Lawfare Daily: Israel: Divided at Home and at War Yet Again

[Intro]

Natan Sachs: And you know, in recent months, if anyone asked me, is Netanyahu gonna fall? I said, probably not. But if he is, this is the context, the context of needing to pass a budget. He had to by law pass it by the end of March, and to do so, he had to get the ultra-Orthodox on board in that context.

Daniel Byman: It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, the foreign policy editor of Lawfare, and I'm speaking today with Natan Sachs. He is the director of the Middle East Program at the Brookings Institution.

Natan Sachs: The context of this war for Israelis and not without reason is much, much broader than Gaza, and that's without diminishing in any sense, neither the human suffering or the importance of both the Gaza question and the broader Palestinian question.

Daniel Byman: Today we're talking about Israel's tribulations at home and its wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and possibly Iran.

[Main podcast]

There's a lot going on in Israel right now. Much of the world is understandably focused on the renewed conflict in Gaza and bombings in Lebanon, but there's also a tremendous amount going on domestically with the budget, with judicial independence questions, and other very controversial issues.

Let's start domestically, but let me ask you, start with what you feel is the most important issue that is shaping Israeli domestic politics today, and then we will proceed from there.

Natan Sachs: Great thanks. I think you're, you're right. There was a lot of attention, of course, on domestic issues in Israel before Oct. 7, a very dramatic time, then a shift very understandably to everything that's been happening since. And now almost under the radar, the domestic upheaval has come back. So I can't actually point to any single event because there's so much, and I think what's very important is that they're tied together.

So the most recent events, number one, Netanyahu and his coalition managed to pass the state budget. That's been looming over them for a long time. It was due by the end of March, so this week, or the coalition, the government would have officially fallen by default. He avoids that; they passed it. Israel now has a budget for 2025, a few months late, and that is the main political hurdle he faced in staying in office. This means that he has a very good chance of remaining in office throughout this term, which is set to expire in the fall of 2026. So the threats to his term, especially after Oct. 7, were significant. He seems probably to have managed to have bested them, and now he will, he will probably be in office until then never say never, of course anything could happen, but this was the major hurdle.

And it tied in a second crisis that was looming, and that is the conscription of Orthodox men, Jewish ultra-Orthodox men into the military. They have been exempt especially since 1977 to a degree even before that. And that has always been a politically divisive, explosive issue, but now in the context of a war that is really stretching the manpower, the patience, the livelihood of so many reservists in Israel, stretching it very thin, it's become even more politically explosive, especially since there was, there is no legal basis, proper legal basis according to the courts for their exemption.

And therefore, the courts have demanded that the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, passed legal legislation that would allow this exemption to happen. This was something that the ultra-Orthodox parties have been demanding of Netanyahu in exchange for passing this budget. They have stepped back from that. They've passed the budget without clear legislation on that yet.

But I'd add to that two more, very important developments. We just saw the Israeli Knesset this week pass in final calling—so a third vote, which makes it final law—the politicization of the selection of judges in Israel, including Supreme Court Justices. This changes the composition of the committee that selects judges and gives more weight to politicians.

Now, in and of itself, of course this is not foreign, certainly to Americans where politicians, governors, presidents do select justices, but it’s, it's in the context of a very different constitutional framework. In the United States, any legislation by the House of Representatives—which is sort of the equivalent of the Israeli Knesset—has many, many hurdles before it comes, becomes law—has to pass the Senate; has to pass the presidential veto; it doesn't apply to states which have a lot of leeway on many different things. It also then confronts courts with a written constitution, and each one of these steps has a different constituency.

Well, in Israel, there is none. If the Knesset passes the law, there is only one check on that power, and that's the court, which is now more politicized now going forward.

And I'd add two more things. The government, the cabinet is now in serious conversation about firing the head of the Shin Bet, which is the equivalent of MI-5 in Israel, so sort of the FBI, although without the law enforcement aspect of it. And it's very influential, of course, also in the Palestinian territories, very influential in Gaza. It’s part of the failure of Oct. 7, and therefore politically very salient. And an attempt probably to fire the attorney general who is a civil servant and is the official legal interpreter for the cabinet, and therefore one of the first checks on cabinet decisions on administrative law.

