← Ask Haviv Anything
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- [00:05]
A
Hi everybody. Welcome to what I think will be a really fascinating episode of Ask Aviv. Anything. Andrew Fox is here with me to talk about the state of play in the Middle East, Israel's strategic options, Gaza, Iran, the whole business. Andrew is a frontline conflict researcher. He served for 16 years in the British army from 2005 to 2021. He left the Parachute Regiment with a rank of major. As somebody who left the army at the rank of first sergeant, there's a lot of culture gap there, attention there, but we're not going to let it get in the way. He is currently a Senior Associate Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London, at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security in Israel, and he's at the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Canada and the euromed Middle East Council in France. Andrew, good to have you.
- [00:57]
B
Great to be here. Thank you for asking me.
- [01:01]
A
Before we get into it, I want to tell you that we have a sponsor for this episode and we're very grateful and proud of this sponsor. It is no less than the Technion itself. For more than a century, the Technion, Israel's preeminent technical college, technological school, has powered Israel. Its graduates built the nation's roads and bridges, its water systems and electrical grid. Israel's high tech industry emerged from the Technion, the very foundation of the startup nation. Today, as Israel recovers from the devastation of war, it needs the Technion more than ever. Technion scientists are developing new energy sources, sustainable food and water solutions, and breakthrough medical therapies, creating innovations for a better world that will also reboot Israel's economy. If you want to help Israel stay safe and strong, support the Technion. When you support the Technion, you're investing in the people, the ideas that will rebuild Israel for a better future. Because rebuilding isn't just about restoring what was lost, it's also about creating what comes next. The Technion built Israel. Now the Technion will rebuild Israel. Join the Technion visit ats.orgrebuild that's ats.orgrebuild we're going to put the link in the show notes as well. And finally, I want to invite everybody to join our Patreon. If you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about, that's where you do it. At the Patreon, we also have a thriving community that has wonderful conversations and discussions. People from very different places, very different types, Jews and non Jews, from the Middle east, from North America, from Europe, from all kinds of different countries and experiences, have real conversations and share resources that I learn a great deal from. And you get to be part of our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. Join us@patreon.com AskHaviveAnything and that link will also be in the show Notes Andrew I'm going to dive right into it. Let's start with the dire and the worrying and then take it from there. You wrote a very interesting piece on your substack, which again, I recommend everybody join that. You basically argue that the clock is Israel's main enemy. Tell us what you're talking about. What do you mean the clock is running out? What kind of dangers does Israel face?
- [03:24]
B
So let's look around the fronts. You know, it's been called the Seven Front War. I think the Knesset demanded that it be called the War of Redemption, but that sounds a bit melodramatic. I think I prefer the Seven Front War. And if we look at those seven fronts, Israel's in a pretty good place across all of them right now. You know, Gaza is, you know, pretty much done less one hostage to come home that's been kind of outsourced to the United States is a problem now, so that we can forget about that to an extent. Lebanon, they have, as well as Syria, they have this kind of forward defensive posture, creating that buffer zone so that there's no direct attacks that can happen on Israeli soil. The Houthis have got bigger problems to worry about than launching rockets at Tel Aviv right now. Iran is clearly suffering its own tensions. And then we look at Iraq. They've been quiet. The American presence there has kept those Iranian militias on the back foot since 7th of October. And Syria is going in its own direction politically. So kind of on a physical, military, strategic threat front. Israel is actually in a really good place when you compare where they were two years ago. The eighth front, I would suggest, is the information war. And that's been a real problem for Israel. I mean, and I don't think you get a sense of it when you're on the ground in Israel yourself. You know, I've been there literally in the last week. And you don't go there and experience that, you know, that thriving Tel Aviv or that very serious and historic Jerusalem. You don't get a sense for kind of how badly Israel is perceived in the wider world, certainly in the West. Whereas, you know, I have Jewish friends in the UK who won't even go out with their, with their Mag and Davids on because it's such a terrible environment to be even remotely associated with Israel through religion, never mind being actually Israeli. And during the war, we even saw allies like Germany ceasing arms sales. Obviously, that has quickly changed since the war in Gaza came to a kind of kinetic conclusion, which was actually one of my points is that that needed to end so that Israel could start rebuilding its relationships. But clearly the biggest strategic partner for Israel is the United States of America. I don't think there's any debate to be had over that. And in America, things seem to be turbocharging slightly if you look at the direction the Democrats have gone. Support for Israel is now in single figures amongst Democrat voters. And then we look at the other side of the House, we're seeing a resurgence in the sort of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, all these major influences that have a real impact on White House policy. Rabidly anti Israel at this point. And we're already seeing a development in that anti Israeli rhetoric. And so the clock I'm talking about is the American political clock. Because if your strategic security is reliant on one country and that country is taking a quite significant turn turn against you, then clearly when Mr. Trump is out of office, as he will be in two years, and he may be a lame duck even sooner than that, if the midterms go against the gop, then clearly Israel has a problem to confront when it comes to its long term security if it loses America as a stable and reliable partner. And as a final point, I would say you have to look no further than what's happening in Europe right now as to what happens when that break in a relationship catches you unawares. You know, it's not as if Europe wasn't warned. It's not as if Europe didn't have an inkling that this might come. But the American recusement from their European security commitments has left Europe on a really sticky wicket with a very aggressive Russia on their eastern border, no real military power to deploy should the worst happen. And that's the situation Israel, I think, can resolve if they start acting. Now.
