Lawfare Daily: Trump's New Plan for Gaza, with Joel Braunold

[Intro]

Joel Braunold: The Israelis think this is all a con, but they realize that they need to do something. But their own politics won't allow them to do something. And the Board of Peace is stuck now that they've got this agreement that President Trump has announced and has loved, but what can they deliver?

Scott R. Anderson: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm senior editor Scott R. Anderson, joined by contributing editor Joel Braunold, managing director of the Center Project.

Joel Braunold: But so far in Lebanon, the negotiations are slow and are difficult, and the Israelis are very sensitive before the election for anything leaking about what they're agreeing to. And any leaks will just make them not be willing to do anything at the table, given the sensitivity of everything that's happening right now.

Scott R. Anderson: Today, we're discussing the Trump administration's new plan for Gaza and why Israel isn't on board.

[Main Podcast]

Joel, it has been an eventful couple of weeks/months since the last time we caught up on the state of the kind of Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. We have not one but two frameworks this administration has kind of hailed as historic, a more recent one related to Gaza, an earlier one from last month in Lebanon, both of which have gotten hung up on kind of a similar problem of sequencing between disarmament and Israeli withdrawal to some extent, although in somewhat different ways.

So, so let's walk through and talk to people about what these two deals are and how they fit into the broader picture. Let's start with the Gaza deal, which of course is the product that's come out in the last two weeks. That's particularly notable, particularly because we're seeing this unique political alignment with a very open break by the Israeli government from the plan and less so, interestingly, by Hamas and other parties in Gaza that are traditionally much less aligned with the Trump administration around this. Let's start with h- how do we get to the 15-point plan, to this idea that we need a 15-point plan? And how, how does it replace the 20-point plan that we're all familiar with from the beginning of this administration?

Joel Braunold: So the 15-point plan, which I will urge the listeners to look at, you can go to the Board of Peace's X page and it is the pinned tweet, the pinned post at the top is the text of the 15-point framework between the Board of Peace and Hamas, as well as an explainer of what's going on.

And the first point of that explainer tells you what it is. It fundamentally is, as I'll read from the plan, “all parties reaffirm their commitment to President Trump's comprehensive plan to achieve peace in Gaza, which constitutes, together with UN Security Council Resolution 2803, an agreed upon international framework guiding the implementation of this process. Through this process, the parties aim to end the cycle of destruction, secure the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, restore normal life, enable Palestinian governance, reconstruction, security recovery and economic development, rehabilitate damaged sectors and facilitate launching a credible political pathway that achieves self-determination and statehood.”

Okay. Why is that very long preamble very important? If we remember when we were debating and discussing the 20-point plan, we said it was really a three different plans that were squished into one. Point one was a hostage prisoner release deal that was supposed to also undergird the principles that no Gazans would be forced to leave Gaza, that there would be some level of amnesty for Hamas if they would go through this, and that there would be an eventual with- withdrawal from Israel from Gaza. Okay? That was sort of part one, that just the commitments that those were where we were aiming towards.

Point two, the phase two, which was always the one that was bedeviling everyone was who would replace Hamas' governance in Gaza? What would reconstruction look like? What would a decommissioning, instead of disarmament, we used the term decommissioning that basically Jonathan Powell, who was the British national security advisor, who was very involved on the Northern Irish peace process, sort of brought into this equation saying, "Don't use disarmament, use decommissioning." It's more of an acceptable process where you don't give up wecon- weapons, but you make them inoperable. What does that process look like?

And then there was a third part of the 20-point plan, points 18, 19, and 20, which really looked towards creating a political horizon for the entire Palestinian national project. And the third part was, you know, how does Gaza link into the wider regional integration? How does it link the West Bank to Gaza? And all the other things.  So what the 15-point framework is, is basically a recommitment to the 20-point plan and the implementation framework for phase two. So it's very important to see it within that context.

Now, since the 20-point plan was announced and started sort of just a little over a year ago we did of course have the hostage release and prisoner release. There was an increase in humanitarian delivery, and Israel was supposed to, and did at the beginning, withdraw to 52% of Gaza that was called the yellow line. Now, the yellow line was demarcated within the maps.

The yellow line's gonna become very important to this conversation. The yellow line, as understood in the document, is 52% of Gaza. Israel remains on 52% of Gaza. The rest of Gaza is Hamas controlled. Now, before the Board of Peace made this agreement with Hamas a few weeks ago, like almost 10 days ago, there was a move in the Israeli cabinet to enable the ISF, the International Security Forces, which is supposed to be the international group that will go in, not to create a peacekeeping role, but to sort of be a between forces between Israel and Hamas and sort of do that. So not an internal securitizing DDR sort of role of disarmament, but really to sit between the forces.

Israel's cabinet agreed to extend the immunity laws to the eventual ISF, but they made some conditions. All soldiers that are part of this need to be, have, have countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel and are not trying to hurt Israel in an international forma. Read: “no Turks and no Qataris.” But before deployment, the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister all need to agree. So it was really just sort of a technical move, but I think that the Board of Peace was banking that as the Israeli acquiescence that we were moving into phase two.

So then what happens? The Israelis were convinced, totally convinced, their security, their intel groups and everyone else, that there was no way that Hamas would agree to ever give up their weapons. That it was just, the, the Americans want a fool's gold. And lo and behold Hamas finished its, some part of its internal elections. Haniya was elected, who is sort of the Gaza main representative and still one of the last survivors of the October 7th leadership. And he, you know, is doing his tour. He sits with Hi- Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey and a few others. And lo and behold, the Board of Peace actually manages to get a commitment from Ha-Hamas to agree to this 15-point plan.

