Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Growing tensions between Hamas Leaders — with Dr. Matt Levitt

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

What do Israelis know about the political tensions within Hamas’s leadership? About their decision-makers, their motives, their processes, and Hamas’s internal disagreements and rivalries? Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Ehud Yaari of Israel’s Channel 12 news set out to try to answer these questions. Are tensions heating up between Hamas’s internal and and external leaders? Dr. Matthew Levitt. Matt is the director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury, he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse and to deny terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other rogue actors the ability to finance threats to U.S. national security. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. Previously, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counterterrorism operations, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. He is the author of several books and monographs, including Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press, 2006), and Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). He is the host of the podcast series, Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule. Washington Institute for Near East Policy paper discussed in this episode: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/growing-internal-tensions-between-hamas-leaders

Haniyeh is the overall secretary general of the group, but Senoir was the guy running Gaza. Gaza is where the militants were. Gaza is where the money was coming into. Gaza, in fact, was the money machine by virtue of taxing and extorting and running the border customs and all that. And so ultimately, Haniyeh left Gaza and really became part of the outside leadership. And now, post-October 7th, Hani and some of his guys are trying to get involved in the morning after conversations. He's even had a few people start meeting with various representatives of the PLO and Fatah to talk about what could happen afterwards. When Sinoir found out about this, he apparently went crazy. You guys on the outside don't get

to negotiate what my situation will be here. It is Monday, January 8th at 11 p.m. in New York City. It is 6 a.m. on Tuesday, January 9th in Israel, as Israelis are getting ready to start their day. Before we get to today's conversation, one housekeeping note, as many of you have let me know either directly or via social media, we are well aware that Haviv, Rettiguer, and I did not release our weekly check-in from Jerusalem on Monday morning. We actually recorded a conversation in which we wanted to focus on the changing political trends in Israel post-October 7th. Some of those trends were already in place among certain demographics and certain groups and voting behaviors and electoral interests before October 7th, but they have been accelerated post-October 7th. And we thought that would be an interesting

conversation talking about the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, the Israeli Arabs, the Mizrahi base of the Likud party, the Ashkenazi elite of Likud, and the New Left, which is some version actually of the old Mapai. In any event, we thought this would be an interesting conversation. It was very interesting for us, except we dove way too deep and way too narrow. And we really kind of geeked out on a lot of details that would probably be not that interesting to our audience. So we shelved the episode. We may repurpose it in a later conversation. We will get

back to these themes at some point, but we'll have the conversation in a different way. That plus the fact that Haviv's son was Bar Mitzvahed this past Shabbat, Mazel Tov to Haviv's entire family. And so for all those reasons, we decided to hold off. Haviv will be back. Until then, we are dropping a different episode today, equally as timely as our check-ins with Haviv Red Degour. But now on to today's topic, I want to focus on the opacity of the Hamas leadership class, the leaders of Hamas, how they make decisions, how they disagree, what are the various factions and rivalries. You see, in most democratic political systems, which Hamas is not, but in most democratic political systems, like Israel's, for example, political tensions are exposed to

the public and, as an extension, to the enemy. It's a reality, one among many, that democracies just have to contend with all the time, but especially in wartime when it gets really complicated and it can be a vulnerability. It's well known, for example, that Yehiya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was an avid consumer, both when he was in prison and after prison, of Israeli political news. He would read it in Hebrew so he could better understand Israeli decision makers, their motives, their processes, and their internal disagreements and rivalries. But what do Israelis or Americans know about the political tensions within Hamas's leadership, about their decision makers, about their motives, about their processes, and about Hamas's internal disagreements and political rivalries. Well, Matt Levitt of the Washington

Institute for Near East Policy, who's been on this podcast before, and Ahuja Ari, a veteran Israeli analyst of Israel's Channel 12 News, set out to try to answer these questions about Hamas, trying to get to the core question of whether tensions are heating up between Hamas's internal and external leaders, meaning the Hamas leadership in Gaza and those external to Gaza, those seeming to run satellite offices around the Middle East. Dr. Matt Levitt, as I mentioned, is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he's the director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury,

he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. Department of Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury, he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse from terrorist organizations and to deny terrorists and weapons proliferators and other rogue actors the ability to finance their threats to U.S. national security. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor to the Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security. And previously, Matt was a counterterrorism advisor to the Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security. And previously, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he focused on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle East terrorist groups. He's the author of several books and monographs, including Hamas, Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, and then also Hezbollah,

the Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God. He's the host of an excellent podcast series that I recommend called Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule. We'll put the link to the podcast in the show notes. Matt Levitt on growing tensions between Hamas's leaders. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast Dr. Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has appeared on this podcast a couple times. Always like to check in with him on developments as they relate to Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, but also now I want to talk to him about a paper he recently published on Hamas. Matt, thanks for being here. Dan, thanks for having me.

