Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Anatomy of a Deal - with Nadav Eyal

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu released to his cabinet what could be interpreted as a first sketch, an early blueprint, or a statement of principles for post-war Gaza planning. At the same time, and much more newsworthy, it appears that there is some progress on the negotiations to return more Israeli hostages. To help us understand what’s going with both tracks, our guest today is NADAV EYAL, who returns to the podcast. He is a columnist for Yediot. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. One of Israel’s leading journalists, Eyal was a winner of the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s most prestigious journalism award. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. He received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The issue of Israeli hostages is even bigger than Netanyahu. This is not the chief of staff. The commander of the Israeli army is not the prime minister. It's the government, the entire form of the government. And in Israel, you have the army, you have the Shin Bet, you have the Mossad, you have the government, you have the war cabinet, you have the person, the general responsible for the hostages. And I don't think,

Dan, that if these very serious people, most of which are not political, will come to the prime minister or to the cabinet and say, this is the best deal that we can have, this is what's on the table, and we can release dozens of Israelis that are being tortured right now in those cells of Hamas in Gaza. I don't believe that even Netanyahu, with all his power, I don't think he'll be able to stop it. It's 6 p.m. on Sunday, February 25th in New York City. It's 1 a.m. in Israel as Israelis turn to Monday, February 26th. Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu released to his cabinet what could be interpreted as a first sketch or an early blueprint or a statement of principles for post-war Gaza planning. According to this document, at least as it is understood, Israel would retain security control

over Gaza for the foreseeable future while handing administrative and governance responsibilities to Palestinians that do not have any previous ties to Hamas. A few other principles that have either been stated explicitly or implicit in the early stage planning include, one, there will be some kind of physical buffer on each of Gaza's Egyptian and Israeli borders. Two, the rebuilding of Gaza will only commence once Gaza is fully demilitarized. That means no remnants of Hamas. Three, there will be full and complete closure of UNRWA. It sounds far-fetched that the UN would agree to that, but who besides the UN is going to actually protest, or at least who that actually matters? And four, Israel will reject any Palestinian state or Palestinian state recognition as a precondition for commencement of its post-war planning and implementation.

Now, none of these items should be surprising. They are versions of what Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of the war cabinet have been saying piecemeal over the past couple of months. At the same time, and much more newsworthy, it appears that there is some progress on the negotiations to return more Israeli hostages. We had heard until recently that there had been one step forward and two steps back in these negotiations, the ones occurring in Paris and elsewhere. And now, suddenly, if the Israeli press reporting is accurate, there is new momentum. To help us understand what's going on here on both these tracks, our guest today is Nadav Ayel, who returns to this podcast. Nadav is not only a regular on Call Me Back, but he's a columnist for Yediot Achranot, one of Israel's most influential news organizations. Yael has been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last

two decades for Israeli radio, print, and television news. Nadav Ayal on the anatomy of a deal. This is Call Me Back. and i'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast nadav ayel for a regular check-in on what is happening behind the scenes as a number of plans are being negotiated and backgrounded and briefed nadav thanks for being here thank you for having me again dan nadav over the past week there have been two streams of conversations that are both separate, but of course connected regarding two separate plans. One is a short term hostage deal, possibly in the works. And then there has been surprisingly a day after plan, meaning who and how Gaza will be ruled after the war. And I want to talk to you about each of these plans. Let's start with the hostage negotiations. There was discussion of a broad outline being negotiated. It was knocked down in terms of how viable it was by Prime Minister Netanyahu, I don't know, something about 10 days ago. And then suddenly it seems that it's gotten new life or new momentum, at least based on what

I'm reading in the press and people I'm talking to, but you are closer to it. So tell us what we know. So what we're seeing right now is a revival of the negotiations between Hamas and Israel through those mediators, which are basically the US, Egypt and Qatar. And the structure seems to be more clear now. Basically, we're talking about 40 days of limited ceasefire or pause, whatever you want to call it. During these 40 days, about 40 Israeli hostages, men, women, elderly men, people who are in dire medical condition will be released by the Hamas and then you will have the IDF moving to other areas in the Gaza Strip possibly leaving the centers of the Gazan cities but still staying in the Gaza Strip there is not going to be any decision or any declaration by Israel that the war is over. During this time increased humanitarian aid will go into the Gaza Strip.

