Lawfare Daily: The Famine in Gaza and Its Implications, with Joel Braunold

[Intro]

Joel Braunold: The Israelis are scrambling to basically enact the humanitarian part of the ceasefire agreement, try and take pressure off themselves and so to reverse course from what they did in March. But in many ways, the damage has been done. And what every humanitarian expert will tell you is that once starvation starts, it is incredibly difficult to stop.

Scott Anderson: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson, joined by Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.

Joel Braunold: If you want an international governing body for Gaza full of Egyptians and Arab states and rebuilding with a U.S. world, you need the P.A. to invite them. And the P.A. has said we will invite them if it leads towards a pathway to a political solution of which Israel says no, so we're stuck.

Scott Anderson: Today we're talking about the famine in Gaza. And what it may mean for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[Main Podcast]

So Joel, we are back for, I think, what has become a pretty regular series at this point of roughly quarterly I would say, check-ins on what has been happening in the world of the peace process, Israeli-Palestinian relations, Gaza in particular since we've been doing this series for the last year and a half, two years or so now.

But this is a big update because I think we've seen a lot of big developments happening for the first time, really in a number of months, Gaza is back on front pages and headlines for the global media here in the United States, New York Times, Washington Post. It has been above the fold most days for the last week or two.

And it's happening a lot of other corners of the world. And we're seeing pretty big developments around, at least rhetorically the way people are talking about Gaza and what's happening there, and particularly this issue of famine and hunger, we're going to get into that's kind of the driving force for a lot of that.

Before we do though, for people who, and listeners who may not have been keeping as close a tab as developments in Gaza of these past few months, remind us where we are and how we've gotten here since the beginning of the Trump administration, where we saw a somewhat hopeful ceasefire that lasted, then collapsed in March. Where have we gone since then and, and what is the state of play on the ground in Gaza?

Joel Braunold: Scott, it's always a pleasure to be, to be with you and with Lawfare. I actually, let's start by going all the way back to October 7th and I, I think it's important as we, we go forward. You know, Hamas commits these atrocities on October 7th.

Hamas has a history of committing atrocities against Israel at times where it feels that diplomatic options might be on the horizon. We saw it during the Oslo Accords with suicide bombs. We've seen it lots and it, it's come out in reporting that one of the motivations for Hamas, and it seems that the Iranians were also involved to push Hamas to do this at this time, was to disrupt any potential moves with Saudi-Israeli normalization.

And Hamas, you know, again, for those who say, well, Hamas were just complaining about the siege or their political situation, they did not stop at the military targets, they went into the Kibbutzim, they slaughtered, kidnapped, sexually assaulted. They did what Hamas always does, which is that they sacrificed their people in their political vision of ‘No Israel.’

Okay, Hamas does not believe that Israel should exist. Okay, it, it, yes, there has been questions about whether they changed their chart or whatever, but it was very clear that the military wing, you know, won out and decided to try and humiliate and destroy and terrify the Israelis for what they always try and do, which is basically give up and leave.

Why do I start with this? It's important because Israel knows as part of its breaking of the conception what October 7th showed them, is that Hamas were monsters. And that not only do they not care and commit genocidal attacks on Israelis, they don't care about their own population very clearly 'cause they knew that if they did something so horrendous, there would be such a response and that Hamas at multiple times said that they would do it again, and said that it's not their responsibility to protect their population.

So the Israelis are extremely and acutely aware that Hamas takes no accountability or responsibility for the population in Gaza. And that makes and has made the Gaza War extremely tough to fight. Because if you are fighting an opponent who is the governance authority that takes no responsibility for protecting its population and expects the international community to protect it, it makes it a far more complex and complicated battlefield than fighting a traditional war, okay. So why do I put that as context?

I put that as context 'cause where we find ourselves right now is that it seems that the ceasefire talks that many people were very hopeful could lead to something positive, after the Iran War where Israel and the U.S. basically humiliated the Iranians, right, and took out, you know, whether they completed the takeout of the nuclear program, whether it will forever be taken out.

And, you know, that's a subject for a different podcast, but at least you know that they, you know, their aim was that if Bibi had had this strength and strong response, he now has the political wiggle room within his coalition to successfully conclude the Gaza War and move forward with the new Middle East.

And it was clear that at least, that was at least the hope of many in Israel and also I would say in the White House. Like, you know, President Trump constantly wants to be a peacemaker. And that this could be the opportunity now that's done, that we could move forward with peace in Gaza. And over the past, sort of five, six weeks, there had been reports they were getting closer, they were moving further away. And around a week and a half ago, basically the negotiations collapsed. Steve Witkoff blamed Hamas saying they weren't being serious. The Israelis drew, withdrew the negotiators.

But something else also happened, which is why all of this went back to the front pages: The starvation of Gaza finally started to create starvation casualties. People were starving to death and across world newspapers. We saw images of starving Gazan children and starving Gazans. And this created, again, renewed significant pressure on how the Israelis are prosecuting this war. And how we got here on starvation, I think is very important and why I started with the context, okay.

So when President Trump took over, if you remember during the initial handover, Brett McGurk and Steve Witkoff worked ceasefire where you saw a surge in humanitarian assistance, you saw hostages released. And the Israelis said, look, we had no obligation to move from first phase to second phase of the ceasefire. The whole point of a phase ceasefire is that we weren't obligated.

And basically they felt like, you know, they weren't interested in ending the war, Bibi wanted to keep his coalition together and so they didn't end the war and they didn't end the war, they went back to the war in March, okay. But the cabinet also made a decision in March that they would suspend all humanitarian aid. And this was something that the Israelis had been signaling is something they wanted to do since the beginning of the war.

The charges that the IC, the ICC laid out when they issued the arrest warrants for the prime minister and the defense minister were around starvation and the allowance and the, and the allowance of aid in and the early statements from Gallant and others saying, we won't let grain in, we won't do this. And the whole question is, was starvation being used as a tactic?

The Israelis denied it and kept showing, look, we're putting, we're putting aid in, we're doing it this way. We might not be working with this UN group, but we're still facilitating aid. The Biden administration spent so much of their leverage on ensuring that humanitarian assistance would get it.

So when President Trump was president, the Israeli coalition felt, okay, now's a chance to try and test the thesis that if we just block off aid, we'll put more pressure on Hamas to come closer to our positions. And so the cabinet made a decision in March to suspend aid.

And what happened was all of the aid that had gone on during the ceasefire, the Israeli said, there's plenty of food in Gaza. All this food came in during the ceasefire, and so there's, we don't have to worry about starvation. There's plenty of calories we've counted. And so, day by day, week by week, the food in the UN warehouses and others started to deplenish. It had deplenished and deplenished in the one more and more warnings coming out of different international agencies saying that starvation is rising.

And they were measuring, for example, children under the age of fives upper forearms, because if there's a certain circumference that doesn't measure it shows this acute starvation. And it was going from 2% to 4% to 6% to 8% of all children coming in. And the Israelis realized by May that this isn't gonna work, but they didn't wanna go back to a system that they felt went against one of their war aims.

And one of their war aims was to, to destroy Hamas' governance capability. And they said that as long as the UN and others were using local actors who were armed, Blue Police or you know, civilian military. The Israeli said, look, they're all Hamas, they're all part of the governance authority, so we're not gonna in, we're not gonna go back to that distribution mechanism 'cause it specifically undercuts our war aim.

