← 5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan
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- [00:00]
A
Thanks so much for rejoining us.
- [00:01]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [00:02]
A
Yeah, of course. A lot of people in our audience kind of view you as the foremost authority on everything happening in the Middle east right now. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who want to know, just first and foremost, is the war over?
- [00:14]
B
No. We have to look at it on three levels. I think the first level is the hostage exchange for political prisoners, the redeployment of Israeli troops, and the resupply of Gaza. That looks like that's working. Although the Israelis are making noises about the few of the dead hostages that are being returned at the present time. The second thing. So that's done. The war in Gaza is probably not over. I'm very dubious about this whole deal. It's got too many red lines that Hamas is not going to commit to. It's got too many time ambiguities. It's got too many ambiguities of meaning. So, I mean, we read that as of yesterday, Hamas was attacking Israeli collaborators and was appointing governors. Now this doesn't look like an organization that's prepared to disarm or prepared to give up its role in governance. So there's that aspect to it. And the Israelis also have some sticking points that they don't particularly appreciate. They will probably put up a fuss about redeploying in the second redeployment. And then finally, is the Arab Israeli conflict over? And there's no way in hell it's over. The only way this conflict is going to end is going to be a two state solution, period.
- [01:21]
A
Yeah. So you talked about the execution of Israeli collaborators. I saw that video from the Gaza Strip of six people lined up on their knees being kicked in the streets and then shot at point blank range. What happened there? Who were those people and why were they executed by Hamas?
- [01:35]
B
Israelis were trying to set up some sort of militia that would be pro Israel within Gaza and anti Hamas. They've done this sort of thing before in the run up to the Lebanon War. They did this in the West Bank. The problem then is like the problem now is that the PLO kept killing the people that were collaborating with the Israelis, which is why the Israelis went into Lebanon in 1982 was to get rid of the PLO problem once and for all. Basically what Hamas is attempting to do is the same thing that the PLO did, which is to get rid of the collaborators with Israel. And it's not just collaborators with Israel. These are clans, these are warlords who can fundamentally give Hamas a hard time and they want to get rid of them as quickly as possible before there's a real entrenchment of these people.
- [02:15]
A
It goes back to one of the things that you predicted last interview that we did, which is that part of the Israeli strategy was that hoping that Gaza would devolve into warlordism, where you had clans in different factional pockets vying for control of stuff like aid, weapons, drugs, et cetera. Would you say that warlordism ensued in a full capacity in the past, let's say five months?
- [02:34]
B
Not in a full capacity, no, because Hamas is still in control and warlordism tends to occur where there isn't some sort of central power. So we see warlordism, for example, in Libya, we see warlordism in Yemen. It's probably still there in Syria as well, where there isn't effective central control. Now in Gaza, there was effective central control even though it was under attack by the Israelis. So, and this is one of the reasons why the Israeli strategy was bound to fail of wiping out Hamas was Hamas was totally integrated into society in Gaza. So there was no way that the Israelis were going to eradicate Hamas. And after all this time, after two years of bombing, of invasion and so on and so forth, Hamas is still there.
- [03:13]
A
You mentioned disarmament. So the peace deal, as they called it, won't be officially complete until Hamas surrenders all weapons.
- [03:22]
B
Right. And Hamas has pretty much let it be known that they will surrender some of their weapons, but they refuse to surrender other weapons because they need them for self defense or self offense in this case.
- [03:32]
A
Theoretically, if they did give all of their guns to Israeli forces and all their weapons and stuff, what would be the plan after that?
- [03:39]
B
Well, the Trump plan calls for the disarmament and then that anybody who wants to stay and pledge that they're not going to be belligerent can stay and not be belligerent and anybody who wants to leave will be allowed to leave. That's a deal that probably is not going to work itself out. What do you mean it's probably not going to work? The, you know, Hamas loyalists are Hamas loyalists and Hamas is not going to force those loyalists to give up their weapons. It's very dubious that they would. Now here's the interest interesting part of it, which is that Donald Trump said that security is necessary for the Hamas to keep their weapons, to have security in the Gaza Strip. So Trump is actually saying that it's necessary that this disarmament not occur. So it's a very, very ambiguous sort of situation. One of the things about Trump is The lack of consistency. Netanyahu was counting on Trump to be a consistent ally, more so than Joe Biden. There would be no pressure from Trump. And so that's why he stepped away from the ceasefire in March. And then all of sudden, he got duped by Trump. And there are probably a couple of reasons why Trump turned on Netanyahu. I mean, first of all, he is just inconsistent. He does on Tuesday what he said he wouldn't do on Monday. There is the Nobel Prize that's dangling in front of him that he really is desperate for today. Apparently, he called Putin and had a conversation with him. So now he's going to solve the Ukraine problem. And then finally, there was the Israeli bombing of Qatar. And you don't bo a site in which your putative ally is going to build a golf course. The Qataris and the Trump family are involved in some very dubious dealings. And then there's the aspect of the $400 million plane that Qatar gifted to Donald Trump as well. So apparently, when that happened, Trump really read the riot act in Netanyahu.
