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A
Foreign.
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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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The War. According to all the sources that I'm speaking with in Washington D.C. in Jerusalem and in Arab capitals, this war, after two years, is finalizing. It's coming to an end. What we are seeing in front of our eyes is history.
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It's 9pm on Wednesday, October 8th here in New York City as many Diaspora Jews come out of Yom Tov. It is 4am on Thursday, October 9, in. In Israel as we all are learning more and more details about an end of war ceasefire, slash hostage release deal. To jump into all of this, I'm joined by ARC Media contributor Nadavael. We will be having a longer conversation that we'll be releasing tomorrow, but we just wanted to get Nadav's quick news gathering, empty out his notebook and provide us some analysis on what is going on, what has actually been agreed to. Nadav, thanks for being here.
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Thanks, Dan. Let me just say, really, from the bottom of my heart, and I think I speak for you too. The war. According to all the sources that I'm speaking with in Washington D.C. in Jerusalem and in Arab capitals, this war, after two years, is finalizing. It's coming to an end. It's true that this is just the first phase and one should always be cautiously pessimistic in the Middle east, but what we are seeing in front of our eyes is history. The details coming out from Sha Moshe.
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B
Before you do that, Nadav, I do want to say, just for our non Jewish listeners, of which we have many, the Hebrew blessing, the Hebrew prayer you just recited, the translation, the rough translation, is thanking God for, for bringing us to this moment. And it is a blessing we often say on various holidays. It is, especially in my family, we say whenever, whether it's a chag or whether it's a Shabbat or whatever. We, we, we recite it whenever we have extended family together and we have everybody in one place. And we're just saying that we're healthy, that we're together. And I will tell you, I, I wasn't planning to say this. You saying the Shehek prayer just triggered for me how many times over the last two years during Jewish holidays, during Friday night Shabbat dinners, whenever you do these blessings and these prayers, there's an element of happiness and festivity and hopefulness. And there's always an element of pause because we've all been for the last two years, just constantly balancing this living, modeling for our children. You've been to my home, Nadav, with your family. You have Young children. I have children. Children, teenagers. You want to model for them, that you're one step forward. And we are an enduring and robust and forward looking people and community. And yet there's always this element. What can you do? What should you say? How should you acknowledge we were just living with this weight of the suffering of these people in the dungeons of Gaza and these, their families in Israel. So as you were saying, Sheikh Yanu, I was like, wow, maybe we'll be able to kind of really say it now.
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I think that it's fine to be happy now because what I'm seeing and the people I'm speaking with tonight in Israel, or actually it's morning, are just really joyful scenes of the parents of the family members. I shiver when I talk about this. Just seeing the videos of them hearing President Trump announcing that all of them, all the live hostages are coming back home and it's going to happen during this weekend. Dan.
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So just as I said in the introduction, empty your notebook here. Just tell me what you know. Just, just details of the deal.
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So the basis for this deal is the Trump 21 point plan. This is the basis for the deal. But what they did very cleverly in Shahmashaikh with the teams there, with Jared Kushner there, with Steve Witkoff there, the Qataris, some representation of the Turkish Republic and of course the Egyptians that were hosting everyone, the Israeli delegation is that they decided that they're not going to agree about everything as to the final status of Gaza. They're just going to agree about the first phase. And there you have specific questions that I'm going to raise and answer. First of all, do we agree with the overreaching principle set by President Trump that we spoke about when I said a few days ago that he was expanding the framework of possibilities as leadership, good leadership knows how to do, great leadership knows how to do, of releasing all the hostages at once. Something that if you would have told me, Dan, a month ago, two months ago, that's going to happen, I would have said as far as I know, it's a non starter in the Middle east right now. It was a non starter, I will.
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Say, just on that it got to a point, as you know, this Nadav over the last three or four months, many guests we had on, and I can rattle off their names, who I completely respect and actually more or less agreed with on this point when we would talk about the hostages and I would say, I mean, I used to think this in the recesses of my imagination, but then we would Just talk about it outside of our imagination in the context of a conversation. Do you think Israel will get all the hostages back ever? And they said, obviously we'll try, obviously we'll hope, obviously we'll do everything we can. But if you. And they simply made this point that if you're Hamas, there's no way you give all the hostages back, because at the end of the day, that is Hamas's only currency. That is their only leverage. And if they want to stay in the fight, even. Even if they give some more hostage back, they'll always hang on to some.
