How the Deal Came Together, and What Comes Next? - with Ari Shavit

You are listening to an art media podcast.

Before today's episode, a housekeeping note, or rather, a bat signal, a bat signal that we are blasting out to the Call Me Back community.

Nadav, Amit, and I are getting together next week, Thursday, October 23rd, in the evening, 8:30 p.m.

at the Stryker Center for a live taping of Call Me Back.

We organized this event in light of recent developments because a lot of you had a lot of questions with the implementation of the ceasefire and all the living hostages, thank God, back home.

Where does Israel go from here?

And what about Gaza and the Arab states and U.S.

foreign policy?

From Jerusalem to Washington, there are still many unanswered questions, which will be the focus of this live podcast taping of Call Me Back.

So join me and Nadavael of Yidiot Akhronot and Amit Segel of Israel's Channel 12 News and Israel Hayom for this conversation.

Amit will also, in the conversation, be talking about his new book called A Call at 4 a.m.: 13 Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions That Shaped Israeli Politics.

There'll be a number of topics for us to unpack, and I can only imagine how many new topics there will be between while I'm recording this and when we all get together on Thursday, October 23rd.

Details in the show notes for registering.

That's Thursday, October 23rd at the Stryker Center at 8:30 p.m., or just go to the Stryker Center website.

Hope to see you there.

And now on to today's episode.

The real Israeli plan is a two-Gaza solution.

Israel gave back 47% of the Gaza Strip.

It keeps 53%.

That's the yellow line.

The Israeli assumption is that Hamas will not keep the deal.

And therefore, Israel will not have to withdraw.

And then in the 53%, Israel will try to do East Germany, West Germany, to bring all the moderate Arab money into the eastern part of Gaza, our 53%.

So you will have the beginning of a boom in Gaza.

It won't be overnight.

And we will leave the 47% in the hand of Hamas and let the Palestinians choose.

And as you remember, the Germans liked West Germany much more than they liked East Germany.

The real practical plan is this kind of Gaza partition plan.

It's 8.30 a.m.

on Tuesday, October 14th here in New York City.

It is 3.30 p.m.

on Tuesday, October 14th in Israel.

Yesterday, Monday, all of the 20 living hostages were returned to Israel after two years in Hamas captivity.

We continue to receive images and videos of hostages being returned to Israel and reunited with their families as they begin undergoing extensive medical examinations after two years of abuse and starvation, the marks of which we can already see on some of the returned hostages' bodies.

Only four of the 28 remains of hostages that were killed and still in Gaza were also returned, constituting a breach of the ceasefire deal, which is supposed to see the return of all 48 hostages, living and deceased.

Israeli officials say they will continue to pressure Hamas until all its obligations under the deal are fulfilled.

Also, yesterday, President Trump conducted a whirlwind visit to Israel where he met with former hostages and families of hostages and celebrated the conclusion of the war in a speech at the Knesset.

In his hour-long speech, President Trump expressed extensive praise for U.S.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who pushed the deal across the finish line days earlier, Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt.

President Trump also lauded Prime Minister's wartime leadership.

In the evening, President Trump departed from Israel and flew to Egypt, where he met with European, Arab, and Muslim leaders at the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit, where Trump urged more countries to join the Abraham Accords.

President Trump also signed a document along with Egyptian President El-Sisi, Turkish President Erdogan, and Qatari Emir Khamed Al Thani, aimed at enshrining the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Things are moving extremely fast in the Middle East.

The hostage ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is already reshaping regional dynamics with many officials expressing renewed optimism for a broader peace.

Over the past month, longtime journalist and analyst Ari Shavit has been following the making of the deal very closely.

Today, he joins us to walk us through all he knows about what brought us to this moment.

What happened behind the scenes that took us from the seemingly intractable situation of the past two years to suddenly seeing Israeli hostages return and regional leaders, as well as President Trump, touting a new era of hope and peace.

Before we dive into our conversation with Ari, just a reminder that on Friday, we will be releasing an episode of Inside Call Me Back, where it will be my turn in the hot seat answering your questions.

So feel free to send in your questions on anything and everything.

Ari, welcome back to the podcast.

