Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The October Massacre changes... Everything - with Elliott Abrams

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

In this episode with Elliott Abrams, we provide additional detail on the history of Israel-Gaza/Hamas — this time from a White House insider on U.S.-Middle East policy during a critical period in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza — what were leaders in Washington and Jerusalem thinking at the time? Elliott takes us into the Situation Room: What did they get right and what did they get wrong? This part of the discussion is a good complement to our conversation last week with Jonathan Schanzer on this history of Hamas. Elliott also considers all that has changed for Israel, the region (especially the Sunni Gulf and Iran), and the Diaspora-Israel relationship as a result of this war. Elliott is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump. Elliott was educated at Harvard College, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. After serving on the staffs of Senators Henry M. Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan, he was an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration and received the secretary of state's Distinguished Service Award from Secretary George Shultz. Elliott is the author of five books, including “Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, which is most relevant to today’s discussion.

First, it changes the Israeli policy that there's a modus vivendi with Hamas that's gone, and they will try to crush Hamas. It changes, I think, their relationship with Hezbollah, because I think they will come to apply the same calculus with the two-state solution was dead. I think its death will be a lot clearer to people all over the world, certainly to Israelis and even to many in the Arab world. They may not admit it, but I think they will understand it. It changes Israeli internal politics, obviously. It changes the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia because it means, for now, that agreement that they were going to come to is off for a year or two. It may change the Israeli calculus when this war is over with

respect to the Iranian nuclear program. Because if you believe you cannot live with major threats, then maybe it increases the odds of an Israeli attack ultimately on the Iranian nuclear program. It's currently 4.30 p.m. in New York City on Friday, October 13th. We're already well into Shabbat in Israel. Before we get into today's conversation, here's an update on where things stand as of now after the massacre in which 1,500 Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel's territory last Saturday, October 7th, leaving over 1,400 Israelis dead, and that number is climbing, 3,500 wounded, and at least 150 people estimated to have been abducted to the Gaza Strip in what is now recognized as the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Funerals continue all around the country and around the clock, as every community in Israel buries its daughters, sons, parents, and siblings.

I actually spoke to my sister yesterday in Jerusalem, and she just said the amount of time everyone's expending now to plan for all these funerals is almost like the next wave of horror. The sentiment in Israel is that of unbearable grief and rage. There's a palpable sense that this changes everything, which will be part of the focus of our conversation on this episode. As Israel grieves, the fighting continues. Thousands of rockets have been continuously fired by Hamas at Israeli towns and cities over the past 48 hours, including a newly revealed Ayyash-250 missile with expanded range that reached northern Israel. The Israeli city of Sderot, on Israel's southwest border with Gaza, is in the process of being evacuated. Metula, a town that borders

Lebanon up in the north, has been declared a military zone. The IDF has urged Palestinians living in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes and move to the south for their own safety and protection. Hamas's leadership, hiding inside tunnels in Gaza City, told residents to stay in their homes. And to be clear, if many of the Arab countries, some of which have been very critical of Israel, want to help protect innocent Palestinian civilians, they can open their borders to them. Certainly Egypt could do that. The IDF says it carried out airstrikes against 750 targets belonging to Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip overnight. Other targets

included tunnels, military compounds, residences of senior members of Hamas and other terror groups, weapons storage warehouses, and communications rooms. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in Israel in a show of U.S. support, stated that, quote, as long as the U.S. exists, Israel won't have to defend itself alone. While talking with survivors of the attack in an aid collection site in Israel, Blinken had an emotional meeting with a 24-year-old survivor. Here are some of the audio from that exchange. I'm Lior. Nice to meet you, Lior. Nice to meet you. This is my father, Eitan. Good to meet you, Eitan. We went through horror. We managed to escape.

But there are a lot of friends that didn't. And there are a lot of friends that are kept captive now in Gaza. And we were saved by miracle. But there are friends that we love that weren't and that aren't. Thank you for being here, it's really important. We're strong here, we're powerful here, in this place, now in Tel Aviv and everywhere. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're thinking of them and trying to do everything we can.

I know. I admire your strength. And also telling your stories makes a big difference too. The world knows about this. In a press conference in Tel Aviv, Blinken described his own feelings, having been shown horrific images of the attack behind closed doors. It's really beyond almost anything that we can comprehend, digest. A baby, an infant, riddled with bullets.

