Emergency Episode: DEAL! - with Nadav Eyal

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The war, according to all the sources that I'm speaking with in Washington, D.C., in Jerusalem, and in Arab capitals, this war after two years is finalizing.

It's coming to an end.

What we are seeing in front of our eyes is history.

history.

It's 9 p.m.

on Wednesday, October 8th here in New York City as many diaspora Jews come out of Yom Tov.

It is 4 a.m.

on Thursday, October 9th in Israel as we all are learning more and more details about an end-of-war ceasefire slash hostage release deal.

To jump into all of this, I'm joined by Arc Media contributor Nadav Ayel.

We will be having a longer conversation that we'll be releasing tomorrow, but we just wanted to get Nadav's quick news gathering, empty out his notebook, and provide us some analysis on what is going on, what has actually been agreed to.

Nadav, thanks for being here.

Thanks, Dan.

Let me just say, really, from the bottom of my heart, and I think I speak for you too:

Yanu,

the war, according to all the sources that I'm speaking with in Washington, D.C., in Jerusalem, and in Arab capitals, this war after two years

is finalizing.

It's coming to an end.

It's true that this is just the first phase, and one should always be cautiously pessimistic in the Middle East.

But what we are seeing in front of our eyes is history.

The details coming out from Sha'Ama Sheikh.

Before that, Nadav, I do want to say, just for our non-Jewish listeners, of which we have many, the Hebrew blessing, the Hebrew prayer you just recited, Shehech Yi Anuvikimanu Vihigiyanu Lazmanazeh, the translation, the rough translation is thanking God for bringing us to this moment.

And it is a blessing we often say on various holidays.

It is, especially in my family, we say whenever, whether it's a chag or whether it's a Shabbat or whatever,

we recite recite it whenever we have extended family together and we have everybody in one place and we're just saying that we're healthy, that we're together.

And I will tell you, I wasn't planning to say this.

You saying the Shehechianu prayer just triggered for me how many times over the last two years during Jewish holidays, during Friday night Shabbat dinners, whenever you do these blessings and these prayers, you...

there's an element of happiness and

of festivity and hopefulness.

And there's always an element of pause because we've all been for the last two years just constantly balancing this living, modeling for our children.

You've been to my home,

Nadav,

with your family.

You have young children.

I have children, teenagers.

You want to model for them that you're one step forward and we are an enduring and robust and forward-looking

people and community.

And yet there's always this element, what can you do?

What should you say?

How should you acknowledge this?

We were were just living with this

with this weight of the of the suffering of these of these people in the dungeons of gaza and their families in israel so as you were saying she

was like wow maybe we'll be able to to kind of really say it now

i think that it's it's fine to be happy now uh because what i'm seeing In the people I'm speaking with tonight in Israel, or actually it's morning,

are just

really joyful scenes of the parents, of the family members.

I shiver when I talk about this.

Just

seeing the videos

of them hearing President Trump announcing that all of them, all the live hostages are coming back home.

And it's going to happen during this weekend, Dan.

So just, as I said in the introduction, empty your notebook here.

Like, just tell me what you know, just details of the deal.

So, the basis for this deal is the Trump 21 point plan.

This is the basis for the deal.

But, what they did very cleverly in Shama Sheikh, with the teams there, with Jared Kushner there, with Steve Witkoff there, the Qataris, some representation of the Turkish Republic, and of course the Egyptians that were hosting everyone, the Israeli delegation, is that they decided that they're not going to agree about everything as to the final status of Gaza.

They're just going to agree about the first phase.

And there you have specific questions that I'm going to raise and answer.

First of all, do we agree with the overreaching principle set by President Trump that we spoke about when I said a few days ago that he was expanding the framework of possibilities as leadership, good leadership knows to do, how to do, great leadership knows how to do, of releasing all the hostages at once.

Something that if you would have told me, Dan, a month ago or two months ago that's going to happen, I would have said, as far as I know, it's a non-starter in the Middle East right now.

It was a non-starter.

I will say just on that, it got to a point, as you know this, Nadav, over the last three or four months, many guests we had on, and I can rattle off their names, who I completely respect and actually more or less agreed with on this point.

When we would talk about the hostages, and I would say, I mean, I used to think this in the recesses of my imagination, but then we would just talk about it outside of our imagination, you know, in the context of a conversation.

Do you think Israel will get all the hostages back ever?

And no, they said, obviously, we'll try.

Obviously, we'll hope.

Obviously, we'll do everything we can.

