The Duran Podcast - Palestine to Ukraine. Conflicts without Solution - Alastair Crooke, Alex Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Palestine to Ukraine. Conflicts without Solution - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Welcome to today's discussion. My name is Glenn Dyson and with me here is Alexander Mercuris from the Duran. And we're joined by former senior British diplomat, Alistair Crook. It was also an excellent or expert on the Middle East. So welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. So today we really want to discuss both the. the conflict we have with Russia, between Russia, Ukraine, but also the Palestine-Israel conflict. I guess what they both have in common is they both have severely weakened the West standing in the world, and one can almost feel the shifts of world order under Western leadership declining.

So you yourself recently came back from a trip from Moscow, and I just thought I would start off by asking your oppressions there. from the mood. How bad our relations? Are there at the Cold War level worse? Do you see any path towards at least learning to speak to each other again? Certainly. I mean, I was actually,

it was last week, and I was quite shocked because I spoke with a person who was, I mean, this is, who is very much responsible for this fear, the relationship between Russia and the West.

And what was clear from this is just how bad they are. They are much worse than during the Cold War, I remember. The Cold War, yeah, sometimes I remember the Deputy Defense Minister telling me that there were almost no channels open left. It was just the one military channel

with the Pentagon, video thing but for resolving basically technical issues about military to prevent a sort of clash or some sort of problems between aircraft and things like that. But what he, how we described it was that, you know, this sort of sense of enmity was really striking. It wasn't that Russia was seen any longer as just, you know, a competitor, a rival, a sort of unpleasant intrusion into the geopolitical order, is saying that, you know, they see Russia as something really, you know, hostile. I mean, the enmity was very pronounced. I mean, and that Russia is a deep enemy. And so there's There's almost no channels open.

There has been one or two initiatives. We probably know about them. I should think from, it was from the Democratic side to try and talk. But they just, I mean, really sort of dismissed us quite laughing and said, well, you know, I mean, but they can't commit to anything. They said, well, maybe we can commit in 2030.

I mean, great help. So there is a sense of this deep enmity, and this is compounded by two things, really, the mainstream media, which projects a sort of, really, vituperation towards Russia and towards Russians and towards Russian culture. And so that is a factor.

And really, they don't know what to do about this. I mean, they're pretty frank and saying, how do we address this? And some people have suggested to them that they can address this, perhaps, through engaging more with the alternative media and through, you know, blogs and things like this. And maybe, I mean, certainly there is a huge shift taking place in the media world. I mean, we're all aware of this, financial as well as in just people's preferences. I'm not sure that it's really that easy for a spate to engage, because so many of these alternative medias are individualists, an individual, I mean, in the way in which they approach

it. So it's quite hard, and I'm not sure whether it would be helpful to these blogs, you know, to be sort of embraced by Zachara. So it is a problem about how to do it. Basically, I think what I was saying was, you know, actually, it's not worth banging your head against the wall at this period in the West, because that's what you're doing is just banging your head

against a wall. Because there's such a divergence around about thinking. I mean, you know, everything you stand for, you know, a man is a man, a woman is a woman, the religion, the family is the basis of society. All of those things are completely opposite to what, you know, the DEI, the sort of diversity, equity, inclusion, values. stand for. I mean, it's like you were in sort of 1917 trying to negotiate with a Bolsheviks. There isn't very much to talk about. And so I said, I think this was it. What I think is very serious about this is that they feel the same about the Europeans, that the Europeans, I mean,

in a sense, the Europeans, they just don't feel there's any political leaders of any caliber. I mean, It's not just their attitudes in their political position, but there are just, there are no people of any caliber. And so, well, where is them? And what I sort of talked about is that, you know, we're in a very strange state at the moment. In the West, we have a sort of cultural revolution, half engaged. half the population is zealously engaged in it, but half the population probably would say to them, no, everything's normal.

There's nothing, you know, what's the problem? There's nothing a problem at all. And so I gave the example of this, perhaps you know of him, this Russian general who worked for the Tsar in 1919 and he came back to find St. Petersburg in this sort of strange betweenness, too. And he said, you know, the army was on the street acting illegally and robbing and threatening people. And at the same time, he went to this cinema theater.

And all the affluent class of St. Petersburg, everything was normal. Everything was fine. They were enjoying it. And he said, there was no sort of sense. that outside there was a revolution, and they were all right because it was normal inside. And then so he took a train and went off to see the Tsar. But when he got to the court, I mean, he was shocked to find that the Romanov women,

many of whom he'd known throughout his life, 80% of them were wearing the red ribbon of support for precisely those forces who would later... murdered them. And so Racha has a sense that we're in a between-ness. But what is worrying is that at the end of this period, if there is an election, who knows if it will resolve anything or nothing, there may be even next year or beyond, actually no one able to pick up the phone to their telephone call.

who's able to commit to anything or to be able to, you know, because if it's so fragmented the structures of power and which they are already, you know, is there anyone who can actually commit to what is, you know, the things that are lacking, I mean even the basic treaties on the use of weapons, on nuclear weapons. All these things have to be addressed, but will there be someone there that is in part to deal with that. We don't know. So this was sort of part of the conversation. But beyond that, Russia is very sort of, I think, confident. And it's been told and it knows that, you know, it's going to assume the presidency of the Bricks in the 1st of January. Together with China, it can change the world in the next two years if they really set up.

about it. And they do have plans on the monetary side and on sort of the trading side, which I think we'll see probably around about April taking some sort of shape. So they do have some ideas. There's still a deep discussion in Russia between, if you like, the Western economic side, you know who I'm talking about and the sort of more, and the more radical economist in Russia. But that is going to be resolved, I think, quite soon. So that's

really what we saw. And the sense, of course, I just want to say something which is speculative in my part, but I think the sense that there's no one to talk to for Russia

and that it has no challenge also probably explains why China is so busily trying to open up channels. It doesn't want to get in that, even if they have the same doubts about whether they're really worth it or whether anything will come from it. I think they are doing this partly, probably on the accounts that come from Russia about their situation and trying to avoid that also.

I think the other thing that is quite striking is that, you know, Russia is moving on from that European period of St. Petersburg. I mean, as you know, it sort of ended in the 90th century, more or less when people were saying, well, why are you speaking French and not Russia? I mean, it has started to change, but now it's really changing. And of course, there is tension for those in St. Petersburg and Moscow who are sort of lean much more towards European culture, that they feel their landmarks in life are sort of receding, and they're a bit uncertain about the future. But I think, you know, the rise of the Orthodox Church has been very important in grounding people, giving them a sense of belonging and giving them a sense of belonging and giving. a sort of direction for the future. And that is affecting Ukraine. That's the other thing that I would say

that people perhaps don't pick up so readily. There's an aspect of Ukraine, which has become, in a certain way, sort of eschatological to Ruski-Mir. I mean, Russians are beginning to see, you know, they are, finding their new self. They are evolving a new identity and a new being. And part of that is the absolute victory in Ukraine. It has to be part of this sense of coming, the three peoples

coming together in this fashion. And so it's very clear that it's very clear that it's It is something that is sort of not just a sort of instrumental politics, instrumental talk. Ukraine has become part of them finding and coming to their own being. And there is perhaps an optimism which may or may not be misplaced because they feel just as orthodoxy sort of self-started in Russia as soon as the churches were open again. everyone just came back. It wasn't choraled or particularly organized. It just was a spontaneous thing. With what we've seen in Ukraine and how the Orthodox Church there has been persecuted,