Soldiers beheaded. Young people burned alive in their cars or in their hideaway rooms. This is a moment for moral clarity. I think what it's done is united a country in profound grief, but also united a country in resolve. And it's imperative that the rest of us share that resolve. Our guest today is Elliot Abrams, who's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has extensive experience in foreign policy and national security, working back in the Reagan administration under Secretary Shultz at the State Department, working in the National Security Council of the George W.

Bush administration, where I worked with him when he was Deputy National Security Advisor, and worked on a number of issues related to Israel and Gaza and Israel and Lebanon. He was the top national security aide in the Bush White House during Israel's disengagement of Gaza, during Hamas's election, and during Ham Israel's disengagement of Gaza, during Hamas's election, and during Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip. He also, in the Trump administration, was a key policy point on U.S. policy towards Iran. He's also a prolific writer, authored a number of books, and he is president of the Tikva Fund. Lots to discuss with Elliot Abrams on how we got to this situation as we deal with a series of events and a war that has changed everything. This is Call Me

Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time my longtime friend and former colleague, Elliot Abrams, who's former Deputy National Security Advisor in the George W. Bush administration, who played a key role, really was the point person on a number of issues in the Middle East, specifically related to Israel and Israel's relations with its neighbors. He also served in the Reagan administration in a key role at the Department of State under George Shultz and has a long history in foreign policy. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations today. He's the president of the TICVA Fund, an organization that I'm a beneficiary of and a big supporter of, and my children have been

very involved with it. And Elliot also served in the Trump administration, also working on issues related to Iran and Venezuela and a whole array of matters. So Elliot is one of the most perfect people to talk to now for a series of big questions that I have now. So Elliot, first of all, thanks for being here. Sure. My pleasure. Sure. So Elliot, I want to start with the why now. Before we get to this changes everything, I do want to understand the why now. And by my lights, there are three reasons, three motivations for the timing. In other words, if you think about October 2023, what is happening in the world now, the three big ones to me are, one, the speed with which the Saudi-Israeli normalization

process was moving, and I think it was moving faster, and I think you would agree, faster than even the press was reporting. There was a lot of momentum to it, and the Iranians were very worried about it, and Hamas is a proxy army of Iran. And the one vulnerability that Saudi Arabia had in its normalization with Israel was the potential problems in the Arab world as it relates to looking like they're throwing the Palestinians to the side. So if the Iranians are able to light up a big fight between the Palestinians and the Israelis, they could disrupt the momentum of the Saudi-Israeli normalization process. So that's one. Two is the Iranians and other bad actors in the region hostile to Israel watched what they would perceive as the chaos of the last nine months in Israel and think, oh, wow, there's real division

in Israel. And the leaders of Iran said as much, Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, said as much that this was the moment to strike. Israel's never been so divided. Solidarity has always been a strength of Israel, and if the solidarity is compromised, now is the time to strike. Or three, it is the 50th anniversary of Israel really being caught off guard. The last time they were really in a seriously vulnerable situation. And there's some symbolism in that.

And let's use the moment to humiliate, embarrass, and weaken Israel's geopolitical position in the world. So those are my three reasons for why now. It could be one of them. It could be two of them. It could be all three of them. It could be two of them. It could be all three of them. What is your reaction? I think it's all three. This is a long-planned attack. That's obvious. For months, there were meetings between Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranians in Beirut. But this is the kind of thing that you think of very far in advance. And I think the

original seed is the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war. As you begin to work on that, you, Hamas, with Hezbollah and Iran, you watch two other things, the two you mentioned. You see the Saudis getting closer to Israel and you think about how do I disrupt that. You see the internal divisions. This attack could have regional and internal situation in Israel and thought, this is perfect timing. Absolutely, we should do this. And if they thought of a small attack, those things would have led them to try to enlarge the size of the attack. And so, just to be clear, how long do you think this has been in the works? I know we don't know precisely, but based on what you... We certainly don't, but my guess is this is a year. Yeah. And the actors involved are Iran, the IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,

Hezbollah, and Hamas. Anyone else? Palestinian Islamic Jihad is another dependency of Iran in Gaza, but they have much less capacity and they'll do pretty much what they're told. So, yeah, three players, the three who have been meeting in Beirut, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas. OK. And just to our listeners understand the relationship between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, because they're sort of like frenemies, right? Exactly. They're rivals, but Islamic Jihad is much smaller. You know, when we were in the government together, I'm thinking 15, 20 years ago, there was a big debate among experts about whether Iran would ever support Hamas, because Hamas is Sunni, Muslim brotherhood, and Iran is Shia. And there were plenty of experts who said, oh, it's impossible. But slowly and surely, Iran has become deeply enmeshed in Hamas's activities. And how would you characterize the difference in the relationship between how Israel has managed its sort of practical operational relationship over the last couple of decades with Hamas and Gaza to how Israel has managed its relationship with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon over the same, basically close to the same period of time, maybe a little longer with Hezbollah?