And some Palestinian civilians now residing in the south after they were displaced because of the IDF operation and the war that Hamas initiated will be allowed to move back to the north. And one of the things that we learn, and I wrote about this extensively in my column this Friday, is that the most important thing to Hamas right now is to have the pose and to get some of those Palestinians back to the north, because they understand that, strategically speaking, Israel holding the north of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians used to live, now many of them, are in refugee camps in Rafah. This is

an advantage of the IDF in the war in the sense that Hamas would want to erase this and to return to business as usual. Now Israel is not going to allow this but it might allow for instance women and children or men above a certain age to return back to the north after they are being inspected in the checkposts of the IDF all along this specific corridor that the IDF has created. We call it the Nizarin corridor in the Gaza Strip between central north Gaza Strip and the southern part of Gaza Strip, places like Hanunas and Rafah. Now, negotiations are still there. And one of the big questions is, who are the prisoners of Hamas that are going to be released? These are going to be convicted murderers, people responsible for

suicide bombings. We know this. So you mean who are the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons that would be released as part of this deal? Before we get to the who, I just have one question. Based on what I was reading and based on those I've been talking to inside Israel over the last couple weeks, including when I was there recently, the two demands from Hamas that were on the table, or at least briefly on the table until they were outright rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the war cabinet, included a complete end to military operations in Gaza. Not a pause, not a temporary ceasefire, but an end to military operation in Gaza. That was the first one. The second one was a Palestinian prisoner release in the ratio of something like 10 to 1, meaning 10 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli released. And Netanyahu, from my understanding,

had instructed Barnea, the head of the Shin Bet, and the other members of the negotiating team to not even offer a counter offer. It was just non-negotiable. Those two points, the idea of end of military operations and a ratio as high as 10 to 1 were just non-starters. And Netanyahu was not even willing to discuss those. And he received a lot of blowback inside Israel for not seeming, again, this is just based off public reporting, not seeming to even willing to engage on those two points. He just shut down any conversation about those two points. Is that accurate? Yeah, it is accurate, but at no point did Hamas, at this stage at least, really demand for an end of the war. The reason for that is because as far as Israel is considered, this is a no-go, okay? There is no chance, and this was true from the beginning of negotiations and no one really criticized him in israel for that specifically it was and is a consensus within the war cabinet

that regardless of the hamas offer israel will not commit itself to ending the war as part of a hostage deal and oppose in the war now the other the other point you made, Dan, is about the ratio. And the ratio and the identity of those released, these are really critical issues. But one thing is for sure, Israel is going to release many more than 10 to 1. They're going to release more than 10 to 1? If the Israeli hostages that will be released are 40, it's going to be much more than 400. This is for sure, okay? And the reason for that is because one of the things that Hamas and Israel basically agreed is that each Israeli hostage will be worth different number of Palestinian prisoners convicted of terror in Israeli prisons. So, for instance, elderly men, which is a humanitarian

based release, will be leading to a release of less Palestinian prisoners. So say three to five. Less in quality. I don't want to go into the specific ratios, but yeah, for instance. That would be more in line with the ratio in the first negotiation. We're not going to see the same ratio as we saw the last time. We're going to see a different ratio. And the numbers that are mentioned in Israel are anything between 900 Palestinian prisoners to 1400, which Hamas is demanding right now, out of which, and for sure, hundreds will be what we call with blood on their hands. So an elderly man who under international standards, loosely defined, it's so obvious that he should be released. He would not warrant a return of more than, say, a handful of Palestinian prisoners.

