The Gaza War is Over - with Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal

You are listening to an art media podcast.

Hamas are not that strong as they pretended themselves to be.

We built them.

We built them with fearing to act in Gaza, with tunneling Qatari money more than a billion dollars, with trying to end each and every military operation without entering Gaza city.

And maybe we could have ended it before, I don't know.

But once we did it, we can do it again.

And each and every citizen in Gaza knows it very well.

For Netanyahu, if he gets normalization of sorts in the next few months, either with Indonesia or with Saudi Arabia or something with Lebanon, my guess is that this is going to be as important for his positioning of winning the next election as this day.

It's 1:40 p.m.

on Thursday, October 9th here in New York City.

It is 8:40 p.m.

on Thursday, October 9th in Israel, as Israelis await, with bated breath, to learn more about the ceasefire deal reached last night to end the war in Gaza, and which the Israeli cabinet is expected to approve in the coming hours.

The deal, which was announced last night by mediators in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh Resort, marks the first phase of President Trump's plan to end the war and perhaps, more ambitiously, redefine the region.

This phase requires Hamas to release within 72 hours all living Israeli hostages who have been languishing in Gaza for just over two years, as well as most of the remains of the deceased captives.

Hamas has also agreed to refrain from holding their notorious release ceremonies for the handing over of the remaining hostages.

In previous hostage deals, the terror group ghoulishly paraded the hostages in front of a cheering crowd before releasing them to the Red Cross in a cruel attempt to increase the psychological pressure on Israelis.

Israelis have responded to the news of the deal with an overwhelming outpouring of emotion.

Hostage families have been seen expressing cautious hope, with some thanking President Trump for bringing this 734-day nightmare to an end.

Meanwhile, hospitals and healthcare professionals across the country are bracing to receive the returning hostages and provide specialized medical and mental care based on lessons learned from the previous hostage deals.

Praised by both Israeli coalition and opposition leaders, President Trump is expected to land in Israel this Sunday, according to Con News, to participate in a ceremony at the Ben-Gurion airport celebrating the return of hostages.

Joining me now to discuss the mood in Israel, what we can expect in the coming hours and days, and what all this means for the future of Israel and the region are ARC Media contributors Nadavael and Amit Segel.

But first, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

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Before we start, given the momentous news of the past few hours, we are releasing this as a second episode in less than 24 hours.

So this will be available to all listeners and we will not record a members only inside Call Me Back this week, given the obvious nature of these events we are discussing so let's dive in amit how would you describe the mood in israel over the past 24 hours i'll give you an example i was driving to the studio early in the morning and i heard the radio and something was weird in the sound so my instinct was to try whether you know whether it's not really tuned in and then i got it what i heard and was weird that for the first time in 734 days, there was a pure joy in the air.

There were many glorious moments over the last two years.

We assassinated Nasalah, we defeated Iran, we killed Sinoar and then Sinoir the brother, but you could always

get the gist of sadness because there were still hostages in Gaza.

There was still a tragedy unfolding, ongoing, and suddenly you could hear a pure joy.

This is how a normal country looks like.

Nadav, you and I talked last night.

Any further reactions to just the sentiment, the sentiment in Israel, as you're watching things play out and obviously in response to what Amit just said?

I think that, as Amit just said, and as you've said, Dan, last night when we spoke, it's like a cloud has been lifted from the country on the one hand.

But there is another element there that I want to mention, and I want to mention this right at the start.

And these are the people

that feel very differently today.

And we need to acknowledge that.

The people who have lost their loved ones, the families who have sacrificed their sons and their daughters in the war in Gaza, those 465 men and one woman that were killed inside the Gaza Strip fighting so that Hamas cannot control the Gaza Strip, again be a threat, and may need to get the hostages back home.

Also, the hostage families that are going to receive their loved ones' bodies, and they need to start thinking about how to cope with that.

And of course, the hostages that have been murdered, the stories that are going to be left from this war, the many hundreds and thousands of Israelis that are injured, some of them very severely injured.

And I'm not mentioning this because I'm trying to put down the jubilation and the joy we all feel.

I'm very much part of it, and anyone who heard our emergency episode could notice that, how personally happy I am.

I'm mentioning that because it's very important to remember that this was Israel's longest war, and it was a terrible war.