I want to talk about Hamas in a moment, which is what I originally brought you on to talk about, but given events and how fast moving they are right now in Israel, it sounds like we're still learning details, but it sounds like it's been a pretty tough day for the IDF. Something close to a mass casualty event or series of events in Gaza. We'll be learning more details about that. On the same day that the news came out that Israel had taken out or someone had taken out, Wissam al-Tawil, a senior Hezbollah operative who was apparently close to Soleimani, the former leader of the IRGC, the Quds Force from Iran, who was killed several years ago, and was a major player in this sort of Iran, Hezbollah,

and Hamas access. Matt, what can you tell us about Al-Tawil and what you interpret from events surrounding his death? So it's significant that the Israelis have targeted a senior Radwan commander. Radwan is Hezbollah's special forces. We've heard a lot about Hamas's Nukbah, which carried out October 7th. Nukbah is fashioned on Hezbollah's Radwan forces, and they're much smaller. Radwan is larger, far more capable. And Al-Tawil is believed to be a senior commander of the Radwan forces. Pictures are already circulating on social media of him with the late Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani, with the late Hezbollah commanders Imad Mugnia and Mustafa Badr-Edim. There are reports even that he may be a relative, perhaps a brother-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah himself.

This was not a nobody. And taking him out is significant. So before the war, the red lines between Israel and Hezbollah came down to so long as Israel didn't carry out attacks in Lebanon or targeted and killed Hezbollah operatives, Hezbollah wouldn't necessarily retaliate. That's all out the window now. Israeli targeted attacks, taking out specific individuals, in part to message to Hezbollah and Iran that while you don't want a full scale war, we understand that you'd love the fighting to go on at the level that it's going on at now for a long time. And that's not OK with us, Israel. And we're going to exact a cost. So put this in perspective. First, the Israelis, purportedly, the Israelis took out the Quds Force most senior general general in Syria, Razi Mousavi, right? Then they took out the number two secretary general, deputy secretary general of Hamas in Beirut, in the Dahia Hezbollah

stronghold, Salah al-Ruri. Just to be clear, the added significances of that hit is what you just said, which is the area just near or outside of Beirut where the operation against al-Awri took place was especially surprising because there's a scenario under which al-Awri may have thought he was safe there because Israel would never strike such an important elite Hezbollah stronghold for fear of escalating. And that may be why he was hanging out there and holding meetings there. So that was like a double shock that he was killed in the Daria area. That's exactly right. This is Hezbollah headquarters, if you will, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. But then today you have actually two individuals who were targeted. One, as we've discussed, as we sum up to will, the Hezbollah commander. But now I understand a Hamas operative in Syria who was responsible for overseeing Hamas rocket attacks from Syria into Israel was also taken out. And this is part of

both Hezbollah and now Hamas's effort to try and expand the battlefront, not only from Lebanon across the blue line into Israel, but also now from Syria into Israel. Sometimes these operations are just opportunistic, meaning the IDF gets intelligence about the whereabouts of someone who they may want to target at some point. And it's sort of like a now or never scenario. So strike now. And it just so happens that another one of those avails itself the following day and another one two days after that. And so it sometimes is easy to stitch together in one's mind, oh, they did al-Urri last week, and they did al-Tawil today, and they did the Harsha in Syria, and then they did, and it's all some pattern that has some strategic design, when in reality, and like a messaging point, a broader messaging point,