- [07:14]
A
Let me make the argument that it's not that bad. You're right. In Israel, we don't have this sense, we don't have this inkling. And also I think Israelis don't respect, inasmuch as they do understand that the world hates them quite a bit of the world, they don't respect it. And one of the reasons they don't respect it is they genuinely think that the only real thing on offer to them from Palestinian politics, from The Palestinian political factions is their death. We have polls on this. 90% of Israeli Jews believe that what the Palestinians want offered an option of what they think the Palestinians think. 90% of Israeli Jews, including meaning deep left progressives, think that Palestinians want to annihilate them. They don't think that Palestinian politics are capable of any other relationship of reciprocating an Israeli withdrawal with peace. That's been the Israeli left's experience of the last 30 years. Look, Europe really depends on America. The average spending on defense in Europe is 1.9% of GDP. That's nothing. Israel on the other hand gets 4 billion from America. That's not nothing. But it spends 5% of its GDP on defense before October 7th. And it has this. And look at the capabilities it showed over the last two years. And the capabilities it showed over the last two years were not the upper limit of its capability. It still has a long way to go up that escalation curve. This is not the existential war. And Europe doesn't have a whole lot of escalation capability. And so arguably Israel's a much better position from a future president that doesn't want to be entangled in the world. If America stops supporting Israel, it saves $4 billion a year. If America stops supporting Europe, it saves $60 billion a year. Fifteen times that. An America that becomes more isolationist or just dislikes Israel, what do we actually lose? What actually do we. I love the American alliance. I believe in the American led world order. The biggest thing America gives Israel is being America. That is the great gift. And it's been the great gift for eight decades. And even when Israel was Marxist, it was pro American in Ben Gurion's day. Would it be so terrible if we lost American support? What would we actually lose?
- [09:29]
B
I'll deal with Europe in a second. I'll go back to your point about the Palestinian peace. I don't think my solution at any point suggests that. The answer here is a two state solution. And if you just played nice with Palestine, then this would all go away. I don't think that's the case at all. I think for the last, certainly the last two and a half years, but before that, a lot of the demonization of Israel came not from a place of genuine care or interest in Palestine, but really as more of a totem, more of creating an imaginary Israel for people to rail against. It's almost like there's two Israels, there's the real Israel and then there's the Israel that particularly the left in the west really, really hate. And Palestine is the vector by which they can do that because Israel represents, I think to these people it represents everything about the west that they can't say about themselves, but they can say it about Israel. You know, it's a democracy, it has a, you know, a vibrant economy that makes a lot of money and, you know, and then factoring anti Semitism to that as well. So I think there's, there's, there's a hatred for Israel that is almost divorced from the Palestine issue. And the Palestine issue is the, is the oppressor versus oppressed narrative they've thrown into that to kind of generate the, generate the fuel on the fire. Clearly there are intractable problems when it comes to a two state solution. And if we could fix that on this podcast, we'd probably be a lot richer than we both are because this is something that has defeated diplomats for 40 plus years. So I don't think Palestine is the answer. The point I'm making when it comes to the fact that Israel on the international stage is losing allies left, right and center, is that there is a threat picture growing that Israel needs to respond to. Looking at Turkey, looking at Qatar, looking at the online Chinese influence and the financial Chinese influence that's pouring into the Gulf, there's the fact that a bunch of Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf, are playing both sides. So there's a real threat picture emerging and Israel needs to have strong defenses in order to counter that. Which leads me to answer that second question, which is what happens if you lose American backing completely? Well, those F35s that did such sterling work over Tehran in the summer last year, they come from America. The missile defenses, the Thaad system and the Patriot systems that the Americans uplifted the IDF with, the casualties from the 12 day war on the Israeli side would have been far greater without American support. And we can say that about the previous two missile attacks as well. There was a lot of American involvement in shooting down those Iranian missiles. Take that away or draw that down, even if it doesn't have to go away completely, it just has to be reduced and Israel is strategically weaker unless they do something in the interim to build up their own autonomous strategic defense capability. And let's not forget, this is not a new idea. I'm not coming out of left field with something that's never been done before. 1948 and 1967 and the Americans put arms embargoes on Israel, and it was Israel's strategic autonomy that enabled them to win those wars. So this Is, you know, I'm almost arguing for a reversion to where we've been in the past rather than develop a reliance upon American technology and arms supply that will come back and bite you. And yes, you're absolutely right. Europe is very reliant on America for its defenses, and that is proving now to be a complete disaster. You know, it's hard to underestimate just how screwed Europe is right now with the Americans basically dropping everything and walking away and leaving that war raging on our eastern border in Ukraine. We look at the British army and let's just be clear. This was by design by the Americans. You know, after World War II, and particularly after Suez, they created a strategic and military dependence within Europe in order to maintain global peace. It suited America very much to have a defanged Europe. This is by design, not by accident. And the Americans got very, very rich off the global peace that resulted, you know, from those. From those decisions to keep Europe weak. And not militarily, you know, not militarily on the front foot. So America can turn around now and complain about the amount they pay for European security, but they've done very, very well out of that investment. But that doesn't change the fact that Europe is now scrambling to try and find defenses. We're desperately trying to rebuild our arms industry. We're desperately trying to increase the troop levels that we can deploy to the various conflict zones that we're being confronted with, potentially even In Greenland, if Mr. Trump goes through with some of his more lurid threats. And that's just a situation Israel doesn't want to be in, I would suggest. And Israel has the technological capability. You know, you spoke about your sponsor for the show, Technion. You know, this is a. This is a country that, that has in many ways led the way. Right. In various technologies around the world, including military tech. And Israel has the capability to develop that strategic autonomy. And given the. The nature of the United States right now, I think it would be a mistake not to do that while you have. While you have the time and while you have the opportunity.