I think they've made what more and more Israelis will come to see as the same mistake in both places. That is, they're sober. They have responsibility for their population. You can reach a modus vivendi. In the case of Hamas, that's obviously what they were doing. And indirectly through Egypt on how many people can work inside Israel. So there's a modus vivendi here with people who have to govern a region, Gaza. A lot of that same thinking, I think, has been true with respect to Hezbollah, even as it, like Hamas, has grown stronger and stronger and stronger. Israel has not wanted another Lebanon war. It has thought it could live with the threat of Hezbollah. And one of the questions I think that emerges after this war, after

there's a complete consensus in Israel that that was wrong about living with Hamas? Is it wrong about living with Hezbollah? And is that the next war? And was it the next war or is it, does it, does the war, you know, choose the timing rather than Israel choose the timing? Meaning does the war get opened up in choose the timing rather than Israel choose the timing? Meaning, does the war get opened up in another front in this war? You know, I can argue that both ways. My judgment is no. The argument is, look— Wait, just to be clear, you don't think that the northern front opens? That's my judgment. I have not got great confidence in it, but here's the judgment.

What is Hezbollah? Hezbollah is Iran's deterrent against an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program, and it is Iran's second strike capability. If there is a major war in the north, Israel presumably would crush and destroy Hezbollah. They would do it differently from 2006. If Hezbollah is then gone, what stops Israel from attacking the Iranian nuclear program? That's too great a risk for Iran to take, I think. The other side of the argument is, it's a month from now, Israel is deeply enmeshed in Gaza. And the Iranians think, okay, let's have Hezbollah attack them with everything it's got. Let's do the most damage we can to Israel.

Because even if the Israelis win, they will emerge from that war so weakened for a number of years that they won't be able to attack us here in Tehran. On balance, my thought is they're not going to do it. So just on Hezbollah, for our listeners to understand, you talk about Hezbollah as though it has no independent agency, that you're evaluating the threat of Hezbollah as though it's solely Iran's decision. So I just want to drill down on that for one moment. The nature of the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran? Hezbollah is completely dependent on Iran for its financing. Hezbollah does have some support among Shia Lebanese,

since it's impossible to judge how strong that support is, because if you were a Shia and you oppose them, you would be killed. So it's obviously not universal among the Shia in Lebanon, but they depend on Iran. If Iran cut them off tomorrow, if there was a revolution in Iran, the Islamic Republic falls. It's a democracy. There is no support for Hezbollah. Their strength, military strength and political strength would drop instantly. Iran spends something like half a billion dollars a year on Hezbollah. Wow. Okay. And what about its capabilities? Hezbollah's capabilities relative to Hamas's? Oh, infinitely greater. Hezbollah, we used to say back in the Bush administration,

not Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah is the A-team. Hezbollah is larger than Hamas and much better armed. We don't know whether it's 100,000 or 150,000 rockets and missiles, but they have built up an enormous force. And some of those are precision guided missiles. When you read about Israel bombing Syria every other day, what are they bombing? They're bombing efforts to get weaponry from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from getting even stronger. That war, if it unleashed everything in Hezbollah's arsenals, would not be two or three or 4,000 missiles a day the way Hamas is doing. It could be 10,000 a day. It could be 15,000 a day in an effort to overwhelm the air defenses that Israel has. So Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas and much more dangerous for Israel.

There are even some Israelis I've talked to in the last week who said we should have gone north first, not south into Gaza. Meaning in response to Hamas, Israel should have gone north first? Yeah, not because Hezbollah did it, but because it's the more dangerous enemy. Yeah. And, okay, that's, but that's clearly not happening, or so we think. All right, so I want to talk to you about, I want to get to our topic here soon, which is why this war changes everything. But before I do, I just want you to talk for a moment about your time in the Bush administration when Hamas runs for office in the Palestinian territories in 2006. You were in the middle of all of that. I know you had my conversation with Jonathan Shanzer earlier this week, and you and I connected offline, and you rightfully quibbled, corrected some info that was incorrect there.