It's going to be burned to our flesh for many years, but mainly to these families who have sacrificed everything

and are going to remain with this immense pain that none of us can imagine.

Amit, I've heard a lot.

Nadab, I've heard a lot of that since we released that conversation.

A lot of the feedback we've gotten from Israeli families who aren't celebrating today.

Obviously, they're feeling joy for those who get their loved ones home.

But if you're not getting your loved one home, it's still a sad day.

And one of the messages, I won't say the person's name, but one of the messages I received was a message from a family that lost a son on October 7th.

She wrote, We, along with 1,200 other families, are preparing to say say Yisker and have a Yortzeit on Simchat Torah.

And everyone keeps thinking we should be happy.

So for many of the families that have loved ones who were killed on October 7th,

this is what this holiday represents to them,

not the return of the rest of the hostages in a new day, timed with this beautiful holiday.

It's not that.

And so these are these mixed emotions that are flying around.

Nadav, can you tell us a little bit about what we know now as we're learning more about the details of the deal?

Yes.

First of all, we know now that this is going to happen rather quickly.

So we're talking about this weekend as the time in which all the hostages, the live hostages, are to be released.

And the release of the Israeli bodies that are held by Hamas is due to begin almost immediately too.

Although Hamas has already notified the mediators that it doesn't know as to some of these dead bodies where they are buried or they are held.

Israel treats these announcements by Hamas very suspiciously.

Israeli intelligence is trying to find out, but the Israeli intelligence also doesn't know sometimes.

And some families have been notified by the officers that are handling those families from the IDF that they are still trying to determine where these bodies are held.

These are extremely tense hours for these families.

Now, Israel is going to redraw to what we call the yellow line.

It's actually not the yellow line anymore, but what we call the yellow line according to the Trump plan as it was published by the White House.

One of the things that happened in Shalma Sheikh during the talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the Egyptians, the Qataris, and mainly, of course, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, is that Israel agreed to redraw slightly more eastward than it did agree at the beginning.

So, between 200 and 600 meters more.

Another thing we do know is that some symbols of the Palestinian prisoner list are not going to be released.

And the name that the prime minister's office has committed to is Marouan Baraguti.

They have said on the record he's not going to be released.

By the way, maybe Amit has more information about that.

They didn't say that Ahmad Sadat is not going to be released.

He's the one who you talked about in our last episode, who's a Hamas leader in the West Bank, who's a major player player in slaughtering a lot of Israelis during the Second Intifada.

So basically, Israel vetoed at least four to seven names.

And what's really happening behind the scenes, which is interesting because we thought they agreed the names.

And what happened since we last recorded is that I learned that not all the names were agreed.

And this is the extent of American pressure that was put on signing the agreement before the names were agreed.

And I think this stems then from a recognition of Hamas and the Arab mediators that at any case, the president is not going to let this deal fall through on a specific name.

One of the names was Ahmed Sadat.

Another name I mentioned was Ibrahim Hamed, who's very dangerous, probably more dangerous than Marwan Baragoti and Ahmed Sadat, but less of a symbol.

And there are other names there.

I expect there will be a last-moment crisis because there always is a last moment crisis as to the name.

Another question, and Amit, feel free to chip in and give your headline for the 8 o'clock p.m.

news in Israel if you want to, is the collection of weapons.

What Arab sources are telling us is that Hamas didn't really agree to hand over its light weapons, Kalachnikov's AR-15s.

What they're saying is that it will be, these at most will be held by a Palestinian or an Arab force within Gaza.

It's like saying we're not actually disarming Hamas from these light weapons, but weapons that are like rocket launchers mortar launchers and the rest they would be decommissioned and of course the tunnels so it's the difference between light weapons and weapons that can hit more collectively a group of people and we don't know you know the israelis are not telling us what's the summation here and amit if you want to amit yeah do you know any other detail Yeah, I hate to bring the news to you in New York, but I don't think what was assigned today in Shalom Sheikh was a peace deal.

At least not the biggest peace deal in the last 3,000 years.

This was a ceasefire that was signed and a hostage deal.

That's all.

And that's why I'm not depth in the details and I'll explain why.