So what are we gonna do? We'll set up our own foundation, and this is where GHF, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, comes in and they start trying in, in middle of May to start the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. As we said on the last podcast, you know, one of the big challenges for GHF is that it's switched the risk from, you know, Hamas, it's very easy to control warehouses. You don't even really need to control them. You just need to be present. And it demonstrates governance capacity.

This put the emphasis on individual Gazans to travel huge distances, to pick up bags of flour at distribution, and boxes of food, at distribution sites, and then have to go back. And so the risk was on them. And many, many, many, many, many people were like this is very bad because a, how are you gonna communicate when they're open, when they're closed. They set up the GHF sites, there were four originally, you know, behind Israeli lines of control. So people have to cross lines of control. And we can get into GHF little later, but you know, that's been a, a complete unmitigated disaster.

Whether you wanna believe all the reports or not, there's lots of dead people, okay? And we're trying to get aid. And so starvation starts peaking, right? Because there's no, you know, even though there's sometimes a truck here and sometimes a truck there, starvation starts climbing up, climbing up, climbing up, and these images coming out of Gaza, just disgust the world, just disgust them.

And to some extent, start shocking Israelis who have been told for two years that starvation is coming. And they're like, well, it never happened, so this is all just garbage. And then suddenly starvation is everywhere. And they're like, well, what happened? Well, what happened was the government decided to try and out monster Hamas.

If at the beginning as I started saying that Hamas does not care about its population. It does not, we know this, okay? They are a terrorist group who are willing to sacrifice Gazans in the name of their hope that there will be a regional war that will wipe out Israel and it would all be worth it. And they say this repeatedly, okay?

If that's what you know, you trying to out monster them by starving Gaza in a siege 'cause that will put pressure on Hamas is an absurdity. And that decision in March to suspend food, which is now quickly being reversed, and now they're like you know, basically what happened was last Sunday they realized they're screwed.

And they started allowing things that they had never allowed before. Humanitarian pauses, safe corridors, all to say the UN just pick up the food that's gone up, that we've let in pick it up and start going with it. And so now you've just got this fight, this screaming national media about who's responsible for the starvation of Gaza.

Is it the UN who's not picking up the trucks or is it the Israelis? And that's where we're currently up to. You know, some people still think there's hope in the ceasefire negotiations, others thinks there's not. But you are now having at least most people, including President Trump, accept that there is starvation in Gaza, and that's unacceptable. The Israelis are scrambling to basically enact the humanitarian part of the ceasefire agreement, try and take pressure off themselves.

And so to reverse course from what they did in March, but in many ways, the damage has been done. And what every humanitarian expert will tell you is that once starvation starts, it is incredibly difficult to stop because it takes a long time to start a famine. And that's why all of these warnings for years, for two years were not in vain. It was warning. It's getting closer, it's getting closer, and then once it starts, it's a snowball.

And to reverse this, it requires such a level of coordination between the various humanitarian actors and the, the military force, it requires such close coordination. And what we have instead is a public screaming match on social media of everyone screaming at everyone. And, and what happens is, is that Gazas continue to starve.

And like even though this humanitarian aid now moving since Sunday in at a far higher rate, the Israelis are letting more in, the UN is able to pick more up and distribute it internally, it's chaos. Because what's happened is this, a lot of Israelis will claim and pro-Israel supporters well, it, why isn't the UN picking up these 500 or 900 trucks worth of pallets that are next to Kerem Shalom or Zikim, two different entry points? You know, the Israelis have allowed all of this aid in and it's up to them.

Well, the UN has said publicly, it's not a McDonald's drive through. You don't just pick it up and distribute it, it's complicated. The situation has got so dire, given the fact that the Israelis were not allowing humanitarian pauses, and the Israelis were not allowing multiple safe routes in. Cause they wanted people to use the GHF system rather than their system, the UN system, that the patients are starving. And so what happens is when they try and distribute the food, the trucks are ransacked.

Now, the Israelis will say, well, it's always Hamas ransacking them. Well, right now, it's not Hamas ransacking them. It's desperate starving people who are desperately trying to rip flour off because they're starving. And once you reach this moment, it becomes incredibly dangerous to the UN to deliver that aid. Okay, so it's very dangerous.

And then they're like, well, the UN is denying the IDF from protecting their convoys. The one time the IDF did try and do humanitarian distribution, there was the flour massacre because again, you've got people surging at the trucks. The Israelis have no idea who these people are, and it's a terrible situation, which is why that is not how you provide humanitarian assistance.

And all of this goes back to the problem that, again, goes back to the Israeli war aims. The Israeli war aims being three. Okay. Once it finally, we tried to understand what total victory meant. It was about rescuing the hostages, it was about making sure that Hamas couldn't be a military threat, and destroying Hamas' governance capability.

If you destroy Hamas' governance capability, you need to replace it with something else. And because there has been no consensus in the Israeli coalition about what could replace this authority, you've got chaos and into chaos it is incredibly difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance. Who is the UN supposed to rely on?

They've been complaining for ages about trucks being hijacked by this one and that one. So, you know, is the GHF supposed to defend these trucks? Are we gonna have U.S. security contractors going deep into civilian parts of Gaza? What happens if they're shot at? What happens next on that? Like th, this is not a simple situation and goes directly against one of the Israeli war aims on governance.

So because we haven't had this ability to understand who comes next and that the Israelis went through this period of, we can out monster Hamas, and clearly they can't, right? 'Cause Hamas doesn't care if their people are starving. What's happened is that you've had huge international pressure on Israel to alleviate the starvation and to end this war.

President Trump wants this war to end, the Europeans, the Arab states, everyone wants this war to end, including a lot of people in Israel. The Israelis are stuck because they haven't created a different governance capability and don't seem to have an ability to do one. And Hamas doesn't care if its people die.

Hamas is hardening its positions. Hamas at the moment is not incentivized for a ceasefire 'cause they can see all the global pressure on Israel. And that global pressure on Israel has happened 'cause Israel made the, the step of saying, we'll starve you out. And that was a stupid step to make. It was morally reprehensible and now the consequences of that step have now been demonstrated where now that there is huge international pressure.

Scott Anderson: So. Well, let's talk about GHF. I think we've already broached it a little bit here and talk about what exactly the model is the Israelis have been pursuing and what we're shifting towards now.

Like you said, after March we saw the Israelis say we're gonna end the UN driven humanitarian assistance program, which had already been under pressure at various points and cut off in a lot of different way by the Israelis, off and on over the prior two years, year and a half of conflict at that point. But they saw a near complete cutoff, I think it's fair to say particularly about this kind of core food assistance, humanitarian assistance, medicine, things like that.

The GHF model this is something that we have seen driven by and primarily staffed by U.S. security contractors, ao a lot of U.S. veterans. We've seen in the U.S. media over the last 48 hours, a lot of reports from one former employee of this group, a former U.S. Green Beret reporting having seen the IDF and U.S. security contractors engage in what he describes as war crimes, essentially fairly arbitrarily shooting civilians.

Talk to us a little bit more about that structure, why it's failed and, you know, the Israelis have a deep distrust of the United Nations in numerous regards. UNWA has been under constant assault as basically, you know, a, a close to a defunct entity at this point in a lot of ways because of Israeli pressure and U.S. pressure on it.

How likely, how easy is it to set up a new system, a sustainable system in the short term or the long term that can rev back up even acknowledging the fact that the famine has a momentum that needs to be reversed? And so it's gonna be, even on a perfect system, take a fair amount of time to, to turn the boat around.

