Episode Notes:

Israel's war appears to be shifting to a different phase, amid broader questions about the future of governance in Gaza and the conduct of the operation. To discuss the latest from Gaza, Michael Koplow, the Chief Policy Officer at the Israel Policy Forum, joined the WarCast.

[:30] Latest from Gaza

[2:18] The next phase of the war

[3:28] An inept government

[7:22] Extremists in Israel's government

[10:41] The fate of Israeli hostages

[12:06] Israeli security demands

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. We're joined again by Michael Koplow, Chief Policy Officer at the Israel Policy Forum. Mike, it's good to have you back on the show. Hope you had a restful holiday break.

Michael Koplow: Thanks, Aaron. You too. And happy New Year.

Aaron Stein: Happy New Year to you. For those who tuned out over the holidays, maybe were at Christmas dinners or something along those lines, the war obviously continues in Gaza. I feel like the war itself has taken a back burner to broader concerns about the way the war is being executed, but we'll talk about that later. Where is the focus of the Israeli operation today?

Michael Koplow: So as you correctly pointed out, the war is ongoing, but at this point, Israel has really started to wind down its operations in the northern part of Gaza having concluded that it has basically taken control of that area of the Strip. It, during the break, also launched operations in central Gaza, but there too, things seem to be winding down a bit. And that basically leaves southern Gaza, Khan Younis mostly, which is where Israel assumes the remainder of Hamas leadership and Hamas battalion commanders are located. And I think in a reflection of the fact that things are starting to wind down a bit, Israel announced a few days ago that it is going to be pulling a number of brigades out of Gaza, reservist brigades, and at least one standing brigade, in order to either let the reservists have a break or to deploy people elsewhere, likely the north.

So even if Israel has not yet come out and said that it's transitioning to the next phase, I think that events on the ground are leading to the conclusion that it is indeed transitioning to the next phase. And I should also say I don't think it's coincidence that the administration had been saying before the break that it expected Israel to move into that next phase at some point in January. And here we're in January and it seems to [inaudible 00:02:18].

Aaron Stein: What does that next phase look like? I think in the run-up to the actual invasion of Gaza, there was a lot of leaks, I think obviously coordinated leaks, on the U.S. side that they had preferred perhaps a more surgical campaign, looking more like a counter-terrorism campaign, thinking special forces, door-kicking, far more precise. Is that what you mean by next phase? Or is it still nebulous?

Michael Koplow: I think that it is likely to look like that, but nobody knows for sure. I don't think that Israel, for instance, is going to stop airstrikes or stop providing cover to ground troops, but I do think that we'll see less of those and I think it will look like a more surgical campaign of sorts. But frankly, much of that depends on the type of resistance that Israel meets, continues to meet I should say, in the southern Gaza Strip. And I think a lot of it is also going to depend on this question that the Israeli Cabinet up until this week has refused to discuss about the day after because a lot of it is also going to depend on what sort of outside pressure, assistance, what have you, is going to come. And there are no answers to these questions yet.

Aaron Stein: One of the nice things about this podcast is because we've been doing them basically every week since October 7th is that you were on the record in saying that this is one of the most inept Israeli governments you had ever seen.

Michael Koplow: I think I probably said it is the most inept, not one of.

Aaron Stein: I was caveating because I haven't gone back and listened to it, but sure. The government's handling of the operation, let's put the military operations aside, lives up to the type in terms of the inability to plan for the day after, the sort of politicking by Netanyahu it seems to try and prolong his hold on power in terms of how he's thinking about the operation rather than the operation as solely a military thing. And I think it's translated into a lot of Palestinians unnecessarily dying. Not I think. It has. What is your assessment of what the government thinks is the next way forward here? Because you said it's unclear. Is it unclear because the government doesn't know what it's doing? Or is it unclear because the government is keeping its cards close to its chest to try and play a good poker hand?

Michael Koplow: I think there are a number of reasons. First, you have Netanyahu who, as I said months ago and continue to reiterate, is concerned far more about his political future than he is about anything else. And he actually definitively said over break that he has no intention of resigning once the war is over, that he is going to see Israel through to the next phase and make sure that an attack like this will never happen again. I don't think that's going to be a political possibility for him, but it's very clear from that that he thinks he's sticking around. And so he's being driven by political calculations, and that means that any type of strategic assessment about what should come next is something he's avoiding because he's concerned about the politics.

Second, you have a war cabinet that is divided between Netanyahu and his Likud defense minister, Yoav Gallant on the one hand, and Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot on the other. And Gantz and Eisenkot have their own party, the National Unity Party, which only joined the war on day four as an emergency situation and formed this war cabinet. So they tend to be at odds with Netanyahu and Gallant on many things. And I'd say that primarily what they are at odds with Netanyahu and Gallant on is this question of the day after and what should happen. And so I think that the divide in the war cabinet is also driving this.

And then third, you do have the most inept and unprofessional government in Israeli history. And that means that when you take things out of the five-person war cabinet, the other person in there, by the way, is Ron Dermer, and you bring it to the security cabinet, which then includes clowns like Bezalel Smotrich, who is the finance minister, and the minister in Defense Ministry, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who's the national security minister, you get all sorts of garbage, including the stuff that the two of them in particular have been pushing over the last few days, which is the idea that you just take most of the Palestinians in Gaza and quote, unquote, voluntarily transfer them somewhere else. And so when you have Cabinet ministers, and these are not fringe people, senior cabinet ministers, and by the way, the cabinet ministers who represent the second-largest party in the Netanyahu coalition, suggesting this kind of stuff, how you're supposed to have any sort of cogent discussion about the day after, I'm really not sure.