- [14:50]
A
All right, so just before we get into back to Gaza and back to Israel, crises are not bad things. Is Europe going to respond? Is Europe going to build out a defense capability? I know Germany is talking about it. Italy is pretending to talk about building a military again. The only people who are taking it seriously are the people really on Putin's border. I mean, the Poles have an actual real fighting army. It's extraordinary what Poland has done very quickly to build up a Real proper military force. Is Britain going to start to do that? I just literally, bitterly, sadly, not bitterly, tweeted Ursula von der Leyen, who's the president of the EU Commission, I believe former Defense Minister of Germany tweeted, as the repression intensifies, she's talking about Iran and the loss of innocent lives. Continue. We are monitoring the situation carefully. That's the literal statement from the President of the EU Commission. Europe stands with the people of Iran in their legitimate fight for freedom. Nothing about, you know, designating the IRGC a terrorist organization. Nothing about cracking down on massive, you know, skirting of oil sanctions. Huge amount of Iranian oil is actually sold out to the world through Iraqi pipelines. And everybody pretends not to know this. Nothing about doing anything that actually matters in the world. Europe just occasionally puts out these, you know, we are monitoring the situation carefully is the statement of the EU Commission president. Can Europe. This is the only question we're going to ask about Europe. Can Europe become a force in the world again?
- [16:24]
B
It's always really tricky when people talk about Europe collectively because you have to be very specific as to what you mean. Do you mean the European Union? Do you mean countries within Europe? You know, the eu, for example, has the pretensions of national government. Without quite significant amounts of the power of a national government, they don't really have the ability to have a coherent defence policy EU wide that is a retained power for member states. So it's very much dependent on the individual governments of various European countries. And as you say, you quite rightly say that the Poles have really seized this. The Polish economic miracle is quite remarkable and that's worthy of study to see how they've taken themselves from an extremely poor post Soviet nation to being, you know, an economic powerhouse in Europe and probably the preeminent military power in Europe right now. You know, it's a toss up between them and the French. The uk, when our government's making big promises and not delivering the finance to achieve them, we give, we give Vague targets in 2030 for various capabilities that still don't make us into a, you know, a military power. Our Prime Minister is talking about deploying troops to both Ukraine and Greenland. And in the amounts he's talking about, which only amounts to about 10,000 total, that is our entire deployable land force. We only have 23,000 combat soldiers, including reservists in the British army right now. So we're hollowed out and we have a long way to go before we get to any sort of credible defense capability.
- [18:00]
A
You literally said 23,000. That is what the. Britain has a population multiple times the size of Israel's. You have 23,000 deployable troops, literally 23,000 combat armed soldiers.
- [18:12]
B
So infantry, tanks, air corps, pilots, the whole army itself in total is 69,000. That's every regular soldier is 69,000. We can get up to about a hundred thousand with the reserve that they're not in a place to deploy at the moment. So we're in dire straits. We don't have artillery, we don't have air defense in any numbers required. So yeah, we're in a really bad way. We need huge amounts of money spending today, not in some unknown date in the 2000 and 30s. But you know, Germany showed that you can actually throw money at the problem and start making, start making changes. You know, von der Leyen's really interesting because she was a dreadful defense minister for Germany. A lot of their, their armed forces problems are right at her doorstep. But they are starting to spend money and even just this week they've signed another deal with Israel to get some of, some of your equipment that's now battle tested and very, very ready to be sold around the world. But yeah, so when we're talking about Europe, we're not in a great way and we need to do something about it fast would be my concluding statement there.
- [19:18]
A
Yeah, it's unbelievable. Okay, back to, specifically to Gaza. So we have this clock. It's ticking. Israelis are unaware, possibly, presumably Netanyahu is aware. He knows the world. He understands the world, or he's supposed to. And yet I'm quoting from your substack. In summary, I believe Bibi mismanaged and prolonged the Gaza war for domestic political reasons. And we've talked about that a great deal on the podcast. The suspicion by probably half of Israelis that they share your assessment that to some extent he prolonged the war because of his far right partners, political partners, he failed to understand. You write or give credence to the strategic dangers of Israel's resultant international isolation, most particularly the collapse in domestic approval in the USA caused by the Gaza war puts Israel's international support on a long term ticking clock. The short term ticking clock is the end of Trump's presidential term and an anti Israel candidate from either party may replace him. Especially if America First Republicans continue their slide to join the Democrats in anti Semitic insanity. And then you say two things. For all Trump's faults, he did at least save Israel from itself by forcing a ceasefire against the Netanyahu government's wishes and by bribing Turkey and Qatar to achieve the hostage release deal at long last. Also, you write that it would be a terrible folly to return to war. Would it be a reasonable thing for Netanyahu to argue we should return to war in Gaza because Hamas won't disarm Trump's entire ceasefire? Everything depends on Hamas disarming. By the way, the rebuilding of Gaza depends on Hamas disarming. Because if Gaza is just going to go to another war in five years, which is all Hamas could possibly promise us, then why would anyone put $100 billion into rebuilding Gaza right now? And so why is a return to war a terrible idea in your view?
- [21:08]
B
I don't see any upside. None. Because nobody, no analyst that I've come across has talked about how you disarm Hamas. Like how what do you do with this military force, this return to operations? What do you do physically with those troops that guarantees Hamas's disarmament? Because we know the tunnels may be even longer than we thought they were. They could be as many as a thousand miles. Some reports are saying, you know, they will have arms cases, arm stores all over the place. And all Hamas fighters have to do to not be targets is not pick up a weapon. You know, that. That takes you out of scope.
- [21:47]
A
We left a large part of the tunnel system intact because we haven't. The IDF has not done to Gaza City, the largest city in Gaza, what it did to Rafah, where it actually had to destroy every last tunnel coming, going under that border. And Rafah is leveled. It's leveled, yeah, but it's.
- [22:02]
B
You know, I've been to Rafah. It is leveled. But the reason it's leveled is because Hamas mined every building. You know, it mined every building and.
- [22:11]
A
Every street and every neighborhood is crisscrossed with tunnels that you have to get to. It's very hard to bomb a tunnel without bombing the entire street. And that's the result. Now, Gaza City is not leveled, but.