as you articulated, in another world, they're just getting intel about where their whereabouts, and it's now or never, and it just so happens that each of these are a day or two apart. Look, there is an element of there being targets of opportunity, as you've described it, no question. But there is also an element of strategic decision. It's not the case that every time you get information about someone who could be a target for one of these attacks, that you necessarily take the shot. There are many, many cases we now know about where Israelis had shots, decided not to take them. It's also an element of who's being targeted. The fact that Quds Force General Razim Usavi is targeted in Syria, that is a strategic

decision. The fact that Salah al-Ruri is taken out, that's a strategic decision. I can't say the same necessarily for this Hamas rocketeer in Syria, but Wissam al-Tawil, that also appears to be something more significant. It wasn't like he was in a house that happened to get hit. His automobile was hit. So it does seem to me that there is an element here of Israel saying, we are no longer going to allow the people who are targeting us daily to do that. We're not going to ratchet up with a full-scale war and start bombing bridges and taking this to civilians. But in the most

targeted way possible, when we can, we are going to eliminate those people who are most responsible for targeting us and our civilians every day. And all these issues are obviously intertwined, but I want to transition to what I originally wanted to talk to you about today, which was this paper that you and Ehud Yari from Channel 12 in Israel have published, which is a paper on the ties, growing tensions or weakening ties between Hamas's leaders and its various factions. And the reason I wanted to spend some time, I read the paper, I was struck by it, which is why I reached out. Very little is known to the public, both in Israel and over here in the United States, about the inner workings of Hamas's leadership, except at a very superficial level. We know there's a political wing, we know

there's a military wing, but then it's confusing because there's the Hamas inside Gaza, and then there's the kind of global Hamas. And this is especially complicated during the war, because when you hear there's these negotiations over release of hostages, who are the negotiations with? Are they with Hamas players around the world in the region, or is it Yechia Sinwar and Mohamed Def inside Gaza, who are deep in some tunnel underneath Gaza that are conducting these negotiations? Or is it all of the above? And in Israel, the slightest tensions in the war cabinet are endlessly debated in the press in Israel. And just in recent days, there was a contentious security cabinet meeting with the chief of staff of the army. And like, within minutes of the conclusion of the meeting,

there was just endless leaks. And every little disagreement between Gallant and Netanyahu, or between Netanyahu and Gantz, and every little detail just gets endlessly reported and analyzed. And we have virtually no information about how the decision makers who are running the war that was launched in Israel on October 7th are making decisions now. So before getting into the substance of the paper, I just want to get a sense from you. How does one do the reporting that you did for this paper? Like, how did you manage? How did you and Ehud Yari manage to gather all the information to reach the conclusion that tensions between Hamas leaders are rising?

So first of all, one of the reasons I love this podcast so much is because you're reading what everybody's doing and get your finger on the pulse. So thank you for noticing this paper. Trying to understand the inner workings of Hamas is very difficult. It's why so few people understand it. And the way Ehud and I went about this is by talking to lots and lots of people who are in positions to know and who understand this and have watched this for a long time. And then trying to bring all that information together and synthesize it because not everybody is in complete agreement, right? Some person will understand things slightly differently than other people. And what we synthesize this down to is that, and it shouldn't surprise that within an organization, any organization, there are going to be disagreements between different leaders and different factions. We talked about how in the paper, this has been the case long before

October 7th. But after October 7th, this has really become a significant issue between the different parts of the Hamas leadership. So let me break down those concentric circles for you for one second, because it's not just a question of the leadership internal to the Palestinian territories and external. It's a lot more complicated now. First of all, you've always had under the overall Politburo, you've had Shura or consultative councils, Shura councils in at least four locations. One in the Gaza Strip, one in the West Bank, one the external leadership in its various locations, and the final one, and this may surprise people, in Israeli prisons. And that actually is where Yehia Sinwar became the important person he was. He was an enforcer. He was jailed because he killed fellow Palestinians that he believed had collaborated with Israel. He wasn't jailed for killing Israelis, actually. Yehia Sinwar was jailed for killing Palestinians. And there's even a power structure in Israeli prisons, right? There's like a formal elected body. Exactly. Yeah. One of the four Shura