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So.
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So would you say you didn't. I mean, that was the. I mean, if you just thought like how Hamas thinks, then you wouldn't think any other way.
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Yeah, we're going to talk about that. Let's delve into what was happening in Hamas, because I'm speaking with intelligence sources all through the night to start to understand what happened here. But as to the overreaching principle of releasing all of them at once, it was accepted. So when this was accepted, everything became really easy. And if you think about when Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff actually landed in Sharm El Sheikh and how much time it took them to get an agreement, you know, I don't think they even needed to sleep one night in a hotel before they managed to get this agreement done. So all the live hostages are coming back home. As to the Israeli bodies held by Hamas, the dead hostages that Hamas either murdered or they kidnapped their bodies from the Noba festival or from the kibbutzim in the southern parts of Israel, there was an argument made by Hamas negotiators there that they're buried around the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is devastated. It might take time to get some of them. They cannot commit to getting all the bodies of the Israelis. And they need some time. And the agreement is that it will begin. Retrieving those bodies will begin at once. But it doesn't need to end in 72 hours. And you can absolutely interpret then that they might use this as leverage. They might use the bodies of the Israelis that were murdered by them as leverage. A second issue is the Palestinian prisoners. The Trump plan said that two hundred and fifty prisoners that have been sentenced for life in prison, sometimes consecutive life prison sentences for murdering, responsible. Being responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis, that they're going to, you know, be released. And they're going to be released with another number of Palestinian prisoners. That was about a thousand, but I think it's going to be more at the final agreement in Shalmashay, which are not serving life sentences. Now this is a big issue and I'm going to give you the news flash. As far as I know right now, according to senior Israeli sources, Marwan Baragouti and Ahmad Saadat are not going to be released from Israeli jails.
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Wow.
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Israel did not surrender these names, or at least this is the brief as we are making this report that's coming from both security sources and I would say high ranking official sources in Israel. They're not going to be released.
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And that's, that's Hamas tried and Israel just was, was dug in on it.
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Let's see, what are the names? So one of the names that I'm worried about, which we, we discussed earlier, is Ibrahim Hamid, who's.
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Yeah, explain who he is.
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Is an arch terrorist who security sources define to me as someone whose double, Yahya Sinwar or three times Yahya Sinwar, like the leader of Hamas that Israel released in the Shali deal a few years back that gave the orders for the October 7th and planned the October 7th attack. So Hamid was the head of the military wing of Hamas in the west bank, was responsible for dozens of terror attacks and the biggest suicide attacks of the second Intifada led by Hamas. This is a very dangerous man. And Israel was chasing him in the west bank under its own control for years, until the Shin Bet and the IDF managed to arrest him. I still don't know if Hamid is going to be released. One source has told me he is not being released. I have not verified it. I do hope he won't. But this is just an example. These are going to be complicated dates in Israel. They agreed in principle as to the names. That's another section of the problems we needed to solve. Here's another problem. So the White House talked about the first Israeli withdrawal. And what Hamas said is it's not enough. And that map that was published by the White House was not that specific. It didn't contain the exact, the exact points of withdrawal around Gaza City and at these exact places they compromised. Israel is going to redraw between 200 meters to 600 meters more than the original yellow line published by the Trump plan, the 21 points.
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B
And that line is all around the, it's all around the perimeter of the. Of Gaza. Right. I mean it's at every border.
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No, I think about this as a few circles. Right. The first circle is the first line of withdrawal. Maybe we'll show it so our viewers will be able to show it. We'll ask our producer Elan to put it when we're editing this. But basically think about this as a bunch of circles. The first circle is the first line of Redrawal and Hamas just got between 200 and 600 meters more of the area that the IDF is going to be pulled out from. And as to that area, this is meaningful for Hamas to present this as a more important withdrawal. So that was the compromise. However, Israel is going to still control after the live hostages are released, 53% of the Gaza Strip. Exactly, according to my defense sources. And that's, that's meaningful. I guarantee you that Netanyahu or Netanyahu's allies are going to say, look at this, we're still controlling the majority of the Gaza Strip and all the live hostages have just been released. And that's going to be a big achievement for, for Netanyahu in that regard. Now, after the deceased Israelis, the murdered Israeli bodies are returned, there will be more withdrawals. So this is a sort of a compromise there then that actually there will be needed to be more withdrawals in order to release everyone, including the dead bodies of the murdered Israelis. So this is the kind of compromise that was made there. So we have the borders of the withdrawal, we have the Palestinian prisoners and we have the Israeli hostages released at once. And we have a general agreement that the war has ended with the guarantee of the President of the United States. This is phase one of the deal. So now it's going to get more complicated. And the reason it's going to get more complicated is that they're going to discuss the future of Gaza and I have less details as to that. I can, for instance, tell you, Dan, that Qatar is going to be involved with the rebuilding of Gaza. This is part of, if not of the formal agreement. It's part of the, more importantly off the record agreements behind the scene, written and unwritten. So Qatar is going to play a role. One of the questions is what's going to happen as to the decommissioning of weapons. Now I'm really trying very hard to get the phrasing there and I'm sorry, it's. Some of my sources went to stage, they had a really long day.
