The Israeli Right’s Plan to Carve Up Gaza

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Speaker 2 We're a few weeks into the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. It's a deal that has already been troubled by violence, but so far it is holding.

Speaker 2 If you're listening to that deal being talked about in the U.S., you're hearing it spoken about one way.

Speaker 3 So, this long and difficult war has now ended. You know, some people say 3,000 years, some people say 500 years, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 It's

Speaker 3 the granddaddy of them all.

Speaker 2 But when I read the Israeli press, I'm hearing and seeing something very different.

Speaker 2 In America, the dominant position on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is still a belief, a hope, and the two-state solution. In Israel, it's just not.

Speaker 2 Israeli politics is well to the right of where America admits it is, where America even, I think, often realizes it is.

Speaker 2 One of my intentions in the way we have covered this conflict since October 7th is to not present either an Israel or a Palestinian politics that is different from the one that actually exists.

Speaker 2 And so I wanted to talk to someone about this deal who represented more the way the Israeli government and the forms of politics that are in power in Israel see it.

Speaker 2 Amit Sagal is the chief political analyst for Channel 12 in Israel. He is a political columnist there.
He is the author of the newsletter, It's Noon in Israel.

Speaker 2 and of a new book recently published in English, A Call at 4 a.m., 13 Prime Ministers and the Crucial decisions that shaped Israeli politics.

Speaker 2 He's known to be quite close to the Netanyahu government, and I think speaks with strong sourcing among both them and quite a bit of their opposition.

Speaker 2 Sagal, as well, to my right, there are things I think you'll hear him say that many people listening to this will not like.

Speaker 2 But in order to understand this conflict, you have to take seriously where the Israeli public actually is on it and how the government that is in power in Israel and the coalition that might take power in in Israel.

Speaker 2 See it. As always, my email is reclined show at nytimes.com.

Speaker 2 Amit Segel. Welcome to the show.
Hi, Azra. I wanted to start with the state of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Speaker 2 How do you understand

Speaker 2 what was agreed to? Well, it was something quite minor. I'm quite skeptical about the chance of having peace, the biggest peace in 3,000 years or something like this.

Speaker 2 I think it was a ceasefire based on a prisoner swap deal, and

Speaker 2 this is it. Now,

Speaker 2 it's not something small in terms of the hostages, and it was a huge question and the warfare, but it does not end the war between Israel and Hamas.

Speaker 2 It just, it's like pressing the pause button when Israel still controls 53% of Gaza Strip and Hamas is in 47%,

Speaker 2 and there is a plan, pledge, you name it, by President Trump to actually unroot Hamas one way or the other.

Speaker 2 Now, Israel is quite skeptical about, I don't know, Hamas just decide to demilitarize themselves, but let's give peace a chance. How did Netanyahu sell it to his own coalition?

Speaker 2 Well, I guess he

Speaker 2 doesn't mention the term total victory anymore, but he says we got the hostages back, which 80%, 90% of the public wanted, and we actually stay in Gaza Strip and we don't withdraw from Gaza as long as Hamas is not demilitarized and dismantled.

Speaker 2 So it's like saying there were three

Speaker 2 goals for the war. Releasing all the hostages, Czech.

Speaker 2 Dismantling Hamas as an army, Czech.

Speaker 2 demilitarizing Gaza Strip and removing Hamas from Gaza.

Speaker 2 It has not happened yet, but unlike all the offers made by the Biden administration and by many Arab countries, the war does not end when Israel is out of Gaza and Hamas is still there.

Speaker 2 It's where Israel is still in Gaza, and there is an agreement that Israel will be there as long as Hamas is not demilitarized. So Israel is still in half of Gaza, and we got all the hostages.

Speaker 2 And this this is the most important thing.

Speaker 2 Hamas was not alone in

Speaker 2 this war. Qatar supported it and Turkey supported it.

Speaker 2 And the fact that Qatar and Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, and even the Palestinian Authority are agreeing to a plan according to which Hamas is to be demilitarized means something which didn't exist before.

Speaker 2 There has been a lot of focus in American coverage of the deal on what gets called phase two, which is this demilitarized Hamas and the possibilities of international operations and a new Gaza.

Speaker 2 And you wrote that there is a view that Israel's unstated goal is to avoid moving forward with the next complicated and mostly fantastical phase, Arab soldiers policing Hamas with the heavy price of idea of withdrawals from the Gaza Strip, as well as a future, however unlikely, return of the Palestinian Authority to the area.

Speaker 2 If Israel's unstated goal is to not move forward to the

Speaker 2 form of settlement or peace envisioned in that deal, what is the goal?

Speaker 2 Everyone would wish that Hamas would be demilitarized with, you know, by outsourcing.

Speaker 2 No one wants Israeli soldiers to die at the pace of two a week or five a week in order to have a mission that can be done otherwise.

Speaker 2 It's just the pessimism about the option that Hamas would see, I don't know, two Emirati battalions and all of a sudden would give each and every Kalachnikov rifle, for instance.

Speaker 2 So it's about what I call in the Middle East cautious pessimism. So from the highest possible American sources I spoke to this week, they don't think it's feasible.

Speaker 2 What they do see is a future in which, in five years from now, in the area controlled by Israel, behind what we call now the yellow line, there would be a new Rafah. The yellow line in Gaza.

Speaker 2 In Gaza, not the green line in the west.

Speaker 2 Exactly. The Israeli line, okay? It's the Israeli-controlled area.
In this area, there would be a recovery.

Speaker 2 Rafah would be rebuilt as a city funded by the Emiratis with a de-radicalized education system and under Israel's security supervision.

Speaker 2 So what you said is that you now envision a two-state solution, but it is a two-state solution inside the Gaza Strip. Right.
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 I mean that since I don't believe in the idea that Hamas is something that took over Gaza out of the will of two million Palestinians, innocent Palestinians, I don't see any way in which Hamas can be unrooted from Gaza.

Speaker 2 As long as there are in Gaza young males between the age of 17 to 35

Speaker 2 and as many Kalachnikov as one can see,

Speaker 2 more than meets the eye, there will be Hamas in Gaza. And therefore, the only way to actually create something else is in the 53%

Speaker 2 that Israel controls militarily.

Speaker 2 And then if you build there the new Raf, an Emirati-funded, Saudi-funded, I hope not Qatari-funded city in which people have no weapons and there is an efficient police force, no tunnels, no kalachnikovs, no hatred, then you can see a future.

Speaker 2 This would be the moderate Gaza. And the other Gaza would be the Gaza that lies in ruins in Gaza city and the refugee camps in central Gaza.

Speaker 2 When I've heard this vision, it seems extraordinarily, putting aside a lot of questions about it, very hard to administer. Right.

Speaker 2 Is there movement between the people in the two Gazas that you're describing here?

Speaker 2 Just think about, it's not exactly the same, East Berlin and West Berlin.

Speaker 2 Before the war in 1961, you could actually move through, but if you want to go to the so-called Israeli side or the American side, I would call it, okay, American Emirati side, you have to go

Speaker 2 without your weapon

Speaker 2 and without being part of Hamas.

