The Dispatch Podcast - Nuking the Overton Window on Gaza | Interview: Einat Wilf

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Dr. Einat Wilf, a former member of Israel’s Labor Party and co-author of The War of Return, joins Adaam James Levin-Areddy once again to discuss President Donald Trump’s supposed plan to encourage Palestinians to voluntarily self-deport from the Gaza Strip—and what it means for the future of the conflict. The Agenda: —Consequences for aggressors —Where does the money go? —No one knows Gaza’s future —What is Gaza? —The drip, drip, drip of hostages Show Notes: —Friday’s Dispatch Podcast Roundtable mentioning the Trump-Netanyahu meeting —Dr. Wilf on The Remnant —Dr. Wilf and Adaam discuss the history of UNRWA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Adam. Today we are going to talk with A-Nutt-Wilth about the, I don't know how many air quotes I need to put around the word plan, but the Trump-Gaza plan and what it means, how it could change the conversation in the Middle East. Aynot has been on the pod multiple times. She is a former member of the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and the co-author of The War of Return. Enoch, thanks for joining. It's pleasure. Enat, can you give us a quick rundown on, before we go into analysis, on what Trump actually said last week and how this is being heard in Israel?

He keeps saying one or two clarifications, but broadly speaking, the message is Gaza is uninhabitable. And before anything can be said about reconstruction and building the place, the population has to leave or to be allowed to leave. There is some debate about people whether he said they should be forced to leave or just allowed to leave voluntarily. And then, of course, he discusses about Americans owning it, but there won't be boots on the ground. So a notion that Israel will finish the job and then hand it over to America.

And then the idea is to use, basically take advantage of Gaza's wonderful location on the Mediterranean coast. I actually heard someone call it a sunset-facing coast, which really shows you how specifically are about beaches. So, and the idea is to develop hotels and resorts and an export-based economy, a trading hub. that's it. That's what I could gather from what he said. In terms of how this is being heard in Israel, we could go into the TikTok of how Trump comments have been rolled out in the U.S. and then rolled back a little bit and then Trump unrolled it back a little further, as is almost always the case when Trump makes one of those bombastic statements that are, whether intentionally or not, do have the result of

shattering, expanding the overtone window. Before talking about whether or not there is any realistic probability that something like this will be implemented, how is it being heard in Israel? How is the Netanyahu government

regarding it? Are they seeing this as a conversation starter or are there people that are already starting to play out the scenarios in which something close to this, just this kind of massive exodus from Gaza actually happened?

So you're getting all of their bubble, of course. Broadly speaking, people consider it a plan for a form of American ownership, but most fundamentally that the Palestinians of Gaza will not be there and that they will be in neighboring countries either temporarily or permanently, mostly Egypt and Jordan or some other countries. And now Trump mentions Egypt and Jordan specifically in his original suggestions that they should absorb them. And let's put a pin in this because this is something that I want to ask you about. But go on. So, you know, Israelis, in addition to everything you said, is this realistic? It's just on Basque. What does it mean? How is it going to be implemented?

I will say that the main thing, and you refer to that in talking about blasting open the overturn window, I think for a lot of Israelis, the biggest contribution that the American president made was to change the conversation because there was a deep sense of being stuck in a loop and that we are on the verge of essentially going back to October 6th. I think in previous discussions with you, I mentioned that I think the history of the conflict is a history, a tragedy of ceasefires, where essentially, you have an incentive structure that whenever our country's attack, and especially when Palestinians attack, and they fail to achieve their goal of undoing Israel, they essentially get a redo. They don't pay a permanent price. And the message that they get is that they should try again. And this goes to the fundamental imbalance or asymmetry of interest, of incentives between the two sides in this conflict,

where one side has a goal of prospering in their own land and is willing to negotiate the shape of that land in order to achieve that prosperity, whereas the other is being hijacked or driven by an ideology of destroying their neighbors, which leads to a completely different understanding of what a ceasefire means, whereas a ceasefire for the Israelis would mean another chance to rebuild, to grow and hopefully flow into a status quo, of strained peace, whereas a ceasefire for her enemies often means a chance for rearmament

