Episode Notes:

Aaron sat down with Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of Israel Policy Forum, to discuss the latest from Israel, the status of the war-time government, Prime Minister Netanyahu's popularity, the latest from the war, and what Israel may be planning after the expected ousting of Hamas from power.

[:28] Political developments in Israel

[3:34] Netanyahu's popularity

[7:00] Israel's war against Hamas

[10:18] Day after planning

[13:19] U.S. response

[14:42] Israel resists outside pressure

Episode Transcript

Aaron Stein: My name is Aaron Stein, and I am the Chief Content Officer at War on the Rocks. You are listening to The Warcast, the members' only podcast for what you need to know, now. Hello, and welcome to The Warcast, where I'm joined again by Michael Koplow, who is the Chief Policy Officer at the Israel Policy Forum. Mike, it's good to have you back on the show.

Michael Koplow: Hey Aaron, good to be here.

Aaron Stein: So I thought we'd have you back on just to give an update on where things have been going with the war. When we spoke last, I think it was either the day after the initial attack, on October 7th, or a couple of days after. The war has been ongoing, there have been political developments inside Israel. So let's start right there. What's been the latest political developments in Israel on the unity government and how that's playing out and Netanyahu's popularity?

Michael Koplow: Israel now does indeed have a unity government, something that it did not have last week, and that unity government... It is described as unity government, but that's actually, and it's a term I've used as well, but it's not actually entirely correct, it's more of an emergency war government, and it's more of an emergency war government for a few reasons. First of all, the largest party in the opposition, which is Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid, the most recent former Prime Minister, is not part of the government. He said that he would only join the government if Prime Minister Netanyahu jettisoned the two far-right parties that are included in the current government. And Prime Minister Netanyahu was not willing to do that. So yeah, Yair Lapid did not join. Who did join is Benny Gantz, the former Defense Minister and former Chief of Staff and also former alternate Prime Minister, which was during the short-lived government he formed with Netanyahu after the third election of this five election cycle.

He and the 12 members of Knesset from his National Unity Party, [foreign language 00:01:58] in Hebrew, joined the government. So, it isn't quite a unity government when we think of the sense of the largest opposition party joining, but you still have this second-largest opposition party joining. And what they did was they formed a war cabinet, which consists of the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz. They left a fourth slot open in that war cabinet for Yair Lapid if he decides to join. And they have two observer spots. One of those is for Gadi Eizenkot, who is a member of Gantz' party and is a former IDF Chief of Staff himself. And one is for Ron Dermer, a figure who should be familiar to many Americans because of his time here as ambassador.

And then, aside from Gantz, four other members of his party joined the security cabinet. And what that means is that this three-person war cabinet, which is supposed to meet at least every 48 hours, is going to make decisions and presumably those decisions will then be ratified by the security cabinet, because the security cabinet under Israeli law is the institution that is actually empowered to officially make these decisions. And the last significant part of this is that they agreed that while this war cabinet and security cabinet, emergency war government, situation continues, the Knesset is not going to take up any new legislation or pass any existing legislation that was in the hopper that's not related to the war. And the government is also not going to pass any non-legislative regulations that do not directly pertain to the war. And as soon as the war is done, presumably, this emergency government will dissolve, and we'll be back to where we were. So that's the current situation politically.

Aaron Stein: Let me jump in right there. There's been, and I don't know if this is true or not because there's been so much misinformation flying around on social media, is that Netanyahu hasn't been as out and about as one would expect a wartime prime minister to be, hasn't been meeting with the families or if he has, they're tightly scripted. And there have been continued protests against his rule, at least in Tel Aviv as well. How popular is he and does he have a strong footing to actually see this war through?

Michael Koplow: He is massively unpopular. He was underwater before this started as compared certainly to Benny Gantz in almost every single poll that has been done over, not quite since the government formed in December, or not quite since the government took power, I should say, in December. But starting a couple of months later, he and his party have been behind Benny Gantz in almost every poll. But the gap was not enormous. You'd have polls where the Likud party, which currently has 32 seats in the Knesset, would be down to 25-26, sometimes as high as 29 or 30. And Benny Gantz would have 1, 2, 3 seats more. The poll that came out last week, and I've only actually seen one since this all started. I think Israeli pollsters have other things on their mind, and potentially they're all in the reserves at the moment. The one poll that I saw came out had Benny Gantz' party, and he currently has 12 seats, Benny Gantz' party at 41 and Likud, which currently has 32 seats, down to 19.