Speaker 2 But once you are there, you're going to run security vetting on people somehow. Yes, exactly.
And then I guess that then the market forces would actually determine the future of Gaza.

Speaker 2 Because where do you want to live? In the ruins of Gaza, where no one pays for recovery and rebuilding, etc., or in the new Gaza, heavily funded, more not democratic, but more Western than the other.

Speaker 2 There is a future for Gaza. You also say in that quote I read that

Speaker 2 Israeli society does not want to go to the point where the Palestinian Authority is ruling in Gaza.

Speaker 2 After 32 years of having failed attempts to foster the Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace, I would say that 90...

Speaker 2 92% of the Israeli public does not believe in the idea of the Palestinian Authority.

Speaker 2 Because Because as long as its education system poisons the minds of generation after generation of young Palestinians for anti-Semitism, hatred towards Jews, anti-Western sentiment, people don't see any option of prosperity and peace and new Middle East with this Palestinian Authority.

Speaker 2 By the way, Israel is not the only one to to have a strong disbelief in this option. Them Iratis and the Saudis too do not really believe in this.

Speaker 2 That's why they want a reformed Palestinian authority. But to be honest, I think that a Palestinian authority that does not educate its youngsters, its pupils for hatred and does not pay for slay

Speaker 2 is not a Palestinian authority. I don't see it happening in this generation or two to come.

Speaker 2 I think it's fair to say that most of the players in the region, and at this point, the United States have not been confident in the Palestinian Authority.

Speaker 2 I was actually surprised to see in Trump's plan an end state in which the Palestinian Authority was believed to be the sort of final governing regime.

Speaker 2 But if you don't believe in that, if Israelis don't believe in that, then is there any assumed future in which there's Palestinian self-determination, or is this really forever under Israeli control?

Speaker 2 Okay, so I think you can identify two streams within the Israeli right wing. One,

Speaker 2 Smotrich and Ben Gavir do not believe in a Palestinian state, even the Palestinians were to be Americans or Swedish, okay?

Speaker 2 This is the part of the right wing that said we want annexation, we want settlements in Gaza Strip, and we want mass emigration.

Speaker 2 I don't think that the vast majority of Israel is there. The vast majority of the lion's share of even the right wing believes in Netanyahu and Dermer perception that says

Speaker 2 we actually have given three symbolic concessions to President Trump. A future authority, a reformed Palestinian authority,

Speaker 2 a future participation of this reformed Palestinian authority inside Gaza, and more important than this, the image in the future of a reformed, united

Speaker 2 West Bank and Gaza altogether. Now, Israel opposed it for many, many years under Netanyahu.
What's the difference?

Speaker 2 The difference now is that, according to Netanyahu and Dermer, if it's going to be reunited. Ron Dermer, his very close aid.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 The joke says in Israel that Netanyahu is the closest person to Ron Dermer.

Speaker 2 So anyway, now it's not that the West Bank is going to take over Gaza, but that a reformed, demilitarized, de-radicalized Gaza is going to take over Judea and Samaria, because according to the Emirati plan, for instance, it's not only that they are about to change the education system in Gaza, but in Ramada as well.

Speaker 2 I live 20 minutes from schools in which children are taught that you should kill as many Zionist pigs as possible, for instance.

Speaker 2 You can't have peace with generation after generation taught on these principles. Aaron Ross Powell,

Speaker 2 you describe the ceasefire deal as giving a number of symbolic concessions to the Trump administration. And they're based on these benchmarks, right?

Speaker 2 So they could be more or less symbolic, depending on how things play out. Do you think the understanding of this deal?

Speaker 2 is the same for the Trump administration and for the Netanyahu government. Do you think they're aligned on what it will mean for benchmarks to be met or not met?

Speaker 2 Or do you think that there is a possibility of divergence in one way or the other on two sides?

Speaker 2 You know, usually in diplomacy, you have debates behind closed doors, and in the news conference, you try to actually marginalize it. Here, it's exactly the other way around.

Speaker 2 In order to sell the plan for the Arab world, Trump speaks mainly about ending the war rather than eliminating Hamas.

Speaker 2 However, the main advantage of this plan is that President Trump articulated for at least five or six times since the ceasefire has begun that between the two goals of the plan, ending the war and eliminating Hamas, he prefers eliminating Hamas.

Speaker 2 That's why he keeps saying that if Hamas does not demilitarize, Israel would crush him if I only give the world, as Trump said.

Speaker 2 And that's why I'm quite confident that the number one strategic asset of this ceasefire plan, that Hamas can no longer rule Gaza, is there to stay.

Speaker 2 And as long as Trump is the president, I don't see, to be honest, any option in which this Hamas presence gets legitimacy.

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Speaker 2 you're putting a lot of weight in this conversation in your your vision here I remember this was actually true the last time we spoke to

Speaker 2 on

Speaker 2 the power a reconstructed education system could have for the future of how Palestinians see Israelis I think that creates two questions one is why you believe it is the education system as opposed to sort of lived experience checkpoints, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Obviously, in Gaza, huge numbers of people have now lost relatives, lost friends, seen their homes destroyed. Perhaps it was a bad idea to massacre Jews.
It was a bad idea to massacre Jews.

Speaker 2 We're not disagreeing on that. And it was an immoral idea, right? Not just a strategically bad idea.

Speaker 2 But it's a lot of work for an education system to do. So that's one thing.
But also, how is this work done?

Speaker 2 I know you're thinking of it being based on what's been done in the UAE, maybe it's overseen by the UAE,

Speaker 2 but what is being imagined here? Okay, so it's not only education, it's not only the pupils, but it's both the media. I'll give an example.

Speaker 2 Al Jazeera, if you watch Al Jazeera, all of a sudden you see the wind change.

Speaker 2 I suspect that this is the Qatari gift for this wedding between Israel and President Trump, that Hamas would no longer have this media branch named Al Jazeera to fuel hatred all over the Middle East.

Speaker 2 So it's media, it's education. I would compare it not to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but to Japan following World War II or Germany.
However, it is not the case. Why?

Speaker 2 Because there was only one Japanese state. The Middle East is still full with Arabic speaker, Muslim countries that hate Israel.
So even if you live in reformed Gaza and educated on Western values,

Speaker 2 you can still follow influencers on TikTok that hate Israel. That's why I'm more cautious.
But when I see in the UAE and Saudi Arabia how it succeeded, I'm more optimistic.

Speaker 2 Now, yes, the ruins in Gaza might be a bad service for living side by side

Speaker 2 in harmony with the Israelis, but it can have exactly the other effect. I'll give you an example.
I visited Ramallah a few weeks ago. in the biggest mall.

Speaker 2 If I send you the pictures, you won't believe it's in Ramallah. You would say to me, you would tell me it's in Abu Dhabi or in, I don't know, Cincinnati.
It's better than every mall I saw in Israel.

Speaker 2 I walked there with Yamulka. No one told me anything.
And Ramallah was a city that, I don't know, 20 years ago, soldiers were lynched there.

Speaker 2 So things change, and you can change them more rapidly as long as you recognize the problem.

Speaker 2 Is there a view eventually?

