Rafah, Egypt & the "Day After" - with Amos Harel
In recent days, we have had three persistent questions:
One, how is it that – in just a matter of approximately 10 days – the IDF managed to move anywhere between 850,000 to a million Gazan Palestinians from Rafah to other areas of Gaza so Israel could conduct its operation against remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah? Weren’t we repeatedly told by the Biden administration that it was impossible?
So, our first question is, how did this happen? And what does it tell us about other gaps between the Biden administration forecasts and that of Israel’s when it comes to war-fighting in Gaza?
Our second question is about Egypt. Given what we have learned in recent days, why has Egypt escaped any real scrutiny or pressure over the past 7 months?
Our third question is whether all the heat on the Israeli Government for a lack of a “day after” plan really about the pursuit of a “day after” plan, or is it about deflecting scrutiny from other failures?
To help us answer these questions and others, we are joined by Amos Harel, who has been the military correspondent and defense analyst for Israel's Haaretz newspaper for 25 years. He is among the most well-sourced and thoughtful journalists and analysts covering Israeli security affairs inside Israel. Prior to his current position, Amos spent four years as night editor for the Haaretz Hebrew print edition, and from 1999-2005 he was the anchor on a weekly Army Radio program about defense issues.
Along with frequent "Call Me Back" guest and Fauda co-creator Avi Issacharoff, Amos co-wrote a book about the Second Intifada, called "The Seventh War: How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians", which was published in 2004 and translated into several languages, including Arabic.
Amos and Avi also co-wrote "34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah and the War in Lebanon", about the war of 2006, which was published in 2008.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
DS: It's 11:30 PM on Wednesday, May 22nd in New York City. It's 6:30 AM on Thursday, May 23rd in Israel, as Israelis start their day. In recent days, I have had three persistent questions. One, how is it that, in just a matter of approximately 10 days, the IDF managed to move anywhere between 850,000 to 1 million Gazan Palestinians from Rafah to other areas of Gaza so that the IDF could conduct its operation against remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah? Weren't we repeatedly told by the Biden administration that it was not possible? Here was Secretary of State Tony Blinken less than two weeks ago:
Voiceover, Secretary of State Tony Blinken: “Most of the population from Gaza displaced from the north and from central Gaza has gone to Rafah. There are about 1.4 million people there. And we said to Israel that we cannot, will not, support an operation in Rafah, in the absence of a credible plan to protect civilians.”
Voiceover, Vice President Kamala Harris: “And they still haven't delivered it.”
DS: And of course, Vice President Kamala Harris had seen the maps, proving it could not be done.
Voiceover, Vice President Kamala Harris: “Any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake. Let me tell you something, I have studied the maps. There's nowhere for those folks to go. And we're looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there, most of them. And so we've been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.”
DS: So today my first question is, how did this happen? And what does it tell us about other gaps between the Biden administration's forecasts and those of Israel's when it comes to war fighting in Gaza? My second question is about Egypt. Given what we have learned in recent days, why has Egypt escaped any real scrutiny or pressure over the past seven months? My third question is, well, is all the heat on Israel's government for a lack of a “day after” plan really about the pursuit, or the lack of a pursuit, of a “day after” plan? Or is this heat really just deflecting other failures from other areas of the government, including the security establishment? To help us answer these questions and others, we are joined by Amos Harel, who has been the military correspondent and defense analyst for Israel's Haaretz newspaper for 25 years. He is among the most well sourced and thoughtful journalists and analysts covering Israeli security affairs inside Israel. Along with frequent Call Me Back guest and Fauda co creator, Avi Issacharoff, Amos co-wrote a book about the Second Intifada called “The Seventh War: How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians”. Amos and Avi also co-wrote a terrific book about the second Lebanon war that I highly recommend called “34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah and the War in Lebanon”, which was published in 2008. Amos Harel on: Rafah, Egypt, & the “Day After”. This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, a friend of the Call Me Back team, Amos Harel, who's the leading military and defense analyst for Haaretz, joins us from Tel Aviv. Amos, thanks for being here.
AH: Hi Dan, thanks for inviting me.
DS: It has been quite a week, Amos, and there's a lot we want to cover with you. Before we get into what I wanted to focus on on today's episode, a mere 15, 20 minutes ago, a new video was released documenting the abduction of female Israeli soldiers on October 7th. Apparently the families of these women asked that this video be released to the public. What do you know about the origin of this video, and what are your immediate reactions? We'll do a longer analysis in the days ahead, once we, or more fulsome analysis, once we have more information. But just based on what you know so far, what can you tell us?
