Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Is Gantz headed for the exit? with Anshel Pfeffer

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

On Wednesday, Benny Gantz announced he was calling for new elections to take place in September. What is the significance of this announcement? Is it a sharp turn for Israel’s Government? What are t...he implications for the war and the War Cabinet? What does it mean for the protest movement? Anshel Pfeffer — who has covered Israeli politics, Israeli national security, and global affairs for over two decades — joins our conversation very late at night in Jerusalem. 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.”

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 For Gantz, the question here is a question of timing. Gantz himself is not that powerful. He's only got eight Knesset members. But if he times it right, and if he frames it right, that moment in which he decides to leave could be pivotal. It could also be a trigger for much bigger protests as well. He's not doing that much good by remaining, and the damage of this terrible government is bigger.
Starting point is 00:00:37 It is just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 3rd in New York City. It is just before midnight in Israel as Israelis get ready to turn to April 4th. When I spoke with Anshul Pfeffer, who has covered Israeli politics and Israeli national security and global affairs for over two decades for Haaretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers, and he's also the Israel correspondent for The Economist. He's also the author of the book, Bibi, The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu. Anshul Pfeffer joins us from Jerusalem where he tries to answer the question, is Benny Gantz headed for the exit? This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my longtime friend Anshul Pfeffer from Haaretz, who joins me from Jerusalem. I wanted to get
Starting point is 00:01:26 a hold of Anshul at the last minute before his day completely winds down in Israel to find out how to make sense of today's events with Benny Gantz calling for the first time since he's joined this emergency cabinet for elections, albeit not till September. Anshul, what actually happened today and why did it happen? Benny Gantz called a press conference this evening, relatively short notice, and came out with a bunch of messages which I think were more as expected, that he was against the Knesset going on recess and he was against the various alleged acts of violence in in some demos last night in jerusalem and violence in response to the demonstrations there's been some claims that there was a bit of rowdiness in the demonstrations against the government on until it was tuesday
Starting point is 00:02:18 night and um you know i think it was very much exaggerated and certainly was hyped up by the pro-Netanyahu smear campaign, just to try, you know, which brands anything which challenges his leadership as being divisive and helping Hamas and so on, all kinds of really nasty stuff that they do, and accusing everybody else of playing politics at war, while of course this was something which would never even occur to our prime minister who would never do such a thing. So Gantz came out with his statement, and he said towards the end that also there needs to be
Starting point is 00:02:54 a renewal of trust of the nation and its leaders, and therefore the nation should be allowed to once again choose its leaders, and therefore early elections. He suggested the date of September. You know, Gantz has been in this dilemma for a few months now. On one hand, according to the polls, he's the person who is most likely to benefit from an election now
Starting point is 00:03:20 because he's doing well. People say that they'll vote for his party. But at the same time, many people are in favor of Gantt because he's not rushing to hold the election, because he's bringing this very vague idea of some kind of unity at wartime. He personifies that. He's also benefiting from the fact that trust in Netanyahu isn't an all-time low. The Israeli people, including many who voted for Netanyahu in the election back in November 22,
Starting point is 00:03:52 have totally lost trust in him. Hard to see him regaining that trust. And the kind of party which perhaps would be successful in the election right now, which you would say would be a right-wing party, but at the same time an anti-Nantaniel party. There aren't really many parties like that in the current. Now you've got Gidon Saar,
Starting point is 00:04:12 but mainly Gantz is getting a lot of that soft right vote. And the most important thing to say is that Gantz hasn't got any real way of forcing this election to take place in September. He's only got eight Knesset members in his party right now and the rest of the coalition and suddenly the opposition don't have to go along with whatever he says. Well, to be clear on that point, even before Gantz joined this netanyahu-led government in this to form this emergency cabinet nothing nothing who had 64 seats so gantz walks even if he does walk nothing you know still has a 64 seat majority which may seem small but it's the largest majority
Starting point is 00:04:57 i think a government has had in in a number of years so um it's not clear how much political leverage he has well yeah daniel still has his majority on paper but at the same time you have 64 that means that all it's necessary is for five coalition mks to join the opposition and there's a majority to dissolve to dissolve the knesset and to hold early elections and we don't yet know if there are five such MKs, but there are various ways in which you can predict that happening, whether it's a handful of Likudniks who don't want to go down with Netanyahu and have some kind of minimum decency and understand what a terrible failure, unprecedented terrible failure his government has been in.