- [22:22]
B
The point is that Hamas isn't disarmed because Rafah is leveled. There's no connection between those two things.
- [22:28]
A
Gaza City was always Hamas's home base, that we've always known. It's their economic base. Gaza City is the biggest city in Gaza. Gaza City was not treated as, in quotes, the military. In other words, the tunnels are still intact under Gaza City, by and large. Well, dealing with those tunnels, that tunnel system, which would be devastating to Gaza City itself, but dealing with that tunnel system is Hamas's last great refuge in Gaza. That's the cost of removing Hamas.
- [22:55]
B
Yeah, but that still doesn't remove Hamas. That's my point. And I don't buy the piece that the Gaza City operation is why they, is why they handed over the hostages. They did it because Qatar and Turkey were given huge bribes and told them to. And the route to releasing the hostages was always, always, always through Doha rather than through Gaza. And you know, people like Daniel Rubenstein and me as well have been saying that since the start of the war. But look, you're still not removing Hamas. Even if you get in there and trash every bit of Hamas infrastructure, lay waste to Gaza City, remove every weapon you find, you still haven't got rid of Hamas. They're still there. Then, you know, unless you go systematically kill every single member, which isn't going to happen because Hamas is the judiciary, it's the, the police force, it's the, the, you know, the, the guys who collect the bins. You know, everything is Hamas. And it's a, it's a thing that people online who support Hamas throw at you. When, when you point out the reason places like Rafah and Darabala, you know, the reason these places are leveled is because everything there is Hamas. And they're like, it's all Hamas. It's like, yes, it is. It's literally all Hamas. You're not going to get rid of a Palestinian population who, as you say, hate you. They're always going to try and rearm, they're always going to try and find another route. And Hamas is so infested that just removing the tunnels and just removing the arms still doesn't remove Hamas. And yet on the other side of that, you'll see massive devastation in Gaza City. Significant numbers of civilians will begin to die once more and Israel will be hammered for that. On the world stage, you will find the protests in the west, you know, again launch up to crazy levels. And then you have this American election coming up in 2028 where Trump will definitely be gone, he's not going to do a third term. You may well have J.D. vance, who is certainly an Israel skeptic, if not an Israel phobe, or you will have a Democrat whose entire voter base, you know, in single digit figures support Israel, which means 90% plus of them are anti Israel. And all of a sudden you've got an anti Israel White House, which means there's a potentially a very different solution to the one that Trump has offered you. It just doesn't make military sense to go in there. The only way to get rid of Hamas is if you go in fully occupy all of Gaza for 20 plus years, own the rebuilding, own the reconstruction, own the re education, take the security responsibility for the Gazan population and then you're basically just playing a repeat of Basra or Baghdad or Fallujah or Helmand. You know, this is not, you know, and as you say, at the expense of all of those days of reserve service, all of those billions of shekels that you will have to spend to keep that army in the field sustained, reconstructing the place, you know, this is a unbelievably cost worthy solution for very little gain. Because again, the odds of this being a solution to that part of the Palestine question is incredibly small. Because how on earth do you persuade a population that's just been bombed for two years, rightly or wrongly? I think rightly. But the point is they're not going to turn around and start having love for Jerusalem or Israel because you've occupied and you started rebuilding the place and winning those hearts and minds. As we talk about in counterinsurgency, it's just not going to happen. If we frame this in terms of utility of force. It's a great book by Sir Rupert Smith, a retired British general, where he talks, you know, he takes it back to Clausewitz. You know, war is politics by other means. That's the abbreviated quote, like what's the political end state here and what's a realistic use and what's a realistic thing you can achieve with that military force? And if you set the goal of completely removing Hamas in its entirety, you're not going to achieve that as a military objective and I'll tell you that right now. And then politically you're doing yourself actually way more damage to a force that is actually no threat to you. Hamas has not been a threat to Israel for well over a year now. Their capabilities are ruined. They may get the odd rocket off every once in a blue moon, but they certainly can't repeat 7th of October. And as long as Israel keeps a buffer zone around the edge of the Strip and reserves the right to just drop an airstrike every time they see a capability starting to emerge, which is essentially what they're doing in Lebanon and Syria, then you've got a solution that works and keeps Israel safe whilst preventing that demonization and that massive international campaign against Israel.
- [27:47]
A
How do you rebuild Gaza in those conditions?
- [27:50]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. And there's no real solution here right now.
- [27:54]
A
Nobody knows how to rebuild Gaza. If Hamas sticks around and Hamas is not leaving and Hamas is not disarming and everybody's looking for a way to pretend that it may have kind of pretended to disarm just to move ahead to phase two. But Hamas is making sure nobody can even do that. Making sure to say explicitly, we're not disarming, we're still here, we're in charge. And so Gaza, Gaza doesn't come out of this.
- [28:17]
B
Yeah, I think what it looks like is just rebuilding in the bit that the Israelis hold right now. And we're seeing that test case now happening in Rafah where the rubble is going to be cleared and something is going to be built there.
- [28:28]
A
And then of course, take us to what you saw. You were in Gaza very recently with the idf. What can you tell us from that? By the way, does the IDF share your assessment about the utility of force problem and why you would even go back to war right now?
- [28:42]
B
I mean, some do, some don't. And quite frankly, the IDF guys I've spoken to about are about as split as everyone else is on this issue. But you know, the Americans own this problem now. Trump directed the ceasefire, Trump directed the Trump plan. Trump is maintaining the ceasefire. And the Americans are kind of mediating between the IDF and Hamas right now through Egypt. So, you know, they get intelligence about a planned Hamas strike on the yellow line. They will literally go through Egypt to make a phone call to Hamas and say, hey, we know about this. Don't think about it. So, you know, there is a real balancing act going on through the civil Military Coordination center, the CMCC down at Kiryat Ghats. And the Americans are suggesting that what's going to happen is you will rebuild in the area on the Israeli side of the Yellow Line. You will then have some sort of filter system for civilians that want to leave the Hamas area and they will then be allowed to come through the border on the yellow line and go and live in the newly rebuilt bits of bits of bits of Gaza. And I think there's a longer term plan for removing or at least defanging Hamas. That is a far better plan than rolling tank divisions through Gaza City. Because if you can bring the population over to your side, then that is the win. Because you're making Hamas lose their popular support, lose their ability to threaten and control the population. And Hamas is empowered right now by the ceasefire. The amount of aid going into Gaza is mind blowing. They showed me the big screen at the CMCC with all the various levels of aid of various kinds that are going in. It's astonishing. And all of it is reaching the warehouses and I think we can Draw two conclusions from that. The fact it's not getting molested, the fact it's not getting intercepted by anyone shows that a Hamas arrow and deterrence units have done their job. They've quelled any opposition and they've enforced preventing people from looting aid trucks that aren't Hamas. And B, when it gets to the warehouse, it's obviously going significantly into Hamas pockets because Hamas are letting it get to those warehouses, and they wouldn't be if they weren't taking their share once it arrived at those warehouses. And so those two things, Hamas is consolidating, Hamas is rebuilding, and Hamas is in total control of their area. That's on that western side of the yellow line. And so a far better way is to create a reconstructed area in the eastern half of Gaza, filter people, allow them through, allow them to live in there. People will see their friends, family, cousins, people they know living, you know, hopefully what will be a good life in the newly rebuilt part of Gaza. And that will then turn them away from Hamas in that western area. And eventually that will leave Hamas alone and isolated. And then if you have to, then you can go in and you can smash them militarily. But doing that now makes no sense because A, it won't work and B, it'll lead to Israel's complete isolation on the world stage.
- [31:43]
A
This brings me to the painful question, the hard question. Everything we know about this Israeli government and how it's handled itself. We covered extensively on this podcast the hunger crisis. In the summer, Israel stopped all aid going in. The Israeli cabinet was absolutely convinced there were conversations about this, that there was a lot of aid in Gaza, it never occurred to them. For some reason, even though one general at least told the cabinet this could be a problem, that maybe distributing aid in the conditions of Gaza's destruction might not be so easy. And so even though there was, there was enough actual aid, according to the UN Dashboard of how much aid was going in in Gaza, about three months too soon, we started getting real price hikes in actual prices in the marketplaces of Gaza. There was real scarcity, there was real hunger setting in. Nobody on the Israeli side at any point, while all of this was exploding, everywhere around the world talked about it said anything. People like me in outlets like the Free Press had to raise the alarm so that the Israelis would notice and somebody would do something, not just me, but I'm just saying, like, it had to literally come from outside and it had to come from places the Israelis couldn't write off as anti Semites. The sheer Galling, unbelievable incompetence that you saw when it came to running this war effort in ways that would lose us. Not the enemies, Israel, the friends, the best friends of Israel. They did everything they possibly could. A lot of friends of Israel have just gone silent because you sit this one out. The Israelis are not competent enough. They don't themselves offer reasons when people are genuinely suffering on the ground and it's visible and it's obvious and they're just not competent enough for you to stake your own capital, your own political, social, public capital on. There are people like Bitzela Smotrich, finance minister of this government, member of the Security Cabinet, as one of the secondary minister in the Defense Ministry who publicly said multiple times, this is about ethnic cleansing, we will empty Gaza and settle Gaza. I have come to the sad conclusion that one of Smotrich's, that he's not an idiot, that one of his goals and the goals of his religious world, of his rabbis who give him a lot of his instructions when he goes into the government is to isolate Israel. He wants an isolated Israel because an isolated Israel is an Israel that can do things in the west bank, for example, that he wants to accomplish in the West Bank. He is on the right wing end of the settlement movement. He's not even the sort of mainline settlement movement. And so we actually face a government that when it isn't stupidly doing these things in the information, losing the information war, it's maliciously losing the information war. Can this government build behind the yellow line? Can it do that strategy, that American suggestion, turn the Israeli half controlled half of Gaza into the argument against Hamas on the Hamas controlled half of Gaza? Is that now moving forward in Gaza, something this Israeli government can do in your assessment, having watched them on the world stage?
- [34:44]
B
Look, talking to the Americans at the cmcc, actually I don't think it's Israel's problem at this point. I think the Americans will lead on it. Trump's board, headed up by Trump himself, we'll have obviously directors to run the day to day piece of it. So that's the first step. The second step will be the international security force. And I've, you know, I've written another article on my substack about all the challenges that that particular part of this plan faces. And having been at the CMCC last week, I wrote that article back in November and I would back myself to the hilt in my conclusions there, that actually the challenges for that are huge and it will take a lot of time to get that international security force over the border. To give you a flavor of the challenges, you know, first of all, who commands it? Secondly, what's their mandate? Thirdly, what are their rules of engagement? Fourthly, who's doing their logistics for them? Someone gets injured, what happens? Who deals with the casualty? Where does the casualty go? How do different nations come with different caveats as to what they can and can't do? What happens on the first occasion when Hamas shoots a member of the isf? How do they respond? Do they have the ability to be kinetic going forward? All of these problems are incredibly challenging and nobody has an answer yet. So this is going to take time. But it's actually the Americans, I think, who will lead that rebuilding effort. So it'll almost be taken out of the Israeli government's hands. And for the reasons you've so articulated so well, that's probably a good thing quite frankly, because, you know, the way the people like Ben GVIR Smotarich have carried on throughout this war, they've made it exceptionally difficult for certain people like me in the West. You know, I'm critical of Israel's government, but I'm certainly not critical of, of Zionism or the existence of the state of Israel. I'm a passionate supporter of those things. But they have put people like me and others in a bind because, you know, they have been explicitly genocidal in some of the stuff they've been saying. It's almost as if they want to lose the ICJ case single handedly. And you know, there needs to be some sort of accountability for the way they've behaved and maybe taking Gaza out of their hands is, is a form of accountability for that. You know, they simply can't be relied on to, to behave in a fair, decent and humane manner.
- [36:54]
A
And just to add it's a no, can't be relied on to rein them in and do the thing that needs to be done for Israel's interests because he needs them politically.
- [37:02]
B
You know, he loses them and the government falls. But actually on the brink. Our podcast with Jake. We interviewed Yoav Gallant and General Gallant was quite clear that, that these guys were torpedoing potential hostage deals. So that, you know, he said it on the show that there was a, be a war cabinet meeting somehow before the main cabinet. They would find out what had been agreed on when it came to agreeing a hostage deal and they would walk into the, into the main cabinet and torpedo the deal on the spot. And that happened a couple of times. So, so Gallant didn't, didn't pull any punches on that one yeah, these guys aren't good for Israel. They're not. They're not good for, you know, the idf. They're not good for Palestinians. They're no good. That would be my take.
- [37:42]
A
Let me. Let me cut to the chase. I don't think an ISF is possible. I've never seen it done, not in the forces in the Sinai, not in the forces in the Golan. When Jabhat Al Nusra came down the Golan Plateau in 2015, I think it was conquering various areas and coming, brushing up against the international forces, separating between Syria and Israel on the Golan Heights. The solution of the international forces was to run back behind the IDF line. They literally came up to the IDF and said, mind if we hang out on your military bases for a couple of years? The international forces. Abba Eben, the legendary Israeli foreign minister, once said, international forces are like an umbrella that doesn't work in the rain. They're incredibly useful right up until you need them, and then suddenly they don't exist. And our experience in Lebanon was actually worse than that. Our experience in Lebanon was that they had no ability to actually counter Hezbollah. UNIFIL would neither search nor confront them and was only really a liability for Israel. Israel couldn't do an airstrike next to a UNIFIL site. On multiple UNIFIL sites, the Israeli army found tunnel systems, you know, fortresses, arms caches. This is something that you've seen in southern Lebanon, also with the idf. So why would ISF possibly be any different? Name the military on this earth that would face down Hamas in a gunfight. Not because they're cowards, but because why lose anybody? For Hamas, for Gaza to fight, to do the. For Israel, for any of those, right? Who was out there? The Turks would go in gladly. But the Turks would go in to fight for Hamas, to defend Hamas from the Israelis. Who else would go in there and be willing to have a firefight of any kind? And if there's zero chance that you'll ever get into a firefight, Hamas will build its tunnel entrances next to the ISF bases. So is the ISF even remotely a possibility? The ISF is something that either the IDF will protect or nobody will protect, and then it won't matter.
- [39:44]
B
Yeah, look, I share your cynicism. I share your cynicism, and I've been very clear about that in my writing, that I don't think it's a plan that's going to work particularly well. But where does that leave us? I mean, the alternative is the IDF just hold the yellow line whilst rebuilding goes on behind them. That's American led reconstruction. I mean, that might work. You know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I have every answer, but you know, this is the definition of a wicked problem that every time you think you come up with a solution actually it just unlocks a bunch of other difficulties. But we've got to do something, as you say, you know, otherwise the solution is, the solution is Garza's living intense forever, which is, which is clearly not workable when it comes to, when it comes to holding the yellow line. You know, there's never really been a ceasefire in Gaza. They've always been shooting at the idf and the IDF have always been responding. I mean, an IDF soldier was shot by a sniper whilst I was at the cmcc. We had to cut the visit short because they were dealing with that particular crisis. So this is, this is still ongoing. But the question is, is it manageable? Is it a manageable level of violence where reconstruction can actually happen whilst it's going on? And I think it probably is. So I think if we end up with a sort of fudged solution where you have Israel holding the yellow line, responding to Hamas on their side of the border when they, when that, when they need to be dealt with, then we can have the Americans in behind clearing rubble and building buildings and then we come up with some solution further down the line to filter people through the yellow line to, to occupy those new buildings. Somebody's going to need to secure that because, you know, there's every chance that Hamas might tunnel through or tunnel up and people might slip through screening somehow. You know, there's no, there's no easy solution. There's no easy quick win here. I think we might find ourselves having to go with the 60 solution rather than the 100 solution, which is basically going to leave everyone unhappy. But we have to do something and something sort of 60% is better than nothing, even if it's not 100%.
- [42:01]
A
This is the frustrating thing for me. The only path forward is the rebuilding of the Israeli side in Gaza. There are millions of people and they are living in tents and we have to have an answer and we have to have a solution to that human suffering. And the Israelis refuse. I don't know why. I'm just harping on this. Maybe I'm really stuck in this moment. This is the pivot. This is the moment. We went through a lot of bad times, a lot of insane anti Israel protests and now we can actually set the narrative of this war by the rebuilding. And we're refusing. Why don't we have a vision for Gaza of a disarmed, but also because it is disarmed, happy and prosperous Gaza. Why don't we show what Gaza gets if it loses Hamas? You're right. I don't know how an infantry force removes Hamas from Gaza, but so Gaza has to remove Hamas from Gaza. Gaza has to say, I don't want that future, I want this future. But we're not offering that second future. And they're not leaving. And so Smotrich's fantasies are irrelevant. And so now the question becomes, what is the Israeli government doing and why aren't we more frustrated about it?
- [43:13]
B
Yeah, I can only assume it's because Bibi's trying to hold the coalition together until the election. And I suppose that's really the great hope is that post the election this year, a government is in place or is empowered enough to actually make these decisions without worrying about the government falling apart the next day if they do so because half the coalition walks out. There's that inherent structural weakness, I think, in Israeli politics, where these coalitions do tend to be incredibly fragile. And look, I try and stay broadly out of Israeli politics, apart from where they specifically pertain to the conflict, because my job is conflict analyst, not, you know, it's none of my business what, you know, what Israelis vote for or who they vote for.
- [43:54]
A
Maybe rebuilding won't help. Maybe they'll still be radicalized. Maybe you can't. Maybe it's too deeply embedded in Palestinian identity, the idea of the destruction of Israel. But then you've at least made the case to Israel's friends. We really do kind of need Germany. We really do kind of need America. We do kind of need a couple of. I think we can go it alone. And in fact, I think there's an advantage in going it alone. A silver lining. I think it would be hard, it would be painful, it would be deadly. But it would also have a huge silver lining, which is that our enemies have always argued that they don't lose wars against a bunch of Jews because the Jews are doing something right or because they themselves have gutted their own societies. They lose wars against the Jews because the Jews are backed by great Western empires. They're the spearhead of the American empire. Well, if we're no longer the spirit of the American empire and then they lose the next war against us, they'll have a lot harder time explaining why they themselves are so weak. So I'm eager for that moment. But over the long term, we still are Westerners, and we want to be part of the west, and we want a strong, healthy west that continues the advance of democracy in the world. And all of that is something that kind of requires having a narrative come out of this war that is not ethnic cleansing, but is denazification. So I need a government that's going to do that.
- [45:09]
B
I think it's about alliances over dependencies. I think there is a painful case to make that Israel at the moment is dependent on the United States. There are a lot of billions that are given to Israel to spend on the American defense industry, and that has been very well spent, clearly, because the IDF performed extremely well for the last two years. But there is a difference between dependency and alliance. And I think alliance is the key here for Israel. Alliances are what you need because they work at the diplomatic level, the economic level, as well as the military level. And if you can get those other two legs of international affairs up and running, you know, the diplomatic and the economic, then you're in a much stronger place than if you're just a military superpower. And look, you know, Israel, Israel did beat the Arabs in 67. They did beat the Arabs in 48. Not entirely alone, but certainly with alliances rather than dependencies. And as I've already mentioned, you know, the Americans put an arms embargo on Israel for both those wars, and Israel still won them convincingly. So this has been done before, and it just makes a lot more sense to me if you want to be in a region that is going to go and continue and be volatile for the foreseeable future. We're seeing the resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood axis of Turkey and Qatar massively empowered by the bribes they were given by Trump to get the hostages released. We're seeing Saudi and the UAE now falling out as they both compete to establish their own influence in the face of a resurgent Qatar and Turkey. Israel somewhere caught in the middle. Strategic autonomy makes an awful lot of sense when you're looking at the kind of instability that's rolling around that region for the years going forward. And that's before we even get to Iran and how stable that might be at the end of this current convulsion they're going through.
- [47:02]
A
Let's get to the last question I want to ask you about Turkey and Iran. You write on your substack, the Turks are militarily emboldened and will solidify their influence in Syria. Both Qatar and Turkey will pull every lever to ensure their continued influence in Gaza. Either through Hamas or another proxy, they will support Hamas and other terrorists in Judea and Samaria. We have seen that the Turks, I should just say, fund some of the activist groups that try to drive violence on the Temple Mount to create those kinds of explosions. They very much attempt to destabilize. They are a Muslim Brotherhood ideological movement that is currently in control of Turkey and leading it very much away from democracy. And they have a competent military. They are the only really genuinely competent military in this region outside of Israel. Forgive me, there's some very good commando forces in the Emirates, etc. But largely speaking, broadly speaking, if the Turkish navy decides to impose a blockade on Israel, Israel has a real problem. Whereas if the Egyptian navy makes that decision, Israel does not have a real problem. And so going forward, you've written now about Iran. We're watching all the tumult in Iran and the possibility that there could really the regime is more threatened than it has been in anybody's memory. What does that strategic environment look like? You have written really pessimistically that Israel could face a broad multi front, Turkish led if Turkey replaces Iran, so to speak, in this proxy system. It's already very much in Syria. It already is ideologically kin to Hamas, so it's not hard for it to then be there. It is funding activism in the West Bank. It easily can come in. Jordan just made the Muslim Brotherhood illegal this past year. It did that because the Muslim Brotherhood was getting massive funding from Iran, among other places, and starting to become a serious threat going forward to the government of Jordan. Well, that's something that Turkey can play with. Turkey would be one of the great groups propping up a Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. That's Israel's longest border. This whole idea. Turkey is very much involved in the Libyan civil war that's currently underway that nobody knows about because there's no Jews involved. Little zinger from the side. Turkey is shaping up to be a strategic threat going forward. What do you see Israel's broader strategic environment, Iran, Turkey, the larger region. We've just smashed our enemies, but you know, we smashed our enemies in 67 very convincingly, embarrassingly. And six years later we fought a war that was more dangerous for Israel in 73, so the region doesn't magically stabilize and turn into a European Union. What do you see going forward in terms of Israel's security challenges on the larger region?
- [49:46]
B
I think if we frame a risk in terms of capability, opportunity and threat, it gives us a kind of lens to analyze this problem, like who has the intention to attack Israel, who has the capability and will they have an opportunity going forward? The money will come from Qatar, the, the flex will come from Turkey. And we're seeing that now. You know, it was, it was almost a, a statement of fact rather than a prediction in that article. Because look at Syria that is now being divvied up between Saudis and the Turks. If we look at Lebanon, Hezbollah are rearming faster than they are disarming. Yes, disarmament sort of south of the litany has been going okay. Not great, but okay. I think better than the IDF expected, but still not perfect. But that still doesn't change the fact that the rest of Lebanon is infested with Hezbollah and they are rearming faster than they are disarming. So that's going to continue to be a problem going forward. We've already talked about Gaza in depth. If you look at Judea Samaria, west bank, that is something the IDF have been on top of, but is still a huge problem. They're still smuggling across the Jordan Valley. There is a central command for the IDF that is stretched thin along that area. They're looking at contingency plans to try and stand up reserve units that can respond in 20 minutes rather than 24 hours. And, you know, they're trying to put those raids into places like Jenin or Tulkan or whatever to get ahead of the problem so that anyone with intention or capability never gets an opportunity and ideally loses their capability as well. As you say, Jordan is looking incredibly fragile. You know, the Hashemites are, are not the most rock solid. And if I were an enemy of Israel, one of my priorities would be to, you know, to destabilize Jordan to the maximum possible extent because it just opens up so many avenues of attack on that eastern flank of Israel. And then we look at Iran, their rocket stocks are back to where they were before the 12 Day War, but this time they're focusing on solid fuel rather than liquid fuel. Solid fuel can be fired straight away. Liquid fuel has to warm up before you can fire it, which gives an air force like the IDF the opportunity to strike them whilst they're still on the ground. You know, the nuclear program is still going. Fordo is still absolutely in operation. It's heavily damaged, but it's not completely out of action. And if Iran, if the regime falls there, then who knows who'll take over afterwards? You know, we assume that just because the mullahs are gone, it'll definitely be a good outco. But actually, what if another hardliner from The IRGC takes over. You've got a problem on your hands straight away there. So I'm not saying that there's an imminent catastrophic threat to Israel. And as an army officer, what I'm trained to do is to plan for the most likely enemy course of action, but always have a contingency plan for the worst case scenario. So you have to understand what that worst case scenario is. And that's what I've articulated in that article. I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm just saying you need to be ready for it because that's the, you know, end of day stuff if it comes true. But it's not a particularly more stable region than it was pre summer of October. The Ring of Steel turned out to be a damp squib. Nature abhors a vacuum. We're in danger of seeing a vacuum emerge should Iran fall. And that vacuum could always be filled by good things or it could be filled by something much, much worse. And it's just about being alive to these strategic possibility. And there's so many variables. I'm not going to make a prediction. You know, my job is to analyze what is, not predict what it's going to be. So I'm not going to make a prediction. I'm simply saying that there are a number of ways this could go. One of them is particularly bad and Israel should certainly have something in his back pocket just in case it does go that way.
- [53:52]
A
Wait, no, we're not, I'm sorry, we're not ending on that note, okay, but my listeners and viewers are going to be wondering, okay, but where does Andrew think Israel stands in 5, 10 years? Are we capable of meeting these threats even in a worst case scenario? Are we capable of meeting these threats.
- [54:11]
B
Today? No. Which pretty much takes us full circle back to the point of my article and that's that Israel needs that strategic autonomy. And look, and I think Bibi's all over this, you know, I've been very critical of him, but I'm always happy to praise where I praise his G. He made that speech a few months ago about autarky and that's been I think reinforced even this week by Senator Graham talking about, you know, reducing Israeli aid over time even in less than a 10 year time span he spoke about. So it's not, this isn't just me saying it, this is actually being spoken about credibly in Washington. And again I would frame it through those three things, the economic, the diplomatic and the military. And we're already seeing Israel making economic links, which are really helpful. You know, we've seen that pact with Cyprus and Greece. We've seen the energy deal with, with the Egyptians. You know, these are really good things that create strengths. You know, if you, if you take a max, a matchstick, you can break it easily. If you take three matchsticks, they're much, much harder to break. And that's how you should look at the economic, the military and the diplomatic. If you have only one of them that's easy to break. If you can get all three up and running, then you're much, much stronger. So the first thing I would do would be to focus on those capabilities on a military basis. You know, we're seeing things like the, the, the iron beam, you know, huge leaps forward in Israel's defenses. They need to make sure offensive capability matches that defensive capability. And, and I'm certain that will happen diplomatically. And this was the thrust of my article. Israel needs to repair some of those damaged relationships that have come about through the information campaign. And in that article, I give a bunch of different ways I think that Israel could go about doing that, particularly in the information space. And then economically forging strong economic links with their neighbors will make a big difference. Economic links alone won't do it. You need all three of the things, but get all of these things running in the same direction. That makes Israel far, far stronger than it would be if it just tried to rely on any one of them alone. And look, the Abraham Accords proved that that was economic and diplomatic, but there was no military side to it. And, you know, the Abraham Accords sort of held up, but I think they're in a very much a frozen state right now where people are playing lip service to it. You know, the UAE were the strongest kind of runners with that, but they're looking very wobbly right now with some of their involvement in Sudan, with the falling out in Yemen they've had with the Saudis. And, you know, even after the strike on Doha, you know, the Israeli strike on Doha, the Arabs quickly all kind of bonded together and condemned Israel, Abraham Accords or no Abraham Accords. So these things need to happen in conjunction. If you keep your forward defensive posture, as the IDF are doing at the moment, then you're in a pretty good place. So it's not all negative going forward. It could go horribly wrong, and you need to have that in your back pocket. But actually, as long as Israel can start repairing those diplomatic and economic relationships and make their military strong, they're prepared for the worst. Obviously, the enemy always gets a vote. And you can't control what Turkey do or what Qatar do or what any other enemy does, but at least you can influence their thinking by being strong militarily. So that's where I think we should go.
- [57:31]
A
Thank you so much, Andrew. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thanks so much for coming on.
- [57:36]
B
Hey, thanks for having me.