- [05:32]
A
So do you think that Trump's diplomacy did play a significant deal in achieving this peace deal?
- [05:38]
B
It depends what you mean by achieving the peace deal. First of all, it's not a peace deal. It's a ceasefire deal that he. And I'm not being facetious here. It's a very, very big difference. It's stage one of the overall peace deal that has been implemented at the present time. But to move on to stage two is going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible.
- [05:56]
A
And what is stage two?
- [05:57]
B
Stage two is going to be the insertion of a international security force. It's going to be the creation of a technocratic Palestinian government underneath this board that Trump is going to head. It's going to be the final redeployment of Israeli forces. It's going to be the disarmament of Hamas, et cetera, et cetera, and eventually the takeover of the Gaza Strip by a reformed Palestinian Authority. Now, when it's going to reform, who's going to call it reformed? You know, sufficiently reformed is up for dispute. And that's one of the problems with this. Ambiguities in these treaties work in two directions. Ambiguities can be good because people will read into them what they want to read into and sign off on it. Maybe there'll be room for compromise later. But also, ambiguities mean that people are reading in two different meanings into these things. And so therefore, there's bound to be a lot of Noses out of joint on both sides and particularly in this case.
- [06:53]
A
So will the international security force be composed of U.S. troops?
- [06:56]
B
No, the United States will not commit troops to this question. I mean, there are troops now, about 200 troops in Israel. They're not going to go into Gaza at all though. It's going to be made up of other forces. They haven't really determined who it's supposed to be yet. The Indonesians have made some noises that they would be willing to do it if certain stipulations. So we don't really know what is they're intending to do.
- [07:18]
A
Aren't the Indonesians Muslim though?
- [07:20]
B
Yes, this is the largest Muslim country in the world as a matter of fact.
- [07:22]
A
So would that be seen as kind of a roundabout betrayal of the Palestinians?
- [07:25]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, it probably would be. Problem is is that anybody closer, you know, among the Arabs is not going to want to, you know, be put into a position of having to shoot at Palestinians, whether it's Hamas Palestinians or anti Hamas Palestinians or just civilians on the street. So you have to find somebody who's willing to do that. And it's, it's a hopeless, it's really a hopeless sit situation, you know, because nobody's really wanted, going to want to do that. So it's very probable that the entirety of the plan is going to collapse before that gets done.
- [07:56]
A
And how do you see that collapse coming about?
- [07:58]
B
Well, I see that the Israelis are going to accuse Hamas, either rightly or wrongly, of abdicating the plan. Hamas is not going to disarm, for example. Hamas is not going to stop governing if they can help it. The Israelis don't want a second redeployment. They want hostages that are dead to come back to Israel. So, you know, there's all sorts of things that they could say. This, this is a straw that broke the camel's back. It probably won't be the hostages because everybody knew that the, the hostages who are, have passed are. It's going to be difficult to locate them. They're going to be under rubble, they're going to be in bombed out tunnels and that sort of thing. So everybody knew that. And the Turks have volunteered to implant experts who can do this sort of thing. The Turks are very good at this. Turks have had earthquakes, for example. It's in an earthquake zone. And so what they've been able to do is to basically people and have a very, very good crew that could go in and look into the tunnels, look in under rubble and that sort of thing.
- [08:57]
A
So if Trump's plan were to be executed as he plans, what would that mean for the future of Palestinian statehood?
- [09:04]
B
The plan itself makes a nod towards statehood, but it was very, very careful just to make a nod towards Palestinian aspirations, as I call it. In the plan. There is no commitment to a state. There is no idea that there's going to be a state. Benjamin Netanyahu has said on multiple occasions he's opposed to State for 20 years, and he's not about to change his mind on that. So the plan will not fall on the basis of a Palestinian state or there not being a Palestinian state. It'll fall probably before then, anyway.
- [09:37]
A
So if there was an intermediate or I guess, pacified Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, it's not Hamas. They wouldn't have autonomy in the same way that they aspire to have. Right? Is that kind of what you're saying?
