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Episode: A WINDOW OPENS FOR A HOSTAGE DEAL - with Nadav Eyal

Author: Ark Media
Duration: 00:38:28

Episode Shownotes

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: Please note that as of our Thursday episode this week, we will be updating Call Me Back’s cover art. This will not be a dramatic change, but as to not miss out on any new episodes due to this change, please keep an eye out. TODAY’S EPISODE: As

we witness Iran’s proxy system unravelling, there may be an opportunity for a new hostage deal and temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Over the past few months, Israel has seen a number of successes, from the deaths of key Hamas and Hezbollah figures, to the destruction of Iran’s air defenses, a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, and finally the fall of the Assad regime, which has collapsed Iran’s proxy strategy. With Hamas in its weakest position yet, will they try to negotiate a hostage deal? Are there common threads between this new development, the fall of Assad, the ceasefire in Lebanon, and the incoming US administration? To discuss, Nadav Eyal returns to the podcast. Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediiot. He is one of Israel’s leading journalists. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. To visit our website where you can access transcripts for each episode, sign up for updates, and get in touch with us: https://arkmedia.org/

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
What has changed since May and July, since we had the negotiations and they failed? Well, first of all, the axis of resistance has been basically evaporated and Hamas is isolated. That's a political element.

00:00:12 Speaker_00
Another political element is now that Netanyahu can actually survive a deal and the government is not going to fall. We're on the verge of a breakthrough. I'm saying this carefully,

00:00:22 Speaker_00
But we have more and more reports coming both from Hamas and from Israeli officials that conditions have matured into the possibility of a deal in a matter of a week or two.

00:00:47 Speaker_03
It's 10 o'clock a.m. on Monday, December 9th here in New York City. It's 5 o'clock p.m. on Monday, December 9th in Israel as Israelis are winding down their day. And it is 6 o'clock p.m. on Monday, December 9th in Damascus.

00:01:04 Speaker_03
Before we get into today's episode, just another housekeeping note to look out for the new art on our icon, our poster art for this podcast in your feed in Thursday's episode. That's where it will first appear.

00:01:18 Speaker_03
Just so you're not confused when you are used to seeing the traditional call me back art and it will no longer appear. I don't want you to think the podcast, our podcast will no longer appear. Now on to today's conversation.

00:01:31 Speaker_03
As we witness Iran's proxy system collapsing at a pretty rapid clip, there appears to be an opportunity for a new hostage deal and temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Consider the milestones of just the past five months.

00:01:50 Speaker_03
Mohammed Def, one of the leaders of Hamas and one of the architects of the October 7th massacre, was killed on July 13th. Ismail Haniyeh, another leader of Hamas, was killed on July 31st in Tehran.

00:02:07 Speaker_03
3,000 Hezbollah fighters were taken out of action in the Pager attack on September 17th. Operation Northern Arrows crippled Hezbollah's military stockpiles on September 23rd. Hassan Nasrallah killed on September 27th.

00:02:23 Speaker_03
Yehya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the architect of October 7th, was killed on October 16th. In a massive airstrike, Israel did extraordinary damage to Iran's air defenses on October 25th.

00:02:38 Speaker_03
Hezbollah all but surrenders and signs a ceasefire agreement on November 25th. And now, on December 7th, just days ago, Assad's regime, a key strategic partner in Iran's axis of resistance, falls.

00:02:54 Speaker_03
And with it, perhaps Iran's proxy strategy, its entire proxy system, will collapse as well. Not exactly what Yehia Sinwar had in mind when he launched his flood of Al-Aqsa massacre on October 7th, 2023.

00:03:10 Speaker_03
To think that Sinwar with his attack would have midwived the complete collapse and destruction of Iran's ring of fire is something no one could have possibly imagined. Time does not seem to be on the side of the few remaining leaders of Hamas in Gaza.

00:03:27 Speaker_03
They are still playing one hand, that is the hostages who continue to be front of mind for all of us. According to reports and what we are hearing from our various sources, there are serious negotiations on a hostage deal.

00:03:42 Speaker_03
How is this development, progress on the hostage deal, connected to the fall of Assad and the ceasefire in Lebanon? and the incoming Trump administration.

