Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Is the war in Gaza over? With Nadav Eyal

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

There is intelligence coming in that Sinoir is much more optimistic as to the future in the last couple of months. And that he is in what some sources say in the Masonic kind of mood that he sometimes goes into. That he thinks that he's winning. And the reason for that is that he's seeing the kind of pressure employed on Israel. His general gamble from the beginning of the war is that he'll survive underground more time than the IDF will survive overground. It's 10 p.m. on Sunday, April 7th in New York City. It's 5 a.m. on Monday, April 8th in Israel as Israelis get ready to start their day. In recent days, there have been two major developments. One, the IDF is announcing that it is winding down much of its ground force presence in Gaza,

at the same time that Iran is threatening a direct military hit against Israel or Israeli assets. Neither of these two developments have occurred since October 7th until now. The Iranian threat is in response to the IDF operation that destroyed Iran's consulate in Damascus one week ago. This was the operation that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals, one of whom was General Mohammad Zahadi, who was the commander of the Al-Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. He's a key figure in managing Tehran's relationship with its proxy, Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon on Israel's border. According to reports, Israeli defense capabilities are on high alert right now due to the Iranian threat. And as for Gaza, according to

the IDF, there will now only be one brigade, the Nachal Brigade, remaining in the Gaza Strip. It's reportedly there to secure the Netzarim Corridor, which is the corridor that crosses Gaza from the Bari area in southern Israel to the Gaza Strip's coast. The corridor is important for a few reasons. One, it enables the IDF to carry out raids in northern and central Gaza. The corridor also prevents Palestinians from returning to the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and it allows, or is supposed to allow, humanitarian organizations to deliver aid directly to northern Gaza. But no matter how you look at this, the combination of the dramatically scaled back

IDF military presence in Gaza and the heightened threat alert in response to a possible direct hit from Iran means we are in somewhat new terrain. To help us understand what's going on here, Nadav Ayel returns to the podcast. He's a columnist for Yidiot. Nadav has been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli print and radio and television news. Nadav Ayel on Is is the war in Gaza over? This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast for a regular check-in. Nadav Ayel from Yediot Akhranot joins us from Tel Aviv.

Hi, Nadav. Hi, Dan. Nadav, we are officially six months in to this war, six months since October 7th. Tens of thousands of Israelis have not yet returned to their homes in the south and the north. Hamas has suffered major setbacks. As we understand it, something like 18 of Hamas's military battalions have been destroyed or crushed or destabilized, yet there are four to six battalions still intact. Hamas's leadership, its most senior leadership, meaning Sinoir and Def, are still unaccounted for and seem to still be calling the shots, the architects of October 7th. Hezbollah is still intact. Obviously, there's been no full frontal war against Hezbollah. There are 133 hostages

that we know of that are still in Gaza, and Israel has had some success in taking out senior architects of war against Israel, either directly or indirectly, whether they are Hamas officials or Iranian military leaders, like the most recent strike in Damascus. This morning, the IDF announced that it is withdrawing many, most of its forces from southern Gaza. You'll help us understand that. So if that's true, then the only IDF forces left in Gaza are those that are securing the line that divides Gaza's north and south. I guess what I'm trying to understand today, it may be too strong a question or too provocative a question to say, is the war for all practical purposes over? It feels that way to many Israelis

I'm talking to. So my first question is, with the news that came out Sunday, that the IDF is pulling back its forces from southern Gaza, what do we know about that? What can you tell us about it? So Dan, the 98th division of the IDF, and that's a commando division, is leaving Hanunas, and that's a southern Gaza Strip. This is the announcement by the IDF spokesperson. And what they're saying is that they finished or they're over with their mission. And of course, when you look at just the public announcements by Yoav Galant, the defense minister, by the prime minister, and by the IDF,

you know that the reason they were there in Hanunas is hunting down the architects of October 7th and mainly Yechir Sinwar, thinking that they might find the bunkers where they are actually holding out against the IDF and managing somehow to encircle them, if not really enter them, because they are still fearful for the lives of the hostages

probably held together with Yekhir Sinwar. So when the IDF is saying, or when the Defense Ministry is saying, their mission is over, that's not exactly the case. The mission in Hanunis was not only to destroy some of the Hamas infrastructure and kill as many of the Hamas fighters as they can. That was part of the mission, but also getting to Sinoir. And it's not only that the 98th Division has left Hanounis. It's also that, as of today, the IDF has no maneuvering force within the Gaza Strip.

