Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The ‘Day After’ Document - with Prof. Netta Barak-Corren

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Share on X: https://tinyurl.com/yc8jb3m6 Is now the time for Israeli decision-makers to begin serious internal deliberations and planning for the “day after” in Gaza? According to Nadav Eyal in his column last Friday in Yediot, over 95% of Hamas rockets are gone, Hamas’s smuggling routes have been closed, and its munitions production capacity is zero. Is progress in defeating Hamas appears much better than one would think from reading popular press accounts? It’s against that backdrop that we’ve learned of a 28-page document -- this is not publica -- and is circulating among Israeli military leaders and war strategy decision-makers within the government. Some we spoke to suggested that this document is being treated as the basis for ‘day after’ planning in the government. It’s called: "From a murderous regime to a moderate society: the transformation and rehabilitation of Gaza after Hamas". The researchers are Prof. Netta Barak-Corren, a law professor who works on conflict resolution; Prof. Danny Orbach, a military historian; Dr. Nati Flamer who specializes in Hamas and Hezbollah; and Dr. Harel Chorev, an expert on Palestinian society. To help us understand these recommendations, we are joined today by one of its authors, Prof. Netta Barak-Corren, who is a legal scholar with degrees from the Hebrew University (where she is a professor). She clerked for the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, and then pursued doctoral studies at Harvard, graduating in 2016. She currently is on leave from Hebrew University, while she’s visiting faculty at Princeton. She’s previously taught at University of Pennsylvania and University of Chicago.

So what we recommend in the paper is the following. We say as a matter of practicality, there will need to be a period of non-ructuring and rebuilding Gaza and want to form a regional alliance with Israel. And, you know, the U.S. maybe could be helpful and other allies, etc. It doesn't have to be Israel. It is best if it is not Israel. If nobody else is willing to do that, there might be no choice but for Israel to do that for a period of time. It might make the project less successful. But without it, the likelihood that Hamas will reconstitute itself as has happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. It's just30 a.m. on Monday, June 24th in New York City. I'm back from Israel. I'll have more to say about my most recent visit on future episodes. It's 730 a.m. on Monday, June 24th in Israel,

as Israelis get ready to start their day. Is now the time for Israeli decision makers to begin serious internal deliberations and planning for the day after in Gaza? According to regular Call Me Back guest Nadav Ayel, in his most recent column last Friday in Yediot Akhranot, over 95% of Hamas's rockets are now gone. Hamas's smuggling routes have been closed, and its munitions and bomb-making production capacity is zero. Indeed, progress in defeating Hamas appears to be much better than one would think from reading popular press accounts. According to one academic that Nadav cites, each time the IDF raids an area in Gaza now,

it encounters a weaker and weaker Hamas, as well as evidence that young boys in Gaza are now being recruited to serve in RPG attack squads. So Hamas may be facing a recruitment crisis. That is, as has been reported, something in the neighborhood of at least 30 percent of Hamas's fighters have been killed or captured. And it's against that backdrop of military progress that we learned of a 28-page document that is not public and that is focused on planning for the day after, and that has been circulating among Israeli military leaders

and decision makers on war strategy in the upper echelon of Israel's government. We have read this document closely. Some we spoke to suggested to us that this document is being treated as the basis for day after planning within the Israeli government. The paper is called From a Murderous Regime to a Moderate Society, the Transformation and Rehabilitation of Gaza After Hamas. The Israeli researchers who produced this document are Professor Danny Arbach, a military historian, Professor Neda Barak Koran, a law professor who works on conflict resolution, Dr. Nati Palmer, who works on intelligence about

Hamas and Hezbollah, and Dr. Harrel Horev, an expert on Palestinian society. These Israeli researchers know that their paper will be controversial as it gets more and more attention, but they offer this question in response. Do you want a Gaza that you can live with? Well, this is the way. They're not concerned with getting U.S. support for their proposal. They're also not particularly impressed by polls of Palestinian public opinion, which, in their view, can change quickly, especially once Hamas is unequivocally defeated, which, in their view, is essential to any kind of day-after plan. To help us understand these recommendations, we are joined today by one of the authors of the plan,

Professor Neda Barak-Koran, who is a legal scholar with degrees from the Hebrew University, where she is a professor. She also clerked for the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, and then she pursued doctoral studies at Harvard, graduating in 2016. Professor Barak-Koran is currently on leave from Hebrew University, while she's visiting faculty at Princeton University here in the U.S. And she's previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago. Now, this is a wonkier conversation than we usually have. We get into a lot of the complicated issues that decision makers will have to contend with as they think

about the future of Gaza. Professor Netta Barak-Koren on the day after document. This is Call Me Back. I'm pleased to welcome to the podcast for the first time Netta Barak-Koren, who is normally in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but has been recently and now visiting faculty at Princeton University before she gets ready to return to Israel and Hebrew this summer. Neda, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Great to be around. Neda, last Friday in his column in Yediot Achranot, Nadava Yal, the correspondent and analyst for Yediot, that is a frequent guest on this podcast, reported on the existence of a,

which to my knowledge had not ever been reported upon before, a 30-page document that outlines, it's a draft proposal for a day-after plan. The much sought-after day-after plan that everyone's talking about must exist, should exist, why doesn't it exist? Apparently, whether or not this is the plan, there at least is a proposal for a plan. And the document has been circulating, I think, since February among the very top decision makers in Israel's security apparatus, and including some within its political leadership in the government. And according to Nadav's reporting, it's being treated among many of the decision makers,

including some on Israel's Security Council and in the war cabinet, as a possible foundation for a day after policy. And you and three of your colleagues wrote this document. Now, the document itself has not been published. So Nadav reported on the document, but the document itself has not been released in public. Elan and I have read the document in its entirety, but we won't obviously post the document in the show