00:03:52 Speaker_03
Well, after a long 15 hour hiatus, I'm pleased to welcome Nadav Eyal of Yediot Aharonot back to the podcast. Nadav, welcome back.

00:04:02 Speaker_00
Thanks, Dan.

00:04:03 Speaker_03
Nadav, I will say just for our listeners to understand, we had planned to hit this topic with you when we recorded our episode yesterday.

00:04:12 Speaker_03
But, because developments in Syria overtook the entire conversation, we didn't have enough time to get to this topic, and this was worthy of an entire episode. So, we wanted to just bring you right back.

00:04:24 Speaker_03
We're not on the normal schedule that Call Me Back is on.

00:04:27 Speaker_03
with these two back-to-back episodes within 36 hours, but given events and given how each of these topics, the fall of Assad and then the possibility of a hostage deal, given how important both these topics are, we just wanted to break it up into two episodes and dig into both of them with you.

00:04:44 Speaker_03
Before we get into the conversation about the hostage deal, Nadav, I wanted to play a short video of Inav Tzankakor, who's the mother of a hostage being held by Hamas, Matan Tzankakor, who has come to be known as the lioness mother, leading the fight for the hostages, going toe to toe at times with Israeli government officials and politicians.

00:05:05 Speaker_03
She's been quite outspoken.

00:05:07 Speaker_03
And in this video, which you can watch on the YouTube version of this conversation, just go to our YouTube channel, you can see a Nav watching a video of her son in captivity, one of these Hamas propaganda videos, which was just released by Hamas a few days ago.

00:05:24 Speaker_03
So let's watch that.

00:05:27 Speaker_01
What?

00:05:28 Speaker_02
What? What? Nadav, for Israelis, who is Enav Tzankalkar and what was the significance of Hamas releasing this particular video?

00:06:14 Speaker_00
Well, Enav Tsangkaoker is probably the most known in terms of name recognition of the parents that are fighting for the release of the hostages and their kids that are there. Matan Tsangkaoker is a young man.

00:06:31 Speaker_00
he was captured in near Oz, a Naftan Gawker began by not being too vocal in her demand for a deal. But this developed as months went by and she became the most outspoken voice. today in the Israeli sphere for the release of the hostages.

00:06:53 Speaker_00
And what's interesting about the voice that she brings there is that Einav Zangauker testifies about herself, that she is a Likud voter, that she supported Benjamin Netanyahu in every election. And the things that she is saying

00:07:09 Speaker_00
about what the government has been doing and the way that she is making these demands is very resolute and she's extremely critical of the government. She goes into these demonstrations together with her family.

00:07:23 Speaker_00
The police is aggressive with some of these families in those demonstrations. And there were sort of skirmishes between the families and specifically between Einar Zangauker and her family and the police.

00:07:38 Speaker_00
And she's basically in this very much addressing the distress of the families, not letting the government off the hook. She is saying, I don't wanna misquote her, but I'm paraphrasing, we don't care what you're saying about Hamas.

00:07:55 Speaker_00
We care that you are responsible to getting our kids back home and get them back home. And we're not gonna leave the streets until you do that.

00:08:05 Speaker_00
And it was her decision to actually align herself with some of the organizations that are extremely critical of the government in general.

00:08:16 Speaker_00
and it's not only about the hostages and in that sense in the fact that she comes from the Likud, she's from Ofakim, it's the south of Israel, it's an area very much voting for the right-wing bloc, this gives her a lot of leverage in trying to get pressure on the government to get Matan back home.

00:08:38 Speaker_03
And there have been now two hostage videos that have been released in recent days, this being one of them. Why do you believe Hamas is releasing these videos now?

00:08:47 Speaker_00
Hamas is releasing these videos because we are seeing secret negotiations that are quite advanced towards a deal.

00:08:55 Speaker_00
And we are actually today, Dan, closer to a deal than we ever were since the last deal that was back, I remind our listeners, in November 2023.

00:09:07 Speaker_00
Israel and Hamas are extremely close to reaching at least an interim or first phase of a hostage deal in return to a release of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom convicted with murder. and also a pullout of the IDF from some parts of Gaza.