And if you go through all 15 points, it's actually pretty detailed with international verification regimes, when NCAG will come in, which is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, who will pay the debts that the Hamas government put up, amounts of, you know, no more than 400 million, how will decommissioning work? You know, they'll be stored in warehouses before they're decommissioned under the Sharm el-Sheikh protocol, the responsibility of the police.  You know, genuinely and honestly, this is not a nothing document. This is a pretty detailed as it goes document.

But the core way that the document works is that as Hamas decommissions its weapons in point by point in different areas of Gaza, so as they do, you know, Deir al Balah, for example, and then it is verified by an international committee of verifications, which includes the guarantors, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, as well as the U.S. and others, then Israel will start withdrawing from the yellow line. Okay? So that is the mechanism that was somewhat agreed within this document.

So Hamas agrees, and President Trump announces on Truth Social a historic agreement. And to his credit, this is a big deal. Trump's entire mechanism on, on the 20-point plan, if we remembered, was just to say, "Look, we've all agreed to phase one. Let's just put in phase two and three and we'll get there. We'll use the momentum." There were lots of skeptics and everything else, but do you know what? He used the momentum over the past year and some of the pressure that Israel moved beyond the current yellow line of 52 and now occupies 70% of Gaza, that they continued to kill, continued to do airstrikes, you know, was sort of putting pressure on Hamas to, to move them, and now Hamas has moved and has agreed to do this sort of disarmament process. So the momentum thesis worked, right? It sort of moved in.

But it was curious about, why now? Why did Hamas agree now? We are 90 days before Israeli elections, at a time where there is the least amount of Israeli ability to agree. So Hamas agrees and there was complete silence from Jerusalem. You know, not, you know, the, the right wing of the cabinet. But Ben-Gvir, Smotrich starts screaming, "This is unacceptable. We never agreed to this. We have to, we have to say no. We have to tell President Trump absolutely not."

And Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming under increasing pressure to say something. There's a meeting between Nikolay Mladenov, the high representative of Gaza, Aryeh Lightstone, the CEO of the Board of Peace, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which afterwards Mladenov tweets saying that Hamas needs to complete its disarmament before there's a withdrawal, seemingly indicating that he's now changed the agreement, though they keep talking about the same yellow line.

And it seems like there are two different yellow lines. There's the yellow line of the 52% and the yellow line of the 70%. After Hamas agrees, Israel steps up its airstrikes on Gaza. So it looks like they're just continuing to step up their airstrikes on Gaza in order to force Hamas out of compliance. So there's a lot of pressure on the Americans to get Israel to stop basically imploding the f- 15-point plan before it's even had a chance to start.

The one thing coming out of this meeting is that strike procedures change from the head of Southern Command to the head of the entire of the IDF. So now if you wanna commit a strike in Gaza, you now need the permission of the chief of staff of the IDF, which as you can imagine, is pretty significantly high up the decision-making chain. So the, it seems like at least the meeting prev- has now prevented Israel from just going after Hamas targets as they saw fit, but now it's somewhat more of a restrainer.

So finally, Netanyahu's forced to say something because this is becoming a huge political issue in the campaign. You know, you're gonna, you're gonna withdraw, you're gonna give H- you know, Hamas is lying to the international community. We're not gonna believe them. And Netanyahu two days ago says, "We reject the 15 points. We have nothing to do with it. We reject it. It's nothing. We, we don't agree." To which the Board of Peace does an interview on Channel 12 with Amit Segal saying Israel's not party to the Board of Peace anyway, so this is really an agreement to us and G- and Hamas, which is a curious thing seeing as that the IDF of course needs to agree, otherwise this whole thing doesn't really work. But basically, again, doesn't really dictate which yellow line we're talking about.

So for your listeners at the end of this very long sort of answer, here is what I think is, is going to happen and is going to go on, okay? The head of the Shabak, the Israeli sort of domestic secret police who really are responsible for a lot of security vis-a-vis the Palestinians, unlike Mossad that operates beyond Israel's borders, called the Hamas signing of this a “diplomatic October 7th.” Which by the way, an absurd thing to say, a horrendous thing to say. But it was like, we were surprised, and again, they've destroyed us internationally.

So in many ways, Hamas, i- if you don't believe that Hamas is serious, they've basically learnt off Israel to say yes and throw the blame game over to Israel. Knowing that Israel can't agree to this in the next 90 days, they say yes and throw the blame game back over to the Israelis. So learning from the mediators and everyone else and the, and the guarantors, Hamas says, "Yes." Now Israel has to be the one who look, looks like it's belligerent rather than Hamas, and Israel is like, "Well, they're not, you, you can't believe them." And the Board of Peace is like, "Well, you didn't believe us when we said we could get the hostages and the bodies of the hostages, and we did. So let us try and do this."

So A, the Israelis think this is all a con, but they realize that they need to do something, but their own politics won't allow them to do something. And the Board of Peace is stuck now that they've got this agreement that President Trump has announced and has loved, but what can they deliver?