Pleasure to be with you.

Before we unpack the story behind the deal, I wanted to ask you to share your immediate reaction to the events of the past couple of days.

Look, talking to you from behind this wall is the shelter to which my wife and I went down on October 7th.

And it was an apocalypse.

Something unbelievable and incomprehensible happened.

And two years later, something unbelievable and incomprehensible happens.

So this kind of closure is really, you know, beyond belief.

Hostages come back after hearing all the analysts telling me that there is no way that all the hostages will be released.

I'll give you a few historical associations that came into my mind.

I mean, in some ways it was like the release of prisoners from Dachau combined with V-Day.

It was such an incredible, astonishing event.

In some ways, it was...

I felt like the landing on the moon.

I mean, something that is unbelievable is happening in front of your very eyes.

But when the initial thinking comes along, I think I have, and I still do, have two pictures in my mind from relatively recent history.

One is the Anwar Sadat moment.

I remember the moment when the door opened in Lod at the time airport and Sadat, and it was unbelievable.

And I remember the ceremony in the White House on September 13th, 1993.

This event resembles both the Sadat peace and Oslo, because in an incident of putting the cart ahead of the horses, Peace did not really happen yet.

The end of war, highly probable.

The war as we knew it ended.

But is it peace?

We don't know.

In the case of Anwar Sadat, the promise, the commitment to peace, creating a momentum that was stronger than the animosity worked and we got peace.

In the case of Oslo, it did not work.

People promised us peace that was not there and it didn't happen.

So watching this, you pray that this will be like the Sadat precedent and not like the Oslo one.

And I think this is what we'll probably discuss in the next hour.

Yeah, I'll say I take your point about the euphoria around Camp David and the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, 78 to 79.

But obviously there was in Sadat you had someone who seemed genuinely committed to peace and coexistence with Israel, traveling to Jerusalem, speaking before the Israeli Knesset, recognizing Israel's right to exist, which is a whole other universe from just cessation of hostilities.

I think it's an extraordinary accomplishment, but it was a cessation of hostilities.

So look, I didn't want to be the party poop here, but I think they're a very, very serious question mark.

Again, bringing back the hostages and ending the war is incredible achievements and changing the dynamics within a few weeks.

Incredible achievements.

Right.

In some ways, you'll remind me the name of that senator from Vermont, Aiken, I think, that in 1966 said, let's declare victory and get out.

So right now, what happened is that they've declared peace and now they're trying to work it out.

So, this is where we are.

It's an unprecedented adventure.

And when we'll get to talk about President Trump, it took someone who's totally a non-diplomat and non-conventional, who never studied international relationship, to be so audacious to begin such a process when there isn't that much beef there.

I mean, very little was agreed upon, and yet the process is amazing and inspiring.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, there's a a lot of speculation as to how the deal came together, but you say that you have gotten some pretty interesting and unique reporting on the story behind how the deal came together.

So take us from your perspective and from your reporting where and when this story began and what the context was.

So it begins actually before October 7th.

Okay.

October 7th happened.

One of the reasons because Hamas and Iran wanted to torpedo the Israeli-Saudi peace deal, which was in the making.

It was probably weeks away.

So that's the background.

Come October, catastrophe, war, Netanyahu is a bit out of balance.

By November, the Netanyahu strategy is Hamas first, Hezbollah, Iran, and then getting back to Saudi Arabia.

The initial Netanyahu concept in late 2023 is that this terrible war must go back exactly to the peace agreement that perished because of October 7th, or it was suspended.

By December 2023, two very important individuals, Ron Dermer and Tony Blair, are working with a third very important individual, MBZ of the Emirates, on what we see today.

Trump's 20 points are 80% of that are what was in work throughout 2024 between Dermer, Blair, and the Emirates.

The logic was that if there will be an Israeli peace proposal, it will be dead on arrival.

And therefore, you need an American initiative supported by the Arabs that Israel can live with even if it doesn't love it.

That was the initial concept.

Within that, the two sensitive issues were a Palestinian state and a Palestinian authority.