00:09:28 Speaker_00
And these negotiations have been going on for a while, for a few weeks now, but there's no doubt that both the statements made by the President-elect, President-elect Trump,

00:09:39 Speaker_00
and the disintegration of the Iranian-led axis have pushed Hamas to this point. And you're also seeing, I would say, more seriousness from the Israeli side.

00:09:50 Speaker_00
And I'm saying this because although the Biden administration has continuously said in recent months that it's Hamas' fault and responsibility that we don't get a deal and that

00:10:00 Speaker_00
They believe that to a large extent if the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, will face a decision as to a deal, he will accept the deal. It's also true, and this is what the families are saying and also the team of the negotiators in Israel,

00:10:17 Speaker_00
that again and again the government has been very outspoken about its position during negotiations that are very sensitive.

00:10:25 Speaker_00
So for instance the prime minister will have a meeting with the Likud members in the Knesset and will brief them as to Israel's red lines. and will say that Israel is not going to stop the war or something like that.

00:10:37 Speaker_00
And in the meantime, his staff or the negotiating team is on its way to Qatar or to Cairo to negotiate with Hamas. Then Hamas basically blows up the negotiations and again and again, the hostage families

00:10:49 Speaker_00
have said that the reason for Netanyahu to do that is because he's actually sabotaging a deal.

00:10:57 Speaker_00
Sometimes they would not use these exact words, they would talk about seriousness, but others would say, you know, it's the responsibility of the government. And now we're not seeing that.

00:11:07 Speaker_00
We're not seeing the government speak at all about the terms of the deal. Even off the record, they're not briefing. Almost everything we know that is published comes from mainly Arab outlets.

00:11:18 Speaker_00
There are things that we do know, and I need to apologize to our listeners. I'm an Israeli citizen.

00:11:23 Speaker_00
I can't publish everything I know, not only because I want the hostages back and I want a deal to happen, but also because on some elements there is military censorship during war and specifically related to the hostage deal so that this deal could go through.

00:11:40 Speaker_00
So not everything we know we can say, which I know is annoying, but I need to recognize that. And basically this deal is much about Israel redrawing in some positions in the Gaza Strip. And it's a humanitarian deal.

00:11:54 Speaker_00
And that means that the people to be released from Hamas dungeons are first and foremost, the Israeli female soldiers that were taken captive on October 7th.

00:12:07 Speaker_00
Israelis that are over 50 that are held by Hamas and Israelis that have been severely wounded or are in bad shape medically speaking that will be released. It's a hundred hostages that Israel knows now that are being held by Hamas

00:12:26 Speaker_00
And I should say that dozens of these hostages are dead. And Israel knows this for sure.

00:12:32 Speaker_00
And some of these families have already said Shiva on these hostages because they've been notified by the IDF that the IDF knows because of intelligence that they're dead.

00:12:42 Speaker_03
As recently as last week, where we were about 10 days ago when they learned about Omer Nutra, for instance, an Israeli American. whose family and he were from the New York area. Parents thought he had been alive.

00:12:54 Speaker_03
It turns out they just recently learned that he was killed on October 7th.

00:12:59 Speaker_00
And some of these families, by the way, decided not to sit shiva on their loved ones and they're waiting for the funeral. They're waiting to get their bodies back.

00:13:10 Speaker_00
But others went through such a difficult process of acknowledging that their loved ones are dead and their bodies are held captive by Hamas. And still dozens and dozens of Israelis are alive.

00:13:24 Speaker_00
Let me just bring a quote from Enav Tsangawkyar, because I think our listeners should understand the state of mind. After that video that you mentioned became public, the prime minister gave Enav a call.

00:13:39 Speaker_00
and she spoke about this phone conversation afterwards and she said I understood from him and I'm quoting that unfortunately Israel is not going to go for a full-fledged deal.

00:13:53 Speaker_00
I asked him that this video of Matan will be screened in every cabinet meeting and I hope he will but he didn't answer me The prime minister told me that this is an interim deal, and that means that my son will be left there.

00:14:09 Speaker_00
And she used a much harsher word in Hebrew. She used the word in Hebrew as to what the government is going to do with her son. And she described this as a very difficult conversation with the prime minister.

00:14:22 Speaker_00
And she said the reason that the prime minister wants only an interim deal is because he wants to please his coalition partners out of political reasons.