So in the next 90 days, here's what I think they can deliver. One, as we've seen, I think there can be pressure to prevent targeted assassinations which aren't imminent threats, so really to restrain Israeli activity on that side. I think, two, while it won't happen before the election, this ambiguity about the yellow line, I believe that the Trump administration is gonna put significant pressure on the next Israeli coalition, whoever they are, to pull back from the 70% of Gaza that they've got back to the 52% of Gaza. Because there are no IDF troops supposedly deployed between the 52 and 70%. They're just sort of moving these concrete blocks further and further, pushing Gaza- Gazans, and civilians into a smaller and smaller area. So therefore, that, that will once again go back to 52% and use that as a deposit to Hamas to say, "Okay, look, we've demonstrated that Israel has withdrawn. Now let's start a decommissioning process."

The last thing I'll say, what this has done, right? Ultimately, is really got rid of something that I like to call “the precedent thesis.” So the precedent thesis said that if you could get this Israeli government to agree to something, then the next Israeli government would be able to do it even more. So whatever you can lock in now, lock in, because it will make it easier later on for a new Israeli government 'cause they can't be sniped by the right. In many ways, the 15 points in the Hamas decommissioning linked to Israeli withdrawal, despite the fact that it was this Israeli government who signed it, and despite the fact that this Israeli government signed that there would be a pathway to a Palestinian state, 90 days before the election, there's no way that they can agree to it.

And instead of this being an enabling move, it's actually a disabling move. Because what will happen now is that Bibi will run on, "I will not agree to this," and will say that anyone who agrees to this can't stand up to presidents, even if it's President Trump. And so this concept that you can get precedents right now to lock in as much as possible is no longer really holding true. And it's not holding true because President Trump's popularity in Israel has dipped because of all the stuff to do with Iran and America not sort of fulfilling what the Israeli commitment they thought it was.

And so unless President Trump enacts some very significant political costs for Netanyahu, which is unclear if he will during an election campaign, the aim of trying to push Israel today before the elections in order to open up space for a new Israeli government is somewhat depleted.

Scott R. Anderson: It is a wild story with a lot of moving pieces. That's an amazing overview of where we are on this agreement. I, I think one thing as we look forward to think about is what is the state of these institutions that we understand are supposed to play this central role if we ever make it to this next step?

We know we have the Board of Peace opera- operating. We have Mladenov as kind of the special envoy heading up that effort on the diplomatic front. We know we have now a SCAG, a, a, pardon me, not SCAG, an NCAG, a body set up of Palestinians intended to fill the governmental role that Hamas now has formally ceded as of, I think, July 6th, if I recall correctly. Basically saying, "Our civil authorities are disbanded, but we still have our paramilitary and security forces still armed, at least until this agreement is implemented."

And then you have the ISF that's supposed to come in and play that mediating role, presumably, I think, still provide some security for the people doing disarmament inspections, things like that. W- we, I know we are some country commitments about that, but we haven't really seen, as far as I'm aware, much that's retaining operational.

So, so where are these three key institutions now, and how close are they actually being able to deliver themselves if the parties ever come to the table to say, "Yeah, we're ready to move to this next step"?

Joel Braunold: So let's start with NCAG. So NCAG is 15 commissioners that are Palestinian, headed up by Ali Shaath. NCAG plays, y- you know, they've been stuck in Cairo. They haven't been allowed to go into the Strip. The Israeli fear is that if they go in before, well, the cynical one is like, we don't want any Palestinian governance. We want Palestinians to leave, not to go back in, right? And we can see that on Israel not allowing sh- you know, there's a big push to allow patients to leave Gaza to get cancer treatment or students to go abroad, but there's no guarantee from Israel that they can come back in, right?

So there's still, even though there's a commitment that from the Board of Peace and in the 20-point plan that Gazans should be allowed to return, there is still no Israeli counter-commitment, and so there's still this tension from coming in. And so NCAG's inability to enter is, can be seen as the Israelis are just blocking any potential future.

But there's also a non-cynical risk that they don't want a Lebanon-ization model where you've got a civilian government that has international impromptu, where you've got Hamas really controlling everything behind the scenes with their armed militias anyway, because that would give Hamas sort of a diplomatic immunity, which is what they really don't want to have.

So NCAG for the past year has been sitting in Cairo. They've had some conferences. They've done some stuff in Cyprus. They're really subservient to Nikolai Mladenov and the Board of Peace. Legally, they have the ability to run Gaza, but there's a liaison committee between Nikolai's office and the PA, because should the PA reform up to standards, then ultimately that's what NCAG will be working with in terms of a legal set of precedents coming from Ramallah rather than sort of new Kennedy School-esque or Tony Blair Change Institute-esque reforms that they're creating in Cairo, right?

So they're sort of in public policy school right now working out all the different things, but there's been nothing operational. So they're ready to go, and the main thing that they've done is to try and recruit a police force. They opened up applications. They had, like, 300,000 people apply. They've got sort of a training, they're trying to kick off the training for who will be the civilian police, who will be, like, the one gun, one power sort of underlying of Gaza.

And they need to do that, but they don't really have civil servants. You know, as part of the whole demobilization disarmament process, many of the Hamas civil servants, once vetted, will basically just switch over to work for NCAG afterwards. So they're sitting there sort of working it up.

The, you know, Dahlan who is, you know, an Abbas opponent, Fatah guy who sits in the UAE as an advisor to the emir there, you know, he has a lot of allies on NCAG as well. He and the UAE still control a lot of the economy that's still currently going into Gaza. And interestingly, he put his own reputation on the board for the 15 points, backing it in some way. We're not really clear. It's not public how he's done it. But he basically, after Israel rejected it, publicly condemned Netanyahu saying that he's humiliating President Trump because Khalid Dahlan put his reputation on the line as well. So that's NCAG.