Joel Braunold: So let's start with GHF and we'll get to the UN second because I, I, it's a very different conversation in the UN, but GHF. GHF seemingly, as you pick together the breadcrumbs of what is a very untransparent institution, seemingly was a brainchild of a bunch of Israeli businessmen starting early after October 7^th were working out, well, what, what would be a way that we could do humanitarian aid that Hamas couldn't take, right? What, what would it look like?

And like, it, it seems like this idea of having a new humanitarian foundation that would deliver food directly to the participants would be the best way of doing it, that wouldn't use any of the traditional aid functionalities. You know, was GHF only meant for food? Was it meant to actually eventually become part of the governing authority of a future Gaza that was basically private U.S. military contractors that could be joined with others? Was it about them providing military assistance or security assistance, I should say, to, to other international organizations in order to replace, you know, what was known as the Blue Police?

It's all very unclear. But the GHF was formed as an Amer-, well, firstly as a Swiss, until the Swiss deregistered it, and then as an American foundation, a 501(c)3. Right. And it was connected at the hip to Safe Reach Solutions, or another name, which was basically a private military security outfit where you'd have a bunch of private military security folks protecting food distribution sites.

And as I said earlier, that the thesis was that you would set these up behind Israeli lines and that people could come and pick up the food. Now, before it launched, there were a lot of people being like, this thing seems a bit nuts and will it fulfill and follow humanitarian principles of neutrality and all the other things that the humanitarian community have had for a very long time.

And just before it launched, their interim executive director quit because he felt it wasn't gonna go forward. And after a bit of scrambling around, they appointed Reverend Johnnie Moore, who is a prominent evangelical supporter of Israel, who's very close to President Trump to sort of be their, their executive chairman.

And GHF basically opened humanitarian hubs. And it was very unclear who was paying for any of this. And the Israeli opposition revealed that there was at least a significant amount of money coming from the government of Israel that was paying for this, whether it was just paying for the security contractors or it was paying for the food, again, unclear.

Since then, the U.S. government has given at least 30 million. We know publicly to GHF. But the modality was that the GHF would set up these distribution sites with boxes of food that they claimed gave X amount of meals. In these boxes, there was oil and sugar and like other flour and other basic necessities. No water by the way, no cooking gas, things that you would need to actually make this.

And what would happen is that Garzas would be told through Arabic channels when these sites would open and when they wouldn't open. And then they could go, but they had to cross Israeli lines to get there. And that the Israelis basically, over the past two and a half months, the GHF and the IDF said, they've been learning, they've been doing this, but basically daily there were dozens of people killed. And who were killing them? And how do we know?

There were no independent journalists allowed into Gaza. But it was clear that there were four different groups who had weapons. One are GHF contractors, the other is the IDF, the other were local Palestinian militias, Yasser Abu Shabag, who seems to be supported by the Israelis to try and create Hamas for his own, he himself had been previously accused of drug trafficking and other things and as a tribe in the south of Gaza. And lastly, Hamas have weapons.

So everyone's blaming everyone. But the net effect was that you had lots of dead Palestinians and you had these videos coming out of Palestinians lying on the ground as bullets would be shot in front of them or at their feet. There were cases where Israel has admitted that it used naval artillery and other artillery try and communicate to Gazans when things they could move forward or not.

So shooting at people to say it's safe to move forward. It's not safe to move forward. You know, are they shooting at them to kill them? Are they shooting to over their heads again, like every report tells you something differently. The Israelis vehemently disagree and constantly say, we have never told people to shoot at civilians. That is not what we have done. We have never done that.

There are counterclaims, as he said. There's this whistleblower, Green Beret who GHF says is a disgruntled employee. He claims that private military contractors and the IDF were shooting at civilians. Anyway, the GHF modality basically have these images that even when pro-Israeli journalists who accompanied the IDF, look at them, it looks worse than feeding animals at a zoo.

You have just massive crowds of people running in, grabbing what they can. They save some back for women and children at the end, and then they have to walk by the way, like 10, 15 kilometers back across Israeli lines. And of course, as everyone expected, they get looted. And so you've seen like all of them high value materials get sold on the black market as people looted as they go backwards.

So the ability and also the amount of aid that's distributed is not that high. It's basically three or four trucks a day worth that you could do through this distribution mechanism. So you had three, you know, four or five behind it. It's behind Israeli lines, but it's not reaching population centers. The GHF also had a second track where it would enable stuff to go to food kitchens and the Israeli stars to allow a little bit of UN aid.

But the Israelis also changed constantly how you could register. And now we'll get to the UN. Right? So the united and by the way, the, the public messaging of GHF online was just screaming at people. It's like every time you criticize them, you are just backing Hamas. And, you know, Hamas would threaten GHF workers and GHF workers, both local and foreign, felt that they were abandoned by the international aid community who were boycotting working with them because they felt that it was too dangerous.

But then they wouldn't come to their defense. And so you just had this massive screaming match online saying, you are responsible, you are backing Hamas. You know, the UN basically being like, you guys are just dangerous. You know, you had BCG who are somehow involved in some of the setup, firing partners for being involved. GHF claiming like you are only abandoning it because of bad press. It's just been it a nasty, chaotic thing.

And I'll, the last thing I'll say about GHF before I get to the UN. When President Trump, I think yesterday or the day before, spoke about starvation and Gaza and he believes there is starvation and Gaza, right? He says, “I don't wanna see these gates and lines of people waiting for food, we need open distribution.” And that's him talking about the GHF facilities. He doesn't wanna see people stuck behind barbed wire looking at food. So whatever they're doing, if the U.S. is gonna create different food distribution moving forward, they don't wanna see at least this modality of how it's working.

The Israelis have had a problem with the UN for a very long time. The UN has had a problem with Israel for a very long time. The nature of the UN General Assembly of the Human Rights Council being a voting majoritarian system with the majority of states being, not being democracies and not really believing that Israel's a right to exist or having many issues.

There's a fixation and a fascination on Israel. It's very well documented. The U.S. has been very critical of that. So Israel is already pretty set up not to be very pro-UN. UNRWA in particular, the Israelis have had a desire to destroy it, to try and get rid of the right of return. For them, they think that UNRWA perpetuates the right of return that for them is an existential threat for them at the, at the final status talks. And so in their head, if we get rid of UNRWA, we get rid of the right of return. Of course that that's not how it works, but at least in the Israeli mentality. But, and UNRWA of course, were one of the biggest state within a state in Gaza because 75% of Gaza were registered Palestinian refugees.

So Israel early on has passed legislation that means they are forbidden legally to deal with UNRWA, but there are other UN groups. But as like OCHA and others have risked, have talked about famine and Israeli actions, the Israelis have started banning. OCHA have basically said that they're throwing out members of OCHA, the lead of the mission. They're not renewing their visas.

And Israel basically has said that even the World Food Program that is run by Cindy McCain is hopelessly biased and against it and really just there's not, there's no, there's no real way to move forward with the UN. There's been hopelessly compromised in their view. And that once the, for example, they're comfortable having local civilian police, but not the IDF and that shows that they want to be, you know, their pro-Hamas and that the Israeli, you know, instead of being pro-IDF.