and another shot at destroying Israel. So the feeling is that the president's proposal essentially changes the conversation and brings back quaint ideas like consequences. The idea that if you repeatedly wage a war with not declared annihilation, intentions, then it used to be understood that there were consequences to that, in land loss, in population displacement, in a need for ideological change before any rebuilding is taking place. So I think if nothing else, the proposal serves to kind of bring back the idea of consequences and that we can't just assume that the Palestinians of Gaza get a redo,

get to control all of Gaza, have billions of dollar flow in, because that's what all the previous loops were. They attacked, they failed, and then billions of dollars of reconstruction kept flowing in, and the only thing they reconstructed, to use the Biden phrase, build back better, they just built back butter how to try to annihilate Israel. It should be mentioned that the concept of warfare and some kind of punishment being inflicted on the aggressor

was not even necessarily tied into any kind of annihilistic ambitions, which Hamas and to some extent historically the PLO had, but merely to the aggressor, to the side that launched a war, historically a site that launched a war and has been defeated, needs to pay the price for dragging everybody into the war. This is like paying legal fees when you bring up a spurious claim in courts. If you are starting a war and then get slapped down, you need to pay the consequences. You need to either lose some of your territory or in other means you need to pay the reparations for causing this chaos in the first place.

The fact that the logic even right now in Gaza is that Hamas clearly launched the war and now we might slide back into a discussion, okay, so now how does Israel pay reparations for the war that Hamas started is, I think, the perverse logic that we take so much for granted because of decades of playing out this same exact loop following what you might call the Washington State Department slash Israeli foreign policy consensus. Yes, my colleague, Dr. Sheneen Moore, wrote a beautiful piece a few years ago about the return of the peace processors, and he spoke about this perverse incentive

structure that literally incentivizes war, because you're basically telling the aggressors, you're telling the Palestinians, and even the Arabs, the Lebanese, you're basically telling them, okay, you didn't succeed this. time in your efforts to make the Jewish state no more, you will essentially no, you will pay no price, and you will get a second, a third, a fourth chance. And I think President Trump, in a very basic common sense logic, understands that this is literally an incentive structure for war, and that the idea, which is what we've had for the last century, and that you actually get to peace by making the aggressors pay a price.

that makes them realize that they don't want to wage war anymore. And I think in many ways what his plans serves is to push us in that direction, that there are consequences that should make war unthinkable. Regularly cautious or habitually cautious when I try to discuss Trump and how Trump thinks about the world because people jump to make assumptions about what drives Trump, whether on the left they would accuse him of being a malevolent dictator in the making or in the right, they will embrace them as this 5D chess player. I don't want to assume what it is that makes him throw out these bombastic statements.

So what I want to discuss is what the result is and how it might change the conversation. So we know how his bombastic statements or how his willingness to throw over the board in the case of annexing the Jordan Valley territories back in his first administration led to the Abraham Accord, completely changed the region, right? He was willing to completely open up negotiations, says that we are basically starting from scratch and everything is on the table. And that kind of conversation prompted a willingness for negotiation from the UAE and later other Arab states that were willing to join in an open agreement of cooperation with Israel in exchange for taking the Jordan Valley question off the table again. So the fact that Trump gave that a green light, accepted an idea that was mostly verboten until that point, ended up reshaping the Middle East in what I think we can assume is a more peaceful way. Whether or not Trump knows what he's doing, whether or not his plan is for, it has a vision of peace, or he's just working from an instinct of an understanding of power. As I like to think about him is a large particle collider that smashes ideas and then catches what opportunity. flies out of it. The fact is that this is completely redefining how we are talking about the

war for the first time, at least in my lifetime. For the first time in my lifetime, we are not seeing ourselves sliding back into this October 6th conversation, which, as you suggested, is something that Israelis were very concerned with, concerned that we are going to have the same kind of two-state peace talks that we were having in loops for decades, offering land exchange with Palestinians that they will inevitably reject and then just waiting for the next altercation, which was somewhat insufferable before, but has become completely unacceptable after October 7. So this is what Trump has achieved whether knowingly or not, whether intentionally or not. The question now is, what does that actually mean for Palestinians? Because now the

Overton window has changed in a way that is suggesting, let's call it, voluntary ethnic cleansing for the 2 million people who live in Gaza. I don't even want to get into the conversation that is rampant on Twitter about how many of the citizens of Gaza are actively involved in Hamas or are ideologically associated with Hamas or even cheer or jeer to the actions of Hamas. So what does this realistically mean to those people? So first of all, I think the immediate impact is likely to be that if there was a kind of rushing to close the loop for reconstruction of Gaza, that I think it's safe to say that that's going to pause.