All this very long answer, I'm sorry, put together means a turbocharging of what was the judicial revolution that and his cabinet were trying to push before Oct. 7. It's come back and not all elements of it certainly, but some elements, and now for the first time, one of the main elements is actual law.

Daniel Byman: Just to draw the connection, I think you're drawing, but I wanna make sure I'm right in that our listeners have it, that the passing of the budget required Netanyahu politically to go down the road of if you wanna call it judicial reform and firing some of the senior officials or these somewhat independent sort of, we wanna call them crises or issues, whatever term we wanna use.

Natan Sachs: Now they're somewhat independent. To pass the budget, what he really needed was to placate the ultra-Orthodox. And for that they care certainly about the judicial overhaul, but they care about that mostly in the context of conscription or non conscription of ultra-Orthodox men and of the continued funding by the state of religious institutions and the welfare aspects of ultra, the ultra-Orthodox community, which is a very poor community in Israel and very dependent on state funding.

And what the courts had done was said that you cannot fund institutions that have these men that should be conscripted unless there is a legal foundation for it. So if the Knesset passes a law saying they're exempt, then that would be legal. But without that, they could not.

Now Netanyahu is in a bind. He cannot pass that legislation 'cause even in his coalition there are many elements, both secular but also modern Orthodox who simply cannot politically do that when their young men are serving and dying in a very active war, and absolutely politically explosive. On the other hand, he cannot not do it because of the ultra-Orthodox partners, which are essential.

So managing to pass the budget for him was a major political coup, not completely unexpected. He's the magician of this and has done it many times before. Nonetheless, it's a major hurdle for him. And you know, in recent months, if anyone asked me, is Netanyahu gonna fall, I said, probably not, but if he is, this is the context. The context of needing to pass a budget. He had to by law pass it by the end of March, and to do so, he had to get the ultra-Orthodox on board in that context.

The return of the judicial overhaul in the judicial revolution, that is a second element, and that is much more in line with Netanyahu's own proclivity, but also the Minister of Justice, in particular Yariv Levin, long standing desire of theirs, turbocharged a certain degree by Trump and by the rise of similar sentiments in the United States, a much more centralized conception of power unencumbered executive, feeling that the deep state is somehow preventing the will of the people as Netanyahu sees it coming to, to exercise its, its electoral power.

I'll note of course that Netanyahu in the polls is underwater. Most Israelis do not want these steps and many other steps that he is doing. But that's polls and of course the only poll that really counts as an election, which he has probably managed to postpone.

Daniel Byman: So lemme ask on, on Ronen Bar then. Why did Netanyahu, why is he being dismissed?

Natan Sachs: So Ronen Bar is the head of the Shin Bet. As I said, he is the only name we know from the Shin Bet. Otherwise, the clean names are classified, and as I said, that's MI-5. The Mossad, which is more famous, that's the MI-6, the External Security Service.

The Internal Security Service, Shin Bet, is a very consequential one. It's extremely consequential for Palestinians. It has a major role in the military rule in the West Bank and aspects previously of, of dealing with the Gaza Strip and now even more so of course. He is clearly one of the men responsible for the failure on Oct. 7. And I say clearly also 'cause he has himself taken responsibility, but he has not yet resigned.

So the chief of the military and the head of the Shin Bet were the two civil servants, call 'em that, that were clearly implicated and they both said very early on we failed and we will resign or, or suggested they would resign. But it's clear that Ronen Bar also does not mean to resign necessarily before Netanyahu does, because Netanyahu was also in charge on Oct. 7. In fact, he was in charge of everyone.

And Ronen Bar and others have been calling for a national committee of inquiry, which is a, a well established tradition and legal construct in Israel that would inquire as one suggests, as a name suggests, and to all the different aspects of what went into this. 1973, the other historic example of a major intelligence and security failure, the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in Oct., Oct. 6, 1973—that was followed by a National Committee of Inquiry which was designed, pre-designed to exempt actually the political echelon, but that was not enough, and eventually the Prime Minister, minister of defense called, had to resign because of public pressure.

