The Team House - Israel\Hamas Negotiations: Are They Going Anywhere? | EYES ON | Ep. 22

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseAlex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation working to strengthen and deepen Arab-Israeli normalization. Additionally, he is currently a principal and industry director for aerospace and defense and high-tech electronics at Providence Consulting Group where he oversees and leads industry-focused teams who conduct business and digital-transformation projects for enterprise resource-planning software systems. Previously, Plitsas served as the director for strategic operations for a high-tech electronics company servicing the aerospace and defense industry and as a chief of staff at the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. He completed his federal service as the chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he oversaw policy and operations for compartmented plans and programs. He was also detailed from the Pentagon to the Intelligence Community, representing the secretary of defense as a senior member of the White House Hostage Policy Review Team. Plitsas also worked as a strategic planner for the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, where he was deployed to Afghanistan. He also deployed twice to Iraq, once in uniform leading a psychological operations team during “the surge” and fighting in the Battle of Sadr City, and a second time as a civilian working in the Special Programs Office at United State Forces–Iraq Headquarters. Plitsas has also worked as a program manager and contractor for several tier-1 aerospace and defense companies, such as Northrop Grumman, in between stints in the federal government and military service.Find Alex here:https://twitter.com/alexplitsas?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorFind Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554Team House socials https://www.instagram.com/the.team.house/https://twitter.com/theteamhousepod?lang=en#iran #israel #negotiations Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And, when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Izaun. And I'm going to announce my introduction. and the host introduction first because we never rehearsed this. So, and then we'll get around to the guest.

I'm Andy Moulburn. I'm Jason Lyons. I'm Dmiti Contacos. And today, as a guest, we have Alex Pleitzis. He's a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. Very interestingly, I think, I mean, his whole resume is interesting, but of particular interest, especially to our listeners, he's just taken over the terrorism studies group.

Is that right? Alex at the Atlantic Council. You know, he's a, and perhaps unlike some of the think tank crowd, Alex has plenty of practical experience. He was chief of special programs under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. It's so much easier saying ASD Solic, but I get beaten by acronyms. Anyway, kudos to you. That's one part of the Pentagon that I think. I think honestly anyone in soft probably does want to work, even if they don't know it.

Alex, I am turning it absolutely over to you and to guide the discussion as you wish, topics of your choice. It is. Thank you. That was a kind introduction. I'd like to think myself as like the forest gump of the Gwad era, stumbling my way through historical events. I have no business being involved with. On the way all, like Iraq.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, along those lines. I mean, of late, yes, the terrorism studies program, the council has been revamped, obviously in light of what has transpired, as we all know from guests and colleagues in the community, you know, after the airport fell in Kabul, the agency was basically told to take the Afghan maps off the wall. We've all moved on. We're going to, you know, pivot to the Pacific was the famous phrase. We're going to look to the threats coming, you know, from China and the East China Sea and then South China Sea. And then all of a sudden, the terrorists said, hey, you may be done with us, but we're not done with you globally and regionally, right? So we spent a better part of 20, years going after, Sunni, Salafist, you know, jihadist groups across the region, you know, from al-Qaeda to ISIS, et cetera, who were seen as a geostrategic threat, particularly with the existence of the caliphate under ISIS that, you know, then dissipated through the combat operations. But then we've seen a, not a resurgence, but one that's been there for the entire time under, you know, boiling right there under the surface, the boiling frog syndrome, which was really the threat posed by Iranian state sponsorship of terrorist groups in the region. And for the

purpose of discussion, right, the definition of terrorism we use is politically motivated violence against civilians. So somebody is using acts of violence against those civilians in the hopes that they can get them either as voters or in a dictatorial regime to get the regime itself to change its behavior in line with whatever the group wants, right, is what we're talking about. So for Iran in many cases, that, you know, happens to be in Israel or in other places where we're against U.S. forces to try to get us out of the region where they don't want us based sort of nearby. So that's been a focus on the counterterrorism side, and obviously immediate short term then being Hamas, which we kind of talked about in October 7th. So my role at the council, in addition to the terrorism

program, so part of the N7 initiative or the Ngev Forum, which is where the Abraham Accords were sort of born. And so that's building on the work that the Abraham Accords had done. I was in Abu Dhabi last March, Bahrain last July, and I was supposed to land in Israel on October 7th, actually. The rest of my teammates had landed from the council. We had about 30 members of Congress that were coming, many of whom you saw on television immediately afterwards saying, I was in Israel and I was there under rocket attack and they were there for our conference, what they were doing there. Ministers from a number of Arab countries were coming. Billionaire financiers from New York and from the states were coming in to talk about

financial investment in the region, improve the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, and then October 7th happens, right? And 1,200 people are slaughtered in probably the most of some of those heinous fashion I've seen. We'll kind of get into all that a little bit. 200 hostages at that point. And I have to tell you, having done propaganda analysis on the fly at the Pentagon and senior leader spaces, and then through the course of my career in Sa'iop,

here or there, seeing the ISIS videos, seeing the Al-Qaeda videos, they were very business-like, for lack of better term, black shadowy figures, remember, you know, jihadi John was part of the Beatles,

you know, with the ISIS videos and some of the others. They would make very serious policy statements, right? Their acts of violence were grotesque and what they were doing to intimidate people, but it was policy-based, right?

But we want you out of our lands, the caliphate's going to take over. And even though we don't agree with what they're doing or how they're pursuing it, it was seen business. It was serious business in the videos and meant to intimidate. I went to the Atlanta Council because the Israeli embassy provided the 47 minutes of footage of the attack that transpired on October 7th. And I have to tell you, it was among the most heinous things I've seen, not only for what it transpired and the callous disregard for human life, even women and children,

but the maniacal laughter, the phone calls back to mom. and dad bragging about the fact that they had just, I just killed Jews, mom, your son's a hero. You know, high-fiving each other and giggling about what was going on as they're, you know, killing people and some pretty often torturing folks, basically is no way to describe it. It's a pretty awful ways. It's almost indescribable. And if you think about the problem that we had there, it was 2,500 people crossed the border from Gaza into Israel to commit these atrocities.