And in the question about who is more suited to serve as Prime Minister, Benny Gantz is now 20 points, 30 points ahead of Netanyahu. Netanyahu's ratings are very bad, and I think that Israelis understand, except for the most extreme ones, this was the biggest disaster in Israel's history. It was also the biggest catastrophe in Israel's history. Those two things are different, but both of those things happened on Netanyahu's watch, and after he's been prime minister with exception of about a year and a half, continuously since 2009. So, despite the reckoning that's going to come certainly for the IDF and the professional security establishment, there's going to be a huge one for Netanyahu as well. And part of the other problem here is, as you correctly noted, he has not been out and about. He has been not all that visible. It took him a long time to respond.

Even now, most of his ministers are literally AWOL. Nobody has seen or heard from them. When he has responded, he still has not taken any blame or responsibility for anything. There was a really strange episode yesterday where he met with families who have hostages inside of Gaza, and these families all live in the south, they have all kind of coalesced together and been organizing now since last week. And in the meeting somebody showed up who none of them had ever seen before and started kind of shouting about how he has hostages and Gaza, family members, but he wants the government to just not worry about the hostages, to just go in and do whatever they please. And many of the families think that this was actually a plant from someone in Netanyahu circle in this meeting with families to try and divide them and make it seem as if there is support among the families for the government to just go and do anything and not worry about the hostages. So there's all sorts of odd things going on, but suffice to say Netanyahu right now is not a very popular guy.

Aaron Stein: So let's turn to the war itself. I think we've all seen the numbers of airstrikes. I think the main figure that's come out that's been floating around is 6,000 just in the past week, which is maybe two and a half times, if not three times as much as the entirety number of airstrikes that were conducted against the Islamic states, against Syria and Iraq for a month. It does seem like we're on the precipice of a ground invasion. Israel has asked residents of Gaza to go to the south of the country. And we saw news last night that the water for the south has been turned back on and that there has been movement on humanitarian supplies coming out of Egypt across the crossing and perhaps a movement of dual citizens out of Gaza into Egypt. What's the latest with the war? What's been going on?

Michael Koplow: Israel did indeed restart water supply to the southern Gaza Strip. There are conflicting reports about whether people in Gaza who have citizenship in another country, whether it be the US or somewhere else, are being allowed out through the Rafah Crossing, which is the crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It seems as if people were gathering there, but it's a bit unclear whether they're actually out yet. This morning, or I should say this morning here, but this afternoon in Israel, the Prime Minister's office said that at the moment there is no ceasefire for humanitarian aid to come in or for foreigners to come out. Though Egypt says that there was an agreement, so it's unclear exactly what's happening. I suspect that there may be things moving in and things moving out, but Israel isn't quite ready yet to say it or to announce it. But the water has been turned back on.

And part of the difficulty here is that there are concerns on all sides. On the Israeli side, their concern is that if you let humanitarian assistance in without it being screened, that people will be sneaking weapons into Hamas. And so they want all the assistance that comes in being screened. And the problem with people going out is that, first of all, Egypt does not want potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Gaza flooding into Egypt. And the other issue is that there are many Palestinians, and this is not just in Hamas who are reportedly not letting people leave Northern Gaza. There are many Palestinians who worry that if they leave Gaza, Israel is not going to let them back in. And you hear from a lot of Palestinians that this is a replay of 1948 and the Nakba, the idea that they're going to leave, and then they're going to lose their homes for good.

So I'll say, from the outside looking in, there have been some Israeli officials who've made completely irresponsible comments about how Palestinians should leave Gaza, and they should move to the Sinai and the international community should build them homes there. And we've heard that from some fringe folks. The Israeli government is consistently saying that that is not going to be the case. And I'll just say from the outside looking in, it would be strange to me if even this Israeli government had some plan to depopulate Gaza and take it back. That's something that 95% of Israelis, at least, would be opposed to. So I understand the Palestinian fear here. I don't think that's what the Israelis are aiming at, but I get why Palestinians are worried about this eventuality.