Now, Netanyahu has withstood very widespread calls and a very popular demand, very popular demand for a National Committee of Inquiry. And people like Ronen Bar have, have sort of been in the standoff with Netanyahu.

So Netanyahu's problem with Ronen Bar is multifold. First, there is the implicit criticism when Ronen Bar said it publicly—I should say. Ronen Bar reports directly to the prime minister, he, his boss is personally the prime minister himself, and so he has not made anything public like that.

However, Shin Bet is investigating a case of very close advisors, young advisors to Netanyahu himself, who were involved in an influence campaign to make Qatar, the state of Qatar look better. And Qatar is seen in Israel as a major—well, it is in fact not just seen, it is major funder of Hamas. It hosts Hamas leadership abroad and funded Hamas with Netanyahu's explicit acquiescence, allowing Qatari funding to come into the Gaza Strip ostensibly and to a certain degree, truthfully to support civil aspects of the Gaza Strip, but not solely so.

And as we saw, Hamas was able to build an enormous defensive and eventually offensive capacity in the Gaza Strip. And so that is explosive in Israel, and that is something that Shin is investigating. It, it has responsibility for counter intelligence.  This is in many people's eyes a background for, for the desire to fire him, but for Netanyahu it is very convenient to say the deep state and the Shin Bet is part of it, are responsible for Oct. 7; I, by extension, am not.

And sort of the tagline of that is they didn't wake me, which is the, the night between Oct. 6th and Oct. 7, 2023 there were intelligence signs, signals coming in the SBE and the IDF, the intelligence chief, but also the chief of staff of the military were on the phone at about 3:00 a.m. and they did not wake the Minister of Defense or the Prime Minister and that is Netanyahu’s ultimate defense. I'm not responsible for anything. I wasn't even woken. And the people who didn't wake me were exactly who reports to me and the chief of staff.

However, I'll just note that if Netanyahu appoints his own kind of person to the Shin Bet, that has immense powers, especially in a country that's officially legally in a state of emergency since 1948, where an agency that is not above the law but operates in a very different context of the law, like the Shin Bet, if he had a real loyalist there, much like the police is now extremely loyal to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of charge of them, it would be a very different environment and one that is very scary for demonstrators against Netanyahu—there are many of them in the street right now—and for anyone who's interested in a state not identifying enemies of the state where they aren't.

Daniel Byman: So that's pretty depressing. So I'm, I'm hoping you're gonna cheer me up with your answer to the next question. Explain why the attorney general is also in the spotlight.

Natan Sachs: No, I will not cheer you up. I think these are very, very troubling times. It's overshadowed somewhat by Turkey and of course by many things in my view that are happening in the United States. But, but they, it is of the same family. It's about consolidation of power within the executive and especially around one personality, one individual. In the United States and Turkey and Israel, the name of the top executive is central to absolutely everything we say. You cannot speak of Turkish politics today without starting and ending with the name Erdogan. The same is true elsewhere, and that's happening in Israel.

So the attorney general is unlike the United States, not a politician and appointed by the cabinet, but she in this case, had to be approved by a committee that vetted her qualifications as a civil servant qualified for it. So it cannot be the brother of the president, the younger brother of the president, as the United States has had, or the his favorite attorney general from one of the states, although perhaps he's qualified in this context.

But it has traditionally been a very distinguished jurist and the level of qualification has been defined as someone who could serve on the Supreme Court. So it needs to be someone who would be qualified to be appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court, and many of them, in fact, have gone on to serve as justices and even presidents of the Supreme Court.

The most famous president of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, who was sort of the boogeyman of the judicial overhaul, the man behind judicial activism—very controversial also in legal circles in that context, but considered, widely considered a brilliant kind of jurist whether you agreed with him or not. Aharon Barak had previously been the attorney general; he was the attorney general, for example, drafting the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt or, or helping in the early stages of that with another future attorney general also present there, Elyakim Rubinstein, who went on to the Supreme Court as well.