Right now, it has one brigade that's holding the entire Gaza Strip. That's a very limited amount of actual force within the Gaza Strip. It's not present in most of the northern and central and, of course, southern Gaza Strip at all. It's holding the corridor, cutting down the Gaza Strip from east to west between the north and the central Gaza Strip and the southern Gaza Strip, where Hamas is still holding its forces, its regiments in the areas that we call the central Gaza, that's Dir al-Balak and other areas, but also in Rafah, of course. And these areas were virtually left untouched by the IDF. The IDF did tackle most of the infrastructure of Hamas in the Gaza Strip during the last six months. But no,

in any way that you look at this, this was not the mission as it was suggested, as it was introduced to the Israeli public and the world. And I think we cannot disconnect the 90th division leaving Khan Yunis and the way that Israel has changed its tone in the last week with the very difficult conversation that Prime Minister Netanyahu had with President Biden after that terrible incident in which seven aid workers of the World Central Kitchen were killed in the Gaza Strip from rockets fired by the Israeli Air Force. And that conversation changed things substantially. And what we're seeing right now is that Israel has given the negotiating team traveling to Egypt much more leverage to get to a deal. And that means actually to compromise more with Hamas in order to get a

hostage deal on the one hand. And on the other hand, we're seeing the IDF leaving the southern part of Khan Yunus. Now, when I ask my sources at the defense apparatus, how are you leaving Khan Yunus before you came to that bunker of Yusra Sinwar and others. They're saying, look, we tried to do that. We understand that we didn't manage to get to the bunker of Sinwar and his associates, and they might not even be in Khan Yunis right now. We have nothing else to do there. We have tackled every force of the Hamas that there is in Khan Yunis, and we're now pulling back in order to prepare for the next stage, and that is Rafah. And that is the official statement of the government official,

that this is not a surrender in the war, this is not stopping the war, this is actually them preparing towards the operation in Rafah, which will begin by evacuating the civilian population from Rafah, the Palestinians that have fled their homes, sometimes in the north and the south, so they might not be jeopardized when the IDF starts operating against the Hamas regiments in Rafah. But Dan, to be frank, nobody that I speak with in Israel at the senior political level believes that this is tangible in the next month or so. They all say it's going to take at least a month and a half or two months to get that evacuation over. They understand that Hamas sees that.

They see the amount of time that it will take. They see the American pressure on Israel. They see the demonstrations in the streets against the prime minister, the loss of trust within the Israeli public, and the feeling that this war is not going well, internationally speaking, but also, you know,

when you look at results in the ground, at least in the last month and a half or two months in the Gaza Strip for the Israeli government, everybody in Israel understands that we are in a changing tide situation here in regards to the war and we're entering a new phase and that phase might also be called an end to the war as we have known it. Nadav, for our listeners to understand exactly where we are on the ground, what is actually left of IDF forces in Gaza now? There's one brigade left, and that brigade is the Nachal Brigade, and it's holding the corridor between north and central and south Gaza Strip.

And that's the only IDF force left in Gaza. And it's static, basically. So it's not moving within Gaza in order to clear terrorist cells. It's mainly responding. And sometimes it has some defensive elements. I was there a few weeks ago in the corridor with a commando from that regiment. We were there, we were traveling all the way to the sea. And he told me that they need to operate very decisively. They're not sitting and waiting for Hamas to attack them, right? They go every night, they go looking for terrorists. They are defending actively the corridor on its outskirts.

