
never come.
He also understands that Hezbollah doesn't want a war with Israel.
It might be, you know, going into a war,
but it doesn't want a full frontal, full-plagued war between Lebanon and Israel because this will destroy, you know, large chunks of Beirut again
and it will be terrible for Hezbollah within Lebanon
and Lebanese people don't want this.
And he also understands that his days are numbered.
He can be assassinated every day now.
If Israel go to Mohammed Def, the chief of staff of Hamas,
one of the mega organizers of October 7,
and a man who's been involved with terror as long as Yichas Sinwar, maybe more,
if it go to Def, it can get to Sinwar. And this can happen within hours.
And if it gets to Sinwar, basically it won the war.
So he needs a deal right now and he wants a deal right now.
But within the perimeters that they described to begin with,
and as far as Hamas is concerned, say these intelligence sources,
they already made their concessions by saying, yeah, you can actually restart the war after this deal.
Secondly, you'll get some of these people out, but not all of them.
And Israel's army is going to have a presence in the Gaza Strip.
So they made these concessions already.
Also, he's going to get down a million people coming back to their homes
in the northern side of Gaza. Now, just imagine that picture. Imagine the picture of Palestinians
returning back to their destroyed neighborhoods and towns and cities, discovering what was left
of them. Imagine how the international media is going to cover this. And also imagine the idea
of a return, not a Nakba, the way that Palestinians describe 1948, a disaster, a Nakba,
in which they were expelled, as far as they are concerned, never to return. Not a Naxa like the tragedy for them of 1967 within the West Bank but Sinoir the only one
who got Palestinians back to their homes and Netanyahu critics by the way are saying exactly
that the reason that Netanyahu doesn't really want a deal even if he tells Tony Blinken that
he accepts the offer he sabotages the deal with his statements,
public statements, briefings all the time.
Because he knows, Dan, that if he's going to see that picture of a million Palestinians
returning back home, maybe jubilant, maybe in tragedy, the international media, he's
going to be blamed for that. That's going to be for him in
Israeli politics, say the critics, like the moments of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
This is going to be a picture of victory for Hamas. And this is going to be played out,
you know, disastrously politically for Netanyahu. That's the reason why he's trying to
derail the deal. And I think I just presented both the internal discussion within the intelligence
community and also the Netanyahu critics. Netanyahu, of course, is saying, I want a deal.
I'm willing. And I quoted these sources on your show. I'm willing for this government to fall over a deal, but I'm not going to let go
of Israel's basic security needs. And now I wrapped up everybody in this.
What's interesting is we will see if Iran and Hezbollah strikes, assuming the deal's dead
for now, we will see now if Iran and Hezbollah strikes, if Sinwar gets his wish of some kind
of regional escalation. But if he doesn't, if they strike, but in a minimal way or symbolic way,
but not in a way that's more reminiscent of what happened in mid-April, that Israel either,
either it is a powerful strike, but Israel's defenses are strong, or they just don't bother
doing something extravagant, Hezbollah and Iran. So
if Sinwar doesn't get his regional escalation, and if Netanyahu continues to convey that he's
willing to do a hostage deal, so long as certain principles undergird that deal, and those
principles are, in Netanyahu's argument, key to another October 7th not happening, meaning Israel in
the Philadelphia corridor, Israel in the Netzerim corridor, and some kind of system for controlling
who comes back to the north. If Netanyahu digs in on those principles, and by the way, Netanyahu's
poll numbers are improving right now. Are improving, absolutely.
Not dramatically, but they're improving. No, no, I think they're improving dramatically,
Dan. I think they're improving dramatically. Netanyahu is having, you know,
he has resurrected, really. Right. So, Sinoir then looks at that and says, wait a minute,
there's no regional escalation that I was waiting for, and Netanyahu is not compromising on these
principles that matter to me, Sinowar, and his political posture within Israel.
And we know that Sinwar is a close follower and consumer of Israeli news.
And he sees Netanyahu's political position improving, that maybe Israel, this Israel
of 2011, and the Netanyahu of 2011, that was willing to cut a deal to get one Israeli hostage
back and release 1,027 Palestinians from Israeli prisons, including
Sinoir, that that Israel and that Netanyahu are over.
By the way, I'm not passing judgment here one way or the other.
I'm not saying it's a good thing.
It's not a bad thing.
It could mean that Israel isn't a new...