This was not a cell of 5 to 10 deranged individuals or even a couple of cells. 2,500 is a massive sample size of the population there that came across the border, and unfortunately indicative of the indoctrination into the terrorist ideology that Hamas has pursued for quite some time, and it resulted in the deaths of the 1,200 people in Israel. And what I also, you know, you derive from looking at the situation is, you know, having dealt with hostage cases as part of my, that was other part of my portfolio at Solek was hostage rescue. I was on the 2015 hostage policy review where we created the hostage recovery fusion cell.

we created the special envoy for hostage affairs, which is currently Roger Carstons, his position. And we wrote the presidential executive order and the strategy for responding to hostage events. So I'm still deal with hostage cases, still helping hostage cases in Afghanistan, a few other places around the world. And what the situation told me when looking at is a couple of things, off the back. First of all, there were some debates about whether or not Hamas truly knew, you know, the scope of what it was doing. The hostages weren't taken from one kibbutz or one small village. they were taken from all across southern Israel from a number of different cells that were operating right out of 2,500 people. So it was clear from the onset that they were given instructions to take

hostages and bring them back to Gaza. And why would you take hostages in that number? The only reason you would need that many hostages to bring back to Gaza is if you were aware that what you were planning to do was so incredibly big and spectacular, for lack of a better term, in terms of the attack itself and the carnage it was going to cause, that you need to mitigate the gap in military capabilities between the IDF and whatever Hamas has between rockets and fighters on the ground. And the way you do that is by passengers. That's your negotiating chip. Bargaining chips. Israel has participated in lopsided deals for years, releasing thousands of people and even, you know, murderers for dead bodies of Israeli citizens to bring them back. So Hamas knew what it was doing. And what it created is this

nightmare scenario where you have essentially Gaza 8 by 20. miles controlled by a terrorist organization that's effectively walled and blocked off. It's often described as the most densely populated. It's not the most densely populated. I don't even think it makes top 25, but it is extremely densely populated out of 2 million people in that small space. With an underground tunnel network of 500 kilometers or so, if not more, it's basically a giant ant farm.

I mean, there's stuff all over the place. And so you've got this densely populated environment that is non-permissive with a hostile, you know, population there towards the Israelis. And with 200 hostages dispersed across a tunnel. system and in buildings across the area, it makes trying to conduct simultaneous hostage rescue operations virtually impossible. You've got small arms fired RPGs and potentially shoulder fired missiles, you know, man pads, etc. making helicopter missions, you know, and they're extremely difficult, right, for any aerial insertion. You know, trying to come over the beach is obviously

difficult, too, is you're going to be seen coming. So you're really basically limited at that point to a large scale ground incursion that we saw along with special operations forces trying to conduct limited raids. And so you really, it puts you in a shitty position for lack of better term. It really forces you into a primary stance of negotiation to try to get the hostages release because there really isn't a good viable means. So Hamas really set themselves up in this case to get what it is that they were looking for. Now, whether they're going to get it, it doesn't look like that's going to happen here at the end based on negotiations. But this was well planned. This was well thought out. Yes, certainly. I mean, no argument there. I think, you know, that's

having spent a good deal of time in Israel the last six months I've said on this program the sad thing is you know as someone who really loves Israel is that I don't think that country will ever be the same again like I can't I just can't see it I don't think that people

outside the country understand that they don't I think you're 100% right maybe you know and and I think at the same time and this this may not be neither there here nor there but it's but I think it's an interesting aspect and I think I'm not sure what the comment is on this but um you know as Hamas whether or not you know as they try and distance themselves some from some of the worst random atrocities and yet claim um claim you know responsibility for others you know it almost

becomes irrelevant but an interesting point I think is and worth pointing out um with no agenda is that a lot of those people who got out of Gaza were common criminals or opportunists, sadly. And that is what now the IDI thinks, I mean, I'm sorry, the IDF thinks occurred in some of the kibbutzis that weren't on their map, but were nevertheless act. Correct. Here are the same thing. And I think, you know, to your point, if you look at the polling data coming out, there's 90% support for the war in Gaza, 90% for, you know, eradicating Hamas for lack of a better

term, 15% support for Prime Minister Netanyahu, which is, which you think is rare, right? I mean, after 9-11, we saw a rally around the flag. It's high. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah. No, I mean, having been there, I'm surprised it's high. I didn't need anyone who liked them. You know.

They're furious. But like you said, but yeah, they've rallied. That's absolutely the point. So I wanted to now kind of jump forward. And I know, you know, every time no one can talk about this discussion without getting and recalls, you know, and so on. Our listeners know, hopefully, hey, listen, this is, we're going to go down this part because we need to and just arguing either way as we get, you know,

fast forward to where we are now, right? And I believe, and tell me if this is, you know, incorrect summary, and then absolutely want to hear your thoughts. So, you know, things, over the weekend, especially in the Arab media, there were kind of optimistic rumors that Hamas was going to and accept the latest proposal, which happened to be an Egyptian brokered one, right? Right. And then sometimes Sunday morning Israeli time, Hamas targeted an assembly area in Kharom Shalom,

killing for Israeli soldiers, wounding nine. Right after that, so that, that in, you know, as far as the Israelis were, concerned, hey, that's all bets are off, right? Sure. Nessa went into session, not the Nesson, I'm sorry, the cabinet went into session, came out by unanimous, unanimous vote, decided to go ahead with invasion of Rafa. Hamas, Hamas's claim at the time was, hey, this was self-defense, they were going to take Rafa anyway, that's why they were there in that assembly area, and the whole useless borough of arguments.

But as the, as, you know, kind of the initial shaping action start in a phase that was estimated to take two to three weeks, you know, evacuation of personnel, insertion of special operations forces, gathering an assembly. As all those steps are taking place, arguably William Burns was unable to say, hey, look, all this stuff is happening, you know, kind of a veiled stick behind the carrot and the carrot being potentially survival of Hamas leadership. And that's, and at that point, Hamas counterproposed, but it wasn't the Egyptian proposal it had changed in at least two points. that the Israelis regard is critical. And that's kind of where we are now.

Agreed. And I think, you know, as you mentioned, for listeners who were in there, you know, history starts for people on either side of this argument, either after Palestinians or after Jews were killed and people argue to the death over who's got the moral right here. We're largely talking about here is the military tactics and situation on the ground that's going on. You can draw your own conclusion about who's correct and who's not,

and that's not, I'm not really interested in getting into the moral rights and wrongs here so much as like we're having a discussion about, what's happening from a tactical perspective, from a strategy perspective, what's going well and what's not. And we talk, you know, we talk about politics here too. Absolutely. I think, you know, I think our listeners count on us to be as bipartisan as we can, or at least if we present one view, then we argue back and we've got pretty good at that. I think that's fair. Yeah, feel free to express your views at all. Okay. I mean, I think so I wrote on October 11th, I wrote a piece for the Atlantic Council, basically detailing exactly what's happening now, the military strategy, how it was going to work.

So from the beginning, Prime Minister Netanyahu laid out what he declared was his goal for the operation, which would be the demilitarization of Hamas, right? We know from 20 years of counterterrorism ourselves, you can't kill an ideology with bombs and bullets. That's simply not going to fly, right? But you can degrade and disrupt a terrorist organization, such as ISIS, right, in the caliphate or so-called caliphate to the point where it's rendered and effective and can't operate the way that it was. But in order to do that, in an area that they control, you basically have to conduct a giant court on in search of Gaza, which you're then going to break up into chunks, which is what they did. So if you, you know, at the beginning of operation, they basically, I mean, the end is your

wellware, you know, midway down Gaza is wadi Gaza, like a wadi that kind of goes across a little valley. And they declared that to be the basically the line of advance. And they told everybody in northern Gaza to get south. So they included the evacuation of Gaza City, roughly a million residents, then fled south. And Israel began conducting clearing operations inside the city, Hamas remnants were there, the battalions and they fought. You know, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed. This was a real battle that's been going on. Hamas did stay and fight. And the goal is to get the strategic weapons and the fighters.