AH: This is a video obtained from GoPro cameras used by Hamas terrorists on October 7th. And about two or three months ago, one of the terrorists involved was killed in fighting with the IDF, inside Northern Gaza Strip. It was found, discovered later by the army, brought to the attention of the families of those five female soldiers who are kept hostage by Hamas. And after a lot of deliberations, the families decided to come out with this publicly, this evening in Israel. It has already caused quite a lot of shock among the Israeli public, on Israeli media, and so on. It's the leading news story of this evening. It's devastating to watch. It's heavily edited. Some of the more terrible images are edited out. And yet what you can see is the pure fear on these young women's faces. There are, some of them are in their pajamas, they’re described as soldiers, in the end, they’re 19 year old girls, like college students in the US. These are not well trained fighters. They did not fight. They did not have guns or rifles or anything like that. And they could not defend themselves. And, actually in Arabic you can hear some of the terrorists joking among themselves, saying that these are women ‘that we could get pregnant’. And since we know quite a lot since then there is quite a lot of evidence about sexual atrocities, sexual violence towards women on October 7th and later on in Hamas captivity. This is of course causing a lot of alarm in the Israeli public. There will be a discussion whether this pushes forward ideas of a possible hostage deal, or some would say this is more cause to fight Hamas as much as we can, in order to defeat them and release the hostages. We'll see where this leads, but there are waves of shock in Israeli society right now.
DS: We've been talking extensively about how sexual violence was used as a weapon of war on October 7th. So this is evidence of what everyone's worst fears were.
AH: It's more shocking because some of these photographs were released by the Daily Mail in Britain, about three months ago, but these were only still photographs and not videos. It's something else to watch three minutes of this, and to look at those terrorists and to look at how their faces and their bodies are bloodied. They're bleeding. I assume the reaction will be the same for people who sympathize with Israel or sympathize with humanity, in the West. It's not just images or just some speech in the UN. You actually see the reality. And this is, uh, there's something quite frightening about that. And, you know, being a father to a woman of that age, it's something that, you know, it shocks you to really watch. And I think this is the same reaction I'm getting from Israeli parents everywhere.
DS: Last question before we move off this, and obviously it's impossible to know with certainty, but, is it your understanding that Hamas, at least recently, does not want these kinds of images out there?
AH: It's hard to tell. In the beginning, they were quite proud of themselves. Most of what we watched was actually caught, not only caught on camera, but broadcasted through Hamas terrorists and so on. Sometimes through networks like Al Jazeera, all kinds of stringers working for Arab media in the Gaza Strip and joining the mob while it was storming those Israeli border communities and raping and mutilating and killing people and so on. We saw that they were not ashamed then. Later on, it became a so-called PR problem for Hamas, and then they started denying. And then you had the whitewashing, and then you had people all over the West. Mostly from the left, from the extreme left, either justifying those atrocities or claiming that nothing like this happened and it's the Jews inventing stuff all over again. This is the reality we're facing. Things like this happened quite a lot, and we know again from testimonies of hostages that came back, it took them time to come forward and speak about what they've encountered. Not everybody has encountered that, but there were enough young women who either went through this or saw others going through this and they're beginning to talk. We saw some of those testimonies in the UN and so on.
DS: Okay, we will be returning to this topic extensively. The reason I first reached out to you for this conversation, for today's conversation, was about Rafah, which is really one of, not the only, big things going on. It has political dimensions, it has military dimensions, it has diplomatic dimensions, it potentially has legal dimensions. And it has - Rafah has come to symbolize this sort of, like a flashpoint for everything in the war. And rightly or wrongly, I think it's been viewed by many in the Israeli security establishment, by many in the Biden administration, one way or the other, as sort of the Stalingrad of this war. And everything seems to hinge on what happens there and what will take place there. And there was a lot of concern, that we were just hearing over and over and over, about Rafah, from the U.S. administration, and other governments in the West - that were all focused on: Rafah can't be done the way Israel wants to do Rafah, the way the government wants to do Rafah, because of the civilians. The estimate was something like 1.3 million civilians, many of which were refugees from other parts of Gaza that were now in Rafah that had been moved there because of fighting in the north or the center of Gaza. And there are other concerns and issues with Rafah too, but primarily is, ‘what are you going to do with the civilian population, these 1.3 million people’, and Israel kept saying ‘we will move them before there is major military operations in Rafah’. And everyone was saying, you can't move them. It's never been done before. Given the population density in Rafah, now that it was only a couple hundred thousand people living there, and now there's over a million people living there, and you pushed all those people there, and the idea that you're going to get them out of there in any kind of reasonable time frame is absurd. It can't happen. It can't happen. And then…
AH: It happened.
DS: It seems to have happened, right? Between 800,000 and a million refugees have been moved to a humanitarian zone in a, seemingly from afar, and you're closer to it than I am, but in a seemingly orderly way. There hasn't been chaos. There have not been casualties, or at least major casualties. So what am I missing here? First of all, is what I'm describing accurate? And if so, how did the IDF accomplish it?