So I want to get to the correcting the facts. But before I do that, what were you thinking at the time? And I don't ask that question as, what were you thinking? I'm asking it as, like, literally. No, no, no. I'm not saying it like, I really want, what was the thinking when you were, the Bush administration was very supportive of there being elections in the Palestinian territories. And Hamas announces it's going to compete in those elections. And I'm not sure the U.S. had veto power over that, but it didn't seem like the U.S. policy was objecting to Hamas participating in those elections.

Arafat died in the fall of 2004, and they chose Abbas to succeed him. Mahmoud Abbas was still president and head of the PLO and head of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party. So he's got three hats, PLO, PA, Fatah. But he wanted to be legitimized. So in early 2005, he said, I want a presidential election

to legitimize me as president. And that election took place. And it was a good election. That is, he won fair and square. It wasn't, you know, a sort of 99% communist vote type of thing. He got about 60, 65% of the vote. It was a free election. He won.

And it was to be president of the Palestinian governing authority over both the West Bank and Gaza. Exactly. Exactly. Then the Palestinians said, let's have a parliamentary election now. And it did raise the question of whether Hamas should be able to participate. Now, when you say the Palestinians, who's saying this? Abbas is saying this? Fatah is saying we should have? Yes, because they had just won and they wanted to win, and they wanted to be re-legitimized. Because they had, you know, with the death of Arafat, who were these guys? Nobody had ever heard of these guys.

Who gave them the right to rule? He had been a charismatic leader to most Palestinians. So they wanted to legitimize themselves. And the election had been a success. They wanted to do it again. And what do you do about Hamas? Well, no one thought Hamas would win. Okay, but I just want to, I just think this is interesting because I don't think people always have the perspective, they don't have the perspective of the policymaker dealing with this. So just explain to us how it happens. Like Hamas says, oh, you're having an election? We're going to file. We're going to form a political party. First, we did say, and the Israelis said, well, Hamas can't run. Well, Hamas wasn't running as Hamas. They formed a political party, you know, like the Peace and Freedom Party or something. And they were very smart in that they didn't put Hamas thugs up as their candidates. They put up fellow travelers who were lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, respected in their communities, which Fatah didn't do. That

was the first thing. Then we said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. These Hamas guys are going to run? President Abbas said to us, you know, this is supposed to be a free election. You like free elections. My purpose is to legitimize my government. There's one real opponent, and it's these Hamas guys. If you forbid them from running in the election, this is like a communist election. There's no choice here. Not only does it not legitimize me, it delegitimizes me. Many people at the time thought, you can't do this. You cannot allow this terrorist group directly or indirectly to participate. There was a big debate in the quartet, which is U.S., Russia, EU, UN. Can we let this happen? Can we let them run? And many people said, no, you cannot do it. But a compromise was reached instead. And the compromise was, all right, all right, let them run

with a proviso that they can't join the government unless and until they pledge to abandon violence, to recognize Israel, and to adhere to the Oslo Accords. So the election took place. Everyone, this includes the Israeli intelligence agencies and all the polls we saw, everyone says, Fatah will defeat Hamas. In the last two or three days, it did appear that they might win. I remember going to the West Bank in the last week before the election, and everywhere you look, there were banners from lampposts, like an American election, for the Hamas guys and nothing for Fatah. And the Fatah guys, as individuals, were much worse thuggy, corrupt candidates than the Hamas guys. Anyway, Hamas won 44-41 in the popular vote, though because of the way their parliamentary system worked, it got a much larger margin in the popular vote, though because of the way their parliamentary system worked, it got a much larger margin in the parliament. And we know that the Europeans and the Russians tried to get Hamas to make those pledges, which of course it would not do. What we then decided was, okay,

it's a parliamentary system. The parliament has control of the ministers. It's a terrorist parliament that has a Hamas majority. These are terrorist ministries. So we cut them off. We maintained our relationship with the president of ASK because he was independently elected and with governors independently chosen and with the intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, separate. But anything that had to do with the parliament, the parliament itself, any ministry, we said is a terrorist organization. And if you deal with it, you're engaging in a criminal act.

We cut them off completely. When Hamas wins, I take your point, you're in the West Bank sometime before that, and you're like, hmm, it looks like these Hamas political parties are better organized, better politicians than Fatah. Okay. But then they actually win. Can you, I don't know if you remember,

I remember some of this was in your book, Tested by Zion, which we'll put in the show notes. Terrific book. But do you, was there like a meeting or a discussion right after they win where you, on behalf of the U.S. administration and the Israeli government, are like, which was, you know, was it Omer or Sharon? Sharon.

