Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Anshel Pfeffer - Embedded in Gaza

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

It’s 5:45 am on Thursday, November 16 in New York City. It’s 12:45 pm in Israel. Early this morning, I spoke with Anshel Pfeffer, who is just back from his second trip into Gaza embedded with th...e IDF. Anshel has covered Israeli politics, Israel National & national security, and global affairs for over two decades. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and Israel correspondent for The Economist. Anshel is the author of the book: “ Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.” He lives in Jerusalem.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, my friend Anshul Pfeffer, who has covered Israeli politics and Israeli national security issues and global affairs for over two decades. He's a senior correspondent and a columnist for Haaretz, and he is the Israel correspondent for The Economist magazine. He lives in Jerusalem. I first met Anshul in 2018 when he was working on his book, his biography of Benjamin Netanyahu. He and I were on a panel together at an event in the U.S. with Anshul, me, and Amir Tibon. Anshul, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Dan.
Starting point is 00:00:57 You are fresh back from Gaza. It is your second trip to Gaza in the last couple of weeks. You were there over the last 48 hours. Can you just start by, I mean, we've had a number of guests on this podcast since October 7th who are intimately involved with covering the war or intimately involved with the war, Israelis, but no one we've had on has had has had your experience i want to talk about that you've been into gaza just i guess maybe describe each each visit to gaza what what what what what about each one what was the biggest impression you had from each one how are they different just your general impressions so um i went in both times from the same route israel the israeli forces obviously have gone in to the gaza strip from a number of routes both times i went in
Starting point is 00:01:51 from the northwest corner of the gaza strip quite close to the uh to the sea uh at a place called israel those who have been to israel and got a good knowledge of Israeli beaches at a place near Zikim, which is one of my favorite beaches, and I hope to be back there not as a reporter once all the unexploded ordnance is removed from there because it was the site of some major attacks on October 7th. That's the route in which the main unit so the main big unit operating there is a division is the 162nd division which is one of the idf's two regular uh mechanized armored divisions and both times but i think the second time even more i was there i think on it was day eight
Starting point is 00:02:45 of the ground offensive the first time i was there uh so that's by now nearly two weeks ago and i was there on this week on tuesday night um both times what struck me going in is the level of forces that the idf has employed in in gaza there's um i mean without going into numbers it really is a it is a massive deployment of arm and force and that was really the thing that struck me in the first time is that this the way a lot of uh a lot of suddenly the initial uh part of the ground offensive was was being conducted from uh both tanks and uh you know we don't call them APCs anymore. And the people who are into military lingo know that we call them now IFVs, infantry fighting vehicles, because they're much bigger than those old
Starting point is 00:03:34 Vietnam era M113s that basically tanks just without the turret and the cannon. And you've got space inside, which would normally be in a tank so instead of all the space in the tank for storing the storing the cannon shells you have a whole infantry compartment and these are quite in quite advanced vehicles they also have a lot of a lot of screens inside both for driving the vehicle and for the gunners and thermal cameras to try to locate ambushes and it's also all interconnected so the commander of the vehicle can also get on his screen a map showing where all the where all the other vehicles and other forces are and have intel and surveillance feed onto his screen from drones and from whatever other sensors the idf is in this um in its uh
Starting point is 00:04:37 and it's very impressive digital array and it can you get the feeling when you're in one of these vehicles in in an armored convoy going in that there's a war going on, which is kind of being carried out on the screens. And then at some point you arrive, I'm talking about the visit almost two weeks ago, the Embedded Ad then, you arrive at an advanced command post. In this case, it was of the 401st Armored Brigade. And you dismount from the vehicle, and suddenly you're on a battlefield, and there's the dust and the explosions, and the soldiers around you taking cover. And you go from seconds
Starting point is 00:05:19 and being in this very high-tech environment, which, to be quite honest, 20-year-old soldiers around you were much more at home in because these are kids who grew up in the era of smartphones. Right. And then you're back on what could be a battlefield in any major war in history.