Because if the American president is kind of inserting these ideas, then everyone's going to pause before kind of just sending billions again to reconstruct. and all that. So I think the immediate impact for the people in Gaza right now is if there was a sense that, okay, war is over, this was just another round, and we're going to have the billions flow in again and Hamas is in control, I think there is perhaps now an understanding that this is not what's going to happen. And then the question is, how long will that last? How long will it be before anything gets reconstructed? Will it be possible for people to leave? Will there be an opportunity for people to voluntarily,

individually begin to leave to the point that it actually becomes a kind of blood? Are there going to be opportunities? Those are all things in the air. I think the immediate impact for the people of Gaza is essentially an extension of the present situation and not a move for immediate reconstruction. Another thing, and here I am engaging in wishful thinking, one of the reasons that I think the Palestinians, if not the main reason, that the Palestinians have become a people organized around the idea of the negation of the Jewish state

is that literally no one ever gave them the message of enough is enough. And for me, it's a tragedy because every time that they could have reckoned with the consequences of the ideology of no Jewish state, they were. saved by various powers to say, no, no, you didn't lose. Your victory is merely delayed. So keep fighting. So this never allowed for any other voices and any other ideology to emerge among the Palestinians. This is why I've come to call this ideology Palestinianism, because it is what they all believe. From the river to the sea, there will be no Jewish state, and therefore we are perpetual refugees until return.

Those are the four core tenets of Palestinianism. And no one was ever, there was no great power that ever kind of said, enough is enough. Those are the consequences of your actions. You have to reckon with the disaster that is your ideology. We will be with you if you want to build a good, constructive life, but not if you're intent on destroying what the Jews have built. again, what the Trump intervention is doing, and it's not dissimilar for what he did in his previous presidency, closing PLO offices, defunding UNRWA, recognizing Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, they all essentially were ways of sending the message of enough is enough.

And again, I'm speaking from wishful thinking, but hopefully not too much. hopefully if there is finally a strong voice that tells them enough is enough maybe that will give courage to some Palestinian voices to also stand up from within their people and to say yeah enough is enough spending all our capabilities for the last century trying to undo and that the Jewish state has been a waste of our time and we just want to build something rather than destroy what others have built. Maybe actually the president's plan will allow such voices to emerge. Starting to think about this from the perspective of Palestinians in Gaza, who might be amenable to this new thinking. There is, and this is something that I've had conversations with internally at the dispatch trying to convey this idea because I don't think this is obvious to a lot of people

outside of Israel and maybe not even in Israel. there is a non-trivial amount of Gazans who would be happy, who already have been eager to leave Gaza before October 7. Not because of willingness to abdicate their relationship to their connection to the land, but because they are tired of living under two decades-long tyranny of a theocratic, millenarian madman cult. Their problem was that Hamas is doing everything in its power to prevent Gazans from leaving. The few who have succeeded have had to go through a long process of bribing guards and then finding incredibly difficult routes

either through Egypt or through Turkey and into Europe. And that also at risk for their families, because when Hamas learns that a Gaza has escaped, they will kill the refugees family or at least imprison them and torture them to send a message. You do not lead this hellhole. Those people, whatever percentage of the population they make up

might be open to the idea of relocation if an opportunity is created for them to actually start alive. These are the people that we can assume prioritize their own well-being and their own welfare above any ideological, fanatical commitment to the conflicts.

So these are the people. people that as a starting point the Trump plan should appeal to. However, the Trump plan started by offering entry to Egypt and Jordan. The press focused on whether Egypt and Jordan would accept them, which of course has its own problems. But the reality is, as I see it, the people who would want to escape Hamas will never agree to go to Jordan and Egypt. Egypt is the origin. of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned Hamas. And in Jordan, the Palestinian population is kept both immisorated and radicalized and forms a high percentage of the population,

which means that Guzzan refugees that will take up Trump's plan to move to Jordan and Egypt will be marked as traitors. And I'm sure they know it. I can't imagine anybody who had had enough with Hamas. who just wants to start a new, start afresh for their family, taking up the offer to move to either of those countries without any kind of guarantee for their security, which, of course, America under Trump will never offer.