The ISF, the U.S. has been sort of slowly closing down the CMCC, the Civilian Military Coordination Center that was set up just after the 20-point plan and is building more of a permanent base, which looks like from the logos that are on it the permanent headquarters of the ISF, the International Security Forces. I think there's been a U.S. general appointed who will be the head of the ISF in some way. And then there have been, I know Uganda and Morocco have committed some level of troops, but we're talking sort of under 200 troops in totality. I think Albania might be around there. I've got to check. Like it's sort of, that sort of level.

And so until the 15-point plan is agreed upon, and then you've got the agreement of the Israelis to allow them in, they're sort of just sitting, waiting as well in terms of what's going on.

And then the Board of Peace itself is this bizarre entity, right? So it technically has on it a representative of the World Bank that holds a trust fund for the reconstruction of Gaza. But their operational funds seem to be a JPMorgan Chase account that they're using, it seems, and they've signed at least some construction contracts for sort of a small pilot humanitarian city on the Israeli side of Gaza, near Rafah, that they're supposed to start with, I think, 10,000 people. Where the aim is to say, if Hamas won't agree, though ironically, they now have agreed to a 15-point plan that there'll be some sort of humanitarian city that NCAN could start running as sort of a pilot program where everyone coming in is vetted.

And also on that, who's going to live there? So there are militias, anti-Hamas militias, that have weapons that Israel has enabled to operate on its controlled side of Gaza that have been attacking Hamas. Now, as part of the disarmament deal of the 15 points, they also have to give up their weapons. And as you can imagine, they are very not keen to give up said weapons, saying Hamas is lying and we'll all be killed. But of course, everyone has to give up their weapons according to a DDR deal. And so you've got sort of these competing modalities, whereas do we allow the Rafah humanitarian city to move forward? Bibi, it seems, and the defense minister are pushing to allow that to move forward now in order to take focus off the 15-point plan. But if Hamas is agreeing to the 15-point plan, why would you only start reconstruction on the Israeli side of Gaza? These are some, some of the sort of pressure points that are going on.

But the Board of Peace itself, you've got Mladenov, you've got Blair, you've also got these very larger than life billionaire figures like Mark Rowan and others who sit on the Gaza Executive Committee, who are supposedly, you know, gonna be creating mega deals for Gaza and everything else.

We'll see what happens there. But the real operative part of the Board of Peace seems to be its professional secretariat, which is Aryeh Lightstone, Nikolay Mladenov, that crowd. But it's still not, still not clear what kind of legal entity they are, and that matters now from a U.S. context as they look to try and get, I think, around 200 million in, in peacekeeping support from the U.S. federal budget.

In order to get that, you know, President Trump has signed an executive order saying that they are able to receive defense articles, but what's their legal standing? You know, you're far more skilled on this than I am, Scott, but there's a lot of still outstanding questions. It's sort of very much run like a startup rather than a serious international agency, so it's very unclear.

Scott R. Anderson: Let's shift focus now from Gaza to Lebanon. We've got a good sense of what the picture is in Gaza. In Lebanon, a few weeks ago, we were in not a totally dissimilar position. We've had for a while now a nominal framework. The Trump administration trumpeted, you know, had a reasonably high-profile signing here in Washington, D.C. in April or May, as far as I recall, of the steps towards this framework for trying to get Israel to give up the 28% or so of Lebanon it is occupying and has been occupying for, you know, a better part of a year at this point, hinging again on a process of disarmament, this time headed up by the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Lebanese government and their ability to assert themselves in this Israeli-held territory and actually effectively disarm. That re- seems to remain the holdup.

So talk to us about the status of that framework agreement and, and where we seem to be stuck on it, given that we haven't really seen that much progress, at least from, from a, a, an observer, outside observer's perspective for the last couple weeks.

Joel Braunold: So, you know, as we mentioned last time, Lebanon was really the big question that Israel had on the MOU with Iran. They really wanted to have freedom of action, and the Trump administration created the separate formal government-to-government track in order to disentangle the Lebanese, the Iran-dominated Hezbollah track. You know, who basically is a ceasefire in Lebanon declared in Beirut or is it declared in Tehran was really the question. For the Israelis, if it's declared in Tehran, it doesn't work. But if it's declared in Beirut, then there might be something to work with.

Now, again, the general thesis coming out in Israel on a pretty mass popular level is that one of the lessons after October 7th is that we should have these sort of buffer zones around us, and one of those buffer around zones is in the north, sort of the, the place going up to Bouffon Castle, south of Litani, as you said, sort of that they're trying to hold onto right now.

But the Trump administration created this process directly between Lebanon and Israel that, you know, their thesis is that if the LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces, can disarm Hezbollah and move into those pilot zones, then Israel can start withdrawing from those pilot zones, though the Israelis have been signaling both in the negotiations and publicly that everyone should have very right-sized expectations.

These pilot zones aren't within the kilometers that they care about, so they're in the buffer zones, as in they took more territory than they needed, at least in their own security envelope, in order to give back that territory while holding onto their own territory. So, you know, over-anchoring in the negotiation discourse in order to sub-anchor afterwards with the promise of normalization sort of being dangled out at the end once this whole thing is concluded.