Starting point is 00:05:38 Right. Yeah, it could have been the Lebanon War. It could have been the Yom Kippur War. It could have been the Lebanon War. It could have been the Yom Kippur War. It could have been the Second World War. The level of had an idea more or less of the type of force that the idf was employing it only really comes home to you when you're actually there and you see the tanks and the uh and the armed vehicles and what they're firing and what and and the incoming this was still a relatively early stage of uh of the ground campaign and Hamas was still putting up quite a fight and we saw incoming mortar shells trying to find where, I mean this was a very
Starting point is 00:06:38 small command post and it was sort of hidden, where we were and there were buildings around where uh where the soldiers we were with thought that there may be snipers or or some kind of missile ambush coming from that was that's something you immediately feel and understand when you're when you're there um so that really was struck me the second time was it's just that level of both, on the one hand, very high-tech advanced interconnected kind of fighting force, but still having to employ the old school tactics once you're out of your vehicle and on the ground. In the second time I went in on Tuesday night,
Starting point is 00:07:24 I went in with uh another force which belongs to the 162nd division but they were they didn't go in with they were not one of the advanced units i went i went in with the battalion of the nafal brigade which is an infantry brigade they went in uh initially about two or three days after the beginning of the ground i think that they've been in that now for two and a half weeks so it doesn't you know the times are pretty similar but they went in on the foot classic infantry um nation um after but obviously after the tanks and the heavy fighting vehicles had already uh broken through uh and it was uh first of all you know i'm myself many many years ago i was i was in the hdf infantry so for me it was kind of
Starting point is 00:08:13 a bit of a throwback to the past um but what really struck me on this visit and we went we went into the to the battalion command bus this this was the 931st Infantry Battalion, in Al-Shati, which is one of the largest neighborhoods, or refugee camps, as it's called. It doesn't look like a refugee camp. It's been there for 70-odd years, and it's just a very dense residential neighborhood. What struck me there was just the level of destruction.
Starting point is 00:08:45 And once again, this is something I knew about from having been in briefings and having been to to headquarters behind within israel and seeing on the screens what the idf was doing but once again this is something that you only fully grasp when you're on the ground and you see around you that the amount of buildings which have either been destroyed or severely damaged. And you talk to the soldiers and the officers on the battlefield who are carrying out these search and destroy missions, going from house to house. Most of these houses have either been pinpointed by IDF intelligence or surveillance, or they themselves have seen something which uh causes them to be suspicious
Starting point is 00:09:26 that their house may have a a tunnel shaft or or some kind of stronghold or weapons store that they go from house to house and this is an area which uh until six weeks ago 90 000 people lived in it's i think the second largest neighborhood of gaza city and now it's totally empty of it of its residents they've all fled south so there's very little uh um the the limits of using firepower mainly at this point limits which are uh are there to prevent friendly fire to prevent harm to the forces because there are no civilians there. There is no real concern of collateral damage at this point. And when they have a house that they're suspicious has something in it,
Starting point is 00:10:17 they don't immediately go in. There's either a tank firing a couple of shells at it or an airstrike. Then they'll go in and usually they'll go in with combat engineering troops either a tank firing a couple of shells at it or an airstrike. Then they'll go in, and usually they'll go in with combat engineering troops whose job it is to detect any booby traps, any type of explosives left there. They'll search the building. When they find what looks like a tunnel shaft or weapons left behind or any kind of signs of of hamas presence the building will either be blown up or they'll bring in a heavy some kind of heavy equipment usually a d9 uh to
Starting point is 00:10:54 basically to level it and this is one battalion of dozens which is currently in the process of doing that in various sectors of gaza city you know they talk about the objective of of this campaign and the main objective that the israeli government has set is to destroy hamas's um military capabilities when you see what that means you realize just to what a level in the 16 and a half years of hamas's rule in gaza they have built those military capabilities in the 16 and a half years of Hamas's rule in Gaza, they have built those military capabilities to the length and breadth and depth of the civilian fabric of Gaza City. When you see all that, are you thinking, wow, it's impressive that Hamas built all this infrastructure? They basically built like a military base, effectively, in North Gaza or Northwest Gaza.