But you're saying what would be a category of person who would be worth, I hate to use that term, but worth in the eyes of Hamas more Palestinian? Female soldiers. And why are they worth more? Because soldiers, as Hamas describes this, are legitimate targets during warfare, right? So they're leaving the soldiers to the end. But Israel is saying, we want all our women back and we want them right now in this phase of the deal. And that includes the female soldiers.

We don't care about you, Hamas, saying these are soldiers, they were part of the IDF, they were caught in uniform, they were in the line of duty fighting us. We're saying we're getting all Israeli women out right now. And because of that, Israel is willing to pay, quote-unquote, more with the release of Palestinian prisoners convicted and tried and held in Israeli prisons. This entire thing is basically a facade, right? Because Israel wants as many hostages released as it can, and Hamas wants as

many prisoners as it can, and with the highest quality. And with Hamas, as many prisoners as it can and with the highest quality. And with Hamas, quality is being determined by the number of Jews or Israelis that you have killed. So this is the entire game here of negotiations. Israel wants to get as many living Israelis out of Gaza, out of these cages, you know, being tortured by Hamas. And Hamas wants to get as many Palestinian prisoners out and with the highest number of deaths to that prisoner, that specific prisoner. Hamas also wants specific things. For instance, it wants Israel to release prisoners that were held again after they were released in the Gilad Shalit deal a few years back. So Israel sometimes

arrested these people because they were again involved in terror. And for Hamas, it's very important for them to be released because it wants to signal to the Palestinians that people are being released because of Hamas remain out of jail. So it's a very complex negotiation. Okay, I just want to stay on this, Nadav, because I just want you to explain it in a little more detail, because I think it's a very important point. Israel is trying to get out the most vulnerable citizens that are being held hostage. So obviously there's the elderly, and then there are the women, even if those women are soldiers. They want the women out for a variety of reasons, not the least of which my understanding is, based on what they have heard from women who have been released so far and based on the way

sexual assault was used as a weapon of war on October 7th. And from what I understand, what Israeli authorities have learned since October 7th from the women who've been released in November, there's an urgent need to get these women soldiers out of captivity, given how they're most likely being treated. Israel knows, this is not speculation, that Israel knows that they have been or are sexually assaulted. Ongoing, meaning the women that are still there. As far as Israel knows, it has a variety of intelligence reports,

and of course the reports of these hostages, Israeli hostages, that were released and are saying this, you know, live on Israeli TV, that they have seen specific cases and they have been told, they have seen in front of their eyes these things happening. Yeah. And so obviously, that's the priority that Israel is placing on getting them out. For Hamas's negotiations, they measure value based on, or values determined based on how many Jews have been killed by the Palestinian prisoner they get released, meaning there's a higher value placed on a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli prison who has killed more Jews than the next Palestinian prisoner.

Yeah, in general, we can say that. I want to be more specific about this. Generally speaking, the big question is how many prisoners with blood on their hands Hamas will manage to release. And its first priority, as you said, Dan, is to release as many prisoners with blood on their hands, not to release the humanitarian prisoners, which they have got in the first deed, to release those that we consider as heavy-duty terrorists that are in Israeli jails, commanders of Hamas and Islamic jihad, and sometimes even Fatah, because they want to prove to the Fatah supporters that only Hamas can release. And I should underline that for the Palestinian society, the issue of prisoners is paramount in their national identity. And releasing the prisoners is one of the key

arguments for combat against Israel, for attacking Israeli outposts, and for October 7. So for them, this release of, you know, people with blood on their hands and hundreds of those, this is a major win. Now, I should also remind us that during the Gilad Shalit deal, in which Israel managed to release one captive Israeli soldier, was like a million years ago. It's a big deal in 2011. Yeah.

After years that he was the hand of Hamas, Israel paid, quote unquote, with the release of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds with blood on their hands, including one that's called Ichyos Senwar, the current leader of Hamas, who was released by Benjamin Netanyahu's government back then to release Gilad Shalit. Now, you said blood on the hands of Jews. Well, Icher Sinuah was arrested and tried and set in an Israeli prison, not for murdering Jews, but for murdering, of course, Palestinians that were collaborators, or he suspected them to be collaborators with Israeli officials. Last question on this topic before we move to the day after plans.