But this is a corridor of just a few kilometers wide. You know, its main purpose is to prevent terrorists returning from the southern side of the Gaza Strip back to the north and the center. Okay, the threat from Iran. So Israel, I would say, according to public reports, but it seems to me that Israel all but took very direct credit for this operation against the quote-unquote diplomatic facility in Damascus that led to the death of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps military official. And Iran is now threatening response. The IDF seems to be on heightened alert. What is actually going on? What is the IDF expecting

with regard to Iran? So the IDF evaluates or assesses that Iran will respond, that's the assessment within the entire defense apparatus. But one thing is clear, they're taking their time. And the reason they're taking their time is, and they're covering this in Iran, is that they're saying that the conversation in Israel is very much a conversation of, is it going to happen? And people are very stressed out. I'm sitting in my office and one of the secretaries in another office next door knocked on my door just 10 minutes ago. She was asking me,

you know, what's going to happen? I'm afraid. And people are afraid that this is changing plans. My son had a day trip, you know, in the Boy Scouts and they canceled it because they don't want to do it

when we're waiting an Iranian response. And that as of itself, Dan, means that they got what they wanted even before initiating the attack. And what they got is that Israelis now have to calculate the response of Iran to this attack in Damascus. So when you ask defense officials in this country, in Israel, they say that they would have done that again, because the Iranians need to understand that they cannot plan and execute operations against Israel while being immune to an Israeli response. And that's very important for them to see that. But on the other hand, you know, the Israeli society and the Israeli defense apparatus are really alerted to the possibility of an Iranian attack. And of course, if this

Iranian attack is going to be lethal within Israel, within the territory of Israel, if civilians are going to get hurt, and if it's going to be a substantial number, then Israel might respond. And Israel would respond directly against Iran rather than responding to Iranian proxies. If Iran is going to hit Israel from Iranian soil, unlike proxies, from Iranian soil, and it's going to hit the territorial state of Israel, the Israelis are talking about a response, yeah. But then how does that, Nadav, I don't mean to overreact to what you're saying, but it's hard to underreact to what you're saying, which is it doesn't feel like anything more than a hop, skip, and a jump from there to the potential for massive escalation to

a full-scale war between Israel and Iran. The answer is that both sides, both Israel and Iran, according to various sources, including in the US, including within some covert conversations between the regime in Tehran and the Biden administration, nobody wants a full frontal regional war between Israel and Iran. Including Iran? Including Iran. Why should the Iranians have a real war between them and the West or them and Israel when they get all these proxies and they can always play this game in which they're not really involved? And what I just said is the Israeli argument that they've been putting to Washington specifically, and this is what I'm basically pitching, is the pitch of the Israeli

defense minister and Israeli chiefs of staff. They're saying to the United States, look, if you don't have deterrence against Iran, you're not going to get regional stability and peace anyhow, right? So you're going to get these proxies trying to ruin everything like they did on October 7. On the other hand, when I'm saying this, you simply cannot neglect the responsibility of the really disastrous way that the Netanyahu government has been conducting itself in these recent months. And if you're looking for that moment that Hamas suddenly saw the light in this war, that's the moment that you saw, for instance, reports of hunger in the northern part of the Gaza Strip and the central part of Gaza Strip. So the Chanioulis operation was relatively successful. Israel was advancing towards Rafah. Israel was conversing with the U.S. as to Rafah.

And then we started getting the reports of hungry people in Gaza in areas that were occupied by the IDF, and that's very important. So in these areas, Israel, to an extent, is responsible. And you can argue to what extent, because some would say it's still an active combat area. It's still fighting terrorists there. But others would say, yeah, but you have effective control of these areas, and you have a corridor there preventing terrorists coming, and you also are preventing population coming from the south back to the north. So you're responsible. But at any rate, this is something that, again, you know, I have a lot to say about the U.S. administration's policies in the Middle East

and their strategy, and I just said that about Iran. But to their credit, they have said to the Israeli government from the beginning, make sure that the humanitarian condition in the Gaza Strip does not deteriorate. If you want to get rid of Hamas, you need to get as much food as you can to the Gaza Strip. I think it is absolutely incomprehensible that the President of the United States will have to raise at least two times, and I think three times, this specific issue of flour going into the Gaza Strip from the port of Ashdod. And the President will need to say that to the prime minister, who will promise

the president that it will be taken care of. And that's a big mistake. You know that, Dan, better than I do. If you make a promise to a US president, you keep that promise. And Netanyahu has promised Biden at least a couple of times to make sure it happens. It didn't happen. He made a promise to the president that tax payments will go back to the Palestinian Authority. And that didn't happen because it was blocked by the far right in his cabinet. The flower, by the way, was also blocked by the far right in his cabinet. There are other issues like Kerem Shalom. We can go into this.