And again, if you are trying to prevent starvation, okay, because people are starving rather than screaming at each other on social media, just find a way. I think that's what the majority of people are saying, like at this point, flood it with aid. If there's a distribution problem you're worried about Hamas getting it, put so much aid in that it doesn't matter.

Destroy the black market by just having unlimited food going. Right, if that's what you're gonna do. And so that's sort of where the humanitarian situation is sort of left off. And just to conclude on the first question. Where are we up to now?

Prime Minister Netanyahu has sent his two top advisors, Minister of Strategy, Ron Dermer and his National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, to D.C. this week, where apparently they've been discussing with the Trump administration how they can, you know, if Hamas has walked away from the table, how can they again, up the ante on Hamas. And apparently there have been three options that have been put on the table.

One is annexation of parts of Gaza. The second is to siege the last, you know, Deir al Balah and a few other of the population centers. And the last one is forced, well, they claim it's not forced, but it's, it's population transfer, right? And and to do that and that those will threaten Hamas. And again, I go back to the first point that I made.

Hamas wants Israel to be a pariah nation. It wants it to destroy its diplomatic relations. It wants this war given how much it's cost to be the thing that destroys Israel. And if Israel annexes territory, Hamas doesn't care because it doesn't believe in a two-state solution. It wants the whole land. So whether Israel annexes it now or it doesn't, it's irrelevant to it.

And Israel's desire, or even mooting of annexation, it's not putting so much pressure on Hamas. It's showing the people who said, Israel's only doing this to get rid of the Palestinians and build settlements back in Gaza. Well, today, 22 members of the governing coalition are basically wanting to go on a tour of Northern Gaza to see if they can build settlements.

And that is going to Israel's critics saying, this doesn't put pressure on Hamas, it just demonstrates to us that you are not acting as part of the family of nations if you are gonna do that. The same as with besieging, and the same as with population transfer. And so in each of these cases, people are like, well, what do you want us to do?

And in many ways, when Israel made that decision in March, and especially when they couldn't conclude it after the war in Iran, there's a feeling like, how do you win this against an opponent who doesn't care? And the answer is, this isn't probably the way, and this is where everyone's stuck. Are they doing dishes to put pressure on Hamas? Could you targeted assassinations? Is it throwing Hamas out of Qatar?

All of these options keep being mooted to try and see what they can do. But the world's attention right now is not on that which the Israelis want it to be about, like how do we get the hostages out? The full attention of the world is how do we stop Gazans from starving? And that is the situation again, that of which we are, we are now on.

Scott Anderson: So amidst the backdrop of this horrendous humanitarian catastrophe, there were until this week cease fire negotiations ongoing in Qatar involving the Israelis and representatives of Hamas, those broke down, and the United States should say.

Those broke down earlier this week, at least according to the Trump administration, where Steve Witkoff their kind of lead negotiator, withdrew, came up very publicly on Thursday, said he didn't think Hamas was serious about reaching a resolution on this to put pressure on them, presumably. Hamas, reportedly, at least the comments I saw said they thought actually negotiations are moving in a productive direction. There was at least one tabled proposal that was going, being gone back and forth between the two sides. Talk to us about the ceasefire process where we are now that appears to be broken down, but has broken down before and restarted.

How much is that, is dovetailing with this effort to provide to humanitarian really how much of it is superseded by or made secondary by the focus on the humanitarian situation? And where does it seem like it might be going after this kind of seminal moment, at least in terms of global attention to the Gaza conflict?

Joel Braunold: So the ceasefire negotiation again, there, there are really, I think there are multiple pieces, but let's just say there are at least four big pieces of this question. The first is, is this a ceasefire to then lead to the end of the war or not? And that's been a huge sticking point. It seems a couple of weeks ago we were closer that Hammas and Israel had found some level of creative ambiguity that both sides could live with.

This was also the original sticking point on the multi-phase approach that Biden put through. It feels like that time is in a doom loop? Feels like we're having the same conversation again and again, but there's that. You know, President Trump said he wants the war to end, and that could have been enough for Hamas to say that Trump will hold Israel's feet to the fire around an end of the war. So that's one.

Two is the ratio of hostage releases to prisoner releases. Apparently Hamas has been really upping the ante quite substantially about how many prisoners they want to, to release in a way that the Israelis find acceptable, unacceptable. And that's one of the, the hardening of Hamas' position.

The third is about humanitarian access. You know, Hamas shockingly doesn't like the GHF because again, and that makes the GHF feels like it's doing a very good job if Hamas doesn't like them. And so, you know, there's the humanitarian chapter.

And the fourth is where does the Israelis withdraw to during the ceasefire? Like what are the lines of withdrawal and sort of, where do you go? President Trump rightly said that this would be a very hard negotiation because as you get down to the last few alive hostages, which apparently around this 20 to 21 people still alive. Hamas realizes that's its last bargaining chip, and therefore they want this to end the war.

And the Israelis are like, no. And by the way, that also puts truth to the room that if Hamas just gave up the hostages, the war would end. No, it wouldn't, because Israel doesn't want Hamas to maintain or remain a governing authority. They want them to go: either exile or leave and they can't participate. Right, so that is a, an additional war aim.

So the negotiators are trying to work out as you said, Steve, where you know, the original it was going well. And then Hamas did like, apparently a very harsh response that the mediators didn't even wanna give to the Israelis. Trump has been using also a back channel, this American Palestinian guy who was the head of Americans for Trump, who, you know, criticized Hamas’ original proposal.

Then apparently Hamas meet, you know, moderated and gave another proposal, but by that point it seems to have been too late. And now the question is Steve Witkoff flown to Israel to look at some of the humanitarian stuff for his own eyes and then report back to President Trump and see what's the way to move forward. Again, is this all negotiating tactics or not? Who knows?

But there has been a whole other thing going on that has also upset the apple cart in Israel amongst the mask, which has this entire push for Palestinian state recognition. And to understand that, Scott, we have to actually go back quite a way to understand where we've, we've got to what's happened and like the completely parallel universes that Israel, the region, and Europe, and the U.S. just occupy in completely different spaces.

So if you remember before October 7th, the whole aim, one of the big aims of the Biden administration was to advance Saudi Israeli normalization. And the big question was, what would be the Palestinian component? We knew there was a civil nuclear component. We knew, you know, the, the parts of it had been worked out a defense treaty potentially with the U.S., which would have a Senate vote.

But there was always a big question, what would be the Palestinian component? And Brett McGurk and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken had maintained that just before or just after, when October 7th was supposed to happen, they were supposed to actually move forward on some normalization. They had been working out what the Palestinian component would be, would be something economic, maybe some words here or there, but not nothing towards the Arab Peace Initiative or anything like that.

War in Gaza happens. The images shock, the region, shock everyone else. You know, there's criticism of Hamas, there's criticism of Israel. Anyway, the price for Saudi normalization apparently goes up. And even if it's not a ‘67 lines, it was A an end to the war on Gaza. And B, the concept of a political horizon, okay? That there has to be some level of political horizon

At the time there was, you know, President Abbas has maintained for quite a while now that what he wants coming out of Ramallah, what, what he wants and needs is what he says is irreversible time bound steps towards two states. And for him, irreversibility is international recognition.

He no longer trusts the Israeli government. He's like, they'll just reverse, they, they're not gonna do anything. So I'd rather have my legacy of leaving the state of Palestine in as many countries as possible, even if it doesn't make a difference on the ground, it locks it into international law. Tt locks it into the consciousness of these countries and prevents Israeli annexation of the state of Palestine without significant consequences of for Israel, okay.