AH: It is accurate, and it has been accomplished, but not for the first time. You surely recall that similar things happened in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, and the towns and refugee camps around it in the beginning, around late October, early November. And then at the Khan Yunis area during December. Both these places, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated quite quickly. Now these people sometimes are refugees for the third or fourth time within seven months. This is what happened. People moving from Gaza to Khan Yunis, Khan Yunis to Rafah, and now from Rafah to those shelters you described, which are closer to the coast of the Mediterranean. And the IDF has gotten pretty good at delivering the messages, and then convincing people that they should leave. And this is what happened, and it happened quickly. The IDF is surprised itself, they thought it would take four or five weeks. The administration, the Biden administration, thought it would take much longer. Within 10 to 14 days, I think it was over. And yet, it's not completely over. What we tend to forget is that there are still 350,000 people, most of them civilians, still there. It's still densely populated, it's still an urban area, it's still an area where there are bunkers and tunnels and shafts and so on, and where Hamas terrorists are hiding behind civilian population. I assume that more civilians would leave as the IDF would apply more military pressure. But the danger is still there. It's not as big as the Americans have warned. There's another danger which has to do with the hostages. It's assumed that dozens of these hostages were at least held until recently, around the Rafah area. If Israel acts there, and Israel bombs those places, some hostages may be accidentally killed by friendly fire. It has happened before both in Gaza and in Khan Yunis. So this remains volatile and dangerous. And yet, this is not the hill that the Americans are going to fight Israel over, unlike the situation two weeks ago. You remember, just two weeks ago, President Biden came out publicly against the Rafah operation and also decided to stop a shipment of bombs to the Israeli Air Force - and now they're reacting differently. It's not as if the White House is saying, ‘go ahead, do as you please’. But when the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was here on Sunday, see the, you know, read the headlines later, in Washington Post - David Ignatius and others reading, writing in different American newspapers. It's no longer the number one issue, Rafah, you know, the danger awaiting in Rafah. Now for Netanyahu, this is important. Firstly, he's moving forward. And secondly, this is something that he promised to his political base. He was under a lot of pressure to deliver. He said, ‘I would do this by hook or by crook. I would go forward. It doesn't matter, with Rafah’. Yeah, it doesn't matter what the world says about this, and now he's delivering to his political base. And yet, I still don't know how this will end.
DS: But I don't think it's just his political base. My sense is, there's been a pretty broad consensus in Israel that Rafah, in some way, needs to be done.
AH: Done, yes, but I wouldn't define it as a consensus. For instance, if you watch Israeli TV, broadcasted in Hebrew, of course, there's a guy called Israel Ziv. He's an ex general, very close to the army, used to be a head of operations for the IDF. Still, most of those paratroopers, ex paratroopers, who are in important positions in the IDF, used to be - he used to be their commander. He's still, I think he enjoys the best connection contacts to the IDF. And he spoke publicly on Channel 12 TV, which is the most popular TV station in Israel, for weeks and weeks, saying ‘Rafah, we shouldn't go into Rafah’, not only because the Americans don't want it, but because it's unnecessary and it will get us dragged into Gaza, we won't achieve anything strategic and it's going to be a waste of time and we're going to waste lives there and it's going to achieve nothing. He said that evening after evening on TV. So, and he's not the only one. And when you heard Gallant, Gantz, and Eisenkot, they were also saying, ‘yes, we will go to Rafah, but the hostage deal is more important right now, is more urgent for us’. So there were all kinds of positions on this debate, on this policy debate. And yet, I'd say that most of the Israeli decision makers were more in favor of this than the Americans. And Netanyahu pushed forward.
DS: Knowing what we know now, and that it only took 10 days for the IDF to move something in the neighborhood of a million people. Are there some asking, well, Israel could have done this a lot sooner? A lot earlier? Because then they could have advanced to Rafah sooner, and perhaps this war could have been “won”, quote-unquote, whatever “won” means, sooner. In other words, if Rafah was viewed as this final stage, and the holdup on Rafah was a debate about, a bilateral debate basically, between the US and Israel, about whether or not Israel can move this population before it did Rafah, and Israel saying it could, and the U.S. is saying ‘you can't’... turns out it only took 10 days. Could all of this been done two or three months ago?