Starting point is 00:05:46 Therefore, they understand that Israel should hold the election. Or it's one of the coalition parties, for whichever reason, decide to break with Netanyahu. It could be with Haredi parties, who are now rather angry at Netanyahu for failing to fulfill his promise in the coalition agreements to pass a law regulating the exemption of yeshiva students from military service. It could at some point turn out to be the far right who won't like the terms of, we can hope that there'll soon be some kind of an agreement for the release of hostages and a temporary ceasefire. So that's also going to be a reason that there could be grounds for a party leaving the coalition.
Starting point is 00:06:32 None of that is happening yet, but these are very likely scenarios which could happen in the next Knesset session. The Knesset session, the winter session is about to end, so nothing's going to happen right now until after Pesach and after Independence Day but when the Knesset reconvenes on May the 19th that's going to be a two month or so period of the summer session which I think Netanyahu's coalition will be sorely tested. Anshul, if I'm thinking that Gantz has thought this through very strategically and maybe I'm
Starting point is 00:07:03 thinking about it more strategically than maybe Hiro advisors are, or maybe I'm wish-casting in terms of how they're thinking it. Could it be that the reason they picked September is because if you assume RAFA, the IDF operation into RAFA is still a few weeks away, and then the actual operation will take a few weeks, so you blink and you're into the summer. And so what Gantz is effectively saying is, we're going to do Rafah. We're basically going to end the war after Rafah. And that's the time to go to elections. There is no Rafah operation right now on the cards. To carry out the Rafah operation, there are three conditions that need to be fulfilled. One, the main thing is that you have to find a way to move a million and a half Palestinian civilians
Starting point is 00:07:52 who are currently gathered in and around Rafah, move them away to currently non-existent safe areas. So you need to set up safe areas which are large enough to contain and to shelter a million and a half people. That's quite a major undertaking. Then you've got to convince these people to move. That's not going to take a few weeks. It's going to take months. The IDF hasn't even begun to do that. There are no real preparations yet for these areas, and there's no call to the population to start moving there.
Starting point is 00:08:24 That's going to take months. The other thing you need is you need some kind of deconfliction, coordination with the Egyptian army, which is right there on the border. Once again, something that the Egyptians haven't even prepared to, haven't agreed yet to start talking with Israel about. And the third thing is you need a certain level of IDF forces to both be there in that operation. And we're talking at the least division level, five, six combat brigade teams.
Starting point is 00:08:56 The scale of the forces used in Khan Yunis, which is probably a smaller operation in size, that will take perhaps not the same scale of mobilization of reservists that we saw at the beginning of the war with 300,000 soldiers being called up, but certainly a much larger force will have to be on hand than the one the IDF currently has in and around Gaza. So these three things will take time. We're not seeing them happen yet.
Starting point is 00:09:26 And the most important thing to say about the Rafik campaign is that it's for now just words. Netanyahu is in no rush to go into Rafik, but he wants you to think that Rafik is the be-all and end-all of this campaign. And if the IDF doesn't go into Rafik, then it can't win. And if it goes into Rafik, then victory is secure. The most important thing that Nia wants is for everyone to be blaming these terrible people who are preventing Israel from going into Rafah. Joe Biden, who doesn't want Israel to win, you know, the famously hostile to Israel Joe Biden,
Starting point is 00:09:59 who we all know just wants Israel to lose and hasn't done anything for Israel since October 7. And everyone else, Benny Gantz and anyone else who dreams of replacing Netanyahu. And there may be a Rafak operation, and there are many reasons to justify a Rafak operation, but we're not talking about a real operation now. We're talking about yet another Net another niautric i was when
Starting point is 00:10:26 i was in israel over the last couple months and i'd meet with different members of the government including members of the war cabinet it wasn't just netanyahu that was talking about rafa gantz was talking about rafa galant was talking about rafa you know and gantz famously when he was in washington he he said to the administration asking us to finish the war without going into Rafah is like asking a fire department to show up at a burning house and stop extinguishing the flames when only 80% of the flames are extinguished. If you ask us to leave, we're going to have to come back. So it does seem more widespread than just Netanyahu. No, I said just now, there are tactical and strategic reasons that, very valid reasons for carrying out an