- [09:49]
B
You could say Hamas has had autonomy, but basically the water table is controlled by the Israelis. The electricity is controlled by the Israelis. Going in and out is controlled by the Israelis. What can. What can go into the territory, what can come out of the territory is controlled by the Israelis. So it's fundamentally, is this really sort of autonomous, or is this sort of like a false autonomy?
- [10:10]
A
Yeah. And who would be in charge of appointing the leaders of the new Gaza?
- [10:14]
B
Well, at this point, a group is actually looking at diaspora Palestinians, Palestinians, for example, in North America, because they're not associated with either the PLO or with Hamas. That's the idea that's been floated. Why Palestinians would volunteer going from the west back into Palestine to do a fool's errand, I have no idea.
- [10:33]
A
And they'd be appointed by the Trump administration.
- [10:35]
B
They'd be appointed by whatever cutout Trump put between him and the administration in Palestine.
- [10:41]
A
But it sounds to me like mostly the Americans and the Israelis would have control over who gets to be in charge of the Gaza Strip.
- [10:46]
B
I don't know about the Israelis. I assume the Israelis would have an ability to do that. After all, there was some talk about who was going to make up the list of the. The prisoners that were going to be released. Marwan Bahuti, for example, was rumored to be on a list that the Hamas wanted to get back. He's somebody who's serving five life terms. And the Israelis said no, they put the kibosh on that. So whether the Israelis will have the ability to put the kibosh on who is going to be the Palestinians in this technocratic government hasn't been arranged yet.
- [11:15]
A
Some people who watch Channel 5 may not know that there's two distinct Palestinian territories over there. There's the Gaza Strip, which was controlled by Hamas, and then there's the west bank, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which is kind of a new adapt of the plo. From what I understand rhetorically, whenever you hear the Israelis talk about Palestinians, they generally refer to Hamas as like this radical fringe group of terrorists. They treat the PA a bit more charitably in their rhetoric. Where does the PA fall in this whole situation? Are they going to have say in what happens to the Gaza Strip if Trump's plan is executed?
- [11:48]
B
Well, the PA and Hamas don't get along very well either. I mean, there was a civil war. The PLO controls the executive branch of the PA, and Hamas controlled the legislative branch as of 2015. But there was a brief fight between the two in Gaza. The Hamas won the fight. Fatah, the largest group within the pa, was expelled from Gaza. And so what we have now is two representatives. I mean, starting in the 1970s, most of the world began to recognize the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Well, now you got two sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. You have Hamas in Gaza and you have the PA in the West Bank. Now the PA is involved in, or theoretically is involved in negotiations with the Israelis, although there really is no negotiations or hasn't been since 2015. The PA has decided to do an end run around the Israelis after the Israelis decided to do an end run around the pa. The Israelis fundamentally, at a certain point said, okay, look, we're going to build a fence, we're going to take Jerusalem, we're going to take our marbles and go home. I don't care what you do behind the fence. If you want to have a democratic state, you've got to have a democratic state. If you want to have an Islamic republic, you can have an Islamic republic. We just don't care. Well, they were made to care in two 2006, when there was a brief war between the Palestinians and the Israelis. So then the Israelis began to rethink. They're not caring anymore. The Palestinians at that point, though, beginning in about 2006, 07 or that period, began to rethink its strategy in terms of negotiation with Israel and began to do thinking about an EN run. For example, all these recognitions of the state of Palestine that you've seen over the last couple of weeks, with France and various other countries recognizing it, that's an en run around the Oslo process, the negotiated process. The idea being that the Palestinians have pretty much given up on Oslo after the Israelis gave up on Oslo years before.
- [13:44]
A
But whenever those countries, like France, etcetera, Recognize a Palestinian state, they are recognizing the pa, Right.
- [13:49]
B
They are recognizing a state. They're not recognizing a government.
- [13:52]
A
But it seems like generally when people talk about. Talk about diplomatic relations with Palestinians, they generally are talking about the pa. Yeah.
- [14:00]
B
Remember the. That in Oslo, the PLO and Israel traded recognition. So the Israelis recognized that there was a Palestinian nation and that the Palestine Liberation Organization was the representative of that nation. Got to speak in that nation's name. PLO recognized the state of Israel. And what that did, in effect, was take 78% of what had been the Palestine Mandate off the table. So what we're negotiating about now is less than 30% of Palestine. In fact, less than 20% of Palestine, actually. Or actually 22% of Palestine. My math is not that good.
- [14:34]
A
Yeah.