They're not going to send troops to secure the new lives of Palestinian emigrate. So what are we doing with this? To me, the moment you start taking apart this plan, it shows how unserious the details really are beyond, you know, merely shattering the overtone window. The first, you're absolutely right that people wanted to leave. You only had to see the kind of wall that Egypt built immediately after October 7th, because, I mean, once you see it, you understand how much people wanted to leave

and how much they were prevented from leaving. And again, this is the other thing that Trump kind of ideas serves to do, is to remind people that in any other context, which is not Israel, it's normal to expect the world to allow people to enable people to leave a zone of conflict. But no, in Israel it goes like this. You blame Israel for genocide, but if people are allowed to leave, you screech ethnic cleansing. But it's never serious because it's all about what will make it the hardest for Israel. But the fact that people wanted to leave before and after,

you only need to look at the wall that Egypt built to see that. Or talk to the refugees, which is something that I've done in the past, interviewing refugees who live in across Europe and in the U.S. who left Gaza over the past 20 years and are still afraid for their family and are still doing all they can all they can. And I'm talking before October 7 to gather funds to bring them out because all they want to do is just live a good life anywhere that will take them.

They actually want to fulfill the dream that UNRWA should have built for them. True. So the issue here, though, and by the way, an Israeli journalist also said, yes, many Gazans would love to go, but not to Egypt and Jordan. They want to go to Europe, America, or Canada,

which raises its own kind of questions in terms of like the notion that people are, if we go back to the idea that to bring the idea of consequences to an ideology, the notion that, oh, I just want to live in the West, not in the Arab world. I would say, I don't know that necessarily they're in the position to make that demand. I would also add something else. A lot, unfortunately, of the Palestinians who do immigrate to the West. Number one, as you correctly said, And UNRWA never takes them off the books, still keeping the idea that they are Palestine refugees. And two, because they leave without going through a process of ideological change, denoxification, de-radicalization, call it what you will, they often bring those ideas to the West.

So I have concern for Jewish communities to have hundreds of thousands people with a Palestinianist ideology going into, Canada or Europe will literally, it would move the danger from the Jewish communities of Southern Israel to the Jewish communities of Europe, Canada, and the U.S. And that's not something that I'm keen to do. So I think, if anything, the countries that should be involved are Arab countries. I'm partial to Qatar, which, again, apropos consequences. Qatar has funded, aided, abetted. prolonged this war, essentially playing a protector of the Hamas kidnapping strategy, making

sure that it's successful, that it helps keep Hamas in power. Qatar has plenty of land, plenty of houses. It can give the Palestinians cash directly rather than sending it through trucks going into Gaza. So personally, I think it has to be clear that the consequences need to be played in the Arab world, and not in Europe and the West, and certainly not by the Jewish communities of Europe and the West. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be

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How do you overcome that problem? Because it's not just the risk that the Hamas ideology has on infiltrating other countries. It's also other countries in the Arab world that are already permeated by Hamas ideology or Hamas-like ideology that would regard as enemy, any refugee that takes on the Trump plan and could

put their lives at risk, which again, they know. The only reason they'll be regarded as a traitor and an enemy is that they're not fulfilling the goal of like making life miserable for Israel. That's their only reason. Which is the Hamas ideology. The purpose of the civilian population is to stir,

Exactly. Yeah. The question is ultimately one of alternatives. If Gaza is a wasteland, if nothing goes in, if there is no reconstruction, if there are no billions flowing, and in parallel, the American president is able to strong arm Jordan in Egypt as semi-clined states of the U.S., definitely highly financially dependent on. on it, to create conditions, and then couching it in something that is temporary, saying, okay, this is temporary, so thereby taking away, perhaps the traitor element, then again, ultimately, the question is always one of alternatives.

And if, as the American president says, life in Gaza is such that it's not one that one could live, then maybe it will. Maybe at one point, kind of the calculation becomes such that it is worthwhile. And all this is talking about undisclosed numbers or, you know, we can't really make a serious estimate. I don't want to throw fake statistics. But it's certainly not the entirety of the guzzan population. I would guess not even the majority of the guzzan population that would voluntarily leave.