Speaker 2 even just a pragmatic view on the second, you know, non-messianic stream of Israeli society, that in the long run, Gaza and the West Bank should have self-determination of some sort from Palestinian government.

Speaker 2 The government should be Palestinian, even if it is not today's PA,

Speaker 2 today's Hamas, or is the view that either it will be in Israeli control, right?

Speaker 2 We've moved back to occupation, or that it will be under some kind of Arab consortium, or I've seen people talk about the Jordanians, or obviously you're talking about the UAE, and they're a big player in this, that there is some other alternative.

Speaker 2 50 years from now, five years from now? Let's say 10 years from now. Okay, so here is the main debate between the Israeli median voter and the center left in the US.

Speaker 2 The center left in the US says we should

Speaker 2 try and give Palestinians a state because that's how people are used to live.

Speaker 2 And Israelis say we gave them a state. Gaza was a state.
This was the outcome. Because when Israel evacuated the settlements in 2005, unilaterally,

Speaker 2 it actually abandoned Gaza. And Israelis were under the impression that if you build a big wall, you can forget about Gaza.
And the outcome was horrifying for Israelis.

Speaker 2 The Palestinian Authority was something like 60% stake, right? It failed in the second Intifada with 1,200 casualties over five years.

Speaker 2 And when we gave them a state in Gaza, we got 1,200 casualties in five hours. So that's why Israelis don't even want to talk about it now.

Speaker 2 If you speak about 10 years from now, I guess we'll see something closer to,

Speaker 2 you know what, I feel easier to speak about 20 years from now because this is the time frame for raising a new generation. I would say that you'll have 60, 70%

Speaker 2 statehood with reformed entity. I don't want to call it the Palestinian Authority, but something like this, living really side by side in peace with Israel.

Speaker 2 And a Palestinian would say none of these things were anywhere close to a state. They did not have control of their own borders.
They could not leave and come at will. It will never be 100%.

Speaker 2 There was a siege, functionally a siege, and control of the borders and, you know, barring different goods coming in and out, which is partially why you got the tunnels in Gaza.

Speaker 2 But in the West Bank, too, you have checkpoints. You have a tremendous amount of Israeli control over daily life.
I've been through it.

Speaker 2 It's striking and visually apparent the moment you step foot in it. And they would say that the reason you have this ongoing conflict is that the conflict for the Palestinians is ongoing.

Speaker 2 That in none of these 60%, 50% states that you're describing, was there anything like genuine self-determination, freedom, and that in that condition, there will never be any kind of stability.

Speaker 2 I refuse to call it a cycle of violence because it bases the idea is that

Speaker 2 we do something by revenge and vice versa. It's not the case.
There was a wide agreement in Israel towards a two-state solution.

Speaker 2 But what we have to unroll to the conclusion from October 7th, the only reason it didn't happen in the West Bank is because the IDF is still there.

Speaker 2 The support, I think we spoke about it in Jerusalem a year and a half ago, the support, the level of support for the October 7th massacre in the West Bank was even higher than in Gaza Street because they were not to pay the price of, you know, bombing, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So we should be very cautious before we give anything. I mean, the last attempt to to have a real peace, you know, not a cold peace, but a peace between like Germany and France.

Speaker 2 That was the perception in the 90s. You know, this multi-culture era following the fall of the Berlin Wall, New Middle East, Paris and Rabin are in office, the center-left controls.

Speaker 2 Michael Jackson has a concert in Tel Aviv. That was the sentiment.

Speaker 2 I lived in a settlement, and even in this settlement, far from the eye, okay, far in the right, we could feel the winds of change, okay?

Speaker 2 And it collapsed here, not because of Israelis, but because

Speaker 2 they didn't want peace. And as long as we don't take care of the idea that the Palestinian image

Speaker 2 is not of

Speaker 2 a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, but of

Speaker 2 from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free. I believe when they say it.
I don't think it's just a slogan, just a campaign ad.

Speaker 2 As long as we don't change it, we are not going to see peace as we describe

Speaker 2 So the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Arab governments strongly oppose the idea of dividing Gaza, arguing it could lead to a zone of permanent Israeli control inside the enclave.

Speaker 2 I mean, that seems more or less what we're talking about, permanent Israeli control inside the enclave.

Speaker 2 But in that world, the Journal reported, they're unlikely to commit troops to police the enclave on those terms.

Speaker 2 Do you think Israel's going to face a choice between the involvement that you and others are hoping for from the UAE and from others, Saudis,

Speaker 2 and having the level of

Speaker 2 control, involvement, security presence that you're describing. To be honest, I don't think any of the actors know what is going to happen.

Speaker 2 No one knew about Berlin that is going to be divided into two cities. No one, by the way, two days before the wall was built, it's a reality created.
But

Speaker 2 in Sherlock Holmes' stories, when once you rule out every possible that doesn't make sense, the last one is here to stand. And I don't see Hamas demilitarizes itself.

Speaker 2 I don't think the IDF would soon invade Gaza again with full engines and five divisions. And hence, I think the only option is what I described.
I don't think this is perfect.

Speaker 2 I just try to envision what's going to happen in five years from now. No, I appreciate the realism you're offering on that from the Israeli perspective.

Speaker 2 One reason I think that the two-state solution language caught my eye is that this feels more in a way like

Speaker 2 the West Bank solution for Gaza. Exactly.
And, you know, in this case, the role of the PA is being played by the UAE and some sort of Arab consortium.

Speaker 2 But that sets up this other set of dynamics, which we're seeing play out with incredible force and violence in the West Bank right now, which is that there is a lot of pressure, particularly over time in Israeli society, for expansion, for annexation, for settlements to be returned to Gaza.

Speaker 2 That this is not a situation where what Israeli society wants is Palestinians living in a thriving Israel slash UAE controlled

Speaker 2 Gaza, please. I'm not sure.
Listen,

Speaker 2 I come from the most ideological settlement in Judea and Samaria.

Speaker 2 And yet I allow myself to say that the vast majority of Israelis, when they speak about right-wing ideas, they don't think about annexation or about

Speaker 2 settlements

Speaker 2 in Gaza Strip. Being a right-winger in Israel or being hawkish means that you think the only solution to protect Israelis is neither speeches by a US president nor

Speaker 2 international treaties, but by Israeli soldiers with boots on the ground where it's needed. So this is why Oslo Accords

Speaker 2 the collision between the leftist idea of the Oslo Accords and the right-wing idea of annexation actually led to the outcome you've just described in Judea and Samaria and the West Bank, which is an Israeli permanent security presence in areas, in Palestinian areas, but no annexation.

Speaker 2 It's not a coincidence. So this is going to be the same outcome in Gaza, in my opinion.
A heavy security presence with no other presence.

Speaker 2 Another way to describe it that you've used it in other columns and interviews is that the Israeli goal is Lebanonization. Exactly.
What is Lebanonization?

Speaker 2 Okay. In the past, Lebanonization meant something really bad.
Israeli military presence, when you suffer from booby traps or terrorist attacks, and you bleed two, three soldiers a week or a month.