The current attorney general was appointed by the Naftali Bennett-headed government. The minister of justice at the time was actually Gideon Sa’ar, who has flipped and now has now joined Netanyahu in joining the Likud. In fact, after swearing, he would never support. Netanyahu is now very much firmly in Netanyahu's camp that has helped Netanyahu pass the budget that I mentioned before and made his coalition much safer.

They are now turning on the attorney general. She represents the deep state. She is unelected, although appointed by the, by the cabinet. She is also the one who has to say no. Her job is to say these are the limits that the law applies to any specific case. She's the interpreter, the legal interpreter for the cabinet.

There have been many people, sometimes with reasonable cause saying that her job is too complicated. It is both prosecutor general—there is someone under her call the prosecutor general, but she's the head of the prosecution—and she's also the legal advisor to the cabinet, and she's also the legal interpreter for the cabinet, therefore, both defending the cabinet in court, but also limiting it.

There can be a serious conversation about that, should that be broken up in the context of a wider judicial or legal overhaul, but that is not the context we're in. The context we're in is that she represents the limits, the encumbrance to executive power. And therefore she's a target, and therefore she's also become a hero for many of the demonstrators those who oppose Netanyahu are on the streets as we record this right now, people are in the streets of Tel Aviv, and we'll be going up to Jerusalem already today, but especially tomorrow and Sunday, there'll be she, she's very central to the story.

Again, if, if the cabinet appoints someone much more favorable to their point of view. Then the first and major legal hindrance to their actions will be removed. It'll then rely almost completely on the Supreme Court to intervene, but in a very different context than before.

Daniel Byman: Let me just ask you very briefly about the demonstrators. Does it matter? I mean, obviously Netanyahu is, you know, a controversial figure. There are demonstrations, there were demonstrations before.

Is this simply, you know, people who are politically not very important, expressing their opinions and politically life will go on for Netanyahu and the government and, you know, whatever is causing Netanyahu to stay in power or for that matter to fall, the demonstrators aren't gonna matter much or is it much more consequential?

Natan Sachs: It's a bit of a philosophical question, right? So let, let me answer in the most immediate sense. It matters a lot less than it did once upon a time.

I mentioned 1973. 1973, Golda Meir leading the cabinet, appointed a National Commission of Inquiry. They, they wrote the terms of that commission very explicitly to investigate what the military got, and the intelligence got wrong, not the cabinet. And unsurprisingly, that's what the commission found. The commission found that the military had, and especially the intelligence had got it wrong.  

But then one reservist, his name is Motti Ashkenazi. He commanded the one outpost in the very north of what was known as the bale line, so that was the line that Israel held on the Suez Canal facing the Egyptian military. And the Egyptians overran that, that line only one station of the very north held it was very hard to reach, so the Egyptians didn't reach it, and he came back and he started a one-man demonstration holding a sign and demanding a serious inquiry.

And because of the gravitas of here's a man coming from the front line, had lost many of his friends—the unit my father served in, I should say, although he was not in Israel at the time—that held a lot of weight and it led to much bigger demonstrations and it led to Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan resigning.

We are very far from those days. Netanyahu has no intention of appointing any commission of inquiry, and he has simply discovered that the demonstrations while very bad, he can ignore them, or he thinks he can ignore them. So in the immediate sense, it will not bring down the cabinet. It will not change the minds of anyone in the coalition.

I think I've said this on one of these podcasts before, but in 2019, someone, me, wrote an article titled, “The End is Nigh for Netanyahu,” and that foolishly titled article—and I, I have to take responsibility, I actually suggested a very similar title to the editors—I got it completely wrong and what I got wrong there that the context then was that Netanyahu was about to be indicted. It was announced that he will be indicted with criminal charges. And I thought that Netanyahu won't resign on his own accord, but that people around him, this crosses enough lines with enough precedent, including Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor that they will force him to resign.