So when you even take a step further, And imagine, okay, so maybe we've been able to convince 10, 20, however much percent to relocate, given some kind of guarantee of a new life, you're still dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not a million of people who currently have lost their homes, who are put in a horrific situation. You know, before the war, I remember reporting about,

the state of the Ghazan population and thinking that they are probably the most tragically positioned people in the Middle East, maybe in the world, because they are stuck between the security needs of Israel and the oppression of Hamas and the blindness of the West that keeps them in this perpetual state

of intended planned immiseration. So you will counter that this immiseration is to some extent self-inflicted by the preservation of this ideology that it's not something that is merely imposed on them from other forces and to some extent that is obviously true for some people it obviously

isn't because we do know that there are also people who truly want to rebel against it. There are some liberal grains and even in Gaza there are some liberal grains. We don't know how strong they are but you know we can find the anecdotal cases and I've interviewed people who risked their lives

protesting for peace with Israel within Gaza and suffer the consequences of that. You know, and I think if you're looking for stories of bravery, protesting for peace with Israel in Gaza, truly putting your life on the line. So I don't want to take away the credit from the people who are taking those steps within a truly totalitarian state.

Do they represent more than a fraction of a percent? Maybe not, but we will never know until Hamas truly collapses. So the point is that the majority of the population there surely is not that. Truly, they're not the people who are protesting for peace, and surely they're not the people who are eager to give up on their land. What do we do? Let's say Trump managed to push for a path for exiting, which will also have to be, to some extent, guaranteed by Israeli military forces

that allow them to live and leave and create a channel for them, to exit the strip without the intervention of Hamas, which is already quite a military undertaking. But let's assume that we're able to provide that. What then? Okay. So here, it goes to the point of what you said, that once you introduce new ideas, new possibilities open,

and it's in the phrase that you said, their land. The reason that we're in this predicament is that the vast majority of Gaza's population was constantly groomed to believe that this is not their land, that Gaza is not their home, that they are a fifth generation refugee, but that their real home is Palestine.

And some people had a tweet of mine from 2018 running around in which I said, as long as the ideology of the people of Gaza is that Gaza is not their home, you can count on it that the billions of dollars that are flowing in and the cement will be used to dig tunnels in order to take back what they believe is their home. And that's a tweet from 2019 merely by listening to what they're saying and looking at the incentive structure.

Their home being their home being the... Palestine from the river to the sea, no Jewish state, all that. It's suddenly by the American president saying, well, you need to get out of Gaza, they're saying, no, Gaza is our home. We're actually making a major breakthrough because maybe we can actually finally and the entire scam of the perpetual refugeehood, the idea that millions of Palestinians possess a non-existent right of return into the state of Israel, and I always mentioned that anyone, if anyone thought that return is kind of innocent nostalgia, October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return, which is why you had so much

euphoria on October 7th. So if we can, for example, euphoria on the Palestinian side, of course. Yes, yes, of course. And they're collaborators. So if we can even get to the point that actually says, oh, so you think that Gaza is your home? So let's discuss. Let's discuss one of the ideas I proposed is how we transmute this whole scam of perpetual refugeehood and right of return into property rights in Gaza. And those rights can only be realized once you go through a process of de-radicalization. And maybe you can divide Gaza into zones. And some zones will indeed be developed only for those who are struck from the records of UNRAS refugees, declare that they possess no right of return,

go through an extended process of re-education, and then it's clear that Gaza is their home and there's no other home and there's no right of return. That actually could already be an amazing outcome merely by forcing Palestinians to admit that Gaza is their home and that they're not Palestinian refugees from the river to the sea. I teach a class in sort of,

sociology. And my students asked me last week to talk about the Trump deal. And in going through the process, I asked them, okay, so what is Gaza? Well, we talk about moving people out of Gaza, moving people around Gaza. But what is Gaza? What is the status of Gaza? And they, like, is it occupied land. It's not occupation. The West Bank, you can say, is according to international law, that's occupied land to some extent. What is Gaza? And searching that around and doing some live Googling, it took them about 10 minutes to come up with the answer, wait, is it a refugee camp?

And then realizing that the status exists in this nebulous realm of a refugee camp and then figuring out what UNRWA's role in it, which searching up the actual mission of UNRWA as described right now does not list restettling refugees like any other refugee mission, but rather list education. welfare, health care, quote unquote, camp infrastructure. You could see the neural connections being made in their eyes opening. Wait, so is Gaza refugee camp and UNRWA is the government?