notes, but we just want to talk to you about it and some of its key points to understand at least what is being, even if this is not a final plan or even the basis for a final plan, it is the basis for a discussion. And even understanding how various leaders and decision makers are thinking about this discussion and the various trade-offs is important. And I want to understand your process, your motivation, what the recommendations are. And no one asked you to do this, I don't think. So you and your colleagues took it upon yourselves to do this. And how the document was received. In the intro of this episode, I laid out your, shall we say, remarkable career and highly credentialed background. But I want to start with a few questions on the process for this project. So take me to the moment in November of 2023, which was about a month and two weeks, you know, basically six, seven weeks into the war

when you and your colleagues independently, unprompted, unsolicited, decided to take it upon yourself to work on a solution to what I would call one of the world's most perplexing problems, meaning this is not a problem that actually began on October 7th in terms of what to do with a Palestinian governing structure in Gaza, but a problem that goes back decades, if not even longer. Just tell me about how it all got started. Great. Thank you. You know, very shortly after October 7th, and once this sort of scope and the magnitude and the methods of Hamas became known, comparisons started between Hamas and ISIS. At that moment, I think the sort of the insight that hit me was that, well, if Hamas

is in any way similar to ISIS, then that is really interesting because ISIS has been largely defeated and he's not today the frightening and all-encompassing and global threat that he was a decade ago. So I started reading about the military history and the diplomatic history of defeating ISIS. And then it almost immediately became clear that defeating something like ISIS only on the military level is insufficient. The situation in Iraq and in Syria now, of course, demonstrates how it's not sufficient to just move on the military front. And then came the idea to maybe look at both cases of successes and failures of trying to rebuild and transform nations that became consumed by authoritarian and ideologically extremist and murderous regimes. And so I formed a group. It includes both Professor Adani Orbach

from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He's a military historian. And Dr. Nathie Flammer from Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Har El-Khoreb from Tel Aviv University were both experts on Palestinians and Hamas. And we set out to study together cases of successes and failures in trying to do exactly what Israel said

he wants to do, which is to transform and rebuild in the day after. And we went over lots of cases. We focused on Germany and Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan. But this is the process that we got into. And that was all voluntary. I mean, I think the motivation was to try and see whether we can be helpful in anything. It was clear that nobody else is going to delve into the history and do this kind of research because this is not what the government does. So your first stop in researching this topic was looking, as you mentioned, at historical precedents, both very recently and then in the 20th century.

And you mentioned ISIS, but you also looked at post-World War II Germany, you looked at post-World War II Japan, ISIS, as you mentioned, and then you also got into Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to start, though, just in chronological order. So let's start with Germany and then expand to Japan and going forward. What were some of the key similarities and differences between Germany in 1945 and Hamas in 2024? In both cases, you have a nation entirely engulfed and consumed by a murderous ideology that has been instilled both for education, for culture, for the structures of government, that it also inhibited any kind of opposition and a regime that is bent on continuing through the very end without any stopping to it. Of course, when we wrote this document, it was not clear yet. You know, it was pretty early in the war and it wasn't still clear, you know, how the war will end, not that it's clear now. But the additional similarity was the goal,

the Israeli goal to achieve a distraction of the Hamas regime and to ultimately build something new in Gaza, whether by itself or with allies. And so that was a goal that was also similar between what Israel sought to achieve in Gaza and what the Allies sought to achieve in Germany post-World War II. And you put Japan in that category as well? Japan is a very similar category. In fact, in terms of ideology and extremism, there are a lot of similarities in the suicidal culture of Japan and Japanese military forces during World War II, including the atrocities and the torture and the cruel methods used by Japanese forces against both civilians and military opponents

and the jihadi culture of Hamas. So that was also specifically interesting about Japan because the ideological component and the sacrificial component was so strong in Japan before the defeat in World War II that it made it even more relevant and interesting to look at how a society, if a society and how a society can put that behind and move to the Japan that we essentially know today. Yeah, I completely agree with you about Japan. I mean, that transformation is extraordinary. I think people who spend time in Japan today don't realize that it wasn't that

long ago that the culture you're describing, at least among the military and government and others in society, was as pervasive as it was. But one glaring difference between germany and japan and i guess especially germany is however radicalized those societies were a they were highly educated and b they were pretty advanced economies pretty advanced industrial economies hamas has and gaza has many challenges not the least of which is, it doesn't seem to be very advanced. It does seem like, let's just say, not a first world country or government. Where was Germany and Japan at the end of World War II in comparison to where Gaza is today in that regard? They were actually in a much worse situation. Of course,

Gaza is under a severe state of destruction today, and the war hasn't ended, and one cannot underestimate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza now. But if we're looking back to the end of World War II, Germany and Japan, millions of people died. The magnitude of ruin of schools, of infrastructure was just enormous. In some places, more than 80% of all civil infrastructures were entirely demolished. And there were millions of people who lost their homes. And of course those countries, each and every one of them was much, much bigger. And I haven't even mentioned, you know, the atomic bombs on Japan. So it's true that in terms of history, both Japan

and Germany had this impressive history, but their actual physical state and moral state at the end of World War II was really even much worse than it is the situation today in Gaza. And of course, what ended World War II, and that wasn't an end that was easily achieved, was total defeat. So both in Japan and in Germany, the regimes were unwilling to surrender and end the war for a very long time, even after it became clear that they will not be able to win this war. That is, by the way, a similarity between both cases and the case of Hamas in Gaza. We see that today in Gaza as well. You see Hamas unwilling to surrender and unwilling to put an end to the war on its own volition. Okay. ISIS. You mentioned ISIS at the