- [14:34]
B
So Israel can only get bigger and Palestine can only get smaller. And this is what we're seeing in the skirmishing that's taking place on the west bank right now, where settlers are expanding the settlements on the west bank against the wishes of the Palestinian population. And very recently, there was a authorization to build settlements in an area called E1, which is to the east of Jerusalem. Which means that you have Jerusalem jutting out into the West Bank. You have the settlements that'll get built, which will basically divide the West bank bank divided into a north and south region. So this is something that the Israelis have been dreaming about doing, building in this area. And this is something that the Palestinians have been dreading.
- [15:12]
A
So the settler violence has been something that I've seen a lot of documentaries about. They appear to be, like roving gangs of, like, tan teenagers.
- [15:21]
B
Yeah.
- [15:22]
A
I mean, wild hair. Who just, like, start harassing. What's up with those guys?
- [15:26]
B
What they want to do is they want to annex West Bank.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah.
- [15:28]
B
And they want to create the situation on the ground whereby the annexation will take place de facto or de jure. It doesn't really matter to them. So what they want to do is drive out Palestinians and make life extraordinarily difficult for Palestinians. So what they do is they have, you know, burned down Palestinian villages, they've looted Palestinians, they chop down olive groves and that sort of thing. And the army just stands by and does nothing while this is taking place.
- [15:53]
A
So there's no explicit endorsement of settler violence and expansion by the Israeli government, but there is a catacid acceptance of it?
- [16:00]
B
Well, there are elements of the government that give it a wink and a nod. For example, the extreme right and Netanyahu's cab have any objections to the settler violence, but the mainstream right wing fundamentally pays lip service to the rule of law.
- [16:16]
A
So the fringe would be like Ben GVIR and Atsma Yehudit and these Jewish supremacist organizations, right?
- [16:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are pure racists.
- [16:25]
A
Yeah.
- [16:25]
B
So. And basically they want all Palestinians out. They were having, you know, a great dream of Gaza being abandoned by the Palestinian, forcing the Gazans out. This is, this is what I meant by Trump's being totally inconstant. Trump's plan would have been for Palestinians to move out of Gaza, and he would have been. He would have redeveloped it. Now, this is something that the extreme right in Netanyahu's cabinet was just welcoming. Now he's walked away from that, and he's also promised the Arab states that the United States will not support Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
- [16:57]
A
So there's a higher likelihood for the west bank to remain intact if, if Gaza is taken over by this intermediary, u S backed force.
- [17:05]
B
Again, that depends on what we mean by intact. There's going to be an expansion of settlements. There has already been an expansion of settlements. In order to keep his coalition afloat, Netanyahu has basically given an okay for that. The west bank is not intact anymore. And the question that experts are asking is whether or not there's enough of a West bank to actually have a state at the present time, or whether it's being splintered into these cantons that are separated by settlements that are being separated by bypass roads that people with Palestinian license plates are not allowed to go on, and whether or not you can actually have a state like that that is, you know, sort of ribboned together.
- [17:41]
A
Y One thing you mentioned about October 7th and the justification for, I guess, Israeli expansion is that they don't deserve a state because of what they did.
- [17:50]
B
Yeah, that's the narrative. You know, how these narratives work is you go in, you throw something out, and what you try to do is you try to get your story to stick. And that is a narrative that, you know, basically stuck. The logical thing would have been, of course I saw what happened on October 7th. And so therefore, Palestinians have to have the state in order so that this violence never occurs again. That would have been a logical thing, and that's what I think would be the. The only resolution possible. But instead, the other narrative is narrative that's taken hold that they don't deserve a state. When do you Deserve a state? I mean, what does this thing about deserving a state? Most states are born in violence anyway. So the idea of deserving a state.
- [18:28]
A
Is a ridiculous argument, I guess, in terms of the west bank. From an Israeli perspective, what did the west bank do to deserve the expansion of settlements? Is there a rhetorical argument for the expansion into the West Bank?
- [18:40]
B
Yeah, basically this is where the ancient Jewish kingdom were. I mean, they weren't, they weren't on the coast, they were in the hills.
- [18:46]
A
Yeah.
- [18:46]
B
You know, this is where Jerusalem is. This is where David and Solomon's kingdom was. So if they're going to justify their state by saying, okay, we were the ancient inhabitants here, this is our state, then, you know, the west bank is an integral part of that. There's also the idea that God, God made a covenant with the Jewish people. So the religious Zionists demand the state include this territory as well. Because we can't give up anything. That's God's commandment, a covenant. It was very interesting that Hamas, the exact same idea, which is that Palestine is an Islamic waqf, an Islamic endowment from God. And so we have no right to give that up. So we have to maintain our connection to the land in that way.
- [19:29]
A
How much do you think the expansion of settlements into the west bank has to do with the construction of the Third Temple in the place of where Al Aqsa Mosque is now?