councils that, yes, has elections is in the prisons. And Yiddish Sanwar became the head of that separately at a different time. So did Salah al-Aruri. And on top of that now, you have a situation where there are two factions within the external leadership, in part because of the constant moving around. They were all in Damascus for many years. And then there was the Syrian civil war. And one faction in the external leadership said, we should stick with Iran, with Hezbollah and with Assad. And others said, no, we, unlike them, we are a Sunni organization. Assad is butchering fellow Sunnis. This is very uncomfortable for us. We should try and convince the Gulf monarchies to be more supportive of us

and move away a little bit from Iran. That was under Khaled Mishal. He was the secretary general at the time. He lost that fight. He's no longer the secretary general. He's still a senior official, kind of their foreign minister, if you will. But now they have people not in Damascus, but in Doha, Qatar, in Beirut, Lebanon, in Istanbul, Turkey, and some other places. They're dispersed and they are at least in these two factions. Finally, the most important thing today is, while they clearly had some general knowledge that an October 7th type of thing was going to happen and that it was going to be big, they didn't know when it was going to happen. And they didn't realize how big it was going to be.

They were not consulted. They were caught by surprise. And now they're trying to pick up the pieces. But the only guy who's in a position to make things happen, and by things I mean a temporary ceasefire, a full ceasefire, a prisoner release, leasing hostages, killing hostages. That's not Ismail Haniya in Qatar or Musa Boumarzouk or Khaled Mishal or Khalal Hayya, any of those guys. It's only Yehia Sinwar and Mohammed Daif and Marwan Issa, the heads of the Qassan brigades, all somewhere in a bunker in a tunnel in Gaza. And so it's not always clear when the head of the CIA and the head of the Mossad fly

off to Qatar and they speak indirectly through the Qataris to Hamas officials, if those Hamas officials can actually deliver. So does Sinwar, who's in Gaza, view those external players in Doha and Istanbul and Beirut and wherever else? Sounds like Syria to some degree. Does he view them as resources that augment his own assets or just a bunch of guys who are mucking around and meddling and representing their capacity to deliver on things that they can't deliver on because to your point only he can deliver on them and they're sort of in the way and stoking confusion not intentionally stoking confusion but they just they can't execute on whatever they're because i often wonder all these people are negotiating with these actors in these various capitals, these actors who are affiliated in some way with Hamas.

But it's not clear to me exactly how those actors can deliver on anything if Senwar is the sole decision maker and he's in Gaza. Exactly. So there are two things here. One, Senwar is the decision maker because de facto he's the one in Gaza. He's running this war, right? The guys off in Qatar can say what they want, but they're not running the war. The second is that even prior to the war, it used to be that the overall heads of Hamas were outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That started after the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, and then his successor,

Abdelaziz al-Rantisi, were assassinated. And they decided it would be safer to be outside. Then SINWAR actually partnered with HANIA and with ARURI, and they successfully kind of moved the center of gravity back to Gaza, which they could do because after 2007, they were running the Gaza Strip. HANIA started losing out to SINWAR, however. HANIA is the overall secretary general of the group, but SINWAR was the guy Strip. Haniyeh started losing out to Senouar, however. Haniyeh is the overall secretary general of the group, but Senouar was the guy running Gaza. Gaza is where the militants

were. Gaza is where the money was coming into. Gaza, in fact, was the money machine by virtue of taxing and extorting and running the border customs and all that. And so ultimately, Haniyeh left Gaza and really became part of the outside leadership. And now, post-October so ultimately, Haniyeh left Gaza and really became part of the outside leadership. And now, post-October 7th, Haniyeh and some of his guys are trying to get involved in the morning after conversations. He's even had a few people, one of them reportedly was Salah al-Ruri, start meeting with various representatives of the PLO and opposition factions of Fatah to talk about what could happen afterwards. When Senoir found out about this, he apparently went crazy, said this is outrageous,

demanded that all of contact with PLO and dissident Fatah entities end. You guys on the outside don't get to negotiate what my situation will be here. I think there's also an ideological component here. Senoir is extremely, extremely, extremely hardline. He sees himself, multiple people have said, he sees himself as a kind of Salah ad-Din figure. And setbacks in the war, losing North Gaza, just a setback in the war on the road to ultimate victory. This kind of idea of mukawama, patience, patience of the resistance. Ultimately, it will happen. And whereas the people outside are kind of focused on the moment and seeing Hamas losing a lot, all of the military industrial complex they built over 25