And I think that simple encapsulation of what we're actually dealing with explains why talking about the resettlement merely as a matter of overtone conversation shifting, completely changes or reopens a sort of Pandora's box that has been tucked away by the international community and I think I agree with you that even merely starting to talk about Gaza

as you want it as your home we agree that's why Israel left the strip plenty years ago we want you to have it as your home but you need to regard it as your home and the world needs to accept it as your home. And Israel did not define Gaza as an open-air prison. This was your propaganda.

This was your vision to see it as an open-air prison and preserve it as an open-air prison by lobbying rockets daily from your territories and making it impossible for Israelis to live side by side. Okay, agreed. This could be huge. Will it? Will it?

Will it? the people who actually need to get along with this are the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Americans who go beyond the bombast of the Trump administration because you need to drag on a lot of Republicans who seem kind of reluctant to follow along with this kind of ideological shift.

And then, not to mention the entire international community that has been ossified in its old version view of a two-state solution, an old explanation of the theory of the conflict that has kept the conflict ossified as it is, which is the UN, the EU, and not to mention all the Arab states, that don't really necessarily feel inclined to give up on this source of grievance. How do you imagine this dynamic being reconstituted by this overtone shift? I will just say, I mean, certainly for, as an Israeli, I don't think we should be passive here. Ultimately, the American presidency is four years.

And the Arabs have a very long history of taking grand American plans, keeping the money, and then doing nothing that kind of was part of the grand American plan. The original sin is, of course, the story of honor. The Americans, the British, wanted to put a lot of money on helping the refugees, the Arab refugees in Jordan and the Gaza Strait. and in Syria and Lebanon to inject a lot of money into these countries and build great projects and help the Arab refugees

settle into those countries and become integrated into their economies. And UNRWA was going to be the mechanism of doing that and we know what the Arab countries and the Arab refugees themselves did with it.

They took the Western money, but rather than settle and move forward and build a better future, they used Western money, money to keep the conflict alive. So if I'm kind of recommending policy for Israeli decision makers, I will say, look, take the opportunity to have real achievements that will change the future of the conflict, even when

there is a different American president. In retrospect, for example, we wasted the decade of the fall of the Soviet Union when the Palestinians lost their main backer, they were isolated in the Arab world because they supported Saddam Hussein, we wasted that decade on fruitless direct negotiations rather than a chipping away at Palestinianism so that sometimes in the future negotiations could be fruitful. So I'm saying, okay, we might be getting another opportunity. Let's use it not to necessarily get the grand thing. Who knows if that will happen? But let's say. use it to lock in actual achievements that will chip away at Palestinianism. Make sure that this

plan immediately translates to no one is a Palestine refugee. There is no such thing as a right of return. Any construction in Gaza has to depend on that realization. So maybe try to lock in actual achievements that will have beneficial long-term consequences, rather than, than waiting around for something that might not happen. Aren't you worried that given the current shape and direction of the Netanyahu government, that rather than focusing on this redefining of the terms of the conflict, you could argue are much more humanitarian for the concerns of the lives of the Palestinian, That's my argument all the time.

Right, exactly. By eradicating the annihilationist ideology, you actually create the opportunity for Palestinians to build a prosperous life in the Levant, in Palestine, or whatever you want to call it. Aren't you worried that this might be sidetracked by some of the members of the Netanyahu government who heard the Trump plan

and their excitement was not simply about changing the conversation or redefining what is or isn't a refugee, but rather what they heard was resettling Gaza. What they heard is annexing the West Bank. What they heard is greater Israel. Aren't you worried that they will be hijacked by those members? I must admit that I tend to be actually less concerned about that because despite the kind of the role that they play, I was recently in a panel abroad and some European said, oh,

Matritch and Ben-Vir are names that everyone in the Arab world knows. I'm like, okay. So despite their kind of big name, again, look at the last time that Trump was president. You know, he did all those acts that sent a message

to the Palestinians in the Arab world of enough is enough. And then he proposed a Palestinian state. Netanyahu likes people to not notice that, but he actually said yes to that. And the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called moderate, true to the Palestinian ethos, said no, no, and a thousand times no, in case it wasn't clear. And then there was this, the possibility that Israel will be kind of supported by the United States in annexing about 30 percent of the West Bank territory that was

going to be part of the Jewish state in the Trump peace plan. And then, as you said, the U.A.E. ambassador to the U.S. wrote in an Israeli paper an op-ed that basically said, how would you shop those annexation plans and you get direct flights to Dubai? And Israelis, true to the revealed preferences for the last century, preferred normalization, acceptance, direct flights to Dubai over annexation. Now you're right. There were people in the right among the settlers who said this was a terribly missed opportunity. But ultimately, they were the ones who were sidelined, not the Israelis who wanted direct flights to Dubai.