The whole thing around the last two years of failed attempts to bring an end to this war was about the Israeli refusal to withdraw to the last inch or centimeter in Israel without having Hamas dismantled from the last Kalachnikov, RPG and Tannel, you name it.

However, since we know Hamas and we know the terrorist organizations, at least or specifically fundamentalist Muslim ones, do not tend to give up their weapons, the whole idea was about an insurance policy by Israel to make sure that there isn't a single more Israeli citizen to get killed or intimidated by Hamas.

So, what Israel got in this hostage deal is the amazing achievement, in my opinion, that following the release of the last hostage, Israel will still control 53% of the Gaza Strip, thus enveloping Hamas inside Gaza.

Now we have two options.

We have a fork.

One option is that Hamas will be willing to give each and every weapon, no matter if it's a Kalachnikov or an RPG.

The other option, which is the most probable one in my opinion, I guess that Nadav would think the same, is that Hamas is not going to be willing to give it.

And therefore, Israel will stay in 53% of Gaza Strip for the forthcoming future.

This is, in my opinion, the most probable option.

And now we are going to a second phase of negotiations, which is going to be way longer.

Now, here's the question then.

What is Trump interested in?

Is he interested mainly in bringing back all the hostages?

which I think this is the right answer, or in putting an end to the war in Gaza.

I've said for a while he wants those hostages back, period, full stop.

So it's about getting the hostages back.

And I also think he's about Abraham Accords or Abraham Accords 2.0, and that is Saudi normalization, you know, peace throughout the Middle East.

That's a longer-term goal.

It's the in-between part that I'm not sure.

I'll put it differently that I don't think there was a single report in the American media over the last 10 months about Israel striking Hezbollah members in Lebanon.

Why?

Because in the eyes of the US public, the war has come to an end around November 2024.

And the same would apply for here.

So there are going to be a few weeks of ceasefire.

And then once Indonesia joins the Abraham Accords, or hopefully Syria and Saudi Arabia, we will see a Lebanon model of Gaza Strip.

Thus, that Israel is no longer inside Gaza City, but it's definitely going to attack Hamas targets if it sees that they are going to attack Israeli soldiers.

Nadav, any reaction to that?

I think that the president is dead set that this war will end.

We'll have to wait and see.

I would advise people who want to understand what the president is saying to, for instance, listen to his interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last night, in which the president, without being asked, spoke about his conversation with Netanyahu.

He commended Prime Minister Netanyahu for the deal.

He said that Netanyahu was happy.

He also said that Netanyahu said, now everybody likes me.

And the president said, what's more important is that they like Israel again.

I think that to be educated by President Trump as to not being self-congratulatory too much is something that no other person in the world could have achieved, but Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I've never heard anything like it, but I think that that remark by the president was very interesting.

And of course, he gave light to that remark on Fox News.

And then he said something really important then.

I told Bib Israel can't fight against the entire world.

You can't fight against the entire world.

And the fact that Trump would say this in a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu after reaching a deal hints to something deep that I'm hearing from Washington and from Israelis that have been speaking with Washington.

Washington has been very worried as to Israel's situation globally and to Israel's situation within the American public and specifically within people who support, of course, the Republican Party and MAGA.

And there is a recognition there that this war should end.

And when the president says, I want to have peace in the Middle East, he means that.

Now, if Hamas won't abide by the agreement, Amit, I agree with you.

If Hamas is going to cheat, we'll hear President Trump saying, you know, let's open the gates of hell.

But he's not going to allow this to crumble so quickly.

And I remind ourselves of the Singapore summit.

That was the meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Trump in the first term.

And did it reach any sort of practical means of disarming North Korea from its nuclear weapons?

No.

Did we hear anything?

about the possibility of a nuclear war in the Korean peninsula ever since?

We didn't.

And the president came, he shook hands with Kim Jong-un, they had this summit, and then the president basically said that the problem is over.

And I think that this is his course of operations.

Now, again, if Hamas is going to piss off the White House, betray Qatar, betray the Turks and everybody else, President Trump will do what he does at these cases.

But I think he wants this really to end, and he's not going to allow small details to interrupt with the march towards peace, if not to the Nobel Peace Prize this year, the Nobel Peace Prize next year.

By the way, I don't think this is his main motivation.