Speaker 2 Following the war, Lebanonization means something way more positive, that you have a ceasefire, but this ceasefire is really kept and you enforce it. with a heavy fire when needed.

Speaker 2 When Hezbollah tries to rearm itself, Israel attacks. Since the ceasefire, almost a year ago, 11 months, I think, Israel attacked more than 1,000 times.

Speaker 2 And Hezbollah didn't even dare to attack back even once because they are deterred. So this is the, I think this is what Israelis want from Gaza.

Speaker 2 Now, when you have a very, very big perimeter, you know that this imminent threat no longer exists. And then you can attack from the air once you see, I don't know, a tunnel being built, for instance.

Speaker 2 When I was in Israel a year ago, June, I was talking to people who lived on the border with Lebanon. And at that time, they were furious.
They felt completely unsafe.

Speaker 2 They would say, look, I can see Hezbollah from my house. Since then, obviously, Israel has functionally destroyed Hezbollah.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's not gone as an entity, but the threat it poses is significantly. Israel's most significant victory since the 1967 war.

Speaker 2 But the reason I ask about it is because, as of, you know, not very long ago, many Israelis seem to me to feel that the Lebanonization strategy had been a failure and there had been a lot of.

Speaker 2 The first Lebanonization. Great.
So you mean the Lebanization of like the last year? Yes.

Speaker 2 The early period Lebanonization meant that your enemy is one inch from your border with commando divisions and you trust the legitimacy or the international border being sacred.

Speaker 2 The new Lebanon says that you have outposts, military outposts, and you attack attack when needed. That's what I meant.

Speaker 2 So this is when you talk about Lebanon as it actually exists, when you talk about Gaza as it is coming to exist, when you talk about the West Bank as it currently exists, the theory of the Israeli mainstream, you call it the right, but it seems to me to be the center,

Speaker 2 is that there is no security without actual constant boots on the ground presence, surveillance. Like there is no trusting an agreement.

Speaker 2 There is no pulling back that either you are there and you can see it and you have operational control of it or you are not safe.

Speaker 2 And that the lesson Israeli society has taken from October 7th and also, I suspect, from attacks on Iran, on Hezbollah, on Syria, is that the one thing it can trust in is its own military strength.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And it came exactly when President Trump talked about Greenland.
Now, I know President Trump is not going to invade Greenland, right?

Speaker 2 But his talking points about annexing Greenland or taking over the Panama Canal, I think articulated something that Israelis can understand. It's not imperialism.

Speaker 2 It's that international borders used to be sacred, but it's no longer the case.

Speaker 2 And when you see Russia invades Ukraine and you multiply it by a thousand because Hamas and Hezbollah in Iran are not even Russia, they're way more monstrous.

Speaker 2 You can't trust only international guarantees or borders and you have to be wherever there is a danger. This is the main lesson from October 7th.
Trump's view of

Speaker 2 power, of strength, of geopolitics, of treaties, of all of it, is very different than Republicans and Democrats who preceded him.

Speaker 2 But you just got something I'd be interested to hear you reflect more on, which is

Speaker 2 how does Trumpism, the rise of right-wing populist parties in many other countries, particularly in Europe,

Speaker 2 how has that affected Israeli politics, its sense of what is possible, what is desirable?

Speaker 2 So when I go back to 2016, following Super Tuesday in March 2016, when Trump actually took over the Republican Party, Netanyahu told his staff, be like Trump.

Speaker 2 He repeated those three words, be like Trump. And then Netanyahu shifted from the TV Netanyahu to the Facebook Netanyahu, okay? From Netanyahu, the elder statesman,

Speaker 2 think about, I don't know, not Ronald Reagan, but even more boring than this,

Speaker 2 George Bush, something like this. He turned into Donald Trump.
Now, he is no Donald Trump. He's way more educated.
He got better English,

Speaker 2 but he changed.

Speaker 2 And in my opinion, this is why, in an absurd way, the right wing in Israel, or the power of the populist right, the radical right wing in Israel, is way smaller than in the US, the UK, France, and Germany.

Speaker 2 Why? Because you still have the founding father of the right, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is two at the price of one.

Speaker 2 He is both the elder statesman that gets the agreement of the US to attack Iran and for the annexation of the Golan Heights and the recognition of Jerusalem.

Speaker 2 And at the very same time, he is the Netanyahu that speaks viciously about the left. So once Netanyahu resigns, you'll see a spike, in my opinion, in the representation of the far-right in Israel.

Speaker 2 I don't know how many people are aware of the fact that both Smotrich and Bengal combined got only 10% of the popular vote in Israel. 10%,

Speaker 2 just compared to the Reform Party in the UK these days.

Speaker 2 So Trump's, I think, most significant foreign policy success of his first term was the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 2 And that's based on Netanyahu and him and Kushner and others

Speaker 2 realizing, and this comes from some of the Gulf states too, that there is a transactional relationship that is possible with surrounding Arab states,

Speaker 2 absent any change in Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And I think somewhat to the surprise of many, the Abram Accords hold through this whole period.

Speaker 2 So you recently wrote that Ron Dermer, Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs, a person who counts Netanyahu as among his closest states, believes the chances of Israel signing peace agreements with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and even Syria have now increased.

Speaker 2 There's a belief there that they're now with the ceasefire on the cusp of an expansion of the Abram Accords. Why? Okay, so there is a gigantic fight over the last two years, which is rarely spoken.

Speaker 2 The main idea behind October 7th,

Speaker 2 behind killing as many Jews as possible, was to stop the normalization process, the Abram Accords, from happening. It was 12 days before Saudi Arabia was to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Speaker 2 The due date was October 19th, 2023.

Speaker 2 Now, the whole idea of the Abram Accords were based on denying the liberal idea that the way to have Israel involved in the Middle East with normalization, this way goes through Ramallah, the Palestinian capital city.

Speaker 2 Many, many Arab countries refused to base their commercial relationship, their even relationship with the United States on the idea that a very old unelected dictator named Abbas is going to actually set the terms of of the entire regime.

Speaker 2 And that was the idea behind the peace agreement between Israel and the Emiratis, which is, in my opinion, the most important development in Israel's history, save only the six-day war in 1967.

Speaker 2 And that's why I, as a right-winger, I wrote against the annexation of the settlements a few weeks ago, because what I heard from my friends in the UAE is that it would be too much on their plate to digest.

Speaker 2 This is one thing. Now, apart from the military operation, operation, the best Israeli answer to October 7th would be to expand the Abraham Accords, thus proving that strategically speaking,

Speaker 2 not even morally speaking, but strategically speaking, October 7th was a failure.

Speaker 2 And that's why, in my opinion, Israel's efforts should be based on expanding the peace agreements with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Syria.

Speaker 2 And from what I hear, there is an option that the agreement with Syria would be more than merely merely a security agreement. Aaron Trevor Bowie, what are these agreements now based on?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think this is partially what I'm trying to draw out: that for a very long time, the relationship between Israel and its neighbors was understood to be

Speaker 2 ideological isn't quite the right word,

Speaker 2 but based on an assessment of

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 moral and ethical condition of Israel's relationship with the Palestinians.