Aaron Stein: So I have two questions, and we have about five minutes to wrap it up here, but let me ask the first one. So what's the plan here? It's hard to see once Hamas is pushed south, and perhaps it develops into an insurgency, we'll see. Who actually would take over governing here in terms of who will assume responsibility for Gaza? Is it going to be wrecked, for lack of a better term, in the war and then just left? Or will there have to be a governing authority after the invasion?

Michael Koplow: At the moment, I think what Israel's plan is, is to get rid of the infrastructure in Gaza City in northern Gaza. Hamas is obviously everywhere through the Strip, but their main stronghold is Gaza City and particularly underneath Gaza City, with bunkers and tunnels and all the infrastructure that they've spent 15 years building. So, at the moment, I actually don't think that the Israelis are intending to push Hamas out of the north. I think that they anticipate that Hamas will be waiting for them underneath Gaza City, but if they want to get the infrastructure, they need Gaza Cities to be clear to civilians, which is why they told 1 million Palestinians to move south. And I presume that after that they will then worry about what's going on in the south. But I think at the moment they're much more concerned about infrastructure than they're about anything else.

In terms of what happens when this is finished, I hope that the Israelis are thinking about this because you rightly bring up this issue. And even if it doesn't seem pressing to the Israeli government right now, it's going to quickly become the biggest issue. If you're the Israelis, do you go in and rule Gaza day-to-day, as was the situation before 1993? Do you just let Hamas back into ruling the day-to-day after you have degraded, if not in your estimation, eliminated its military capabilities? Let's say, both of these seem like terrible ideas to me. There is some fantasy out there that the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Egyptians and others are going to come in and administer Gaza. There's just no way that is ever going to happen. And then I guess that leaves two other options. One is some sort of new homegrown movement of Palestinians and Gaza who form some sort of administration.

I suppose that's possible. I'm not really sure how that happens. And then, option number five, and this is the one that I think makes the most sense, even with all its difficulties, is getting the Palestinian authority back into Gaza. Now that is far easier said than done for all sorts of reasons. I'd say number one being that there is no Palestinian leader, whether it's Abu Mazen or anyone else who wants to return to Gaza, literally on the back of Israeli tanks. But I think there needs to be some thought now dedicated to how that can happen, because you do have this Palestinian government that's in the West Bank and still has people and facilities in Gaza, and that seems to me to be the best situation.

Aaron Stein: Final question here, the US response. How is being received in Israel?

Michael Koplow: Incredibly well. There's an Israeli TV channel, Channel 14, which people compare to Fox News, but it's actually not comparable. It's much more like One America or Newsmax. It's a [inaudible 00:13:34] and a very, very far right station scene as a mouthpiece of Prime Minister Netanyahu. One of their commentators last week went on and did a five-minute monologue apologizing to Joe Biden, saying that he and his colleagues had gotten Biden and the Democratic Party wrong and that there's never been so much support for Israel coming from the United States. And for Israelis across the board, you routinely hear that Joe Biden's speech last week was the most Zionist speech ever given by an American president.

I think Israelis feel incredibly grateful, not just for the President's rhetoric, but for two carrier strike groups that are being moved. I should say, that already are in the Mediterranean, for Blinken being there, for Austin being there. There are rumors that Biden's going to go there himself soon. So Israelis are looking at the US right now, and I think that they're grateful and thankful, and it's the gap between some of the rhetoric on the right here in the United States about how this is Biden's fault, and that he abandoned Israel. And what you're hearing in Israel on the right, which is not one bad word about Biden, is incredibly striking.

Aaron Stein: I lied. I had one last question. There's clearly going to be a lot of international outrage, we're already seeing it, about the Israeli way of waging war from the air campaign to the expected ground campaign. Is that having an impact on the debate in Israel in terms of slowing it down?

Michael Koplow: I don't think it's having an impact on slowing it down. Again, you have to understand that at this point, the death toll is over 1300. The new estimate this morning of hostages is there are 199 families that were notified that they have hostages inside of Gaza. Many of the bodies still have not been identified because they are literally so badly charred that they can't even get DNA. In that situation, Israelis are not calling for the government to take a step back. You do hear concerns about figuring out a way to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. So it was not to punish all Palestinians. And I think that that's a large part of why Israel turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the calls to stop or have an immediate ceasefire, deescalate, are few and far between.

Aaron Stein: All right, I could ask 10 more questions, but we're at the end of the time here for the Warcast. Thanks, Mike, for coming on.

Michael Koplow: My pleasure. Thanks, Aaron.