It was Sharon at that point. Prime Minister Sharon. Right, so Sharon. Right, so the show. So Sharon is prime minister, and you're talking to Sharon or his, you know, doobie, wise glass, or whoever was around him at the time. Were you just like, whoa, we didn't expect that? Yep, yep.

I'd love to know what that conversation was like. Completely shocking. I want to go back one day before the election. Yeah. When it became clear to some people that Hamas might win, one of the Palestinian leaders came to see Sharon's staff to say, I think Hamas might win, cancel the election. And Sharon said, oh no, you guys want to cancel the election, go ahead and cancel the election,

cancel your damn election. You're not going to pin it on me with 24 hours to go. So he wouldn't do it. And the election took place. And then the shock, I think, if I remember right, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem called Secretary of State Rice, Gandhi Rice, at 2 a.m. or something to say, boss, we have a problem. And we worked our way out of that problem by using our terrorism rules. That is, we cut them off. But obviously, we were open to the charge of hypocrisy. You wanted an election, you didn't win. So then you say, well, cancel that. Israel withdraws. Israel's withdrawn from Gaza. Israel. Israel. Let's wait. Wait. And let's talk about that for a minute. All right. F. After 9-11, President Bush, George W. Bush, had to figure out what do I do with the Palestinians who are led by a terrorist, Arafat?

And this, everybody's for two-state solution, and everybody wants peace, but they're led by a terrorist. And he gave a very important speech in 2002, where he said, the Palestinian authority needs new leadership, not compromised by terror. And what he said in that speech was Arafat's got to be out. And slowly but surely, we tried to marginalize him. For example, we forced him to make Mahmoud Abbas prime minister and Salam Fayyad finance minister. So we started to clean up the place. And the Israelis, who would not deal with Arafat, would deal with Abbas. So we thought, you know, maybe there are some negotiations that can take place here. And in the spring of, I think it was 2003, we had a big summit meeting in Aqaba, Jordan, with President Mubarak of Egypt, King of Jordan, Abbas, Sharon. We thought we were heading towards some kind of peace negotiations and that we had sidelined Arafat. And Mahmoud Abbas was prime minister for six months and Arafat kicked him out. He just kicked him out. At that point, we knew, okay, that's over. We have, on the Israeli-Palestinian front, we have nothing going. And we asked the Israelis, we asked Sharon, we asked his chief aide,

Nubi Weiss-Glass, what do you think we ought to do here? And the Israelis came back with an idea that we thought they would never contemplate. Sharon was going to get out of Gaza. That was not something that President Bush, Secretary Rice, the U.S. government imposed on Sharon, forced on Sharon, raised with Sharon. That came from Sharon. Now, why? The thinking of Sharon and his people was, we are not going to get a peace deal with the Palestinians for decades. There's nobody to negotiate with, and we're not negotiating with Arafat. So why sit here for 40 years? Let's set our borders. Let's make permanent borders. What did it mean for Sharon to say, let's set our own

borders? To him, it meant building the wall in the West Bank. And basically, I think they were going to say, that's our border. It was going to take maybe 15% of the West Bank as a permanent border, and getting out of Gaza. Because in Sharon's view as a general, having 7,500 Israelis among what was then, I don't know, million, million and a half Palestinians with a giant part of the IDF tied down constantly in an area that was of no economic value and no religious value. Why stay there? 75 of our settlers, a million and a half Palestinians, and a huge IDF force protecting them.

Again, a territory that is of no economic value, no political value, no religious value. So that was Sharon's decision, and we supported it. Okay. So that was Sharon's decision, and we supported it. Okay. So that's 2005. The elections happened in 2006. So Israel's out of Gaza in 2005. The process begins really in 2004, but the formal disengagement's 2005. The parliamentary elections are 2006, where Hamas wins the majority in the parliament.

You begin the isolate, the strategy. You and Fatah begin the process of freezing out Hamas, even though they're in the government. And then what happens in 2007? First, Sharon is now out of the picture, and Omer is prime minister. Okay, so for our listeners, I just want to— So Omer gets, Sharon gets sick in 2006. He goes into a, he goes into... No, it's earlier than that. His first stroke is 2005, really right after the withdrawal from Gaza. Okay. And then the second

and completely, right, he's out, The debilitating stroke is in 2006. That's right. I remember I was there with Campbell right when he had the debilitating stroke. Debilitating stroke meaning he's in a coma and Omer, who at that point was deputy prime minister, had to take over as prime minister. So Omer becomes prime minister. Okay, take it from there.