Because Netanyahu and Dermer, rightly or wrongly, are committed not to have a Palestinian state, not to have a two-state solution, at least not as we knew it.

And they were committed not to give Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

While all the other members, all the other partners, the moderate Arabs and the international community, are actually committed to both.

So the creativity here, the creative ambiguity, if you wish, was how to do both, that somehow the Palestinian state is mentioned but doesn't terrify right-wing Israelis and somehow the PA is mentioned without Israel's government falling apart.

It came pretty close on several points with they were working with Blinken, with Secretary Blinken, but because the Democrats were much more committed to the Palestinian cause, it was very difficult to do.

There was a moment that it was, it could have really been done after President Trump was elected, when he was president-elect in the transition period.

But the decision was taken that it's better to keep it for Trump.

So phase one is the initial idea, phase two is this work, Emirates and Israelis, with Blair and the Emirates and with the Democrats.

And then President Trump is elected.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So the Emirates have this plan.

They've been working with the Israelis on it.

And then there's this decision made, as I think you're about to get into, to wait for Trump.

But was there...

A question as to how committed the Americans were, including the Biden administration, were to this plan?

You know, could the Biden administration say that to the Israelis, to the Emiratis?

Like, we want this plan.

We are not waiting for the end of this administration.

Because my impression talking to an Emirati, a senior Emirati official, is they had been working on this plan with the Israelis and the Americans.

And then the Biden administration, it's kind of lost steam.

It lost its momentum.

And the Emiratis were saying, we can't want this more than the Americans and the Israelis.

There were ups and downs.

There were moments when it was very close.

But the best moment when there was really feeling, because President Biden really want this as his legacy, okay?

The real golden opportunity, so to speak, when the Israelis Israelis felt that it can be done with the Democrats on terms that the Israelis can live with was in that period of, you know, between November and December of 2024.

So now comes in President Trump.

And here, what happened is, I think, something that is, again, all those signs of it were in the media and in the public arena.

But in some ways, I think people definitely in Israel did not totally understand

how hawkish President Trump was.

But President Trump, completely different than what we see today, was committed to the total destruction, in a way, of Gaza, to basically flatten it, making it a parking lot.

He was totally committed to trying to get as many people of Gaza out of Gaza, in a sense, Gaza without Gazans.

And I would even dare say that his sensitivity to the hostages issue was different than what we see today.

So what you had is a very hawkish strong, 160 degrees different than what we see today.

And that meant that those Israelis and Arab moderates and envoys who were working on this plan for such a long time and who were waiting for Trump and in many ways believed in Trump could not implement it because the game totally changed.

Now, I'll tell you what was the impact in Israel.

And here I'm not giving just analysis, but my worldview.

Something was unleashed in Israel that was irrational and caused terrible mistakes because suddenly there was the illusion in Israel, you know, that there won't be any Palestinians in Gaza, or very few Palestinians will live in Gaza.

And Israel lost its way, the way I see it, between February and August, or February and July, something like that.

Everything that we saw with the terrible tragedy, with the food, with actions taken on the ground, was connected to the fact that suddenly there wasn't an American who restrained Israel, but there was an American that Israelis felt are telling them go all the way.

Now, it's a good question where Netanyahu and Jerma were exactly during this period.

I think that many Israeli leaders actually thought of their original plan.

But what you saw, what the Israeli public saw, was a very hawkish Netanyahu inspired by the hawkish Trump.

And you'll see what Netanyahu promised, what he committed to himself.

By the way, things that were causing political trouble now when he was talking of absolute victory in a very dramatic way that is not consistent whatsoever with any diplomatic solution.

So for a few months, after preparing this plan, basically, which is so similar to what we see now, the whole thing was derailed.

But then reality struck and actually brought us back to where we are.

And in my mind, what happened is mainly, I would say, three events.

One is Israel's collapse in public opinion.

The isolation of Israel became a major problem.

Israelis realized it took them a while, but they realized it's a major problem.

But I think President Trump understood that.

And if you listen carefully to his speech in Jerusalem, he was actually saying it.

He said to Bibi, Bibi, you cannot go against the world.