00:14:32 Speaker_00
And it's true that in polls, most of the public again and again says that the decisions made, I'm talking about Channel 12 polls, if someone wants to look it up, says that the prime minister doesn't have the best interest of his country at heart when he makes these decisions.

00:14:50 Speaker_00
but his own political interests. This is the question, what do you think is leading the prime minister's decisions? And people can probably look it up using Google Translate. So this is a widespread approach in Israel.

00:15:02 Speaker_00
And after saying that, I should say again, that it seems now that there is much more seriousness with the Israeli side, but mostly that Hamas now very much weakened by what we have seen in the last two months.

00:15:18 Speaker_00
is agreeing to do things it didn't agree to do before. So I guess that the prime minister people would say, look, it was never about us. We understand the pain of the families. It was about Hamas.

00:15:29 Speaker_00
And if you want to know that this is true, look at the Biden administration. It's not that Netanyahu had such great relations with this White House. And even the Biden administration is saying it's the fault of Hamas.

00:15:43 Speaker_00
So I'm trying to represent that side of the prime minister argument.

00:15:48 Speaker_03
One official put it to me this way, that the challenge of the hostage negotiations, an Israeli official, have always been such that it's, unlike most negotiations, it really is a zero-sum game.

00:15:58 Speaker_03
They're zero-sum negotiations because Hamas ultimately wants to remain in power, and Hamas remaining in power is unacceptable to the government of Israel.

00:16:07 Speaker_03
Hamas wants to release as many dangerous hardened terrorists from Israeli prisons and have them flood into the West Bank so they can pose a threat to Israel. Israel wants to release the minimum number of those terrorists as possible.

00:16:22 Speaker_03
So it's all zero sum. And that in and of itself makes this negotiation strip away every other issue. At the end of the day, there is a zero sum aspect to these negotiations.

00:16:33 Speaker_03
So Hamas has to be persuaded that they still have a shot of staying in power when they do a hostage deal.

00:16:41 Speaker_03
And Israel's government has to be persuaded that they are effectively fooling Hamas into believing that they have a shot of staying in power in the context of a deal. When in reality, Hamas staying in power is just completely unacceptable, right?

00:16:57 Speaker_03
If you said to the Israeli public who are overwhelmingly supportive of a deal, if you said to the Israeli public, this deal will create a path towards Hamas staying in power in Gaza, it would be interesting to see what the polling looks like.

00:17:10 Speaker_00
Yeah, well, first of all, I wanna say something about Hamas staying in power. Hamas understands that it's not gonna formally stay in power in the Gaza Strip.

00:17:18 Speaker_00
What it wants to have is a sort of a Hezbollah model that's also defunct in recent months, but basically to be in control militarily of Gaza and run the show behind the scenes while having sort of a technocrat civil government that would be accepted by the world and legitimate.

00:17:38 Speaker_00
And of course, for Israel, this is the worst of all worlds. Hamas will rebuild its army and the world will say, Hamas is not in control of Gaza. You have this technocrat government and they're fine.

00:17:51 Speaker_00
And everybody will know that they're just, you know, just a puppet government of the Hamas lords of war that will run the show. Somewhat to the extent that Hassan Nasrallah managed Lebanon after he assassinated Rafiq al-Hariri.

00:18:06 Speaker_00
the former prime minister of Lebanon that was the strongman before Hezbollah decided to do so. But Hamas does understand that it is impossible for them to be formally the rulers of Gaza after October 7.

00:18:20 Speaker_00
And it's true that this is a problem with no immediate solution. I'll give you another problem there. Let's say that Israel says, yeah, we're willing to end the war and get all of our hostages back.

00:18:33 Speaker_00
Let's say that this is the position of the Israeli government. It changes its position and Hamas has to release all the hostages for that. Well, let's say they do. What prevents Israel then going in and then destroying what's left of Hamas?

00:18:48 Speaker_00
and sort of violating that agreement, which Israel signed with a terror organization in order to save the lives of people who were kidnapped in their pajamas from their homes.

00:19:00 Speaker_00
Is someone going to come in the Trump administration and say, hey, don't destroy this terror organization that has taken hold of the Gaza Strip again?

00:19:08 Speaker_00
So if you just think about that, you come to the conclusion that even for Hamas releasing all the hostages, is something that will be very dangerous for them to begin with.