- [19:37]
B
I'm not sure that that's very important. There's an extreme right wing. I mean, we have our Q people in the United States. They have their craz with the Temple Mount. That's something that's there. I mean, some American support is for that. I mean, somebody tried to burn down the Al Aqsa Mosque several decades ago. An Australian tried to do that in order to bring about the Second Coming.
- [20:00]
A
So, yeah, because I was reading, you know, some stuff from the Torah and they think that when all the Jews are in Israel, the Messiah will return.
- [20:08]
B
That's. Yeah. Or that's one man's opinion.
- [20:10]
A
Well, that's what it says. That's what it says. You know, the, the, it's not that many Jews in the world, so they think they're all there.
- [20:17]
B
One of the arguments that the Orthodox have had, or some of the Orthodox have had against Israel has been that this is trying to force God's hand because God gets to determine when there's going to be an incoming of Jews into Palestine. And what we can't do is we can't force God's hand because that's Sort of apostasy. That's. That's crazy.
- [20:32]
A
Those are the Nuricardas, right? You've seen those guys at the Palestine protest in Times Square and stuff like that. One thing I was wondering, too, about the settler stuff. Stuff is settler violence specifically. Does the Palestinian Authority ever try to deploy military forces to go against them or stop them from burning down villages and stuff like that?
- [20:48]
B
The territory, the areas in which the territory of the west bank is split between those parts of the west bank that the Palestinians have security forces and those parts of Palestine where they don't have security forces. Parts of Palestine where they do have security forces, where they're in charge of security alone, are the highly populated areas. So to answer your question, no, basically there is no security, no Palestinian security forces in these areas.
- [21:15]
A
Has the Palestinian Authority been willing to open diplomatic relations with Hamas since this first stage of the peace deal took effect?
- [21:22]
B
Well, I always say that, you know, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is like a couple that's about to get a divorce. You know, half the time they want reconciliation, half the time they want to kill each other. It's that sort of thing that, you know, there's been negotiations in the past that have fallen apart. There's hardliners on both sides. There are people who think that they can't reconcile. This is why Marwan Barghouti is so important, though. He's somebody who could actually bring the two factions together. He's popular enough with the Palestinian population so that nobody could stand in his way. If he were to do that, people are comparing him to Nelson Mandela, not in the sense of ideology or anything along those lines, but as somebody who fundamentally, you have to negotiate with in order to be able to resolve the problem. You have to take him, get him out of prison. You have to basically recognize him as a spokesman, spokesman for the other side, and he's willing to play that role.
- [22:15]
A
Who is he?
- [22:16]
B
He's been involved in politics since he was 15 years old.
- [22:18]
A
Is he in Gaza or is he from the West Bank?
- [22:20]
B
He's from the West Bank.
- [22:21]
A
Gotcha.
- [22:22]
B
Yeah.
- [22:22]
A
And he has a pretty large following there.
- [22:24]
B
He has a large following in both places in Gaza as well, which is why Hamas wanted to get him out as well. They would have been very popular in spite of the fact that he's a member of Fatah, which is part of.
- [22:34]
A
The pa. Is there other political parties within Gaza that are nearly as popular as Hamas?
- [22:38]
B
We don't know the popularity of Hamas. I mean, how do you do a public opinion poll in a Territory, that's you. It's like doing a public opinion poll about Putin in Moscow. But there's another question as well, which is the popularity of any of these factions tends to come and go, whether they're winning or succeeding, or not winning or succeeding. So public opinion is extraordinarily volatile. Shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency by getting a majority of the vote, he's down to below a majority.
- [23:06]
A
So I guess the better question is, during the last election where Hamas was voted into power, were there any other contenders that came close to getting nearly 30 many votes?
- [23:14]
B
There was, actually. I mean, first of all, when Hamas was voted into power, about 1 or 2% of Palestinians said that they wanted Islamic law as the law of the land. In other words, Hamas didn't broadcast its Islamist agenda. On the other hand, Fatah had a failed strategy for winning these things. It didn't regulate who was going to want, who was going to run in various districts. So sometimes Fatah ran two candidates in the same district, and Hamas actually won.
- [23:43]
A
Many majority Hamas coming to power in the first place. I read something. I think we might have talked about it, too. There was a great deal of funding that was coming through Qatar to Hamas in its infancy, that was sanctioned by the Israelis.
- [23:55]
B
There's probably stuff coming in from Israel, too, we don't really know. The Israelis wanted Hamas to succeed. They saw it as a counterweight to the plo, which they thought was their real enemy. They thought that if people were involved with personal piety, they wouldn't be involved in politics. Boy, were they wrong. So Israel either sat on their hands while Hamas was emerging or actually actively abetting the emergence of Hamas. We don't. We don't know that stuff.