beginning of this conversation. So where does ISIS fit into all this? So ISIS fits into all of this in several interesting intersections. So first, if you're looking at ISIS, ISIS has developed and built itself to the sort of fabric of Iraq in ways that are very highly related to the series of strategic and military mistakes that the United States made in Iraq after first invading Iraq with the hopes of transforming Iraq and reproducing the success of democratic transformation of World War II in Iraq. And the series of strategic mistakes that the United States have committed in Iraq in 2003 onwards has in many important ways produced ISIS. So if to give a few concrete examples, the US dismantled the military, the Iraqi military, without first securing the borders,

it was in fact very hard to do to secure the Iraqi borders, lengthy desert borders that are very hard to secure the Iraqi army. They did not meet the American army with any kind of resistance. That was one of its central goals. And once it was dismantled, all those the situation in Iraq has also contributed to the failure of the transformation efforts and the efforts to rebuild Iraq. To rebuild schools, for example, to rebuild civil infrastructures, to rebuild or to build democracy itself in Iraq. Because ISIS started to attack all of those rebuilding projects and to assassinate teachers and to attack schools, et cetera. So ISIS is interconnected here in the sense of the failures that produced ISIS on the part of the, you know, you try to create and you try to engage in rebuilding, but if you make strategic errors, such as those that America did in Iraq, you might produce something much more dangerous and you might hinder your own efforts to try and do the rebuilding. And of course, the military defeat of ISIS, that's the first angle I talked to at the beginning of our session. was extremely important in terms of defeating the terror threat and the threat to life that

ISIS posed. But in and of itself alone, without anything further, it did not help the Iraqi society restructure and rebuild itself. So it's not enough to just proceed on the military front. That's another lesson from the ISIS example. Okay. I want to come back to your Iraq observations because I'm deep into that topic, having spent a lot of time there and working on these exact issues. But we'll come back to that. I do want to get into these recommendations. Having read the document now, I'm struck by how pragmatic it is in its approach. Again, even if I don't agree with every recommendation or every analytical observation, it does not strike me as an ideological document.

I mean, I read it thinking, we're so wired these days to think of what happens next with Israel in this crisis, in this war, or post-war, hopefully at some point, to view everything through an ideological lens. Do you come at it with a plan to reoccupy? Do you come at it with a plan to reoccupy? Do you come at it a plan to re-empower the Palestinian Authority and Fatah in Gaza? I was reading it closely thinking, what's their ideology? And it's not. I mean, it's not an ideological document. Again,

I think there are things in it that ideologues on both sides will like. There are things in it that ideologues on both sides will hate. Therefore, it is very much like just, it strikes me as very practical. So can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. What we wanted to achieve is to understand what works and what doesn't. It was a practical enterprise, and that's why it looks this way. I could share that people in our group come from different ideologies. We did not discuss these ideologies. We were arguing about what sources, how to understand the evidence, how to best fit and analyze it. That was what the project was about. So I'm pleased to hear that this is also how it reads. Okay. So now let's get in, as I said, to these specific recommendations. It begins with

the assumption that absolute defeat of Hamas is a precondition to implementing any of the recommendations. What do you mean by a complete defeat of Hamas? Because we hear versions of this term, sometimes from the prime minister, total victory. You know, I talk to government officials in Israel, I talk to military officials in Israel, and I get different versions of complete defeat is Hamas is wiped out completely full stop. And then I hear from others, no, no, no, no. It's not that every Hamas fighter is wiped out. But if there's these 24 battalions that matter of Hamas, that those battalions are crushed, their command structures are crushed. And even within the individual battalions, half of the fighters may be still alive and scattered, but they're outside of the command structure. So the sort of the institution of Hamas, both the military and civilian institution, the organizational structure is destroyed. Again, and I can give you like five other versions of what total defeat of Hamas looks like. So how do you define total defeat of Hamas? Great. So there are three potential components in our view for total defeat. The one is the loss of

territory. So Hamas is no longer sovereign. In Gaza, the Gaza territory is no longer being dealt or being administered under the sort of sovereignty of Hamas, which is, by the way, akin to what happened in Germany, in Japan, and in Iraq and Afghanistan in each of those cases. The second component is loss of control. So if Hamas is no longer running and controlling Gaza, but another operation is, even if there is no Palestinian loss of territory, but this region is not administered any longer, not even behind the scenes by Hamas, this is also very important. So we shouldn't be finding ourselves in a situation like Hezbollah in Lebanon, where theoretically you have an independent country, but Hezbollah is actually running the scene behind the scenes. And the third component is public trials to senior Hamas perpetrators. But I think it's very important to say,

oftentimes there is a little bit of confusion between a few dimensions of what it means to totally defeat Hamas. And I think some people say it's not possible to totally defeat Hamas because Hamas is an idea and you can't totally defeat ideas. You can't defeat ideologies. They will always be there. They will be preserved in the text and how people think and so on. And I think it's correct that one cannot totally defeat ideologies, but ideologies can be either very centric or very peripheral. And we see the Nazi ideology hasn't passed away. It's still out there, but it's not what it was during the time of World War II. The Nazis, yes, the ideas are out there, but they don't have an infrastructure and they don't have territory. And not to imply that when we're saying total defeat, we mean a defeat of the ideology. It's the defeat of the sovereignty and the effective control of the territory.