But when I looked at the 47-minute video of what transpired that day, and that's again where some of the analysis comes from, there were no strategic weapons. There weren't even really many technicals being used. This was AK-47s, pistols, knives and grenades. That's what I saw. So the fighters themselves are what conducted that attack, though, that threat to Israel, right? So for them, it's the active battalions on the ground.

So if your goal is to demilitarize Hamas and all. also ensure that that type of attack doesn't happen again. I don't mean from a radicalization perspective, but people turn around and say, well, great, you're creating another generation of radicalized individuals because they've been now subjected to total loss, their families, their homes, their livelihoods, and this is just going to be a perpetual psychoviolence. That is one counterargument to go. From a strictly military perspective and achieving the objectives that were laid out in front of them, you know, the only way you can really do that is you've got to go in and search. And so that would include remaining areas, Rafa and everywhere else, because the second you pull out, and all of a sudden,

Hamas still has strategic stockpiles of rockets and everything else, and rockets are flying across the border, the chiefs, the military, the government, who is responsible for ensuring this type of attack doesn't happen again, look like utter incomplete clowns. So that's the political problem. Never mind the actual military problem itself of not getting the remaining fighters and the stockpiles. You're never going to get every AK-47. You're not going to get every single fighter. But again, it's about disruption and degrading the institution to where it doesn't function, and you've got to deal with the remnants sort of afterwards. And so the problem is when everybody pushed out, again, if you look at, if you picture Gaza as a giant

rectangle, for lack of better term, and starting up the top and moving south, everybody's essentially wedged between what's a wall on the right-hand side or the east side and on the north side. South side is a wall with Egypt, and on the left is the Mediterranean Sea that Israel has basically a naval blockade. So it's a giant rectangle where everybody's stuck in the center, and so everybody's now pushed south close to that wall with Egypt, nearly two million people. Infrastructure has been destroyed, so difficult in many cases for sewage, water, those types of things. Humanitarian conditions are extremely difficult on the ground. I mean, Cindy McCain, the head of the World Food Program, has talked about famine and other issues that are on the ground there, which are very real.

I mean, we've been running rescue operations in Gaza since October, helping to evacuate American citizens and allies. And it's the same thing again from our folks on the ground, you know, in terms of the conditions, they're right. So the question then became, what the hell do you do with the two million people trapped south around the wall? And the Israeli answer is, well, we're going to have to shuffle them around the battle space, literally like in a circle. And as we move in, we'll push them one way or the other and try to send people back north, although you don't want people behind your rear flank. And so it became this, my God, this humanitarian disaster, you know, we need to stop this operation.

They're going to have to go into Rafi. You cannot achieve the military objective of demilitarization and leave strategic areas where you've got known Hamas fighters and stockpiles of weapons intact and expect to achieve your objective. It's simply not going to happen. So when everybody's arguing against, I'm looking at from a military and security perspective, they're going to have to do it. And then Hamas is like, well, we don't want this. We want to be Israeli troops without all from Gaza. Yeah, you also open a giant horse. on the fence and opened up hell, for lack of a better term, with 2,500 people coming across the

border and slaughtering 1,200 Israelis in probably the most heinous way they've seen. And relative to the size of their population, it's a very significant number of people. And there was not, and again, the arguments are, well, you know, we've been trapped like, you know, caged animals in Gaza, and this is, you know, resistance fighting back against an oppressor who is on occupied territory and they have no business being here in the first place. The justifications will go back and forth in terms of whether people should or shouldn't. Whether you believe it was a right thing to do or not, 2,500 people call. the border. They blew a hole in a billion-dollar fence system that was out there and they murdered

1,200 people. Alex, can I just not, you know, certainly not argue that point to, but to talk about the, you know, the operation itself. And, and I think, you know, I think it's fair to, for me to share, I think, at this stage, a pessimistic assumption about the hostages. And it's not easy for me to do that. I actually know, you know, one of the hostage families and have met, you know, but I, I just, it's got to always be front and center as a strategic goal for the Israelis. I understand that. But in practical terms, although its importance remains great, I think, in practical terms, we're looking at a very long shot, right, you know, for even getting the 40-out.

But that should, anyway, that's kind of, that's something we can can say here, clear eye, but I understand in Israel, no, you know, that's a, you cannot talk about that. But from the perspective of military operation, then, as far as goals, as far as objectives, you know, it's almost an open, it's not a secret. I mean, there have been rumbling among IDF leadership about kind of lack of strategic objectives. They have no problem. In fact, they insist that many of them, I mean, that Rafa has to be clear, but they're needing kind of just like, they're needing some kind of overall goal. Who takes over from Hamas? That's number one. How do you see that evolving?

Number two is you mentioned, and we're all aware of this problem, to include, of course, the Israelis, this whole clear and hold, they just don't have the manpower to hold. Correct. Gaza, they haven't made an attempt to do so. That isn't for tactical reasons. It's simply because they can't keep 300,000 reservists tied down. So they've had to move out of areas of Gaza. they have tried to, they have retained, you know, they've kept soft in there.

They've got far better visibility of what goes on. But the plain fact is, as they know, at Hamas has backfilled those areas and retaken control. And that is always going to be a problem. So those kind of questions are linked. How to solve that problem? You know, let's not even worry about, well, let's not talk about the hostages at this point, but those goals. So, I mean, I think it's actually probably the most point in question. and the one that needs to be answered the most, quite frankly,

there's an obsession with Rafa right now because it's been the thing in the news. And, you know, with a progressive administration on the U.S. side and around the world with seeing a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians, it's my God, the humanitarian situation. We need to focus on Rafa. Rafa is going to be done in not that long. This is not going to be a very long operation, as you mentioned. It pivots to the longer term question. And it's one that's actually probably the, I think, the worst from an Israeli security perspective,

like you mentioned, who is going to take over security afterwards? inside because you need to, like we talk about clear bill and hold, somebody has to provide security. Who is going to govern that space, right? And then we talk about reconstruction. If we look at the damage that we've seen, 50% of buildings are damaged or destroyed in one capacity or another. It's going to be a decade to rebuild at least on most estimates. If the people there don't accept the governing institution that is put on top of them, right, they may rise up against it. So if it's not a, if the Palestinian Authority doesn't come in and they're not accepted or somebody else outside of Hamas, right? Now, not only do you have Hamas,

remnants that are going to rise up, but you may have the population that's going to rise up. And then for security, if that security force ends up being the IDF and there's not an outside force of contractors or a coalition of Arab states or whatever other else has been proposed, you essentially end up with the Iraq scenario. And I hate using these comparisons, generalized ones to other conflicts. But if we think about it, it's essentially where we are, right? All right, we've taken Baghdad and we've, you know, we've beaten the Iraqi army in 2003. Fantastic. We're a uniformed military force whose mission is to conduct military operations. and defeat an adversary. Now you're telling me I got to hold this place. We can do a security

mission. Sure. Okay. Who does governance? Anybody in here do governance nation and state building? Who the hell is responsible for that? So, and that's, again, when we had a population and an ingenious decision to send the Iraqi army home without their weapons and have a bunch of military age males without jobs or income who are now pissed off at what's going on, right? And at least there, there was at least a democratic election of local candidates who were not selected by the U.S. eventually, right? There's a democracy where you have a Shia majority government for the first time after Saddam was removed, right? In Gaza, we're not even talking about that. So we're talking about potentially the Israelis from what we're hearing on these so far, because there's been no

announcements to what the hell the plan is, right? Again, Rafa's the big thing. Great. What happens in two, three weeks a month when this is done? If the plan is for the IDF to remain there security posture, also to administer temporary governance and then start the reconstruction process and try to find some alternative government, again, because there hasn't been elections in the A decision, by the way, which has tremendous economic and social implications throughout Israeli society. It's not an operation. It's not like deciding to surge the military to Iraq.