Starting point is 00:11:07 operation in Rabat. But it's not part of the political equation right now, except to be used as another reason to keep the worst government in Israel's history in power. And it would make much more sense to replace the government and then seriously sit down and talk about what are israel's strategic options and necessities because this isn't hasn't been done for the last six months so does this what you're saying that the idea is in this holding pattern does this i mean i i have a feeling i know the answer but i have to ask the question does this mean any talk of israel opening up a front or or uh more robustly responding to a front that already is a little hot in the north against hezbollah does it make that possibility completely unrealistic in the near term none of israel's decisions in gaza and up
Starting point is 00:12:02 north with hezbollah in lebanon that's what we're talking about with Iran, none of these are easy decisions. And we've seen previous Israeli governments and previous Israeli prime ministers make bad decisions there. We saw Oya Dolmet basically going to war when perhaps it wasn't the right thing to do. Back in 2006, I mean, Echenbegen in 1982, and we've got a whole history of how Israel hasn't really dealt
Starting point is 00:12:28 with the Gaza issue going back to 1948, when the Egyptians created the Gaza crisis by basically sticking 160,000 refugees there instead of allowing them into Egypt. But nothing is made easier by this chronic indecisiveness, which is Netanyahu's style of doing business at the best of times, and his, you know, him being in survival mode. So let's, you know, let's kind of go through what are the challenges up north. You've got Hezbollah, which is not as strong as the IDF, but it's still a force which has one of the biggest
Starting point is 00:13:05 missile arsenals in the world. So taking on Hezbollah, Israel will not be destroyed by it, but Hezbollah have the firepower to cause massive damage to Israeli cities and civilian infrastructure. So that always has to be part of the decision-making. And then you've got the level of forces you need to continue fighting and to expand to Rafak and other places in Gaza while fighting a war up north. Israel will have to mobilize yet again the 300,000, perhaps even more, reserves that it mobilized on October 7.
Starting point is 00:13:42 It means, once again again paralyzing the Israeli economy for months to come. It means eroding the resilience of the reserve units. It's a huge undertaking. And it's not just a question of what you're going to do to do that. What is the result you're going to have at the end of the day? Because at the end of the day, Hezbollah will probably still continue existing in Lebanon
Starting point is 00:14:08 and Iran will still be there trying to set up. So what's your alternatives? Do you allow Hezbollah to continue shelling and launching rockets at Israeli villages and towns up in the north? What do you do with 80,000 or 90,000 Israelis who for six months now have been uprooted from their homes there, which now is a decision that many people are saying was a very bad decision to make in those first few days.
Starting point is 00:14:38 But people were very worried that something like what happened in October 7 in the communities around gaza could also happen in the north so all these questions are massive and by the way there's the biden administration because it sounds to me like the last thing the biden administration would want is israel to go open go go to war with hezbollah before november yeah and the biden administration made it easy for israel and putting it easy in quote marks in the first weeks of the war by sending those two carrier groups off Lebanon's shore, first of all, because there was this added deterrence against Hezbollah from doing that. And Israel could say, okay, well, the Americans have those carrier groups there.
Starting point is 00:15:28 We have this sort of temporary insurance policy that we don't have to worry that much about Hezbollah doing something. So that kind of gave Israel a bit of a breathing space, but it also meant that Israel didn't have to make any tough decisions. And those tough decisions will have to be made at some point. Currently, they're not being made,
Starting point is 00:15:50 and everybody's still pinning hopes on this Israeli-American diplomat who refuses to speak in Hebrew, but everybody knows that he grew up here and went to high school here in Jerusalem, who goes back and forth to Beirut to try and reach some kind of magic formula, so far unsuccessfully. Do I sleep better knowing that there are serious Israeli ministers and decision-making process going on about what's happening in the north? No, I don't it's very you know i was up north last week and
Starting point is 00:16:25 and it's you know you really despair when you see the empty communities that you talk to the few people who are still taking care of places like matula and shlomi and the most basic questions of whether the schools can reopen there in the next school year in september you know you're talking about september of elections for israeli september means the next school year in September. You know, you're talking about September of elections. For Israelis, September means the new school year. And families have to make the most basic decisions. They're stuck in temporary housing. Do they still hope that they can go back home with their kids and restart their lives?