But crucially, I mean, just referring to the two definitions that you provided at the outset of the question, it's not enough to just defeat the Hamas militarily. The Hamas is not just an army. It's also the sovereign, was a sovereign in Gaza before the war, and it still tries to be the sovereign in Gaza during and amidst the war. And total defeat in that sense means to replace Hamas with a different authority, different regime that administers all affairs in Gaza. Yeah, I make this point all the time, because I've heard this from the early interviews I've done. And I know from friends of mine in the government and in the war cabinet, or what was the war cabinet,

this came up from US officials all the time, you can't defeat an idea. And the response, the example that was given by one official was, you know, what is Nazism today? I mean, versions of Nazism are expressed rhetorically in an almost clownish way, you know, what is Nazism today? I mean, versions of Nazism are expressed rhetorically in an almost clownish way, you know, with young people, kids marching the streets of Charlottesville with tiki torches that they got from Bed Bath and Beyond. You can't destroy an idea from their head. They're chanting Jews will not replace us. But that's what Nazism can look like without infrastructure, without a military capability, and without territory to govern. It's not to say your standard can't definition of total defeat is already entangled with you can't really achieve total defeat if you just stick with the military aspect of defeating

the organization. Without actually structuring something else that will replace it, you cannot really achieve total defeat. Okay. so one recommendation from the paper, which I think will be hard for some to get comfortable with, some in the Israeli government, and I'm going to quote it here. Historical experience shows that setting a positive horizon of renewed independence and acceptance into the family of nations is necessary for the success of the process, both for harnessing the population and the new leadership. Now, I translate it, a lot of people will hear in that, aha, a two-state solution.

That's where this is going. The seeds are being planted for a two-state solution. And there will be some, including some within this current Israeli government, that will be allergic to that idea. Yes, but as you begin, this is not a political document. This is a document that aims to learn from the best knowledge that we would put into this how to proceed if Israel and the region, because I think it's not just an Israeli interest, want to ultimately have a future

where there is peace and stability and there is no ongoing violence. And if you're looking at the historical examples, you see that you need to have this component in order to provide the motivation for the people who are living there to do the necessary rebuilding and transformation for new political leadership to emerge and ultimately for this process of transforming a nation to succeed. You know, it's very clear. The Germans clang on to this idea, to this understanding. Nothing was promised to them at the beginning, you know, about the specific date where this will happen. But the possibility, the option to harness, you know, Adenauer and the entire, you know, new, fragile, very, you know, inconfident, still building a new political

system in Germany was very strongly linked to the hope, to the understanding that if things are done right, if the transformation, if the rebuilding is pursued with diligence, if it's successful, that's the horizon. It's going to happen. Germany will be readmitted to the family of nation and we will re-win its sovereignty. And that was also the case with Japan. And we see that that's also a broader lesson from conflicts around the world. Yes, you're right. You know, maybe one of the reasons why this proposal was not formally adopted or why we don't hear these kind of statements from the Israeli government is because of the objection or the allergy, as you said, to some of these recommendations. I think what's, as you know,

going back to your first point, this is not the only recommendation and maybe what's unique and, you know, Nadavie, I'll define it as provocative in our findings is that on the one hand you have here a very strong, you know, emphasis on the importance of total defeat, which is something that those, you know, those elements in the coalition that you alluded to, you know, are all for alongside with ensuring the positive horizon for the Palestinians that

they're all against. But that's what we found. Another controversial recommendation revolves around the notion of de-radicalization. And you write that the transformation, I'm quoting here, the transformation and rehabilitation cannot be achieved with the flow of material human resources alone, infrastructure, food, medicine, and that eliminating the jihadist ambitions will only be possible by reforming the educational, religious, and media systems. Now, who on earth do you imagine doing that? That's a great question. And first, let me say, you know, the very important observation that we make here is it would be very bad for Israel to try to do that directly. So given, you know, the sort of long and bloody history of the Israeli control and occupation of Gaza, this very war. We think it shouldn't be a mission that Israeli forces are actually conducting. This is definitely a point where

the allyship of the moderate Arab partners in our region is necessary. But we have here sources for optimism because the transformations that already occurred in the educational systems of the Emirates, of Saudi Arabia, of Egypt in very recent years provide the initial sources, both in terms of textbooks, of teacher preparation and infrastructure in order to start this process. And the French and the Brits had very different models of how to do de-radicalization, de-dentification in Germany post-World War II. The French had an all-in, very sort of patronizing model for how to do that. The British took a more, you know, I'm going to be a regulator on the outside. I'm going to mostly focus on saying what couldn't be, but I'm not going to tell you how to write your textbooks. And we think that Israel should definitely be on the sort of more off and regulatory sort of aspect

to constitute a partnership and a coalition that could help achieve this change or good precedents, good materials to work with. But it's very important that all of these processes will be conducted with the outmost respect to the local population and the constant sort of goal to grow ultimately a regime that is able to govern itself effectively and non-violently. I mean, in all those examples you refer to, Netta, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in particular, but I'm especially interested in Saudi Arabia. You did have a leadership and a leader who was

committed to systematically expunging the language of radicalism from everywhere. I mean, there was a decision that these countries could not modernize until, and these societies could not modernize until they tackled this, not only in the schools, but also in mosques and madrasas. And it was a systematic campaign. I mean, Israel can't do that. It requires a leader from within the society who's empowered to do that. So then you

get into a chicken and egg issue. Who's the leader of the society that Israel's ready to empower to do that? Well, first, you know, we might not know yet who that person is. And it wasn't clear when you started out this process in Japan, in Germany, who that person is going to be. Let me remind our listeners that Hamas has very effectively essentially annihilated and eradicated any opposition in Gaza, both Fatah and independence. There was no way to challenge the Hamas regime in Gaza before October 7th, and even after October 7th, without losing one's life. And so it's not surprising that we don't know who that person is right now. Unfortunately, the Hamas has been effective in also assassinating proponents after October 7th in Gaza when they were trying to sort of- Well, that's an interesting point that I don't think gets as much attention is that there have been some Palestinian leaders,