In other words, that shame and this sense of this is not done, whether he is guilty or not, whether he believes he's guilty or not, that a Prime Minister cannot serve while being on trial for criminal charges and the people around him will force him to resign. I was completely wrong. And I was wrong, the the core reason I think is, is because that sense of shame. That sense of sort of norms is just very different these days, and I think that's true not only in Israel. It's a very soft element of democracy and a functioning state, but it actually is an extremely consequential one, and that applies here too.

So the demonstrations, they're not gonna cause Netanyahu or anyone in this coalition to change their mind. However, they do demonstrate to Israelis, to the demonstrators themselves and to anyone still serving in the civil service, that the, the public is at the very least, extremely and deeply divided over this, and then Netanyahu does not have some overwhelming support, and in fact, he is underwater in the polls, as I said, and most people oppose many of these steps; they're unpopular, certainly anything to do with conscription.

And so I do think in the long term they are very important and they would lay the groundwork for any future government to understand that the public mood is in a very different place and it is a warning sign to anyone interested—and there are many people interested, including in the government and public service—of understanding just how damaging this is, where the very deep sense of commonwealth of mutual assurance in Israel is, is being broken. It's being undermined by its own government, and the consequences of that are very deep.

It's not the demise of Israel. I think there are many who think that Israel's about to disappear because of this, that's not the case, but it is, it can be very deeply damaging. And the demonstrations I think are very important as a major warning sign about this, that even if they don't bring down this coalition, will be very consequential in the slightly longer term.

Daniel Byman: Let's shift gears or at least directions a little bit and talk of course about what is dominating U.S. headlines, which is the return of conflict in Gaza, return of conflict in Lebanon, and is there any connection between what's going on domestically and the, if we wanna say renewal of war? There are kind of different terms we can use, but the fact that Israel is, again, in military operations, especially in Gaza, but also in Lebanon.

Natan Sachs: So the short answer is yes, although it's a, it is a slightly convoluted answer, but I think it's very important.

I'll just distinguish first between Lebanon and Gaza. So in Lebanon there, there is certainly fighting, but it is very different. There, official Lebanon, the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel and the United States are not as at odds as it might seem. Much of the Israeli operations there, of course, Lebanon is unhappy about them, but they are still within the context of the ceasefire, which is not completely public, and which allowed Israel a lot of leeway for any remnants of Hezbollah and any attempts—not remnants, Hezbollah still exists—but, but of existing forces of Hezbollah to try and return south and to reestablish their capacity to attack, to attack Israel.

 That is sort of longstanding and includes a quite a bit of leeway to, for Israel and with a very different government in Lebanon—which is certainly not pro-Israeli in any regards and would like Israel out of there, but is also not beholden to Hezbollah as previous governments are—so a very different context. And in the Israeli public, which relates to your question, noncontroversial.

So in the context of Lebanon, Israelis, there's not much debate on whether Israel should be doing this or not. There's a sense that Israel has to be extremely vigilant. It cannot allow his battle to build itself up again. And and so that's not controversial.

The Gaza context is very different. At the very beginning–I'm sure I said this also on a Lawfare podcast—Israel set out two sort of paramount objectives for its war. You've written about this too, Dan. To remove Hamas as the governing force and fighting force of Gaza and to release all the hostages.

And from the very start, it was clear to all of us that there's a deep tension between the two objectives because for Hamas, their main card that they held, their main, the main leverage that they had was the hostages. So long as they held them, Israel was ostensibly limited to a certain degree or had to be careful to a certain degree, much less so than Hamas thought; Israel was willing to go much more forcefully than Hamas thought it would with the hostages. But that remains in Israel too, extremely controversial, which is the paramount objective.

Now, to be clear, Israelis by and large are very supportive of both objectives. They believe Israel cannot live, live with Hamas governing a statelet alongside it as it did on Oct. 6, and therefore preparing for Oct. 7. But for many of them, and I would say most of them, they prioritize first returning the hostages, even if that includes enormously painful concessions, concessions to Hamas, but with the belief that the, the war is not over with Hamas in the long term.