AH: Yes, but it's not only the argument over Rafah. The fact is that ever since, I think January, the IDF has been proceeding quite slowly. These are not lightning quick attacks. This is not the Six Day War. Look how long it's taken us. Some people will tell you, well, it's because the army is not doing its job and so on. The reality of the matter is that it's a much more complicated kind of war than the wars we've encountered in the past, as terrible as they were, whether it's the Six Day War of ‘67 or the Yom Kippur War of ‘73. The challenge is different. The fact that the enemy is hiding behind a civilian population, the fact that it’s dug in hundreds and hundreds of miles of tunnels. And the fact that they've prepared for this for the last 15 years or so. This is the reality that the IDF is facing. I think, personally, that if we decided that we want to dismantle Hamas or as much as possible annihilate its military capabilities, then we probably should have done this quicker: decided to go to Khan Yunis quicker, end the Khan Yunis operation earlier, move on forward to Rafah and so on. But this was not only because of the debate regarding Rafah and the argument with Biden. It was over how many forces you're going to use, how many soldiers, reserve soldiers, remain in service. What damage this does to the Israeli economy, and so on. You have to remember people have been fighting for months and months and months. I know personally dozens of reserve soldiers who've been called for the third time, who spent more months in Gaza or up north on the Lebanese border, than they have at home or at work with their families and so on, since October 7th. This is the reality. So these are hard decisions to make, but this is, the whole process is moving in a stop-start kind of way. It's not going forward consistently. This is not the case. And part of it has to do with the fact that Israel is still searching for its strategy. There are declared goals: defeating Hamas, destroying Hamas, creating conditions to bring back the hostages, and so on. But in the end, we're struggling for a strategic path here. This is part of the problem.
DS: One more question on this before we move on. Before Israel launched its ground operation, the administration was issuing all sorts of warnings, apparently in meetings, not publicly. The warnings about Rafah became public, but the warnings at the beginning, immediately post October 7th, issued to Israel - they had senior U.S. military officers come brief the war cabinet, and basically argued: ‘it appears now’, they argued, ‘that Israel was ran the risk of suffering something like 10 times the number of casualties that Israel has endured so far since the war began’. And there were always these projections that Israel was going to get itself in a quagmire - you know, obviously every casualty is a tragedy, but the numbers are a fraction of what the US, according to public reports, predicted Israel would suffer and warned Israel about these risks. And then of course, Rafah, again, dire warnings, and they haven't borne out. So how do you explain that gap between what the Biden administration and the US military leadership is telling Israel? And, so far, at least in these two cases, and there may be others, Israel has proved them completely wrong.
AH: So regarding the casualties, I think the Israelis were proven right, of course. And it was not only the Americans. It was some generals, some retired, others still in office, who were warning Netanyahu personally of this, and saying this would end in a disaster. There would be too many casualties. The Israeli public is really, really bothered with the question of military casualties. It's different now after the terrible tragedy of October 7th, but for years and years, there's been this concept of the Israeli society being very very sensitive to lost lives of soldiers in action. Sometimes we talk of the ‘wrong pyramid’, meaning that lives of soldiers are considered more important than lives of civilians, where it should be the other way around. But this is the way it was for many years in Israel. And the ‘upside down pyramid’. and people were concerned about that. There were fears. I fear that as well. I think the idea has proven that wrong, and I think the idea has done a good job. All things considered, and considering and always remembering the terrible failure of October 7th, it's done pretty well, fighting an unprecedented challenge. Nobody ever fought that kind of war. This is, we've discussed that in the past. I assume you've read or talked to people like John Spencer, and so on. It's quite clear that this is different than Mosul or Raqqa or anything anybody else went through. And the IDF was quite successful.
DS: And that it's harder. I mean, John Spencer, who's a head of the urban warfare studies at West Point, argues that what Israel is dealing with in Gaza is harder than what the U.S. dealt with in Fallujah or Mosul or Raqqa.
AH: I tend to agree, and he's much more of an expert on these matters than I am, but I should note two brief observations. One, having said that, one is that this meant massive destruction to the other side and got us in a sort of an international diplomatic mess. We've talked of the ICC, the ICJ, and so on. This is part of the issue. In order to defend our troops, we caused a lot of damage, a lot of destruction and so on. And this is part of the reasons why we're being criticized now. So this is, uh, an important matter. The second issue is that there's a difference between gradually defeating the other side, causing huge casualties to Hamas and so on, and between achieving the final victory. When Netanyahu - and I understand you interviewed Netanyahu recently - when he talks about the final decisive victory, I don't believe him. I think that he knows that this is nonsense, that this is not going to be breached anytime soon. And any Israeli expert I've talked to, they say, ‘yes, we can gradually defeat Hamas. Yes, we can, within a year's time, if we work properly, if we act in a smart way, we can create a lot of damage to Hamas and gradually change the situation.’ But it's not as if we're facing an immediate victory the way Netanyahu presents that, because sometimes what he's saying is, ‘A) There's going to be decisive victory, B) It's going to be achieved in Rafah, and C) It's going to happen very soon. We're one step away with a victory’. He got carried away and said that a couple of times. I assume he was more cautious while you spoke to him, and yet this is the message he's been selling to the Israeli people and I think we should be careful and note that there's a difference between reaching quite a lot of achievements on the field, and reaching a strategic victory. Also, there's also always the question of Vietnamization. I've heard Israeli generals mentioning that fear quite a lot recently. And of course, you'll tell me this is very different than fighting a war, 10,000, 7,000 or 10,000 miles away from New York. We're fighting - we talked about that. This is happening in our backyard. We don't have any other choice, but to fight it. And we've saw that there was evil lurking a mile away from Nahal Oz, and Kfar Aza and all those kibbutzim, which their members were slaughtered on October 7th. Once we face this, we need to realize that this is a long term campaign. This is not going to end anytime soon. And if we want people on the extreme right, the far right parties in the Israeli government are now talking of full occupation of the Gaza Strip, of building a new civil administration, as the way it was in the 80s and the 90s. This is going to be costly. Yoav Gallant is no dove, and yet the defense minister, as he spoke at the Likud party, which is quite a hostile arena for him, in spite of the fact that he's a Likud member, this Monday he spoke to them and he said, ‘Look, if you want a civil administration to be established’, meaning the return of the Israeli occupation in Gaza, and some Likud members want that, and of course Smotrich and Ben-Gvir want it, ‘this would mean that we will need four to five divisions’, which is a huge number of soldiers by Israeli standards, ‘to maintain our control of the Gaza Strip all the time’. This would mean that combat soldiers would have to serve four years instead of three years of regular service in order to get this done. And again, I think that we shouldn't get carried away. We should understand what our goals are, and we should be searching actively for a way to end this war and not to make this the forever war.