Starting point is 00:11:55 They basically built a military base disguised as a civilian community. Are you impressed by it? Or do you say to yourself, this could only have the israeli leadership kind of letting it happen meaning meaning sort of turning a blind eye or or or not knowing about it like let it happen by by accident but are you just sort of struck that they were that they were able to do it is it that impressive just to be accurate it's not they didn't build a military base disguised as a city. There was a city there and they took over that city and they threaded their tunnels and bases and headquarters of every, at every level through the city. I mean, Hamas is built on, the military structure of Hamas is built on a regional scale. is there are but you know the but every neighborhood is a battalion
Starting point is 00:12:46 every town or city is a is a brigade that that there are a significant difference between them and an organized military but in many ways they are they're an organized military with with uh uh with gaza as its base and look this is not something that Israel did. If we zoom out, Israelis knew about this. I've been hearing about this over the years in briefings. It's something that Israel fought against in other rounds of warfare. So
Starting point is 00:13:15 once again, you never fully grasp it until you're on the ground seeing it, but it was there. It was known. There was no... Hamas doesn't put out the figures and names of its military personnel, though. I think Israeli terrorists had a pretty good idea of the scale of it. But to go out, to zoom out and ask the question of
Starting point is 00:13:40 why did Israeli leadership not act against it all those years? That's the kind of question that Israelis have been asking since October 7, and there aren't any easy answers for that. I mean, I assume at one point we'll have to make this about one man. And Netanyahu, when he returned to power, he had his first term of office in the late 1990s when he returned to power
Starting point is 00:14:09 in 2009 there was a situation already there Israel had left the entire Gaza Strip in 2005 in disengagement carried out by another Likud government in which Netanyahu was a senior minister
Starting point is 00:14:25 voting for disengagement over and over again until just, I think, eight or nine days before the disengagement actually began resigning. He resigned. He resigned because he did not want to be part of the Sharon government. Yeah, I mean, the out-confliction. He wanted to break with Sharon on it. He resigned because he did not want to be part of the Chiron government. He wanted to break with Chiron on it. I mean, by now it's almost distant history.
Starting point is 00:14:53 Yeah. No, no, no, no, I know. I mean, the timing and the circumstances in the hours of resignation are interesting, but probably for another discussion. But anyway, he came back to the Prime Minister's office four years later. In the meantime, in 2007, the Palestinian Authority, which had taken over all of Gaza
Starting point is 00:15:15 after this engagement, before this engagement, and after the Oslo Accords in 1993, that they'd controlled all the towns and cities of Gaza after disengagement in 2005 that they were already in control of the entire territory. Two years later, Hamas takes over in a bloody coup. And then the out comes to power a year and a half after that in early 2009, shortly after Israel's fought its first ground campaign of a series at the end of 2008, early 2009, Operation Cast Lead. And Netanyahu was saying in that election campaign in late 2008, early 2009, that the
Starting point is 00:16:00 government at the time, it was the government of the now defunct Kadima party. He will be very different to what they're doing. He will go in all the way. He will destroy Hamas. He won't allow Hamas to remain in Gaza. And Kassel had ended in a sort of stalemate. It all went in, not as deep as it's gone in now, but it went into the outlying neighborhoods of Gaza, fought what was a short war against Hamas on the ground. Hamas took a lot of hits, but it wasn't nearly enough to destroy their capabilities. And Netanyahu comes to power promising to destroy Hamas in Gaza. He doesn't do that. Since then, with the Walsh short break of 18 months, which ended a year ago, he's been in power.
Starting point is 00:16:51 And Netanyahu's strategy, which he's set out, not exactly in the open, but in enough meetings and events which have been leaked out, and we know we have verbatim comments of his he's said this is the best strategy keep hamas in gaza because as long as hamas are in gaza the palestinian leadership is divided the world's most certainly the western world sees hamas as a terror organization doesn't really expect israel to have to negotiate with them and they can't really expect us to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority which still controls the West Bank because uh how can we make a deal with with an organization which doesn't control Palestinian area yeah
Starting point is 00:17:37 and and the belief that the assumption that at least some part of Hamas was serious about governing Gaza, that they were dealing with leaders in Gaza, I mean they were not dealing with, but meaning that they assumed that there was some practical mindset to leadership in Gaza that viewed their job also as kind of running Gaza, not a death job. Hamas had a vested interest in holding on to this base. Hamas, for the first time in 2007, suddenly were in charge of territory. Hamas until then was only an opposition movement within the wider Palestinian movement. For the first time, they had power over territory. That meant for the first time they had to run all the civilian apparatus as well.