I see public reporting in Israel and in the West and in the U.S. that Netanyahu may have political incentives to delay a possible hostage deal, which applies a level of cynicism that I think even Netanyahu's fiercest critics over the years would not apply in terms of his motivation and what he's trying to accomplish. When I was in Israel, I met with a number of government officials, including members of the war cabinet, including people who don't like Netanyahu, who are political rivals of his. I didn't get the impression from any of them.

I mean, he may have a different strategy on how to get hostages out and do that in the context of fighting the war. But the idea that he was trying to like delay a process to the release of hostages outright just seemed so disconnected from reality to me and preposterous. What's your reaction? Let me quote someone who's heavily involved with what's happening right now.

He's a senior Israeli official that I spoke with in the last two weeks, and I asked him exactly the question that you're asking me. What do you think about Netanyahu's intentions? Does he want to prolong the war? Is he serious about the hostage deal? Is it not popular in his crowd, in his base? And he's trying to delay it. And the answer he gave me, and this person should know, he said, you know, the problem with Netanyahu is that I don't know. And I'm working on this, you know, on a daily basis. I really don't know what's leading him exactly. One day, it seems that he's very forceful in the intention to release them, you know, as quick as he can. The other day, Benny Gantz needs to walk into his room, the Kiriyah in the center of the defense ministry in Tel Aviv, and shout at

him, let's have an answer to the Egyptians already, because hostages are there. What are we waiting for? And this is a scene that I just described to you, Dan, that actually happened. Benny Gantz had to walk into Benjamin Netanyahu's office, was reported and shouted at the prime minister, what are you going to do? Why are we delaying this? Now, is this kind of delay tactic negotiations? I think Netanyahu would say it is.

And Netanyahu supporters would say this is how the man conducts, you know, difficult negotiations. You probably remember the Rye River plantation negotiations during 1998. President Clinton. And it was on the Hebron Agreement. And it was about packing the luggage. You know, he packed the luggage and he told the President of the United States, we're leaving. And he thinks he's a mega negotiator. I think you have people in American politics that believe that they are mega negotiators

and that they can apply this everywhere. And this is what Netanyahu thinks. What I wrote about this, and this is sort of the best angle I can give you, is that the issue of Israeli hostages is even bigger than Netanyahu. This is not the chief of staff. The commander of the Israeli army is not the prime minister. It's the government, the entire form of the government. And in Israel, you have the army, you have the sheen bet, you have the Mossad, you have the government, you have the war cabinet, you have the person, the general responsible for the hostages. And I don't think, Dan, that if these very serious people, most of which are not political, some of which they are, will come to the prime minister or to the cabinet and say, this is the best deal that we can have. This is what's on the table. And we can release dozens of Israelis that are being tortured right now in those cells

of Hamas in Gaza. I don't believe that even Netanyahu, with all his power, will be able to prevent it. And I should also say that considering his political situation right now and the polls saying that he's very unpopular, and that his government is very unpopular, I don't think he'll be able to stop it. So to an extent, I think it's a fake discussion that's happening in some corridors of the Israeli discourse. Because first of all, Hamas is not agreeing to the consensus terms of the war cabinet, including Benny Gantz and Eisenhower and and the opposition, basically saying, we're not going to stop the war. So we need to pass this

in order to get to specifics. And when we get to these specifics, you have the best and the brightest of the Israeli defense apparatus. That's the Mossad, the Shin Bet, the IDF. And these people are not going to allow the political system to shove away, you know, the idea of the hostages. They're going to say, look, you're going to take this decision. It's a decision by the cabinet. But if you think you're going to shut us up, if you think you're going to somehow derail this without the public knowing that there is an offer on the table, that's not going to happen. And because of this, what I wrote is that this issue is even bigger than the prime minister of Israel. It goes to the nation's soul.