The entire National Security Council in the White House and the American embassy in Israel have become experts on Israeli bureaucracy in trying to get aid to the Gaza Strip, while it's an interest of Israel to get as much aid as possible so the world will not criticize Israel as it has been doing in the last couple of months. And another thing that happened, which I find also hard to believe, is the extent in which, again and again, the defense minister, the defense apparatus, the IDF, the chief of staff himself,

have told the war cabinet, you need to have an idea of what's going to happen in these areas that we have just occupied. We have occupied these areas. We have sacrificed lives of young men, you know, officers, the best and brightest in this country, in order to take over Hanunis. Now what's going to happen in Hanunis? We have just pulled out of Hanunis. What's going to happen in Hanunis? And let me tell you what's going to happen. Hamas is going to happen in Hanunis,

because there's no other force. Now, many people would say this is inevitable. This is inevitable, you know, because there is no other force. But I don't know. The Shin Bet, the IDF, and the defense minister said, let's bring in Fatah people. Let's arm them and let's make them fight Hamas. Maybe it's science fiction. Maybe it's impossible. I don't know. But this wasn't

my suggestion. This is the suggestion of the IDF and the defense minister and the Shin Bet. And it was ruled out by Netanyahu. So now when we don't have a maneuvering force within the Gaza Strip, and there's almost no IDF troops within the Gaza Strip And let's be clear, right now in the Gaza Strip, there are less than a thousand IDF combat troops, as we are speaking right now. Throughout all the Gaza Strip? The entire Gaza Strip. Less than a thousand, as we are speaking.

Combat troops, okay? Not troops in general, but combat troops. So if this is the case, what have we achieved that will last? The Gaza Strip is completely torn down. It's a disaster zone. On the one hand, the population is evacuated to the south. What's the horizon? What's the vision? Now, this is not a question that is being asked retroactively. It was asked in real time. I don't remember who's the American president or general that said he's against plans, but he's for planning. Eisenhower. It was Eisenhower. So, you know, where's the planning? And the defense apparatus was ready to make these plans,

but it was blocked again and again, frankly, by Netanyahu, because the far right in his government frankly said, I'm not willing to work with the PA or with Fatah or with any Palestinian. But another argument I've heard, Nadav, is it's impossible to contemplate any real day-after plan without figuring out how you're going to get some buy-in from the local Palestinians living in Gaza. And as long as there's a perception that Hamas can reemerge, and there could be a Hamas 2.0, no serious self-preserving minded Palestinians are going to emerge to cooperate with Fatah,

with the PA, with the IDF, with anybody, with the Americans, with the Saudis, with anybody, if they believe Sinoir is alive and well and will reemerge because they know what life is like in a Sinoir-run Gaza where there are Palestinians who are suspected of cooperating with anyone other than Hamas. So we can talk all day long about day-after plans, but until there's a sense in Gaza that Hamas is gone, it's pointless.

It's a talking point. I'm sorry, it's a talking point, and let me tell you why. Because Majid Faraj, who's the head of the Palestinian intelligence, was willing to pick Fatah people, not Palestinian Authority people, to pick 8,000 Fatah people living in Gaza to allow them to train with American assistance in Jordan, then get them back to Gaza. They were willing to do that. I get they're willing. The point is, you know, once they face a little bit of resistance, does the whole thing collapse from Hamas?

Maybe it might collapse. But you specifically, Dan, have an experience with that. What occupying forces want is some sort of collaboration of the local population. Now, you can argue, what's their incentive and their motivations? And they're not Zionists, okay? Now, if any occupying force in history would have said, first of all, I destroyed the enemy, then I create a local force, it's impossible. You need to work this around, you know, many balls in the air. But the truth of the matter, the reason I'm saying it's a talking point is simple, because what led people to say that was the politics of Netanyahu trying to survive with the far right,

knowing that if Netanyahu will have any sort of understanding with the PA or with Fatah Fudat Macha or with any Palestinian group, then he will be immediately outcast by the Israeli far right. And because he knows that without the far right, he doesn't have a government, he took the wrong turns in running this war, both humanitarian assistance and also insofar of the day after plans. So he wouldn't do that. And I heard the same things that you heard. I heard, first we take care of Hamas, then we do. Well, you took care of Hamas in Beit Hanun, for instance, like five and a half months

ago, okay? There were no Hamas fighters in Beit Hanun, the northern side of the Gaza Strip, like five months ago. What happens then? How do you create a new reality in which Hamas is not the regime in the Gaza Strip? What's your plan or what's your planning? The U.S. has been saying that to Israel, but I don't want to quote the U.S. because I have, if you want, we can go into the mistakes of the Biden administration in running this. But the Israeli defense apparatus has been saying this, begging, the chiefs of staff have been begging the government to bring some sort of plan to this.