So that's been his strategy and you know, he's like, whatever you need me to do in order to, to help you get that, I'm willing to do. Okay.

So that's sort of the stuff. So the Biden administration had tried to link a ceasefire move with a move on Saudi normalization and using the Saudis as a potential carrot the whole time. Try and get the Israelis to get to the point where, you know, I understand it's politically unpopular for you to talk about a political horizon, but if you do it, you can move forward a normalization with Saudi and that could be enough for you to overcome the political problems and you can have a brand new Middle East.

And throughout the prosecution of this war and the war with Hezbollah and the war with Iran, Israel has been incredibly successful at destroying, you know, Iranian proxies. The region is not mourning the loss of Nasrallah, the region is not mourning the loss of the Iranian nuclear program. But without this common threat, holding it together, you know, the region's also looking to Israel to ask themselves the question, which has always been the question, can you be rational towards the Palestinians?

We understand you don't want Hamas, but like when it comes to the PA, can you be rational, okay? Now, from the Israeli perspective, the concept of moving from conflict management to conflict resolution straight after October 7th as anathema because it's clearly a reward for terrorism in their heads, Hamas does this, and then the Palestinians get a state like, no, that's not gonna happen.

Right, so in the, in the academic parlance, you say, well, if you can't go from management to resolution, you go to transformation. How do we transform this conflict over time in order to make things more likely? And so there, there's been tremendous pressure on the PA throughout to reform their prisoner payment system.

We've spoken about this, of which President Abbas claims he started or enacted the reform back in February, was waiting for U.S. stuff. And like they've been trying to rebuild their relationships with Abraham Accord countries as the UAE and others. President Abbas has technically appointed a successor. There's a vice president— Hussein al-Sheikh—now doing all these things that the region has asked him to do to show that he could, he could play ball. Okay.

So the Saudis and the French basically come together to say, look, we need to make sure that two states doesn't die, because before October 7th, this was a government that had no interest in two states. And that post-October 7th, they're like, this is our opportunity to truly kill two states. And we heard that from multiple members of the Israeli government coalition that we can use this to completely foreclose the Palestinians and, and all these other pieces of that puzzle.

So the French and the Saudis wanna do this conference, they were supposed to hold this big conference, even potentially at a head of state level just before the Iran conflict that it was supposed to be scheduled. And then the Iran war happens, and so it's delayed. And then the conference happens this week. And here's how it works, okay?

From the Euro-, from the Middle Eastern perspective, two states is a defeat of Hamas. Why? Because they understand the Muslim Brotherhood as never accepting Israel, and the Hamas will never accept Israel. And therefore, by pushing two states and pushing a Ramallah-based agenda, you basically lock in that Israel can be a part of the region, it can exist alongside a Palestinian entity.

And so the way that you defeat Hamas ideology and you settle down the extremists in their own backyard, is that you say there can be a Palestinian state that can live alongside as Israel, okay? And that that is the response that, yes, Ramallah is corrupt. And yes, Ramallah has had its challenges and it's autocratic, but we need to reform the PA and move in that direction.

The European perspective is also similar, which is like Hamas clearly are extremists who can take no part of a future Palestinian state. But a Palestinian state is the best response to those who are looking to destroy fully the other, because that will do it, okay.

In Israel, they're like, you guys are all smoking crack, right? Like two states died, at least in the eyes of the majority of the Israeli population after the Second Intifada, it hasn't really been restored. They claim that the Palestinians are historic rejectionists, even if President Abbas is being positive, he doesn't have capacity, he doesn't do anything.

And the government has multiple times that there's no difference between Hamas and Fatah or between Ramallah and Hamas. Which by the way, is abjectly absurd. And I'll just tell you, like last week, 50 religious Jews were arrested by PA security forces in Nablus trying to pray at the tree of Joseph without coordination, and they were returned safely without harm to Israel. If they were Hamas, they'd be kidnapped or they'd be killed, or they'd be arrested. And that didn't happen. So the fact that gets no play in Israel, nonsequitor.

Okay, so the Israelis are like, this is all crazy. And the Americans, President Trump's like, I'm not weighing in on this and he said to Keir Starmer when he was in England, you do what you want, whatever.

So the Europeans like, look, if you want us to recognize Palestine, you the Arab States need to do something. You need to commit that Hamas needs to disarm and basically cannot be part of a governing entity. And you need to put your name to that. All of you, you all need to sign on this. And so coming out of the UN meeting yesterday, you had French announcement of recognition.

You had this bizarre British statement, which was like, will recognize if Israel doesn't commit to two states and doesn't help on starvation, which is a bizarre way of doing recognition. Keir Starmer is being attacked in my view, rightfully by everyone 'cause what is that like, recognize, or don't recognize, like it's very odd. But the Arabs promised, you know, sign that the Europeans recognize. And the aim was to try and kick off a process.

Now the Israelis are basically threatened to potentially annex in response parts of the West Bank could potentially Gaza in response to recognition, saying you can take your recognition and basically shove it up where the sun doesn't shine. And we'll annex and good luck with that.

And I think that, you know, whether it's Australia, Canada, other parts of sort of the Western English speaking world are waiting to make a decision. But I think that if Israel pushes forward with annexation as a response, they'll see more recognition. And again, it basically ups their dependencies significantly on America and on President Trump.

And at a time that we can get into it, that support for Israeli actions at are historic lows Israel is upping the level of dependency ever more on a mercurial transactional second term, soon to be lame duck president. And that is sort of where that entire trajectory lies.

Scott Anderson: So let's go to that part of the equation, the American part of the equation. Because the kinda the global movement we've seen, we're seeing European states, as you said, working closely with regional states.

We saw this really notable declaration come out of the UN conference this last day or two between the Arab League and the European Union and a number of states basically laying out this multi-point framework, Hamas get out, but commitment to Palestinian statehood and autonomy, to some extent in some form without too many specifics. But I think that's actually a really notable development, reflecting a lot of consensus around the international community.

The United States is an outlier to that, but at the same time, we're seeing interesting things from the United States, from the Trump administration, at least in my mind. As somebody who has followed U.S. policy in this area for a long time. The fact that Donald Trump would respond to Keir Starmer and say, you do what you gotta do, or what you wanna do on this, is itself, I think, pretty notable.

That's not a green light, but it's a yellow light, which is more than a lot of U.S. administration, Democratic or Republican would've given to, you know, strong suggestions European states, close eyes are gonna move close, closer to recognition of a Palestinian state in the near term. Not least 'cause it causes all sorts of legal headaches and political headaches for Americans and a relationship with the United Nations and others.

We've seen rhetoric come from within deep within President Trump's camp, Marjorie Taylor Green being the most notable high-profile example saying yes Israelis have a right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean we can accept genocide and famine in Gaza, to paraphrase. But she used the term genocide. That's kind of extraordinary. She's not, you know, the head of the party or anything, but she's a notable figure and her voice on this gives cover to other people, I think to say other things, particularly such a strong statement.

So talk to us about where American politics and reaction has been around this, particularly in President Trump's administration and the MAGA camp that kind of makes policy with it. Because it strikes me as, as we're seeing a bit of a change in trajectory or change in tone in a way that I think a lot of people wouldn't necessarily expect.