Where is it up to? So in the last, the, the negotiations seem to be held in Rome. In the last round the Israelis cut short the negotiations because they claimed that the Lebanese were leaking from the room, and there was an incident, a security incident, where, I think, two Israeli soldiers were killed and four were injured as an IED went off as they were clearing some of the tunnels and houses in some of the villages in southern Lebanon. The Israelis claimed that this was a ceasefire violation and wanted to go back to striking Lebanon. But interestingly, the Americans reviewed it and said it was not a ceasefire violation. This was an IED that had been planted before the ceasefire was in power, in put, and so it shouldn't be counted, and the Israelis didn't go on to commit strikes in south Lebanon.

Now, the Israelis, meanwhile, there is significant, just like in Gaza, political cost if you withdraw anything from Lebanon right now. And there's also, from early reports, a real dissatisfaction with the job that the LAF is doing, claiming that they're not really challenging Hezbollah and it's just, you know, another version of the UNIFIL sort of forces that didn't help after 2006. And so there's a lot of pressure on the Lebanese to sort of get this right.

Now, the Lebanese, unlike the Palestinians, have real diplomatic allies in the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon, the U.S. ambassador, ambassador to, to Turkey, who also is a special rep now for Iraq, Tom Barrack, people who are very close with President Trump. And President Trump really does not like to see, at least from his own language, destruction and death and wants to see economic commerce. You know, the president of Lebanon got to go to the White House. You know, I don't really see President Abbas or, or the head of Hamas being able to do that. So the Israelis don't get to somewhat dictate terms as much, and the U.S. seems far more willing to sort of put significant pressure.

The, the people who actually get the most ire from the Americans on the Lebanese file are the French who of course are the former colonial power in France and like to think of themselves as being involved in that after the relationship between Paris and Jerusalem just collapsing over the past few years. The French really have been banned from the room in many different ways. And all of these negotiations are going on, sponsored by the Americans, between Lebanon and Israel. Slow process, but again, we see something that's very different than the Gaza context that I think is very important.

One of the big critiques of Israel, when they say, "Well, we just want Hamas to surrender, and then we can rebuild the society." And they point to what happened in World War II with Japan or Germany. Ron Dermer used to talk about this quite a lot. A lot of Israeli commentators do, is that Germany and Japan were still countries, right? The governments might have been defend- defeated, but no one was talking about the end of Germany. I know it was divided into West and East Germany, but the aim was that it was gonna be unified, and it was still Germany. Occupied Germany, not occupied Germany. Same with Japan, right? So, you know, the, the aim, it was still Japan.

So Israel has not agreed to a state of Palestine. So w- who are people DDR-ing into? And that's why it, the logical thing is that it either remains in rubble, which is what one former head of Israel's National Security Agency said, or that Gazans leave, right? The, the solution for this is that it's no longer a problem which is ethnic cleansing, it's war crime, it's all the things that we know.

In Lebanon, there is an entity. It's the Lebanese Armed Forces. It's broken, it's difficult. And the, and the Taif Agreement that ended the civil war that was negotiated in Saudi Arabia offers a framework for how the Lebanese state can operate without militias there. And there is a general sense within the region, in the most parts of the region that isn't Iran, that we don't want armed groups operating in sovereign spaces because it gives Israel an excuse and others an excuse, whether it's the Houthis or whatever else to bomb those places. And it would be good if sovereign governments were in charge of all of their territory.

So there is a regional interest in the LAF succeeding, and there is a U.S. interest in restraining the IDF to enable that time to succeed. But should they not succeed, I don't know how this gets better. But so far in Lebanon, the negotiations are, are slow and are difficult, and the Israelis are very sensitive before the election for anything leaking about what they're agreeing to. And any leaks will, will just make them not be willing to do anything at the table, given the sensitivity of everything that's happening right now.

Scott R. Anderson: So there's another front that we've seen pop up, particularly in the U.S. media ec- ecosystem increasingly often over the last few months, and that is the West Bank. Kind of simmering in the background, not at the sort of active scale of conflict of Gaza or Lebanon but a place where we have seen increasingly aggressive Israeli actions around settlements, including in just the last week or two really, I think, if I recall correctly, including a number of high-profile conflicts with international media, with at least one U.S. congressperson who was there, Representative Ro Khanna, who had a, an encounter with security forces and settlers that got a lot of media attention here in the United States.

And it's an issue set that I think is rising on the list of at least the public profile here in the United States, and to some extent has never been that far down the list for a lot of the world. Even as Gaza has blown up, Lebanon has blown up, the West Bank was always kind of visioned as the, the number one problem before October 7th and has always sat there in the background.

So talk to us about what we're seeing there, particularly as Israel enters this critical moment before the election, where we know the status of settlements in the West Bank and of the West Bank itself is such a domestically significant political point.

Joel Braunold: So, the West Bank has not been calm. It's never really been calm, and it's definitely not been calm since October 7th. While of course, for obvious reasons, the majority of the world's focus has been in Gaza. You know, the Israeli, the finance and deputy defense minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has seen this as his opportunity to try and collapse the Palestinian Authority in every which way he can.