Parts of the government have been bringing plans. The defense minister has brought a plan, again and again, ruled by Netanyahu, ruled out by Netanyahu, again and again because of his political troubles. And it's not the only thing, by the way. If you look at this, the IDF managed to fight well, very well, against Hamas. The number of casualties was much more limited than they thought it will be in occupying Gaza. They managed to take over Gaza.

The prime minister, in closed discussions before the ground incursion, estimated that the number of people who will die, or IDF soldiers, will be in the thousands. We're talking in the low hundreds right now. The IDF has been extremely successful in combat, but the government has been just disastrous in diplomacy. All you have to do is look at polls, look at public announcements. I've just heard that Nancy Pelosi has signed a letter to stop delivering weapons to Israel.

But yeah, but hold on. Okay, we can get into what's going on in the US because I... Yeah, I'm sort of handing it over to you then now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it's a much longer conversation in terms of what's happening in the US. I want to ask you, you said the Biden administration, you have your own criticisms of how they've handled things. You just did this big interview with Jack Lew, who's the US ambassador to Israel, who actually arrived, was confirmed by the Senate and arrived in Jerusalem, intended to succeed Tom Nides, but he wasn't confirmed and he didn't arrive until after

October 7th. You have the first interview of Lou of a Bain Israeli journalist. I have many questions about that interview. I read it. It's in Hebrew, but we'll still post it in the show notes. My first question is, you asked him about a day after plan. You asked him, why hasn't the U.S. put forward a day-after plan? What was his reaction to that? So what he actually told me is that the U.S. is trying to assemble a plan, but he didn't say this in this kind of quote. He said there is a lot of thinking going around in many places as to how it should look like.

And I got from that that he was hinting, diplomatically speaking, that the U.S. is trying to structure some sort of plan. Because my argument to him was, why is the Biden administration even pushing Israel to have a plan, while you know that any plan presented by Israel would not be accepted by the Palestinians, it would not be accepted by most people in Gaza, and it will not be accepted by the Palestinians. It will not be accepted by most people in Gaza. And it will not be accepted by many Arab countries, including moderate countries, considering their own domestic pressure.

You know, any plan for the future of Gaza should come from a force like the United States, and it's going to need to push it down, you know, across the region. And he wasn't contradicting me on that point. He was saying, you know, there's a lot of thinking going around about these issues. But this is the first point that I made. Another point that I made to him is, what's the strategy if Hamas just says no? You know, you're betting everything on Hamas saying, yeah, we're going to go for a

deal, that the Houthis will stop their attack, that Israel and Iran won't be escalating, that Hezbollah will stop shooting so we won't have a wider war in the north with Hezbollah, which is, by the way, the most dangerous kind of real scenario in the region. So your strategy is to have a deal. I would want to have a deal as an Israeli citizen. I think most Israelis would want to have a deal with Hamas right now in order to get our hostages back and, if not stop the war, pause the war. But Hamas can just say no, right? So that

puts them in an excellent negotiating position because the great United States of America is saying, my strategy is to get something that Hamas will agree to. He said, there is no alternative but getting a deal. And I think this is dangerous. I will also say to his credit that in the meantime, unlike other U.S. administration officials, he was very positive to an extent as to an operation in Rafah. So basically, it's the first time I heard a U.S. official saying, we're seeing that the Israelis have understood and are implementing in their plans our remarks as to defending the civilian population in Rafah before going into an operation.