It's about solidarity. It's about kol Yisrael ha-revim zel hazeh. It's about the notions that one for all and all for one. That really are the fabric of the defense approach of Israel. And also the guilt, because these people, most of them are civilians, those who are going to be released beyond the female soldiers. These are civilians. These are dads and grandfathers and women that just happened to be that day on the southern border of Israel. And the defense apparatus in Israel feels responsible.

People are, you know, they're still not sleeping at night because they were responsible and they failed the country. And they failed those people who are now being tortured by, you know, a genocidal organization out there. A long answer, I know, but I think, you know. No, no, no. Very important because I think there's conventional wisdom out there and you're bringing some clarity to the issue that I think is absent, at least in a lot of the coverage over here outside of Israel. I want to talk about the day after plan. The government, the war cabinet

released an initial blueprint for a potential path for how Gaza could be governed and possibly rebuilt after the war. What can you tell us about this plan? So this is not actually a plan by the war cabinet as it is. It's the Netanyahu plan or the Netanyahu vision for Gaza. And what I found interesting about that is that he wasn't ruling out specifically that the Palestinian Authority would be there. He said in that plan that Israel will aim to have a force there that wasn't involved in terror, which specifically applies to the Palestinian Authority. But he didn't say the Palestinian Authority, so he left a window there. All the rest are basically a summary of what Netanyahu has been saying about what's going to happen in Gaza.

Gaza is not going to be a threat to Israel anymore. Israel is going to have the overreaching security responsibility for the Gaza Strip. The IEF will be able to operate and so forth and so forth. But it's not really a day-after plan. I'll just give you an example of what's a day-after plan. One of the things that's being considered within the Israeli-American discussions right now is what they call humanitarian islands. And the idea there is to create hubs within the Gaza Strip that will be protected by either Egyptians, Emirates, a United Arab Force, Gazans that are not Hamas, or maybe PA soldiers that are not Hamas, be guarded, you know, with armed men. And in these places, you will have, you know, a school,

you'll have bakeries, you will have all the things that people need to continue on with their lives. And Hamas would not be allowed around these places. So this is a sort of a day after plan. I'll give you another example. I published two weeks ago the plan of Yoav Galan, the Israeli defense minister. So basically what he's saying is Israel is going to supply humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. It's going to allow this to come from the south and from the north. And it's going to arm Palestinians to make sure that it doesn't fall to the hands of Hamas. And it's going to have relations with commerce and trade and civil commissions within the Gaza Strip. And they are going to be built as a new power hubs of sorts around the Gaza Strip, and they are going to be built as a new power hubs of sorts around the

Gaza Strip. And this is how Gaza is going to be run from now on. Another day after plan is what we're hearing in recent days. We'll have a new government of the Palestinian Authority. It's not going to be with Fatah ministers, but with what they call sometimes technocrats. Technocrats that are approved by the Palestinian Authority, technocrats that the Palestinian Authority has been consulted on. Yes, of course. But these people can be, for instance, Salam Fayyad, who Saudi Arabia really wants to be the new leader of the Palestinian Authority, and he is known to reject corruption. And that's one of the reasons that he was kicked out of the Palestinian

Authority to begin with. And then this new government is going to rule both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And it's going to take some forces from the West Bank and enter with them to the Gaza Strip, therefore shoving away Hamas. Now, I'm not saying about any of these plans, Dan, that they're viable, that they're the way to go forward. But this is a day after plan. What Netanyahu published is basically a summary of his speeches in points, together with one small new idea. And that is that Israel would want to have some local authorities in the Gaza Strip that were not prior to this involved in terror, meaning probably not the PA. It's not a day after plan. And I think that this is one of the things

that the administration is saying, and Dan, I would want to hear your input about this because of your history in Iraq and other places. The administration is basically saying, we understand you want to topple Hamas. They're saying this from day one. We support your intention in toppling Hamas. But if this is what you want to do, and you're going to drag everyone with you, and you're absolutely right in doing so, what do you want to happen thereafter? Are you going to control the Gaza Strip? Israel says no, absolutely not. So the administration is saying, and the rest of the world is saying, so what are you going to do? And Netanyahu has been dodging this question again and again and again. And his document this week is just another way to dodge basically the question.