And they simply made this point that if you're Hamas, there's no way you give all the hostages back because at the end of the day, that is Hamas's only currency.

That is their only leverage.

And if they want to stay in the fight,

even if they give some more hostage back, they're always hang on to some.

So when you say you didn't, I mean, that was the, I mean, if you just thought like how Hamas thinks, then you wouldn't think any other way.

Yeah, we're going to talk about that.

Let's delve into what was happening in Hamas, because I'm speaking with intelligence sources all through the night to start to understand what happened happened here.

But as to the overreaching principle of releasing all of them at once, it was accepted.

So, when this was accepted, everything became really easy.

And if you think about when Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff actually landed in Sharmashekh and how much time it took them to get an agreement, you know, I don't think they even needed to sleep one night in the hotel before they managed to get this agreement done.

So, all the live hostages are coming back home.

As to the Israeli bodies held by Hamas, the dead hostages that Hamas either murdered or they kidnapped their bodies from the Noba festival or from the kibbutzim in the southern parts of Israel.

There was an argument made by Hamas negotiators there that they're buried around the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip is devastated.

It might take time to get some of them.

They cannot commit to getting all the bodies of the Israelis, and they need some time.

And the agreement is that it will begin, retrieving those bodies will begin at once, but it doesn't need to end in 72 hours.

And you can absolutely interpret then that they might use this as leverage.

They might use the bodies of the Israelis that were murdered by them as leverage.

A second issue is the Palestinian prisoners.

So the Trump plan said

that

250

prisoners that have been sentenced for life in prison, sometimes consecutive life prison sentences for murdering, responsible, being responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis, that they're going to

you know, be released.

And they're going to be released with another number of Palestinian prisoners that was about 1,000, but I think it's going to be more at the final agreement in Shamasheikh, which are not serving life sentences.

Now, this is a big issue, and I'm going to give you the news flash.

As far as I know right now, according to senior Israeli sources, Marwan Baraghuti and Ahmed Sadat are not going to be released from Israeli jails.

Wow.

Israel did not surrender these names, or at least this is the brief as we are making this report that's coming from both security sources and I would say high-ranking

official sources in Israel.

They're not going to be released.

And that's that's Hamas tried, and Israel just was tug in on it.

Let's see what are the names.

So, one of the names that I'm worried about, which we discussed earlier, is Ibrahim Hamid.

Yeah, but who's

explain who he is?

Is an arch terrorist who security sources define to me as someone who's double Yaqya Sinwar or

three times Yaqya Sinwar, like the leader of Hamas that Israel released in the Shali deal a few years back that gave the orders for the October 7 and planned the October 7 attack.

So Hamid was the head of the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank, was responsible for dozens of terror attacks and the biggest suicide attacks of the second Intifada led by Hamas.

This is a very dangerous man and Israel was chasing him in the West Bank under its own control for years until the Shin Bet and the IDF managed to arrest him.

I still don't know if Hamed is going to be released.

One source has told me he is not being released.

I have not verified it.

I do hope he won't.

But this is just an example.

These are going to be complicated dates in Israel.

They agreed in principle as to the names.

That's another section of the problems we needed to solve.

Here's another problem.

So the White House talked about the first Israeli redrawal.

And what Hamas said is it's not enough.

And that map that was published by the White House was not that specific.

It didn't contain

the exact points of redrawal around Gaza City and at these exact places.

They compromised.

Israel is going to redraw between 200 meters to 600 meters more than the original yellow line published by the Trump plan, the 21 points.

And that line is all around the, it's all around the perimeter of Gaza, right?

I mean, it's at every border.

No, I think about this as a few circles, right?

The first circle is the first line of redrawal.

Maybe we'll show it.

So our views will be able to show it.

We'll ask our producer, Elan, to put it when we're editing this.

But basically, think about this as a bunch of circles.

The first circle is the first line of redrawal, and Hamas just got between 200 and 600 meters more of the area that the IDF is going to be pulled out from.

And as to that area, this is meaningful for Hamas to present this as a more important redrawal.

So that was the compromise.

However, Israel is going to still control after the live hostages are released 53%

of the Gaza Strip exactly, according to my defense sources.

And that's meaningful.

I guarantee you that Netanyahu or Netanyahu's allies are going to say, look at this, we're still controlling the majority.

of the Gaza Strip and all the live hostages have just been released.

And that's going to be a big achievement for Netanyahu in that regard.

Now,

after

the deceased Israelis, the murdered Israeli bodies are returned, there will be more withdrawals.