So Trump, with his instincts and his kind of understanding of reality, suddenly realized that the old ideas he was thinking about are becoming very dangerous for Israel, and Israel cannot fight the world.

All right, I want to go back to the, because the whole, you talked about there was this fantasy among some in Israel, the Gaza without Palestinians.

So this was the whole, you know, the Gaza Riviera plan, which was announced when Prime Minister Netanyahu was visiting Washington on one of the first trips.

How should we understand that specifically?

So in retrospect, you can say it was genius because it had one very positive impact.

Look, the moderate Arabs have a tradition of wanting moderation and stability, but not willing to pay the price.

They like others to pay the price.

The Trump plan, the Rivera plan, the relocation plan, terrified.

the people who are very close to Trump and very close to Jared Kushner, people who believed in them and loved them and their friends.

They were terrified.

They were totally shocked.

So the outcome was that their ability or their willingness to accept the old Blair-Dirmer MBZ plan was much greater.

Because people who before, again, the Emirates wanted it all the time, but other Arabs were reluctant.

And they thought it's not giving the Palestinians enough.

Now, when the alternative was the expulsion of a million or two million Palestinians from Gaza, suddenly moderate Arabs came to the Israelis and and came to them and go, you remember that plan?

We want it back.

Bring it back.

So the Rivera plan had a very positive impact on the Arabs.

But the Rivera plan had a very problematic impact in Israel.

Because for a few months, many Israelis, I'm not talking about necessarily about the government or about the prime minister, but definitely the extremists in the government, but also many other Israelis, suddenly began to think in terms that are unrealistic and not getting into the moral discussion.

So the Rivera Riviera Plan had this double effect.

It was helpful in bringing the Arabs along, but actually it led Israel to extremism and actually to Israel paid a horrible political, diplomatic, and PR price for the mistakes done under the inspiration of the Riviera Plan.

So what happens afterwards?

So we're talking now early summer, okay?

Early summer, three things happen.

One is Israel and Trump understand that Israeli isolation is dangerous.

Two, the Hamas is terrified by the attack on Gaza.

And here the Israeli hawks and their American supporters were actually right, because Hamas felt that Gaza is their Jerusalem.

Meaning Gaza City, Gaza City.

Gaza City, Gaza City.

When we say Gaza City, we're not referring to Gaza.

Gaza is the entirety of the strip.

Gaza City is within the strip, and it was the last stronghold of Hamas.

It was basically untouched for most of the war.

And in the eyes of Hamas, according to analysts that have explained it to me, both Israeli analysts and Arab analysts, is that Gaza City for Hamas was like their Berlin

or Moscow, you know, during World War II, that it was that that Fort Gaza City, you know, they had to defend that to their death.

So I would say that the following happened.

Israel was under a lot of political diplomatic pressure or losing the war diplomatically.

Hamas was under a lot of military pressure.

For once, they were really scared they are losing it.

So the combination of the two created a kind of softening of the hearts and laid the ground for change from the dynamics, very hostile dynamics that happened in the months before.

Now within that context, the old plan comes back to life and we get a new player who is very important, Jared Kushner, who was not active in previous months and becomes very active now.

And with his very strong connections in the Arab world, Turkey, Qatar, not only the Emirates, the old plan begins to come back.

But I want to understand what, to explain to you what happened.

At that time, we actually have two tracks.

There are two issues.

One is the hostage deal, and the other is the day after plan.

And throughout that period, the Israeli concept is that we will have the Witkoff plan, if you remember it, which was partial release of hostages.

Then we get 60 days and then we'll discuss the rest.

And the idea was within the 60 days to put in the Blair-Dermer Emirate plan and to weave the hostage track with the day after track.

That was the idea.

At a certain point, Hamas becomes very hawkish, very tough.

And because they felt Israel was collapsing politically and they were not, they went crazy in their demands, they drove Trump crazy.

He became very angry.

And he became very angry at who.

He became very angry at who.

At Hamas.

Right.

So Hamas is becoming transigent.

Exactly.

So what happens then, that we move from a partial deal, partial peace, partial war to full war, full peace?

Okay.

Israel on the one hand goes for the full, the God that attacks of Gaza and the plan to go all the way.