quasi leaders, tribal leaders in certain parts of Gaza that have been willing to step up and try to lead and build governing capacity in some way at a very local level. Or at least try to, yeah. Right, at the local level and work with the Israelis. And they have been since slaughtered by Hamas. Yes, and that goes back into the sort of first point that I made,

that how difficult it is to try and do rebuilding, to grow a new leadership, when you're still fighting the old regime and this regime, you know, hell-bent on making sure that nobody will replace it. So that's why you need first total defeat, and then you're able to assess the conditions under which it is possible for new leadership to grow. That's why it's so important to ensure that Hamas can no longer threaten any new leadership such that Gazans will be able to rebuild their lives in a positive direction. Related to that, you also wrote in the paper that the moment you start talking about

a day after plan, the moment you start trying to work with local people while the fighting is still going on, it poses another problem, which is it signals to the enemy that you have to defeat, total defeat, that you want this war to end enemy that you have to defeat, total defeat, that you want this war to end, that you have one foot out the door. Even though you don't explicitly express a timeline or a clock, there is a timeline. And I've just been struck by this with U.S. pressure constantly on Israel. Where's your plan? Where's your day after plan? Where's your plan? We need to see a plan. We're in Riyadh. We're talking about a plan. We're in Cairo. We're talking about a plan. We're in, we're coming to Israel. You know plan. We're in Cairo, we're talking about a plan. We're coming to Israel.

You know, Blinken has done 700 trips back and forth to Israel. We need to see a plan. And all Hamas sees in that is they want to get this thing over with as quickly as possible, which becomes an enormous strategic advantage for Hamas. Well, I sort of partially agree with you. I mean, so let me offer a little bit of a clarification because maybe it wasn't clear enough. Our specific recommendation regarding timelines was that if you announce that you're going to end the war or you're going to end whatever it is that you're doing, no matter what, and if you set, especially if you set a clear date, like the United States did in Afghanistan, this is a very bad move. So in Afghanistan, the Biden administration essentially announced that, you know, They announced in August of 2020, summer of 2021. We are going to evacuate our forces, and they're going to leave Afghanistan. You know, that date

seemed sufficiently far in advance when it was announced. but what it created was a spiral of dynamics. Sort of the new administration that the U S worked so hard to construct the democratic government of Afghanistan that had, you know, numerous successes in actually rebuilding culture and education and economy in Afghanistan. That one knew that, you know, it's going to lose its most important ally. And the Taliban knew that August, 2021,, the US is going out and there is no one left to protect this sort of new government. And everything began to collapse leading up to this point. those, you know, photos and videos of the United States forces leaving essentially under fire, almost not succeeding in evacuating everybody who needs evacuation from Afghanistan because the Taliban was already advancing on Kabul and was already taking over as the United States was

living, taking back control over Afghanistan. And the point we make in the paper is, you know, if you're announcing a date that you're going to end your stay or your campaign at that date, regardless of what you've been able to achieve up until this point, you essentially signal very strongly to the other side, there is no incentive to try and achieve the substantive goals because there's already a deadline. And once the deadline arrives, they win. So they only need to survive and to make their plans up until that deadline, and then it ends. And that does have similarities with the current situation in Israel. It's not exactly the same one that you alluded to. I mean, at least in my view, the insistence of the American administration on ending the war,

I mean, wherever you are, just end the war, just get the forces out. I think that does strengthen Hamas. That does signal to Hamas that Israel is in a sort of weak position and that if they just survive long enough, they will be able to declare victory from their perspective because victory from their perspective is simply to survive and to be able to reconstitute themselves in Gaza, which they will be able to do if Israel does not actually build a new government with its allies in Gaza. And that is very dangerous. That is correct. You know, it reminds me of that line that the American military officers fighting in Afghanistan soon after, you know, in 2003, 2004, when they would hear tribal,

Afghan tribal leaders say to them about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, they would say to the American military, you may have watches, but we have time. Meaning we can be patient, we can wait you out because we know from the moment you're here, you're already planning your departure. And that's a very important component of the jihadi ideology in general. It's not true just in Afghanistan. It's also a very key feature also for Hamas and for the struggle that it views itself as leading. We have time, we have patience, and they're playing out the mindset that we don't have the resources to do it, we need to cut our losses, we need to exit, whatever is going to happen, it's going to happen. We just need to cut our losses and get out. You're sometimes missing

the larger picture, which is that whatever losses you're cutting in the immediate time frame, you might be paying some really excruciating price for this just in a few years' time. Because if Hamas is able to reconstitute itself in Gaza, my prediction is that less than one year afterwards, you'll have rockets in Tel Aviv again. Of all the provocative ideas you present in this document, one of the ones I find could be the toughest for the Israeli people is this, and I'm going to quote here, all attempts at restoration and transformation, and in particular the successful ones, invested a lot of effort in creating a narrative of continuity for the defeated nation.

In governance, this means preserving elements from the old regime. So I'm quoting from you. So I presume you mean elements of the Hamas regime. And then you go on to write that you mentioned, you say that the successes in Germany and Japan stemmed in part from curbing the desire to purge all of the actors up and down the org charts of the regimes that were defeated. And then you say, and some of the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan stemmed from the purges being too extensive, which collapsed the government, as you write, and at least contributed to the chaos. I want to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically about Iraq, but can you first tell me the experience in Germany and Japan?