Starting point is 00:17:00 Or is it time to look for a new home? And that means that these places, these kibbutzim and these small towns, and I'm sure you've been to places like Kiryat Shmona and Shlomi and Metula, their future, even if there is no war, or no bigger war, because what we're seeing now is a low-intensity war with Hezbollah. There's no bigger war with Hezbollah. It may mean that these places will never come back from this period. Essentially, take them years until they'll be flourishing again. Okay, Anshu, I want to talk about the current protest movement within Israel
Starting point is 00:17:34 and try to understand what it represents. And you have described in a piece you've written and in other conversations these sort of three waves of the protests in Israel, they call them the anti-Natanyahu protests in about the last five years, the first being May of 2020, which is when Natanyahu was trying to form a government. Benny Gantz ran against Natanyahu. Benny Gantz said he'd never serve with Natanyahu. Then Benny Gantz joins Natanyahu's government back in May of 2020, forms a government with him, and there was protests already brewing joins Netanyahu's government back in May of 2020, forms a government with him. And there was protests already brewing against Netanyahu.
Starting point is 00:18:09 And people were furious that Benny Gantz kind of saved Netanyahu. And that was like a period of something like 20,000 somewhere in that neighborhood protests. And that lasted regularly until June of 21, until that Netanyahu government fell. Then the second wave was January of 23, really up until October 6, which was the new Netanyahu government. Protests were against judicial reforms. And now we're in the third wave, as you put it, which is what? What is this wave of protests now that we saw? It seemed to be at a different level level maybe not as high a level of intensity as some of the social media commentary would have suggested following it from last weekend but it does seem to be ratcheting up what what is it well let's just remember you you told you you mentioned those
Starting point is 00:18:58 previous two waves it seems almost quaint now that you in May of 2020, three and a half years ago, almost four years ago, the protests were just about the issue of can a man who has been indicted for corruption charges be the prime minister. At the time, the idea was so monstrous. It was so clear to Ariel Dol, to Eudolmet, and back in the 70s, it's like Rabin, that if you're indicted,
Starting point is 00:19:31 then you can't be prime minister. And now, we've been inured to this by Netanyahu, but then there was a large number of people who went out every Saturday night to Paris Square in Jerusalem, came from around the country and also did smaller simultaneous vigils and demonstrations near where they lived.
Starting point is 00:19:56 It was also periods of COVID social distancing, so you couldn't gather in the same way. It was clear then what they were protesting against, and it was clear yet again with the second wave of protests, which began in January last year following the inauguration of Netanyahu's current government. Yair Yivlev, the Justice Minister, presented his plan to eviscerate the Supreme Court. Once again, it was clear what Israelis were
Starting point is 00:20:25 demonstrating against, and the organizers did a very, very good job, especially in the second wave, of focusing the protests and the public anger and the growing numbers, and we were at hundreds of thousands on the streets at one point, in focusing specifically on these issues of how Israeli democracy works and how the government was trying to assault the Supreme Court and the very delicate balance of Israel's increasingly fragile democracy. That was clear. What we're seeing now is something much less coherent. What are they demonstrating against? First of all, it's much more difficult. What is still, even though the war has winded down, even though most of the reservists are back home,
Starting point is 00:21:11 and there was this kind of idea, just wait for the reservists to come back from the war, and then you'll see this incredible outpouring of anger on the streets. Now, that may happen, but we're still far from hundreds of thousands of reservists on the street. I think now maybe thousands, perhaps 10, 20, 30,000 at the most. There's a protest which is calling for the release of the hostages now. Who doesn't want to release the hostages? So what are they calling for?
Starting point is 00:21:38 Are they calling for a release of hostages at any price? Hamas are the ones who need to release the hostages at any price. Hamas are the ones who need to release the hostages. So, you know, there's the feeling that Netanyahu isn't pushing this deal as much as he should. I think that feeling is justified. But what do you demand? Do you demand Netanyahu agree to give up everything to get the hostages back? Obviously, that's not what they're asking for.
