Episode Notes:

As the war in Gaza continues, the Israel Defense Forces report that they are now in control of the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The humanitarian situation on the ground remains dire and the Israeli government has yet to clearly indicate who they plan to hand control of Gaza to after the military operation finishes. There are also reports of an impending humanitarian pause to allow for the exchange of Israeli hostages taken on Oct. 7th for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. To discuss the latest in the war, Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, joined the WarCast.

[:28] Impressions from Israel

[2:44] Military operation

[5:21] Prisoner swap reports

[8:34] Israeli far right

[12:21] Planning for post-combat operations

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 of the podcast for what you need to know now. Hello and welcome to The WarCast. We are joined again by Michael Koplow, Chief Policy Officer at the Israel Policy Forum. Mike, it's good to have you on the show.

Michael Koplow: Good to be back, Aaron.

Aaron Stein: Well, I actually know you just got back from Israel or you may even still be there. So why don't you first just give us a rundown of your impressions from your trip.

Michael Koplow: I did just get back from Israel, I was there last week. My impressions are that the IDFs military campaign is going better than I think almost anyone expected inside of Israel in terms of the thoroughness and speed with which the IDF has tackled northern Gaza. In addition, IDF casualties are relatively low. I think people were expecting in the hundreds, and at this point the number I believe as of today is still in the 60s. So the military campaign seems to be going as well, if not better than anyone really expected. Where there is a real gap is on the humanitarian side of things, where the situation in southern Gaza is extremely dire. You have all the Palestinians who went from northern Gaza into the South and it doesn't seem as if their needs are being adequately provided for.

And in addition, we now have an Israeli military operation, well, assuming that we have a ceasefire announcement within the next couple of hours which everyone is expecting, when that is done five days later, I think everyone is expecting Israel's military operation to really ramp up in the South, particularly in Khan Younis where the IDF was dropping leaflets last week telling people to evacuate. And as it is, the humanitarian situation is extremely difficult once you have Palestinians in southern Gaza who are being told to move out of certain areas but are still not allowed back north. And they're basically moving around in a very small, tight area with not enough humanitarian supplies, not enough shelter, not enough fuel. I think that the problem that exists now is going to get much, much worse. And I didn't hear very many answers from folks within the security establishment or within the administrative defense that makes me confident that Israel is on top of this as much as they should be.

So I really think that you sort of have this split screen here where the military operation going great, humanitarian not so much. And rather than thinking of them as two sides of the same coin, I think in many ways the Israelis are thinking of these things as separate.

Aaron Stein: Let's talk about the military operation. I believe the IDF has said that their Hamas' infrastructure or control of the northern part of Gaza has been broken. I think this sort of culminated with the battles outside of Al-Shifa Hospital. For people who are not following this at the granular level, where's the IDF at?

Michael Koplow: So the IDF had circled Gaza City and started to basically tighten a noose and move in. And at this point the IDF is in control of most of the neighborhoods in Gaza City. They did indeed take Al-Shifa Hospital, which they had said was above Hamas' headquarters command and control center in Northern Gaza. I think it's been difficult for anyone to verify because all of the tunnels are booby trapped. And the last time in 2014 that Israel tried to go into Hamas tunnels, even lowering cameras down resulted in bombs exploding and soldiers who were pretty severely injured. So I think they've been proceeding very slowly in terms of going underneath into the tunnel complex, which is why you have this kind of gap where Israel and the U.S. have been telling people about the things they expect to find under Al-Shifa Hospital. And so far those things have not been found.

And what I hear from the Israelis and I have no reason to doubt this, is that it's not necessarily that they aren't there. It's that actually getting to them in a safe way is even more difficult than taking the hospital, for instance. So the IDF has really started to tackle this problem. They seem to be making slower progress on collapsing or clearing out tunnels than they have on other aspects of the operation if you compare them. And they also have said that it's their intention to destroy the tunnels completely. So I think all of this is going to take time and for folks who are expecting evidence to be right there immediately as soon as Israel enters the space, I just don't think that's realistic. And the question will be, I think assuming that there are limitations that are going to be placed on Israel from outside, whether that's the Biden administration or international pressure at large, I think you're going to continue to have this tension between the IDF trying to demonstrate that its claims are valid.