Starting point is 00:18:26 And since they see themselves also as a political organization, as the rival of Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, it was thought that Abbas would have a vested interest in some kind of stability in Gaza so they could prove that they can run a city, they can run a territory, and ultimately they can run the Palestinian people. And Netanyahu banked on that as a way of dividing the Palestinian leadership and keeping both sides weak and not being under too much pressure from the United States to negotiate with the Palestinians and to embark on any kind of diplomatic process,
Starting point is 00:19:10 which he has never wanted to have. Netanyahu's biggest strategy, and this is Netanyahu going back, and you know the man, you've spoken with him many times. Yeah, yeah. This is going back basically to Netanyahu at the very beginning,
Starting point is 00:19:22 not just as Netanyahu's political career, not even his diplomatic career in the 80s in the US, but stuff he's been saying from the days he was a student activist in the 70s in MIT, doing lectures for the consulate in Boston, in Jewish communities, and after that in various local channels, local television stations. Netanyahu has always said the persian issue is not the main issue israel is facing a much bigger threat from the main powers in the region at the time when he started speaking about this he was still saying they're backed by the soviet
Starting point is 00:19:58 union after the soviet union uh ceased to exist in the early 90s, then they were being backed by Saddam's Iraq, they were being backed by Iraq, which is not untrue. But the flip side was that they always said, look, the Palestinians are not a real important issue. They're basically being used by that bigger Arab or Muslim threat on Israel as a wedge issue to try and chip away at Israel and force Israel to make concessions and put Israel in a situation where Israel will be weak and vulnerable and then they can finally realize their ambition to destroy Israel. So Netanyahu's always, I mean, I've been
Starting point is 00:20:39 also in conversations where he's called the Palestinian issue a rabbit hole. Don't go down that rabbit hole. That's not the real important thing. Let's talk about Iraq. And part of that strategy of keeping the Palestinian issue off the agenda has also been to try and keep this divide between Fatah and Hamas, between the West Bank and Gaza, between these semi-autonomous or autonomous enclaves, keep them divided,
Starting point is 00:21:07 and in that way, ensure that Israel wouldn't come under too much pressure to make any serious concession or embark on any kind of real diplomatic process with Palestinian leadership. So Hamas served that purpose. And over the years, you said Netanyahu didn't deal directly with Hamas leaders. That's not entirely true.
Starting point is 00:21:28 There was perhaps not direct. Usually there was some kind of go-between. But in 2011, once again, Netanyahu was the one who green-lighted the prisoner exchange in exchange for Gilad Shalit. One of his – For Gilad Shalit. Would have been held for five years by Hamas in Gaza, he agreed to release over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. The main figure amongst that group was Yahya Sinwar,
Starting point is 00:21:53 who is now Hamas' chief in Gaza. Yahya Sinwar already then in prison was running a lot of Hamas affairs. He basically was the point man from Hamas for the deal. He was doing this while in prison and nathaniel has been engaging with the sinuara for years including we know at least one case in which sinuara sent him a note uh we there's a picture of the unwritten note it's written in arabic and hebrew sinuara learned hebrew in in prison he sees himself as someone who knows the Israeli mindset.
Starting point is 00:22:28 No, he's like an obsessive consumer of Israeli media, right? I mean, he learned Hebrew in prison. He would read Israeli press all the time. He follows Israeli press. He considers himself an expert. I've spoken to intelligence officers in the Israeli prison service who were there.
Starting point is 00:22:44 And just to be clear, just for our listeners to understand, Yechei Asinwar is the man. I mean, he was the architect, so it's been reported, of the October 7th massacre. And he was in prison for two decades. He gets released from prison, from Israeli prison, in 2011, as Anshul is saying, in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. And he comes back to Gaza, and we're dealing with him today.