So, this is a sort of a compromise there, then,

that actually there will be needed to be more withdrawals in order to release everyone, including the dead bodies of the murdered Israelis.

So, this is the kind of compromise that was made there.

So, we have the borders of the withdrawal.

We have the Palestinian prisoners, and we have the Israeli hostages released at once.

And we have a general agreement that the war has ended with the guarantee of the President of the United States.

This is

phase one of the deal.

So now it's going to get more complicated.

And the reason it's going to get more complicated is that they're going to discuss the future of Gaza.

And I have less details as to that.

I can, for instance, tell you, Dan, that Qatar is going to be involved with the rebuilding of Gaza.

This is part of, if not of the formal agreement, it's part of the more importantly of the record agreements behind the scene, written and unwritten.

So Qatar is going to play a role.

One of the questions is, what's going to happen as to the decommissioning of weapons?

Now, I'm really trying very hard to get the phrasing there.

And I'm sorry, it's...

Some of my sources went to sleep.

They had a really long day.

The nerve.

I'm still texting them angry messages.

How dare you go to sleep in a night night like this?

You know, I'm going to go and dance in the show, and I need to know everything now.

A big question is: Arab sources are maintaining that Hamas

didn't speak about decommissioning of weapons

in relation to this agreement, but freezing the weapons.

I don't know what it means freezing the weapons.

And I don't know if it's just Hamas disinformation.

But what they're saying is that there is a formula there is that somehow the weapons would not be held by Hamas, by a different factor, maybe a Palestinian police.

Here's the bottom line.

If the IDF is out of Gaza, nobody effectively will be able to collect light weapons, and by light I mean AR-15, Kalachnikov's grenades, the type of weapons that Hamas likes to use, to collect them effectively house to house.

All the sources I'm speaking with in Israel are saying, look, we're having a hard time to do this in the West Bank that we controlled for 58 years.

It's going to be a problem to convince the Arab force, the international stabilization force in Gaza to do that.

It's not about only that.

It's about, for instance, their rocket

launching capabilities, what's left of their industry to produce these rockets.

It's about their tunnels down.

That's really important.

And it's part of the 21 points of President Trump to make sure that they don't start building

into the ground again.

And it's also about future questions.

What happens if the IDF sees, according to its own intelligence, that they're starting to develop something, that there is a new unit of Hamas that they're arming, that they're planning?

What does the IDF do?

with this international slash Arab force that is in the Gaza Strip.

how is it actually maintained?

And we don't know.

We don't know how this entire

apparatus is going to work within the Gaza Strip.

We do know, and I think I'm underlining this because Hamas will present this as a victory.

This agreement is a huge achievement for Israel.

And maybe we can go into the reasons exactly.

Well, just to say, Hamas will present this as a victory.

I mean, I'm just looking at their statement here.

I don't know if you saw the statement they issued, but

the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, announces that an agreement has been reached to end the war in Gaza, ensure the withdrawal of the occupation forces, allow the entry of humanitarian aid, and implement a prisoner exchange.

We highly appreciate the efforts of our brothers and mediators in Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey.

It goes on and on.

We call upon President Trump and all Arab, Islamic, and international parties to compel the occupation government to fully implement all provisions of the agreement and to prevent it from evading or delaying the commitments.

So we salute our, it goes on, we salute our great people in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and throughout the homeland and the diaspora, who have demonstrated, it goes on.

So

this is the language of a victor, not the language of someone who is surrendering.

No, and I want to say something really important here.

And I'm going to say something nuanced, but it's very important.

After speaking with those intelligence sources, One of these sources told me, I really hope that the other Israeli sources you spoke with didn't say, oh, oh we managed to humiliate hamas hamas is on their knees hamas is completely beaten and i told that source you know what nobody told me that and he said i'm happy because it's not the case it's not how they think about this they were cornered they were weakened they had

to agree to Hamas.

They had to agree to an agreement they would have never agreed to a year ago.

And that agreement says that the IDF stays in Gaza, the hostages walk back home, and their legitimacy to hold arms in the Gaza Strip has been to some extent, we still don't know exactly, has been fractured.

People are going to play this

from the government side.

I'm not weighing in politically here, right?

We're not talking here about legacies.

I'm just talking about plainly what has happened here.

So they have been cornered, they have been weakened, they are bankrupt.

All of their military commanders in Gaza, besides three top military commanders, are dead, every single one of them.

And those that remained alive, by the way, are more moderate.