Because my understanding is it initially was quite extensive, the purging, and then later on they had kind of let up. Yes, you're correct about that. So when the Allies first set out to rebuild and transform Germany and Japan. Let's talk Germany first. Japan is an interesting case in and of itself and a unique case. But Germany, they start a process they call denazification. And the ambition is to essentially remove all elements, all people who are engaged and are part of the old regime

in the process of rebuilding the new regime for Germany. But then they realize, you know, that's the sort of, there is a regional plan and then there is a practical realization that, you know, if you actually proceed with that all the way, then you will lose too many people, too many bureaucrats, too many public servants that actually had the knowledge of how to run Germany. It's a big nation. It's a nation that people experienced decades of experiencing in managing. And it's too much of a project to seek to replace all of them. Also, what they discovered is if this process of denazification goes too deep, and essentially every citizen

feels that their job is threatened, their liberties threatened, they might find themselves behind bars, then they will lose the population and the motivation, the willingness of the population to collaborate with them. You know, if a major group of citizens feel that their very livelihood and ability to continue to live in this country is jeopardized by these processes, then you lose this crucial motivation to work with you towards transformation. So very wisely, they curbed this initial motivation to get rid of all of the Nazis. And it turned out that quite a lot of old regime of Nazis continued to serve under a different ethical codes

that they had to commit to and serving different values and different regime. And they actually succeeded in transforming into this new democratic pacifist Germany. And in Japan, there were some similarities in the sense that a very crucial component of the military occupation of Japan was to preserve the emperor. So the emperor was the head of state. So unlike in

Germany, where Hitler was no longer there and all of the top apparatus of the Germany government was eliminated, in Japan, the most central figure, the emperor, considered sacred and a symbol of unity in Japan was preserved. And the Americans worked with the emperor, such that it gave a stamp of legitimacy to the entire project. But they eliminated the top government officials, the top military officials, both through public trials. I alluded to that before. Both happened in Germany and in Japan and military-wise before that. But they kept a lot of the sort of lower echelons of the bureaucracy. And in contrast to that,

in Iraq, I'm sure you'll want to say more about that. The ambition that Americans came into Iraq with were very similar. They thought we're going to do denazification. They call it debathization. Bath was sort of the main. Debathification, yeah. Yeah, that was the party of Saddam Hussein. The system crumbled. The exiles that were brought to run the country were incapable of actually doing so. The army was dismantled as part of the debathization, leading, you know, sending to the streets a very large mass of people who lost their livelihoods and were military trained and had ammunitions and had weapons,

essentially turning them against you. So I think it was a very important insight for us, something that we didn't know when we went in that we're going to find out. And you're right that it's probably one of the most pragmatist points of our findings. Gaza can only be managed by people who know Gaza. So you have to adopt this pragmatism where the top, you know, people with blood on their hands cannot stay in power, but the technocrats, the bureaucrats can and should. You're right that in Iraq, you have to think of both of these orders that we issued.

I was in the government there. I worked for the coalition authority. There were two orders that were issued. One was debathification and the other was dismant the government there. I worked for the coalition authority. There were two orders that were issued. One was debathification and the other was dismantling the army. In fact, the army order came first, dismantling the army. And you write that this was a mistake because the army was not part of the problem and that the army was a unifying symbol that all factions within Iraq took pride in. I would take issue with that in the following sense. One, most Iraqis regarded the army, Saddam's army,

as Saddam's principal tool of repression. That is how he maintained his hold over society, was with the army and Muqabirat, the security service. And the army was staffed at the senior levels by Sunni Muslims loyal to Saddam, not a majority of the population, but Saddam's ethnic sectarian faction within Islam. But the rank and file, the conscripts were Shiites, largely Shiite underclass, who the moment the U.S. rolled into Iraq, they scattered.

Those units disappeared. Those army units disappeared. Literally, we had General John Abizaid, who was a senior military official at the time, head of Central Command. We had Walt Slocum, who had worked in the Clinton administration as head of policy, undersecretary for policy, even the Defense Department, who was with us, who had done all this analysis. And they said they couldn't find a single standing unit. All these units had scattered. Why did all these units scatter? Because many of them, most of them,

were staffed by Shiite Muslims who were thrilled to no longer have to deal with their Sunni commanders anymore, who treated them horribly. So I don't believe that a majority of the Shiites viewed the army as some source of national pride and unity. And actually, when we first got to Iraq, kind of April, May of 2003, we were going and our biggest concern was that the country was going to split apart, A. And B, the big mistake of the first Gulf War was that we completely abandoned the Shiite majority. We basically left the Shiites to be slaughtered by Saddam. After we encouraged them to rise up in the south, we, the U.S., we encouraged them to rise up in the south, in southern Iraq.

And then when they did and Saddam slaughtered them, we were not there for them. So there was complete distrust of the U.S. And you're talking about something like 60% of the population, when you're talking about the Shiites of this country, 60% of the population are Shiite, and we couldn't afford to have them not trust us. I was in Iraq on April 9th of 2023, before we had formally gone in on the civilian side, but I'd gone into Umm Qasr, which is in southern Iraq. I'd gone in from Kuwait and met with a number of Shiite leaders. And all I heard over and over, are you going to abandon us again? You're probably going to abandon us again. Like nobody trusted the United States. They were

thrilled Saddam was gone, but they did not trust the United States. And what we needed was Sistani, Ali Sistani, senior Shiite cleric, the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, we were back channeling him to try to get him to issue some kind of statement to encourage the Shiites, again, 60% of the population, to cooperate with the U.S. after most of them did not trust us. This statement from him or some kind of signal from him that they should trust us was extremely important. And he basically made it clear to us, if Saddam's army is still in power, I'm not going to issue any statement. I'm not going to, you know, project any, I'm not going to fire up any signal that the Shiite should cooperate with you, because if Saddam's army appears to be back in power,