years, all of the tunnels, at least 8,000 fighters, Hamas has lost a lot. So the actors, the Hamas-affiliated actors outside of Gaza, they were, it sounds like they were out of the loop on the planning and the execution and the timing and the scale, that's certainly what you write in the paper, of the October 7th massacre. Was that primarily driven by operational security? They didn't want it to leak out. Many of these actors, leaders of Hamas or affiliations of Hamas are in capitals of sovereign governments that have robust intelligence capabilities that could be spying on these Hamas-affiliated figures and learn things. Was it Mohamed Def and Yechia Sinwar saying, this is our project, we're in charge, and we're not sharing any of the decision-making or any of the glory with these outside actors? I don't think we can fully answer that question. There is no doubt that there was a huge operational security component to this. It's amazing that they were able to carry out what they did. They had very disciplined operational security internally within Hamas, even in the

Gaza Strip. So it doesn't surprise that they didn't share this information with people farther afield. I can't say if this was also something political, but it may well have been because they did not want to be constrained. They had their own ideas. Mohamed Deif, Marwan Issa, Sinoir and his brother as to how October 7th should go. You said that Yehia Sinoir has like a Salah ad-Din complex. He's a larger figure than himself,

you know, potentially even larger than Hamas, larger than the resistance. Do these other figures outside of Gaza operating in these other countries? Because it sounds the way you're describing them, they have much more practical concerns. They are focused on the survival of Hamas. They are more focused on, and this is going to sound weird to say, but it's kind of the quasi-normalization of Hamas as an actor in international affairs in the Middle East, which if that's accurate, that sounds like much

different than what Senoir is fashioning for himself in terms of a mission and an ambition. Yeah, I wouldn't want anybody to take away that this means that those guys are like moderates and Senoir is the radical. The spectrum is very, very narrow. They're quite happy with October 7th. The question for them is, how do you play the day after October 7th? And Senoir seems to be willing to fight until he can't anymore. And they are trying to figure out how to ease out of a situation in which they almost certainly, Hamas, are going to be dislodged from their governance project in the Gaza Strip. And that is a difference of tactics more than overall strategy. Strategically, they are all committed to the idea, from their perspective, prerogative of

destroying Israel and creating an Islamist Palestinian state in its place. What about Iran and Hezbollah's leadership? It seems that they have not met Sinwar's expectations to join the war, to join the resistance. Did he misjudge that? Was it a huge gap? Was it a huge error by him to misjudge this? Or was it reasonable for him to assume that they would join and then something changed that has resulted in them at least not willing to join the fight yet? You know, we've yet to find that person who was the fly on the wall in these meetings to answer definitively. Did someone misinterpret or did someone make an assumption?

I've seen people, heard people say that Salah al-Aruri, who was the primary interlocutor with Hezbollah in Iran, who met with Hassan Nasrallah on October 7th, that maybe he oversold to Sinwar and others what Hezbollah said they would or wouldn't do. In Nasrallah's first big speech after October 7th, which many of us were kind of on eggshells waiting to see what Hezbollah was going to do, he made it very, very clear that Hezbollah had no interest in really expanding the war, but that they were very interested in taking advantage of the opportunity to hold severe clashes with Israel on a daily basis. They've been wanting

to reassert their resistance credentials against Israel ever since they turned away from northern Israel and put all their forces fighting in Syria for the past few years. And they were able here to say, look, we're drawing Israeli forces away from the south. We're forcing Israelis to evacuate the north. Hezbollah has had a very serious impact. But I think it's equally clear that neither Iran nor Hezbollah want right now to go all in on a war because of the political economic situation in Lebanon. Hezbollah cares about its position in Lebanon and almost nobody but the most hardline Hezbollah guys economic situation in Lebanon, Hezbollah cares about its position in Lebanon, and almost nobody but the most hardline Hezbollah guys want war in Lebanon right now. Iran, from

its part, is, while we're all focused on this war, is ratcheting up its nuclear program. And it sees Hezbollah's rockets as its most effective way of deterring Israel or anybody else from attacking that program. And if they do, they see Hezbollah rockets as its most effective ability to have a second strike capability against Israel. So there are a lot of issues at play here. It doesn't mean that there can't be miscalculation. Things can get out of hand. Hezbollah will respond to the assassination of Tawil. Hezbollah said that the 60-something rockets it claimed it fired at an Israeli surveillance facility on a mountaintop in the north was just the first part of their response to the assassination of Salah al-Awri in their Beirut stronghold. Depending on how those