And trying to proceed as slowly as possible in order not to risk IDF casualties when you're trying to get all this infrastructure that's underground.

Aaron Stein: Let's talk about the at least reported or pending prisoner swap and exchange for, I guess Israeli release of Palestinian or Hamas prisoners as well as, I think it's five days delay in fighting. We are recording this on Tuesday, November 21st at 11:36 AM East Coast Time. I do not think it's been reported yet, but I think it's widely expected that at some point this will happen. What are the thoughts on the hostages in Israel and what are your thoughts on the potential, I guess five day humanitarian pause?

Michael Koplow: Yeah, when I checked 70 minutes ago, it had not been announced yet but I think everybody's expecting it to be approved in the next couple of hours. So the basic parameters assuming the reporting is correct, is that Hamas is going to release about 50 Israeli hostages, women and children, no IDF hostages and they're going to do it over four days. And presumably that is to from their side guarantee that Israel isn't going to break the ceasefire early. Although I should note in the past that when there have been Israel-Hamas ceasefires, those have always and almost uniformly been broken by Hamas, not by Israel. And then on the other side of the equation, Israel has agreed to either a four or five day humanitarian pause on all fighting. That's both in northern Gaza and southern Gaza. They've agreed to release sounds like something between 100 and 150 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, women and children. And they're going to release them back to where they came from, whether that is the West Bank, east Jerusalem, or elsewhere.

And in addition, it seems as if there's going to be a pause on Israeli surveillance operations and drones, there's going to be a small window where they're allowed to fly them. And in addition, during the ceasefire, it seems as if more humanitarian assistance including fuel is going to go into Gaza. Within Israel having just been there, I think from the outside everybody can appreciate what a big issue the hostages are. On the ground it's really, I don't want to use this term remarkable because again, it's expected but everywhere you go that is what's first and foremost on people's minds. For anyone listening to this who's been in Tel Aviv, you know that you go to Tel Aviv and there are billboards and digital advertisements all over the place. I did not see one billboard or advertisement while I was there for anything other than hostages.

They've literally overnight replaced any commercial anything and it's the hostages. So this is first and foremost on people's minds. There was a contentious hearing yesterday in the Knesset that involved some far right members of Knesset screaming at hostage families. Everybody's very much on edge about the fate of these Israeli civilians, and I think anything that brings some of them home is going to be supported and is going to be popular. If anything, the critique is going to be that it's only 50 and that perhaps a bigger deal should have been concluded to get all of them. So I don't think this is writ large going to be controversial inside of Israel. I think most people are very willing to swallow a four or five day pause if it means getting the civilians back to their families in one piece.

Aaron Stein: I want to talk about that far right because you brought it up, I believe it's the intelligence minister - and I don't remember her name to be honest with you - wrote a pretty ridiculous op-ed that I think channels what a lot of people are concerned about is that people on the far right in Israel, in addition to viewing this war as existential because of what happened on October 7th, sees this as an opportunity to sort of bring back some of that settler, I don't know what other word, crazy, which is that basically the Jews will control large swaths in the Middle East that are not under Israeli control or in Israeli territorial boundaries. What's going on with the far right? Maybe talk a little bit about how that's impacting stuff in the West Bank.

Michael Koplow: Her name is Gila Gamliel and she is the intelligence minister, but the intelligence ministry doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't really control Israeli intelligence. It's one of these places where you just park somebody to give them a job as part of building a coalition. So yes, Gila Gamliel, her ministry had written a very much criticized report that got leaked a few weeks ago about transferring Palestinians in Gaza, outside of Gaza to the Sinai. And now she has this op-ed in Jerusalem Post urging other countries to take Palestinians from Gaza. And of course the argument for that, aside from security, is with an eye toward restoring Gush Katif, the settlement movement that was in Gaza before it was evacuated in 2005. So that's one strain of the far right where they are looking to return Israelis to Gaza. And almost nobody is talking about that.

I don't think anybody takes that seriously. It's unfortunate that you have these extremely unqualified and irresponsible ministers who shoot their mouths off for political purposes. But nobody inside of the Ministry of Defense, nobody who's acting in a position of power is contemplating returning Israeli civilians to Gaza. Then you have another strand of the far right, and this is the one controlled by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Otzma Yehudit which is effectively the far-right nationalist, proto-fascist Israeli right. And they held a hearing yesterday in the Knesset on a bill they've introduced to apply the death penalty to Palestinian terrorists. And this has upset the hostage families greatly, A, because the law is extraneous under current Israeli law, if you wanted to execute terrorists you could. B, even if you passed this new law it's not retroactive. So it wouldn't apply to the attackers from October 7th.