He's just outlining something so general, so vague, so you can't understand anything from it. But as you know, for instance, with Iraq, I'm not saying that it worked really well. Maybe it did. I don't know. You tell me. It initially did not work well at all in Iraq because the United States had a very ambitious vision for how Iraq would be rebuilt and governed after the regime was toppled. But it did not, during that period initially, have sufficient security forces present to provide for basic order while the U.S.-led coalition was implementing its plans. So we had a very light military footprint. Basically, the U.S. strategy was win the war, quote-unquote, topple Saddam and his sons, and then basically move most of the U.S.

military forces out of there. And when you had the collapse of a governing authority, meaning the Iraqi government had collapsed, and you had the disappearance of U.S. forces, you had total anarchy. And the U.S.'s ability, whatever our ambitions were for the future political process of Iraq and the future reconstruction of Iraq, they were impossible to implement with any kind of serious success without our ability to provide basic order, which is why many of us on the ground were arguing to Washington, we need to bring forces back. We cannot, as my boss at the time, Ambassador Brimmer, argued to our bosses in Washington, the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department, the worst of all worlds is an ineffective occupation. It's one thing to have an occupation.

It's another thing to have an occupation that can't provide basic security and order. Then the occupation is resented by the local population because it's humiliating. And it's actually not providing for the safety of its citizens. So you can't build buy-in from the local population. So you've got to choose what you want. You've got to say, we either have this grand vision that we want to implement, but doing so requires providing basic security for the population you're trying to win over. We had a grand vision without providing basic security for the population you're trying to win over. We had a grand vision without providing basic security.

And we didn't really begin to provide basic security until two or three years, two to three years later, when we started to implement the surge strategy, where we brought our troop presence back up, and we implemented a whole other approach to how we start to provide security for Iraqis, which is a conversation for another day. And I think this is interesting as it relates to what we're talking about now, because there's something to be said for the Israeli for the war cabinet saying we need total victory in, in Gaza, we need total victory against Hamas in order to implement a post Gaza or post war plan. In other words, you can words, you either have to have a wipeout and then you implement the plan, but to have not a total wipeout of Hamas and hope to implement a plan,

my sense is Netanyahu, or at least some around him, believe that that is futile. It doesn't negate, and not only does it negate, you need to have some sort of solution in central and northern Gaza, because these places have been taken effectively by the IDF almost three months ago. And in these places, every place that there is a vacuum, Hamas enters, re-enters. I'll give you one example.

The IDF is having, in the last two weeks, an operation in a neighborhood near Gaza called Zaytoun, which it occupied in the first month of the war. In the recent two weeks, they killed over 100 Hamas fighters. So what's happening? And the answer, of course, is that there is no other force taking this from the hands of Israel. The Israeli IDF, the Israeli Shin Bet, is really begging the cabinet to take these decisions. Gadi Eisenkot, who's a member of the war cabinet, an important member, a former chief of staff, sent a letter to the other members of the war cabinet, basically arguing that the main problem

is not that the war cabinet is making the wrong decisions, that it's not making decisions at all, and decisions that need to be made. And the most, you know, recycled argument that you'll hear within the IDF and other places in Israel that do security, we're winning the war militarily. But if we're not going to have a solution politically, all that we have worked for can be futile and then Hamas can re-enter. And that's one of the reasons for the pressure, politically speaking and internationally, on Netanyahu to supply for some sort of a day after, because we are right now at the day after. This is what people don't understand. So Rafah is, we need to take care of Rafah. But basically, all the rest of the Gaza Strip has been effectively occupied by the IDF, and the IDF doesn't want to remain there. It's not an occupier,