there's a sort of sense in Russia that there will be a sort of spontaneous self-starting of this current of orthodoxy and of different values coming back. into it. I don't know. I'm a bit skeptical that that will only happen when the ultra-nationalists are gone. It won't happen before that. And we haven't got to that point, but I think they are moving quite fast towards that. And it was pretty clear to me, you know, they're not interested in negotiations about it. They're interested in capitulation. Well, thank you very much for this extremely insightful comments and observations. Now, from my distant perch in London, tracking official statements by Russian officials, I have to say this. I can see a lot of what you've been saying. I remember not all of it by any means, but some of it,

it's been striking to see how since the end of the summer, when it became increasingly clear that this Ukrainian offensive was going to fail and fail badly, that we've started to see one statement after another from Russian officials, which have been taking stronger and stronger, or rather, shall we say, clearer and clearer line about where they see the outcome of the war in Ukraine. And we had people like Volodyn, who was the Speaker of the Duma. He says that the choice for Kiev is very simple, either capitulate or your state as it is today ends,

which could not be more stark than that. And it's important to say Volodyn is a member of the Russian Security Council. He meets with Putin regularly. He's part of the inner councils of decisions. So he presumably is speaking with some authority. But now also we've had Putin himself, and he's made several comments now about the triune of nations, the Russians, Belarusians, the Ukrainians, that they're all branches of the same tree, that they form together the original historic Russian people. He said this, I think, about a few weeks ago back in November. he's been coming back to it more recently

and I've noticed that other Russian officials are now picking up on this so Sergei Narishkin been telling him he's been talking in the same way we've also had this ambassador Mirochnik who appears to have some kind of formal position in the Russian government

though I understand that he's ultimately from Lugansk and he's actually by background Ukrainian. He was a member of Yanukovych's part, at one time. But he's talking along these same lines as well. And I think we got more of this in Putin's Maris and press comments yesterday. So all of this tallies exactly with what you are saying. And at the same time, we have all of these people like Richard Haas in the United States. These are the people that you are, some of the people that, you know, the Russian officials and people that you were talking with are aware of coming along with these ideas about freezing the conflict and bringing things, you know, in sort of, you know, stabilising the front lines and finding some kind of a way to freeze the conflict, all of that.

And negotiating with each other because that's what the Americans and the Europeans are doing. And I don't think they're noticing that this trend, in Russia is moving in a completely different direction. I'm not adding anything in effect to what you've just said. I'm not asking any questions. I'm just saying that even London, if you follow carefully, observe what the Russians, what the official Russian government has been saying over the last few weeks,

you can see this precise trend that you are speaking about. I think, you know, in a sense it's quite hard to convey, but there's a sense that, you know, that the sort of culture, anti-Slav culture that has overtaken Ukraine and their sort of fraudulent claims to be sort of Germanic extraction or Viking extraction is just a phase that will pass. It's going to go. And then the natural if you like, organic process that has happened in Russia in which they're confident in, will ultimately bring in the Ukraine, that they don't have to, therefore they don't have to crush everyone. They probably have to crush those who are deeply bandarites. But beyond that, I don't think that that's not the sense. They just feel it's coming their way. They just continue slowly, slowly doing what they're doing, and it's going to come to them.

They don't have to do too much because it'll eventually come into them. That may be too optimistic, I can't say, but I think this is how they feel about it. And it's changed because it's not all about, you know, well, this line, this town has been one, that town has been one. It's now about, you know, just waiting for it to come to the right point where it will sort of come back. It's funny what used the word, yeah, cultural revolution before, because I remember in 2021,

Putin gave this Valdez speech in Sochi, and he was making the argument that what they saw in the West reminded him of the Bolsheviks. Yes. Yeah, the revolutionary behavior, which would then be defined, you know, largely as uprooting your own past

and, you know, starting from scratch effectively. And this is, again, something that Russia didn't want to follow because their point was that this has been their curse of their history, not just the Soviets, of course, uprooting their past. But before that, you had Peter DeGreate with a cultural revolution. Before that, you had, you know, the breakup of Kiev and Rus and, you know, they started over too many times. And I think what they really see is required for them would be to reconnect its very fragmented periods in history. And as I think you pointed out quite well, as also is what the common,

The common, the nomadic common path through the past thousand years, of course, has always been the Orthodox Church. This is really an important thing that sticks it all together. But again, it's not that different from other countries who lived under communism, had their culture, their nation and their faith purged. They also want to rebuild, so from Poland to Hungary, for example. But the point to go to us, it seems that in the past, Russia was mostly dissolution, with the West because he was excluded from Europe after the Cold War. But it seems that the problem is getting worse because at least during the Cold War,

while there was conflict between governments, the people still often admired the West. Now there seems to be almost detest. There's nothing. The former advisor to Putin Karagnoi pointed out that we have nothing more to get from the West. We got what we wanted. They have chosen a wrong path effectively. And the reason I bring it up, because you mentioned the Ukrainians might naturally gravitate back to the Russians, or that was expectations. And I saw a recent video by Arstowicz, the former advisor of Zelensky. He was making the point.

Did we pick the wrong side? Because they have the Western globalists versus the Russians. So it's going to be hard to overcome this huge conflict with all the death and misery. but of course one shouldn't simply write off Ukraine as being perpetual anti-Russian, I think, after this. No, I don't think so. And I do think, I mean, I would go further and say, you know, a lot of people in Russia, which is why there is some tension, despise what they call the liberals, but which they really mean the sort of the new moral order that Europe is attempting to assert.

And they do see it in terms of their own history. And they see, you know, the constraints on people that come to Russia and that they can't speak freely is very similar to the constraints by the nomenclatured that were imposed during the Soviet period. I mean, these parallels are obvious to you, Alexander and others, but are not really seen, I think, more wider, more widely. in the West, that this is how they're looking at us, not with any great aspiration or anything, and saying, well, you know, it's just not worth spending much energy on the West at the moment. And there's no great desire for it because they can see it's, you know, I mean, they can almost feel it. I mean, you know, we stand for exactly the things the West wants to disembed. We stand for gender issues which they want to dissolve in the West.

We stand for the family with the West. It's trying to disembed it from collectiveness, from belonging, if you like, from nationalism, patriotism. I mean, it is, you know, for them, a real cultural revolution that is underway in the West, even though it's this strange one where, you know, half the population would say, not cultural revolution. Is there a cultural revolution taking place? No, it's all normal. Everything is fine. And that brings me back to that sort of example of St. Petersburg, for them. They understood that allegory quite well of the Russian general who came to St. Petersburg. And, you know, the normal was going on in one hand, and then there was revolution in the other hand.