Third and most importantly, many people are worried that if you right now while Hamas is holding hostages, say anybody that we catch who was involved in October 7th will be put to death, then the fate of those hostages is all of a sudden going to be very uncertain. And they may very well be in even greater mortal danger than they are now. So the hostage families are extremely upset and they went to this hearing yesterday and begged the members of Otzma Yehudit, the far-right party that is introduced as legislation to cancel it. And instead what you had was these members of Knesset and ministers from Otzma Yehudit, literally screaming at hostage families and telling them that they don't have a monopoly on pain and they don't know what they're talking about and it's very ugly. And so you see this awful far right politicking that has very little support.

But nevertheless, I think has the ability to do a lot of damage not only to the hostages themselves but frankly to Israel's image, because Israel's having a tough enough time as it is with this military campaign with the numbers of casualties and the insufficient humanitarian response to have a bunch of far right lawmakers suggesting absolutely insane things like rebuilding settlements in Gaza really does nobody any good.

Aaron Stein: All right. And this is the last question because I know you got to go, is that one of the reasons that these airings of the far right sort of fantasy lands gets traction is because Netanyahu himself has basically come out and even the sort of farfetched and perhaps very difficult to implement idea of an international coalition coming in, perhaps overseen by the US, run by the Arabs in rebuilding Gaza, bringing back in the Palestinian authority. He's made this very difficult in order to bring back. And so there's a vacuum that people are talking about. So let's say five days humanitarian, the IDF turns to the south. And then you have IDF occupation in the Gaza Strip, and then nobody has any idea what happens next. You were just there, I know you've been thinking about this. Is this disconnect still as vivid in Israel as it sort of seems from the outside?

Michael Koplow: Entirely. There's an Israeli expression you hear everybody say there, "Everything will be fine." Israelis like to use that a lot. And well, I didn't hear anybody say that to me this time in response to questions about what happens next, that is the pervasive attitude. You ask about the humanitarian assistance and what's the plan, and it's kind of, "It'll be fine. We'll figure it out when we have to." And what's the plan for the day after Gaza? We will figure it out when we have to. The issue of the Palestinian Authority is indeed a real one because as you note, the United States and the Europeans, the Arab states, basically everybody who has weighed in on this has talked about the need for eventually the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza because while they may not be equipped to run the place now, they really are the only conceivable actor that exists that can do it.

And Netanyahu, mostly because I think of his politics has been either outright saying they can't return or he's been saying it more obliquely, but putting enormous amounts of conditions on it and saying, "Well, it can't be this iteration of the Palestinian Authority." And within Israeli security and defense circles, I think people are trying to come up with plans for what happens when the fighting is over and they're trying to do it in a way that won't include the PA in a big way, simply so it's not to run up against political interference. But I think that's difficult. And obviously we can talk about what happens in a transitional period, which won't involve the PA entirely. But ultimately, once you get through whatever transition period you're talking about, you have to hand the place to somebody. And the PA for all of their faults really is the only address at the moment.

So this gap it's not illusory. It definitely exists. I think you've got the gap with regard to the PA. I think you have a gap just with regard to how this is being seen from the outside, Israelis they're still in trauma. This is not a post-trauma state. It's very much still in the middle of it, especially given the hostages. Israelis are living in a real bubble where all day, every day, there are more stories about October 7th and the atrocities and also the heroism displayed by many Israelis. And this is what Israelis are seeing and hearing and absorbing. And I think it's very difficult for them either to move beyond the trauma stage yet. But I think also difficult for them to really absorb what the rest of the world is seeing and talking about because they're still living in this cauldron, whereas everybody else is not. And I think it is creating difficulties in terms of any type of post-war planning.

Aaron Stein: Well, have plenty of times to keep talking about this. Thanks for taking some time out of your pre-Thanksgiving holiday to come and talk to us about this.

Michael Koplow: My pleasure, Aaron. Thanks for having me.