DS: Okay, so I wanna, with that, then, zero in on a growing rift that appears to be only worsening, between Israel's security apparatus and with the government of Israel. Earlier this week, a National Security Council official from the government, Yoram Hemo, presented the War Cabinet with a ten page document that he had authored, in which he claimed that Israel's management of the war in Gaza was detrimental to the objectives it was trying to achieve, or all but made them impossible. And he recommended a 180 degree change of approach. He then resigned from his position. So my first question is, what was your understanding of what took place there? How significant was this breach, or intervention, by this NSC, National Security Council official? And then I want to talk a little bit about the broader rift going on.
AH: I've known Yoram for years. Everybody knows everybody in Israel. This is the way - we have one degree of separation, not six degrees like you have. So it's, you know, whenever somebody's mentioned, you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I've known him for years, but that's the reality for journalists here. So, uh, Yoram is a very smart guy. I can't remember if he has two or three PhDs, different PhDs, in different matters, served for 30 years in the army and so on, an expert on strategic affairs and so on. And what he's saying makes a lot of sense, but he's not a very senior official. He's the deputy of Tzachi Hanegbi, who's a politician, or an ex politician, who was appointed to the job of the NSC, and he’s actually Netanyahu's man. Okay? He's a political actor. And it's the story as it was told on TV, was that Yoram Hemo came up with this and that immediately Hanegbi disowned him and said, ‘well, this is an independent view, this doesn't represent our views’. Of course, because the NSC represents Netanyahu's views. That's part of the problem right now. It is important in a way because it's symbolic, and Hemo's views represent what most of the security apparatus, including Gallant, and including Gantz and Eisenkot, who are ex members of this apparatus, think about the issues. And more than anything else, it's about Netanyahu insisting to avoid strategic issues, not even mentioning the place of the PA in the future, solution to the Gaza problem or whatever. Netanyahu just doesn't discuss that. It's, you know, it's all about kicking the can down the road, hoping for something better to happen, making this war as long as possible and hoping that, you know, something would break, something would change, in his favor. This is the main issue here and not so much the persona itself. I think we may be facing something bigger, which is a rift with Eisenkot and Gantz, meaning there, which would end in their resignation.
DS: So Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who are members of the war cabinet, you're saying them leaving the war cabinet.
AH: Yeah, I think it's quite clear. I think that I'm, again, I'm not a political analyst, but it's quite clear to anybody who's been speaking to them. They've been deliberating for ages, and Benny is a guy, Benny Gantz is a guy who makes decisions slowly. I was once told by a political ally of his that he's the kind of guy who you ask, ‘what are we having for lunch?’ And he will tell you, ‘let me get back to you in 24 hours.’ This is the kind of decision making process that Gantz is usually fond of. And of course, Eisenkot wants out and it's quite clear. And I think within days, we'll see things moving forward regarding this. But one point I wanted to make is that already, regarding the video that we mentioned earlier, Netanyahu's mouthpieces in Israeli media are already attacking Eisenkot, Hemo, Nitzan Alon, who's the general in charge of the POW discussions and so on, and claiming that this is one big conspiracy with the families of the hostages and the U.S. government, meant to push Bibi into a corner and to force him to accept Israeli Saudi American deal, full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and a hostage deal. One big, great conspiracy everybody's involved in, which is of course nonsense. There are many people with many positions here, and some of them are now combined together. But this is, you know, it's not, I don't think there's a big conspiracy here meant to push Netanyahu to surrender or to push him out. It's quite clear that Biden wants him out, Eisenhower wants him out, but there's, I'm not familiar with the conspiracy here.