I think people who think that this is the main motivation of Trump don't understand what's really happening there.

It's not about getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

And mainly it's about bigger issues, I think, in the background.

Yeah, I would just add, look, Trump and Netanyahu now have a long track record through Trump's first administration and now his second administration in working together.

I can't think of another leader Trump has worked with, actually, as I'm saying this, with whom alongside he has had so many diplomatic accomplishments.

The big events, right?

This deal, the Abraham Accords, taking down Iran's nuclear program, taking down Iran's proxy system.

These are big, impossible to ignore, impossible to not give credit to Trump for accomplishing these things.

I would suggest to watch this soccer game or football game without commentary.

The Trump-Netanyahu football game should not be accompanied by commentary because the commentary is distorted.

You should only follow the play-by-play because the play-by-play is one of the most amazing coordinations between Israeli and American leaders.

Now, we can quote the F-word that allegedly Trump said.

Right, right.

So at the end of the day, what we see now is a highly coordinated move to end the war in Gaza in this specific way, to attack Iran's nuclear facilities in this specific way, and to take care of the Middle East in this very specific Abraham Accord way.

This is my assumption, and I'm not sure that insights from alleged phone calls between Trump and Netanyahu is going to convince me otherwise.

By the way, these are not alleged phone calls.

It's President Trump going on Sean Hannity, telling us about the phone call that he had with the prime minister.

But I agree with Amit's point as to the closeness of the Washington-Jerusalem relations, as to President Trump doing things unimagined before, you know, beginning in his first term.

And he did this together with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ron Dermer are to be credited if they managed to convince a U.S.

administration to go down the route that they want the relationships to go down there.

I don't think that I will equate the coordination between the Israelis and the Americans as to Iran, as to what happened right now.

I don't think that Israel was in the know as to President Trump's decision that it should stop immediately all airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

I'm not sure that the entire Qatar thing was coordinated, to say the least, the attack there.

I think that there was a general intention here, but this agreement is good for Israel.

The direction of travel is of a strong president supporting strong action generally, not to say sometimes there's a pullback, but directionally, strong action by Israel.

So to take this, you know,

it seems that Trump was giving at least publicly and I presume privately support for Israel to go into Gaza City.

And so the message to the world was in a previous administration or a possible future administration, Israel may have been reined in.

Under this administration, Israel's not going to be reigned in.

You know, so the question is, did Trump, I mean, again, we don't know what's in his head, but did he calculate it is this sort of a good cop, bad cop thing?

Is it helpful for Hamas to think, I'm not stopping Israel?

They're going into Gaza City and they're being told there are hostages in Gaza City, and they're still going in.

They're being told by their military leadership it's a mistake to go in, and they're still going in.

So there's no stopping Israel, it's going in, and the president of the United States is not stopping Israel.

So that may have been a calculation that that's what Hamas needs to realize, especially against the backdrop of Hamas believing that the world was isolating Israel.

Absolutely.

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Look, a few things pushed Hamas to this point, okay?

One of them is the military threat and their military commanders decapitated in the Gaza Strip.

This cannot be denied.

They didn't want the IDF to go into Gaza.

This cannot be denied.

Another thing is Qatar and Turkey joining President Trump in pressuring Hamas.

And why did that happen?

That happened also because the president was willing to basically align them with other substantive moves.

In the case of Qatar, a defense treaty of sorts.

In the case of Turkey, maybe supplying them with F-35 again.

It's very much related to Hamas being bankrupt.

Hamas is bankrupt right now.

And I can continue on.

But let's remember not only the story we're telling ourselves, but also the story that Hamas is telling itself.

Fair point.

Yeah, I'm going to leave it maybe to Amit to say that.

But Hamas has a good story that it's starting to tell, and it's not a story about defeat.

It's not a story about the feet.

Okay, so Amit, I want to ask you, Amit, what the story Hamas is telling itself, and then I want to ask you both what Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, which were all in different ways instrumental in all of this too,

what story they're telling themselves?

Meaning, what do they want to accomplish here beyond just, as Amit said, a hostage release and a ceasefire?

But Amit, before we get into that, what's the story Amazon telling itself?

The story that it tells to its public is that we stood, we stood against huge forces, against the most formidable army in the Middle East, that defeated Iran and Hezbollah, yet we are still standing.