retaliations, Hezbollah retaliations go, what they hit, that could escalate things. But I think that it's still the case that Hezbollah wants this day in, day out fight to continue as long as possible without going into war. And what Israel is doing with this string of assassinations is saying that won't be tolerated because the Israelis want to be able to send their population that's been evacuated from the north back home. I get this question a lot, and we address this on a conversation we had early on post-October 7th. But I just want to revisit. It's a little bit of a detour. But I just think it's important to just provide a very brief explainer on in order to understand all the various moving pieces that we're referring to in this conversation.

Can you explain the role of Hezbollah in Lebanon? Lebanon is a sovereign country, and yet there is a half-working government, and then there's this organization like Hezbollah that in many respects is like Hamas in Gaza, although Hamas in Gaza is kind of like the only show in town in Gaza, whereas Hezbollah is not the only show in town in Lebanon, but yet it functions like a government. So I flip it. I think that Hamas wants to be able to have in Gaza and the West Bank what Hezbollah has in Lebanon. Let me explain. Hamas, since 2007, was the governing entity. They ran the show in

Gaza. They didn't like that. It restrained them from being able to attack Israel. What they want is the Hezbollah model. What is the Hezbollah model? The Hezbollah model is when you are part of the government. You have ministers in the government. You have parliamentarians in the parliament. But you are also your own independent organization apart from the government. These ministers, these parliamentarians, they listen to what the government is saying, but they take their marching orders from Hassan Nasrallah, who's not elected. And Hezbollah maintains and remains, it maintains its weapons and remains the single most powerful, well-armed, well-trained military force in Lebanon, more so than the Lebanese armed forces. And Hamas would love to have that in the Palestinian context.

So in other words, when Hezbollah ends up on its own or through the government providing services to people, they get credit for that. They're even able within government to direct government resources to some of their constituents. But if they don't provide a service or if they don't provide enough of a service, that's not them. That's the government's responsibility. They do what they do. They get credit for it. Whatever isn't done, it's not on them because they're not the government. And there's no accountability. And Hamas, I think, has looked north and said, you know what? Hezbollah's got it right. We're dealing with collecting garbage and paying teachers salaries here instead of fighting Israel.

And I think that October 7th was their effort to just break out of that box. What is then the strategic value of Hamas having all these political operations around the world? Like, in other words, if Hamas wants the Hezbollah model, why does it need all these actors sitting in capitals around the world doing what? Oh, it's tremendously advantageous for them. First of all, it makes their leadership more diffuse. It's more difficult to target them because the Israelis have such robust capabilities and because on and off, better or worse, but throughout the

Oslo Accords, Palestinian authority has engaged in security cooperation with Israel and made Hamas's life difficult. Because of that, Hamas in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip has always had a little bit harder a time, certainly before Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip, than Hezbollah did in Lebanon, where there was no local authority that was able to kind of go after them on a daily basis. But the second thing is that by having these people abroad, they were able to solicit donations from people around the world. Those donations don't have to go straight in to the Gaza Strip. They can come into other places. There could be several rounds of money laundering. You can send in the support maybe not by cash, but by purchasing wheat or sugar or other staples that no one questions because there are civilians in the Gaza Strip who need to get by.

So it's trade-based money laundering schemes. You'd have people who could liaise with Iran over years for things like weapons shipments. When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, I saw a Hamas weapons display that the IDF has on a base of weapons Hamas used, taken off the bodies of Hamas operatives from October 7th. Almost all the Kalashnikovs, almost all the RPGs are very old. Still working, I'm told, but very old. And the assumption is that those didn't come in in recent years. Those came in on weapons smuggling ships over years past. Some of those ships, the Korean A, the class C, others, the Israelis stopped. The Israelis will be the first to tell you we probably didn't stop all the ships. Obviously, they were able to smuggle in stuff under the border from Egypt, too, which is something the Israelis are pressing the Egyptians on quite heavily right now. But those people abroad were in positions to facilitate all of this