But that's a kind of stick where actually people are thinking of the carrot of a grand deal.

And then suddenly you have the circumstances allowing you to think of bringing all the hostages, ending the entire war and beginning peace.

And can you help explain and just shed more light at least on why at this moment Hamas had become so intransigent?

Hamas never wanted a deal really.

Hamas always agreed to a deal, considered seriously a deal when they were choked, when they were surrendered.

So whenever they saw there is a chance for regional war in 2024, they disappeared.

Whenever they felt the Israeli public is torn in such a way that Israel will yield, they disappeared.

And when they felt that Israel is collapsing in the world, throughout the world, and becoming a new South Africa, they disappeared.

So, in order to get Hamas, these are evil people, and the only way to work with them is absolute power.

So, it's only when they feel that they are under siege that they are willing to accept the deal.

And when they felt, if you remember what American media was back in July and August, they felt why should we compromise?

I mean, Israel is collapsing.

Why should we do it?

But that made Trump very angry.

And then the concept totally changed from partial deal to a grand deal and all at once.

But at that point, as you probably remember, happens one event which actually crystallizes all these processes that were emerging.

And that's the Israeli attack in Qatar.

Okay.

So walk us through that.

Because there are so many takes on this.

And I think most of the takes, I will say, are wrong.

You want to tell us yours first?

Yeah.

I mean, my take is twofold.

One, I know this because I've heard this from Qatari officials directly.

One is, unlike at any other point since the war began, there was this, Qatari officials were alarmed by the extent to which the fire could come to them.

And by the way, this was the sentiment not only in Doha, it was the sentiment in Abu Dhabi.

It was the sentiment in Riyadh.

There was a concern that weird things may start happening in the region and they needed to shut this down.

They needed to end it, A.

B, in response response to this, in order to calm Qatar down, the U.S.

administration made extraordinary security concessions to Doha to calm them down.

And while on the one hand, those concessions, you could argue, were quite generous, it added to Trump's currency with Qatar.

Because he was making these concessions to Qatar, it wasn't like the checkbook was balanced.

He was actually able to say, now I've given you all these things.

Now I need your help with something.

And the something was putting the ultimate squeeze on Hamas to release all the hostages at the front end and persuading Hamas that the hostages had become a liability and were no longer an asset in their negotiations.

That's my two-part take.

It may evolve over the next few months as I talk to more and more people.

But

how does my take square with yours?

Actually, I don't disagree.

Look, my son, Michael, is one of the smartest strategists that I know in the country.

The moment this happened, he said, Daddy, the irony is that the most successful Israeli raid ever was the one that failed.

The term the cunning of history is all over it.

Okay.

It's all unintended consequences all around.

And by the way, the talent of Trump and partially Netanyahu, perhaps both, is that they have this kind of flexibility.

In my mind, they make great mistakes, but then they have the ability to fix them.

Or their ability to go with the flow was very, very impressive.

What you say about the Qataris, I think, is true regarding the Americans and all the others.

Suddenly, all the moderates Iran felt that this is becoming too dangerous.

As long as Israelis kill Palestinians and Palestinians kill Israelis, it's unpleasant and we protest, but it's not dangerous.

Once this became a regional event and Israel was perceived as a dangerous, unpredictable player, then the moderate Arabs decided that it's time to pay price.

But here, I think that Trump deserves a lot of credit because he took a moment of Arab rage regarding Israel that could have been really dangerous.

And if ever someone made lemonade after lemons, this is the case.

Taking the Qatar debacle, the failure, the embarrassment, you know, this could have been the bee of pigs, okay?

And turning that around into a positive process, that's a huge achievement.

And I think the president should get, you know, all the credit for that.

So the irony of history is that, you know, this was a bombing too far.

Israel did so many successful bombings.

This one was reckless.

It was not well calculated.

But again, ironically, it succeeded in a very unpredictable way.

Can I ask you, I feel like I have to spend a moment on this.

In terms of the perspective of the hostage families, the combination of the Gaza operation, which they said was going to put hostages at risk because many of them were in Gaza City, and then specifically on this concern that the strike against Doha or against Hamas and Doha could have torpedoed the negotiations bike because it would have taken out the people that Israel was negotiating with.