However, I think it's more up to Israel.

And I think the main change, if we are trying to wrap up the last two years of war, is that Israel changed its course.

The main principle is not the international border being sacred, but the lives of Israel is being sacred.

Prior to the war, Israel withdrew from Gaza Strip and from Lebanon, and we can argue forever whether it was good or not.

Let's keep it for history.

But the idea was we will get international legitimacy.

And following October 7th, Israeli soldiers are now, as we speak, holding 53% of the Gaza Strip, five outposts in Lebanon, and 10% of the Syrian territory, including the highest peak in

the second highest peak in the Middle East, the peak of Khamon Ma on the Syrian side, which means that the Israeli forces will be there to take care of Hamas if it tries to rearm.

And this is the most important factor.

I'm one of those who think that Hamas, let's put aside Iran or Turkey or Qatar, Hamas are not that strong as they pretended themselves to be.

We built them.

We built them with fearing to act in Gaza, with tunneling Qatari money more than a billion dollars, with trying to end each and every military operation without entering Gaza city.

And maybe we could have ended it before, I don't know.

But once we did it, we can do it again.

And each and every citizen in Gaza knows it very well.

Nadav, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, what do they think they're signing up for with this deal?

Okay, so Qatar is getting this defense treaty.

It's getting, of course, the relationship it has with President.

To be clear,

treaty is a technical term.

I want to be careful.

It's not a treaty.

A treaty requires two-thirds vote by the Senate, which I don't think they would get.

They are getting an arrangement, a formal agreement, but short of a treaty.

Yes, and they're getting, most importantly, a promise from the president that they'll be defended.

They got a humiliating apology from Prime Minister Netanyahu, and it was done in order to make sure that everybody understand that the Prime Minister did what he needed to do, right?

And on this show, I said how warranted an attack on Hamas everywhere in the world is justified.

But not only did the White House make sure that he apologized, it also issued photos to show him apologizing, right?

And it was very important for the Qataris.

Also in town, in DC, which you know very well, Dan, probably bought it much better than I do.

Yeah.

But I also think it may have had an effect on Qatar being doubly, triply, quadruply helpful on pressuring Hamas.

Qatar was to supply the bride in this wedding, and they, as far as they are concerned, they supplied.

And then we go into Turkey.

Erdogan sees himself as a close friend with President Trump.

I think President Trump has never said anything nasty about Erdogan at all.

They see themselves in this kind of an alignment.

And Turkey has this problem with its air force.

We discussed it on the emergency episode.

It's important.

They're going to get those, probably there's F-35.

Now, Turkey is the most important factor in the change, in the shift with Hamas, because the Qataris were already pressuring.

The Qataris are pressuring to end this war more than a year now.

They understand this very clearly.

That's the reason they're mediating, okay, to begin with.

They want the Muslim Brotherhood notions to survive in the Middle East.

They understand they can't go against this president.

But it's Turkey that became suddenly essential here.

And a man who's very important, his name is not very known to the general public, and that name is Ibrahim Kaleem, the Turkey's head of security.

By the way, he has good relations also with Israel's security, the strongest man in Turkey after President Erdogan, probably.

He came into this with all his power and relationships, pressuring Hamas too.

Egypt sees the war as a source of destabilization within Egypt.

It was constantly fearing, and this is one of the reasons that relations have deteriorated in the last year, is that Israel will implement the Gazan Riviera vision and will push Palestinians at a certain point, a million Palestinians into the Sinai Desert, ruled, of course, by the Egyptians, into Egyptians' territory.

And for them, it was essential to see this war end, but also to be stakeholders in Gaza, as they always were.

And it's part of their status in the region as they used to be the United States' most important ally in the region.

Now, with all due respect to Saudi Arabia, it's Egypt that is much bigger.

It's also in Africa and in the Arab world and so forth and so forth.

So these are the motivations.

All right, Amit, I know you have to run to the Channel 12 TV studio to do your day job or your night job or whatever it is or your hobby.

Go do it because Arc Media is the main gig and the Channel 12 is a hobby.

Go do that and we'll catch up with you in the next couple of days.

Thank you.

Nadav, before I let you go, what is your sense of current political implications inside Israel of this deal?