Starting point is 00:21:59 So that is a not well-defined cause. Can we stay on that? Because I think there's some confusion about that. The slogan of the, I hate to use that word, the call to action of the hostage families movement is bring them home now. Exactly. But it's meaningless. Right. Well, also, it's meaningless because the implication is, as they protest the streets in Israel saying, bring them home now, as though it's up to the Israeli government to army is with its pressure on Hamas is also influencing the decision making of Hamas and the you know the the considerations that Hamas has so obviously the Israeli government is
Starting point is 00:22:52 a party to that but yeah you're right it's not the Israeli government which need to let this let the hostages go home it's Hamas but there is a very real feeling and a very I think a very justified feeling that Saddam Netanyahu is not doing enough. And every day that passes, as we know, more and more of the hostages are dying. And those who are still alive are undergoing terrible things that we don't even want to describe. Okay, but I want to stay on that because there's a tendency to, again, personalize all of this to Netanyahu. And I just, Herzl Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, was just somewhere in Gaza. there's a tendency there's a tendency to again personalize all of this to netanyahu and i just herzl halevi the idf chief of staff was just somewhere in gaza maybe he was in khan yunus
Starting point is 00:23:29 in the last 24 hours i saw it reported and he told the soldiers he was visiting and i quote here a hostage deal will be achieved by applying stronger pressure as much as necessary and then he says the more battalions we take out the more more infrastructure we destroy. That's how we will increase the pressure on them to release hostages. Now, he may be wrong. He may be right. But again, I've heard that view. That was Gallant's view. Or he may be sticking to his pay grade. His job is to... But Gallant has made the same time, Galad and Heresy agreed to the previous agreement, which meant a pause in the fighting. And in the closed rooms, they're also in favor of the broad contours of the deal, which may be at some point on the table of a six-week pause. Now, the six-week pause means for six weeks,
Starting point is 00:24:21 they won't be dismantling Hamas battalion. Heresy says what he needs to say as leader of the army. week. Porch means for six weeks they won't be dismantling Hamas battalion. So, you know, Heresy says what he needs to say as leader of the army. Whatever recommendations he's giving to cabinet are not necessarily the same, exactly the same thing. Any type of hostage agreement or
Starting point is 00:24:39 exchange, you know, it's very difficult even to give the right words because it's not a hostage exchange, it's not holding hostages, it's very difficult even to give the right words because it's not a hostage exchange, it's not holding hostages, it's holding prisoners. Of course. We'll always involve different types of messaging to troops, to the public, and different things being said in closed rooms. And we'll always mean very difficult concessions
Starting point is 00:25:00 that you don't want to necessarily talk about publicly because you don't want to give the other side ammunition. And it's a very, very painful, very cynical type of psychological warfare going both ways. And everybody's playing a different role here because the families obviously have their one and only concern in getting their loved ones home and there are different families the families here 134 hostages still on paper though 34 or 40
Starting point is 00:25:32 at least we know are dead probably more but these families represent a cross-section of view of political views as well not all of them are behind this maximalist demand of bringing them all home now. Some say, no, no, no, we, especially those who are politically on the right, are more sympathetic to a position saying Israel has to hit Hamas harder and that's the only way to get them out. But that's just one issue. And then you've got other issues that are being raised in the protest. You've got this whole issue of what they call in Israel or in Hebrew, the equal burden issue.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Why is the mainstream Israeli society serving both in regular and in reserve duty? And this community, which is 13 or 14% of Israelis, why are they exempt because of what was until monday you're referring to the ultra orthodox the orthodox community what was a 76 year old agreement that they would remain exempt that was obviously abused by the ultra for so many years and this original quota of 400 students grew to 66 000 that's another focus of the protest and then you have various protests which are which are directly to do with the conduct of the war you have people from the left saying israel now has to end the war and and immediately ceasefire those who say no no no the war has to be pursued and prosecuted much more vigorously.
Starting point is 00:27:07 And why aren't we in Rafak already? Why weren't we in Rafak already three months ago? Then you've got those who were saying it quite openly, the aim of the protest is to replace this terrible government. And until Netanyahu goes, nothing good can happen. And they're saying that quite openly. So all these things are out there in this protest and there isn't a clear idea which is the overall and if they can be
Starting point is 00:27:33 at this point one overall cause like we had in the previous two uh two waves of protests and i think that's one of the main reasons why the protests are growing beyond a few tens of thousands. I think another reason is, yes, we still are at war. And now, even though he's lost the trust of Israeli people, he's still very, very skillful at framing debates in self-serving narratives. So this narrative that by protesting now you're somehow weakening Israel's resolve and giving soccer to Yehoshua has filtered through. So there's that as well. But you've pointed out, Antro, that with the judicial reform, which was very well organized, the anti-judicial reform protests, there were efforts to stitch on other causes to those protests and the organizers of the anti-judicial reform protests were very savvy about making it
Starting point is 00:28:32 singular it's just about the judicial reforms and when there were these left-wing protesters who want to stitch onto the movement and talk about a palestinian state and want and want to talk about the peace process and that they the organizers of the anti-judicial reform movement said no we are we have a singular focus let on the target it is just about judicial reform we're not going to confuse the message and it was it was in that sense a singular call to action and what you're saying here is there are too many calls to action and people motivated by too many different causes and once you have that it's too diffuse yep you you summarize it much better than i do okay well you you have a good excuse because it's almost midnight where you are which is why we're going to let you go to bed in a minute but before we do two questions one what is your
Starting point is 00:29:16 prediction and i won't hold you to this but i'm curious your current thinking just looking at a crystal ball in the near term what is your prediction in terms of where the protest movement goes in the weeks ahead and the second question, what do you think Gantz actually does? So I don't think the protest movement will develop or evolve that much. And I don't think it'll be the main reason for whatever happens next. We spoke, you know, we talked about the two previous waves. I think the first wave between May 20 and the fall of Netanyahu in June 21, I think the protests then were mainly an outlet for frustration. I don't think that they were in any way a major cause of Netanyahu's short-term downfall then. And I do think the protests, the second way, the protests against the judicial overhaul, I think they were successful because they were more focused,
Starting point is 00:30:10 because they were stronger, because they managed to kind of organize this around such a broad consensus of so many parts of Israeli society. They were indeed successful in blocking the assault on the Supreme Court in its tracks. This time around, I think it'll be more like the first wave
Starting point is 00:30:27 in which there will be people who will go. There'll be medium-sized, let's say, protests. They'll be angry. They'll be emotional. But they won't really change. They won't be the main engine of change on the political scene. And the change will obviously have to happen in the Knesset. At the end of the day, Israel is a parliamentary democracy.