Well, a number of things happen. There's a war in lebanon in 2006 a very big war remember hezbollah came across the border killed three israeli soldiers and pulled the bodies back in 2006 major event major event 2007 is the attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor. But during this period, we just talk about Palestinians for a minute. Olmert is pursuing what had largely been Sharon's policy. That is, we're going to we're going to build a border in the West Bank. Bush had said to Olmert, see if you can negotiate something now that Arafat's dead. See if you can negotiate something with the Palestinians. But if you can't, I will

back you on this idea that you're going to set a border. That didn't work because of the Lebanon War, because it really so reduced the political influence, power, prestige of Olmert that after that he really couldn't do anything. And so how does Hamas wind up in charge of Gaza? I mean, really, like what do you think led to it? Sharon says this, I'm going to get out of Gaza in the beginning, January 2004, and he gets out in the summer of 2005. Obviously, we were concerned, what's going to happen when Israel gets out? The Palestinian Authority is ruling the West Bank. After the fall of 2004, Arafat's dead, and now we have people we can work with after the Israelis get out. But we were worried. We talked to the Egyptians. I remember a meeting

in the spring of 2004 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with the head of the Egyptian intelligence service, where the national security advisor, Steve Hadley, and I said to him, are you worried about this? We're worried about this. What's going to happen in Gaza? He pounded on the table to say, Egypt has it. Don't worry. I have a few hundred men in Gaza. If I need to have a few thousand men in Gaza, I'll send them. Egypt has it. Don't worry. And the PA did take over as soon as Israel left, and it took a year and a half for Hamas to kick them out. In the spring of 2007, there was a short war between Hamas and Fatah. One of the reasons that people thought Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, would be able to maintain control in Gaza was that they so outnumbered Hamas,

like five or ten to one in the number of armed men. But when the confrontation came, when Hamas decided, we're going to take this now, the Fatah guys faded away. They just took off their uniforms. The Hamass guys were willing to fight and they took it in a matter of days. What did they do to the Fatah military leadership in Gaza? They threw them off the top of buildings. They're fellow Palestinians and they took complete control. Once they did, of course, you have the beginning of, well, how does Israel deal with Gaza? And I have to tell you that the fatal mistakes begin with Ariel Sharon, I'm sorry to say. Because when the Israelis got out, they obviously said to the Palestinians, now we're out, anything comes across the border, our one rocket, one howitzer, and we're going to just crush you.

But they didn't do it. If you look at the months after they got out of Gaza, they didn't do it. And since then, this pattern has existed where you've had aggression from Gaza, aggression from Hamas, into Israel, rockets, missiles, howitzers, occasionally people crossing the border. And the Israelis have responded in these one or two week battles to punish Hamas. But obviously they've thought they could reach or had reached a modus vivendi with Hamas. It starts in 2005 and continues until 2023. Okay. So now let's talk about that period, 2005 to 2023. We are often told, or I'm often

asked at least when I'm talking about what's going to happen now, I say, look, Israel had this status quo arrangement with Hamas. It was far from perfect, but Israel kind of learned how to manage it and how to balance it. It was a security doctrine that said, you know, that basically, in so many words, we can deal with military skirmishes with Gaza every couple years. They'll fire a lot of rockets. We have Iron Dome. We have a security fence. We can, you know, bomb a few buildings, take out some of their military capabilities. Things will quiet down and we get back into this, you know, status quo kind of coexistence, if you will. And that worked for a couple of decades until it didn't.

And so when I say now, so, you know, when I'm asked, so what happens now? Well, because of what we've seen over the last week, because Hamas has really gone to war against Israel, not just a few terrorist attacks, but this is full-on war, and I don't want to go through all the details, because I've been doing a lot of it, both on this podcast and in other conversations, and it's just hard to go through all the grotesque and brutal details of this war, but it is a war. And Israel can't live with a country it's at war with, certainly not a country that's waging this kind of war. So I say Israel's going to have to get rid of Hamas, and Israel's going to have to get rid of the military capabilities that exist,

offensive and defensive capabilities in Gaza. And then I'm asked, okay, so what follows that? What's next? They go right to what's next. And it's almost a version, listening to you speak, of the conversation you had where Omer said, don't worry, Egypt's got it. And so I guess my question is, I know this is all fast moving