assistance, which I think actually was the secret sauce for Hamas. But now isn't it a liability for the countries in which they're operating, seeing back to the beginning of our conversation, since it seems now that Israel is less reticent to take out Hamas leadership wherever they may be? So it's not the same in every place. The Lebanese government doesn't run Lebanon. Taking out a Hamas leader in Beirut in the Hezbollah stronghold, the Lebanese government protests, but it's not actually something against the government of Lebanon. If Israel were to do something in Qatar or in Turkey, that would ratchet things up and be more sensitive. Yes, I think some of the locations in which Hamas has embedded itself, I think Hamas sees

as somewhat of a protection. I think it's also a question once the dust settles, however long that takes, as to whether or not they're going to be as welcome in some of these capitals. Erdogan has said Hamas is great and October 7th wasn't an act of terrorism. He's gone beyond the pale. But the Qataris have gone public to the Associated Press and others and said publicly, we recognize that we're probably going to have to revisit who, if any, Hamas leaders stay in Doha after all this. Right now, everybody wants them here so we can negotiate over the hostages. I think there are going to be opportunities to put significant pressure on Hamas internationally when this is all done. Don't open up cases against Hamas because Hamas killed, wounded or kidnapped their citizens. that the IDF and SINWAR knows there's no way this can end without SINWAR dead or in at least alive in Israel's hands? I think that that is increasingly likely, but I do not discount

the potential for some type of negotiated outcome that is different. It's less likely, I grant you, but I could see, maybe not with Sinoir, maybe for others, a situation where Israel really wants the fighting to end. The last thing is getting Sinoir and someone proposes a Beirut style, Arafat got in the boat, went to Tunis situation. I don't think that's likely. I don't think that Senwar would go for it. Can you just describe that just for our listeners? So, you know, Arafat was embedded in and the PLO was embedded in Lebanon for many, many years, creating a state within the state. And ultimately, he was allowed to get in a boat and go to Tunis. And the Palestinian Liberation Organization moved there, set up its shop there. And the Lebanon War, when we talk about the first Lebanon War in the early 80s,

it was in part to deal with the Fatah PLO base of operations in Lebanon. Exactly. And we mentioned earlier how, you know, you don't take the shot every time you have it. So one of those shots that is now famous as a picture of Arafat in the scope of an Israeli rifle getting on the boat, and they chose not to take it. So, you know, there is a strategic element to the decision to carry out a targeted assassination, let alone a string of them. And another scenario, could you imagine Hamas rank and file or fighters or Hamas leadership just below the level or two levels below the level of Sinoir deciding to take him on and try to overthrow him or kill him or liberate their fates from his? are committed to their ideology. Senouar reportedly has a very strong following of his people within Gaza. I think that you could have lower level foot soldiers who will be willing to lay down arms

and mold back into the population, maybe to then, you know, retry and reorganize in small cells, which would be, you know, 180 degrees from what Hamas was on October 6th. But I doubt that Senouar faces a threat to life from his own. And then just, I guess I'd close, Matt, by asking you, from Israel's standpoint, it had the, you know, the concepcia, the concept of how it was learning to operate with some kind of detente, learning to live with Hamas having some kind of operational role in partially governing Gaza, and just there'd be these skirmishes every couple years, and they would, you know, modellon is the term the IDF would use, and then things would kind of revert

back to quiet, and just Hamas would be there. And Hezbollah was becoming increasingly of, you know, a nuisance just in terms of the scale of the threat that it posed by the number of fighters that it trained, by the arsenal it had. But again, Israel could kind of learn how to live with it. My question is, it sounds like you're saying those days are more or less over for Israel on all fronts, A. And then B, there's a big U.S. diplomatic engagement right now trying to reach some kind of diplomatic accommodation, the days of living with a gun to our head are over.