Let me tell you something as a Netanyahu follower.
The Netanyahu that was willing to release 1,027 prisoners for just one soldier, that
Netanyahu is still very much here. And much of
the defense apparatus resisted that. So now the defense apparatus is saying, take the deal.
Netanyahu is hesitant. And then much of the defense apparatus said, don't make the deal.
And he did. And the differentiating factor, Dan, was polls and public opinion. And he can say what the Israelis wanted
me to do. And his critics can say, it was just good for you towards the elections.
But my only point is that Sinoir may be dealing with an Israel that's a different Israel. That's
my only point. And what he thinks is going to happen, that Israel is going to be under pressure
from regional escalation, Israel is going to be under pressure, that actually the regional
escalation may not happen or may not happen the way Sinoir
thinks it may not happen.
And Netanyahu's susceptibility to pressure from a majority of the hostage families, albeit
not all of them, is not what it may have been in another time in modern Israeli history.
And if that's the case, then Sinoir doesn't have, my only point is he may not have a lot
of options because then he's dealing with an Israel that he doesn't recognize. That's a possibility. The problem here, of course,
is that you need to have, I think, some sort of understanding. This is an op-ed I wrote yesterday.
Going into the possibility of an escalation, you would want an Israeli society that is very much united at the idea we did everything. And I want to remind
you, Dan, Eud Barak returning from the Camp David failed summit with Bill Clinton, and he landed his
plane. And I was already a political reporter back then. And he landed, he went out of the airplane,
and he said to the Israeli public, we did everything, you know, and everybody knew that because the right wing was saying you wanted to divide Jerusalem.
You wanted to get them half of Jerusalem.
And they blamed him that he's a traitor and everything.
But you know what he got from that?
He got from that the Israelis understanding that the second intifada that broke soon after, it wasn't because of them.
And he also got, you know, President Clinton to acknowledge that. that the second intifada that broke soon after, it wasn't because of them.
And he also got, you know, President Clinton to acknowledge that. And Hillary Clinton, probably the most ardent Israel supporter today with democratic officials,
saying, you know, Israel did everything in its power.
And we're going to maybe go into this escalation when more than 50% of the Israelis think that the prime minister is not doing his
best. And that's a problem. So I'm not saying that he's not doing his best. And I'm listening
when the prime minister says, this is the way you negotiate. But I'm saying that he didn't manage to
convince the Israeli public with this. And if Israel is going to face even worse war than the one that we have had in the
last more than 10 months, well, you know, you would want to convince the Israelis that we did
everything in our power to prevent that. And this is not only about hostages. This is about that
regional deterioration. Because let me tell you, you know, you wake up in the morning in Israel,
there's a push notification about another bombing attack in the north, Israel attacked in South
Lebanon. This is becoming, you know, most of the attacks are right now in the north.
This is a dire situation for Israelis. And I think that this kind of unity is very much needed
in Israel today. And you're not going to get it when your negotiating team is briefing that you don't really want a deal.
And, of course, you can always say, you know, they're all lefties.
And some of the Netanyahu people are saying, you know, the head of the – that's the reason we had October 7.
These are the arguments that they're making.
But you need to convince the public with that.
And I think, by the way, that by accepting the bridging offer by the United States,
Netanyahu was trying to start do that,
but it's not enough as of yet.
Okay, Nadav, we will leave it there.
I know you've got to get back to
covering all my friends.
It's a democratic national convention.
Yeah, I didn't see you around then.
Were you only on the McCormick place or, you know?
Yeah, Nadav, just keep looking.
Okay.
Keep looking.
You'll see me at some point.
Maybe at the Uncommitted Prince conference together with Ilhan Omar and Laila El-Abbid.
My people.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
My people.
My people.
Tell them I say hello.
Okay.
I'm going to do Dan Sino spottings in the DNC. Yeah, send. My people. My people. Tell them I say hello. Okay. I'm going to do Dan Cena spottings in the DNC.
Yeah.
Send everyone my regards.
Okay.
And stay safe.
I really mean that.
And I look forward to talk to you when you're safely out of there.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Dan.
Thank you.
That's our show for today.
To keep up with Nadav Eyal, you can find him on X, at Nadav underscore Eyal, E-Y-A-L or at Ynet.
Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar.
Our media manager is Rebecca Strom.
Additional editing by Martin Wergo.
Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.