Joel Braunold: Nine percent. Nine percent is the level of support for Israeli actions for Americans under the age of 34, okay. You don't get that by just polling Democrats. Okay. There is functionally no support, or I should say 9% of support for Israeli actions amongst the youth of America. And remember, Gen-Z males are overwhelmingly right now, Republican, okay. So the, the state of Israel has lost the support of the youth of America.

Amongst all Americans support for Israeli actions that are a historic low according to Gallup, 32%. Okay? Democrats are gone, right? They are now 19 points more favorable towards Palestinians than they are towards Israel. That's a historic number that we haven't seen before. And again, basically the only sectors of Republican support that have rock solid for Israel are over fifties, and mainly probably in the non-MAGA parts of the Republican coalition.

The, the slippage in America has happened for a few different reasons. We had a, a mind-boggling statement from Ambassador Huckabee two, three weeks ago when he threw all of the toys at the pram because he felt that the Israeli government wasn't being respectful when it came to visas towards Christian Americans and evangelicals. What was supposed to be a simple visa issue, he wrote a letter that he CC'd basically half of the Israeli government saying that he would tell Christians to stop coming to Israel.

Now, that has subsequently been fixed, but that damage doesn't just go away. You saw the Israeli mistaken shell hitting the Catholic church in Gaza, followed by settler attacks that beat to death the 20-year-old Floridian Palestinian. You've seen constant settler attacks on the Christian town of Tayibe, which even if it's a minority, why can't Israel stop it? And it's driving the Americans crazy.

They took off settler sanctions and settler violence has gone up. And they just, this is driving the, you know, Governor Huckabee is, is, is no pro-Palestinian, and yet he went and saw the PA after the settler attacks and went to start engaging. And by the way, the PA changed its position on meeting with the ambassador to Israel. They would never meet with David Freeman. They were happy to meet with Ambassador Huckabee and be able to do that. You know, the Trump administration is not interested much in the same way with Keir Starmer. They're like, we haven't made a decision about how we feel about Ramallah.

You know, that's also an indication to the Israelis don't collapse it. We haven't made a decision yet. And I think that this, I think the Trump administration's position towards the Israelis, we're never gonna put pressure on you. There'll be times like when you bomb a church, we're gonna go crazy, right, or anything else?

But in general, you do you. Like President Trump also said, we don't think that recognizing the Palestinian state at this time does anything to help the negotiations. They're probably right. It doesn't, of course it Hamas, but like the reason that European states are doing that and others is that they see the Israeli coalition stating, we are going to control alt delete the Palestinian cause.

We're just gonna get rid of it, whether it's through forced immigration, whether it's through annexation. And that's a response. Their inability to put forward what a day after will look like has created this doom loop. It is very clear, and it has been clear for years, like since six months into the war.

If you want an international governing body for Gaza, full of Egyptians and Arab states and rebuilding with a U.S. world, you need the P.A. to invite them. And the P.A. has said we will invite them if it leads towards a pathway to a political solution of which Israel says no. So we're stuck and the, the Saudis have therefore got off on their own tack.

And you will notice that despite the fact that the Saudis are, have basically done an end run around Israel across the region. We've seen no movement forward on the Abraham Accords. You know, everyone thought Mauritania was about to join and suddenly they didn't. You know, we can get into Syria and another podcast about what's gone on there and everything else in Lebanon.

No one's gonna move before the Saudi says, okay. And the Saudis are like, until they demonstrate they can be rational towards the Palestinians, nothing's moving forward. And by the way, President Trump is not pushing MBS. We've seen no attacks on MBS, no attacks on the Saudis who have been leading this.

Yeah, there's like a, a backwards and forwards Macron, which Trump's always enjoyed. And Macron doesn't seem to be particular bothersome. But I think that the Americans have said the Israelis can do whatever they want, but they can do it. We don't like the UN, we don't care. We'll collapse the UN, it's irrelevant to us, but we're not, I don't see the Americans punishing their allies for going down this route.

And going back to the Americans, just listen to Pod Save America that came out yesterday with, you know, the, the Obama crowd basically saying, you know, to have table stakes, to be in the next presidential run for the Democrat, you have to be against military to Israel. There's functionally no support amongst the MAGA base at all for foreign aid to Israel. Not even slightly.

And I think even Prime Minister Netanyahu recognizes that this isn't gonna move forward. So I don't see how there's gonna be another MOU for military assistance, or if it is, it'll probably be grants that will give more leverage to a U.S. president to call those due whenever they want.

And again, like the feeling in Israel, and this is the thing that I find both frustrating and bizarre. The Israeli response, not just of the coalition, but also the opposition, these recognitions, is to blame local politics in Europe about Islamic immigration.

So Naftali Bennett, who is, you know, a lot of people think could be the next prime minister, releases this social media video saying, you know, first Palestine next Paris, or some weird thing. Where he's like, you know, October 7th was the test case for ISIS, they're coming to you next with images of Paris and, you know, the, the, the suburbs around that sort of imploding. And you've heard from the Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar saying it's all about domestic politics.

So if, if this is the dog whistling to say we're with sort of the nativist right, the MAGA Europe, like MAGA this. The MAGA Europe does not like Jews and, and thinks that Israel controls their politics, right? Just watch any of their media. They are saying it constantly. Watch Marjorie Taylor Green, watch the YouTube clips. So you are siding with people who don't like you and don't like the Jews in that population and think that Israel is leading their politics astray.

That, that's not gonna save you. That's not gonna help you. And here's the biggest thing, and we said this when we did this podcast, about what would the Trump administration want? The Israeli right completely misreads the situation when it comes to the right in other countries. Yes. They're not pro-Palestinian, yes, they're not like in terms of like pro-P.A. Yes, they're not UN. And yes, they're chauvinistic. Like yes, they're nationalistic, but they don't share Jewish supremacy, right?

They don't want to see people kicked out of their homes. They don't wanna see Christian communities annexed and occupied and attack. They don't want to see it, right? They don't support it. They don't support Jewish supremacy. And what, what a driving line of part of this coalition has been is Jewish supremacy. It, it just has been. And that is incongruent with the allies that they are so dependent upon.

So in the U.S. you saw Matt Gaetz do a stunning piece on Newsmax where with the exception of calling, on OANN, sorry, not on Newsmax, with the exception of calling it the West Bank, he called it Judea and Samaria. It could have been coming from Breaking Points. You are using our tax dollars to beat to death Americans, you know, why the hell should we do this? Where are the investigations? You know, they don't care. There's no democracy. It's basically an apartheid in the West Bank. You know, this is coming from Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz is not distant from the president. He was his first attorney general pick.

Meghan Kelly goes on Pierce Morgan and says, Israel's becoming the villain of the world. She says this within a context saying that Palestinian mothers are happy for their kids to starve to death–gross statement, right–just in, if it gets them world sympathy. But says that Israel is becoming the villain of the world. This is what some of their closest allies in MAGA world and in Republican world are telling them in claxons.

Whereas Democrats, Jackie Rosen led a 44-member letter to the administration basically of, of 44 Democrats in the Senate where it basically says that two states has to be the long-term outcome. There is no space in non-MAGA world for anything but two states.

So people then will say, well, what do you expect the Israelis to do, just reward terrorism? No, they could have said, here are 19 different reforms the P.A. needs to do. If they do all of these 19, and we need to not just in intent, not just President Abbas, writing a letter to President Macron saying, I condemn October 7th and I reform this. But actually does the things it needs to do and does it on a basis then we'll countenance that, most of this pressure would disappear.