First of all, it's very important for Netanyahu to present this as a victory.

There are achievements in this deal.

We talked about these achievements.

There are still question marks.

We're going to discover the question marks.

And my guess is that the pushback that I'm already seeing from the hardcore right in israel is going to expand mainly when we're going to see the names of the terrorists that are going to be released and i'm already seeing a lot of pushback there of people saying in israel's right

we are opening the door to another confrontation with hamas we're releasing prisoners again responsible for terror activities against israelis people who think israel should have never agreed to a deal in the first place and and they're pushing back, not attacking substantially the prime minister, not redrawing from government as to Smart Rich and Benquir, but this is going to expand.

The center and the center left in Israel is basically congratulating Israel for the deal.

He has their back, so to speak, but of course this is very short-lived.

This is just to get the deal done.

And it's because the hostage issue is an issue very much associated with the center in Israel.

And they want this maintained.

They want the deal to happen.

It doesn't mean that they're going to join the government the day after.

He doesn't want them to join the government because, as to Prime Minister Netanyahu, he needs to maintain his block towards the elections.

Now, a key question politically is...

Will Netanyahu see a bump in the polls?

We will know this in a matter of a few days, right?

By Tuesday, next week, we'll know if there is a real bump in the polls.

And he will need to make a very quick decision.

Then, is he going to monetize this and go to an election, a quick election campaign, let's say in February of 2026, or he's going to wait it out?

And that's a big decision.

Now, after the Iran war, many people thought, including myself, he's going to see a bump in the polls.

He didn't.

Personally, Netanyahu's condition in the polls has been improving gradually in the last year and a half.

It's been improving, but very slowly.

Bennett, for instance, still beats him in a few points in who is the best candidate for prime ministership, right?

However, his block hasn't been improving.

So the pro-Netanyahu block, according to the polls, has remained on anything between 48 to, let's say, 54 in a really good day, 54 seats out of 120.

So you're not going to assemble a government that way.

And the question is, will the block grow as a result of the hostages coming back home and the ceasefire in Gaza.

In other words, will the Likudniks that have left the party, by the way, before October 7, as a result of this government being so unpopular because of the judicial overhaul or what have you, will these Likudniks, and I can basically, I can identify them to you demographically speaking, they live in the center of Israel, they live in big cities,

they do not come from the Israeli periphery, they live in places like Holon, Ramat Gan, Batiam, Erzeliya.

These are the places that were the center, the historical centers of the Likud, or as we call it, the national liberal movement in Israel.

That's the name of the Likud.

Will they head back home?

It's about seven seats out of 120 to 10 seats of 120.

Netanyahu lost them.

He lost most of them before the war, by the way, but he lost them.

If he's getting them back, then he can absolutely win this.

As we have said many, many times, burying Netanyahu politically is a really bad idea.

I think that for him, and I said this on this show numerous times after the Iran war, against the backdrop of the international media, saying Netanyahu doesn't want a deal, Netanyahu wants to extend the war, Netanyahu wants the war to last forever.

No, no, it's much more nuanced to that.

Netanyahu wanted a deal that he would be able to present as a victory.

In other words, he wanted to win the war, like leaders do want.

And if he couldn't get the deal, he would have made the war last for however time.

Now, if he would pitch it, he would say, of course, this is what leadership does.

His rivals would say, it's very cynical and you're sacrificing the lives of our soldiers to get a good political result.

That would be the criticisms.

But for Netanyahu, he achieved here, at least with the 21 points of Trump, what he was aiming for.

And because of that, that's going to be a good pitch for him, politically speaking.

And the opposition in Israel will need to make up its mind for instance dan can they litigate an election campaign based on the failure of october 7 that's the biggest question politically for them tactically for the opposition for the opposition what are they saying yeah are they reminding people that october 7 was a disaster when people to some extent now maybe want to forget and i'm not talking about the majority of israel i'm just talking about the votes that they need the independence that they need in order to overthrow this prime minister What would be their best course of action, do you think?

Look, the danger, trying to make the election a referendum on October 7th, on the one hand, it's obvious that anytime a country suffers a national crisis, a national catastrophe, whoever is in charge bears responsibility and you can run just and if that leader is running for re-election, they're the incumbent.

They own it.

