The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Episode 19

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This week's Munk Members Podcast digs into the big issues in the news this week: Israel and Palestine ramp up conflict with rocket attacks, shelling and airstrikes – Is this the beginning of an expanding cycle of violence between Hamas and Israel? Is a ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army likely? And what are we to make of intercommunal violence happening withing Israel?; Canadian provinces halt the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine citing 1:57,000 clotting risk – Are we assessing risk versus rewards of the AZ vaccine correctly? How do we return to “normal” when our tolerance of any risks related to COVID-19 are so low?; and no third topic this week as we ran out the show clock discussing our first two topics!   To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live and online events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). To explore you Munk Membership options visit www.munkdebates.com/membership. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.wmunkdebates.com and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our usual Friday Monk members-only podcast. This is the program where we provide you in 30 minutes or so with a look at the big issues and ideas shaping our world.

We focus on three topics that we think are of importance and interest, hopefully leave you with some new analysis and insights. Our guide, as usual, is Janice Gross Stein. She's the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, always great to have these conversations with you. So good to be with you, Rudyard, and also so good to have gotten several great emails from Munk members. Keep them coming. That's right.

Podcast at Munkdebates.com. Send us your comments and questions out of today's show, past episodes. We really appreciate that feedback. Janice, we're doubly fortunate to have you as our interlocking. this week, as every week, but especially this week, given your deep knowledge and expertise developed over a career of yours that has spanned decades now related to the Middle East. The biggest story, I think, globally these past seven days has been this rapid acceleration of a conflict between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the government of Israel.

And maybe we could just start by getting your sense of how did we arrive at this point and how has this conflict ramped up so quickly over really just a span of a few days? To an uninformed observer like myself, this really seems like it's come out of nowhere. Interesting that you put it that way, Richard, because this was both a surprise and not a surprise. A surprise because the operating assumption was that Hamas does not want an all outfight where infrastructure gets destroyed once again. Israel does not want an all outfight with all the knock-on effects that come from inflicting casualties on. civilians. And the lid has been kept on this for seven years. The last time it boiled over like this was 2014. And that's an eon ago. Both sides have moved on from that. Here's where the unexpected

happened. This is an internal issue that blew up and Hamas latched on. It's an internal issue that started around, frankly, a totally misguided process, funded by private trusts to buy houses in East Jerusalem and evict families that was heading toward the Israeli Supreme Court. From that, that touched probably the rawest nerve in the Palestinian community and with legitimate justification, frankly. And it was those pictures that got circulated that led to, I think, a second series of events also so misguided. One was the use of the deployment of the police force.

We have seen in other contexts what happens, Roger. When you let police loose, they don't have the same training, the same bigger picture. sense of where to stop. And this started at the Damascus Gate, which is the gate where traditionally young Palestinian men congregate and spark local violence. The police went in with an over heavy hand. Again, you take a smaller incident and it blows. But the really, and frankly, I'm just going to say that it's dumb.

moved by the police, was to break up a demonstration inside Alexa Mosque. That is the symbol to the Palestinian and to the Islamic world, no matter who's throwing stones from inside the mosque, no matter what the provocation, if you have a bigger picture and you have a sense of discipline, you don't respond to that. You put all those together, perfect storm, starts locally and goes global in this sense.

I will only say this to our members as we are watching these terrible pictures and they're terrible from every perspective because there's community violence now in cities like Lod and Acker and Haifa where there have been years of intercommunal Arab-Palestinian Israeli living together. These towns have exploded in the last week.

As you're watching this, there are intensive mediation negotiations going on. The Egyptians are there. Behind the Egyptians are the Qatariis. The Americans now have an envoy on the ground. So we're watching this, in a sense, awful dance that all the big players in the region, including Hamas and Israel, do not want this to blow. But it's this constant tension of who stops first under what conditions and who gets the most out of it. And in the meantime, the people on the ground are just paying a terrible price.

The situation where it is, though, let's say the last 72 hours with literally hundreds, I think we're now maybe into the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel. I mean, Janice, what state would tolerate that? I mean, just to imagine a situation in Canada where, as we've seen in Israel, our parliament was closed because of the risk of rocket fire attack. I mean, the reaction, surely, of any state in this circumstance, would be to reestablish security. in some ways, no matter what that involves or entails, because your country simply can't function as a free and open society to the extent that Israel is.

So, you know, give us a sense of how you think this plays out. We've had in the last 12 hours or so reports of Israeli troops being staged along the Gaza border. is a ground incursion the next phase of this? So you're actually right when you move up from the community level. And, you know, as you were talking about here, I had images. So let me just, let's just paint this picture for our members that are listening. If you think back to the Black Lives Matter movement that took to the streets in the United States this summer, there was certainly justification.

But imagine that there were countries on the border of the United States. that saw that, and for their own political purposes, lob 1,500 missiles into Washington or New York City, you would get a sense of the dilemma that is working itself out right now in the Middle East. That's the closest analogy I can think of. You know, one important thing to say, what Hamas did is two things. one, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas, canceled elections one more time. That is a source of the frustration that you're seeing in the streets.