I mean, it's interesting, you said strange because, I mean, I should say that I live in the epicenter of the revolution. My wife is an academic, so she's very well aware of the kind of revolution that we're talking about. But of course, the previous revolutions, the ones the Russians went through, Peter the Greats and the Bolshevik ones. I mean, they had a kind of epic quality, a kind of grandeur. I mean, they, you know, moved millions of people. They're tremendously attractive around the world. This cultural revolution that we're going through in the West, which I agree, Westerners have made the Russians in a kind of odd way a part of,

even within the West's own outstanding, is a very strange cultural revolution indeed. I mean, it's certainly not one that I think is going to have anything like the kind of residents that those Russian revolutions are the past one. Can I ask it? It's a question, actually, I'm addressing to both of you, gentlemen, to both Alistair and Glenn, because you've both been to Russia recently. Glenn was at Valdai. You've just been to Russia, literally, just a short few days ago. I'm getting a sense from, you know, again, this is all from London, of a kind of sense

of buoyancy amongst the Russians. I mean, for a very, very long time, Even before the Soviet Union collapsed, there was, you know, growing cynicism among, you sense for cynicism about the Russians, the sense that everything they try to do doesn't turn out well, that, you know, this is always going to be a second-rate country in some way. A lack of self-confidence. And I'm sort of beginning to feel that this is changing. We're not beginning to, but it is changing quite sharply. I mean, was that the sense that both of you got when you were there, or am I getting this wrong? It's a question thrown to both.

Who starts? I'll start. Yeah. I would say it's not just buoyancy. It's sort of positive energy. I mean, it's brimming over with energy. Everything is on the move. Everything is in transatlose. I mean, it's really a very stimulating place to be because, I mean, there is this sort of sense of direction, resolve, and opportunity.

I mean, they can see. You don't have to say it twice. You know, the next two or three years, they, together with China, are not about to be changed by the world, but are going to be the ones who are acting to change the world. The bricks are clearly going to play an important part. Already they're seeing it in bigger terms. I mean, they see the bricks not in a formal way because the instruments of legality are not there, but they see the bricks almost as a sort of shadow security council, UN Security Council.

It's addressing the same issues because the Security Council is locked up and doesn't work very well. So, I mean, you know, they're seeing, I mean, lots of sort of positive ways ahead, geopolitically. I would maybe see it even in the, I think there's also immense confidence over the past few years, but I think, well, can even see it in the wider historical context, because since kind of industrial revolution, whenever country is modernized or in before, you know, there was always a dilemma between preserving the traditional law modernizing. Well, that was in the West. Outside the West, it was often modernization was referred to often as westernizing. This is the case with

from China to Japan. Well, for Russia, I think the modernization process, as was under period great, it manifested itself as Europeanization. So in order to modernize that, to make the country more European. This is something that also always created the sense that they were just walking in the footsteps of the West. This was a key theme for Dostoevsky as well. You know, we can never be great to, so we always just aspire to, you know, try to find the footpath of the West and follow down that. I think that now for the first time since so much power has shifted to the East, they feel that, you know, being able to embrace their traditional values as and modernizing at the same time, that you don't have this,

you know, tradition and modernity isn't either anymore, East versus West question. So I very much agree with with Alster for that on this because now they're seeing, the Europeans, look at where the new technological revolution is taking. It's all becoming digital, this huge digital platforms, which is now transforming the world. You know, Europeans, we don't have any, all our major platforms are Americans. When you go to Russia, all the major digital platforms,

they're all Russian. And, you know, they have, of course, this new transportation corridors they're building. And as I also pointed out, bricks, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they're quite important because they, you know, they were kind of told in all of Europe, Russia is the only country that's not pretty much allowed to join this new year, and now they're forming this new institution, countries in the east. So there's a whole new world opening on which they're not pro-west or anti-West, but simply the West doesn't have to

matter as much as they did in the past. It has other places to go and, you know, it can find this place, it's seat at the table. So I think the confidence is, You can see it on the streets. You can see it in face of people. I think that's the last thing I need to say, because I don't want to give the wrong impression. And then that's it, is basically, of course Russia is open to talks. I mean, there's no question of that. I mean, if there was someone who could really talk with them,

but really that talk has to be with someone who is, who is in part, because really the thing that has to be settled, whether it's Ukraine or anything else, is a modus vivendi between, in the McKinda language, between the Rimland and the heartland. Where are the limits of one's interests, the Rimland, the NATO interest, on the one hand, and where are the interests of Russia, China, and the road and belt economic? depth, how is that going to come to some sort of means of, you know, peaceful alignment? But that's the long way off, long way off. But I mean, you know, everyone understands that's the ultimate destination.

We had an interview about some weeks ago with a member of the IFDA, Maximilian Kla. And it was in KRA, and it was interesting because, of course, he did understand many of these points. He was talking about the atrophy of Germany's industrial economy, the fact that it has been running down, actually, for a very, very long time, which, as somebody who visits Germany, regularly, I have been able to do this for myself, by the way. And he also spoke about the need to reestablish relations with Russia and the importance of those. But at the same time, and it was very striking and really rather painful, is he spoke about the total marginalisation of these views that he had on these issues,

not just, I mean, because he's got other issues as well, other views and other things, you know, about the essence of German this, which perhaps one can understand that they might be more difficult for some people in Germany. But these, even these specific issues about, you know, changing the industrial structure, sorting out problems with Russia, they're completely marginal. You won't find them in the media, you won't find them in academia. It's purely something that has traction. Well, the base of the party's support from what he was saying is what the Americans would call the blue collar working class. There people are responding to these ideas and are open to them, but that there is this barrier that they haven't yet been able to

cross in Germany in order to sort of break. If they didn't do that in Germany, if that doesn't happen in Germany, where realistically else is it going to happen? I can't see it happening in Britain at this time to be realistic. The United States seems to me very far from that point indeed. And other countries, other European countries, I don't think have the political weight at the present time.

even if they had the inclination, which I don't see on you. I accept what you say is, I'm sure, absolutely right. I mean, I think, first of all, catharsis in the United States may provoke some form of catharsis. I think we're heading for a crisis in Europe because we have these two moments clashing together where we have a crashing standard of living. And then we have a huge number of immigrants

coming into Italy and to Germany in huge numbers as people are losing their jobs and their standards of living are collapsing. And I think this is going to sort of be a storm that is brewing politically as well as socially in the countries. I mean, we can see it in, you know, in places like Sweden where they've sort of almost lost control of the system

that, you know, there are gangs and law and order is breaking down. I mean today, tomorrow, I'm just talking about, I think, this is something. So I think in a way, some sort of cathartic effect is going, to come and that may change Europe and probably will begin in America first and then affect us later. Well, on that note

I feel what's perhaps dragging down the west a bit at the moment, it's a nice way to segue into this issues now of Palestine and Israel because I think

again when we began with this something like the Israeli, no, sorry, the Israelis, you know, talking to the West saying, you know, can we get your unconditional support in fighting Hamas, but it seems to have developed a lot since. It's hardly fighting Hamas. It doesn't really sum up what they're doing in Gaza. And also now we have the West Bank, but possibly very soon this will, we might have a war spreading into Lebanon as well.

But I was just wondering if you could first, speak a bit about how we can understand the role of Hamas in the region. Because obviously, they're not really, they don't get along with the Palestinian authorities. And obviously, this was part of Israel's objective as well to keep this, to keep the Palestinians divided. But how, but you've written about this in terms of Hamas being, you know, either about ideological Islam or it being more of a resistant movement. I think the first thing, I think, to understand the situation is really to see that we are leaving behind traditional politics of institutional dynamics of politics.

And what Hamas is about, and that's why I was very interested when Alexander talked about Algiers, because all of this is revolutionary politics. It's not, can't be interpreted in the sort of standard work, you know how much power, how much this. Revolutionary politics is about exploding the situation, even at the expense of large amounts of blood being shed, in order you have to burn it down to build it again. I remember actually in 2006, I was at a hamass-miss-merex.

meeting. And they won the election for the PA. And of course, Condoleezza Rice and Bush and Blair said, no way. Forget it. And the young Hamas members were quite right. They sort of pointed their fingers at the Hamas leaders and said, did you really ever believe that the West would allow you to take part, to administer your own land? You were so naive. The only way ahead is to burn everything in order to build it again. And that's what I mean by sort of revolutionary politics. It is about, and so what Hamas did on the 7th October was simply an exercise to break the paradigm, to explode the whole paradigm.