There was enormous blowback from the hostage families about that.

People were terrified.

What is Israel doing?

They thought they were hoping that killing the leadership of Hamas in Doha will enable the more moderate leadership in Gaza to strike a deal.

So their thinking was that the attack, should it be succeeded, would have been helpful.

I have heard this from Israeli officials.

Again, people can debate it.

We'll learn a lot more more as the history plays out.

But there was a sense among Israeli officials, and not just Israeli officials, that those on the ground in Gaza, believe it or not, at least now, were more moderate than those Gaza officials in Doha.

And that if they could sideline some of the officials in Doha, the decision makers in Gaza would be, the Hamas decision makers would be more inclined to do a deal.

Exactly.

That was the thinking.

I cannot tell you if it was justified or not.

And I think that in any any case, it was a reckless decision.

But their thinking, they did not try to torpedo the deal.

They really thought that getting rid of the Hamas leadership would have been helpful.

So now let's talk about the role of the mediating parties, Egypt, Turkey, and of course, Qatar, between February 4th, which was the Gaza Rufihira press conference, and September 9th, when Israel attacked Qatar.

Can you talk about what these countries were doing between those two dates?

What you have here is Egypt, which is a positive player generally, but ineffective.

You have Qatar, which is the most effective player, but in my mind, dangerous.

And you have Turkey, which is partially effective and dangerous.

The success here is that the Trump administration, Witkoff, Kushner, and Trump personally managed to get on board some of the spoilers.

Otherwise, it would not have happened because the people who really have impact on Hamas are mainly Qatar and partially Turkey.

And Trump understood it and he worked with these.

But when we'll get to analyze what are the prospects now, what troubles me more than anything, if we had this deal with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates as the chaperons, I would have been much more optimistic and much happier.

The fact that the chaperons here are Qatar and Turkey and a weak Egypt, it's very troubling.

I want you to point out something that I don't think many people have noticed.

The most striking fact about the summit in Shar Mashech, the peace summit, was that Netanyahu was not there and MBZ was not there.

Wow.

This was a weird ceremony.

First of all, it's weird in the sense you have a wedding where the bride and groom don't come to the wedding.

And the bride wants to kill the groom and the groom wants to kill the bride.

All you have is very powerful matchmakers having a lot of champagne and making a lot of statements about how great love is.

Now within that context, the fact that Netanyahu was not invited to begin with, and then he was invited, not invited, and didn't come, and the fact that MBZ, who is in my mind the most important, moderate, constructive Arab leader, one of the greatest world leaders, the fact that he decided not to be there, that's very meaningful.

So again, the success, you got players that are in my mind, bad guys or dangerous guys.

You got them to play a constructive role, but now they are a stakesholder in the process.

And in my mind, that opens up very serious questions about the future.

Okay.

I just want you to talk about the unintended consequences of the IDF operation against Hamas and Doha.

In that, in some senses, it was the, you know, kind of lit the fuse, which ultimately led to the deal.

So just walk us through that chain of events, starting with how the Qataris responded until the press conference with Trump and Netanyahu announcing the deal.

So the initial reaction, of course, was rage in Qatar and deep anxiety throughout the Arab world, because all the Arab leaders are mainly concerned with stability.

And one of the reasons most of these players like Israel is not that they became lovers of Zion, but they see Israel as a reliable ally in the struggle for stability.

What's at the heart of the Arab-Israeli unofficial alliance is that, it's stability.

And suddenly Israel is destabilizing the region.

Into that comes Trump and Witkoff and Jared Kushner and really are able to convince all these people that now that we are all so concerned about destability, that is not only the Gaza tragedy and the pain of Israeli hostage families, we all have to come together quickly and solve this.

The fire of Gaza suddenly became dangerous for everyone.

And in this sense, the Qatar raid was a catalyst, a dramatic catalyst to join a political process that would end the war.

Okay.

It's pretty clear that President Trump front-loaded the deal at that press conference.

How did Trump bring it to completion?

And what role did Kushner and Witkoff play in sealing the deal?