From trying to starve it from resources, to encourage wildcat settlements, to legalize what were in Israeli eyes illegal settlements, and try and do as much as possible to foreclose any potential possibility of a Palestinian state. He's doing that on bureaucratic levels at the settlement ministry. You know, he's posting pictures of Peace Now reports that show extreme growth of settlements as like campaign ads saying, "Good. Right. Look, I am killing this opportunity." And, you know, the ho- you know, the one line that Trump has put out is no formal annexation. So, okay, so there's lots and lots of things up to the formal annexation that are basically formal annexation that, that they're trying to do. It also seems that the other red line, I'm gonna get to the violence in the West Bank in one sec.

But the other formal red line, it seems there's this constant undergirding. One of the only places where Israel and the PA still touch right now is on inter-banking relations and economy. Smotrich has refused for the past 10 months now to, to give any customs revenues to the PA despite their legal obligations to do so under the Paris Protocols.

So PA is starving of money, and he keeps playing around with the banking immunity letters that provide, 'cause the Palestinian economy is in shekels, and you need to have a shekel-based bank clear your revenues. There are two Israeli commercial banks that have done it. 'Cause Smotrich kept playing around with not extending the immunity letters, the basically risk analysis for those banks is they don't want to do this anymore. And so they've now basically stopped doing that.

And now there's this big push, and it seems that this is an American red line to make sure that the Palestinian banking sector does not collapse before there is the election. So that seems to be another red line.

But where there is not a red line, it seems, is on the complete explosion of violence between settler communities and Palestinians. So, whenever asked about settler violence against Palestinians Prime Minister Netanyahu's been asked a few times, and other people have been asked the question alway- he always says, "Oh, it's 150 youths. They're not even in the settlements. All the settlers are wonderful people," X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z. And the question always comes back, "Well, if it's 150 youths, why can't you do something?" And then he blames the courts. Well, the courts are very lenient on them.

Well, I mean, it, it doesn't really pass the smell test, and it's very clear that there's been increasing amounts of violence in the West Bank that is happening. Now, the Israelis claim that, look, the w- the Area C is a Wild West. The Palestinians are trying to take over as much of that land as possible. You know, the Oslo Accords said that Area C was Israeli, at least administratively controlled and security controlled, and that, you know, it's a Wild West sort of land fight of who can create as many farms and facts on the ground.

Palestinians are like, "Look, we've got ancient towns and villages here, and the Israelis, not only in C but also in B, are trying to push us off those towns and are basically enabling settler communities to attack farmers and scare them off the lands and try and get rid of as many of them as possible."

And a very significant incident happened two weeks ago in the Palestinian town of Tell where a bunch of religious, s- I think they, most of them were from the settlements, but some might have been from mainstream Israel, mainland Israel, decided to go on a hike that they did not coordinate with the IDF, and they went into a Palestinian village in Area B or in Area C, but they went into the village. That was clearly an intimidating thing. Think like an Orange March, whatever, where one side's armed and one side's not.

The Palestinian villagers went out. There were, you know, there was conflict. The, at one point, a Palestinian grabbed a gun from one of the IDF soldiers who turned up. There were shots fired. The investigation show is not clear about who killed the two Israelis. What, were they friendly fire? Was it the Palestinians who shot one and another one was killed? And then four Palestinians were killed. Some of the video's pretty brutal. It's unclear if, you know, it was somewhat, somewhat summarily executed or whatever else happened.

And then, of course, as was expected, there were riots across the West Bank of Israeli. You know, we used to say riots across the West Bank, and everyone said, "Oh, Palestinians are rioting." And it's not. Every time we now say riots against the West Bank, it is settler groups or religious groups coming from Israel, rioting in Palestinian villages, and the IDF struggling to control it.

And so again, we saw multiple different price tag attacks and riots across the West Bank. And this is a cycle, and this is a thing that we see again and again. And each time the intensity increases, right? It increases, increases. And this has a number of factors. So right now, there is a small Palestinian farm that is being besieged by, like, seven settlers that won't allow food or water to go in.

Israeli MKs are appealing to the IDF to clear them out. The IDF seemingly went there and took pictures with the people blockading them and then went home, and they're still there blockading them. And Jeremy Diamond from CNN spoken about this and lots of people. And as of this recording, it's still happening. Like, it seems like the IDF is just not interested or doesn't have the political capability of preventing what is an assault against the Palestinian local population with the aim of pushing them off their land, right? So that is happening at an increasingly high clip.

Now, we get spots when Ro Khanna is there or when an American's killed. When it's not an American or not a congressman, this is an ongoing campaign. We have seen a response from Israeli civil society of a growth in what's called civilian protection where you've got Israelis with international volunteers as well going to protect these villages. They film them. You've seen religious Israelis, a group called Bnei Avraham, take part in this. Lots of different, so you have seen sort of a different form of civil society sort of come up as they sort of push against this, and this has become a cadence in the Israeli election campaign.

So you see centrist parties, Eisenkot, Bennett, the Democrats led by Yair Golan, and even, you know, some of the slightly more soft right being like, "This is insane. We can't allow this to happen," and that, you know, this is the Likud allowing the Kahanists to run riot, and this is what happens. And I know we're gonna talk about the election. This has even led into the Likud primaries in some way that I'll get to in a second.

But this is what's going on in the West Bank, and the Palestinians are appealing for international support and help. There is clearly in Europe a move to do more settler sanctions amongst Democrats. If you look at House Democrats, over 180 have signed on to Jerry Nadler's bill, which is to codify the Biden settler sanctions. And there's a clear indication from Rahm Emanuel and others when he went to Israel that a next Democratic administration is gonna be unrelenting in sanctioning violence against Palestinians and maybe even just building in the settlements, but definitely against violence against Palestinians in a far more significant way than President Biden was. Really going after, whether it's government officials or anyone else, and making this absolutely clear that this is an unacceptable issue.