Aaron Stein: I see that and I know that you don't agree with these people, so I'm not asking you to defend them, but it's just like the knee-jerk is to call them clowns. And I think we all do that, like, "These are just crazy people and they're just on television and they're being teed up by sympathetic interviewers and they're saying really heinous stuff." I think the challenge is that the conduct of the war, I think the Israelis, I think if you gave them an extra... What's the beer? Gold star. If you gave them an extra two or three gold stars, they would admit that they were very loose with the civilian casualty restrictions on how they carry out airstrikes.

You put A plus B, it starts to reinforce the narrative that the actual goal here is not just territorial taking and removing of Hamas from power. It's getting close or perhaps crossing into the ethnic cleansing word, and I know that's uncomfortable for people to talk about, that reminds some of us of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh stuff, particularly with the voluntarily leaving places. What do you say to all that?

Michael Koplow: So a couple of points to make. First, I'm not sure I agree with you on the question of rules of engagement and how it does or does not relate to ethnic cleansing. I think that Israel's rules of engagement have been looser than they have in the past not because the IDF has any long-term goal of having Palestinians leave Gaza. I think it's largely related to the horrible trauma of October 7th, and that has impacted all sorts of things. And I think that there are probably criticisms to be made of the rules of engagement, and we could have another podcast where we discuss the ways in which that might be. But I think that that's what's driving it as opposed to any desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Second, when I refer to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as clowns, it's because they're fundamentally unserious people. But that's not the same thing as saying that they are fringe or don't have influence, which is why I said a couple of minutes ago that they aren't fringe. They have an enormous amount of influence. And in a similar way that I did and still would describe Donald Trump as a clown and yet he was president of the United States and directed U.S. policy for four years. These two things are not incongruent. And you have a number of people in serious positions of political power who are fundamentally unserious or inept or frankly dangerous ideologues. That doesn't mean that they should be ignored or that their ideas should be discounted or dismissed as being impossible. And it's very clear that not just with those two but with others, you have politicians in the security cabinet and in the government who absolutely think that Israel should ethnically cleanse Gaza and transfer the Palestinians out of there and that Israel should come back in and rebuild the settlements they were disengaged from in 2005 and that that is the answer.

Now, I don't think... I'm actually relatively certain that Prime Minister Netanyahu, if you gave him a lie detector test or gave him truth serum, I'm pretty confident that he actually would not support that plan, but going back to what I said earlier, he is being driven first and foremost by political calculations. And what that means is that even if this isn't something that he wants to do, it doesn't mean that it's an impossible outcome given that he wants to keep his coalition together and wants to remain in power. So all of that is to say that just because the people who are pushing this are either awful people or unserious people doesn't mean that it isn't a real possibility in terms of what might happen.

Aaron Stein: Yeah. That's a good answer. One of the things, again, because we've been doing this podcast weeks on end now, is the outrage over lack of movement on the hostages. We had I think it was five days ultimately, maybe it was, give or take, 24 hours, where there was the ongoing hostage for prisoner swaps that were going on. That obviously doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. What is the fate of the Israeli hostages? And how is that impacting the domestic debate about the conduct of the war or the future of the war?

Michael Koplow: Their fate is awful. Almost every day or every other day there are new reports in Israel about hostages who have been confirmed dead who were thought to be alive. There's all sorts of angst over the fate of the living ones given the testimony that has come from the hostages who have been released and all of the ways in which they were mistreated or tortured or held by what seemed to be ordinary Palestinians, not just Hamas fighters, in houses, in schools and hospitals. So, the angst over the fate of the hostages, I think, is growing. And the more time that goes by where there is no serious movement, there are no serious negotiations, just raises this issue inside of Israel to an even hotter boiling point than it already is.

Aaron Stein: So maybe this is one of the last questions, then we'll wrap up here, is the issue of people going back to their homes, I guess, in the south of the country is something you've also talked about and people, perhaps even those that would agree with you that they would never, ever support Netanyahu or his coalition, are still calling for security measures in the South because of the trauma of October 7th. It isn't correlated, I should say, which is support for elements of the Gaza War versus support for Netanyahu. Please correct me if you disagree.

Michael Koplow: No. Not only is it not correlated, I'd say when it comes to residents of the south, there's a reverse correlation.

Aaron Stein: Right. Exactly. But putting that aside, where are they in terms of the ability to go home? Where are they in terms of putting upward political pressure on the government to continue the campaign and to carve out those security strips that you've talked about I think three to five kilometers deep and to maintain at least some presence for a while in the Gaza Strip to ensure that Hamas can't leak back into territory that they've been pushed from?

Michael Koplow: There are some residents of the south who have slowly started to trickle back, not to the handful of communities that were completely destroyed in the Gaza envelope, places like Be'eri or Kfar Aza or Nir Oz, but to some of the communities a little farther out, people have started to return, not entirely but slowly. I think that once the Israeli government officially admits that it is in the transition to the next phase and has to begin discussing what comes next, one of the very first discussions is absolutely going to be about a buffer zone and security arrangements even before they discuss anything else.

And I maintain what I said a couple of months ago, which is that the residents of the communities in the South, in the Gaza envelope, that are the small kibbutzim and farming communities, they are not going to go back without serious security assurances and they absolutely want to see buffer zones and security arrangements and all sorts of carve-outs as badly as they want to see Netanyahu removed from power. These two things are not related and they're going to demand it. And I think that even if you had a government right now that was led by Benny Gantz, or Yair Lapid, or Gadi Eisenkot, they would also be supporting some sort of buffer zone and upgraded security measures in the South because they understand that it's imperative to get people back and that's the only way that people will go back.

Aaron Stein: Mike, it's good to have you on the show. Thanks for doing this. I have follow-up questions, but we hit our time limit, so thanks for doing it again.

Michael Koplow: My pleasure, Aaron.