So first of all, both Witkoff and George Kushner played a major role here.

The strategy here was to get the commitment out there before we actually have people agreeing to it and creating a momentum.

It's putting everybody on on a train that it's difficult to jump from.

Okay.

And therefore, people are like forced to go with the train.

I mean, the whole logic of this process, even now, is momentum rather than substance.

If you wish, the way I would say, it's fake it until you make it.

Okay, you pretend there is peace, you force everybody to make a commitment, and then you say the dynamics will be so strong that the details don't matter.

And the fact that we actually didn't agree and we don't have actually solution for most problems, the only problem solved, which is a huge thing, is the issue of the tragedy of the living hostages.

That's the one thing that really happened in the real world.

All the rest of it is up in the air.

It's a kind of castle in the sky.

So if you want to think about the Trump world,

you put a huge...

Trump golden sign next to a hole in the ground and you say there will be a huge, wonderful, shiny, beautiful skyscraper here, but you didn't even put the construction.

But the commitment that all the investors, so to speak, make, that may make it happen.

So that's the logic of the process.

I just want to say one thing on this point.

Tal Becker, in a conversation we had yesterday in our podcast, explained it to me this way, which really has resonated, and I've been using this explanation.

He said that the problem every time hostage negotiation or ceasefire hostage negotiations have broken down over the last two years is because Hamas would always say yes, but.

They get the headline with the yes, and then they focus on the but, which is the, you know, the subhead, and then there's all these details where things break down.

And so we, you, me, you know, the U.S.

administration, the Israeli government would always focus on the but and say, oh, this is why it's not going to work.

And what Trump did for the first time is he said, I'm going to focus on the yes.

I'm not going to focus on the but.

I'm going to focus on the yes.

What was the big yes?

What was the big game changer?

The yes was Israel gets all the hostages back at the front end, meaning that Trump had demanded no more trickling out hostages over a long period of time, no more phased release of hostages.

Any deal, hostages come out right away.

And when Hamas said yes to that, even though there was a but, Trump banked the yes.

I remember clearly so much that moment.

You know, you got the Hamas answer.

I sadly don't read Arabic, but I have friends and experts who do.

And immediately I saw it was a horrible text.

The Hamas answer was no with a tiny yes in there or not a tiny but

and it was more no than yes and within an hour or two trump says it's a big yes okay so that's classic that's vintage tramp okay so you can say that that was very smart it was smart in enabling that deal to happen oslo process was very much based just on that the palestinians never recognized the jewish state they never really ended the conflict and the dovish israelis kept saying okay but it's okay the process and it's great and it's going somewhere.

Yes, but

ironically, right-wing Israelis, Republican Americans who never liked Oslo and Clinton find themselves in a rather similar situation.

There are elements of Oslo too here that are quite striking.

Now, the most important meeting in that week was when Witkoff and Kushner met the leaders of Hamas.

At that night, on Wednesday night in Sharmashech, and the deal would not have happened.

Now, in the old world, that would have meant America recognizing de facto a terror organization that you and I think is an Islamic Nazi organization.

So, on the one hand, you have a remarkable achievement, but on the other hand, you have to be aware that you already paid a price.

And with the Turks and Qataris around, you'll keep on paying that price.

It won't end now.

The beauty and the question mark with the Trump diplomacy is that it's so unconventional.

No sane diplomat or professional would have done what he does.

He so believes in his ability to impose his will on others that he takes enormous risks.

We all pray he succeeds.

But this is the question mark.

This is where we are.

You know, what is clear, the hostages are out, amazing.

What is highly probable, the war has ended.

Whether it's a beginning of peace, this remains to be seen.

So let's talk about that.

We're now at the present.

We have a ceasefire.

We have the hostages back, the living hostages.

We're still waiting, all of the deceased hostages.

What about the future of Gaza and the future of Hamas in Gaza?

Let me give you what is my understanding of the real Israeli plan.

Israelis are not naive.

Israelis don't think that there is any way that Hamas will disarm itself within a few months and will transform itself to, I don't know, a Swedish medical organization.

So the real Israeli plan is a two-Gaza solution.