- [24:20]
A
What do you think about Sinwar?
- [24:21]
B
I think he's a bloody criminal.
- [24:23]
A
Yeah.
- [24:23]
B
Yeah.
- [24:24]
A
In what sense?
- [24:25]
B
Well, he was the one who organized. We're talking about Yahya.
- [24:28]
A
Yeah, big time.
- [24:29]
B
Okay. As opposed to his brother, who took over when Yahya was killed. He was the one who developed a strategy for October 7th. And there's been documents that have been released that people attest to are fairly legitimate documents that indicate he knew they were going to kill civilians. This wasn't the military operation. This was to kill civilians. Well. And take hostages. So he was a criminal. And if you think that criminals like that, murderers like that, deserve to die, he certainly deserves to die.
- [24:56]
A
There's an Israeli narrative that I've heard a lot, especially, you know, going to different protests and counter protests, that people like Sinwar were kind of deliberately attempting to get The Israelis to take violent military action in order to create a humanitarian crisis and get more people to have sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
- [25:11]
B
I think that was down on the list of what Sinwar wanted. I think what Sinwar wanted was, you know, to put the Palestine issue on the front burner of international politics once again, which he did. You can't pick up a newspaper these days without reading about the ceasefire or about some atrocity that's being committed or something, something along those lines. If you remember Back to before October 7th, the big news coming out of the Arab world was the attempt to expand the Abraham Accords, the accords between the normalizations between Israel and various Arab states to expand that to Saudi Arabia. And so how are we going to do that, whether it's going to work and that sort of stuff as well. Nobody was thinking about the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords pretty much ignores Palestinians. All of a sudden. The only thing that we're thinking about is the Palestinians. They've worked. I mean, October 7th worked, but evidently.
- [25:54]
A
It was a bad thing for a lot of the civilian population, especially those who.
- [25:57]
B
Oh, absolutely.
- [25:58]
A
So is there. Do you give credence to the idea that the people of Palestine or the people of Gaza have been, I guess, held hostage by the political agenda of groups like Hamas?
- [26:06]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. They weren't consulted on this. I mean, obviously in the very beginning they thought that this was a blow that the Israelis had suffered. And they were. They were happy about that. Many of them were happy about that. I assume there were parts of the pop that saw this for what it was, which was impending disaster for Palestinians on the one hand, and also a bloodthirsty rampage that the Palestinians should have no part of.
- [26:31]
A
So is there. Obviously we don't have public opinions, but do you think. Public opinion polls. But do you give credence to the idea that Hamas is supremely unpopular amongst those who have been victims of Israeli bombardment over the course of the past 20 years?
- [26:42]
B
I don't know. And I'm not being coy here, really, it's impossible to say whether Hamas is incredibly unpopular after the cease ceasefire. As unpopular as it was before the ceasefire. That's also something that's also very volatile.
- [26:56]
A
I guess I'm just imagining, you know, is there a world in which, let's say, the opposite thing happens? There's no international peace force that takes control of the Gaza Strip and Hamas gets control of the Gaza Strip. Is there even a possibility of diplomatic relations between a new Hamas post peace deal and Israel as it currently stands?
- [27:14]
B
No, no. Absolutely not. Yeah, it won't work that way.
- [27:17]
A
So it's we supposed to do.
- [27:18]
B
I think Israel will probably either have to reinvade, which I think it's reluctant to do, but they would probably end up doing that, or they would do go back to the role strategy, what's called mowing the grass, which is that every couple of years something will happen on the border. Maybe there'll be a crossing, maybe there'll be some sort of attack, maybe something like that, an attempt to capture Israelis, kidnap Israelis, and the Israelis will try to degrade the Hamas, its weapons capability, its capability for communications and control. And then, then Hamas will build up again and Israelis will do that again. Now, that obviously was a failed tactic which brought about October 7th, but frankly, I really. Besides re invading, I can't see any other option that the Israelis have.
- [28:01]
A
So do you think that granting statehood to Hamas, you know, or to the Gaza Strip with Hamas in control, would result in a second October 7th?
- [28:08]
B
That's impossible to foresee, but that's also not in the cards. Hamas is not going to be granted statehood, period. The Palestinians as a nation are not going to be granted statehood in the foreseeable.
- [28:22]
A
I wonder if the mass unpopularity of Israel right now and the Israeli government's actions will really hinder their ability to complete the Greater Israel Project.