Speaker 2 And there's been a move towards these bilateral agreements that are much more transactional.

Speaker 2 Because, in my opinion, the Emiratis signed a peace treaty with Israel because they no longer saw the Middle East as a battlefield of Jews versus Muslims, but of radicals versus moderates.

Speaker 2 Or, if you want, a Shia versus Sunni and Jewish states. That was the main idea behind it.

Speaker 2 But even in these countries, there has been a huge amount of anger over the devastation and the death toll in Gaza. So, So, what are the chits being traded back and forth?

Speaker 2 So, here's the thing: because there was a change following October 7th.

Speaker 2 Prior to October 7th, all the Saudis wanted was, I'll put it in an undiplomatic way, a lip service regarding the Palestinian question. Okay,

Speaker 2 now,

Speaker 2 prior to October 7th, the Saudis wanted something quite vague, that even small truths in Bengali would green light. Following October 7th, they nonetheless wanted a bit more.

Speaker 2 Now, I I don't know what this more is.

Speaker 2 I suspect that the idea of the Palestinian Authority somehow symbolically, hypothetically, being involved in Gaza Strip would be, part of the agreement was that Saudi Arabia would base the normalization on this idea.

Speaker 2 So this would be the Palestinian ingredient of the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But my mistake...

Speaker 2 as a commentator was that prior to October 7th, I thought that Netanyahu's main achievement was that he choked the idea of Palestinian statehood.

Speaker 2 I still think that there is not going to be a Palestinian state in our lifetime. But following October 7th, there is a presence to this

Speaker 2 idea. One of the things going in the other direction, though,

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 Israel has become such a capable developer of technology. and weaponry,

Speaker 2 and then highly technological weaponry in particular, that it seems to become a kind of, I don't want to call it soft power, I want to call it medium power, that is at the base of many of these agreements.

Speaker 2 Both that Israel is part of your security umbrella, and it's a way station also to a closer relationship with America, particularly under Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 But even in Europe, where a tremendous amount of public opinion and state-level opinion has turned against Israel, Israel as a seller of weaponry to Europe.

Speaker 2 Germany puts an arm embargo on Israel, but buys, decided to buy missiles in 2 billion Euros.

Speaker 2 So something is happening there that has become a kind of

Speaker 2 bargaining chip, or more than that, almost like a foundation, it seems to me,

Speaker 2 of how Israel understands it is going to maintain relationships without substantial change amidst the Palestinians. And this is a very sort of Trumpist transactional.

Speaker 2 Although I'm not a big fan of the idea of Israel being first the mistress of the Middle East and now the mistress of Europe. Can you say what that means?

Speaker 2 That is to say that we are not married to, I don't know, Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, but we meet at night when no one sees. The relationships are all clandestine.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Now, here is the dangerous idea behind it in Europe, because I think Netanyahu failed to understand the depth of the international crisis Israel has gone through because he knew more than you and me know about the real relationships, okay?

Speaker 2 Because he knew how many European countries beg for Israeli technology and weapons. But when it comes to soft power, soft power is based on the idea that your brand is very strong.

Speaker 2 And with Israel, it was exactly the other way around, that while Israel turned almost to be a pariah state, consumption of Israeli technology and weapons went up.

Speaker 2 And that's why I think Israel should invest more in its branding, if you want to I think it's more than branding but but I don't know that does open up that that does open up that question which is that my read of Israel's geopolitics right now is it is thriving where the relationships are transactional

Speaker 2 and it is suffering where the relationships are more values-based and that's beginning to include America so we just had a New York Times Sienna poll which for the first time since our polling is asked this question going back to 1998 you had more americans sympathizing with the Palestinians than the Israelis.

Speaker 2 Now, the poll is very narrow. I think it was something like 35, 34.

Speaker 2 But you look at the age split in that poll and Americans over 65, 47%

Speaker 2 are more sympathetic to the Israelis and 26% to the Palestinians. Between 18 and 29, 61% are more sympathetic to the Palestinians and 19% to the Israelis.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a tendency to say it's just a leftist thing, but Megan Kelly, the right-wing commentator, she just told Tucker Carlson that everybody under 30 is against Israel.

Speaker 2 Tell me how you're understanding this. I mean, what's going on in America? Also, it's like Europe, other places, the numbers look much worse even than that for Israel.
How do you see this?

Speaker 2 To be honest, it's too early to call. I don't know if it's something generational, something that's going to change with time.

Speaker 2 You know, years pass, you leave university, they're heavily funded by Qatar University, and you understand the situation more. One thing, second, the war.
Today, the world is focused on suffering.

Speaker 2 The more you suffer, the more sympathy you get. Now, remember October 8th when the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Brandenburg Gate were lit with a blue and white flag.

Speaker 2 And to be honest, the image that frightened me the most as an Israeli wasn't the horror pictures from Sederot and the Kibbutzim, but to see Eiffel Tower lit with blue and white, because I said, wow, we look so miserable that even in France we get legitimacy.

Speaker 2 Okay. Now, we won the war.
We decisively won the war.

Speaker 2 I can explain to you for hours why abducting the Bibas family and murdering them with bare hands is not something that you can compare to the death of Palestinian children from Israel bombardments.

Speaker 2 However, I'm fully aware of the fact that the images are so strong that I can't convince millions and millions of TikTok followers.

Speaker 2 And that's why I think the most dramatic thing for Israel is first and foremost to end the war and to move to a a new phase of normalization, peace, having Israel either mentioned positively on the press or even better, not mentioned at all.

Speaker 2 You see that Netanyahu went for a few podcasts and all of a sudden you could see that Netanyahu, I mean, he didn't really control the medium, right? For the first time.

Speaker 2 He went on the Nelk Boys, which is a sort of... I don't know how to describe it, a Manosphere podcast that Trump has been on many times.
They got so much backlash from their own listeners

Speaker 2 that they needed to apologize. And one of them said he was told that having Netanyahu on is like having a modern-day Hitler on.
And he went on to say he thought that was a good point.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's a right-wing coded in this country. That's something different happening.
I agree. So I think there was a damage, a permanent damage.
I still think it's smaller than people think.

Speaker 2 Now, it's elastic. The public opinion is elastic, especially when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.
It's not abortions or weapons or, I don't know, Trump.

Speaker 2 It's something that you can change your mind on. People tend to forget that

Speaker 2 following Yom Kippur War, Israel's rating fell both in the States and Europe following the oil embargo, etc., and that Israel's positioning in the States was very low following the First Lebanon War in 1982.

Speaker 2 The very same picture of a very long war in highly populated Palestinian areas.

Speaker 2 So I think it can change, but we can't base, and this is something more dramatic, we can no longer base our relationship with the United States on the values of the 20th century, because even evangelicals, the new generation, doesn't see Israel through the lenses of a biblical happening, but through the lenses of social justice.

Speaker 2 Exactly like the African-American community used to see the Jews as, you know, Moses coming from slavery in Egypt. And over the last few decades, it sees Israel as a white colonialist power.

Speaker 2 So there's a lot to work on. And

Speaker 2 so something bigger than that seems like it has changed to me. And

Speaker 2 I feel like I have a good sense of U.S. politics.
Yes. And it's not just the polling, it's what is considered conceivable in politics around Israel.
And right now we're in New York City.