which means his leadership structure, which means the officer corps, then it's just like 1991 all over again, and we're not doing this. And he said, so he told us through back channels, you need to make a clear break with Saddam's army. And then in the north, we had the Kurds, which were obviously not as large of the representation of the population as the Shiites, but they're still large, something like, you know, 20%. And they also resided in very important part of the country in the north, in the Kurdish areas of the north. They also had been brutally victimized by Saddam's army, chemical attacks, years of brutal repression. Their leaders, Barzani and Talabani, told us very directly, not through back channels,

that if you do not disband Saddam's army, we will secede. The north will secede from Iraq. So then you would have that, what we feared the most, which was this early breakup of the country into different mini states. So we were trying to hold the country together. And what we're hearing from everyone is, unless that army is gone, this country in the north breaks apart, you know, from the central part of the country to the south, you have 60% of the population that won't cooperate with the Americans. So first, that's fascinating. Second, I think it's a good demonstration of the population that won't cooperate with the Americans. So first, that's fascinating. Second,

I think it's a good demonstration of the fact that sometimes your goals can conflict and different kind of goals and different kind of measures would not easily be reconciled with each other. And I think maybe the United States had other ways to deal with it. I'm not sure we want to go into this rabbit hole of thinking of different alternatives, such as, for example, you know, removing the top Sunni layer by trying to reconstruct the army around some different, you know, structure of leadership, or just bringing much more, you know, many more American forces in order to secure the borders, the long borders of Iraq, which, you know, once the army was dismantled, were left entirely exposed. The border issue is extremely important. And what, you know, once the army was dismantled, were left entirely exposed.

The border issue is extremely important. And what we had done, what the U.S. had done mistakenly after the war is we had very much lightened the U.S. military presence. So in that sense, it was the worst of both worlds in that we had no Iraqi army to deal with, A, because it had disbanded itself, and B, I guess the decision for us was not to disband the army. The decision is whether or not to reconstitute Saddam's army, which for all the reasons I just said would have completely discredited us with the Kurdish and Shiite leaders. At the same time, if that's the path you're on, then you've got to make sure you've

got a massive military presence, which we did not have. Soon after we arrived in Iraq, you know, the administration had made the decision to lighten our footprint. So we just didn't have the presence to do a lot of things, population, manage civilian populations in urban areas, or do borders. Yeah. And that's one of the observations we make in the paper as well, because there is a parallel between the situation there and the situation in Gaza. You know, if you leave the border of Gaza and Egypt unprotected, open for all kinds of trafficking, as it was prior to October 7th, essentially, then you are risking a constant flow of both ammunition and terrorists and combatants of various sorts and radical extremists who would, you know, exploit the situation of the anarchy

and the dismantling of the old regime in order to try and constitute something new and terrible inside. And I think there is a parallel to be drawn here. And the second thing I wanted to say, you talked about the deep divisions and hostility between the different ethnic and ideological groups in Iraq.

We deal in length in this point as part of the Iraqi story of failure was this division and how groups in Iraq. We deal in length in this point as part of the, you know, Iraqi story of failure was this division and how it was handled. And we should be careful not to steer similar divisions in Gaza, which is not Iraq. It's much smaller. It's not as, you know, conflicted. It's not as diverse, you know, it's Sunni, but there are some divisions that one must ensure not to play different tribes against each other and not to play different strong families against each other. And not to think that you could run Gaza with exiles who are, you know, coming back and could just, you know, figure it all out when they haven't been actually

part of the flesh and bones of society for so long. Ned, I want to ask you about a sort of related to my experience in Iraq, but also something specific you write in the paper, which one of my frustrations on the ground in Iraq is, as my boss at the time, Ambassador Brimmer, had conveyed to the Vice President, Dick Cheney, at the time. I remember him saying, I was in the meeting when he said this to him over the phone, he said, we have the worst of both worlds in Iraq today. We have an ineffective occupation. That is to say, it's one thing to have an occupation, which has its own level of kind of humiliation for the local population that they have to be occupied by a foreign force. But we have all the bells and whistles and symbolism of occupation, but we're not doing

it very well, meaning we have such a light security footprint. We have so few American military personnel on the ground that we can't actually secure the place. So the population doesn't have confidence in us that we can provide security and they're being subjected to the humiliation of occupation. That's what he meant by the worst of both worlds. You talk in this paper about, I don't want to call it an occupation, but it reads like a soft occupation, at least in parts of Gaza, that Israel is going to have to maintain a presence there. So I guess my first question is, can you describe what you're prescribing here? And then two, assuming it's effective, we can debate whether this will

be effective. Do you worry about the humiliating, quote unquote, the humiliation part of that aspect for the local population of the occupation aspect? Yes, that's a great question. And, you know, when you started on, you noted how our strong emphasis with a view to a positive outlook for Gaza, for readmission to the family of nations, all of that, how that is appeal hard to swallow on some elements on the Israeli right and some elements of the coalition. I think this is appeal rightfully hard to swallow for elements on the left of the Israeli society. Ultimately, I go back to the pragmatic question of what are the alternatives? We know from history that it will be extremely hard to succeed, you know, for a new government, for a new leadership to form in Gaza without external help, given the level of destruction, given the continuing

aspiration of Hamas to reconstitute itself and to re-govern Gaza, including with all of the oppressive methods that it has been using and still is using. So the idea that you can just let Gaza be, leave it, and it will just sort itself out, it's just highly impractical. And on the other hand, you do not want to find yourself in a situation exactly of the type that you are describing, where you're denying dignity, freedom, and self-rule for the population, and becoming also very ineffective in trying to do this rebuilding, which is necessary. So what we recommend in the paper is the following. We say as a matter of practicality, there will need to be a period of non-Palestinian rule of

the territory for a while. And it is best that this is done in collaboration between several different kind of forces and nations, ideally with moderate Arab allies that want to help with restructuring and rebuilding Gaza and want to form a regional alliance with Israel. And the US maybe could be helpful and other allies, et cetera. It doesn't have to be Israel. It is best if it is not Israel. If nobody else is willing to do that, there might be no choice but for Israel to do that for a period of time.