DS: But let's stay on this because we, in the last couple of episodes, we did an episode with Nadav Eyal about Gallant and his play, we did an episode with Haviv Rettig Gur about Gantz, and trying to understand all the incentives and motives here. So Gantz and Gallant, both members of the war cabinet, have come out publicly against Netanyahu, laying blame at his feet for not developing a real objective, a concrete political objective for the war, a ‘day after’ plan, as the term is used. And so they, and I think other leaders within the security establishment, particularly within the army leadership, are pointing their fingers at Netanyahu and his government for failing to provide a path, and that's why, to the extent that the war seems to have stalled, that's why things have stalled. But there's another perspective, which is, at the same time that they're pointing the fingers at Netanyahu, we're seeing more and more evidence about what led to the massive failure of Israel's security apparatus on October 7th, where, I've seen analysis that many of those figures that I just mentioned bear a lot of the responsibility. And so them pointing on the lack of a plan is a little bit of deflection. And we hear very little about that part of it - and certainly, in fairness, on my podcast we've spent very little time on that. And maybe that was a mistake, the reason I haven't spent much time on it is because I figured at some point there'd be a commission of inquiry and everyone will learn what actually happened, but I'm just hearing more and more that all those complaining about why the war may be stalled - to the extent that it is stalled, I'm not sure it actually is - also have reason to, you know, deflect from other issues. So can you talk a little bit about what's going on?
AH: If you want to go back for a second to October 7th, I think that you can't underestimate the enormity of what has happened. And we talked about the devastating results and so on. But going back to the video for a second, what you'll see once you watch it is not only the absolute helplessness of these young female soldiers, but it's the fact that the group of terrorists is sitting comfortably inside an Israeli military outpost, after it finished invading it. After it finished slaughtering dozens of armed Israeli soldiers, males mostly, who were killed there, and they have all the time in the world. They're not even running for cover. They don't think of taking their prisoners of war, so to speak, those innocent young women, back quickly because they're not afraid of the IDF. They feel masters of this small universe at that time. And for an Israeli to watch that, that's devastating. This is something that, okay, we had the Yom Kippur War when I was 5 years old. But this is something that doesn't happen. And it happened all over the border. The border was broken into in more than 60 different points. So this is a devastating, a colossal failure, and the IDF and Shin Bet are to blame for this. And Netanyahu shifts the blame from him to others and refuses to acknowledge any kind of responsibility, which I think he has for the larger situation. And yet, even if he's - and he is responsible - this doesn't acquit the others. Any general who was involved in that should leave in shame. I had a talk this week, a late night meeting, uh, with a general, I wouldn't name him, because this was, uh, you know, this was done for background. And I hadn't met him since October 7th, and he wasn't too happy, too keen on talking about that, but I insisted on discussing that. And I asked, how do you feel about that? And he was not in the chain of command. He's important, but he was not in this immediate chain of command. He said, ‘You know, I feel devastated. I feel shame more than anything else.’ He said, ‘I feel shame about what has happened.’ And this is the common response among anyone who's involved in this. Anyone who's been to the army, who's been raised and educated on fighting, on defending Israel and so on. It's a devastating failure. And they all feel that. Shame and they all know that they share a big part of the blame. The problem is that some of those generals are now saying, ‘look, we've improved since then. We're now busy fighting Hamas. We're busy in this half war we have with Hezbollah. Things might get more problematic and much more challenging in a short time. And therefore we need to stay on.’ And this is something that the Israeli public is finding very, very hard to accept. Not only is Netanyahu refusing to get out of the political scene and to resign because of what has happened, the generals who claimed responsibility, none of them actually left office. There's one general, the head of the military intelligence, who announced his resignation, I think it was on Passover Eve.
DS: Yeah, it was over Pesach. Yeah.
AH: And he hasn't, Aharon Haliva, he hasn't left yet. They're picking, they're picking his successor right now. So people are saying, look, those girls were taken there and probably raped, and are kept in terrible conditions. This is - I'm not telling you anything new. This is what the public is thinking and assuming has happened, and yet nobody has paid the price yet. Nobody has left in shame. Nobody has said. Okay, the generals said ‘we're ashamed. We're responsible for this.’ But they haven't said, ‘we're resigning. We're leaving office. You won't see us ever again.’ And the sentiment among many Israelis is, go away, we've had enough of you.
DS: Over a long period of time, there were a number of decisions that were made. Elimination of six army divisions over time. You know, 2,000 fewer tanks, maintenance spending cuts, this is all in the military. So the criticism goes - less and less planning, not a clear defense strategy, operational defense strategy for a multi front war. This touches a lot of people, right? Is what you're saying. It touches, these decisions were made over a long period of time. They were made by a lot of military leaders. They were made by a lot of political leaders, or political leaders today who were military leaders at one point. We're talking about Benny Gantz. Benny Gantz was the army chief of staff for a number of years.
AH: And his successor is named, uh, Gadi Eisenkot, yeah.