But instead Israel is basically being this angry guy at the end of the table being like, screw all of you. It's never gonna happen. Get wise to it. And what's their response about what will they do? What is their solution? Well, Gazans should be able to leave and never come back. And you know, in the West Bank, we'll, we'll, you know, whatever, like Jordan's Palestine, that's really the solution.

And we'll, we'll do some sort of village league recognizing point here, point there. The international world's not there. And relying on the Americans and just one party of Americans, one segment of that party of Americans to save you on that, is not a sustainable strategy. And so if the Israelis want to take two states off the table, they need to replace it with something.

And I, I, I'll say this to finish, the state of Israel received the peace dividend from Oslo early between 1992 and 1996, 39 different countries normalized relations with Israel because it entered into a peace process with the Palestinians. So the Global South and the unaligned nations started working with the Israelis, the economy exploded, there were lots of positive things, okay? That's all baked in.

If Israel is the reason that two states is foreclosed, again, not being created tomorrow, but is foreclosed, they foreclosed that vision, it's not happening, get over it, it's never gonna happen, we're never gonna agree. And there's no replacement of anything that resembles rights for the people who live there. They will lose part of that peace dividend. It might not be those same countries who normalized it, but the countries that they are part of a, in a Western nation will not.

There will be consequences, as you said, the legal obligations, once you've recognized the state and in that state is being attacked by another state or is occupied by another state, it creates a lot of different conclusions and, and things that move forward within that regards. And that needs to be part of the public discourse in Israel as it goes forward. And at this point, it's not.

Scott Anderson: So I think that brings us to kind of the last piece of the puzzle we should touch on today which is this question of Israel and Israel’s politics 'cause so far in a lot of this conversation we've talked about Israel and Israelis as a unitary entity, and it's really not that.

On the one hand there is more consensus or perhaps more broad support for strong elements of what Israeli has done over the last two years than many people might acknowledge, right. You, for the campaign in Gaza for resistance to two state solution, that those are issues and positions that have broader support in Israeli society beyond to current governing coalition.

But we've seen a lot of fractures among Israelis against other parts of the strategy. The focus on continuing the conflict versus negotiating for the return of hostages being the clearest cleavage, domestic cleavages around, you know, religious populations in the military and the role of the judiciary and the status of West Bank and a million other issues that have come up and are, are pushing themselves back to the fore.

And now it looks like Gaza, and particularly this famine question is maybe becoming part of that again. You know, we have seen Israeli NGOs begin to use the term genocide in regards to what's happening in Gaza. Groups that may not represent, almost certainly don't represent broad views, broadly held views in Israel. But notable that they're willing to take that line in regards to their audience in Israel. We have seen Haaretz, the kind of left-leaning, but I think it's fair to say center left national newspaper.

Joel Braunold: I wouldn't say center-left.

Scott Anderson: Yeah, I say left-leaning fair, left-leaning national newspaper really playing up body counts on the front page almost every day for the last several months in regards to Gaza.

At the same time you see administration officials from the Netanyahu government whether it is, you know, Smotrich having meetings about reconstituting Jewish settlements that you referenced earlier, whether it is the Minister for Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, excuse me, hopefully I said that correctly, basically saying, look, the whole point of this is to drive Palestinians out of Gaza. You know, statements that really belie a really different strategic calculus that the official government always denies, rejects, but nonetheless is clearly part of the constellation of interests and ideas feeding into policy.

So I think the real question is, what does this all mean for the Israeli government and the trajectory of Israeli democracy? Netanyahu, in a lot of ways, as you teed up earlier certainly a month or two ago, seemed like he was in a pretty strong position to make a case that he was a guarantor of Israeli security setting Gaza aside, coming from the disaster of October 7th, where one could, and many did quite recently, put a good chunk of blame on him and some of the strategic decisions he and his government had made in regards to Gaza.

We've seen him out lead a very successful military campaign in Lebanon, taking out Hezbollah there. You have seen weird tension with Syria, but nonetheless, for reasons somewhat unrelated to Israeli policy, except perhaps the Lebanese offensive, Syria is now not quite the vehicle or hotbed of, of at least Iranian backed opposition to Israel. Although they're having their own tensions around the Druze population.

And of course we had the military campaign against Iran, where Iran has at least, apparently, according to public rhetoric, been substantially set back on the nuclear timetable and took a lot of hits to its conventional capacities as well, which is already sort of on the way.

And in short, he's got a really positive story to tell. And yet the tension and the pressure over this really seems to be percolating in a way that I haven't seen other aspects of this conflict rise to the fore except for maybe the hostages issue. Am I wrong on that? Am I being too generous about how this is impacting Israelis and the kind of Israeli public conversation? And what will it mean for a Netanyahu and kind of the broader constellation of interests he represents that has dominated Israel, a good chunk of Israeli politics, really for the last 20 years, with some brief interruptions?

Joel Braunold: So there, there's a lot, there's a lot here. So again, like I, I'll try and guide, guide the viewers and listeners through.

So the, the biggest critique of the Netanyahu government is you've successfully used military might to truly change the face of part of the Levant and like the Iranian Israeli dynamic, but yet you can't take advantage of what you've done. Like you lack the political capacity to, to do the maneuvers, to bring the Syrians and Lebanese into the Abraham Accords, to settle Gaza. Like I didn't mean physically, to like settle the conflict, I mean, like, to, to finish it off. You, you lack that political space because your coalition doesn't give it to you.

So the, the biggest political contention in Israel has been the fact that the ultra-Orthodox kids don't serve. There was a huge pressure about would they manage before the Knesset recess that started two days ago, get to an exemption bill that would exempt the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox kids from serving, and would they be punished if they didn't serve?

They didn't manage to, and actually Netanyahu lost his majority in his coalition. So Netanyahu no longer controls the majority of the Knesset. The, the Haredi parties exit the coalition. He's now in a minority government. And he still has the far right Ben-Gvir and Smotrich still in there, but they've said that they'll leave if basically a ceasefire happens. And you know there's a lot there.

But the Knesset in recess. So unless people call it back to try and dissolve the Knesset, the government continues until, until October when the Knesset comes back, and then they'll very quickly, we'll see if the government could continue by passing an exemption bill or if it can't, and then if it does, it'll be another three months until there's elections.

Elections are due already in October 2026. So the question will be, the elections will either be in January, it'll be in April, or it'll be in October. So at some point Israel’s going back to elections next year.

What are the Israelis up to? As I said, after the Iran conflict and the surprising victory, though there were big civilian hits that the Iranians managed to hit, not as big as people thought. The exasperation Israel, that this just needs to end, like we're exhausted, this is Israel's longest war by quite a significant margin.

The reservists are exhausted. There's frustration about burdens of service. And there's huge, as we've said since the beginning, where the prioritization of hostages on this? You know, like do, is that will we ever be the same country if those 21 hostages don't come back. And the cleavages in Israeli society go to who the hostages are. You know, if these were settler hostages with the far right in Israel, feel differently then if they're not. You know, there's, it's really getting quite nasty.

And so the majority of Israelis want the war to end, but you have to poll it, right? If the polling is the war ends and Hamas stayed in power, you don't get a majority position. If it's that you get the hostages home and normalization, then the majorities go up. So like how you poll the questions important. But it is fair to say that the majority in Israel don't want this to continue, but also like they're stuck.