Starting point is 00:23:09 I just want our listeners to have that. Sure. And Sinwar is a very interesting figure in the sense that in Hamas, the leadership is divided between military wing and the political wing. And Sinwar is probably the only figure in hamas history it's not very long history hamas was founded in 1987 so it's not yet 40 years old but in that period in which hamas has been through quite a few leaders some have been assassinated by israel some have been forced to into exile he is probably the first leader who has actually taken control of both wings.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Certainly within Gaza, and that's Hamas' main power base, he is someone who is both the political and the military leader. Officially, the chief of Hamas' military wing is Mohammed Def, who's seen as another of the masterminds of what happened on October 7th. But in reality, Sinowar is the one giving the orders both on the political and the military side in Gaza. And there's a lot of stories
Starting point is 00:24:11 going around about Sinhwar. I try not to mythologize any of the people that I write about, but I've spoken to intelligence officers in the Israel Prison Service who sat with him for many, many hours over the long time he was incarcerated. They've all come away impressed by his intelligence. And he wanted to speak to them in Hebrew and to kind of have this kind of dialogue. feeling with and let's not just blame nathaniel for this there was a feeling within the israeli intelligence community israeli politics military and so on then see where is somebody who has made
Starting point is 00:24:52 a strategic choice to go for that uh civilian approach in gaza nobody thought he'd become a zionist or anything like that but that's ininoir had made this and made this strategic choice to prefer uh building Gaza and building his his own political power base rather than launching a war that uh as he did in October 7 that that would um basically condemn him to death and and bring about the destruction of Gaza and I think even now there are people who are still asking themselves did Sinua really think Israel would react in this way did Sinua really want October 7 to be as devastating and barbaric for Israel as it was did he think that they would succeed so much when they breached the border fences? So many points and so many Hamas fighters
Starting point is 00:25:50 and then followed by other organizations and just looters and crime gangs from in Gaza coming through the fence on that day and actually two or three more days until they were finally all beaten back. Did Sinoir expect this, or is this basically a huge strategic mistake on Sinoir's side? A lot of people I've been speaking to in the last few days who are exposed to some of the intel coming in from eavesdropping on Hamas networks, which are still operating to some extent in Gaza,
Starting point is 00:26:26 are saying that there is a feeling of disbelief amongst Hamas commanders that they never expected Israel to go all the way in. The scenes you're describing sound to me like scenes from World War II after D-Day in Cherbourg, which is quite different from the footage which we've been seeing over here that's being released by the IDF when we watch, you know,
Starting point is 00:26:50 CNN or Fox or BBC or whatever we're watching. You're describing scenes that look like World War II. What's the disconnect? Wausau as a city is now uninhabitable. Entire neighborhoods are destroyed. And in the process of going after all the hummus strong points and tunnels more and more buildings will be destroyed or damaged and i don't i can't say at this point when the idf will pull out most of the ground forces as long
Starting point is 00:27:18 as they're in this is the process which is going to continue the idea is doing what the government said to destroy Hamas' military capabilities. The IDF made it very clear on day, I think it was day six or seven of this war, October 13th, they put out the warning to the citizens of Gaza City, go south, go south of Wadi Gaza. We're going to operate. It's going to be dangerous for you. Don't remain there. That message took some time to filter through. In some cases, it seems that Hamas was also preventing people from leaving, but now almost everyone's left. We're talking about a city, a greater urban area of Gaza,
Starting point is 00:27:52 a city of a million-plus people. It's now almost entirely empty. And the reason that what you're seeing, whether it's from Israeli media and IDF spokesperson cameras or from the media which is in Gaza, which is mainly controlled by Hamas, whether Hamas sympathizes or they're simply being limited by Hamas. But what they could do, it doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:28:16 The fact is that whatever you're seeing now from inside Gaza is either coming through the lenses of Israeli media and the IDF or through news crews who are being controlled to a large degree by Hamas. And neither side at this point have an interest in showing the level of destruction to Gaza City, because as far as Israel is concerned, Israel is first of all showing stuff to its own citizens. The main role of the Israeli media, I know that everyone sitting as you are in America thinks everything is just for you,
Starting point is 00:28:50 but most of the message and the visual messages... That's a very American mindset, by the way. Yeah, you are. God bless you. That's what you are like. And it's not being tailored to you. It's being tailored, first of all, whatever's being filmed and broadcast on the Israeli side
Starting point is 00:29:09 is first and foremost for the Israeli public and the Israeli public is now a mobilized society and everybody has a brother or a son or a sister or a dad who's been called up and the Israelis want to see their soldiers
Starting point is 00:29:24 they want to see what they're doing on the the israelis want to see their soldiers they want to see that what they're doing on the ground they don't want to see the big picture they want to see that our brave soldiers are fighting and they are fighting and they're operating i think very efficiently um so that's you know that's the israeli perspective from the hamas perspective they don't want the wider palestinian communities and the wider Arab world to see what's happened to Gaza. Because once that comes through, once the fact that the biggest Palestinian city ever, a city of a million people, the city that was ruled by Hamas is no more.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And Hamas made this terrible strategic miscalculation of provoking Israel into a response that I personally think Israel had no choice to make. Obviously, those who will disagree and say that Israel should have reacted differently. But it doesn't matter. This was Israel's reaction. Israel so terrible that Ixia Sinwa who is supposed to be this genius on Israeli affairs as you said this consumer of Israeli media and expert of everything to do with Israel has made this mistake and brought down this destruction I mean Gaza City is on it's we can almost say and we certainly will be able to say in a few weeks, Gaza City is no more as a place where a million people can live. Hamas is no more as a governing or a military force in the northern Gaza Strip.