00:19:19 Speaker_00
They always need to have some hostages there if they're going to go to any sort of an agreement. Now, in terms of ending the war, I should say that most of the Israeli public in consecutive polls

00:19:34 Speaker_00
supports ending the war for getting all the hostages back. So this is now the position of the Israeli public. They want to end the war in Gaza. By ending the war, it doesn't mean that anyone assumes that Hamas is going to be in control of Gaza.

00:19:49 Speaker_00
To your question, Diane, if you would put in ending the war and Hamas will take over Gaza again for a hostage deal, I think that would be a negative. But at any rate, you need to have one day after plan for Gaza.

00:20:04 Speaker_00
And I remember specifically one person who I really admire from a hostage family.

00:20:10 Speaker_00
I didn't ask his permission to name him, but he talked with me in the last six months again and again about the connection between having a day after plan and having a hostage deal.

00:20:24 Speaker_00
And that's because of the point you were making, Dan, you need to have some sort of a day after plan in order to think about a new order in Gaza, in which you can actually wrap this up somehow.

00:20:37 Speaker_00
And since we know that Hamas is going to be unfortunately still a grassroots movement within the Palestinian street.

00:20:45 Speaker_00
And since we also know that Israel doesn't want to have a military rule in Gaza, as far as I know for now, then without that, how do you get all the hostages back home? But there are much more tactical questions as to this specific deal.

00:20:59 Speaker_00
I'll give you just one. There is the Netzarim corridor, which is not a corridor anymore. It's a huge area that Israel has taken control of. Basically, all of the buildings there were destroyed.

00:21:12 Speaker_00
And if the proposal made by Netanyahu in May and the Biden proposal, which was the Netanyahu proposal, was that Israel is going to evacuate Netzerim and going to allow for Palestinians to return back to the north.

00:21:28 Speaker_00
And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people. And it's about returning to their land because their houses, many of their houses don't exist anymore due to the heavy fighting.

00:21:38 Speaker_00
And if this is going to happen, so how are you going to bring back the rest of the hostages if this is an interim deal? If this just is a phase one deal, you're going to hand over to Hamas the most important card you have.

00:21:52 Speaker_00
which is the control of the Nazarene corridor in exchange to getting the hostages, but it's not all the hostages, right? So how are you going to do that?

00:22:01 Speaker_00
And did Hamas maybe in those secret negotiations agree for Israel not to evacuate all the Nazarene corridor. And from what I understand, Hamas made some concessions there. that are positive for Israel and one of the reasons for this breakthrough.

00:22:17 Speaker_00
And then I remind our listeners about the Philadelphia Corridor, which is not there, but it's actually a very narrow strip of land on the Egyptian border between Gaza and Egypt that Netanyahu presented just a few months ago as something crucial, essential and critical to Israel's survival, not less, I have to say, with many Israeli generals saying it's not the case.

00:22:42 Speaker_00
And it is my understanding that Hamas is now willing for Israel to remain to an extent in that Philadelphia corridor. One of the explanations I made on your show is that the differences between the sides are not really very big.

00:22:55 Speaker_00
It's a very small area and, you know, it's about three outposts. Basically, it's about three outposts and you can reach an agreement there. So these are tactical questions.

00:23:06 Speaker_00
I can't answer all these questions in this conversation, but I can say that we are seeing movement of both sides. And even with that movement, it's still, you know, it begs the question, let's say that Israel gets back 15, 20 hostages alive.

00:23:23 Speaker_00
Hamas will still have a great number of hostages, greater than the number I just mentioned, alive, held by them. What does it mean about them?

00:23:33 Speaker_00
I'm talking about the young men, and not only young men that Hamas would still hold, about people like Mattan Sangauker, who was a civilian when he was captured. They are treating him as a soldier because he's just a young Israeli.

00:23:45 Speaker_00
So for them, any young male Israeli is a target and he's a soldier. What's going to happen with them? And how do you bring all of them back home if you don't have a vision?

00:23:56 Speaker_00
And of course, in the last two weeks, we had the IDF admitting that what happened to those grandfathers that died in Hanounis in Hamas captivity was a result of an IDF activity. it was bombing in the area.