It will certainly not be the best alternative. It might make the project much more limited. It might make it less successful, a work for the diplomats and for the leaders to create this coalition. But without it, the likelihood that Hamas will reconstitute itself or that some other authoritarian and terrorist regime will reconstitute itself, as has happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. It's just too great. And so the question is a pragmatic, what are your alternatives? And we emphasize, it's highly important. I can't emphasize it enough, how important it is to treat the local population with dignity and respect, how important it is that this occupation will not be harsh. It's super important. And, you know, the soonest possible to replace foreign structures with local structures to grow this local leadership, to help it grow, to help it solidify itself, the sooner the better.

But if you don't have any interim regime between a local peaceful Palestinian regime in Gaza and the current, you know, regime, then you will just allow Hamas to reconstitute itself. And do you have any hope for this much talked about, but hard to find any evidence that anyone's making any offers, moderate Arab countries providing a security force? Or the other idea I've heard is private security contractors. Some friends of mine involved with JINSA and I think a couple of other organizations have put together a proposal that includes relying on local private security forces like security contractors to provide security.

What's your reaction to both those ideas? Well, they're both plausible, and I'm not versed in the details of any of them. Again, I mean, I want to emphasize that everything that we talk about is research, and none of us is connected or is being fed by the most up-to-date either diplomatic information or intelligence information. We do the best we can to learn from history. But what's the exact state of affairs? I can't comment on that. What I can say is that it seems to be the case, and again, this is an observation from the outside, that no one is willing to put boots on the ground without Hamas first being no threat. And I think that is a sensible demand, but in order to get to the point

where other players can be integrated, can be collaborated with on the security needs and on government needs, you have to first create the settings, the conditions for them to be able to come and give their help, to come and offer their help. In other words, we go back to the point about the importance of defeat. Right. At the beginning of this conversation, we talked about Nadav Eyal, who reported for Yediot on Friday, last Friday, that your document has had a much bigger impact on members of what was the war cabinet and others in the security apparatus than you could have ever predicted, according to Nadav.

What do you know now, even if indirectly, about the influence this document has had on the government and the military? So the first thing we know is that it was very well received. We know it was well read and circulated, that very senior people got it more than once with a recommendation of reading and discussing it. prospects or avenues of potential action that either they didn't think about or understand before or existed just as mere sort of titles or buzzwords for them. And the paper is helpful in getting them well-versed into these histories and the lessons they can learn from them. I think it's super important to create this plan, even if it changes afterwards, even if it will not be, you know, even if you will not be able to implement it exactly as you planned.

And even if you're still not at the point of, of total defeat of Hamas, because what we find is that the window of opportunity for positive change is actually, is actually, you know, very narrow and you need to act fast. And so it's super important to do this planning, even behind closed doors and with your allies. I'm worried because I'm not sure that this is actually being done and I hope it is, but this is a lingering worry for me. But I mean, it's important to mention, as I said at the beginning, that you were researching and working on this document way before the words day after became buzzwords, source of such controversy. What did you think would happen when you presented this work to decision makers? Like how did you think things would play out and how have they actually played out?

Well, one thing we hoped for, and this was, in fact, our first recommendation, we hoped that our analysis would help them understand that they need to stay in place and build a civil apparatus to deliver services for the Gazan people, whether, you know, to assist with the urgent humanitarian needs, to provide civil services, both just to, you know, to cater to these urgent needs and also to prevent Hamas from reconstituting itself as a governing authority. And its effective method of recruiting to its forces was through the delivery of these civil services, of these public services. We hope that that will happen, that they will, you know, that Israel will constitute such civil administration with international forces, with allies, but will stay in place and will actually govern the areas that it sort of cleared Hamas from. That didn't happen. So that's one thing to note.

I mean, Israel invested lots of humanitarian efforts, but it didn't do that. And the second thing that we hoped will happen, and I think happened to a much smaller degree than we hoped for, is that Israel will start investing in researching and preparing a plan for the day after. I want to be fair, from a historical perspective, when Britain started to talk about the day after World War II in Germany, the first reaction was by the United States, by the USSR back then, later by France, was, you know, you're crazy. This is overly ambitious. This cannot be done.

You know, it took a lot of time for Britain back then to convince its allies that it's a worthy and possible effort to try and rebuild Germany as a democratic and peaceful nation. And ultimately they succeeded. So, you know, I get that, that it takes time to come into, to, you know, to be able to reckon with and to come into embracing this kind of approach. But given the, given the short window of opportunity, given the urgency and given the mistakes that you might make that could jeopardize the entire enterprise, I think it's still super important to get this insight into place sooner rather than later. We hope that this is what the paper will be able to do once we

understood this insight ourself. And I'm not sure that that was actually achieved. Okay, Netta, we will leave it there. I am grateful for the work you have done, the parts I agree with and the parts I disagree with. I am grateful for the entire effort. It's extraordinary. I know a number of Israeli officials feel that way as well, certainly having impact and making the rounds. And I look forward to seeing where it goes and how it plays out. But until then, thank you also for coming here on our podcast to have this conversation and get into it a little bit. Thank you very much. And let's hope for a better future,

for a better day after in Gaza and in Israel and the region. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks. Thank you. That's our show for today. 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.