You know, Palestine is not being discussed anyway. The two states or any state is not being addressed. Their situation just gets worse and worse in places like Gaza. So the aim was to just sort of set off a bomb. Now, I think what people don't probably understand so well about Hamas is this was carefully thought about. I mean, it wasn't just a spontaneous. spontaneous event, it was something that had been deeply thought and the actual actions on the day.

I mean, let's not get into the weeds on what happened on the 7th of October because it's very complicated. But I mean it was a very precise military strategy that Hamas at least was involved with in that. Now, and it has an objective. And it is part of a wider strategy that involves others. It involves a sort of other fronts that are operating in consensus, in coordination with Hamas, in parts of the world. I mean, we've seen some of them in Iraq and Yemen taking part in Lebanon, Hezbollah is part of this. And I think it's fairly obvious that this both imposes constraints but also imposes a structure.

And the structure is basically this, which is that no one wants an American, all out war. I mean, not another, you know, 9-11, thank you, where everything is destroyed and the Middle East is left the desert. So they don't want to go dive into big war. So it is constructed as a sort of escalatory ladder, very careful steps, one rung to another rung, and to move, and this is a strategy that I've been seeing in the region for some time, don't fight on your ground, your home ground, fight on your enemy's ground. And if your enemy expects you to do X, then you do Y.

I mean, it's very much the Chinese model of, if you like, thinking about conflict. And if it starts off, you know, at one moment it's Hezbollah, then it moves to Yemen. Then Iraq explodes. So it puts your enemy off balance. It doesn't know what's going to come next or when that part of it is going to take off.

And you can see this if you want to say, well, how do you know, how can you see this? Well, I mean, first of all, I wrote an article just after 7th of October and I said, the great surprise about 7th of October is that people think it's a surprise. Because I've been waiting for about three months,

I could see all of this sort of coming into sort of play. Now, in that, Hamas wants to, this is about Palestinian liberation. And so as long as they're doing what they're doing, then they don't want Hezbollah involved in it, not because they distrust Hezbollah or have problems with Hezbollah, but because Hezbollah are Sheev and Lebanese and not Palestinian, even though they've supported Palestine and are at one with them on this exercise.

So it's not necessarily. And you could see this happening very visibly if you looked at that main talk speech that Hassan Nathralagov, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. For the first time I've ever seen it, he put on his glasses and started reading passages of it because it wasn't a Hesbila document, it wasn't a Hesbullah position. This was a consensus with other states and other people had been obviously, and so he put it on because he had to get the wording exactly right because everyone was in involved in the drafting of it, quite widely.

So we're facing something is quite different. What is Hamas is aimed? Again, I don't think people are really understanding what's happening there. I know Gaza quite well. The Israelis mainly came in, first of all, when you come through areas checkpoint, then you get a sort of area of cultivating. ground before you get to Gaza City and you get the coastline on the beaches. Going into that with a tank is easy.

I mean, you just walk in, basically. There's no defense that they can mount against it. And then Israel started moving down the coastal areas in their tanks and their forces. Because these are the, I mean, the subsoil is not suitable for deep tunnels. Because it's too close to the sea and the moisture. And after Gaza, you get the Wadi, which is a swarm plan, which separates Gaza City from Khan Yunus and the other parts. And that's not suitable for tunnels, really, unless they're very deep ones.

And Hamas has dug these incredible facilities over the years, prepared them. I mean, they are not the ones you see on the television. These tunnels are 60 plus meters down. They contain their own hospital, it contains munitions, it contains stores, it stains equipment for excavation, for excavating what I call throwaway tunnels, which are the ones where they just small squads come up very quickly, attack a tank, come down it, and then they collapse a tunnel. So it's just one time you've finished, gone.

The Israelis try and follow them will just be collapsed. It will collapse on them. But the big tunnels are really deep, and so they can move. I mean, they're big enough for cars to go up, some of them, I mean, underground, and certainly motorbikes are the main form of communication. So they're a facility that people don't realize.

So when you see all these images of Israeli forces going in on the surface, I mean, what are they doing? Nothing. I mean, very, I mean, you know, okay, they bomb it. Occasionally they get into a far fight. Hamas comes out, attacks them. And they are not winning. They're not destroying the sort of probably, like no one knows the exact figures for these things, but I think largely the forces of Hamas are intact underground, not committed yet, because they're waiting for the long term. The point is, is, and this is what is missed, I think. Hamas can probably last longer than Israel can with the pressure coming from Biden.

Let's stop this. Stop this soon. You know, it's hurting me for the election. And at that point, because they're not destroying Hamas, I mean, and you can see this, I mean, when the Israelis sort of, you know, gather together a lot of Palestinian civilians and put them in their underpants and say these are Hamas members. Everyone knows it's fake. So why do they do that?

It's because they can't actually produce the real thing to their own people. And the Israeli population will soon say, well, you know, but you haven't done what you committed to. You haven't destroyed Hamas. You haven't finished off the tunnels. You haven't done all these things. So that's when I think you'll find at some point, I don't know when it'll come, Hamas will simply say, okay, it's all for all, that's our offer.

All your prisoners, all your hostages for us. Yes, it's 6,000 to whatever it is, 235. That's the deal if you want it. Otherwise, you know, you have nothing. I mean, it just continues. You've got rubble. You've got a main problem. How are you going to deal with a completely disqual?

constructed Gaza, what are you going to do about it? Because we're still going to be there. And we can outlast you. Now, will it work? Well, we have to wait and see. But I think already you can see the signs that Israel is sort of shifting and saying, well, now Lebanon, let's move the discussion to, this is the real problem. We've got to do it.

And Galant has said, Galant has said, from the beginning, we need to take this opportunity to destroy Lebanon. At this point, then the war widens and other fronts open up. And then a lot of pressure comes both on Israel and the United States. And that's really the gist, I think, of what people haven't really understood. It's not a stupid, I mean, it's very far from a stupid operational plan. plan. They have a plan against all odds, against this huge, you know, Goliath of a military structure. But, you know, in some ways, the plan is based on the sense that Israel will not

be able to resist actually going too far and trying to take more and trying to take the West Bank, trying to create a Nakpa because this is what the cabinet I think when I last spoke on your program I said you know this cabinet is much more radical than people realize it's not the old you know politics of Israel before I think if anybody goes back and looks at those programs

they will see that a lot of the events that we're seeing playing out were discussed there and you can see how events have essentially followed along the course that has been out. That's what comes when you have the knowledge of the area, if I may say, the knowledge, the knowledge,

the actual knowledge of what Gaza is like. I should say that I had a, it was on, it was a sort of podcast, but there was an American officer, Daniel Davis, Lieutenant. Oh yes,

I know. And he basically was saying, he didn't have the same degree of knowledge of Gaza itself. I don't think he's ever been there. But even before the Australian ground operation began, he said this is going to be a mistake. That Israelis are going to try and do something that it is beyond their power to do. And the point about Hamas having planned it through, having thought it out carefully, very carefully in advance, having prepared what they were doing very carefully, really need to start to understand this, that this is an organisation that both has agency.