That is true for the south. It is true for the north. What could be negotiated are two things, and there are two diplomatic tracks that are ongoing right now. The smaller of the two is some type of unofficial disengagement. Israel is saying publicly they want Hezbollah to deploy north of the Latani River as it is required to under UN Security Council Resolution 1701. But the reality, I think, is that Israel would be satisfied with Hezbollah forces deploying nine to 10 kilometers from the blue line. And the reason nine to 10 kilometers is because that is the outside range of the newer model of the KORNA anti-tank guided missiles that they have been

firing into Israel on a daily basis. The second more complicated, less likely, but not in the realm of impossible is an effort to negotiate border demarcation. Several people have interpreted Nasrallah's latest speech as saying, look, we can talk about all kinds of things, but not while we're fighting as kind of hanging out a carrot about border negotiations. That is not impossible. Hezbollah supported at the end of the day, the Israel-Lebanon maritime border demarcation. And I don't think a demarcated border would stop Hezbollah from attacking across it when it wanted to. Both of those, border demarcation and an unofficial agreement to redeploy further away from the border in some way that Hezbollah can save face, neither is impossible. The latter is going to happen one way or the other.

The Israelis have made it clear. We can do this diplomatically or we can push you out. Last question. I know I said that was the last question. We've touched on this, but I just want to come at it very clearly. What do you think Sinwar had in mind in terms of the Israeli response to October 7th? And how does it measure up to what you believe he's experiencing right now? That's an excellent and ultimately not entirely answerable question. I do think that

Hamas experienced catastrophic success on October 7th. If you go through the documents found on the bodies of Hamas operatives, it's clear that they had kind of outside ambitions of maybe even sending some of their people all the way into the West Bank to connect with Hamas people in Hebron. That was like a pipe dream, a hope. I don't think they thought they'd kill as many people as they did. I don't think they thought as many of their people would make it through the barrier as they did. I don't think they thought they'd kidnap as many people as they did. So it's hard to say what he thought, except I think it is impossible but to conclude that the goal was to get Israel to respond and to come in on the ground so that Hamas could use its tunnels and its weapons

to pop out and strike at the IDF and pop back in. And the IDF hasn't allowed them to do that. They have also spent the time. Hamas spent time developing weapons and tunnels. Israel spent time developing ways to identify and deal with tunnels and identify rocketeers, etc. And until today, Israel hasn't had a single day with significant losses. Today, there appear to have been a few events. And I think that is probably the biggest surprise to Senoir. All right, Matt, we will leave it there. Thank you, as always, for the quick check-in. We look forward to having you back, typically when there's unfortunately not good news, or at least eventful news. I was just going to say, can you have me back sometime to talk about the good stuff? There's good stuff. Give me a preview of the good stuff.

Look, the fact is that with several hundred thousand people deployed and several hundred thousand people evacuated, Israeli society has not collapsed. The high tech sector has not collapsed. Investors are not pulling out. People understand that Israel is here to stay. The Abraham Acc sector has not collapsed. Investors are not pulling out. People understand that Israel is here to stay. The Abraham Accords have not collapsed. If you go and talk to countries in the region quietly and suggest, hey, we could use some help on this issue regarding Hamas, if you don't ask publicly, you'll probably get a yes. I think that if you are Saudi Arabia and you look at this and you realize, which I think they do, that one of the precipitant events for October 7th was Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian concern that the Abraham Accords could grow into something more and the Saudis could normalize. Certainly in the moment, it's now as uncomfortable. But your takeaway is, no, damn, we need to normalize. We need to get our counter cyber capabilities together. We need to

get our air defense capabilities together. They look at the Emirati, Israeli counter missile, counter drone, counter cyber cooperation, and they're jealous. At the end of the day, what's going to happen is further integration of Israel into the region. Not tomorrow, not naive, but people understand Israel's here to stay. And I think they understand there's a consequence to attacking the country. There was a ceasefire on October 6th. Israel didn't violate it. I will just put an exclamation point on that.

I'm struck by conversations I've had with current Abraham Accord countries, or let's just call them potentially future Abraham Accord countries, and I get no sense from any of them that there's a pullback or considering a withdrawal from the Abraham Accords. It's not to say it's full steam ahead. It's just nothing's really changed. Yes, some of these countries have had to issue statements that are critical of Israel. But that's peace. Yeah. You don't have to like my leadership. I don't have to like yours. But fundamentally, we are at peace. All right. We will leave it there. Thank you, Matt. Be well, Dan. That's our show for today. To keep up with Matt Levitt, you can find him at the Washington Institute at Wash Institute on X, or you can find him directly at Levitt with two Ts underscore Matt. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.