00:24:13 Speaker_00
And what the IDF was saying is they were either shot during that activity and we didn't know that they were there. So of course, Hamas is responsible and Hamas is to blame.

00:24:25 Speaker_00
Or they might have suffocated as a result of that bombing, then shot afterwards. They were found six months later. They died in February. They were found in August. And for the Israeli public, this story is not a story of success.

00:24:41 Speaker_00
And I think we should acknowledge this. What happened with the hostages is a terrible wound for the Israeli society. And this wound is still sustaining more and more hits as time goes by, with every news now coming out of Gaza.

00:24:57 Speaker_00
So we had an operation to free some hostages, Operation Arnon that was successful. We had the first deal.

00:25:05 Speaker_00
I think that people who know Israel like yourself, Dan, know that Israelis are much more overjoyed by seeing hostages back home, whether they were freed by a commander unit or they were released as part of a deal.

00:25:21 Speaker_00
These are moments of victory for Israel, getting our sons and our daughters and our brothers and sisters And unfortunately, not our grandfathers, because they didn't survive this back home. And I said this, I'm going to say this again on your show.

00:25:37 Speaker_00
It's not about being sentimental. It's about the Israeli spirit. It's about the Israeli promise of solidarity, of Kol Yisrael, Arevim, Zeh Lazeh.

00:25:45 Speaker_00
It's about if you live in this neighborhood, you need to know that your government is going to do everything. And after more than 14 months,

00:25:53 Speaker_00
It's a very heavy burden for Israel to say, we have done everything, when the families of the hostages and people like Einar Tangauker are saying, you have not done everything, you know, facing this blame.

00:26:06 Speaker_00
And I should also say that some hostage families, and I don't want to downplay this, are very critical of this approach. This is like the Tikva Forum.

00:26:13 Speaker_00
So the Tikva Forum is another forum with the hostage families, somewhat smaller, the people involved, the families involved. And they're much more aligned with the positions of the prime minister.

00:26:23 Speaker_00
What they're saying, and I really think, you know, would be only decent to present this approach, is that these demonstrations only keep Hamas hopes up.

00:26:34 Speaker_00
they only make a deal go further away and be more remote, and that the only way to go forward is by employing force and then allowing Hamas to cave in. And that these demonstrations and this aggressiveness towards the Israeli government

00:26:53 Speaker_00
is actually giving false hopes to Hamas and they're maintaining much more strict positions because they have the fantasy that the Israeli public will break under the pressure of these demonstrations.

00:27:07 Speaker_00
And therefore it's a hundred percent damage to getting the hostages back. What they're also saying is we need to have a big deal.

00:27:16 Speaker_00
you know, an extended deal in which Hamas just surrenders the hostages and not pressure the prime minister the way that those public demonstrations are doing. And I think I presented the basic positions of the Tikvah Forum.

00:27:31 Speaker_00
This is really a problem from hell, Dan. This is a problem from hell. I talk with the hostage families and hostage families all the time, and they're doing their best to get their loved ones back home.

00:27:44 Speaker_00
And sometimes people abroad are saying, I see this, this is so damning for me. This is so terrible that, you know, you see this in international media, but you know, the demonstrations are against the Israeli government. It's against Netanyahu.

00:27:57 Speaker_00
And to that I answer, yeah, of course, because these are Israeli citizens. So they're making the demands to their government, but if they could make their demands to Hamas, they would do that too. And that's the reason it's a show of,

00:28:10 Speaker_00
both frustration and also, I'm saying this as a journalist who's publishing this, we know that there are political reasons and political elements into the Israeli decision making of the prime minister, including survival, that are involved with it.

00:28:27 Speaker_00
And the prime minister can deny as much as he can. I can bring specific examples of very targeted leaks that were made. from secret discussions as to Israel's minimum position in a deal, and that these leaks were meant in order to derail a deal.

00:28:43 Speaker_00
And we also know that there are coalition partners that are devoted to the idea that there will be no deal. And this is not me putting words into their mouths.

00:28:51 Speaker_00
Ben-Gurion is saying, you know, that he's gonna leave government if there's gonna be a specific deal. And, you know, Uri Stroke is saying, another minister is saying that she's against the deal. So this is what they're saying.