Speaker 2 Zoran Mamdani is likely to become very, well, very likely to become the next mayor. His views on Israel that would have made you absolutely unelectable,

Speaker 2 I think in almost anywhere in the country, but particularly in New York City, a very Jewish city, just a couple of years ago. And it's not just that he is going to win the election, most likely.

Speaker 2 It is that what he is showing a lot of other Democrats is that they can express something closer to where their politics on Israel have actually gone, right?

Speaker 2 Andrew Como tried very hard to weaponize Israel against him, completely failed. Eric Adams was running on the combat anti-Semitism or end anti-Semitism ballot line, completely failed.

Speaker 2 The most Jewish city on earth. And the most Jewish city on earth.
And so, or at least city with the most Jews on earth.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 That shifts things.

Speaker 2 And one reason I think it shifts things, one thing that it is getting at is we're talking about how this is happening on the right, but Netanyahu really, over the past 15-ish years, 20 years, threw in with the right and began to choose to polarize Israel and America, right?

Speaker 2 Going around Barack Obama to the Republican Congress.

Speaker 2 Israel had a bit of an internnium with Joe Biden, who was a much older generation of Democrat and had an older Democratic generation's views on Israel personally.

Speaker 2 It's one of the issues where Biden was quite, I think, to the right of his own administration on how a lot of his staff would have liked to approach this issue.

Speaker 2 Israel seems to be betting a lot on continued Republican dominance, presence in America.

Speaker 2 If you imagine the next generation of Democrats being in power here and Israel needing American support in a time of conflict and crisis, it seems to me it's going to look very, very, very different, both because of the views, but also because

Speaker 2 I don't think American Democrats anymore believe that they have to be more pro-Israel than they actually are.

Speaker 2 Two years ago, before the war, I met with the IDF chief of staff back then, and he told me when they are to buy air jets, air jet fighters, its life expectancy is 40 years, 4-0.

Speaker 2 And he said that when we decide which fighter jet to buy, you take into account that in the next 40 years, 10 terms, there is going to be a US president that would put an arm embargo on Israel.

Speaker 2 That's what he said in 2023. Now, I think you and me would agree.
You and I would agree that had Kamala Haris got elected and Israel invaded Gaza City, we would have already seen it, right?

Speaker 2 So yes, it's there. I think that the question of whether...
I feel like we were on the cusp of that already happening. That's a good point.
Exactly. And then again, it's a chicken and egg question.

Speaker 2 I don't think Netanyahu is to be blamed

Speaker 2 for the fact that Israel became a partisan issue because each and every topic in the U.S., including the weather, became partisan. So maybe, maybe he should.
Well, he made choices.

Speaker 2 I watched this happen, particularly

Speaker 2 in the Obama administration. But tell me something.

Speaker 2 When Obama got elected for the first time, I remember people say that he doesn't have the sympathy for Israel in his kishkas, in his guts, right?

Speaker 2 By the way, Obama got elected before Netanyahu came back to office. And when Obama and Netanyahu met for the first time, Obama told him not even one brick in the West Bank.

Speaker 2 And he appeased the Iranian regime. So I fully agree.
It takes to to tango, but I think it was. But Netanyahu made a series of strategic decisions because he did not want to

Speaker 2 take pressure or at least he wanted to see if Obama was really capable of bringing pressure on him. Look, I'm an American Jew.
I have have more Israel my kishkis, so to speak.

Speaker 2 But I think Israel would have been better off if they had listened to Obama on settlements. Now, I recognize that you and I have a different view on this.

Speaker 2 But even in the last two years, there's been a rapidity of settlement construction in the West Bank that outpaces the last, I think, 20 years, according to the.

Speaker 2 More than ever. More than ever.
So there is a world in which Israel made a strategic political decision to say,

Speaker 2 well,

Speaker 2 we want to make sure that the Democratic side of the aisle in the U.S.

Speaker 2 feels kinship here feels we're taking into account some of their concerns, and we're going to hold ourselves back on certain things for that reason. Israel decided not to do that.

Speaker 2 And in many ways, like kind of spat in their face, Biden ended up humiliated. I think there were real decisions here on the Israeli side, particularly on Nanyaho side, and you could have imagined it.

Speaker 2 playing out differently with different prime ministers. But

Speaker 2 West Bank is easy. How about Iran? Do you see any scenario in which Obama is...
But the West Bank is is easy. Why didn't Israel do it? No, it's easy to speak about it.

Speaker 2 But the differences between democratic administrations and Israel is not between democratic administrations and Netanyahu, because each and every Israeli saw Iran as the biggest threat to the Jewish existence since the Holocaust.

Speaker 2 Now, we know that Obama and Biden didn't consider for a second to attack Ford, for instance, or even to allow Israel to attack. And I guess Kamala Harris wouldn't either.

Speaker 2 So it's not only the easy Palestinian questions. It's something really bigger than this.
President Obama came to office and he appeased enemies and pissed off friends.

Speaker 2 I think it is almost axiomatic that Democrats have a different view of what creates security than

Speaker 2 Republicans do. Prime Minister Netanyahu, I understand it's addictive stuff to inhale the Trump administration because you have the most pro-Israeli approach because his enemies is yours.

Speaker 2 I know it's addictive, but maybe this problem is to be fixed with a different prime minister and a different president.

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Speaker 4 Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class. They're reviewing the American Revolution.
The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating. Okay.

Speaker 4 Where did they initiate force? It started in their taxation without representation. Why is that wrong?

Speaker 4 The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them. Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Speaker 4 Learn more at challengerschool.com.

Speaker 6 Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8

Speaker 2 only at McDonald's. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary.
Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California and for delivery.

Speaker 2 I think when I look forward into the future of this, and when I try to put together the two parts of this conversation we've been having, you have Israel pursuing a lot of settlement building and and control of the West Bank.

Speaker 2 There's been a lot more violence. You have the indefinite reoccupation of much of Gaza.

Speaker 2 You combine that then with these poll numbers, these changes in support here.

Speaker 2 And it's not just like Israel can wait for the war to end.

Speaker 2 It is setting itself up in a structural position where the effort is going to be, and possibly quite successfully, to make it into apartheid South Africa, right? And that that is the

Speaker 2 strategy and also the risk it has opened up for itself by maintaining so much control in both places. How do you think about that?

Speaker 2 The main difference between Israel and South Africa is that African American or the black community in South Africa didn't try to massacre each and every white. It wasn't the case there.

Speaker 2 And here we speak about South Africa, but let's imagine that the clerics signed an agreement with Nelson Mandela only to find out that Nelson Mandela, Yasser Rafat, actually initiated a second Intifala, a war against the whites, killing 1,200 of them and sending suicide bombers to Cape Town and Yohana.

Speaker 2 I understand the argument that it's a different situation. What I'm saying is that the international view that you have roughly 7 million Palestinians without any self-determination is not.

Speaker 2 No, they have. They have a civil one.
They got more than they have now, and they decided that it's more important for them.