DS: And his successor's Gadi Eisenkot, so there you go. So, these are all people who, even if Netanyahu's gone, are expected to compete in future elections. Not to mention people like Yossi Cohen, who's talking about running for office. He was head of the Mossad for three years. Again, I'm not, I don't know enough to know who was responsible for what. I just know that once you start scratching the surface, of the Israeli political class today, and go beyond just Netanyahu - and he's a very polarizing figure. So everyone tends to focus on him everywhere, everywhere, like globally. But when you start to scratch the surface, yes, you know, to quote Harry Truman, ‘the buck stopped with him’ because he was prime minister. But there was a whole establishment… I hate to use the word implicated, but made decisions that created a situation, I think, directly or indirectly, that made October 7th possible over a long period of time.
AH: And yet, the name of the Israeli Prime Minister during the last 15 years was Benjamin Netanyahu. In the end, there was a period of slightly over a year in which Bennett and then Lapid, but most of the time, it's Netanyahu, and forgive me for going back obsessively to this specific issue, but the total refusal of accepting any kind of responsibility is something that is driving many Israelis crazy. You can't fool everybody all the time, and according to the polls I don't know 60, 65 percent of the Israeli people do now no longer believe him over this. I know that he's slightly improving in the polls, and yet the general reaction over his actions and his responsibility to October 7th is quite massive and very, very negative. Including people on the right.
DS: Right. And while this blame game is taking place between the security apparatus and the political class, the IDF, there's a debate about whether or not the IDF is actually capable of dealing with a multi front war. And shouldn't that be what we're focused on?
AH: That's a massive issue. Now, going back, this is something that I wrote about constantly in the year leading to the war, because we had those, I've discussed that, I think, in your pod in the past. I feel myself that I have failed in this because I didn't realize how dangerous the Hamas was, how much of a terrorist monster we were facing with, and how much tougher we needed to be with Hamas in the years leading to the war. And yet this notion of, uh, multi front war was something that was discussed and practiced by the IDF, especially in the year leading to the war. And there were leaders of the radical axis, whether it was the Iranians or Saleh al-Arouri, who was later, the Hamas leader, who was later assassinated in Beirut during the war, who kept talking of a multi front war. And now it's quite clear, A, that the IDF did not prepare for a long war of federation. All those war games and so on were usually a month to six weeks tops. Now we're approaching the ninth month of this war. And secondly, that actually, because of the process that you've mentioned, the developments you mentioned, and not all the math was exactly accurate regarding the number of divisions being cut and so on, because of that, the IDF, as much as it enjoys the best technology and it has great officers and so on, is actually too small to deal with some of these issues. Right now, we can fight a war of containment on the Lebanese border while we're trying to defeat Hamas on the Gaza Strip, but we don't do both. And this is, you know, for Israel, this is a main problem. We haven't mentioned the Iranians yet, or the Houthis launching missiles and drones from Yemen and so on. This is going to be a much tougher challenge in the next few years.
DS: Before we move on, Amos, is that the takeaway from this conversation is, people, including our listeners, shouldn't get so bogged down in these two competing narratives about who's to blame. Reality is, they're both to blame. Everyone's to blame. If we care about Israel, the focus should be on getting ready for this changing environment so that the IDF can defend Israel in this multi front war. That's where we should be channeling our attention. With that, I want to talk about another underreported story, which is Egypt, and it has been reported this week that Egyptian intelligence purposely sabotaged the hostage deal, ceasefire, of a few weeks ago. And then I want to get into a broader discussion about what's going on with Egypt. I'm struck by, that during these entire few months, Egypt has not been subjected to more scrutiny in terms of its role that led to October 7th, and what it's been doing since October 7th. But first, can you tell us what you know from your reporting on what Egypt may or may not have done to stymie these negotiations?
AH: Look, this is quite typical to negotiations in the Middle East. Okay? There are hardly any facts and hardly any numbers. Everything is, all facts are a basis for change, and everything shifts around you. There's hardly any reality. Anybody who's visited Arab countries, friendly Arab countries in the region is aware of this reality there. And what you have on all sides, especially during hostage negotiations, is people lying to each other, misleading each other, trying to pressure the other side to make concessions. And both the Qataris and the Americans and the Egyptians are trying to reach a deal. Now it's presented as a big surprise that the Egyptians weren't actually telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, regarding their proposals and what the Palestinians were willing to give, and so on. But it's part of doing business here. Yet, having said that, I think that it's another proof that we could not really trust neither the Egyptians nor the Qataris. We were busy talking about the Qataris and the way they've sent money to Hamas and how they've, in a way, encouraged Hamas terrorism for many years and worked as a, it's hard to say who's proxy here, but they were part of a sort of an alliance with or an axis with Hamas. But the Egyptians are not innocents here. Look, for years and years, and this is probably the next point or the next question you are about to make, to ask, the Egyptians were not only turning a blind eye to weapon smuggling through the Rafah Crossing and through the Philadelphia Corridor tunnels, they were actually receiving payments from the smugglers. And it's not only specific corrupt officials, it's everybody.