Like what was all of this for if Hamas comes back into power? Like what did we do? And Bibi’s own voting base, which is what he cares about 'cause he wants this to be reelected. And more importantly, his members have to run in a primary. And that primary goes much like our primaries, go very much to the base.

So very much to the right, have no interest in anything but total victory. If it's just that there's more humanitarian aid and the war ends, they're not, none of them are gonna win their primaries. And so there's, there's no support in the Likud for like a moderate option. And so even though he no longer commands the majority of the Knesset like and doesn't have a majority government, the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox are not interested in collapsing this government 'cause they know their voters will punish them anyway.

And so it's sort of, again, you're in the sort of status loop where Bibi’s flexibility is limited and yet he claims that he's in charge and it's empowering the far right. And that's why you've got Smotrich saying publicly, you know, you think, I dunno that I'm a laughing stop by allowing this humanitarian aid in I know something you don't know. And what is it that he knows? That they're, they're gonna annex something. They're gonna annex and settle Gaza. And then what will that mean internationally?

You know, 22 members between ministers and MKs of this governing coalition wrote a letter in support of Daniella Weiss, the mother of the settlement movement, going to Northern Gaza to tour where they could build settlements, okay? If they do that, if they think that they're a pariah now, just wait. And again, Hamas doesn't care. Do the majority of Israelis want there to be settlements in in Gaza? Absolutely not. But there's an intensity of preference issue here, right? Like, you know, some people really, really want it, and the intensity of preference versus not.

Now starvation, you know, as I said, the Israelis have been warned for ages. They've been sort of conditioned to think that the UN's lying to them, that everyone's lying to them. But it finally broke through after like Amit Segal, who's a very prominent right-wing journalist for Channel 12, said, look, if we look at these studies, the price of flour being so high shares there is starvation.

So now it's like there is starvation, but it's the UN's fault, right, 'cause they're not distributing it. So again, like there might be, but it's not us. But there is an undercurrent that you can see in Israel, as you said B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights declared that what's going on is a genocide. You are seeing also just massive parts of the Jewish diaspora just completely lose their minds around the starvation work and just being like, this is just unacceptable.

And within Israel, you're seeing more and more the dean of the, I should say he's my second cousin, so just full disclosure. David Harrell, who's the head of the President of the Arts and Humanities, you know, the, you know, of all our, you know, humanities professors, you know, said we have to do more. The Israeli medical associations, like, you've gotta get food in though.

The, the Supreme Court keeps delaying a petition that says you are starving Gaza. They keep giving the Israeli government more and more time to answer that question. So the judicial system is not interfering in terms of what's going on in Gaza in any way, shape, or form.

So there is a feeling that Israeli civil society is waking up. It's like, we need to end this, this is bad. But again, the question is like, how do we end it? Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition has said, you know, Egypt should take over and we should, we should stand at the edges of Gaza rather than be in and sort of fight a war like that. There are questions about do they take the Lebanese model where they just have like five locations in Gaza that they can do operations. But again, like all of that requires someone else to go in and take over Gaza.

And again, we get back to the same problem, Scott, and going back all the way to the beginning of this podcast and going back all the way to the beginning when we did our first podcast a year and a half ago, Israel's inability to agree about what a day after should look like, okay. Now, added into Trump's magic button, the Gazans just disappear. Right? And go to other countries and live happily in Switzerland.

By the way, you'll notice every time that it's like we found countries to take Gazans that magically doesn't appear, okay. And again, the Israelis can't do this themselves. They require the Americans to incentivize countries, and I just don't think President Trump is interested in doing that. He's like, if this is what you want, if you don't want any role for the P.A. and you can't convince the UAE to do it without it, I'm not gonna push you, but you need to figure this out.

And he is like, well, we need more from you, President Trump. We need more from this, more from that. President Trump puts a greater premium on the hostages it seems, just like President Biden did, than the Israeli government does, who are hopelessly divided. Amichay Eliyahu, as you said, this morning said that we should consider them prisoners of war, not hostages. We should conclude the war. And then we get the prisoners back. Like just changing the dynamics, which caused a massive uproar.

Amichay last week or two weeks ago said that the job is to destroy, you know, all of Gaza and make sure that there's no one left. And you know, the ambassador in the U.S. went so crazy that he forced the prime minister to issue a statement of English that he doesn't speak for the government. But was he fired? No, right?

So like, again, like there's this entire feeling like who's speaking for the government? The prime minister said when this coalition was sworn in, I didn't join them, they joined me. And yet, if you look at who he's most scared of leaving the government. And when every single time push has come to shove, right about if it has to be a choice. At the beginning when Lapid said, I'll join you if you get rid of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Bibi said no, and Ganz joined him instead.

Like at every opportunity, Bibi has hugged the far-right 'cause he does not want to be attacked by the right for his operations in Gaza.Hhe wants to keep them inside the tent, not outside the tent. And by keeping them inside the tent, he limits significantly his ability to operate in terms of what he can agree to and what he can't. And that is also because his own party is closer when you look at their statements to the views of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich than they are to Dermer and the prime minister.

And that reality, as uncomfortable as it is for many supporters of Israel, is the reality if you look at what their statements are and what they're signing onto. And you could say, well, that's just a matter of who the primaries are and who hasn't. You can make all the excuses that you need to. The reality is, is that the constraining of not enabling there to be an international coalition at the invite of the P.A. to go in with people separate from the P.A., everything else, it's because Israel doesn't have the political ability to get there.

On top of that, currently when you look at all the international plans, they are all absent of one very important factor, which is how do you disarm Hamas. Who's gonna physically be doing the disarmament, right? If you're gonna do a DDR program, people need to DDR into something. What are they DDRing into? If there is no political horizon, there is no real context for DDR.

You know, at the end of the second Intifada, you've got the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade to integrate into the PASF, right? That was a process of DDR that went into that. They have to go into something and you need to create a pathway to do that. What they're doing? What is the future of Gaza? These are critical questions for how do deal with Hamas.

If you are trying to get Hamas to exit and exile and all these things, they need to give over their authority. They're not gonna give up to the IDF. They're not gonna hand over their guns to the IDF. That's just not, that's not realistic or human. They'll give it to a local actor. Who is that actor? How does that actor work?

In that document, you said that came out of the UN meeting, it said that they should give up their guns to the P.A. At the moment, the Israelis are not interested in that. So what are they interested in? And again, that gets back to this basic question. There are still 20 to 21 alive hostages. There's 50 hostages still around, like in there, it's Hamas’ last bargaining chip.

But what are we moving towards? The Europeans, the Arab world, have said what their vision is. And once again, we are waiting to hear what the Israeli vision is. We know what they're against. They're against two states. They're against the P.A. going back into Gaza. What are they for? The only thing that we've heard that this coalition is for is voluntary migration of Gazans. That's it. And yet they have not found a single country's willing to take them, at least publicly.

So that is where we continue to go as people star in Gaza, the hostages haven't been released and internationally as Israel is becoming increasingly more and more isolated and Hamas are hardening their position

Scott Anderson: Well for better or for worse, we are out of time for this conversation. I think we'll have to leave it there.

But this has been a real tour de force of recent events. A little bit of a depressing picture to say the least. But I, something tells me we will have a reason and opportunity to revisit it in a few weeks. Until then, Joel, thank you for joining us here today on the Lawfare Podcast.

Joel Braunold: Thanks so much, Scott.

Scott Anderson: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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