unlike the U.S. in Iraq. It has absolutely no claim to take care of the population, to be there for years on end. That's not the aim. Maybe this should be the aim, by the way. Many people in Israel would say, if you don't stay there for a while, Hamas will regain its power anyway. And that's an argument to be made. Last question for you, Nadav. There was some chatter coming out of the Munich Security Conference that Israel was on the cusp of international reputational collapse and complete isolation. I've been skeptical of that, but you're hearing growing chatter that Israel is entering a zone

that it has never in recent memory, at least based on recent history, has never been in before, and that it's not clear how Israel comes back from that. What is your response to that? I think that Israel is in a very dire condition internationally speaking, and one of our chapters was actually recorded from The Hague, from the ICJ there. And I think

many people don't know that the ICJ has been convening in the last two weeks, I think, to discuss the legality of the Israeli control of the West Bank and what's happening in the West Bank, an occupation there. And one of the things that we're seeing around the world is much more animosity, hatred towards Israel, sometimes bordering on antisemitism and sometimes truly antisemitic. And I think it's very dangerous. The founding fathers of Israel understood that legitimacy, international legitimacy, is an asset for the Jewish democracy, and that it needs to be achieved. Now, from understanding that we are in

a very bad shape, internationally speaking, because of this war, it doesn't mean that the war isn't just, or that we shouldn't defeat Hamas. I think, as an Israeli, but also as a person living in the Middle East, speaking with my friends, both in Ramallah and in other countries that have relations with Israel, that if Hamas is not defeated, we're in for just an endless war, a futile war in the region between Israel and all the proxies of Iran, and between these proxies of Iran to all the moderate Arab states. So defeating Hamas militarily is very much needed. But then when you say that, and you understand that Israel is in a very tough spot internationally, there are many things other than that, that maybe you should do.

For instance, maybe the IDF should have those humanitarian hubs. It's not my idea. It's an idea born in the Israeli Defense Ministry. So maybe they should do that more quickly. Maybe the war should be operated on a much quicker pace. Look, Dan, you've been seeing, you've been witnessing Israeli wars for many years now. You know that one of the substantial elements in Israeli wars, this was really made, this call was made by David Ben-Gurion himself, that Israeli wars need to be short. It's paramount that they will be as short as possible. We're a small nation. We don't have, you know, we don't manufacture many of our goods.

It's not the United States. We're not on a continent. And you don't manufacture many of our goods. It's not the United States. We're not on a continent. And you don't manufacture many of your munitions. Exactly. And because of that, we don't want to open the door to international embargoes and to pressure. We want to move the war to the enemy's territory and win decisively as soon as possible. This was the Ben-Gurion idea. Now, Israel was very worried about Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. I know that sometimes it doesn't look like that, internationally speaking, but it was, and about its own soldiers. So it moved slowly. So there can be many conclusions from understanding that we're in a dire and a very difficult international situation. But none of those should be that we shouldn't have fought the war or that we shouldn't, militarily speaking, defeat Hamas.

I think this is essential, not only for Israel's security, but for the security and peace in the region and it's and its reputation and have it having credibility and deterrence internationally without deterrence without deterrence in the region in hebrews sometimes we say uh if charlie's got uh essek we can close down the business okay without deterrence in the middle east it's a huge problem it's a difficult neighborhood and we need to have this. But it's not only about showing our force. It's about effectiveness. We need to defeat Hamas militarily.

It's not about moving populations. It's not about all of these issues and all the far, these really crazy far-right demands. It's about defeating them militarily, And I think this is really essential, even for me personally as an Israeli, just to be sure that I can live in safety in Israel, but also that we can have peace treaties with countries around us. And for them to have peace treaties with us,

without knowing that there is a fundamentalist sect on the outskirts of this, you know, faithful to Iran, that will try to jeopardize and derail this. Yeah. Nadav, thank you for this. It brought some clarity to a number of important issues, and I'm grateful, as always, for your time,

and look forward to being in touch in a week or so. Thanks very much, Dan. Thank you. That's our show for today. To keep up with Nadav Eyal, you can find him on X. That's at Nadav underscore Eyal or at Yediot Akhranot or at Ynet, Y-N-E-T. 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.