Starting point is 00:30:56 There are many pockets still of Hamas fighters, but there is nothing left of its governing structure and its military hierarchy. Some of the commanders and the chiefs are still alive, but its military hierarchy has been broken. They're now disconnected. They're incapable of launching anything, certainly nothing on the scale of October 7th, but anything more than just ambushes here and there. That's what they're capable of doing now this is the destruction that hamas has brought down on gaza and at this point hamas doesn't want
Starting point is 00:31:32 the arab world to see it's it's terrible failure the only thing they want the world to see is these clashes around shifa because that fits in the the narrative that they're working on. So what you're seeing, whether from Israeli or from Gazan sources, is not the big picture. Okay. So I want to ask you, the IDF has reported that more than 1,000 Hamas terrorists have been eliminated so far, which is a lot. However, the estimate is that there are something like 40 000 hamas fighters so it seems that hamas is largely focused on digging and waiting like how is how do you
Starting point is 00:32:13 reconcile the 1 000 eliminated with 40 000 left to go and and also related to that is how is the idea of dealing with the tunnel system going forward, assuming a lot of the remaining 40,000 are somewhere in those tunnels or have a lot of them scattered? Okay, so there's a lot we don't know. Armies are very bad at even the most advanced. Armies are not very good at doing body counts during the fighting. But whether it's 1,000, whether it's 4,000, whether it's 8,000. Yet you're right. The estimate that Hamas has between 30 and 40,000 fighters. Where are they? You know, Israel, so Israel's taken out 10, 20%.
Starting point is 00:32:53 So you still got 80% left. So in other words, in the south, the beginning, we're talking about the Hamas, Hamas is fighting force throughout the Gaza Strip and the cities in the south, Hanunas and Rafah are, they're not as big as Gaza City, but they're not small places either. They have their battalions and brigades who were there to begin with. Those who were probably over half were originally in and around Gaza City. Some of them could still be in the tunnels, some of them dead because some in the tunnels some dead because the tunnels have been some of the tunnels have been blown up whether from in the ground operations or by bunker busting bombs in the more intensive
Starting point is 00:33:31 air strikes which were before the the ground operations began some could be still alive then in with stores of food and water and and and and yeah fuel operating generators and hoping that israel will withdraw at some point before their supplies run out and then they can then they can emerge then some will have discarded their weapons and uniforms and joined the hundreds of thousands fleeing to the south and you know israel has made an effort to try and locate amongst that that river of of of tens of thousands flowing to the south trying to locate who amongst them are hamasniks but the numbers and circumstances of how it's happening that mean that they can't inspect and interrogate every person going through.
Starting point is 00:34:30 But from the soldiers I was with just in Shati a day and a half ago, they told me that a lot of the apartments that were located as being Hamas strongholds or simply apartments belonging to Hamas members which are being used also for military purposes, they found in many of them Kalashnikovs thrown up just lying on the bed or on the on the sofa um military kit webbing uh ieds which had not yet been put together i mean one of them said that you know i saw the whole kit in and one of them one of the guys who was a combat engineer said to me it was fascinating for him to see an IED before it before it was all put together with all the I don't think I know all the technical terms but there you know
Starting point is 00:35:11 the explosives and the various things used to set it off so there was at least from in Shati and I think and I've heard of it happening in other parts of Gaza there was certainly a large number of Hamas fighters who simply fled and put on civilian clothes and left their weapons and their equipment behind. So there are many places where they could have dispersed to. Some of them probably also went towards the city center, to places like Shifa Hospital, where there still are both a significant number of civilians not not significant in the proportion of gaza's original population we're talking here about tens of thousands of people out of over a million but that's the one place where there still are civilians that's like and
Starting point is 00:35:56 that's hamas's uh uh always been their modus operandi by hiding themselves among civilians they're now much much fewer civilians in gaza where they can do that uh i want to talk about the situation with the hostages which i know is a fluid fast-moving situations situation it's sometimes like hurry up and stop one step forward two steps back the idf announced that there were no hostages found in Shifa hospital. Given that the IDF announced its intentions to go into Shifa well in advance, did you get the sense or have you gotten the sense through your reporting and through your contacts and through your spending time with these soldiers on the ground, did you get a sense of disappointment
Starting point is 00:36:43 on the side of the soldiers? Is it safe to assume that the hostages may have been there but were just moved south because in gaza because they they had all this warning so just to clarify um the idea have only actually been into a very small part of shifa combat it's a few building there's a compound they've been in one of the buildings there's been some work done on the done in the grounds including i think some kind of digging work um from what i know and from what i've heard from israeli intelligence officials already a few days ago before anybody went Shifa, their assumption was that there were, at some point, some of the hostages were being held or treated, both in Shifa and they were no longer there. And Hamas is holding on to two, not just Hamas, Hamas, Islam and Jihad crime groups are holding on to 230 hostages that we know of.