It's not taking orders from someone, be it in Tehran or indeed even in Doha or someplace like that. They have agency. And they are very intelligent people. Now, just to say something else, Alice, there's a question I want to just, was a question. I want you to discuss, because to me, and I think we both have some of, some, well, probably you much more than me, some memory of the end of empire type scenarios that happened. Algiers was won, but, you know, we also remember the sort of battles in place. Perhaps you remember Aidan, I don't, but, you know, things like that.

This has something of the look about it, of what national resistance movements do. And this is something perhaps you can discuss a little bit more, again, knowledge. than I can because like many many people, most people, I've tended to think of Hamas as essentially a sectarian religious organization. And I think that the more time passes, the more it is starting to look as something rather different and perhaps more in line with, you know, national resistance organizations like the FLN in Algeria, which we're talking about, existed in Yemen, the A&C, even if you like, to some extent. And of course, you know, the people in Vietnam, the Vietnam, the

people of that kind. Perhaps you can talk a little bit to this, because I think there's some knowledge of them, which of course knew that. Yes, well, I was writing about, you know, the, you know, just recently about my meeting with Sheikh Yassin who founded Hamas. It was a paraplegic, who was in a wheelchair, but really an extraordinary man, tough as nails, I mean, but good sense of humor, twinkling eyes, strange, very strange character. And he said to me something that was, as I say, really startling, but you have to understand the context to see why. He said, you know, Hamas is a liberation movement, a liberation

movement. He didn't say it's an Islamic movement. And in fact, he said the opposite. He said, look, you can join it. Christians can join. Anyone who wants liberation from occupation is welcome to this movement. This was in the context that Hamas and the whole of Egypt were basically Muslim Brotherhood, which was very different. The Muslim Brotherhood is much more about social justice, social movements, about community work. And it had a dogma and ideology. And he was throwing out ideology completely and saying, anyone, you know, we're not Muslim

Brotherhood, we're not this, we are a liberation movement. And this really ended up in the split in her. Hamas, between, this is why, you know, it's quite amusing. I mean, I used to go and see the political leadership when I was in Lebanon. I go and visit Meishal and the Hamas leaders regularly in the leadership. They're not Gaza. Gaza is different. It is something quite different. And what is so striking about it is they've married, they've married, if this, I

idea of liberation. I mean, big, I mean, this affects the whole global south. This is the movement we're in as a world, you know, people wanting independence and sovereignty back. And they married that to this being, if you remember, a couple of years ago it started all through this. All about Alaksa, the fight for Alaksa, saving Alaksa for Omnis. Well, there really is a struggle for Alaksa from the other side. from the Israeli side, which gives it a real sense of substance. But the point about that is this turns it into a sort of civilizational Islam. You know, Al-Aqsa is not she, it's not Sunni, it's not Muslim Brotherhood, it's not Salafist, it's not Wahhabist.

It is, stands for the civilization of Islam over the centuries, and appeals to every Muslim. everywhere, particularly now since Mecca and Medina have become so commercialized and trivialized. And so this has been a very powerful, and I think what you've seen in some of the videos, perhaps you watched it when the hostages were released, was not only this huge energy of, you know, support for what was happening, the freeing of the hostages, they were coming, but there was an undertone of Islam. People got down, they kissed the ground, they kissed the earth,

and talked in Islamic terms, but not in ideological Islamist terms. And this is the first time for a long time, because in a sense, Islamist movements were invented by the West or facilitated by the West to destroy nationalism. Nationalism, the sort of secular nationalism, that was in Egypt, that was in Syria, that was in Iraq.

And, you know, the old neocon sat down and they did this, you know, the clear document from some time ago. And this was the point that Islamists were supposed to be used to contain nationalism, and that the West had to side with the monarchs and the emirs, and even the Islamists in order to win this battle. And here you see it coming together, nationalism, and a form of bottom-up popular Islam, not in an ideological way. I think that's a very potent force.

If it really takes off, it's going to be very frightening for some states in the Middle East, very frightening indeed. But how are they going to deal with it now? I mean, you know, Wahhabism and ISIS and all these things were used against Syria and others. I mean, I've been following this since Afghan, you know, most of these Islamist movements. What are they going to do? I mean, they've gone down the road of sort of secular consumer Westernism, many of them.

It's hard because in that process they left the idea of Islam as a civilization in order for to pursue a sort of westification project, really. I think you would have to call it. So it's a big shift that is taking place and the anger in the rest of the world is is extraordinary. The anger and the Islamic sphere is huge. So all of this is sort of brewing. And Colonel Davis said, you know, Israel is making a big mistake going into Gaza. Well, it sounds as if they're about to make another big mistake in Lebanon, because that will be even more of a mistake than where they are. And then it looks at it looks at it looks at a mistake. And then it

as if they're making another big mistake in the West Bank, because as you've probably seen, the fighting in the West Bank is reaching huge proportions. And now even the Israelis are saying they're worried that the Palestinian Authority might start turning its guns onto the Israeli forces. They're not regular forces, in West Bank, by the way. They are just so, because this is slightly important. They are reservists and predominantly settlers themselves. So they're sympathetic. And Ben Gavier and the other ministers have been fruging the sort of boundaries

by giving them weapons, self-defense, little groups in the settlers, and putting them in army uniforms. So if you drive around in the West Bank, you don't know, is this an army person or is it just a settler, who's going to impose its own will. So the line between the two is blurred, which means I think it is possible that there will be an explosion. And then there's our Raksa, which we haven't talked about,

which of course, I mean this group within the cabinet, and is the policy of the government, they want to build the third temple. They've imported the red heifers, and they're going through this process. And it was, by the way, on the Friday before the 7th of October, that there was a large group of settlers who stormed onto the Temple Mount Haram al-Sharif attacked.

They know that they are planning to, if you like, take Al-Axa. That is why it's called Saving Al-Alaxa. Al-A-Laksa is the key. the radicals. I talked about revolutionary politics with Hamas and the world, but also some of the cabinet are revolutionaries too, planning to blow up the whole process. They've said for years.

Now, there needs to be a real crisis, even a war, and then we can do the next clearing out. And Netanyahu, by the way, said this. 1970 with the book written by Max Hastings in 70s, and he said, in the next war, if we do it right, we'll get rid of all the Arabs from Greater Israel, and we will sort out Jerusalem too. So we have two revolutionary. And so this is why, you know, you can't say, oh, let's have a political process or something like this, because we're talking about quite different form of politics, one which does mean the expenditure

of blood, unfortunately. The trouble with all of this is that for the United States and for the West, a collision of two revolutionary forces in the Middle East is potentially a geopolitical disaster. I mean, I've been reading, there was an article, I don't know whether you saw it, by Gideon Rackman, journalist that I have to read from time to time. in the financial times. He was in contact with people and the American government. They were wringing their hands.