00:29:06 Speaker_00
And the fact that this became, you know, part of the Israeli discourse, that it's obvious that political reasons are part of the calculus of the Israeli decision making, political survival reasons of the coalition.

00:29:19 Speaker_00
So this could be denied by the Prime Minister, but at least one thing is for sure, the government didn't manage to persuade the Israeli public that it's trustworthy, or at least most of the Israeli public.

00:29:30 Speaker_00
And again, I hear what the Biden administration is saying and what Netanyahu is saying, and I don't want to misrepresent that.

00:29:37 Speaker_00
But at the end of the day, your job as a leader is also to convince the public, at least the majority of the public, you can't convince everyone, right? Convince them that

00:29:47 Speaker_00
you have the best interest of the country in mind, specifically when you have Israelis in the dungeons of Hamas dying. That's critical for the Israeli society. And I don't think that this weight has not been lifted by the government.

00:30:01 Speaker_03
To the extent, Nadav, that there's real negotiations happening right now and there's a real pathway, can you just put this in the context of the geopolitical developments we've been talking about specifically over the last few days and the ones I listed at the beginning of the conversation?

00:30:14 Speaker_00
Absolutely. But the general feeling in the region is that Hamas is now completely isolated. So the Hamas leadership abroad also is starting to feel the heat. And by starting, that's an understatement.

00:30:29 Speaker_00
And they see that the person elected president in the United States is threatening them for the first time and giving a timeline. And I wrote, when President Trump made that statement, I just wrote, hallelujah.

00:30:44 Speaker_00
And that's not because of him threatening to rain hell on Hamas. I don't know to what extent the US can actually do that. It's because the president of the United States came up with a deadline.

00:30:55 Speaker_00
That's so important because the only element here that matters is time. It's time that those hostages that have suffered more than any other Jew since the concentration camps and the death camps of World War II, it's time that they don't have.

00:31:12 Speaker_00
So the fact that he would say, don't wait up for me, do it before that. I expect this to be done. I think this brought a lot of energy and pressure there.

00:31:23 Speaker_00
And this pressure is both on, first and foremost on Hamas, but also on Israel and on the moderating countries like Egypt and Qatar. And Qatar has again, joined the negotiations. And that's also, I think a positive sign.

00:31:37 Speaker_00
And Jake Sullivan is traveling to the region this week. And I think that Jake Sullivan is not traveling to the region to discuss only the aftershocks of the fall of the Assad regime, although I'm sure this is going to be high up on the agenda.

00:31:51 Speaker_00
I think one of the reasons he's doing that is because the Biden administration wants to be credited for a possible deal that they, you know, honestly worked very hard to get and they didn't get until now.

00:32:03 Speaker_00
And I think they want to be part of this and we can have dramatic and positive developments coming in the next few days. Nadav, who are the Israelis dealing with on Hamas's side?

00:32:15 Speaker_03
And I know they're not directly dealing with Hamas. I know it's all done through intermediaries and interlocutors. But who are the officials on Hamas's side that are doing the negotiations, albeit indirectly?

00:32:27 Speaker_00
Okay, so the most important persona there is a man called Halil al-Hayya. And Halil al-Hayya is an official of Hamas that used to live, by the way, in Gaza. He's a radical, okay? So he was very much associated with Yahya Sinwar.

00:32:43 Speaker_00
And I remember one negotiator saying to me, when you talk with Halil al-Hayya, you actually are talking with Sinwar. And he is a deputy, I think formally, within the Hamas ranks of Sinwar.

00:32:59 Speaker_00
He used to live in Qatar and he was thrown out, at least officially thrown out of Qatar. I think within the Hamas ranks his underground name is Abu Usama. So this person is the main negotiator.

00:33:12 Speaker_00
And just to understand what I mean by that, just a few hours ago when we were speaking, a delegation of Hamas left Cairo after discussions with the head of the General Intelligence of the Egyptians.

00:33:27 Speaker_00
We have foreign reports, international reports, that names of specific hostages and prisoners are being discussed.

00:33:35 Speaker_00
And this is, if true, big if true, because that means that these are final elements of the deal to discuss the specific prisoners that would be released.

00:33:45 Speaker_00
And I want to say another something, because I presented many views during this chapter, but I didn't present actually mine. Mine is that It is the best political interest of the prime minister to get a phase one deal.