100%. As you mentioned, it's just simply not there from a size perspective. And the economic impact to Israel, from the limited, you know, the world went only on for a few months. We've been a war for 20 years in the U.S. There was a pretty sizable impact, the Israeli economy with people that were missing. We're seeing it, Ukraine, another small country as well, 30% of factories or 30% production capacity down in many cases for Ukrainian factories where people are off to work. So the impacts are real,

as you mentioned, from an economic perspective as well as societal. So even if that wasn't the case, but it is, you have to worry about that. You don't have the numbers. And you end up with that point. So for folks that are listening, right, the definition of what we're talking about here is an insurgency, where you have a group of people who are going to rise up against the governing authority that they don't recognize as legitimate and against a security apparatus, in that case being the IDF that they don't see as legitimate either. And it only takes me, I mean, we did this in Iraq for a long time, two years of my life almost in a country that I'll never get back over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, fighting in a counterinsurgency, right, and against an insurgent force.

And in this case, what happened? Hamas fighters sticking their rifle out of windows. Again, like I said, you're not going to get every AK, every pistol, taking pot shots of Israeli soldiers, kill two, three, four today, five tomorrow. It doesn't take that much where that adds up over time and you end up in the sustained. It's actually Hamas's best case scenario. No longer do they have to break through a fence to attack Israeli soldiers. soldiers, they can do it in their own backyard.

You know, and I just, you know, one other comment, I guess just for kind of context, but the term occupation itself carries an incredible emotional, historical weight in discussions with the IDF. And I just turn a bit. No, I think you're 100% right. It's a very emotional term. I mean, even the way that, you know, areas of Gaza are described as, you know, the refugee camp and people are thinking there's pitch tents, you know, somewhere because they're used to seeing that elsewhere.

And refugees are people who flee their own homeland to go to another country, right? Otherwise, they're internally displaced persons by definition, right? If you're inside your own country, you're an IDP. If you flee to a neighboring country or an outside country, you're a refugee. They're not refugee camps. People have been living there since 1948, right? And the terminology is important because it's, it's, for them it evokes a motion and, you know, a reflection of what they see as an occupation by the Israelis of land that doesn't belong to them, whereas this is the sovereign state of Israel.

and we've got people in our country or neighbors, they were referred to as a dangerous neighborhood or want to kill us. So you're right, it's a very, very different mindset. It does evoke a lot of emotion when we're talking about it. And there's a question of whether or not there should be a two-state solution

or a one-state solution. And unfortunately, this is the other conundrum that we need to talk about as well as part of this. It's blatantly clear, based on the messaging from the Arab states, Russia piling on, China, other major players in the world, that they believe the solution to this is a Palestinian state

based on the 67 borders, before that war, which is a large swap of land in the West Bank with some land swaps, as they'll call it, whatever the hell that looks like, and then the Gaza Strip. From an Israeli perspective, forget the thinness of the state of Israel at those borders, whether or not it's militarily defensible, 11 to 9 miles wide at its thinnest point, right? You can cut the country in half. Put that, just put that aside for a second. This is question now of whether a two-state solution is possible.

Is there somebody they can trust to govern a neighboring state to give up that territory, right? These are, and then are you rewarding terrorism by agreeing to a two-state solution, even if it's not with Hamas, after 1,200 people were killed? And is that now going to be seen as a forcing function for future policy-ask on behalf of other people? And politically inside, and that's the other thing, politically inside Israel, there isn't the appetite if you're looking at the polling data for a two-state solution right now. So you have that as just the general background for what's going on. Then there's the political reality. So for those you who are not following Israeli politics, because it's not something most people would do. so it's not a, you know, just it is what it is.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, it's a parliamentary style system. So it's a majority of the members of parliament get together for a majority, and then they elect their leader who becomes the prime minister. In this case, due to a history of, you know, Netanyahu's been one of the longest serving prime ministers in Israeli history. He's got a couple of stints in and out of the job there. The coalition he had to put together to get the job includes, you know, what's described as the far right inside the Knesset,

which are groups of people who are adamantly against a Palestinian state, you know, you know, Ben, years, one who's very famous for being outspoken. I mean, he was so outspoken and outlandish in his behavior. The idea of wouldn't let him join, he actually didn't serve, which is rare in a country where service and mandatory conscription and getting in not only just a serve, but he's now minister for security, right? National security, right? And that touches on a couple of things. Like, you're right, it's minister for national security. And so for folks who are looking at this problem set, you got a guy who's basically who's feelings towards the Palestinians

was so great. He's now the minister for internal security, like you mentioned, national security guy, who's made some outlandish statements publicly, you know, like, who cares about this? This should be Israelis of Palestinian rights don't matter, which has been not received well. So Netanyahu, even if he wanted to make some more of these, you know, what would be seen as progressive gestures towards, you know, an Arab state or whatnot, Palestinian state, there's members of his cabinet who are adamantly opposed to this. And when you have a razor-thin majority, like we're seeing in the U.S., rather, we've seen the shit show in the House of Representatives over the last six months where it's like a game of musical chairs. if you go to the other hell the speaker's going to be every six weeks. It's basically the same thing for the Israelis. If he, if Netanyahu does something that's considered too brash or too far as a concession, his government could literally collapse in terms of that these folks who pull out of the coalition and

yeah, there's a war cabinet. But at the end of the day, they could say, we're not, you know, we're not doing this. And there's not a requirement to call for elections. And he wants to remain in power. So you have this domestic political problem with a razor-thin majority and a group of people who are opposed to an Arab state. And then you have a global community who is saying that we're going to pay for this, will help with reconstruction, will recognize the state of Israel, you know, in terms of the potential Saudi deal on the table, but it all hinges upon the acceptance of a Palestinian state on the 67 borders. And so the global community's viewpoint on this in many states, their desires and outcome of Palestinians is at stark contrast in odds to domestic Israeli politics and the

realities of the governing situation inside Israel. And so that is probably one of the biggest problems that people aren't seeing that's driving a lot of the inability to get to get some of this done because you've got people saying you need to do this people who are in power like I can't do that my government will collapse and I want to remain in power and that's essentially what we're looking at. Alex, let me. Sorry. Yeah, sorry.