So let's not discount that. There is no way for Palestinians to express their frustration on a whole set of issues. They were looking forward to elections at last. this was going to happen, canceled yet again. So part of this. Elections that Hamas would have likely won. Of course. So all of a sudden, Hamas has the field now.

A bus canceled elections. Hamas is lobbying. Rockets, huge political victory for Hamas in this situation. Number one. Number two, they fired about 150 rockets in the first five minutes. Why do that? Send a message. to the Israeli armed

we've really upped our game here we couldn't do that seven years ago we can do that now because they're manufacturing rockets at home that message was received and so then you get a counter move back and you're in this trap of escalation interesting that those troops

are staged along the Gaza border they have not yet gone in both Hamas and Israel recognize that once those four go in, lose, lose for both sides. Lose for Israel, because the pictures of civilian casualty is the number of of gossons who will be killed will go literally around the world. Lose for Hamas, because, again, if infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed, the Qatari's

who have been paying to rebuild, you know, they, thrown their hands up more than once and said, we're not doing this every three or four years. We're not going to finance rebuilding. We're in this, these next 48 to 72 hours are going to tell us a lot. Can they pull back from the bridge? So, Janice, just finally on that, what about the situation in Israel? Because to me, it seems like a kind of Barbara Tuckman Guns of August moment where you have the worst dynamics in place on both sides, It's pushing, egging everyone on towards conflict. And one of those dynamics, surely, is that Benjamin Netanyahu is facing his, in sense, his final defeat,

if his opponents in fact can form a government. But he has the peril of a serious anti-corruption investigation and a court date to face. And what's holding what's holding Netanyahu back? What's holding back the elements in the Lakud party that are, have always been very aggressive, assertive with regards to their security position, Israel's security position vis-a-vis Gaza. And then as you say on the other side, what does Hamas have to lose for continuing this? I mean, they are showing the Palestinian people that they are the only ones willing to stand up and fight. As you say, this is political manna from heaven. You know, for Hamas, this is a gift.

Only if they stop soon before the infrastructure and gases destroy. That's what the rule is for them here. For Netanyahu, and I say this with some cynicism, Richard, I'm borrowing from you here. This is a gift for Netanyahu. His political opponents finally got the call from the president to form a government. government. There is a one of the leaders of the right wing party, Bennett, so hates Netanyahu. He was talking about going into a government with the center and the central left and an Arab Islamist party. 24 hours into this, stop. He stopped. He put a halt to negotiations, Bennett, and he is back now talking to Leekhru.

This is Netanyahu's path to remain in power. again or to have another election this summer. Big win for him. So you look at this and you have to be, I think, naive to the extreme not to believe that political dynamics are playing themselves out here. Now, Netanyahu, the final comment here, does not like to use force. He has repeatedly, over his career, pulled back. So he's a, he's a odd combination of a verbal hawk. but somebody who when push comes to shove, pulls back, he's innately conservative and worries about the unintended consequences of the use of force. That's why those forces are along the border, but they're not over.

Right. Well, to watch. And just the final thing in this, I know we're short for time, but this is just the big issue this week, I think, for us to discuss the opportunity to do this with you, given your deep area expertise as a privilege indeed. I guess I just would love your comments on this intercommunal violence that we're seeing in Israel because there has been a view that during the Netanyahu era in Israel, that Israeli democracy, that the civic culture of the country has been polarized.

And it's been polarized not simply by more extremist views on the part of Palestinians and Arab Israelis, But by the emergence of the religious right in Israel as a potent political force, arguably the bulwark of Lekud's coalition governments and Netanyahu's base of power, are we now seeing the bitter harvest that was sown in Israeli politics over a decade? And are you worried that there could be something more fundamental breaking down in Israeli society with this communal violence, you know, at really depressingly high levels across many cities, as you've mentioned? You know, Richard, I think it is deeply worrying, frankly. The violence in these Palestinian cities inside Israel has not happened for decades. And I think both, from everything I've been reading and hearing in conversations over the last 48 hours, that is what is worrying most people inside, both Israelis and Israeli Palestinians. They're shocked by this violence.

And again, what you're seeing is not dissimilar from what we've seen in other parts of the world. It's not necessarily, it starts very locally. But then very quickly people come in from outside the community. And that's when the demonstrations and the protests and the violence on both sides really escalates. This, I think, is the biggest concern coming out of this. We know how ugly intercommunal violence can be once it starts. and addressing the fundamental issues, there is almost impossible without addressing the issues in East Jerusalem, for example, that sparked this latest round.

There has to be a sobering reflection coming out of this. But to be frank about this, Israel has no government. It hasn't had a functioning government. for over two years. It has a prime minister who's a caretaker prime minister, but he has not been able to form a government. If this were Belgium, we'd all say failed state. Right?

That's how deep the polarization goes in this society. So those are longer term, big, big worrying issues. The Palestinian Authority failed state. So much of what we're seeing, if we just move it up a level is fail governance in both communities and the really awful consequences of that. You've been listening to a sample of the Monk Members Only podcast. To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member. Membership is free and available at www.w monk debates.com.

Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this episode and all of our Monk Debates.com. members podcasts. Thanks for listening.