Starting point is 00:37:44 In some cases, they're holding on to bodies of hostages. We don't know which of them were alive. And they'll do everything to keep them. They're bargaining chips. And the moment Hamas has some indication that Israel's heading for, the idea is heading for Shifa, then they won't keep hostages there. They'll do everything they can to move them to another location and it was seen that that's already happened it's still important for the idf
Starting point is 00:38:12 to to go into shifa and see what they can that what they can find there which will give them an indication of hostages having been there there there's dna traces so anywhere where where people have been given medical treatment then you there's a chance that you can find uh something which will tell you who was there obviously anything that they find is immediately sent back to israel for for inspection and for dna sequencing um the forces inside are constantly constantly aware of the need to try and locate the hostages. Now, not every Israeli soldier or every Israeli battalion will be operating in an area where Israel thinks hostages were held. But certainly when it comes to bodies and they're finding bodies of Hamas fighters, they're finding bodies of civilians that when they see a body which may, for various reasons, doesn't look like it's a body of another Hamas fighter or just an ordinary Gazan, they'll try and look for traces which will indicate that this may be the body of a hostage. In some cases, bodies will be taken into israel uh for uh for an attempt
Starting point is 00:39:26 at identifying them i think that's i don't want to go into any further detail because this is very sensitive we're talking here about the families who have been waiting now for almost six weeks for any type of any kind of news about their loved ones so beyond that i probably shouldn't say anything but it's certainly at the front of the mind of every israeli soldier and commander inside gaza at the highest level of the war cabinet there is a very big dilemma about how to best prosecute a war which you don't it won't have the opportunity to to use this level of forces and firepower in ghats for much longer while trying to save hostages whether it's saving them by launching some kind of a rescue mission and there's been so for once such such mission in which
Starting point is 00:40:19 a young woman soldier was saved uh and also continuing to negotiate with Hamas, as bizarre as and patrons, trying to negotiate through them a deal. And also the CIA director Burns was there at the same time. So there's a lot of work going on. Most of it secret and some of it, which I do know I probably shouldn't talk about, to try and reach some kind of an agreement. You're trying to reach an agreement with an enemy that you're fighting at the same time it's not a certainly not a simple thing to do and once again this is a terrible dilemma that israeli leadership has right now of how to prioritize of what to prioritize and how to try and both not hinder the the war operation and and use it perhaps as a lever to pressure hamas to uh to release as many of the hostages as possible final question for you
Starting point is 00:41:36 for the military to achieve its objectives i've been told various things from it needs a few more weeks to it needs a few more months but the the US, the United States government has basically said, in so many words, Israel has a few weeks at most, even though they haven't said that officially. How do you see these two time fuses playing out? What's your sense when you're spending time with the IDF in terms of how much time they think they really need for this phase? So it's simply a matter of going from street to street, block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, and destroying the Hamas infrastructure that there is there. The more time that they have to do that, once that time is over, it'll mean that X percent of Hamas's networks, tunnels, military infrastructure, whatever, has been destroyed
Starting point is 00:42:25 in the northern sector of Gaza. Will that be 30, 40, 50, 70, or 80 percent? By then, it's just a matter of time. I can't assess, and even if I could, I wouldn't be able to say it, exactly what that percentage is. But it's simply a matter of every extra day that the IDF has in there, they're degrading and destroying another chunk of Hamas's capabilities, tunnels, weapons, and also fighters who they still are seeing
Starting point is 00:43:02 and killing when they see them. One thing we have to remember that we're still talking about just one half of the Gaza Strip. It's the bigger half. It's the center. It's the capital. It's where Hamas had its main headquarters. But the question will be once this window of opportunity
Starting point is 00:43:24 or window of legitimacy as some Israeli officials have called it, that they're getting from the Biden administration and from other Western allies as well, once that window closes, then the question will be, okay, what about the South? And it's quite
Starting point is 00:43:39 clear now that Israel won't be able to operate in this way in the South of the Gaza Strip. There'll have to be some different type of more mobile, less boots on the ground operations. But both the fact that there are now twice the number of people there, there are over 2 million people in this small area of the south, and there'll be less support from the Biden administration for another type of heavy firepower. Ground operation will mean that the next stage of this war in the south of Gaza will be very different. I can't predict at this point what it'll look like.