They own the successes.

They own the failures.

What I find problematic, potentially, and it's early days, and I haven't seen any data on this, so I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves.

What is challenging about that approach for this election is the more and more we learn, Nadav,

so many of the current actors in the Israeli political system, whether they're leaders of other parties who were previously in positions of prime minister in the case of Yer Lapid or Naftali Bennett or Defense Minister in the case of Naftali Bennett or Minister of Economy or they were, you know, in the case of Yer Lapid, or they were, you know, former generals who were in senior security positions, who are now leading parties like Yero Golan.

There was an element of complacency throughout the system.

And so the danger for the opposition in framing this as this is just a referendum on what happened on October 7th is it potentially opens up a big discussion about what led to October 7th and what were the forces at work and who all was involved in many of the decisions.

And once you start having that conversation, you start seeing a a lot of people around the table.

I'm not saying that's directionally where it would definitely go, but I just think that's the risk if that is the singular approach to the election is to just make it a referendum on October 7th.

So what should they do?

I don't know.

I really, I mean, I haven't thought that far ahead.

So you have conscription.

You have conscription.

You have the ultra-Orthodox.

I think the conscription issue is a powerful issue.

I actually think Bennett, in that sense, we're getting way into political speculation here, but that said, I think that we should do an entire episode on this.

But I think Bennett has been playing this quite cleverly, which is so far to my knowledge, and you're following it more closely than I am, he has not been hitting Netanyahu on the typical conventional, you know, traditional hits that the opposition and the left have been hitting Netanyahu with.

But he has been hitting him on the Haredi issue and the lack of shared sacrifice, shared burden across Israeli society.

And I think that issue opens up a lot of divisions in Israeli society that could accrue to whoever is running against this government, because I think it creates fractures within this government.

I think there are some on the right in this government who represent communities who are otherwise right-leaning or firmly on the right who are disgusted by the, I hear it, I hear them say it.

I've heard Amit, he's not on here to represent himself right now, but I've heard him talk about how members of the national religious community, in many Likud towns and communities, are disgusted by the disconnect and the disproportion between the sacrifices they and their families have made versus the Kharedim.

And I think that's a potentially big issue.

What do you think?

I agree.

Well, first of all, I think it takes time for people after war to process.

And I think we need to acknowledge that because, for instance, in 1973, right after the war, the Yom Kipp war, labor was in control, in power.

They went and did a quick elections, and they actually got a resounding victory after the 1973 war,

which was a failure, a failure of both politics and the army.

And the same happened in Israel in other occasions.

It took time until people actually, also leadership to grow.

What everybody is looking for in Israel right now is change.

Now, I don't know where this change is coming from.

And what I'm saying, they're looking for change.

I'm not, I just spent, you know, a few minutes saying, don't bury Netanyahu.

But what they're looking for is a changed Israel.

The general feeling is for the soldiers who are coming back home, for the reserve soldiers who have spent sometimes more than a year serving, leaving their family, risking their lives, for...

the families who have lost their loved ones so many so many that have lost their loved ones of course the people who are going to be post-traumatic for the rest of their lives.

And there are many, many thousands, probably dozens of thousands in Israel today.

And of course, we have this debt.

Dan, that we should remember, just economically speaking, Israel's stock market has been just booming in the last 24 hours, 48 hours.

The shekel is so strong.

We need to recognize that.

We need to be happy about that.

But we also should say, and I'm saying this after speaking with senior economists in in the last week: there's going to be a price tag for this war, and we're not paying yet.

We basically incur debt in order to fund it, and we need to pay.

So, all of this together means that people are talking about reform, reforming the Israeli society, using

this point in time in order to really move ahead.

And I think that whoever manages to somehow present a polished and reliable vision as to the future of Israel now, not only dwelling on the past, not only talking about who's responsible and who's guilty, but also giving an impression of moving forward, that's very essential.

And because of that, by the way, for Netanyahu, if he gets normalization of sorts in the next few months, either with Indonesia or with Saudi Arabia or something with Lebanon.

My guess is that this is going to be as important for his positioning of winning the next election as this D,

because that would mean that you're moving forward, not only trying to correct your past mistakes.

And he is responsible as prime minister.

You know, I'm not talking about politically or anything.