Israel gave back 47% of the Gaza Strip.

It keeps 53%.

That's the yellow line.

The Israeli assumption is that Hamas will not keep the deal, and therefore Israel will not have to withdraw.

And then in the 53%,

you can do the Blair experiment.

Israel will try to do East Germany, West Germany.

We will try to do to bring all the moderate Arab money into the eastern part of Gaza, our 53%.

So you will have the beginning of a boom in Gaza.

It won't be overnight.

And we will leave the 47% in the hand of Hamas and let the people of the Palestinians choose.

And as you remember, the Germans liked West Germany much more than they liked East Germany.

So that's the kind of, if you wish, hope/slash plan.

What are the problems there?

The problems are

that if Hamas is aggressive, it will will try to sabotage that.

That if, as I said, the Turks and Qataris remain loyal to Hamas, they'll try to sabotage that or they'll make it difficult.

And it's not clear, moderate Arab money, in what way will it come to an Israeli-controlled Gaza strip.

So there are very serious question marks with this plan.

Israelis don't think

that you are going to have a kumbaya moment in Gaza in the coming year.

The real practical plan is this kind of Gaza partition plan.

Wow.

Okay.

Ari, final question.

And I won't hold you to this, but I'm just curious what you're thinking as you look into your crystal ball.

If you were to predict where we are a year from now.

Well, you tell me where China will be, where AI will be, where gold will be, then I'll answer.

Then we'll both be rich men.

So, again, we all bored President Trump just put us on a huge, beautiful, big plane flying who knows where.

Okay.

It's, it's, he first of all, again, we must give him credit.

He took us from the battlefields, from the suffering.

He brought back the hostages.

He should always get all the credit in the world for that.

But now the plane took off.

Who knows where it's going?

Okay, so we hope.

The Trump gamble works in the sense that the momentum will be stronger than the substance and it will take us to a kind of regional process that will lead to really a kind of regional peace.

While Gaza is still so depressing, definitely the regional options and even Indonesia, there are huge options there.

And Trump seems to be a very effective player there.

And I expect some good news, at least on that front.

I'll tell you what I think is for pretty much certain within this uncertainty.

There will be no war.

I think there will be no annexation.

There will be no expulsion.

There will be no permanent settlements in Gaza.

No permanent settlements.

There will be a regional process.

I don't know if it's to say, there will be a regional process with a serious Palestinian dimension.

And here I want, this is important, because I think that what happened to Netanyahu in Derma, that on one hand, they managed in an impossible situation almost to fulfill their dream.

But now it's out of their control.

The process is much larger than them.

The document is an astonishing Israeli achievement.

But the process with the international commitments and all the local players is much larger.

And the problem they have and Israel has is not only Turkey and Qatar, but the entire international community committed to the two-state solution and sees this process as a two-state solution process.

But I'll tell you what I think the impact in Israel.

I think there is a high chance that there will be a dramatic weakening of extremist Israel.

I think that what happened now is Netanyahu will be forced to go to the center, center-right.

I think that Smodrich and Bengview, who had the country because of their ability to blackmail Netanyahu,

are much weaker.

And in this sense, I want to say to Daraba, to President Trump, because I think that in an ironic, weird, colorful way, this person is making Israel sane again.

He's actually forcing us to deal with the reality and he's bringing us back from, first of all, the closure of the terrible pain of October 7, bringing back the hostages, ending the war.

He's enabling actually an Israeli tikkun process.

That was not, I think, his plan.

That was not his aim.

But talking of unintended consequences, I think that this is one of the most promising unintended consequences of this amazing, amazing event.

All right, Ari.

Thank you for this.

A lot to chew on here.

I'm sure we'll get a whole range of reactions.

And obviously, I want to bring you back on as this story continues because it's actually both in a positive way and certainly ways that we're probably not fully anticipating, complicated ways.

This story is going to get much more interesting.

So, I'm grateful for your voice, and you're here, you're reporting, and your analysis.

And time to be hopeful with all the caution, time to be hopeful.

Yeah, you're here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar.

Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin-Aretti.

Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marian Khalis Burgos.

Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff.

Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.

Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sino.