And we're not saying to you, don't go into Rafah. But I think this is read by Hamas as basically, oh, they know they need to pressure us in order for us to agree to a deal, but nobody thinks that an operation in Rafah is going to happen. Because all you hear from the president and from the administration in the last month and a half is just basically condemning Israel in different various sorts of ways, saying there's a change in tone in D.C., it's not a change in policy. Yeah, you know, the way it's being read in the region is very clear. And by the way,

it's the same way that it's read by Russia, the policy of this administration as to Ukraine, it's the same way that it's being read in Iran. It's the same way, you know, you are not willing to go the distance and to stick with Israel during this war. And on the other hand, I have to say, as a journalist, I can see their point. You know, they're saying, we have given you six whole months, which is like five and a half more months than the Nixon administration gave in Yom Kippur for a war. And this is, you know, a very problematic war in this time and era. And we have given you this time and backing and weapons and everything to, you know, with this, to take out Hamas. And you have done what you have done.

We're not blaming you, but it needs to end. Okay, I want to stay on this. So in this interview, this brings up another point in the discussion, in your interview, where you basically ask Lou, is there a Hamas strategy without a hostage deal? Do you have a strategy to deal with Hamas without a hostage deal? And he says no, that everything's predicated on a hostage deal may not, is at least a necessary, may not be sufficient, but it's a necessary piece in the puzzle. And without that piece, there's no solving the puzzle. And yet at the same time in the interview, Jack Lew tells you that Sinoir has all the leverage in whether or not there's a deal. That's pretty depressing. He said that there is no alternative but a deal and that we need to

reach a deal. Okay. So he says there's no strategy with Hamas without a deal. And if I'm Sinwar and I'm looking at events in the region and around the world right now, I could take away from what's going on as the momentum is with Hamas. In other words, October 7th has unleashed global backlash against Israel. October 7th, one could argue, has raised this cost substantially for supporting Israel. And now there is a version of events where Israel's kind of stuck in Gaza, and Hamas is still sitting on 133 hostages. And to the point you made earlier in this conversation, Hamas wants a certain outcome, and it could say, look, we can drag out this process and wait to see if we can

get that outcome while we're sitting with these 133 hostages. And the hostage deal we did back in November, we had the deal. It may be the only deal we ever do. And time is on our side. The world pressure is mounting on Israel. It's not mounting on Hamas. I think that's the key point. If you're Hamas and Hamas' allies, you can come away with the conclusion that pressure is mounting on Israel right now with more intensity, more comprehensively, and at a faster time clip than pressure is mounting on Hamas. And reading that interview you had with Jack Lew, I thought, wow, I don't believe this is their intention. But I do believe the Biden administration is contributing to this perception. Because if you look at their decisions over the last few weeks, between the UN resolution abstention, which was the equivalent of greenlighting the passage of the resolution, to other statements they made,

everything the administration has said and done feeds that perception. So I asked the ambassador about that, and he told me that their priority, the priority of the administration, now I'm paraphrasing, the priority of the administration of the outmost importance is to get the hostages back and that they will not do anything to jeopardize that. And that's, of course, a general answer to a very specific question. I think that your basic assessment, Dan, I share it. I think that for Sinoir, it's been an incredible month in this war, the best month during this war. And what I'm saying right now is not only based on my assessment. There is intelligence coming in that Sinoir is much more optimistic

as to the future in the last couple of months, and that he is in what some sources say in the Masonic kind of mood that he sometimes goes into, that he thinks that he's winning. And the reason for that is that he's seeing the kind of pressure employed on Israel. His general gamble from the beginning of the war is that he'll survive underground more time than the IDF will survive overground. And this is not going to happen because his Hamas military is going to destroy the IDF. He understood that there is no way that they're going to win against the IDF. They're not even going to mount a substantial resistance to the IDF, which they didn't.

He understood that this is going to happen because of diplomacy. This is going to happen because someone is going to restrain the IDF. And also, to an extent, it's not only about Sinoir. It's not only about the international community pressuring Israel and all the West, not being as resolved or vigilant in their fight against Hamas. It's also about the folly with the government official and the way that it's been conducting itself. And for me as an Israeli, an Israeli journalist covering this, of course, I take offense mostly

not because of Sinoir planning to murder as many Israelis as he can and try to win this war. I expect him to do that. But I also expect my own government to do many things cleverly in a way that actually computes international opinion and our alliance with the United States, which is of paramount importance, not only for winning this war, but for us surviving in this region. Now, you know, people can say these criticisms are unjust. They're related to the US elections, which they are. They're related to generally the Biden administration not being too resolved in