Starting point is 00:44:16 And they'll also have to be at the same time. Israel will have to also cooperate with some kind of aid relief operations there that winter's been as already has just begun in this part of the world you've got two million people there who need shelter need food and water and what's coming in through egypt is is very far from sufficient and it can't really be sufficient because that part of egypt egypt's a dysfunctional country northern syria which which is the part of Egypt with borders with Gaza Strip, is one of the most chaotic areas of Egypt. Mounting a serious relief operation through northern Sinai is almost impossible. And Israel, which has so far since
Starting point is 00:44:56 October 7th said, we are not going to allow supplies to go into Gaza from our territory. It's going to have to make some concessions on that front as well. Anshul, we will leave it there. Thank you for this. This is extremely helpful. It's a perspective we haven't had on this podcast. So hopefully you were kind enough to call me back, and hopefully we can rope you into another conversation soon.
Starting point is 00:45:25 But we will be very efficient with your time. Hopefully we'll be able to talk about the war having ended and some clear idea of what's next next time. Let's do that next time, from your lips to Hashem's ears. Maybe Moshiach will come, who knows. Okay, I hope you'll stay safe. Thank you, Dan. will come who knows okay i'll just stay safe thank you dan ענן סמיך בירוחן, ממצמץ בשפתיו יהודה מסתכל בשעון ומפלבל בעיניו נשרד בצפון ארציאלי בעם יועץ אחר הצהריים ובכות העולם מתרוצץ
Starting point is 00:46:19 יוחד סנזם אומר תביא לנו קפה יוחד סנסן אומר שתיקה כללית חמישה אנשים מתוחים הדלת נפתחת וירדנה כולה חיוכים השחור ליהודה, התן לארציאלי הבן ירדנה יוצאת, עזרה לא מפסיק לאשם הנה כיכן מתחלפת שעה בשעה זקן הציאלי יודע שהוא לא טעה נוטף זה פעם ומראים
Starting point is 00:47:15 בקולו על הבן משיח לא בא משיח גם לא מתלפן בעמון הכניסה מנסה את תבשת המזגן מקביצת ירוחם לדלת חותך באשן ארצי אלי הבן מסתכל על אביב מהצד ובפתח מתגלה שוטר עם הקובה ביד ויודה אומר מה שבטח קרה אומר לו ירוחם סתם לא שולחים משטרה אומר הש ירוחם, סתם לא שולחים משטרם
Starting point is 00:48:05 אומר השוטר, הייתה טעונה ולכן המשיח לא בא המשיח גם לא מתלסל טעונה למי שואל, אבסי אלי הבן טעונה למדינה עונה שוטר המסכן הבורסה נפלה, אנשים קופסים מהגג גם משיח קפץ והודיעו שהוא נהרג הכל עבוד, בוחר עזרה דהן הקבלן משיח בשמיים ואנחנו בלי הכסף כאן
Starting point is 00:48:58 וידנה היפה ממלמלת זה לא ייתכן משיח לא יבוא משיח גם לא יתלפן דצמבר אמר זעקו כותרות ביתון ושר האוצר נתן במבט ראיון הציבור נטומטם ולכן הציבור משלם מה שבא בקלות ואודה הקלות ייעלם
Starting point is 00:49:40 האזרח הקטן נאלץ לשלם בגדול ואותי מעניין את ירדנה יותר מהכל הוא הולך למילואים וסופר את הכסף שאין ומשיח לא בא, משיח גם לא מטלפל, כן כן ומשיח גם לא מטלפל, משיח לא בא, הוא לא בא משיח גם לא מתלפן כן, כן
Starting point is 00:50:38 משיח גם לא מתלפן Shabbat Shalom Yes, you are not disappointed either.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.