Now, true that things have changed after October 7th. Israelis, if, for example, now there will be discussion of annexation of the Jordan Valley or the settlements that are adjacent to the 1949 ceasefire line, this might actually be supported by a lot of Israelis. But all I'm saying is that the revealed preferences of most Israelis at the end of today is, like you said at the beginning, to be allowed to maintain a country that is prosperous, that lives in peace. And if we'll be offered something that will make it worth it,

then you will find that those who are sidelined are the settlers, not the Israelis who basically just want to be left alone. Right. And it's worth mentioning specifically that the territories in the West Bank that are now in, I would say, half discussion about annexation, those are the territories of the West Bank settlement that are acknowledged by everybody will be part of Israel under any kind of peace settlement.

and drawing the lines is a matter of details more than the big picture and what kind of line will be given in exchange for these territories as part of any kind of final deal. So the talks about annexation right now simply says getting ahead of that and we're no longer waiting for a deal to happen. We are just drawing the line, drawing a reality. But the question is, are there people right now around Netanyahu and around Trump who are promoting the view that you are describing?

Because I can see a world where, if not, it could be drawn in a more extreme way. Or another opportunity could be missed like the fall of the Soviet Union. If nobody is standing at the center of this recalibration and saying, this is the opportunity that we need to seize, not the land, but the reshaping of the ideology and shattering the annihilationist ideology. Are there people in the orbits of Trump and Nathaniel that are pushing that direction? I'm not aware because what I'm describing is something that is a kind of a unique mix that on the one hand does not have visions of settling and all that and really just focuses on the ideology and that if the ideology changes is more than happy to live in peace. look to chip away of that. So I'm not aware of anyone. I try to do my best, like here, to speak,

to write, to get those ideas out there. Indeed, for the purpose of making sure that we at least lock in some real achievements that will make the situation better for the future. But who knows, maybe there are some people. Ultimately, there was someone that managed to kind of create the Abram accords from the annexation agenda. So maybe there are people now working on some, you know, alternative, positive agenda that comes from this kind of changed conversation. But nobody that you know of. No.

Does this mean anything for the current state of the war? We are before the conclusion of the first stage of the ceasefire deal, I think we have, is it one or two more rounds of hostage releases before the stage is over? Yeah, but they do. just suspended everything, so we don't... And right, in Hamas just this morning, I believe that they are going to halt the release. And that is after there's been big uproar about the state

in which the male hostages that were released this weekend have been, their emaciated appearance. What does all this mean, I guess? The reaction to the state of the hostages in conjunction with the Trump provocation and the fact that now Hamas is suspending the next round of release. What does that tell us about where the ceasefire is

or what the next stage of the war might be? I think what happened is that Hamas was really kind of seeing the end that from their perspective, they committed October 7th, but they're going to remain in control of Gaza. maybe they'll pretend to hide behind a Palestinian authority or a technocratic government. But for all intents of purposes, they will continue to control the strip. The billions of dollars will flow in.

And that was, I think, how they imagined the situation. The combination of the Trump idea plus the global response, or at least by quite a few, by the Holocaust imagery and tales. I think, again, when you grow up in a world that tells you that both the Holocaust didn't happen but that it was actually a good thing that it did, maybe they were not aware the backlash that they will face.

And contrary to what some people think, Hamas is keenly aware, Qatar too, they are keenly aware of their global, image, especially by places where they need, you know, the American campuses, all the places that actually served them very well for the last year and a half in preventing Israel from taking effective action. So they cannot afford to kind of let go of that position of the sad victims, you know, now people see them much more for who they are. So for me, it's very clear that they suspended the release

because the hostages are indeed in a terrible situation. They do look like people who just came out of concentration camps and Hamas can't afford for more people to see that. I hope that the American president,

he kind of hinted at it, he said, you know, I'm not going to have, I don't know how much more patience we're going to have for that. The deal is a terrible deal. I mean, this drip, drip, drip, drip. of every week, three, four hostages.