and Israel's having to make a lot of decisions and they may not have fully thought out what happens after they drive Hamas out of Gaza. But what is the equivalent of, don't worry, X has got it? You know, who's, you know, sub in who? Yeah. It's a very, obviously a very good question. And I don't think they've thought it through because they didn't think they were going to be doing this, right? The Israelis did not think that they were going to be going to Gaza and removing Hamas. On October 6th, they literally, no, Israeli policymakers and military strategists were not thinking about post-Gaza, post-Hamas Gaza. Right, right. In 2005, when Israel got out, it's a year after Arafat's death.

They've had one election in the Palestinian areas that was a pretty good election, Abbas as president. They thought they could leave and hand it over to the Palestinian Authority. And that's what the Egyptians said also. The Palestinian Authority is much weaker now. Much weaker. I mean, it's 18 years later. So corrupt, so unpopular, so loathed by the people. It's an option to try to reestablish Fatah Party, the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. I think it's a very difficult one. What the administration should be doing now, the Biden administration, is talking with Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris who are going to pay for anything that happens in Gaza and the Egyptians, obviously, about your question.

What is the next government of Gaza? I think we ought to be thinking about something like a trusteeship with a number of Arab countries coming in because you do want them to pay for it. There isn't anybody who can rule Gaza now. If you remove Hamas, I don't think it's going to work with a Palestinian authority. It's something worth talking about with the Arabs and particularly with Egypt. But some kind of governing authority has got to be set up, and not by Israel alone, by this kind of consortium of Arabs. And we, the United States, should, I think, be talking to them about it right now, because we're going to need it in a month or two or three. This is what, I don't know if you saw Brett Stevens' piece in the Times over the

weekend where he talked about the Saudis playing a role here. Yeah, well, you know, I think at least at the symbolic level, the Gulf Arabs will want to. Even though they are autocracies, they have public opinion and their publics will want to see them helping. And particularly for the Saudis, particularly for the Saudis. Right now, Israeli-Palestinian violence is terrible for them. They don't want any upset in the region at all. Saudi foreign policy today is Vision 2030. We're trying to remake our country socially and economically. We need calm in the region. We don't want anybody riled up. I think that's why they did the China

brokered agreement with Iran. And I think that's why they're going to want, I think that's why they wanted an agreement with Israel, which is now going to be off a year or so. But I think they'll help. And I think the others will help too. But Israel can't govern. I doubt the Palestinian Authority could govern, although it's something worth thinking about. And if they can't, then you do need some kind of, I don't know what to call it, trusteeship for Gaza. And what is the implications then for, I mean, that's so ludicrous to use the term now, but a two-state solution? Does this mean the whole notion, I mean, good luck persuading Israelis, even Israelis on the way left, the notion of the viability of a two-state solution was a serious question across the Israeli political spectrum. I think now it's probably at a whole other level of

skepticism. Well, I have been saying for years that I did not think there would ever be a Palestinian state. I think I'm more convinced now because a Palestinian state is too great a danger to Jordan as well as Israel. Who is going to prevent it from becoming a terrorist state? Who is going to maintain law and order and fight terrorism? The answer is no one. So there isn't going to be a Palestinian state. I'm confident that if we come back to this 25 years from now, the same question is going to be hit with you are, one, you've basically raised the question that this changes everything. Does this change everything? Can you elaborate what this means in terms of what this, you know, what does it mean for—obviously, it changes everything with Gaza, but you're basically—you believe it changes everything for everything on a whole range of fronts, not just Israel's relationship with Gaza, but start with Gaza.

First, it changes the Israeli policy that there's a modus vivendi with Hamas that's because I think they will come to apply the same calculus with respect to having that dangerous an enemy to their north. I think, though, as I say, I think the two-state solution was dead. I think its death will be a lot clearer to people all over the world, certainly to Israelis and even to many in the Arab world. They may not admit it, but I think they will understand it. It changes the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia because it means for now that agreement that they were going to come to, normalization, is off for a year or two. It may change the Israeli calculus when this war is over with respect to the Iranian nuclear program. Because if you believe you cannot live with major threats, then maybe it increases the odds of an Israeli attack ultimately on the Iranian nuclear program. It changes Israeli internal politics, obviously. It changes the relationship with the U.S. Why do you think it changes the relationship with the U.S. Why do you think it changes the relationship with the U.S.?