We say we got a fifth of the fleet, the US fleet now, tied up in the Middle East. We have all these other things that are concerning us all over the world. We're worried about what Chinese might be doing in the Pacific. We've got to think about the Russians. We've got to think about all of this. And yet we're tied down where we don't really want to. to be in the Middle East. And we don't want an escalation. We don't want to see this war expand. And yet our ally, the key countries that we have given effectively agree like to, to do whatever

it considers appropriate in the Middle East, is now acting in a way that is increasingly out of control. It's resisting our wishes, that it slow things down. in Gaza. On the contrary, it seems to be escalating there. And now it's talking about going after Hezbollah. It's escalating in the West Bank. And they're talking about the temple. And they're going to look upon this with horror. And we can also see, coming back to your point about, well, not just Islamic opinion, world opinion is now hardening. We had a vote in the General Assembly, 1201 states on the 26th of October called for a humanitarian pause leading to an eventual cessation of hostilities. And now we've had another resolution with 153 states, more, in other words,

30 more, coming along and say, we want a humanitarian ceasefire. And these are, this is very measured language in these resolutions, which do not reflect the the feeling that even many governments are now starting to show. So the Americans are going to be horrified by all of this. You're absolutely right, and I'm interested that they're sort of finally waking up to what they're dealing with. But also, you know, it's too late. The genies out of the bottle.

I mean, you know, in Israel and in the region. And, you know, okay, they've stuck all these aircraft carriers. I think I irritated someone very much. You remember what happened in sort of Lebanon and 1983 and what was it, the U.S.S. I can't remember the name of the ship, which was sort of stuck there. And I said, well, you know, seeing your aircraft carrier, sitting off the Mediterranean. I mean, it just looks to me so 1950s.

I mean, it's that really effective piece of equipment for this sort of war now. I mean, I don't think that Lebanon or Iran is the slightest bit deterred by these great big museum pieces that they're rolling out into the Mediterranean. And I don't think the Americans are really sort of understanding thing, you know, they face bigger dilemmas. I mean, in Syria and Iraq.

I mean, in Iraq, there are, I think, 12 bases, American bases in Syria, about nine. And every day they are being attacked every single day. And when they strike back at some of the so-called militia, then they are attacked again. I mean, you know, it didn't deter. It goes on. And really now they're facing the question. the question. Do they go all in or do they get all out? And this is, I don't know what they will do. I mean, I presume probably the dynamic will be to stay because it's always hard to, you know, politically in America to sort of remove troops from an area.

But they're sitting targets. And there shall shy be. the Iraqi resistance are very tough people. They are not, by the way. I know every time I read a Western press, it says, oh, you know, these people are sort of linked to Iran. Iran proxies. It's true that some of these movements are very much linked to Iran and are basically she.

But the majority that we're seeing taking action now are actually either mixed groups, Shani and Shih. But the point is that these are Iraqi nationalists. They're not Iranian nationalists. They're Iraqi nationalist groups. And I've met some of them. And I can tell you they're not particularly Iranian, but they are certainly very, very, concerned to end the occupation of Iraq.

And it's slowly increasing and they are waiting for the next phase. I mean, they even, you know, rather like Hamas, they have their tunnels inside the green zone. The Hiddish. So expect that at some point. It will probably come around and the embassy in the green zone. So, you know, I think that what we're seeing is a sort of really quite big movement around the world. Some people say, well, it hasn't done much so far. And I suppose you can look at it.

But as I say, it's slowly, slowly, you know, one step, one step. Don't let the Americans sort of father all that tomahawks in Syria. And in that respect, you know, certain states are kept, you know, the aim is to keep the nation states in, if you like, the background and to have the sort of informal militias and others in the forefront of it. So it's not going to be, if you like, a big element. But also even so, I mean, you know, what's happening. in Yemen as having a huge impact on many things in the West. So I don't know what the next stages are. No one, I mean, I don't get told these things quite rightly.

I think you're correct that the American impulse will be to stay and double down as opposed to with going. But I'm just trying to figure out how what the framework would be to try to try to make some predictions about what would happen next because, well, obviously, the attacks on newest basis in Syria and Iraq will continue. That's a way to extend the conflict. And, of course, we see now Yemen becoming very active. But I was curious because you mentioned this more almost a revolutionary movement among the people in the region.

And I often get the impression from Turkey to Egypt that most of the resentment is coming more from the people while the political governments, they, well, they kind of reflect the sentiment in the rhetoric, but they wouldn't get into action. I'm just wondering, when does the, is it possible that the pressure from the public become so great they will intervene or? I'm just curious, what are the possible areas of escalation? I guess, yes, question for both of you. Well, I think, you know, you're right in the sense that I don't expect to be a big change

from the Gulf states. They are deeply sort of frightened in many ways by what it is. The sort of revolutionary, I mean, this revolutionary ethos is something that they've always feared, particularly when it comes from Iran, because the Shi'i are sort of, it's in their DNA, the revolutionary back from the time of the profit. So they're not, I mean, they are very hesitant about that. I think that in some places we may see changes like in Jordan, in Amman. We'll see changes. We've seen the big protests there and all of the, you know, calling in front of the American embassy, you know, who's our leader? Hamas. Who's our army? Kasam? I mean, all of the, so that, I mean, it is sort of fundamentally, but I think what we're

waiting for is the next, you know, rung up the ladder to take place. And I think it's very likely to be in Lebanon, of all, because Gallant has given this undertaking, you know, in that you, to, they have 150,000 Israelis sitting in hotels on the Galilee and on the Black Sea, Dead Sea. waiting to go back to the towns in the north. I mean, has one as effectively redone, has created a demilitarized zone in the north of Israel.

I mean, it's empty, apart from a few troops and one or two individuals who've stayed behind. They want them back. I mean, this is another aspect of deterrence that's so important to understand.

Israeli deterrence had two-s sides to it. One side was the big deterrence, if you like, the grain's sort of, you know, Iraq and Syria and the big states. The other thing was that, you know, Israelis had a sort of, if you like, a moral contract with the Israeli state that wherever it lived on the land of Israel, the IDF had its back and the Israeli government had its back. And that deterrence, has collapsed. And people are not going to go and live next to the Gaza fence. Now, whatever the government says, and certainly not up there in the north where Hamas is.

So that's why they've sent off these envoys to Lebanon to say, you know, we'll give you a lot of money if you can persuade Hezbollah to move to the other side of the Litani River, which is about 40, 50 miles north of the border, and to stay there and be disarmed. This came about. It's very complicated, so I won't go into it because it came up a resolution at the end of the 2006 war, which was never really accepted by either the UN or the Lebanese authorities and certainly not by Hezbollah. But it is a UN Security Council resolution.

So, Israel are trying to build that into a sort of justification for military action against Hezbollah and trying to, you know, amass Western European support for it. So I think that's probably going to be the next stage. I don't know when it will be, but as I say, they've set themselves there out. sort of timeline for it because they said by the end of next month we're going to stop moving all these people who are costing the state, the Israeli state quite a lot of money in their hotels. They want them back into their towns. And they said very clearly, you know, the head of Matula and all of these towns said, no, not going back. Absolutely not. You've got to get

rid of Hezbollah before we're going to move back. We'll refuse. So this is the dynamic. dilemma, and also is the diversion, because very soon too, there will be the Israeli public saying, but you haven't achieved your objectives in Gaza, have you? And that's so a war in Lebanon is quite attractive in this way. And it's also really, finally, I just want to say about survival. It's about the survival of Netanyahu and his cabinet. And personal survival, he has to get his base back. And the base have turned very, very eschatological and apocalyptic.