DS: Meaning it went up pretty senior ranks.
AH: Mm-hmm. The English name for that is the Sons of the Sinai Peninsula. It's a company owned by Egyptian generals, that according to reports, controls everything that moves along the border and has its cut from everything. Now all of those RPG rockets made in China or Iran and so on, short range being launched at Israeli armed personnel carriers and Israeli tanks and killing a lot, unfortunately, quite a lot of Israeli soldiers. They were not produced in the Gaza Strip. And they did not land in the Gaza Strip. There were no airplanes smuggling them. This happened through the Rafah crossing, which means that the Egyptians were involved for years and years and years. And now the Egyptians are preaching to Israel and making all kinds of demands and so on. The Egyptians were part of this, not only part of the problem, they were sharing, you know, they were enjoying their cut of this massive business boom that has to do with smuggling of everything to the Gaza Strip.
DS: Not too much military supplies. Also, I mean, you, you don't build 350 miles of underground tunnels -
AH: Without cement.
DS: Without cement, without trucks, without engineering equipment, without professional engineers. I mean, there was a whole industry built around the underground labyrinth that was built in Gaza, and all of that came from one direction, which is from Egypt, or through Egypt.
AH: That's true. Egypt was, you know, there were times when Israel used Egypt as a channel of influence over Gaza, over Hamas, and there were times when this was successful and especially after the generals came back into power after the revolution in Egypt after the, there was a military coup that kicked out the, the Muslim Brotherhood and so on. And at that time they hated Hamas. They saw it as, um, part of what they called the ‘cancer of the Islamic Brotherhood’. And yet, later on, they were willing to do business with Hamas quite a lot. Their control of the Strip, and again, nobody ever blames Egypt for siege over Gaza Strip. It's always a discussion of what Israel is preventing from entering the Strip. Are the Egyptians allowing people to move freely? Yes, if they're bribed to the right amount. This is the way it goes. And yet, I won't suggest here that Israel needs to cut diplomatic ties with Egypt. Egypt is extremely important to us, and in spite of everything that we said, we still need to coordinate with them on many different matters, and I still think that the peace treaty with Egypt from the late 70s is important strategically for Israel even now. And yet we have to face the truth and we have to realize that even as they present us themselves sometimes as our good friends, you know, this is the Middle East, this is the way things go, and we need to be perfectly aware of that.
DS: Do you think the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is, runs the risk of being challenged, compromised?
AH: It may be the limits of my imagination. I don't see it happening soon. I think there's too much at stake here and I think that both governments are aware of the possible damage and are going to be careful about that, but it's a dangerous situation. The fact that we have now tanks and infantry units, not only working, fighting on the outskirts of Rafah, but actually actively engaging in war with the Palestinians on the Egyptian border. There can be mistakes. There could be all kinds of tragedies. It's a dangerous situation right now. In the long run, you know, we know who our friends are. There are some frenemies as well in the region. This is the neighborhood we live in. And we have to be perfectly aware of that and not to rely so much on promises from Cairo or from Riyadh or whatever.
DS: Do you think Egypt could have done more, or are you surprised that Egypt wasn't put under more pressure by the Biden administration or other governments to do more on the humanitarian side? Meaning, up until Israel moved this, some one million Palestinians from Rafah into other parts of Gaza, there were people raising questions: wait a minute, they're right there in Rafah. You can create a humanitarian zone on the other side of the border in Egypt. Other countries, like the Saudis, probably would have paid for it. It would have kept the Palestinians, the Gazans, far away from the rest of the Egyptian population. It's not like they would have been intermingling. And no one ever actually pressured Egypt to help solve this humanitarian problem.
AH: I'm not sure that this was possible, actually, to do. And I think there's a huge sensitivity on the Egyptian side, the fear that Israel would push Palestinians towards what happened in the past inside Gaza would happen again in Sinai. So they're very, very concerned about that. And from the beginning, it was quite clear that this was a red line for Egypt. I think that the fact that so many far right Israeli politicians felt the urge to make all kinds of stupid statements about that made that close to impossible to begin with. But I'm not going to exonerate the Egyptians in any way. For instance, the fact that they haven't helped more regarding the hostages. Okay, they tried, they pressured Hamas and so on. The fact that they couldn't deliver another deal - I think they're partly to blame in this. It's not, they're not the only ones to be blamed. But I think we could have expected more considering the fact that both Egypt and Qatar helped this terrorist monster grow in our backyard means, I think, that they owe us more now in trying to not if not solve the situation that leads ease some of the problems that we're facing.
DS: Amos, I know you got to run. I appreciate your time as always. Look forward to having you back soon, and until then, stay safe, and thanks as always for your analysis and for illuminating a lot of these confusing stories that are hard to kind of disentangle.
AH: Bye Dan. Thanks a lot.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Amos Harel, you can find his reporting and analysis at Haaretz.com. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.