Go ahead. Real quick, you said something a while back. Sorry, it took me so long, but you would mention in the in the after, you know, the I don't know about the possibility, but, you know, like an Arabian. led, not, I guess, occupation, but temporary governance, perhaps, or security or something like that, is there, whether officially or not, is there, are there any Arab states that would be willing to raise her hand that you know of and say, hey, we'll hold on to things, hold things together until you get it. And my second part of that question would be, how long would the

Palestinian people be willing to put up with that? Because that is another, could turn it to another occupation. So I will answer that with yes, but. So yes, there are, but with some conditions. You know, Gaza was administered by Egypt for quite some time. People forget that. Historically, it's not the first time they've had an outside country that's helped to administer the situation there.

Egypt also has the highest anti-Israeli sentiment in the entire Arab world. I think a third of all Arabs live within six miles of the Nile, wherever between Egypt and Sudan. When you look at it, it's the epicenter of Arab culture and language, one of the longest-standing peace deals with Israel, but the highest anti-Israeli sentiment that's kind of around. And there's no desire, I think, for the Egyptians to do that. They're broke at this point. They needed the IMF loans.

You know, C.C's been trying to guide the country the best that he can. And they were worried about a permanent displacement of the Palestinians. And the reason that I mentioned this is tied directly to your question. For an Arab force to go into Gaza to provide security, potentially have to shoot terrorists that are trying to come after my killing fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims, and then also pay for reconstruction without a commitment to a two-state solution based on the 67 borders or something that the Palestinian people would find acceptable. For a lot of the Arab states, and again, the Egyptians with opening the gate to the

Sinai, the biggest concern that they have there is if this is a permanent displacement and I open the gate, am I complicit in the end of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza? Am I doing Israel's dirty work for me? And the same thing is kind of thought and spoken in the background, but not publicly, amongst the Arab states as they're looking at the situation. If I provide the security force here and I do the reconstruction and there's no Palestinian state, I essentially am greenlighting the Israelis coming in, conducting their actions in Gaza, all the death and destruction that took place, whether you agree with Israel's justification for doing so or not,

it's the reality situation of what transpired. Am I complicit now in that because I'm providing these services on the back end and the Palestinians get nothing for it? So I think, yes, there are states who are willing to do so, but it's going to require that to be part of a comprehensive plan that includes a two-state solution. And right now, there's nothing for them to gain. There's absolutely nothing for them to gain to come in. and offered to do this.

They're vilified, you know, by half the world, and they're not really achieving anything. And that great cost. And, you know, honestly, the impetus behind normalization has nothing to do with ideology. It's everything to do with the economies, right? And so why, why in order to achieve that would any country volunteer to take on a massive, unending, indefinite economic cost? not to mention all the political baggage that comes with it. But I'm not sure that, you know, when I say we collectively U.S.,

I'm not sure that our State Department always understands that, I think sometimes again, whether we're dealing with the Arab or the Israeli side, we tend to mirror image our own goals and objectives rather than, you know, be able to see it through their eyes. You mean not everybody's foreign policy goals are aligned with us? Fix it. Yeah, but I mean, inside, inside, Every Middle Eastern is just American, a Texan struggling to be afraid.

The Texan waiting to get his may out. Or even worse than New Yorker. That's the case. What was that line from Catherine Blancas? I would advise you that there's certain areas of New York not to invade if you ever make it to America when he's talking to the Nazi officer. Yeah. The whole truth. The reconstruction alone is just going to be a bad.

I've seen where he lives. Can we hear? Can we touch on? like what's going on with the hostess negotiation and ceasefire negotiation because there was like some back and forth yesterday every you know one side was saying yeah we join yeah we agreed the other side is like no no no we didn't yeah so i think it's a great place to start so they originally started with 200 hostages um let me just make something unequivocally clear as far as i'm concerned from a policy perspective on those works you take hostages you're holding them against their will

you are holding them inside gaza the israelis are telling you we are going to conduct military operations here as a result of the attack that took place. It is your responsibility as the hostage taker and take your happy ass and the hostages with you out of the combat area that's there. And if you can't to basically rod you up and say, hey, I can't do that. I realize we're talking in an idealistic world, right? But this is what's supposed to happen. But from a responsibility standpoint, that is the truth. Amazzo people is holding them against their will. So out of those 200 people, we did see that early, you know, a group of releases, right? That's the initial deal that saw, you know, a ceasefire that took place. And we saw the hostages being released.

So we saw that population dwindle. Since then, we've seen a number of bodies that have been recovered, either by Israeli special forces or by, you know, Hamas videos. I've been announcing these people had died and then telling him it was Israel's fault as means of propaganda, whether it's true or not irrelevant because they were using it for propaganda purposes. So because of how many people are actually left? Now, Israel knows in the literal sense that there are people who are missing who were assumed taken on October 7th who have either been seen on videos or whatever else. So we know kind of what that pool looks like. You know, at least that they were taken alive. Right.

Precisely. Because there's another category of people who are missing, but we don't know. Yeah, we're not being alive. They're taken alive. And people forget, the state of Israel was founded, the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948, right? So everybody had come from somewhere. Zionism, as they called it, starting the Zionist Congress, starting in the late 1800s, right? Start bringing people into the war of independence, the modern state founded.

The reason I mentioned is there were waves of refugees and immigrants that came to Israel, Jews from around the world in the aftermath of World War II, and where they're being oppressed in other places to come into Israel to find the Jewish state as their, you know, their rightful places as a Jew in the world that you are authorized to come to Israel and become a citizen. If you are a Jew, both in terms of religion, but also, I forget what the connections. One grandparent, I forget what the bloodline requirement is. But everybody, the point is everybody came somewhere else. So a lot of these hostages are dual citizens. They're dual nationals because it's such a young country in terms of the modern state that the people hold dual citizenship from wherever their parents.

In some cases, they themselves were born if they're not first generation. immigrants. I believe there's still five Americans that are part of that pool that's there. You've got a couple of their problems. There was heinous sexual violence that took place on October 7. You know, you've seen the videos of the Israeli female soldier and the gray sweatpants with the trail of blood, you know, from her, the back to the backside as she's being forced into a vehicle. While the sexual violence was not in the 47-minute video, I've seen enough and then myself outside of that video itself and then also spoken to enough people and survivors, et cetera, to know that it was real. I fear that there are a number of.

or female hostages or soldiers who may not come back as a result of not wanting them, not wanting to tell that story. It is a real grim fear that I have that I don't have anything other than a suspicion based on the way things have gone down. But then more important, as you mentioned, in recent days as they've been negotiating in last couple weeks, the ask was for 40 women, children, and elderly as part of that deal in Hamas basically came back and said, we don't have that many that we can find, right? Well, you took them.