You know, that responsibility cannot be waived, right?

Yeah, I'll just add on that.

My sense is Israeli voters who want change and who are dispirited by at least the last Kaprin Natanyahu years, they still give him credit to some degree for being able to work with the U.S.

on the Iran.

And obviously, this deal.

I mean, there's a sense that he does have talents and capabilities geopolitically, internationally, to make things happen that some other Israeli leaders may not have.

And to the extent that he can remind them of that and then channel that into this is how we get the Saudi deal done, right?

I'm the guy now to deploy these talents to get the Saudi deal done, normalization, full integration of the Middle East.

I mean, whether he says he tries to do that before an election, whether he tries to run on that, that he runs on, I'm the guy to get us there.

And then the third scenario, and again, we've gotten way too down the rabbit hole.

We should dedicate a whole episode, as I said, is there's also this binary situation.

We were talking about in binary terms, but there's also this hybrid situation where you could have Netanyahu taking his 54 seats and forming some kind of rotating premiership and some kind of coalition government where...

Oh, my God.

Please, no, no.

Remember, you remember, I think that's going to happen.

That would be my, if I had to make, you said, you know, you would bet on him getting elected.

To me, the most likely scenario is that.

No, I didn't say that.

I didn't say that I'm betting that he's going to get relevant.

Okay, not that you're betting.

Not that you're betting, but if someone were betting.

All right, we got to wrap.

Of course, as someone who listens to me, you probably know that I'm praying each evening, you know, before I go to sleep that he'll be re-elected.

Everybody knows this about me.

No, but I'm not betting on anyone in the Israeli elections.

You're not literally betting.

You're speculating.

Okay, we're going to leave it there.

I want to say something else that is important today because of the responses that we're getting for the emergency episode.

And I think that's important.

And that's for me to say, and I'm saying this as an Israeli.

I think that after recognizing the sacrifices made and the efforts made, I need also to acknowledge the support that

the people listening to this podcast, but the Jewish community, not only in the United States, but around the world, has given to Israelis since the beginning of the war.

I cannot think about anything more meaningful as far as Jewish peoplehood, as what has happened right after Israel was attacked in October 7.

The sheer investment of time, of money, and mostly of sentiment by Jewish communities around the world has been so touching.

And when Israelis felt that they are completely alone, it was you, Dan, you, and the people like you that have been there with Israel.

And I find this life-changing.

It's life-changing for me.

It changed my life, not only because I was on this show and I'm speaking with Jewish communities across this country, not only in this country.

It changed my life in the way that I perceive the Jewish people, in a way that I perceive the diaspora, in a way of what I should explain to the Israelis about the Jewish diaspora and specifically the Jewish community in the United States.

But people have given so much of themselves, have devoted so much of their intensity, of their life energy to think

about people living thousands of miles away solely because we are one people.

And in that regard, you know, history will tell us if this war has made us stronger from within in Israel.

I do hope so.

I believe so, as to the Israeli society.

But it has definitely made the Jewish people stronger in the sense of our interconnections.

And it's very important for the future, not only for times of crisis like the one that we have experienced in the last two years that isn't completely over

i'll just add to that i'm very moved by that michal bitton the jewish educator who i quoted in the my state of world jury address shit this incredible line because what you're describing is peoplehood right that's what you're describing the daff which i think diaspora jews had a sense and are educated on the notion of jewish peoplehood i've always thought that israelis before october 7th israelis never the whole notion of there's israel there's israelis but they didn't feel this like sense of this cohesiveness of the Jewish people,

this cohesiveness, that interconnectivity with the diaspora in a way that they felt after October 7th for all the reasons you're saying.

And what Michael Biton said is, she said, that pain you're feeling, and she was speaking to the diaspora, that pain you're feeling after October 7th, right?

This pain we all in the diaspora were feeling, that pain you're feeling is peoplehood.

That's what that pain is.

And I think what you're saying, Nadav, is

the support you're feeling and the sense that you know the diaspora has Israel's back, that too,

that support you're feeling, that's peoplehood.

And I think it's being felt and deepened in both directions.

And I agree with you.

Maybe, you know, one blessing out of all of this is that it endures.

God willing.

We'll be in touch soon.

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 Marianne 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 Senor.

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