- [28:31]
B
I don't know. At a certain point, Netanyahu gave a speech in which he said, we have to be like Sparta, we have to be autarkic, we have to produce our own weapons, we have to stand by ourselves. He took it back, but that's obviously in people's thoughts, that Israel can stand alone against the rest of the world in spite of the fact that now even European powers and Canada have supported a Palestinian statehood.
- [28:56]
A
Do you think part of that has to do with the way that, I guess groups like AIPAC have infiltrated lobbying in America and kind of compromise politicians here?
- [29:04]
B
I think that more politicians are moving away from AIPAC at the present time. So I'm not quite sure that that's a good ship to get on. It's had a lot of power, for sure, in the past, but people who are watching this, people of that age. Most of the people who watch your audience tends to skew younger, I assume. I think so, yeah. So, I mean, those are the people who are going to be the ones who are going to decide the future, and they're the ones who are moving more and more towards the Palestinian side.
- [29:35]
A
I also think the majority of people, at least Americans between 25 and 32 think that the reason that so many politicians blindly support Israel to the end of the earth is because they've been compromised through some kind of Mossad blackmail.
- [29:48]
B
Operation that I can't say. I don't know. There's all sorts of rumors about Epstein, for example. I'm not a big fan of rumors like that, of conspiracy theories like that. I don't know whether or not they got the dirt on people or not.
- [30:03]
A
I'm just giving you the temperature. Like, if you were to go to Venice beach right now and ask anybody smoking a joint on a skateboard, like what was happening at Epstein island, they'd be like, Israel was honey trapping people. That's. Am I wrong? No, that's what. I can't think of anyone who doesn't think that.
- [30:19]
B
Okay.
- [30:20]
A
Do you think that whole narrative is overblown in general?
- [30:23]
B
Yeah, I do. And I think there are other reasons why the United States, it stood forthrightly behind Israel. I mean, basically, why do people scratch phantom limbs? It's because they're used to it. And the United States has been used to being supportive of Israel and is used to having the shared military technology, shared military intelligence and that sort of stuff as well. In the Cold War, Israel was a strategic part of America's strategy for the Middle east. Its habit. Joe Biden was a Zionist because in the days that Joe Biden was entering into politics, Israel was a David the Goliath that it is now.
- [30:59]
A
So you almost feel like they. Their. Their military actions have positioned them, narrative wise, on the opposite side of what they used to be.
- [31:06]
B
Yes, very much so. Very much so. And that began actually with the first uprising against the Israeli occupation in 1987, when the sort of poster children, really poster children of the uprising were kids throwing rocks at tanks. And the. The next prime minister of Israel, who was leading the military in the west bank at that time, said that they should break the arms of rock throwers. He's talking about people assaulting children, you know. So at that point, the roles of David and Goliath switched for sure.
- [31:38]
A
But I mean, if you go back to 1948 and the Nakba and such and all that stuff, do you think that they've always kind of been Goliath just kind of pretending to be David, or do you think they actually were David?
- [31:47]
B
I think they were a lot stronger than they made out to be. You have to remember 1948 happened for a variety of reasons. The Nakba, the disaster of 1948, happened for a number of reasons, one of which was that the Jewish community in Palestine was better organized, and particularly the Jewish community in Palestine was better organized than either the Palestinian community in Palestine or than this grand coalition of Arab armies that were fighting pretty much each other as opposed to fighting the Israelis. They weren't shooting at each other, but fundamentally they didn't trust each other and politically they were fighting with each other. So there was no real coherent coalition. On top of that, Palestinian society had been decimated in the century 19th, 1930s, so really didn't stand much of a chance. There was a great revolt of 1936-39 that the British put down dramatically. I mean, building concentration camps, house demolitions, imprisonments and that thing. The great revolt ended up with class warfare in Palestine. Whereas lower class thugs would try to raise funds for Palestinian independence or against the fight against Israel by blackmailing or extorting richer people and that sort of thing. And then of course, the agricultural economy of the 1930s was devastated as well in Palestine. So there was a lot of reasons for the Jewish victory in 1948.
- [33:04]
A
As far as you're concerned with everything that, you know, what is the best case scenario moving forward?
- [33:09]
B
There is no best case scenario moving forward. I mean, basically there's all bad choices.
- [33:13]
A
And what's the least bad choice?
- [33:15]
B
The least bad choice is that the Israeli withdrawal will hold and that Hamas has been, will be so concentrating on what's going on within, within Gaza that it will not consider moving beyond the Gazan border into Israel again for at least a while.
- [33:33]
A
And so you say at least a while.