And they want the Arabs out. They don't want to live near them. They want them out. And he is molding us to a base that by, 26 when the next election is, he can use this to stay in power, because once he leaves power, then he can be prosecuted and he'll end up in jail. So it's really existential for Netanyahu to have a long war, the longer the better, and the more it sort of brings his base with him by promising a new knackbar of the region. That's his future. That's where he's

wants to go and I don't think the Americans can stop him. Can I just say we had an interview, actually just yesterday, Glenn and I spoke with Syed Mohamed Maharandi. Marandi, yeah. Sayad Marandi. Yes, and he confirmed two of the points that you made because we asked him, we said to him, look, you've got two American aircraft carriers at least, one of them is in the Persian Gulf, there's a submarine with hundreds of tomahawk missiles.

Does this worry people in Iran? And he smiled. He smiled and he said no. And by the way, he said, I think I'm right and stake. He said almost exactly the same thing that you said. He said, this is 1950s technology. The world has moved on. We are no longer intimidated by that.

It's not them, coming closer to us, you know, to put us within range of their weapons, they're putting themselves potentially within range of our weapons. Exactly. That was what he said. He also, by the way, also confirmed, or rather he, he also made exactly the same point about these various movements around the Middle East in Iraq, in Yemen, wherever. He said, these are not Iranian proxies.

These are allies. We are friends with them. We don't. But in no sense do we control them. We don't. We don't give orders to them. And if we did give orders to them, if we did control them in that kind of way,

they would not have the deep roots in their societies, which they actually do. because it's the very thing that makes them strong is that they're deeply rooted and based within their societies. There's just two things, and I'm going to wrap up there, but there's two big questions, quite big questions in some ways. But the first is about the Israeli Kavanaugh, because I've been hearing all kinds of people,

I've to some extent gone along with this view myself, by the way, which is that the United States holds the key, that it can somehow bring this whole situation under control. He's got political problems at home, and it can sort these out and decides to bring this whole thing under control than it can. But, you know, listening to what you've been saying, which has now been corroborated for me by many people, these very ideological people in the Israeli cabinet with these eschatological ideas, people who think like that, who have those sort of beliefs, well, my experiences, and I have come across people like that, is that they are impossible to reason with and control. You can come along and say to them, well, you know, we've withhold some weapons here or pose some sanctions on you there. That isn't

going to impress people like that at all, particularly. if they're starting to fear that their overall project setting up the temple and all of that is beginning to slip out of their grasp. So that's one thing I wanted to ask you. And the other is about the Gulf States because what we've seen over the last couple of days

and it's pivots us back to Moscow. This extraordinary reception that's definitely that the Gulf State put on. And of course, we've had the rapprochement with Iran that the Saudis have the decision of the two of the Gulf states and join the bricks. Is that perhaps, because it's, I mean, this has been a little difficult for me to understand. Is this perhaps a product of that fear of these social movements that you're talking, you've been just talking about? The fact that the war in Yemen turned out terribly wrong.

The fact that Syria didn't turn out well either, a sense of American power is receding, that there's these new movements, these new feelings of the Middle East. So what do you do? You can't rely on the Americans anymore. So you try and huddle under the Chinese and the Russians instead. I don't know that there's any real answer to the second question. But anyway, have you any thoughts about it? about these people.

Yes, I have. I'll do the second one first, because the one before is very interesting question. But the second one is, you know, I think Saudi believes, and I think with some cause, that the US is deliberately lowering the price of oil, like they did against Russia. And when was it, 87, was it in 97? And crashed the price of oil. And they thought he thinks that this is happening now. And so does Russia and health sec cutting back on cutting production.

Because they all think that this is a phase and then actually we're going to see a big spike in the price of all. When because there's no new, no new oil coming into play. And I think, you know, I think Russia has some advice from that earlier period. First of all, against the advice of Nabila Lina at the time, it broke the peg of the ruble and had the rubble floating so that it didn't feel the effects either on the budget or on the costs of the oil companies. But it was underpanned by China. and China would come in and support the currency.

And I think we are seeing very much the same sort of things. I would think that Russia is saying possibly, this is speculation, but I would say Russia is saying to them, listen, you know, if this gets, if the price goes down further, break the link with the dollar, and then we'll have your back. We'll take, you know, if you've got dollar debts, as they almost certainly have in commitments, all right,

we'll give you the dollars to pay them, or at least China, who has a surplus of these, can pay off your debts, and you can repay China with one or some other currency of your choice. And I think some changes are going to take place. I don't know that that's what they had in mind, but I think there's obviously a lot of talk about,

you know, how to manage, because, you know, the bricks is a commodity king now. And they are going to not allow America to set the price of commodities. They're going to set the price of commodities. I mean, it's almost like McKinder reversed. I mean, you know, the heartland has the commodities and the raw materials, and the West doesn't. And that was, you know, all the wars in the night.

century were about that. So I think something like this is going on. I don't know exactly what's going on, but I think it's all about the price of oil and about attempts by America to try and drive it down before the election. Because you know, there's a perfect correlation between CPI and gasoline prices in the States. The first question, the earlier question, first of all, I am perhaps a little contrarian. I served on American Committee, the one that was done by Clinton with Senator Mitchell is in charge. And I discovered exactly how limited all the American parts with Israel at that time. I mean, we'd go along and Senator Mitchell would say, I want these checkpoints from those.

And the prime minister at the time would say, yes, yes. We'll do that for you. And I said to the senator, just give me a day or so. Let me just check. And I came back next day and said, yes, they removed all those checkpoints that they promised you. And they reimposed them within 24 hours. And even with the presidential backing, I don't think it's as easy as that because basically, Israel controls the lobby

and Israel controls Congress. All of Congress virtually is in the pocket. They're not going to allow any president in the White House to cut Israel off of its weapons or to cut its finance completely. I mean it would mean the president

taking on and winning against overpowering the lobby and that's a big, big project. And I think therefore it's much more limited, how much they could. And look at what happened yesterday. I mean, basically, Sullivan was there, and he fell into line with the Israeli demands.

And, you know, we don't want to have trouble with Israel. What the message was in the end, you know. Let's not, you know, I'm not here to cause tensions. But I think the second thing is, you know, who actually controls par? the two things that I've illustrated which would, you know, change the situation, is something in the West Bank, the West Bank going on far, or on Alaska. Either of those, a storming of Alaska or the West Bank would set it on fire. Now, who controls those?

Well, Smotridge controls the administration of the occupied territories and complete. and his colleague, Ben-Givir, is the national security minister and controls the forces in that area and the police on Temple Mount, Haram al-Sharif. He controls those police forces up there. So who actually has the control of the next stage of the situation? Not Netanyahu. these two very radical ministers, plus Levin and some of the others.

But even the rest of the cabinet have moved. Netanyahu's had, I would say, an extraordinary success by, first of all, relying on public opinion. 90% approve of what's happening in Gaza, of the Israeli public. Absolutely. And what's more they're getting more and more approval? I mean, they watch these videos that the IDF have put out of the 7th of October, getting more and more emotional about it. And so he's now giving this illusion that this is, you know, a grand fight.

What we are engaged in is an epic battle of good versus evil, a manichean vision. This is our new independent struggle. we are fighting of war, not of choice, but of necessity that we are coming into. And we all have to get ready for this big struggle that we're going through. And so he's dressing it up in Manichaean, apocalyptic. He's talking about the Amaleks. The Amaleks were a tribe in the Bible that were destroyed. All of these things, it's working.