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The nerve.
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I'm still texting them angry messages. How, how dare you go to sleep in a night like this? You know, I'm going to go and dance Sino's show and I need to know everything. Now a big question is Arab sources are maintaining that Hamas didn't speak about decommissioning of weapons as as in relation to disagreement. But freezing the weapons, I don't know what it means, freezing the weapons, and I don't know if it isn't Hamas disinformation, but what they're saying is that there is a formula there that somehow the weapons would not be held by Hamas by a different factor, maybe a Palestinian police. Here's the bottom line. If the IDF is out of Gaza, nobody effectively will be able to collect light weapons. And by light, I mean AR15, Kalachnikov's grenades, the type of weapons that Hamas likes to use to collect them, effectively house to house. All the sources I'm speaking with in Israel are saying, look, we're having a hard time to do this in the west bank that we controlled for 58 years. It's going to be a problem to convince the Arab force, the international Stabilization Force in Gaza to do that. It's not about only that. It's about, for instance, their rocket launching capabilities, what's left of their industry to produce these rockets. It's about their tunnels. Dan, that's really important. And it's part of the 21 points of President Trump to make sure that they don't start building into the ground again. And it's also about future questions. What happens if the IDF sees, according to its own intelligence, that they're starting to develop something, that there is a new unit of Hamas that they're arming, that they're planning? What does the IDF do with this international slash Arab force that is in the Gaza Strip? How is it actually maintained? And we don't know. We don't know how this entire apparatus is going to work within the Gaza Strip. We do know, and I think I'm underlining this because Hamas will present this as a victory. This agreement is a huge achievement for Israel and maybe we can go into the reasons. Exactly.
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B
Well, just to say Habas will present this as a victory. I mean, I'm just looking at their statement here. I don't know if you saw the statement they issued, but they are, they are the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas announces that an agreement has been reached to end the war in Gaza, ensure the withdrawal of the occupation forces, allow the entry of humanitarian aid, and implement a prisoner exchange. We highly appreciate the efforts of our brothers and mediators in Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. It goes on and on. We call upon President Trump and all Arab, Islamic and international parties to compel the occupation government to fully implement all provisions of the agreement and to prevent it from evading or delaying the commitments. So we salute our. It goes on we salute our great people in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West bank, and throughout the homeland and the diaspora who have demonstrated it goes on. So this is the language of a victor, not the language of someone who is surrendering.
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No. And I want to say something really important here, and I'm going to say something nuanced, but it's very important. After speaking with those intelligence sources, one of these sources told me, I really hope that the other Israeli sources you spoke with didn't say, oh, we managed to humiliate Hamas. Hamas is on their knees. Hamas is completely beaten. And I told that source, you know what? Nobody told me that. And he said, I'm happy because it's not the case. It's not how they think about this. They were cornered, they were weakened. They had to agree to Hamas. They had to agree to an agreement they would have never agreed to a year ago. And that agreement says that the IDF stays in Gaza, the hostages walk back home, and their legitimacy to hold arms in the Gaza Strip has been, to some extent, we still don't know exactly, has been fractured. People are going to play this from the government side. I'm not weighing in politically here. We're not talking here about legacies. I'm just talking about plainly what has happened here. So. So they have been cornered, they have been weakened, they are bankrupt. All of their military commanders in Gaza, besides three top military commanders, are dead. Every single one of them. And those that remained alive, by the way, are more moderate. Haddad, for instance, who's very powerful in Gaza right now, he's much more of a pragmatist than Mohammed Silwar, that Israel eliminated the brother of Yahya Sinwar. They've been attacked in Qatar. Right. Suddenly, their leadership abroad felt that it's not immune anymore. Qatar has also seen that. So a lot of things happened here that contributed to Hamas agreeing to stuff they wouldn't have agreed before.