Haddad, for instance, who's very powerful in Gaza right now, he's much more of a pragmatist than Muhammad Sinwar that Israel eliminated, the brother of Yaqir Sinwar.

They've been attacked in Qatar, right?

Suddenly, their leadership abroad felt that it's not immune anymore.

Qatar is also seeing that.

So a lot of things happened here that contributed to Hamas agreeing to stuff they wouldn't have agreed before.

And Nadav, I know you and I have argued about this over the last several months, and I'm not saying this was a singular factor, but I continue to believe that the Israeli decision to plow ahead into Gaza City

and convey to Hamas that they could not be dissuaded.

The Israeli government was not going to back down.

And it was clear, I think at some point, that Trump was backing the Israeli, the Netanyahu, backing the government into Gaza City.

So they normally thought there's a U.S.

administration who will reign them in, or there's the international community who will reign in Israel.

And suddenly, the international community looked, let's just say, not capable of reigning in Israel.

No, no, it's not that it was even worse than that.

They were cornered, they were weakened.

I completely agree that the operation in Gaza city

put a lot of pressure on Hamas.

And I more than agree that the credit goes to the fact that America saw that it needs to pressure, President Trump saw that it needs to pressure Hamas into an agreement.

However, after I said all this,

what my sources are speaking about is the notion of strategic patience in Arabic, the difference between two notions of patience.

One is a word that describes short-term patience, and the other one is a strategic patience idea.

And the way that Hamas is thinking about this is we have survived.

Gaza will be controlled by the Palestinians, not by an international mandate.

We will be able to hide some of our weapons, maybe navigate behind the scenes.

And we have always wanted,

say, the Hamas will say, to end the war for all the hostages.

Hamas has said that on the record

with the prisoners' deal.

Now, one of the reasons that October 7 happened was to release the prisoners, and they're basically emptying the Israeli jail system from the total majority, like more than 90%

of those life-sentenced Palestinians, arch terrorists.

And they have managed to get to an agreement that, as far as they're concerned, is a better result than the Islamic Republic of Iran and a better result, maybe, of Hezbollah, that is now pressured pressured to be disarmed in Lebanon.

After I said all this, I want to say

the obvious where we began then.

This is a big achievement to Israel after a terrible, terrible war.

And the people that we should remember when we are recording this and remember forever is

466 IDF soldiers who have died, who have sacrificed their life in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli maneuver in the Gaza Strip.

Since the beginning of the war, 913 have died.

And the difference is, of course, those who have died in October 7, October 8, October 9, fighting terrorists within the sovereign state of Israel.

But 466 IDF soldiers with their families, universes just collapsing, losing their loved ones, what did they die for?

What did they sacrifice their lives for?

And the answer is so clear.

It's the most common denominator of the Israeli society, and I think the international recognition of the justice of Israel's war to the extent that there is such a recognition.

They have sacrificed their life first and foremost to get their countrymen and women back home from the dungeons of Hamas.

So Israel has sacrificed for every one of these live hostages that are going to return back home, more than 20 soldiers.

For me,

the fact that Israel would do everything, the IDF would do everything to get back those hostages is really what counts and is so important.

We have heard so much about the need for reconciliation and healing within the Israeli society and ending this war, and how this could never happen if the hostages are not back home.

And many people who said it's impossible, it's never going to happen.

It's impossible, as you said, Dan.

For me, as an Israeli, I'm so appreciative first and foremost of these families that have sacrificed everything to get Henri Mehran back home to his daughters, Roni and Alma,

who he has not seen for two years now, and his wife, Lishi.

And they hear about a father that they haven't seen for two years.

But I'm very appreciative to the president and to the White House for doing that.

I don't think we would have been talking today if this would have been another president or if this president would have been as resolved as he was to get the hostages back home.

That was beautifully said, Nadav.

We're going to talk a lot over the next couple of days, which is fitting because you have been one of the important voices and co-narrators of these last couple of years with me on this podcast.

So we will be picking up over the next few days, including tomorrow.

So we are going to release this episode.

We just wanted to get, you had some reporting that we wanted to get out and some analysis, and we will have much more.

I think we're picking back up tomorrow with Amit as well.

And so I'll see you again tomorrow morning.

But until then, thank you for doing this.

And I will just say I totally appreciate and relate to your elation.

And yet I'm still, I don't want to say I'll believe it when I see it because I believe it, but I really want to see it.

So, thank you.

Absolutely.

Dan, thank you so much.

That's our show for today.

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