assisting all its allies. You know, you can mount a lot of criticisms against the Biden administration and against the Western opinion and the way that he's being influenced maybe by some supporters of Hamas and anti-Semitism, of course. But at the end, this is how the game is played. This is the reality. And in this reality, Israel knew how to play its cards rather well. And it's not playing any cards well. I'm asking you, Dan, you have seen a lot, you know, you don't have a clever Israeli foreign minister, a kind of a Benjamin Netanyahu of the 1980s, going around with Western capitals, trying to deploy a plan for the day after in Gaza, saying we want the best for Gazans, which we do, or at least I as an Israeli do.

We want them to have a good life there. Let's discuss those plans in the horizon while we try to destroy Hamas. You don't see that speech by a great orator like Netanyahu holding the picture of Carmel Gat, who's being held by Hamas for, I don't know, 170-something days now. Just a woman, a young woman, being probably tortured as we speak by this monstrous regime of terror. We don't see that speech, or we didn't see that speech of the Israeli prime minister. You know, he knows how to use props. He used them in the UN, you know, using a picture of an Iranian bomb. I didn't see him in any international speech holding, you know, a sign or a picture

of one of our hostages there, just trying to make the point that this war can be over in five minutes. And it can be. If we get the hostages back and the leaders of Hamas leave unharmed the Gaza Strip, this is the position of the prime minister, by the way, they can leave unharmed. Israel will actually give them immunity to leave, although they are the architects of

mass murder campaign in Israel, in order to stop the war. Nobody is playing in that field of, this is not about Hasbara. This is not about media and communications. This is about diplomacy. This is about being clever and smart and playing your cards. And let me tell you a secret. Ron Dermer, that you have interviewed on your show, you know, as far as I know, and I don't know that from Dermer, I know that from other sources, he has been continuously saying to the prime minister, according to my sources, that he should on various elements act differently. And I don't think that this has been at any rate, you know, being received. Or the political considerations, as we discussed before, are right now being calling the shots. And now we're paying the price for that. This has been an exhausting war for the Israeli society. It's been a terrible,

terrible period. There are thousands of families in this country still walking around knowing that their loved ones are in the fronts, that they can get, you know, a phone call, get back to your home right now. Something has happened and we have a delegation from the IDF outside of our door with a terrible thing to tell us. This is a country in trauma right now waiting for a possible attack from Iran and a possible escalation to a regional war. It needs to be conducted with the outmost of seriousness and with the best and brightest of people that will do that as Israel has done before in a way that will lead to some sort of an advantage and winning a war is not just by employing force. And Israel knew that and it seems that it has lost that edge during this specific war. Now, I know that the Jew is still out.

So while I'm saying this, you know, they can assassinate Sinoir tomorrow morning. They can get a good deal, freeing the hostages. Then they can have a different kind of regime in the Gaza Strip. So it's not over. I'm not saying that, you know, that we should say that Israel has lost the war. But what I am saying is that we are not seeing the type of seriousness that we should have been seeing from the Israeli leadership. And I'm sorry, this is on Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is leading this war. He's the Israeli prime minister. It's on him to prove otherwise. And what he said today is just so disconnected. He just said today, Dan, we are a step from winning the war. This is the day that Division 98 just left Khan Yunus. He has just sent, while being pressured by our best ally, the United States, and we don't have another important ally,

he sent the team back to Cairo to make another rapprochement to Hamas. Nobody in Israel feels that we're a step from victory. We're possibly waiting an Iranian attack, and we're just a step away from victory. He promised absolute victory, not just a victory, an absolute victory. So this is really on him. And also you see the demonstrations in the streets. And that's, of course, very powerful for the Iranian regime, for Hamas to see that the Israeli society is also divided. So you don't get points for diplomacy, you don't get points for rhetoric, you don't get points for overseeing the absolute victory, and you don't get points for uniting the Israeli society in war, or for having good relations with your best and strongest ally.

And I'm not saying that to persecute Netanyahu. I'm saying that because this is a terrible development for Israelis that the idea is that they don't know if tomorrow morning they'll have a future in the Gaza Strip that will still threaten them. We are seeing launches from the Gaza Strip of missiles, including in the last 24 hours. You know that five hours after the IDF left Khan Yunus, there were shooting of rockets from Khan Yunus towards Israel. So the IDF is not over and done with Hamas. Israel will continue to hunt down Hamas no matter what.