So when you're saying you can't find them, it's not like, you know, you put some somebody somewhere. Like, you're responsible for them. Can I ask, is it just Hamas that's holding the hostages or is it like Islamic jihad? Are there other groups? There were multiple. So to start out with, you had Hamas, Palestinian Islamic jihad. And then as Andy rightfully noted, you had a bunch of local criminal shitbags who also, you know, broke through the hole in the fence that, well, Hamas assault and responsible. They created the hole. They let these, you know, people out.

But multiple groups that were holding them, which was part of the problem. And again, in a hostage situation, the first thing you want to do is you want to establish who's holding them as much you could figure out who these people are. who's the decision maker on the release, get to them, figure out what the hell they want. Can you actually give them something that's not a policy concession if it's a terrorist?

And can you get these people released? That's what you're looking to do in these situations, right? Part of the problem, that was part of the reason they were asking for those initial. Remember those two old ladies, I think, were the first ones

they let out in the very beginning. And that was, I think, proof that they were negotiating with the right people. Do you have kind of command and control to actually release hostages? And that was part of the establishment of that, okay, these people are real.

But you're right. Does P.I.J. have some folks to other people. Yeah, and I think that that may be part of it, but there still should be 40 people that Hamas has alone to be able to get their hands on. Some of it could be a means of communication issues, but yes, Israel was bombing and they're conducting military operations, but they told you they were conducting military operations. They told you where they were conducting military operations. So all of those hostages should be safe in southern Gaza somewhere out and away from where main military operations were conducted if Hamas actually did what they were supposed to do. My fear is that either due to military activity, you know, the combat up north or, you know, over time.

not being able to sustain these people, whatever else, that people died during that. So I don't believe that all of the remaining hostages are alive. I don't know how many. I don't have numbers. I'm certainly not going to speculate and play with people's emotions and toys. But when you've got a terrorist organization who is asking for things that they want, it's the reason they took the hostages in the first place and they can't produce them the hostages that they're supposed to in order to get what they want, that's a problem.

Because, again, if they weren't asking for things, no gives a shit. You know, whether we keep them alive or kill them or whatever else. from a terrorist perspective, it doesn't matter. You took the hostages because you knew you were going to need them. You knew the only way this situation was going to end in your favor was through a negotiated settlement because the IDF has overwhelming military superior and advantage over you. So going into that and knowing that's what Hamas's intentions were, if they can't produce the hostages, the only conclusion you can draw from it at that point is they're either

in communication or they're out of communication, which is unlikely given the way Gaza functions and where everything is and more likely, unfortunately, that there's more deceased than I think that people are willing to admit at this point. I mean, that's the conclusion that one has to draw logically. So my background on hostage negotiation is dealing with my granddaughter and trying to get her to go to the bathroom. So let me ask a simple Hollywood question. I'm sure people asking.

And these sorts of things, are the families involved? Or is it kind of like, okay, we'll take it from here. We'll let you know. It depends, right? So in this particular case, the families are unlikely to be involved. And that's due to the fact the hostage takers are not looking for concessions from the family or through the family, nor are they trying to communicate with the Israeli government through the family, right? They've taken in a very public fashion and their negotiators are taking place in Qatar, you know, with the representatives of different folks. The people on the ground are unlikely to be in communication.

It's open. This is open. It's not something I'm, you know, sure. I'm out of government and I'm not a clearance anymore. I'm not revealing it classified. The signals intelligence is good. I mean, they understand what's going. going on inside there, which I know sounds insane in the aftermath of October 7th, but they surge capabilities and they've got a pretty good feel for what the hell's going on the ground. So if they were making phone calls out with hostages, talking to families, et cetera, it would be a big problem. It means they ran hard phone lines under the ground as a means of evasion from the Israelis because they know what that looks like. So communication is is extremely unlikely. If they need to put pressure on the Israeli government, or they try to

activate the families by releasing these videos of people showing that they're still alive to get them fired up and go protest and try to agree. That's all means to pressure a deal that Hamas believes is in its favor. That's the reason all that shenanigans has kind of taken place. So I don't, the families are not that involved here. And the role of third parties, which normally like folks like me and whatever else, it's not an appropriate time for me or someone else like me to try to insert myself in that situation. It's very delicate, ongoing negotiations at the governmental level. And unless they need help where you have some sort of unique thing you can bring the table, you end up meddling and causing problems, right?

Perfect. Thank you. This is not one of those situations. I've observed myself. Gotcha. In your opinion, Alex, do you think hostages will be released? Because, like, I can't see Hamas going for hostages being released without a deal on a ceasefire. And it doesn't seem like Israel's interested in that at all. So I think the big problem and the biggest disconnect in all this is Hamas wants a complete

ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. and it's like the guy who beats the shit out of you and you show up with a gun and point out of it. Well, you know, I actually didn't mean to beat the shit out of you. I'm really sorry about that. I promise not to do it again, even though I've been spewing nothing but genocidal, you know, rhetoric that if I ever got my hands on you again, you know, snap your neck. I mean, it's just interesting how the Israelis feel going at it, right? And like I said, if the military objective is to, you know, demilitarize Moss.

They have to go into Rafa, and the battle, therefore, is not over. And they're not going to withdraw because who the hell is going to provide security? They're not going to allow Hamas to reform in the vacuum, you know, to the extent possible. again, well, that's yet to be seen over time, as Andy mentioned, people, you know, creeping back up north and, you know, and, you know, reoccupying areas. So that, that shit show is already coming. We're already going to see that battle line coming. Hamas continued existence in the form of governance and a governing structure inside Gaza is a non-starter for anybody in the West. It's a non-starter for most Arab states. This is not like, behind closed doors. A lot of folks like, I fucking hate those guys. I wish the war wasn't being prosecuted this way, but I'm really not, you know, all that I'm said about Hamas no longer existing its institution.

They're not exactly a well-liked group amongst most of the Arab states. So the issue is then is there a willingness to accept reality. You pick the fight, you can't win. You can have a respite for a while. You can perhaps, you know, ease the conditions for folks on the ground that are there. Perhaps even negotiate your own exit, like you mentioned, to save your own ass and go to some other country and try to live to fight another day. Although those fucking guys are dead men walking every last one of them, the Mossad is going to get their hands on them and they are going to die. I don't care where they are on the face of this earth.

That is one prediction I will make. I will not make a lot of military predictions. Those men will not survive. They will eventually say, Israel is going to get them. So Sinwar who's in charge, who by the way is a sociopath. The guy is a psycho. The one who was elected to take over Hamas. He was the internal security enforcer for Hamas at one point.