- [33:35]
B
Yeah. I don't know if where we're going to get Hamas is going to be either, you know, we're not going to get Hamas, that's going to be demilitarized. But I don't know if we're ever going to get Hamas that's going to just sit back and lick its wounds. I can't conceive of that. Now, as I said, part of the reasons why Hamas did what it did was to put the Palestine issue on the front burner again. So the way of resolving the whole problem is with a Palestinian state. A two state solution is the only way to resolve this problem. And I don't see that in the near future or in the midterm future as well.
- [34:03]
A
And you don't think either Hamas or the PA is capable of successfully governing a Palestinian state?
- [34:08]
B
No, no.
- [34:09]
A
So there'd have to be a new political party altogether that had enough sway.
- [34:13]
B
With both groups or what they're talking about, which is a reformed Palestinian authority. But the PA is very unpopular. The head of the PA is in his upper 80s. The PA itself is incredibly corrupt, incredibly inefficient. They've been supporting neoliberal economic policies in the territories which are not a good fit for these territories. So they're not particularly popular either. Hamas, who knows what the popularity of Hamas is? It's impossible to determine.
- [34:43]
A
So they're kind of in, I guess, sort of in a far flung way, a two party gridlock pretty much.
- [34:48]
B
So, yeah, yeah. And you're right about the emergence of a new PA would be something. And this is why somebody like Barghouti would be important, because he is charismatic and he does have a, a following. And again, like any charismatic politician, obviously will be able to sway people towards his viewpoint, which would undoubtedly be, if we want a Palestinian state, we have to do it the right way.
- [35:11]
A
Well, I mean, there's, if there's enough youth, people our age and younger, who recognize the dysfunction of this system, it's perhaps possible there could be a brave new world here.
- [35:20]
B
Everybody overlooked the Palestinian contribution to the Arab uprisings of 2010, 2011. But immediately after the Arab, Arab uprisings, the Palestinians themselves not only rose up against the Israeli occupation, but against their own leadership. And there's been bread riots, there's been, you know, basically a group that's called Gaza Youth breaks out, a hip hop group. And they started off one of their pamphlets by saying, you know, fuck Hamas, fuck Israel. You know, what we want is we want somebody who's going to be out.
- [35:51]
A
There for us and not just trying to advance the military strategy of Hamas, basically. Do you think that if there was a wide scale refugee program that Trump said he wanted to spearhead four Gazans, do you think a lot of them would voluntarily leave?
- [36:07]
B
I doubt it. I doubt it. Gazans have historical memory of 1948. They would, you know, don't want to do that. 70% of the Gazan populations are refugees. So it's not something that they would, you know, try to want to, to do. Again, many of them, many of the families, Gazan families hold the keys to their original houses that they had in Israel, what is now Israel. So there's a very, very strong bond to the land. I mean, you don't, do you expand your nationalist base without it having ramifications in terms of the way people feel?
- [36:39]
A
Do you think that the trauma of war and genocide has strengthened their commitment to staying in the land?
- [36:44]
B
Well, there's an old saying in nationalist studies which is that tragedies are better than victories because tragedies you basically inspire people to set them fight. You know, so you have like the battle of Kosovo for example for Serbian nationalism battle that they lost to the Ottomans for example. That's sort of like Kosovo was a sacred territory to the Serbs. So the Nakba was very, very important in instilling a sense of nationness in among Palestinians.
- [37:10]
A
All right, let me see if I have any more questions but I think we pretty much covered everything, right. Especially if we want to get this information to people as fast as possible possible. You know this we want to get when you probably tomorrow or the next day.
- [37:23]
B
Wow.
- [37:23]
A
Well cuz one thing we've noticed is every time we do an interview by the time it comes out, so many things change it like two weeks after and I'm like oh, that question doesn't matter anymore.
- [37:32]
B
Yeah. Remember our interview on on Iran? Yeah. God.
- [37:36]
A
Dude, do you can you think of anything that I didn't ask that that.
- [37:40]
B
No you were would be helpful.
- [37:43]
A
What do you what do you guys think?
- [37:45]
B
They go good.
- [37:47]
A
All right. Well thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it once again. I hope everything is well.
- [37:51]
B
See you in two weeks when something else happens.
- [37:53]
C
Nine days after coming into force, the US brokered Gaza truce had looked under threat after a wave of Israeli airstrikes across southern Gaza today. The enclave's civil defense agency says at least 33 people were killed in today's action which is Israel said was in response to an attack by Hamas on its forces in Rafah. Both sides have blamed each other for the escalation.
- [38:17]
B
Channel 5 live worldwide Hollywood and Vine.
- [38:20]
A
The authority Channel 5 news Channel 55 we don't with Custers and 5 is the best number.