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B
And Nadav, I know you and I have argued about this over the last several months, and I'm not saying this was a singular factor, but I continue to believe that the Israeli decision to plow ahead into Gaza City and convey. And convey to Hamas that they could not be dissuaded. The Israeli government was not gonna back down. And it was clear, I think, at some point that Trump was backing the Israel, Netanyahu backing the government into Gaza City. So they normally thought, there's a US Administration who reigned them in, or there's the international community who will reign in Israel. And suddenly the international community looked, let's just Say not capable of reigning in Israel.
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No, no, it's not that. It was even worse than that. They were cornered, they were weakened. I completely agree that the operation in Gaza City put a lot of pressure on Hamas. And I more than agree that the credit goes to the fact that America saw that it needs to pressure President Trump saw that it needs to pressure Hamas into an agreement. However, after I said all this, what my sources are speaking about is the notion of strategic patience in Arabic. The difference between two notions of patience. One is a word that describes short term patience and the other one is a strategic patience idea. And the way that Hamas is thinking about this is we have survived. Gaza will be controlled by the Palestinians, not by an international mandate. We will be able to hide some of our weapons, maybe navigate behind the scenes. And we have always wanted the Hamas will say to end the war for all the hostages. Hamas has said that on the record with the prisoners deal. Now, one of the reasons that October 7th happened was to release the prisoners and they're basically emptying the Israeli jail system from the total majority, like more than 90% of those life sentenced Palestinians, arch terrorists. And they have managed to get to an agreement that as far as they are concerned is a better result than the Islamic Republic of Iran and a better result maybe of Hezbollah that is now pressured to be disarmed in Lebanon. After I said all this, I want to say, you know, the obvious, where we began then, this is a big achievement to Israel after a terrible, terrible war. And the people that we should remember when we are recording this and Remember Forever is 466 IDF soldiers who have died, who have sacrificed their life in the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the Israeli maneuver in the Gaza Strip, since the beginning of the war, 913 have died. And the difference is, of course, those who have died in October 7, October 8, October 9, fighting terrorists within the sovereign state of Israel. But 466 IDF soldiers with their families, universes just collapsing, they losing their loved ones, what did they die for? What did they sacrifice their lives for? And the answer is so clear. It's the most common denominator of the Israeli society. And I think the international recognition of the justice of Israel's war, to the extent that there is such a recognition, they have sacrificed their life first and foremost to get their countrymen and women to back home from the dungeons of Hamas. So Israel has sacrificed for every one of these live hostages that are going to return back home, more than 20 soldiers. For me, the fact that Israel would do everything The IDF would do everything to get back those hostages is really what counts and is so important because we have heard so much about the need for reconciliation and healing within the Israeli society and ending this war and how this could never happen if the hostages are not back home. And many people who said it's impossible, it's never going to happen, it's impossible, as you said, Dan, for me as an Israeli, I'm so appreciative first and foremost of these families that have sacrificed everything to get Omri Meiran back home to his daughter Zhoni and Alma, who he has not seen for two years now, and his wife Lishi. And they hear about a father they haven't seen for two years. But I'm very appreciative to the president and to the White House for doing that. I don't think we would have been talking today if this would have been another president or if this president would have been as resolved as he was to get the hostages back home.
- [24:45]
B
That was beautifully said, Nadav. We're going to talk a lot over the next couple of days, which is fitting because you have been one of the important voices and co narrators of these last couple of years with me on this on this podcast. So we will be picking up over the over the next few days, including tomorrow. So we are going to release this episode. We just want to get you had some reporting that we wanted to get out and some analysis and we will have much more. I think we're picking back up tomorrow with, with Amit as well. And so I'll see you again tomorrow morning. But until then, thank you for doing this. And I will just say I totally appreciate and relate to your elation. And yet I'm still. I don't want to say I'll believe it when I see it because I believe it, but I really want to see it. So thank you.
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A
Absolutely, Dan. Thank you so much.
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B
That's our show for today. If you value the CallMeBack podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavyal, Amit Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's ark media.org call me back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti Sound and video editing by Martin Juergo and Marian Khalis Burgos. Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan. Senor.