00:33:58 Speaker_00
I think that Netanyahu has a huge interest in getting at least a partial deal that returns at least some of the hostages back. this would not lead to the collapse of his coalition, specifically after he was joined by Gideon Saar.

00:34:13 Speaker_00
So he has a lot of buffer there in the coalition, even if Ben-Gurion leaves. And I'm not sure Ben-Gurion is going to leave for a partial deal. Ben-Gurion is big on talking. He's not big on actually doing things.

00:34:26 Speaker_00
And I think it's the best interest of the prime minister. So if I would have advised the prime minister politically, which I don't, I would have told him, go for at least a partial deal. Just politically, cynically speaking, I think it would be good.

00:34:39 Speaker_03
Gidon Tzar, who had been part of, his party had merged with Benny Gantz's party. They had joined, he technically had joined the government by virtue of Gantz. and Isenkot joining the war cabinet, and then Saar left.

00:34:51 Speaker_03
And then recently Netanyahu brought Gideon Saar back into the government in this most recent shakeup, which resulted in Gideon Saar becoming foreign minister. So that has actually had the effect of giving Netanyahu more of a cushion. in his majority.

00:35:05 Speaker_03
So one could argue that for critics of Netanyahu and his government, that this was very bad because now Netanyahu's government is even stronger. It has even more seats.

00:35:14 Speaker_03
It would take even more members of Knesset to leave the government in order to bring down the government. The other way to think about it is I think the point you're getting at is that it gives Netanyahu more balance.

00:35:24 Speaker_03
It makes it a more balanced coalition. He has more cushion, which takes away the leverage of Ben-Gurion and Smotrich because he's no longer so dependent on them.

00:35:32 Speaker_00
Yes, this is the political condition in which Netanyahu finds himself. But he actually, of course, engineered this. Netanyahu is really a genius in terms of political survival.

00:35:41 Speaker_00
And the fact that he managed to make friends with Gidon Saar, who was once an archenemy of Netanyahu, a former Likud senior member that really devised the downfall of Netanyahu and get him back to the coalition as a foreign minister.

00:35:57 Speaker_00
an important step towards a deal. So cynically looking at this, what has changed since May and July, since we had the negotiations and they failed? Well, a couple of things changed.

00:36:08 Speaker_00
First of all, the axis of resistance has been basically evaporated and Hamas is isolated. That's a political element. Another political element is now that Netanyahu can actually survive a deal and the government is not going to fall.

00:36:21 Speaker_00
But we're on the verge of a breakthrough. I'm saying this carefully, But we have more and more reports coming both from Hamas and from Israeli officials that conditions have matured into the possibility of a deal in a matter of a week or two.

00:36:37 Speaker_00
But the devil is always in the details. And I'm very interested at the terms of the deal. and the specific terms and the names. I'll give you just another example of a stumbling block on the road.

00:36:51 Speaker_00
So Hamas demanded that Israel will have no veto power on any of the names of the Palestinian mergers, terror activists they want to release from Israeli prisons. So no veto. Every name that they supply Israel, Israel needs to release.

00:37:07 Speaker_00
Israel said, absolutely not. You know, we're going to get 20, 30, 40, 50 veto names that we can veto.

00:37:16 Speaker_00
And we're not going to budge on that because we're not going to allow you to release specifically in the first phase of a deal, you know, the most heavy duty mergers that are in Israeli prisons. That's just one example.

00:37:29 Speaker_00
But on the other hand, you're seeing that there is a dynamic that is positive.

00:37:34 Speaker_03
Nadav, we'll leave it there. Thank you for this as always, and we promise not to come back to you to call us back within another 12 hour time frame. You get a little bit of a break.

00:37:43 Speaker_00
You can always call me back. I'm not sure I'm going to pick up the phone, but try that, Dan.

00:37:48 Speaker_03
My caller ID is dangerous if my name shows up. All right. Take care.

00:37:53 Speaker_00
Thanks, Dan.

00:37:58 Speaker_03
That's our show for today. Reminder to keep your eye out for that new cover art that you will start seeing in your feed in the Thursday episode. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alon Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom.

00:38:11 Speaker_03
Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sinor.