So again, maybe wishful thinking, maybe hope that the American president will again kind of throw the table and just say all of them released now or they'll be held to pay and that the hell to pay will extend to the Egyptians, to the Qataris, maybe again that's the benefit of highlighting of sending Ghazans to Egypt, kind of getting all those countries to watch

want to end the situation as soon as possible might be a way, hopefully, to get Hamas to release more of the hostages sooner. Although going to the problem of missed opportunities, if what Hamas is thinking is based on its long understanding that one of the biggest leverages that he has on Israeli policy is the Israeli people themselves and the Israeli sentiment. The panic that Hamas is created by seeing the site, sure, on one end, it renewed the yearning among many Israelis for revenge, but at the same time, it has also exacerbated the pain of the Israelis wanting to get everybody back and saving the remaining hostages from

the horrible conditions in which they are clearly being kept. The reason that the deal was signed was in part because of the massive protests of the Israeli public going out and demanding that the war be paused and that any kind of agreement be signed so that we can get whoever we can out. War policy be damned. We want those people out. We want our brothers and sisters and mothers and children out of this hell. And Hamas showing those images and then pausing the. deal, I can imagine is only going to create a renewal in these, in this really heightened, angry protest against the Tanyao to do something, which arguably will find the face of any

kind of focus on the, on the Trump plan or, you know, the putting consequences to, to Hamas. This is what Hamas understands. Hamas doesn't need to pay consequences as long as it hold Israeli lives in its cages. The only difference I will say is the reason that Hamas did the first hostage release is that holding children and women was a massive problem for that, for them. And they were actually facing problems both in the West and in Muslim countries saying, oh, this is not as long. We don't hold women, mothers,

toddlers, children, babies, hostages, they actually needed to unload what was both a logistical and a massive PR problem for them. In the same way, I think now that they realize that they have again a massive PR problem, they're looking to see what they can do with it and their first response is pause. I agree with you that the only way that I hope we can get out of it, because Israelis are at once horrified and they want to get everyone out. But there are also more of us are realizing that we are dealing with pure Nazi-like evil. And yes, we negotiated with Nazis to release Jews. We ransomed, it's not a deal.

We ransomed Jews from Nazis when we had to. And the same way, we feel that we have no choice to ransom our people again from those who hold them. And there's only, unfortunately, one person who can throw the board and say, no, there will be consequences for Egypt. There will be consequences for Qatar. And this drip, drip, drip of releasing hostages has to end. And there will be hell to pay. And hopefully that changes the equation. But we are clearly very far. If there was a feeling that, oh, this is just going to some kind of happy end for Hamas where they're in control of the strip. I think everything is kind of in motion.

So final question, with Trump moving the conversation in directions that we haven't thought possible in our lifetimes, I think. We never expected things to go so quickly in one direction. I guess you could say the same thing about October 7th, maybe. No, actually, I wouldn't say that on October 7th. because we've always imagined this scenario, we just didn't know that it's going to play out as it did. Was Trump changing the conversation?

Are you worried? This just means that everything is on the table and that, you know, next year we could hear, maybe next year, maybe next administration, we might hear the American president talking about the voluntary ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Or, you know, we already know that on the left, at least, there is more and more room.

the Overton window has expanded to include the idea of the annihilation of the state of Israel. This is no longer an idea that is outside the pale for the American left or the global Western left. So maybe next time that there's a Democrat if they are taken from the more progressive wing, maybe now the Overton window will expand to consider the disestablishment of the state of Israel in exchange for a one-state solution. So I'll start by saying that this is the permanent overtone window of the Jewish people. The kind of the idea that we should not be here and that the Jewish people have no right to self-determination and that they are foreign, white, European colonialists rather than at home is the fundamental reason

that we're in the conflict. And by the way, going back to Israel's founding, the U.S. State Department, it's not new. They all said, you know, they were not enthusiastic about a Jewish state. There was a repeated mistaken notion, whether it was the Soviets or Eisenhower or the American State Department, the things that siding with the Arabs against Israel is somehow going to pacify the Arabs, they always fall flat on their face, never happens. But am I concerned that there is a rising red, green, democratic, that white turn it into political power? Absolutely, which is why we need to secure real gains now.

Annette Will, thank you so much. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be.