He went to prison for almost 20 years inside Israel. He was one of the ones that was released for Gilead Shalit back in 06 at that point. He had brain cancer and survived because an Israeli neurosurgeon removed the tumor from his brain. So he had murdered Palestinians and I think plans to kill Israeli soldiers back then. And that's why he ended up going to jail. and he got out and he's running the show now from the tunnels under Gaza. He's the one that everybody's basically waiting on to say yes or no on this deal. And so far, it seems like Khaled Moshal and some of the others who were in, you know,

in different places in Doha or negotiating or whatever that happened to be hiding, it sounds like there's more favor from those outside to try to negotiate a deal. And he's basically like, no, it's not going to happen. So the question of whether or not there's a deal in hostages is going to get out is dependent upon Hamas accepting the fact, this war will continue at some point. you picked a fight that you know you can't win and the Israelis are going to finish it one way or the other right and it's whether or not you're willing to give some reprieve the Palestinian people and release some you know innocent civilians and everything else if they're interested in doing that and so far you know what came back yesterday was that they significantly reduced the number of hostages to be released and also extended the time frame in which they would be released like three a week or something like that as opposed to three a day which is a non-starter for the Israelis so it would take Hamas getting serious on releasing the hostages as well as accepting the long term faith that Israel's going to continue to fight. Look, if you don't want the fight, you shouldn't have started in the first place, right? And their argument's going to be well,

then we'll continue to hold the hostages. And at some point, Israel's going to have to go in and try to recover the hostages themselves and take the territory or there's going to have to be a deal settlement. But the terms that were put on the table yesterday from a security perspective and politically in Israel, not starting. Not going to happen. And then, and Alex, correct me if wrong thing, you've got this really convoluted kind of chain of communication for the negotiations, right? So not even the U.S. are in the room. the Israelis are not. And the parties are not. And then the parties that Hamas sense to Doha can't make decisions for Hamas, right? They've got to, and as you said, Alex, for some, somehow they're

connecting with Sinjar beneath Gaza to get his final say-so on things. It's surreal. And it's like what's the Taliban in Doha as well. It's the light of misfits. Everybody there's a mouthpiece, but we can make any decision. They can go back to Kandahar, Kabul to get a decision rendered. So yeah, you have that problem. And then it sounds like yesterday, another shit show is the fact that this, you know, negotiation allegedly was taking place without the Israeli's knowledge that the changing to the terms. The Egyptian shots of terms. Yeah. And the way I read that was Hamas gone, ooh, I like this. This I could deal with. Everybody's been saying that it's Hamas's fault for saying no. So I'm going to come out publicly and I'm now going to say, yes, I've accepted the terms of this deal. At the same time, political pressures mounting in Israel for a deal to be accepted and basically trying to throw the ball over an Israeli car. Well, We accept terms of the deal. It's like Congress plays the game, right? We passed the law. We're going home home on break.

Yeah, but your law coming out of one chamber of the other is completely unacceptable to the other side. So I don't even fuck if you pass it and you're going back home to wherever you're from. That's not going to fly. And it's essentially what we landed on yesterday. Israel is like, I'm glad you negotiated with yourself and came up with a deal that you thought is feasible. It doesn't work for us. We're going into Rafa until you guys get serious. So the Israelis are basically saying, hey, that deal is in a fucking sushi menu.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There will be hostages released. issues, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's a business too. You're a businessman as well in addition to having time and service. When you, you know, forget Donald. They are the deal. There's only so many levers of power you can pull inside of a deal structure, right? You got terms, you know, payment terms, net 30, net 45, net 60, right? You know, how much profit margin you're going to have. What other conditions you can have are terms on the sale that's going to be beneficial to somebody else, right? You can tweak those levers,

but a deal's got to be good for both sides unless somebody's back is in the corner. At the end of the day. Hamas is trying to pull all those levels. is in its favor and Israel's never going to accept that. But Alex, I don't see any shaded area in the Venniogram at all. You know, so, so you know, as far as organizations, possibly there's some wiggle room. You know, Israel, Hamas, maybe some wiggle room, maybe kind of a Tunisian type exit for the leadership, as you said, that the Israelis know will only be temporary. Right.

I mean, it took them, it took them 24 years, but they got Arafat in the end, right? well, that's actually a fascinating story. If we got time for that, when you're done, I want to hit that piece. Please, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to stop talking then. I'm going to stop talking. I would love to hear that. So Arafat, so I got to meet one of the agency doctors at one point

and kind of told us the story about what had happened with Arafat because it kind of came up as a means because his job was to assess the health of four leaders and see how they're doing, right? And so everybody was always looking for anecdotes are cool stories when you go to training classes in the community. and said, well, you know, Arafat, he actually died. And, you know, he's like, the Israelis didn't actually get him. And I said, what do you mean?

He said, but they kind of did. I said, can you explain what you mean? And he said, well, he got sick. He ended up with septicemia where he had, you know, the infection had gotten so bad had gotten the bloodstream. And when he was septicemic and required surgery, he was in France, right? So he was supposed to have surgery, I believe it was in Paris where they were going to conduct the surgery.

And suppose the French doctors got together, like, with the septicemia that's here and the conditions and his age and everything else, there's a good chance he's going to die in the operating table. I'm not fucking touching him. I'm going to be the one labeled is responsible for killing Arafat on the table. And he was so paranoid that the Israelis would get him, you know, in a medical situation, they would get to him like in a hospital somewhere

that he held off on medical treatment until the very end until it was too late. So he's like, well, the Israelis didn't get him. It was the paranoia that they had induced in him after years of assassination attempts that actually caused him not to seek medical treatment until it was too late. And for the French to go, fuck this.

I'm not touching him. That is such a great. No, I mean, that's such a great thing. story. I mean, the irony because how many times did Mossad try to kill him? I mean, you know, in that book, Rise and Kill First. And if you look up assassination

attempts on Arafat, it's like page 56, 57. I mean, Aja Barak, at one point, when he was Prime Minister, because he had been there Delta Force equivalent commander in terms of Syriaat Macal, right? I think at one point, in his book, he talked about standing there with like

a, I don't know if it was an RPG or like a shoulder-fired rocket that he was in a field that was supposed to be aimed at killing Arafat. And then Arafat's in charge. And years later, he's the prime minister. And the two of them are trying to negotiate a peace deal. I mean, that itself should give you an illustrative example of how fucked up the politics are there at that point. But there's some symmetry there. When Malikin, when Began wanted to visit the UK in 1977, the British had to remove an arrest warrant for murder for a connection with the blowing up

hotel David back in when was that 45 or 46 no 40s there in the 40s absolutely insane I mean one day you're fighting one next day you're making peace that's right yeah and they found out almost at the last minute it was a hilarious story

special branch is that's awesome but we need to be there for the arrival summit ceremony because we've that is insane I got one more question question about the whole Rafa. What does Egypt do? Because like there's been some talk about Egypt kind of spinning up and is not interested in like,

like you said, like, you know, a million refugees coming through their, you know, that border. Does he does the Egyptian military do anything? Do they spin up? I don't see. Now, spin up perhaps on the other side of a fence to make sure that people escape because there were some reports yesterday that, you know, Hamasmey blow, try to blow a hole in the fence to cause chaos and that let the Palestinian start to escape the situation. The reality is if you talk to the best majority of people,

Palestinian. Yes, they would like humanitarian assistance. They don't want to leave. They want their own country. So by them leaving, right, they're not going to get what they want. I think there's people would be happy to refugees and get the hell out of Gaza. Don't get me wrong, given the circumstances. But for the Egyptians, they're not going to start a war with the Israelis. They're not going to, there won't be military, you know, clashes between the two, so to speak. It would be, the situation's sort of unforeseeable. They do have one of the oldest. I mean, let's not forget, look how far we are into this war and the conditions that you see in Gaza and what the, you know, people are talking about, they still have diplomatic relations. You know, with a number of countries they have

peace treaties with it, right? They haven't suspended. They haven't pulled ambassadors. So we haven't even gotten to the point where we start like the diplomatic dick dance that starts before the combat starts where it's like, okay, going to recall this guy for consultations. Now I'm going to pull the ambassador from here. We're going to degrade, you know, our status here in this country. We haven't even started executing through those diplomatic steps yet, never mind getting down to a military conflict between the two states. So I think of anything, it's potentially we see them. you know, providing security around Gaza to make sure people don't come into Egypt.