Speaker 2 They decided twice, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, that it's more important for them to kill as many Jews as possible than to get more independence.

Speaker 2 That's the thing that we, Westerners, fail to understand.

Speaker 2 Why? I keep asking myself, why

Speaker 2 did the security establishment failed on October 6th to understand that this attack is imminent?

Speaker 2 And my response, I mean, I can speak to you for hours about, you know, those SIM cards and alerts, et cetera. But at the end of the day, they failed to understand that there are people who

Speaker 2 have a lose-lose policy. We know win-win policy.
This is good for all. We know win-lose policy, like in Russia versus Ukraine, that Russia tries to take something.
It's evil, but it's digestible.

Speaker 2 We fail to understand a lose-lose situation in which I know I'm going to suffer. I know my people are going to die.

Speaker 2 I know Gaza is going to lie in ruins at the end of this war, yet I want to kill as many Jews and Israel as possible.

Speaker 2 I think many, I don't want to speak for God knows Hamas, but I think that...

Speaker 2 Another way of saying why this does not seem stable to me, the situation you've described, is that, I mean, they felt accurately like they were losing.

Speaker 2 And that, you know, we talked about, you said, like, look, this is not a cycle of violence. It's, you know, it's one side created.
I've had many Palestinians on the show.

Speaker 2 I've talked to many of them in our reporting. You know, to them, the violence is every day.
It is ongoing. It is ceaseless in Gaza and in the West Bank, right?

Speaker 2 They understand the condition they are living in as a condition of structural violence. And I don't disagree with them on that.

Speaker 2 And the thing that is going to create the ongoing pressure, if you combine an international community that is less sympathetic to Israel, but Israel having much more control of these two places, I agree that it has many differences from the South African situation.

Speaker 2 You speak about the image. I mean, I'm speaking about both the image and the reality.

Speaker 2 The people are going, the idea that forever you will just have a situation where you have seven million-ish people.

Speaker 2 Five. Okay.
Well, I'm including actually Arabs in Israel who have a different situation than good for the people. The vote of citizenship,

Speaker 2 People debate this in different ways. I don't mean to go into it too much.

Speaker 2 That seems like it is a situation in which Israel is going to have a lot of trouble in the long term with not just international standing, but eventually questions like sanctions and other things.

Speaker 2 Yes, I came to the conclusion following October 7th that Israel's number one problem is the Palestinian one. I thought before that it's the Iranian one.
It's not.

Speaker 2 However, I cannot, in order to get legitimacy, giving a license for for people who see me, treat me as an evil enemy that should be eliminated in each and every way. That's the main thing.

Speaker 2 So I think we should wait patiently for a new generation to come.

Speaker 2 I think that the most urgent mission of our generation, both in the US and in Israel, in the UAE, is to base the education system in the Palestinian Authority, not on hatred, but on Western values, on moderate Islam.

Speaker 2 I know it can succeed. How? Because this is exactly what happened in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia.
And they changed the minds of Muslims in both countries.

Speaker 2 You see a decline in the levels of anti-Semitism.

Speaker 2 And since I'm no racist, I don't think that Islam is about killing as many Jews as possible and hating as many Americans as possible and cheering and give candies in the streets when

Speaker 2 9-11

Speaker 2 disaster happened, as it happened in Gaza. And I think it takes time.
It takes time. It takes, I would say, 20 years.

Speaker 2 In 20 years from now, if we start today, you'll see a major change in both what you call the West Bank, Judah, and Samaria and in Gaza Strip.

Speaker 2 I think the question that many people want to see change in Israel here is whether or not if Israel sees its politics collapsing in other countries, right? You have

Speaker 2 after President Trump, a Democrat win office, and there's a recognition that Europe has now accepted Palestinian statehood in some abstracted way and a sense that Israel cannot maintain support here with the politics it has had.

Speaker 2 I could see that going one of two ways. I could see that going under certain leaders and under certain conditions towards trying

Speaker 2 to create some space for the international opinion to express itself and a change in Israeli policy.

Speaker 2 I could see it in Israel becoming more inward-looking, more focused on weapons development, trying to be less reliant on others.

Speaker 2 I mean, there was an interesting quote I thought from Netanyahu where he said that Israel is going to have to adapt to international isolation, become an Athens and a super Sparta. In terms of weapon

Speaker 2 acquiring, yes. So tell me about, I'm sure people in Israel are thinking about this somewhat, given how aggressive and total the international anger has been.
What are those two paths?

Speaker 2 I don't see any chance that Israelis are going to change their mind regarding Palestinian statehood because it's not about diplomacy. It's not about public opinion.
It's about fear.

Speaker 2 People saw what happened on October 7th that they will be willing to give an opportunity for this five minutes from their home in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, ten minutes the most. This is one thing.

Speaker 2 When it comes to cooperation,

Speaker 2 I think there is room for a party that would say, okay, we're quite tired, we want to rest a few years, we will be prepared, our soldiers would guard everything, but we want to breathe some air, international air, economic air, etc.

Speaker 2 And that's the next I think the next government would see a significant ingredient, as I just described.

Speaker 2 There will be either in October 2026 or sometime before then if this government falls elections.

Speaker 2 Israeli politics isn't structured the way U.S. politics are.
Here we're used to thinking in terms of two parties that battle it out. There, it's two coalitions of different parties.
Right.

Speaker 2 Walk me through

Speaker 2 the anti-Netanyahu coalition that this developed. It looks like it would be led by Naftali Bennett, who traditionally in Israeli politics was understood on Netanyahu's right.
In terms of security.

Speaker 2 In terms of security, certainly at an earlier point, was harshly critical of how open Netanyahu at least claimed to be to a two-state solution, for instance. Exactly.
You have Benny Gantz, who

Speaker 2 in November of 2023, I think was widely considered to be a plausible next prime minister for Israel. Now his blue and white coalition

Speaker 2 is under the threshold for representation. Avidor Lieberman, who's a a quite far-right-wing defense minister in 2018.

Speaker 2 Yair Lapid, right, who is one of the more centrist figure. Yes.
Yair Golan, who represents the left in Israel and is inside this coalition too. 8% of the popular vote, yes.

Speaker 2 How would that group govern? Where would they differ? Oh, it won't. My 10-year-old child asked me, why don't you vote for the center-left? I told him, because they are leftists.

Speaker 2 So he said, what is a leftist?

Speaker 2 So I had hard times to explain to him because 20 years ago, it was he's for evacuating the settlement where your grandfather lives. Okay.

Speaker 2 Nowadays, no one really offers seriously to evacuate settlements. So what is the watershed line in Israel these days? Is it a center left?

Speaker 2 Okay, Naftali Bennett is the center left. Exactly.
Now, here's the thing. Who is this? awful monstrous left that is going to try to defeat Netanyahu according to the right wing.

Speaker 2 It's Naftali Bennett, the former CEO of the Yesha Council, the settlement movement.

Speaker 2 A Vikdor Lieberman, a settler himself, who once said that Israel should hang each and every of the Arab Knesset members, like in Nuremberg. Okay?

Speaker 2 And Benny Gans, who is not, I mean, calling him a leftist is not, I mean, I don't think leftists would claim him.