But it is ongoing, it's significant, and it's also humiliating for the PA that can't protect its people. And, you know, this is, this is something that dominates Palestinian media. And the Israeli system, the security system understands how significant and serious this is, which is why they're pushing for a return to administrative detentions for Israelis who participate in this, something that the current defense minister in Israel is resisting for political reasons. And without that tool in their toolbox they're in this very significant problem where they know who's committing it in some cases, and it's not happening.

We have seen two responses by the Israeli state. There have been rare indictments, never really murder, but some manslaughter and others of some people who have participated in this, and also cabinet did pass some things preventing the establishment of settlements in Area B and restriction of funding for settlers who do other things that go against the Israeli government right now. But ultimately, the general trajectory is establishment of as many settlements as possible right now, legalization, massive funding, and turning a blind eye or even an encouragement in many different cases.

And the last thing I'll say, Scott, on this, and I know it's very complicated and we don't have enough time to unpack all of this. And so Central Command in Israel is the West Bank area. It's a very political position. I'll answer in, I know we're getting to the Israeli election, so I'll save the piece of that for the next, next question.

But one of the big issues you've got is you have security squads that are sort of within the settlements that have been especially empowered after October 7th. And then you have sort of often reservists or conscripts from the IDF who are there. So who really has operational control when it comes to that? Are they listening to the settler security squads? Are they listening to the IDF? That blurring of that line, you know, who's really in charge?

Who, you know, again, like the IDF is naturally inclined because of who it's drawn from and what they do to side on the side of the Israeli Jewish settlers against the local Palestinians. It's just, you know, the Palestinian city residents there as well. So, the, the police force itself and the army itself i- is not incentivized to take this violence particularly seriously.

Scott R. Anderson: So, the background context of all of this, as you've alluded to, as I've mentioned a few times, is this pending election. October 27th, we have Israeli elections fixed on the calendar. We're a little more than two months out at this point. What are the dynamics leading into that? We know Netanyahu, I think in the polls I've seen lately, is nominally trailing, although it's still fairly early. The Eisenkot, the kind of leading opposition figure.

Where, how does this fit in? What are the dynamics leading up to the election around these three areas that are so central to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and increasingly to U.S. policy, whether the administration's policy or in the case of the West Bank, a strong political strain that has deep roots, reach in the Democratic Party and perhaps in the administration and part of the Republican Party as well?

Joel Braunold: That's a lot, and it's good for at least another hour. So I'll just give a very basic overview because I'm sure we'll do an election podcast at one point before the Israeli election. So, I've mentioned multiple times the Likud primaries. So the Likud, which is the largest party on the Israeli right, the party of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Until this particular election cycle, was probably the last major party that was still holding party primaries, where Israel is a list system, so you have to hold primaries if, if you want. If you're not a personalized party of just one individual, you have chapters and members, you hold primaries, right? About what position you are on the list. And Prime Minister Netanyahu this time is under a lot of pressure to refresh the list. It's the same old names and, you know, as you can imagine, any primary system where it's a smaller part of the population, the ideological crazies get their way. It's the same as everything else.

And so Netanyahu fought a very good campaign against his party to get a lot of power to reserve the top 11. Why is any of this relevant? So, one of the people campaigning in the primaries until today was the defense minister, Israel Katz. Who was not doing very well in the primaries, okay? And he decided as defense minister to basically run in a primary as defense minister and curve policy to do that. So there were three instances. Instance number one, he goes on Channel 14, which is the very pro-Netanyahu television show. He's on the equivalent of the Fox 5, right? So the whatever it is.

And he basically announces live on television that he's replacing the head of Central Command, Avi Bluth, who despite being a religious Jew, who was generally seen as pro-settler, they, he feels wasn't listening to him because Avi Bluth wanted to return administrative detention to violent settlers or violent individuals who were in the settlements, it's unclear where they live, who were committing horrendous acts of violence against Palestinians. And Yisrael Katz said, "No, and he's undermined me, and so I'm gonna replace him." Caused a huge furor. The chief of staff of the IDF said, "You don't have the power to do that and under no circumstances." And so, you know, the IDF was at war with the defense minister. So that's one.

Two, in a different campaigning event in the settlement city of Ariel, the defense minister declared that he was comfortable signing administrative detention orders against Palestinians, against Bedouin Israeli citizens, against Arab citizens of Israel, but not against Jewish citizens of Israel, and that he would basically ethnically determine administrative detention. Again, big furor, but, you know, he's trying to, you know, this is what the primary said.

And the third one, he decided to have a primary jingle that's AI track was called "Bom Bom Bom," which is just images of him blowing up villages in Lebanon and in Gaza and other things under a thing, bom, bom, bom. And it got to the point that Prime Minister Netanyahu was like you need to concentrate on state security. You can't be doing this." And so he gave him a protected top 10 spot on the list in order just to have him return. He was missing cabinet meetings, right?

That, why am I saying all this? As deeply, darkly humorous, and it's not humorous, it's monstrous, as this is, it demonstrates to the state that primary politics could affect security policy in the state of Israel. And anyone who pretends that it doesn't, just doesn't understand Israeli society in any way, shape, or form, okay?