Starting point is 00:30:48 We don't vote for a prime minister, even though Netanyahu likes to talk of himself as an elected prime minister. He's not. The only other thing we elect in Israel is the Knesset, and the Knesset has to decide who it appoints as prime minister and when to get rid of that person and hold an election again. And it really is all down to this. These 120 men and women, a majority of whom are going to at some point agree upon bringing the election forward.
Starting point is 00:31:21 And against the question here is a question of timing you know it's been clear from the moment you know from october the 10th when he him and he agreed with nathaniel on joining the emergency coalition that it will all be a question of when he chooses to leave and i said before gans himself is not that powerful he's only got eight knesset members, but he could, if he times it right, and if he frames it right, that moment in which he decides to leave could be pivotal he was hoping that he would be able to somehow precipitate an early election without having to resign. Once the coincidence is dissolved, the prime minister becomes a caretaker prime minister and he can't fire any of his ministers. I think that Gantz is beginning to realize that now he's not going to give him that gift of remaining minister while going for an early election so i think gantz
Starting point is 00:32:26 is going to have to reach that point where he realizes that he's not doing that much good by by remaining and the damage of those this terrible government is bigger and it just has to be be replaced as soon as possible and from you know speaking to people close to Gantz in recent weeks, for Gantz the main question is, is there still a prospect for a hostage agreement which will save maybe 30 or 40, probably not all of the remaining hostages, can these 30 or 40 people still be saved
Starting point is 00:32:59 and an agreement reach for a temporary ceasefire and for their, which will obtain their freedom. And this is certainly something which is worth staying a few more weeks, even a month, another month or two in this useless government. Once that's, either once it's achieved or once Gantz realizes that this government
Starting point is 00:33:20 will never reach another ceasefire agreement, that will be the moment of truth for him. And I can't predict if it's going to be in another week or two. There's no point really in leaving the government until the Knesset is once again in session anyway, because the Speaker of the Knesset, Amir O'Hanna, is Netanyahu's tool. He won't agree,
Starting point is 00:33:41 even if there is a majority of Knesset members demanding it, he won't agree to if there is a majority of consent members demanding it he won't agree to convene an emergency session so gantz will have to will be in in decision time from may 19th onwards and i think that he'll be forced and he may be forced by other opposition parties or other groups within the coalition pre-empting him to do. But I think he'll be forced at some point between May 19th and the end of July, the summer session to make that decision. But the challenge, it seems, is so much of his popularity is he's perceived to be above politics,
Starting point is 00:34:16 which is especially appreciated during such tumultuous times, 2023 and 2024. And then he's going to have to get into the muck of politics one way or the other. And we know he's not a great politician. And even if he was a better politician, he'd still be up against the master politician and the man who has not stopped for a moment doing politics since October 7th. Anshu, we will leave it there. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:34:44 I'm going to let you go to sleep. You were kind enough to call me back at such a late hour with so much going on in Israel. Hope to see you soon. Good night. That's our show for today. To keep up with Anshul Pfeffer,
Starting point is 00:35:03 you can find him on X, at Ancho Pfeffer. And you can also find him at Haaretz. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.

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