Hamas will never be legitimate, hunt down Hamas no matter what. Hamas will never be legitimate, and I'm sure about that. But the question is, again, political. How do you actually win the war after you have won the combats around the Gaza Strip? Nadav, final question before we wrap from a spirited response to my earlier questions. I spent the weekend with a few Israelis, some of whom are very directly affected by the war, including family members of hostages, including someone who lost, someone very close to them personally, who was killed fighting in Gaza early on. And the question that we were wrestling with was six months in, is the war, for all practical

purposes, over? Meaning they're still fighting, there's still things happening. But the war, for all practical purposes, over. Meaning they're still fighting, there's still things happening. But the war as we understood it, as it was explained and architected from day one, is it effectively over? And I know that sounds like a binary question, over or not over, don't feel like you have to answer that question in a binary way. But what is your reaction to that conversation? I think that the war as we have known it is coming to an end. This is either a new phase. It's not going to be an end to combat. It's not going to be, unfortunately, an end to violence. Israel is going to continue to go after Hamas. These people, the leaders of Hamas, as far as Israelis are concerned,

will never see daylight. And I don't see this changing. I don't see any Israeli government, no matter how much pressure is going to be employed by the U.S., allowing Yechia Sinwar, his brother, and the other officials responsible for the October 7 massacres,

leaving their bunkers and returning to their positions and leaving Gaza. This is not a matter of politics. This is not about the far right. This is not about Netanyahu. This is about Israelis simply not feeling secure, not in the south, and not generally speaking, if you have this kind of a genocidal regime on your borders.

Not only insecure because of that genocidal regime, but insecure because of the way that it's going to be received by an entire region that has many other elements that once Israel destroyed an Israeli's genocide. And for that reason, I think that the war is going to take different shapes and forms. It was suggested by officials at the defense apparatus months ago that it would be a better way to go than actually advancing on the ground, incursion one after the other.

And the big question that we are left with, Dan, and this is a huge question I don't have any answer to right now, is what's going to happen in Gaza? And that's going to determine a lot, because sometimes you need the dust to settle to understand what happened. And that's what happened, by the way, at the Lebanon War, the second Lebanon War in 2006. Israel at the beginning saw it as a disaster, and then it gave Israel more than a dozen years of quiet in the north, and it sort of understood the deterrence that Israel has on it. If the result of the war

would be a Hamas regime installed in Gaza, Israel has lost the war. But if the result would be any other than that, and you will have a different force in Gaza, even if it's the Palestinian Authority, the revitalized Palestinian Authority. Any international checks and balances to make sure that you don't have the type of threat that you had before, it's a different Middle East. And that's actually a challenge for Israel's diplomacy, together with its military might. This is what it needs to aspire to right now, to get a solution to Gaza that will not hand it over again to Sinoir according to its own plans.

I think it's achievable. I think that Israel needs to play its cards smart and wise and the best practices that this country knew how to employ before. And it's not going to be how many texts you're having in Hanunis or the way that you're encircling Rafah. Something that can still happen, by the way. We can still encircle Rafah or encourage to Rafah. It might happen.

It's going to be all about our relations with the moderate Arab countries around us, the possible pact with Saudi Arabia, and our relations with this US administration. There is no running away from it. And this is the best way that we have to get our goals in the Gaza Strip right now, as we maintain the possibilities for IDF operations within the Gaza Strip, which are going to continue to happen, by the way, the IDF is going to enter again and again the Gaza Strip every time that it has intelligence as to terrorist cells or brigades or units of Hamas.

But this is the time for Israeli diplomacy at its peak. If it has that power, it needs to show it right now. Nadav, we will leave it there. Thank you, as always. We will be checking in with you soon. There's still obviously a lot more to cover. Wish we had more time, but maybe we'll just pick back up where we left off because there are a few more topics I want to drill down with you. But until then, thank you, as always. Thank you so much, Dan. Thank you. That's our show for today. To keep up with Nadav Eyal, you can find him on X at Nadav underscore Eyal. You can also find him at Ynet or at Yediot Akhranot. 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.