So the elections are, are affecting every single security decision right now. It creates this, Netanyahu will do nothing that will challenge his coalition because he wants that bloc to be his bloc in the next one. And if he forces the bloc to split apart on an unpopular decision on Gaza, on Lebanon, on Syria, on Iran, then he knows that he's not gonna be prime minister, 'cause as you said, Scott, the polls right now demonstrate that he is well short of 61 seats if he keeps his current coalition. Basically, none of the opposition parties want to sit with him, and so his ability to maintain his, his grip on power is incredibly limited unless he gets like a big wave before the election so he can get this coalition to return to power.

The other underlying dynamics of the election, the Democrats, which is run by Yair Golan, have finally reconstituted an actual Zionist left again, which had been sort of dead. They registered over 110,000 members, 85,000 of them took part in their primaries. They had a very active primary list. They're polling at around 10 to 11 seats, but they're sort of a very strong poll.

As you mentioned, Gadi Eizenkot is sort of the latest main challenger to Netanyahu. He's eclipsed Naftali Bennett. Eizenkot's a former Israeli chief of staff. He's a bereaved father. He lost his son and his nephew in the recent war that's happened. Is a Mizrahi guy. He comes from Lod. Is seen as a very working class, serious, in, in Hebrew you say “mamlakhti,” like state-like person, and Netanyahu hasn't managed to land a punch on him yet, but it's early days in the campaign.

One very interesting development, a guy called Yoav Stieglitz, who was the deputy interior security minister in charge of fighting crime in the Arab sector as part of the Yesh Atid list, has left Yesh Atid, and it is extremely highly rumored that he will be joining Ra'am, which is an Islamist Arab party, which is somewhat crazy to think about. So why is he doing this? Most math shows that you need Ra'am to join the coalition, just like it did under Bennett, in order for there to be an opposing 61-seat bloc. And the Israeli population at large is still uncomfortable, especially after October 7th, relying on Islamist Arab votes, or any Arab votes, to be honest, but Islamist Arab votes.

And so one way that they're trying to think about this in a different way is what happens if a very popular member of, you know, a secure, a former deputy security minister joins the Islamist Arab list and the Arab community actually really appreciate it because their number one concern right now is crime in the Arab sector, that they feel that Ben-Gvir, second security minister, hasn't dealt with, and that Yoav was seen as very effective.

So should he actually join as the number two on Ra'am? Still unclear if it's gonna happen, but rumors are it is. It demonstrates, one, that Ra'am is not just subservient to the Shura Council, which is sort of their religious council, where Ra'am's tried to move away from that. And two, it offers a real opportunity to have a government minister come from Ra'am because everyone knows Yoav and he can just come back in, and that gives it a safe way, and it shows that the polling that's happened since that's gone in shows that Ra'am is gaining seats. By doing that, the Arab community likes it and the Jewish community likes it, and that that may offer an opportunity.

And so what's the Netanyahu response? The right's response not only is to delegitimate Ra'am further, but also to try and delegitimate the Democrats, saying that they are no longer acceptable Zionist members of the coalition because they're all dirty leftists, whatever else, and that, you know, they'll be in charge. And so this is sort of the campaign that's going on right now.

The last thing that I'll just say on the Israeli elections, two last things. One, there's a bunch of middling center-right parties, all of which are polling below the 3.25% threshold. One is Benny Gantz's party. Another is called The Reservists, which is Yoaz Hendel and Hili Tropper. Another is Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, all three of these want to be get in and get four seats to control the balance of power and basically get to pick the prime minister. So far, they're all not passing threshold, which means that all of their votes are wasted. So, in September, you're gonna have to produce final party lists. We'll see if there are more combos, and that's when the campaign really starts in earnest, and we'll see.

Last note about polling, okay? So when you look at the main, the three sort of non-partisan channels, all of them are sort of convalescing around the same sort of results, where the Netanyahu coalition is polling between 52 and 54. The opposition not including Arab votes, is polling between, I don't know, 58 and 61. And then s- you know, sometimes they pass the threshold, sometimes they don't with Arab votes coming in between eight and ten, okay? But when you look at Channel Fourteen which is Netanyahu's channel in the Field poll, it shows a completely different universe where the coalition is polling at, like, 63, 64 seats and sort of everything's in place.

So what's going on? 'Cause Field is a serious guy. So from speaking to some friends who are involved in the polling industry, Field has got a different panel about how he uses it. He over-indexes young and ultra-Orthodox to try and make up from what is the normal mistakes, that the Likud always seems to do better than the polling indicates because people come home to the Likud and others.

However, this election is being seen increasingly in existential ways by the Israeli opposition saying that if the, if this coalition gets reelected after October 7th with all of the ideological firmness and extremism that is represented by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and others, then there's many of them who are like, "There's no point in staying." And there's huge, you know, 23% of opposition voters have said that they'd consider immigrating should they lose. Amongst the coalition, it's, like, six percent. And so there's lots of things. There's people trying to fly Israelis in for the election who have left the country. There's lots of different things going on.

But what we are sure of is that the turnout for this election is gonna be somewhat different, people think, than previous elections, and it's really about who stays home rather than who turns up.

Scott R. Anderson: It's fascinating, and we absolutely will have another longer committed discussion on the Israeli election as we get closer to the actual date and things shake out a little bit more. Up until then, I think we are out of time for this session, unfortunately. Joel Braunold, thank you for coming back on the Lawfare Podcast.

Joel Braunold: Always a pleasure, Scott. Thanks so much for having me.

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