It shows the closeness of the relationship. Very widespread support in this country. Obviously, the repugnance at the disgusting, horrifying acts of Hamas. I think majorities in both... I know we have poll data. Majorities in both parties continue to back Israel. And I think this will increase any of the polls that already has support for Israel. It is a reminder to anybody who doubted it of the closeness and intensity of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Those aircraft carriers mean something. The resupply, which hasn't happened since 1973, means something. And then if we get to the American Jewish community, the truth is that between 1948 and 1967, American Jews were not so close to and supportive of Israel. But that changed in 1967. It's fallen off in the years since for all sorts of reasons, but there's been an outpouring of support now from American Jews because what happened is a reminder, going back to the Kishinev pogrom, it's a reminder of the Holocaust. It's a reminder of the importance of the Jewish

state. It's a reminder for many Jews who had forgotten how much they care about the existence of that state. It's a reminder that there are people trying to kill Jews still in this world. I think it's going to result in maybe not permanent, meaning 100 years from now, but like the 67 war, I think it's going to lead to a significant increase in the identification of American Jews with Israel. Okay. And before we go, I'm getting this question a lot. Will the U.S. get involved? Here you are, you're saying it's changed the relationship with the U.S., but it's maybe strengthened and deep and already the structure of that relationship. That sounds like what you're saying, which is different from will it change that structure?

And what I mean by changing the structure is will there be a regional war? And if there's a regional war, will America have to get involved? There's, you know, these aircraft carriers, one already there, one heading nearby. You know, Biden gave this full throated statement a few nights ago. Congress, presumably before the end of the year, is going to vote on some kind of, you know, major assistance package for Israel in light of what's happened. So is the U.S. getting drawn into this in more of a direct way than it has been in the past, or at least at any time since 73? We're being drawn in, in the sense of certainly the resupply, the diplomatic support, and they will need more and more of that. They'll need economic support. But the fundamental question you're asking is, what about the military? Are we going to be drawn into a war? It's an old Zionist principle, and it's an Israeli principle. We want to defend ourselves by ourselves. Every president keeps repeating

that. The Israelis insist on putting it in all of the joint statements, helping Israel defend itself by itself. So they don't want that. Now, if you want the most extreme situation, what if there is a war, a northern front, a war between Israel and Hezbollah, and Iran begins to get involved? Big resupply effort to Hezbollah. And the damage to Israel is enormous. What if Israel seems to be losing that war? Would they change their view

about getting help from the United States? My answer to that is only defensively. I don't think they'd ever ask for American soldiers. I think they might ask for help from those carriers, for example, in air defense, missile defense. You know how many American citizens there are in Israel? There are tens of thousands of Americans in Israel. And if Iran and Hezbollah start killing large numbers of them, then I think the calculus may change. But I think that's a very extreme case. And I really don't think it will happen. and the Israelis certainly don't want it to happen. They want to fight for themselves. in terms of how Israel operates in its own theater, if they have to make decisions that are factoring in considerations around American casualties, you know, when Israel makes decisions.

It does—it would put constraints on Israeli action. I mean, just—they put constraints on themselves. Yeah, I think it's extremely—it's not even just far-fetched. I really cannot see it happening. The only way that we get brought in, I think, is if Iran brings us in. part of the naval task force of which it is a part, or attacks American assets during, let's say, a Hezbollah-Israel war and kills Americans. Iran has been killing Americans for decades in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon, in Iraq, and it's not unthinkable. That's the kind of thing that could bring us in, I think, not just in Israel, Hezbollah war. All right, Elliot, we will leave it there. Thank you for taking the time. I know we went a little longer than we said, but to getting your, you know, kind of perspective from inside the situation room on how some of these decisions were made were extremely helpful and illuminating and hope to have you back.

I'd be glad to do it. These are very grim days, but it's important to try to understand what's going on. That's our show for today. To keep up with Elliot's work, you can find him at the Council on Foreign Relations, cfr.org. I highly recommend his books, especially Tested by Zion, which is about his time working on Middle East policy on behalf of the U.S. government. And keep an eye out for our next episode, which will drop on Sunday with Israeli journalist Avi Asakaroff. He's also the co-creator of a number of television series, including Fauda. And we will be discussing with Avi the ground invasion in Gaza. He's an extensive

network, both in the IDF and the Israeli intelligence services, as well as in the Palestinian communities in Gaza. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.