But I don't see them going inside. They don't want to touch it. We were mentioning earlier as Andy mentioned to. For political reasons, for economic reasons, they don't want to do it. They would like, this is a, they don't want to touch this with a 10-foot pole unless they have to. And also, to be clear,

for the Israelis, having CC and control in Egypt is the best of a number of bad options. You know, they're delighted that it's not more seats. on the Muslim Brotherhood, but who, you know, the Moss is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, and there is, and there's more collaboration and cooperation behind the scenes than people realize because the Egyptian government is sensitive to its own public, who, as well, it points out, hates the Israelis, but they're, they're pragmatists, you know, at the...

These are only are. They are. So what happens now? What's your best prediction? I know that's horribly unfair, but we've got nothing closer to an expert. I know you don't like being called an expert. God help you. I can't imagine anyone closer to an expert.

I mean, how I see it going, the key decision that still has to be rendered is by Sinwar and whether or not he's willing to accept reality on some of these major points in the deal. So far, it seems to be a bridge too far that they're unwilling to do that. Israel will go into Rafa. It's going to happen sooner or it's going to happen later. I believe that the IDF will be asked to provide security inside of Gaza, at least initially, while they're there. There is, I mean, we are too close to the end of an operation at Rafa with no mobilization of forces from an Arab country to expect them to be the day after scenario to take over security. So the short term and the midterm is becoming increasingly clear. What is still unclear at this point is a long-term solution for governance post-war reconstructive. and security. And that is where I think we're going to attempt to see some more U.S. broker deals in the background and trying to see this normalization go on. The sticking point I mentioned on one side was he's willing to accept reality there.

The other sticking point then for the longer term solution is whether or not Israel is going to move towards a Tuesday. Alex, you're breaking up a little bit there. Towards a 67 million. Yeah, Alex, sorry. We lost you there. little choppy. Just from the last part, as you're talking about the two-state solution. It was, you were censored. I was censored. That whole thing. So for the folks who were, you know,

pro-two-state solution, there isn't the domestic support inside of Israel for that. So again, if I mentioned Sinwar being the short-term issue in terms of his willingness to accept reality and what's not going to happen as a result of a negotiated settlement to the war, there's a long-term issue that has to be addressed, which is on the Israeli side, which is the, you know, a two-state solution. And there isn't the domestic will for it right now. And for folks, again, we're not following Israeli politics. Well, Netanyahu just gets out of office. This is all going to get solved. You know, he's a conservative loon and, you know, he doesn't want a two-state solution. It's never going to happen. If you look at the polling data, first of all, these really left has

been decimated. These really left in politics. It doesn't really exist in terms of a functioning entity right now. Those days are long gone and who knows what happens in the future. But, you know, Benny Gantz is likely going to come in afterwards. And while he comes with a lot less the political legal baggage that Netanyahu does. If you look at his stances on the war and the other people in the war cabinet, their stances are just as firm as Nathaniel is on a lot of these issues, and they're subject to the same public opinion polling and votes as Netanyahu is. And so there's two things that, in order for this really to get moved, there's two things that have to get solved. Sinwar has to accept reality for this war is not going to end on his terms

and the fact that he wants the Israelis out in a permanent ceasefire. That's great. I want a golden Ferrari. no one's parking one of my driveway next week and ain't going to happen. And in the long term, there needs to be some sort of willingness to move towards a two-state solution but not make it look like it's rewarding terrorism, which is a difficult balancing act, in order for us to see a realistic foreign security force and investment and reconstruction to take place. So unfortunately, we are coming close to the end of the end of the end becoming shortly for Rafa because it's a small area needs to get cleared. We are getting very close to where the day after scenario is supposed to start, where the day after scenario is completely undefined.

And so that is the biggest concern that I see in front of us right now is the coming insurgency that I believe is coming. Yikes. Alex, I'm not going to make a flippant comment at the end about we always end on a high note because, you know, I think sadly you are right on target. I'm a Mets fan. There's always next season. Oh, God.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, if I was a sports fan, I think it's something pathetic to say, you know, to try and raise our spirits right at the end. But instead, I'm going to turn over to D. All right, Alex, everybody can find you on Twitter and LinkedIn, obviously, right? Alex Pleetis. What's your Twitter handle?

I'm going to put it all in the description anyway. So if anyone's looking. A fellow Greek has to stop to try to get that last name, correct? You know what's bad. Because you try to pronounce it the other time. I was going to say pleases. I mean, I heard, I think probably the most insulting comment, which you can't even, you know, say in this environment anymore, boot camp 20 years ago.

I had a drill sergeant looked at me. he goes, do you know what a pleatsis is? I was like, what's, what's coming? Because that's the one part of the Buffalo, the natives would need. I didn't even know how to, I sat there utterly stunned. I didn't even have to respond to that when it's came out. That's hilarious. There is.

It's, so for Twitter, it's at A-L-E-X-P-L-E-X-P-L-I-T-S-A-S. So at Alex Pleets us. And LinkedIn's the same, so it's Alex Pleets us. Great. I'm going to leave all the links in the description. Of course, Andy's award-winning book. Congratulations, is Andy. Congratulations.

Yeah, the link will be in the description. That's the last episode you need to do that, but I appreciate it. All right. I highly recommend buying a copy of you guys having a bandies book. Yeah, it's incredible. It is good, yeah. Well, thank you. What else?

Okay, if you're listening to us, rate and review. If you're watching us, like and subscribe. Check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. We have a really important guest tomorrow on the Teamhouse. Adam Gamal, you wrote the unit. Yeah, he's in studio too, but I'm going to be blocking his face out live. So hopefully I don't screw that up and show his identity. There's another Team House podcast.

Yeah, can you imagine? The actual, yeah. All these offshoots, the audacity. You know what? They see me and Jason. and everyone wants to be us, huh? Exactly. It's not that fucking Jack, Jack, something, Murphy.

Jack Murphy, that green beret, rabble-rouser. Another muscle head, Dave Park. It's a warrior scholar, right? Yeah, two wannabes. Okay. Thanks, House. We really appreciate this. Yeah.

Thanks, happy guys. It's awesome. Thanks, guys.