Speaker 2 And vice versa.

Speaker 2 Okay. So it's about identity.
First and foremost, what I believe is that

Speaker 2 the more religious you are, the more you tend to vote for the right wing.

Speaker 2 That's the real the debate over the judicial reform was not about the judicial reform, but about whether Israel is more Jewish than democratic or more democratic than Jewish.

Speaker 2 And the right wing here is the Netanyahu Coalition. Exactly.
Now,

Speaker 2 it's quite a miracle that the leader of the so-called religious, Jewish, Sephardic, relatively lower-class camp in Israel is this secular atheist millionaire, the son of a professor from Jerusalem in the school.

Speaker 2 We're acquainted with these peculiarities in American politics at this point. By the way, it's not peculiarity because the politics of identities is not something that I believe in.

Speaker 2 I think it's a walk way of describing things, and that people don't vote for someone like them. If you have a bird, you'll vote for someone with a bird.
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 You vote for someone that you believe would represent your values the most. So this is the Wadder Share Line.

Speaker 2 And that's why, that's why, in my opinion, the ultra-Orthodox parties who are not part of the right wing at all, they are anti-settlement, anti-annexation, are a basic part of Netanyahu's coalition because it's about Judaism.

Speaker 2 But I would like to offer something else. We moved in 2020 from one generation, the security generation, towards the identity generation.

Speaker 2 And that's exactly the point where Israel went through five consecutive election campaigns. Why? It's like the summer league in the NBA, okay?

Speaker 2 Where still try to get accustomed to your new basketball team, but it takes time because you used to be for the Chicago Bulls and now you are for the New York Nick.

Speaker 2 What was the dividing identity line that created it? It's just religious identity is what you see it? The religious one. And I'll give you an example, okay? Victor Leberman.

Speaker 2 In terms of security, he's the most hawkish figure in Israel. His voters are former USSR immigrants who are more hawkish than Bengevir.

Speaker 2 But when you talk about domestic issues, about civil society issues, they are more secular than Yair Golan and Yair Lapid.

Speaker 2 That's why Viktor Lieberman moved from the so-called right-wing to the so-called left, although he's not leftist, because it's not the left we used to know. The same applies for Naftali Bennett.

Speaker 2 In terms of security, yes, his foreign exation is allegedly more hawkish than Netanyahu.

Speaker 2 But when it comes to civil society things, et cetera, and domestic issues, he's the leader of the moderate, small Yamulca voters

Speaker 2 who believe in, for instance, public transportation during Saturdays, during Shabbat.

Speaker 2 This is the main change. Let's speak about the last coalition to the Fit Netanyahu in 2021.
It was called the Coalition of Change.

Speaker 2 But when you try to really analyze where the change is,

Speaker 2 You couldn't find a change in the policy towards Gaza, which was the same, in the policy towards Iran, which was the same, in the policy towards settlements, which was exactly the same.

Speaker 2 Even in terms of economy, it wasn't a social justice coalition, but even more hawkish, more capitalist than Netanyahu's right-wing coalition.

Speaker 2 So the main change was changing the living address of Sarah Netanyahu, Prime Minister, Netanyahu's Netanyahu's wife. So there was no change.

Speaker 2 And that's why you see Israel's political system reshapes itself. If you are American, hoping for change in terms of policy, you'll get quite disappointed.
Towards the Palestinians.

Speaker 2 Towards the Palestinians, towards Gaza. I would say even more than this, that a coalition controlled by Bennett Liberman, Yergolan, Yarapid, et cetera, would never be able to sign this Trump

Speaker 2 ceasefire plan. Because the right-wingers would kill them.
Netanyahu would say this is a surrender to Hamas. And do you think there's a good shot that Netanyahu just survives the next election?

Speaker 2 Yes, but I have to explain something about Israeli politics. In the U.S., when you have Trump versus Harris, one of them must win, right? Because someone has to get 270 votes on the Electoral College.

Speaker 2 In Israel, you can either win, lose, or having the election undecided. Why? Because in Israel you have Arab parties that traditionally do not take part in coalitions.

Speaker 2 There was one exception four years ago, but it was under the

Speaker 2 COVID crisis, which was a domestic issue.

Speaker 2 As long as Israel has its complicated strategic relationship with the Muslim world, I don't see any coalition formed on the basis of an Arab non-Zionist or sometimes anti-Zionist party.

Speaker 2 Hence, if they get at least 10 seats out of the 120, so if you get 61 seats, you won the election, right? If you're a bibby, you won the election, 61 out of 120, out majority. But if you get 50,

Speaker 2 you didn't win the election, but you didn't lose it either, because you blocked the center-left change block from forming a coalition.

Speaker 2 According to each and every poll following the deal reached in Gaza, Netanyahu got 51, at least. Netanyahu lost the outright majority.

Speaker 2 But as a result of October 12th ceasefire and Iran being defeated, Khizbalah being defeated, Netanyahu secured himself from not losing the election for the time being, of course.

Speaker 2 Time and again, he outnumbers his opponents, and it's too early to call, but I would say that something dramatic would have to happen in order for Netanyahu to directly lose the next election.

Speaker 2 Do you think his government will stand until October 2026? No, but I mean, the last coalition to survive a full term in Israel was in 1988. I know it sounds...

Speaker 2 weird for Americans, but in Israel there are no fixed terms. So Netanyahu succeeded in the mission that most of the governments failed to reach the fourth year, the final year of his term.

Speaker 2 And it's amazing. No one believed it, including Netanyahu himself, the day after October 7th.
And then I'll ask our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience? Yeah, so

Speaker 2 I recommend two English books and two books in English and one in Hebrew. The first is The Accidental President, about President Truman's first four months by A.J.
Boehm, I think. Great book.

Speaker 2 The second is is not exactly a book about presidents, but a book about the history of how to write history of presidents. It's an unfinished love story by Doris Goodman.
Doris Kearns Goodman. Exactly.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Goodman, because yes, she was married to President Johnson, and President Kennedy is a special advisor. And it's a brilliant book about how to write about history.

Speaker 2 And the third is a book in Hebrew, and it's a book written by my father. It's called The Messiah in Stebo Kerr.
It's about David Ben-Gurion.

Speaker 2 Ben-Gurion was the founding father of Israel, a mixture of George Washington and, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson. And

Speaker 2 he was a very, he was considered a very secular leftist leader at the time. But my father reveals how deep inside he was very

Speaker 2 Jewish and how the right wing should fall in love with him in retrospect.

Speaker 2 And if you want to understand Israel, so it's better for you to study Hebrew, to learn learn Hebrew as fast as possible and read it.

Speaker 2 I'm itsego. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 This episode of Israel Clancho is produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker.

Speaker 2 Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon.

Speaker 2 The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassione, Roland Hu, Marina King, Kristen Lin, Emma Kelbeck, and Jan Koble.

Speaker 2 Original music by Amon Sahuta and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Christina Semiluski and Shannon Busta.
The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rosstrasser.

Speaker 6 Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8.

Speaker 2 Only at McDonald's. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary.
Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery.