← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and I am joined by Dan Shapiro, who is the former United States Ambassador to Israel. We are going to be talking about Israel and Gaza and everything that's happening there before we do. Dan, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. It's a weighty topic and so you've agreed to spend a fair bit of time with us to talk through it. So, hoping to have a nice enlivened conversation, I want to start up with just sort of why we're talking at this particular juncture. Obviously, this war has been going on for some time now, but it does seem like in the past couple weeks there's been a bit of an inflection point, I suppose, and certainly more scrutiny about what's happening there owed to some horrific images and video footage coming out of Gaza that suggests a real humanitarian catastrophe there, actual starvation. Can you describe why this moment feels particularly different to a lot of us than any moment in the nearly two year long war?
- [01:03]
Dan Shapiro
Yeah, will do. Thanks for having me, Sam. This is an important conversation. These are difficult conversations. But appreciate where you're starting. I mean, even where you're starting, we do, you know, do have to lay the foundation. Obviously, Hamas, the suspicious terrorist organization, bears responsibility for starting the war with the attacks on October 7, for refusing to release hostages all throughout, for hoarding aid that the international community has gotten in often Israel has facilitated getting in throughout the war and then using their own people as human shields. These are all things that are just facts about Hamas and who they are and how they conduct it and kind of how we got here. But none of that justifies some of the recent decisions and policies by the Israeli government that have prevented aid from reaching some of the desperate civilians and that have now led to this hunger crisis. And of course, we've seen it and seen the images. And it's not that every single person in Gaza doesn't have access to food, but there is not enough food and the food has skyrocketed in price. So those who can access it or maybe can't access it. And we've seen some of these really desperate cases. You know, this started, I guess, this inflection point that you're referring to started really right at the end of the Biden administration and when Trump was coming in during the transition, the outgoing and incoming administrations worked to get a ceasefire that started, I think, January 18th. And it led to the release of about 30 hostages and it led to about six weeks of quiet or 60 days of quiet when food was an. Aid was flowing in at a significant rate. And there was supposed to be an extension of that ceasefire to continue to negotiate for a final deal at that point. But Netanyahu made a mistake, I think, or bad decision not to extend the ceasefire, basically to say, we're going to go back to fighting. And thinking he could pressure Hamas in those before the next negotiations would resume by cutting off the aid that was going into Gaza. In doing so, he was also caving to the extremist members of his cabinet, Itamar Bengvir and Bitzal Smotrich, two ministers from far right parties who really see themselves as advocating for Israel to permanently occupy Gaza. But he depends on them to stay in power. So he was kind of also catering to them. And Israel tried to set up an alternative aid delivery mechanism, this Gaza Humanitarian foundation, to give aid directly to Palestinian civilians so that it wouldn't go into Hamas's hands and they couldn't steal it and sell it. But it really has been a deeply insufficient approach, not nearly enough distribution points. A lot of danger for Gazans having to reach it by crossing long distances, including open military zones. And there's been shootings, sometimes the idf, probably some by Hamas, and people have gotten killed trying to get to their, you know, this desperately need aid. So that's obviously been an unsuccessful, unsuccessful substitute. And once the aid stocks that were built up during the ceasefire ran out, that's when the prices shot up and the hunger crisis started. And Israel spent too long trying to kind of win an argument about stealing the aid. It's true. And we tried this other thing, it's true, although it wasn't successful, rather than try to surge aid to those in need. And so the result was that instead of pressure going on Hamas, as we should all want, and Hamas, we know, revels in the suffering of Palestinians. So it doesn't create pressure on them. The pressure landed on Israel. And of course, we've seen it. All those images, all those pictures all over the world are putting pressure on Israel. It's a crisis of their own making. Now, they've started in the last week or so, or week, 10 days maybe, since that crisis really became apparent, to start to let more aid flow in. They're doing humanitarian pauses to facilitate deliveries by the UN organizations. They're letting a lot of nations do airdrops of aids, kind of in an efficient way, but in an emergency basis. It's a good addition, but this really needs to be sustained. And the goal should be to flood the zone with aid, make it accessible everywhere. And what that does is it drives down the market price and so Hamas can't exploit it for political power.
- [05:10]
Sam Stein
Obviously, the Netanyahu government says and argues that Hamas is intercepting this aid, that they are in fact putting aid into Gaza, and that if not for Hamas, it would get to the right people. I take your point that if they just flowed the aid, this wouldn't be an issue. I would actually kind of welcome your insights into how the Netanyahu government is operating in this moment. By that I mean, look, people who have observed Israeli politics for a while thought they had an understanding of what Israeli politics represented. But a variety of different actions taken by the Netanyahu government, both domestically and with respect to this war, has really questioned or forced us to question our priors on that. You've worked with these people, you've talked with these people, you've been there as they've prosecuted this war. What are the motivations that we maybe don't appreciate behind what Netanyahu is doing now, both domestically and with respect to the operations in Gaza?
- [06:10]
Dan Shapiro
So this war really, of course, started with wall to wall support in the Israeli society, that it was a defensive war, it was a just war. Responding to the October 7th and 7th attacks, and then of course, Israel came under fire from multiple other fronts. Hezbollah from Lebanon was attacking it by October 8, and eventually Israel did a very serious operation to disable Hezbollah. Of course, the Iranian attacks, which came last year in April and October, and Israel responded to take out the nuclear facilities a month or two ago, Yemen, Houthis have fired. So Israel's really been under fire and there's been a strong feeling of a need to defend itself and quite legitimately so. And then of course, to secure the return of all the hostages from Hamas's captivity. But also going into the war now, 22 months ago, I would say most Israelis would agree with the contention that no outcome in which Hamas continues to rule Gaza and could rebuild and refit and Prepare for another October 7th attack is acceptable. At some point, Hamas has to be really moved for power in Gaza. And so there's a lot of unanimity about that for a long period of time. But of course, as the war has dragged on and that has looked to be harder and harder to achieve militarily, there's been increasing appetite in Israeli society. Most polls show 70, 75% of Israelis say, you know what, what we should do is get a deal to end the war and bring all the hostages home. And that's not going to be a sufficient end to the whole episode. We're going to have to continue then to work in diplomatic ways and other ways with Arab states to get Hamas fully exiled from Gaza, to put in place a different alternative Palestinian leadership. But that for now sequence, the sequence requires getting hostages out as the first priority. But that's in the broader society. Within the cabinet, which is Netanyahu and these right wing ministers on who he depends to stay in power while he's on trial for corruption and the like, there's a different agenda. Their agenda is to take over Gaza, to reoccupy it, to remove as many Palestinian civilians from Gaza, not just Hamas, but Palestinians who live there really in a form of ethnic cleansing. They'll say it's voluntary, but you know, they're looking for countries, Ethiopia, Somalia, Indonesia, who would take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. And none of this is going to happen. But that's their vision. Resettle it and eventually annex it back to Israel. If they were to succeed in all of that, that vision, you know, Israel is going to lose some of the real strategic opportunities it has right now to normalize its relations with Saudi Arabia, to broaden out this coalition of the Abraham Accords. Countries who are moderates, who want to recognize Israel, who want to have normalized relations and be that coalition. And instead they're not going to be able to do that because of their own politics if Israel is going to control Gaza. So that's the kind of the tension right now between what a minority that actually governs.
- [09:10]
Sam Stein
I mean, it's the strategic loss of opportunity there, but it's also the morality. It's, it's this idea of Israel as a beacon of democracy morality that is being damaged here too. I mean, that, I don't know if it certainly has affected me as a Jew, for instance, is watching this happen. And so is there a sense within the country that they recognize that they have really lost respect on the global stage? We're on the issues of morality, human rights, diplomatic support. I mean, surely they know that a variety of different countries are now accepting Palestinian statehood that wasn't necessarily Israel in the cards 12 months ago. Do they recognize domestically that they are doing real damage to Israel's image internationally?
- [09:52]
Dan Shapiro
For many months? The trauma, and it's trauma that's renewed every day with the news of the hostages, including this week with these videos that Hamas released of statistically starving hostages and making them dig their own graves and tunnels. That trauma has probably been the main focus for most Israelis for most of the time of the war. But I'd say during the last two or three weeks, as the images of starvation coming out, particularly children coming out of Gaza, that debate has really shifted in Israeli society, saying, this is not something we want to be associated with. We have a moral obligation to address that crisis, even if we have to defend ourselves, even if we still have to fight Hamas. Now. One of the challenges I think we face right now, though, is that President Trump has enabled a lot of these excesses. He really, I think, bears a fair bit of responsibility for inflection point we've reached. And I don't know if you want.
- [10:46]
Sam Stein
To go to this, elaborate on that. What could he have, what could Trump have done differently? I'm very curious. What steps did he make that you would have said, no, no, no, that's, that's probably the wrong way to go about this?
- [10:58]
Dan Shapiro
Several things. First, when he came in to office, they'd just gotten the cease fire. And his, he and his team during the transition had really helped achieve it. And they deserve their share of credit for that, together with the Biden team. And that was a moment, of course, maximum influence for him. Three weeks later, in February, Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Washington and it was the perfect time to say, let's work together on extending this ceasefire and getting to the end of this war and getting all your hostages home. Instead, he rolled out this kind of crazy proposal. He called it building the Riviera of the Middle east in Gaza, in which he described all Palestinians leaving Gaza to who knows where, really, again, a form of ethnic cleansing. And then the United States would fund and facilitate building a luxury hotel strip along the beach. None of this is going to happen. It was kind of a crazy idea, but what it did do was it wet the appetite and emboldened those extremist ministers. Their version of that is, yeah, Palestinians leave and we resettle and we reoccupied and we annex Gaza to Israel. So he kind of has emboldened them. And still to this day, if you ask Netanyahu what is the day after plan, something that we in the Biden administration were urging Israel all through the war to come up with a more realistic day after plan that involved Palestinian moderates governing Gaza, and he wouldn't do it again because of the politics of his coalition, he now says, oh, I don't need a day after plan. Trump's plan is the day after plan. So he's gotten them stuck on this really unrealistic and really immoral and really strategically very, very dangerous proposal. So that's the first thing, that was all the way back in February. Then apparently when the ceasefire ended and ended by Netanyahu's choice in March. This was underappreciated at the time because we didn't perceive the decline in aid going in. But when Netanyahu said, we're going to block all aid going in and try to set up this alternative, he couldn't really have done that without a sign off from President Trump. So I think that was sort of a second mistake. And it led to the starvation crisis that emerged only when the aid really ran out within the last. Within the last few weeks. Then he had another moment of maximum leverage after he joined the strikes against Iran and us, stepped in and bombed the underground nuclear facilities. Something I supported, by the way, because I felt that was a risk that had to be addressed. He had Netanyahu come to Washington. It was kind of a victory lap. Look what we've done together. We've set back the Iranian nuclear program. And he could have used that as a moment of maximum leverage to say to Bibi, okay, let's now work together on what he says he wants. Trump has said several times he wants to end the war, so let's move toward ending the war. Not with this partial deal, which Netanyahu favored. 60 hostages, 60 days, 10 hostages, but a full deal and the war. Get all the hostages home. And it seemed that that was what was going to happen. When Netanyahu came to Washington, it didn't happen. A lot of time was spent just talking, talking, talking. Eventually, his envoy, Steve Witkoff, went back out to the region. And again, a week went by, a lot of talks. He visited Gaza, but nothing has emerged from that. Now he's off to Moscow. Look, if. And now there's a real. Another danger. Now the Israeli cabinet is meeting this week and they're debating really directing their military, the idf, to go in and fully occupy Gaza. That means go into the areas where the hostages are being held, put their lives at risk. And again, that's only going to happen if Trump gives it a green light. So he has an opportunity here to give it a red light and say, no, let's stick back. Go back to the all for all deal and the war. Get all the hostages out.
- [14:34]
Sam Stein
I will just. I'll add to that that we know that he can give these directives to Bibi because for a brief moment in time, there was going to be a retaliatory strike on Iran by the Israeli air force in. Trump got on the phone with him and said, don't do it and Bibi didn't do it. Okay, so going forward, though, look, it seems like there's a few options potentially for Trump to exercise leverage. One is just direct diplomacy with Bibi. The other is withdraw the Gaza Riviera plan informally. Right. Just say this is not going to happen. Don't even get your hopes up. Don't even pretend it's going to happen. I'm not sure I agree with you necessarily that it's never going to happen, if I can maybe envision a world in which they try to make it happen, although that's fairly grotesque. But the other one is do essentially a version of what you guys did, which is leverage US Arms sales to a degree, and they have not been able to do that. Of those options, which one do you think would be the most effective? Assuming that Trump does want to expedite a ceasefire that has some meaning in some length.
- [15:40]
Dan Shapiro
First of all, in this moment, he should give a clear red light, say, no, we're not supporting Israel doing a full reoccupation of Gaza. What that would produce, just to be clear, is more dead hostages, probably all the remaining 20 live hostages killed, many more dead Palestinian civilians, more dead Israeli soldiers, much deeper isolation of Israel, which is a strategic risk to Israel, but also to U.S. national interests. You know, forget about Saudi normalization or expanding the Abraham Accords or even getting Arab states to help with the day after planning in Gaza. So he should be clear that's not something he can support. Second to your point, he should withdraw the Gaza Rivera proposal, which has distorted this debate and given extremists in the Cabinet the sense that they have the backing to do exactly that, to take over the Gaza completely. And then he can tell Netanyahu, look what we're going to do, and with Witkoff out in the region, is go back to which Card even did even say this week, negotiating a full end of hostage, end of war agreement, release of all the hostages, and we will have to continue to work to get Hamas removed from power, exiled and replaced by Arab security forces, and eventually a more moderate Palestinian leadership. That's something he could lay out as the next phase, beyond the ceasefire and the hostages release, and of course, work with the international community to surge as much aid into Gaza as possible. He's, of course, whined a little bit about the US not being thanked. I don't know who's supposed to thank us for doing the right thing to surge aid to hungry people, but there's obviously a lot more to do on that point. So that's look, given he has a lot more leverage with Netanyahu than Biden ever did, and I think simply by making those declarations, he could constrain Netanyahu's decision space into that pathway much more easily. Now, I'm not a huge fan of sort of cutting things off, but, you know, the United States always has the ability to say, look, you know, we are the main backer of Israel security. We're the provider weapons. Let's have a conversation about how it's used, about, you know, where it's appropriate to use certain kinds of munitions, about, you know, where, what the right strategy is to achieve our common goals for Israel's security. So I think you can have those conversations, you know, before you get to the point of cutting things off.
- [17:56]
Sam Stein
You might not be a big fan of cutting off weaponry, and I think the majority of politicians are not a big fan of cutting off weaponry. But it's indisputable that support for that is growing. The Bernie Sanders resolution that would put limits on the military aid that we sent to Israel got 27 votes in the Senate, which would have been unheard of, unheard of six months ago. I mean, it would have been crazy to think that you see these Gallup poll numbers and other poll numbers where especially the younger generations of Americans have really soured on support for Israel and have really blossomed in their support for the Palestinians. What is your take on the domestic political trends here in the United States around this?
- [18:38]
Dan Shapiro
I mean, they are what you described, and I think it's something that the Israeli leadership should be paying close attention to. You know, that's a strategic risk to the health of the US Israeli relationship over the long term of the bipartisan support that's always been there of ensuring that no matter who's in charge, there will be support for helping Israel defend itself. But that's going to be hard to sustain if it looks like Israel is being led by, over the long term, extremists who have a very different agenda, who can't ever accommodate themselves to some Palestinian state emerging alongside Israel, which is going to need to be the endpoint of this conflict if it ever occurs, who are callous about humanitarian suffering among Palestinians, who are careless and sort of, you know, sort of just not smart about how they attack, how they approach a conflict with a terrorist organization that deserves to be the villain in this story and somehow by their own mistakes, flip it so that the international sympathy rides more with the terrorists than with, than with a democracy defending itself. So they have a lot of their own mistakes that they've made. And it does feed those domestic trends in the United States. Something that Israeli commentators and former officials are thinking about, by the way. Just this week, a big group of former Israeli security officials, chiefs of staff of the idf, Mossad official directors, Shin Bet directors, military intelligence generals, all came out with a unified statement saying, we need to end this war. It's not. The costs are too high and they mean these strategic costs with the United States relationship and the military gains are too small or too minimal with a basically largely degraded Hamas down to, you know, kind of a guerrilla force to justify continuing the war. So there's a lot of Israelis who really do see that risk, and they should for the reasons you stated.
- [20:37]
Sam Stein
I saw that letter, which was a remarkable letter. I also, and I know this is like far more trivial, but I thought a really telling anecdote around the miscalculation about the politics of this was when Bibby went on the Nelk Boys podcast and the reaction. I don't know if you saw this, but the online. Did you see this? I don't know if you did.
- [20:56]
Dan Shapiro
I did, yeah.
- [20:58]
Sam Stein
The reaction from the fan base was incredible.
- [21:01]
Dan Shapiro
Yeah. You highlighted the Democratic votes for the Sanders Joint Resolution appointments, disapproval of some of the arms sales, and about, about half of the Democratic senator supported. Some of those, of course, didn't pass. But. So we know about those trends on the Democratic side of the aisle. But it's definitely clear when you look at any polling among younger Republicans, when you see the discourse on the kind of MAGA podcast places, you hear Marjorie Taylor Greene come out and talk about genocide, that this is not something that's only happening on the Democratic side of the aisle. So there is real strategic risk for Israel in continuing to prosecute a kind of a fruitless war with grave humanitarian suffering that they don't seem to be doing everything possible to alleviate. Again, I don't think there's really any question that Israel is justified to fight Hamas and if it were to be able to prosecute that war in a way that, you know, didn't produce those kinds of images, that there'd still be a lot of support for that. But they've made a lot of their own mistakes and they've attached it to an agenda that is not going to have long term, broad American support, and that is basically to recapture all of that territory and have no political space for any Palestinian entity.
- [22:17]
Sam Stein
I'll read the Marjorie Taylor Greene quote and then I want to get to my last question to you, which has nothing to do with Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the Marjorie Taylor Greene quote is remarkable. It's worth reading for the viewers. This is just today she says it's easy to call it a genocide of the Israel Gaza roar. And I think Israel has made clear what they want to do. They really want to basically move all the Palestinians out of Gaza and that's what they're in the process of systematically doing. I think that's a bit of a misrepresentation, but that's where her head is at. It's a remarkable statement politically. Let me ask you last question here because you've advised leading Democrats on this. You've been in the theater itself. If you could outline sort of where US Israeli relations will be a year from now in the best case scenario, assuming that we do forge forward with a successful ceasefire and maybe on the grounds that you laid out, which is hostage return, but Hamas stays in power in some form with the promise down the road that we try to put together some sort of other governing coalition in Gaza. What is like that situation a year from now in that platonic vision that Dan Shapiro can outline?
- [23:25]
Dan Shapiro
Best case. And it's the Middle East. So we never get the best case. But let's say, what are we shooting for?
- [23:30]
Sam Stein
First of all, yes, never get the best case.
- [23:33]
Dan Shapiro
Let's get all the hostages home. We saw Ron Brislovskiy and Evitar David suffering in the tunnels. We know there are 18 more live hostages doing the same, plus 30 deceased hostages who need to be buried by their families in Israel. So let's get them home. Let's get a huge surge of humanitarian aid in to address the needs of the people in Gaza and take some of the power away from Hamas by not giving them that ability to control its distribution. Then let's work with Arab states on a plan to exile the remaining Hamas leaders and fighters. We have a model for this. In 1982, the United States helped facilitate the exile of about 14,000 PLO leaders and fighters from Beirut when Israel was fighting PLO in Lebanon and send them to different places around the Middle East. So there's actually a model for this. It wouldn't need to be that scale, but there are places, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, where you could send some of these people and they are terrorists and they're going to need to be monitored, but send them away so that they're no longer in charge and then bring in an Arab led but US Supported security force, Egypt, the uae, Morocco, a number of countries who we've spoken to about this to provide some basic security and then help a moderate Palestinian Authority security force. It's going to have to be reformed with some better leadership in the west bank, but come in and be the replacement security and governing entity in Gaza. That's something that Arab states want to do, they will do, but they want to make sure it's attached to some timeline and future of establishing a Palestinian state. It's not going to be tomorrow, it's not going to be next year, but something that you can actually see in a measurable period of time. And in that situation, Saudi Arabia is also talking about willing to come and normalize relations with Israel on the promise of a future establishment of a Palestinian state. That's a much better trajectory for the Middle East. It's a much better trajectory for Israel and its security, and it's a much more stable trajectory for the U. S. Israel relationship. Now, one other thing is going to happen next year in 2026, and that's an Israeli election. It could be. It has to be by October of next year, but it could be earlier depending on various political factors. And so you might end up with a different prime minister. Now, obviously, now has a lot of baggage attached to him and a lot of baggage attached to the relationship that he has with Trump. But also he has this very, very extreme coalition that he's depended on. Hopefully, after an election, whether you have a different prime minister or not, you certainly have a different coalition. You have more moderates who are more inclined to move in the direction that I described of getting Israel out of Gaza, getting with their hostages, and getting moderate Arabs and moderate Palestinians into Gaza to relocate, replace Hamas. And that's a much better trajectory for our relationship. It's not going to solve every problem with problems in the West Bank. We have settlers engaging in violence against Palestinians. There needs to be a plan again for some sort of future Palestinian state. It's not going to maybe look the way we imagined it would look 20 or 30 years ago when we started the Oslo peace process. So we have to be creative and thoughtful about that and attentive to certain realities. But as long as that's the trajectory and the effort and there are Israeli leaders who are willing to work with the United States and work with moderate Arabs and moderate Palestinians on that, we could be in a much, much better place. And the strategic gains of military power by Israel and the United States to weaken Iran and that whole axis of the Iranian proxy groups around the region could be consolidated into political gains of getting the region into a much more stable future. That's what we should be working toward. Much easier said than done. Of course.
- [27:17]
Sam Stein
I was going to say that's the best case scenario. It's incredibly ambitious and I appreciate it. Some people are already jettisoning a two state solution entirely. But I guess I have to ask you, what's the worst case scenario a year from now?
- [27:30]
Dan Shapiro
Well, worst case scenario to me is that Israel actually proceeds with this full occupation of Gaza and loses the hostages any chance to get them home, the ones who are safe or even the ones who are deceased. Many more casualties on both the Palestinian civilian side and among Israeli soldiers. Israel really being stuck there in kind of a quagmire with a permanent insurgency that they'll have to fight much deeper isolation of Israel. We've already seen those trends continue accelerate over the last few weeks, but could be far worse, really. You can, you know, in that scenario just write off the dream of a Saudi Israeli normalization agreement or expanding the Abraham Accords, by the way, things President Trump very much wants to work on and you know, obviously much deeper crisis in US Israel relations because of the trends on both sides of the aisle that you previously referenced. So I really don't want us to see be in that situation. Of course, we never, we never could say how an Israeli election in that scenario could play out. It might be that, you know, the Israeli public would see that as a crisis and they throw out the people who got them into it and then we'd have a chance to pivot to something different, but only after a lot of damage had been done.
- [28:52]
Sam Stein
Dan, maybe I should have reversed that and done the worst case scenario and then the best case scenario to end on a more positive note. But it is what it is. Dan Shapiro, Former US Ambassador to Israel thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. It's good to have a nice lengthy substantive talk about a very complicated, nuanced issue. Appreciate you unpacking it for us.
- [29:12]
Dan Shapiro
Anytime, Sam. Happy to do it again.