You know, I don't know, it's not that he's got his whole base back, but he's, who knows, he may not succeed, but he may. I mean, he's moving in that direction. Again, as I say, this is, we're talking about a metaphysical politics or revolutionary politics, not the old thing. Well, let's sit down with Abel Mazen and talk about him going back to talks. for a two-state solution. I'm only coughing, not choking of the idea, but perhaps I am to. Anyway, so, no, I don't think it's, I don't, I mean, nice thought, you know, there are places where the Americans have sway, but I mean on all of the things,

I mean, you know, Solomon came in saying we're going to insist that it finishes in January, and at the end of it, and then, you know, the defense minister went in and he said, I told him, I told him very clear. We'll need months, not weeks to finish in Gaza, and Sullivan said okay. I was curious, I was interesting what you mentioned with, you know, Russia, China would like to influence the price of oil and energy. But I was a bit taken back by this recent visit by Putin to the region when you saw him having this very enthusiastic, almost high school handshake with the Saudis and then of course going to UA and having this guy colored with the Russian flag and it just made me wonder if they

had the extent to which I guess both Russia and China would seek to not take advantage but but make this crisis work in its advantage as to see the US obviously standing is not the same in the region. Well, what, I know that these countries wouldn't necessarily want to decouple, but at least diversify their economies. How do you see, do you see any efforts by either Russia or China to, to take advantage of the situation or any, any takers, I guess, in the region from the Saudis to, or then any of the Gulf states seeking to, well, fundamentally change either.

the format of the region. Yeah, why wouldn't they take advantage? Whatever, why not? Of course they'll take advantage of it. I mean, this is what, you know, what's going to happen with the bricks in this next period. I mean, I don't think they feel they owe anything to the United States or to Europe. Yeah, they'll take advantage of it, no doubt. And they're in a position to take advantage of it, as far as I can see.

I should say that, of course, I've been in contact with people both in China and in Russia over the last couple of weeks, and they both tell me one thing, that in China, feeling on this conflict in Gaza is running very strong. Very strong. Very strong. You go on to social media there. It is absolutely. And the Chinese government has to take that into account.

And I've also heard that in Russia, it is. also running very, very strong. And in fact, the opinion polls, because there are lots of opinion polls done in Russia. It's a country which thrives on opinion polls. But the feeling is so strongly expressed there that the Kremlin has actually said, you know, to publish these results, we still have to keep some kind of contacts with the Israelis. And if these results started to appear, it might make. some problems for us so again the Russian government has to take this into account

and there's a lot of people in Russia anyway who are a Muslim belief and I noticed that Kadirov Khadirov was there with Putin to the UAE and to Saudi Arabia so just just saying those things I mean the most striking thing of course was the photograph, again, underlying what I said about Saudi Arabia, of the lady who's in charge of the central bank being introduced to MBS. I mean, that doesn't often happen. So there's something of that going on. Of course, I mean, this is part of it when I said that the BRICS could become almost a UN Security Council in embryo. They're not trying to take over the Security Council, It just doesn't work the Security Council at the moment.

I mean, the resolutions are ignored if they ever have a mandated revolution as opposed to an advisory one. But I think, yes, Putin envisages, not now, but much later. He has the links to Iran. He has very close relations with Iran, with Syria, with Hezbollah, with all these groups, and also he has links to, he has a million citizens living in Israel. I think he will suggest, you know, the time will come when he'll say, okay, if you'd like some mediation, if you'd like someone to work something out, I'm not saying this is going to be, you know, two-state solution.

I don't think that is on the agenda. But if you want something worked out, then I would be, available. I don't know that's far down and certainly no one mentioned it to me in those terms on it but that's what I would for my own sort of reading between the lines I would think is going on so he's deliberately sort of keeping the thing down to keep a little space for himself to for the future. He said as much he actually said as much in a recent interview that he did that they do have all of these links and if people want to talk to them about finding ways forward. It's also made it very clear, by the way. Again, if you have to pass these words carefully,

that the point about the two-state solution is that it is the international consensus at the moment, but that any final conclusive settlement of this has to be negotiated and agreed by the party. themselves, which seems to actually suggest that it might not be the two-state solution in its classic form. But he's sticking with that at the moment. That's what people, you know, the General Assembly and those places can rally behind. That's the sort of the common, the consensus language. I mean, even people who don't believe in it, use it because this is how you sort of manage politics. I don't think it's, no. I don't think it means much in terms of where Russia thinks are going. Well, this is, I mean, basically I've run through all the questions and

comments I wanted to make. I don't know whether Glenn has any more, but if not, but perhaps you do, Glenn. I'm not just one, one final one. Well, you kind of touched on it to some extent. I was just wondering, teams are coming out in most wars these days, at least the past few decades, has been the lack of an exit strategy, certainly true in the Ukraine now, but also in Israel. I mean, but how do you see this? Well, what is the endgame here? Because we can't really go back to the way things were, yet I don't see any clear path forward. How does Israel get out of this, you think, or not just Israel, but.

Yeah, all the conflicting parties. Finish the question. I did give you an answer to that earlier, but it was that there isn't a way out. That's obvious to it. They probably are going to go in deeper. And having made one mistake, we'll make another mistake, and I don't know where that will end up,

I mean, then we're getting into a sort of, really, you know, crystal ballgazing about what will be the consequences. As other, I think that other states, it will, not other states, but other parts of the region will become, it will become a wider war. It will become a deeper war. And I don't know where it will end, but I think there's a great effort being made to avoid it becoming a destructive, all-consuming war. But it is probably heading towards a wider war and a more serious conflict in the region. And I don't know. I imagine that's what said Mohammed Morandi probably suggested to you as a guest.

It's exactly what he said. It is essentially exactly what he said. So I don't know. Is there a way out? I don't at this stage, no. You know, I've always, and I think I said to you before, it's probably not, I mean, diplomats get very angry when you say these sort of things to them, but I've had to say it many times because I spent a lot of time in conflicts. That I say, you know, there are times when, you know, a political solution is not available, and the parties involved are going to go through a trial of strength, perhaps on both sides, and only at the end of the trial. of strength, maybe the tide changes and this is the point at which you can actually produce

a solution. But to come in with a solution too early and to push it too hard can actually be counterproductive because then they, it's everything that they stand against because they want a trial of strength because they're confident they will win in a trial of strength. They can be right or they can be very wrong, but they don't want to, you know, the issue to be a diversionary issue. I think that's why, you know, Netanyahu very clearly says, you know, I won't, you know, I'm not going to have a two-state solution. We're not going to do this.

I'm the only one who stands to make sure that there will be no Palestinian state on our land. I'm the only one that can do this. I know how to manage the Americans. I can take us there. And so, you know, the trial of strength probably has to happen. It's sort of in the nature of the participants. I used to quote, you know, that old Greek saying about tragedy,

that, you know, tragedy is something that, you know, comes apart, comes about, and that it is necessary because of the nature of the participants and that they can't stop it happening. And it happens because it's in their nature for this to happen because they can't pull themselves back from things. And I think, you know, yes, we are on the sort of, in the beginnings of some sort of tragedy because the nature of the participants in this,

I think, are not really capable of emerging from the expectations of this tragedy unfolding. On that, and by the way, you're quite right about tragedy. My aunt used to act in them, so I should know. But can I just say? From my side, thank you again, Alistair Cook. I hope we have you again on our programmes, and this has been an absolutely amazing program in every respect.

Well, thank you very much, and thank you for saying that. That's very kind of you. Not really merited, but nicely here, of course. Well, thanks for me as well. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you very much for arranging it and hosting it.