There's a paradox here. Of course, Hamas knows this, right? So Hamas will not, will not accept something less than allowing it to, to continue—damage to Gaza be damned—and Netanyahu is interested in continuing the war to take down Hamas and deprioritizing the hostages and the remaining hostages—59 now, including deceased ones—much more than many Israelis do. So if you look at Israeli polls, there's a strong majority in favor of continuing to cease fire in the context of bringing back the hostages, which is what Israelis truly care about deeply. Of course, there are also those who disagree and there are many who would like to then also try to remove Hamas.

So this is very controversial, and it's been tied into a certain degree, it's become almost coterminous with anti Netanyahu demonstrations. I'm not sure it's helpful necessarily to the cause of the hostages, but it has become correlated with it. Netanyahu is the, is is the one less inclined to continue the the ceasefire and get a deal than others pushing more for it. I'll just note, of course, it's not only up to Netanyahu, it's up very much the Hamas as well, and so that often, lets, lets him off the hook, which it has in many times in the past.

But this is deeply controversial in Israel and some of the hostages, hostage families have become very prominent public figures and treated in ways that you would, apropos shame, would never have seen in Israeli society before—kicked out violently sometimes from the Knesset in demonstrations, treated in ways that bereaved families, families of hostages would never have been treated in the Israeli ethos. And now they are seen as opposition forces when their real crime is that their family members were murdered and abducted on Oct. 7, under the watch of this government.

Daniel Byman: Talk me through the logic then of Netanyahu renewing war in Gaza when hostages were being released, right, and it was supposed to move to phase two. The hope was that as part of phase two, we would see continued hostage releases. That may come back of course, but for now at least it's, you know, we're not gonna see hostage releases. So how do you get from strong public demand for hostage release to the government—I don't know if it's fair to say undermining it—but certainly setting back that goal while pursuing, going after Hamas? What's the political logic of that?

Natan Sachs: So it's twofold giving full credit, which is not deserved, but giving full credit to the sort of calculation that as Netanyahu has here, you could say there the best way to get to a reasonable, even interim deal that would extend phase one, which is sort of the immediate goal that also the American negotiator Steve Witkoff has put forward. For that, Hamas has to believe that there is real, genuine damaging pressure coming its way. If it thinks, the ceasefire is just unending and Israel's not interested in ever going back. Then it will toughen its stance and it won't release hostages. So there's that argument.

Added to that, there is a new chief of staff I mentioned, the chief of staff from Oct. 7, Herzi Halevi, resigned. The new chief, chief of staff Eyal Zamir was not implicated on Oct. 7. He was in civilian clothing then, and he is taking a tougher stance as often would be the case with a new chief of staff, and believing that a much more forceful approach will succeed.

I'll add to that, that the Biden administration, which was overall extremely supportive of Israel throughout this war, was also very concerned about humanitarian aspects and trying to limit some aspects of Israeli warfare. The Israelis are hearing none of that from the Trump administration, so there's a complete free hand in that regard.

So for Netanyahu, there is the argument that even if you want a short-term agreement, the best way to do that is to apply pressure and, and then come to terms if you can. But there's also a deeper sort of strategic question. You and I have both written about this since Oct, 7, I think, at the macro level, one of his biggest failures, and I think there are many, but one of, but one of his biggest is lacking any clearly articulated strategy for the vaunted day after, or for, for what is the political aim in the Gaza Strip that follows from a military victory.

And he has constantly been speaking about total victory, but besides killing every last Hamas operative—which is technically impossible anyway—what actually is a strategic goal? You can bring down Hamas. You don't have to kill every last Hamas operative, but you do. You can bring down Hamas, but only if you are putting some kind of structure in its place. And he has not spelled out what that structure is in any realistic terms.

Add to that, that the far right members of his coalition are deeply invested in this war continuing, and some of them have very extreme and very expensive ideas for what would happen in the Gaza—delighted by the idea of ethnic cleansing that the president of the United States raised and were raised and then sort of took back and said, involuntary, not voluntary—and of course some of them, not many, but some of them interested also in renewing Israeli Jewish settlements in the Gaza ship. Most of the coalition is not for that.

So Netanyahu to my best reading, he staunchly objects to the idea of the Palestinian authority based in Ramah, the secular Palestinian authority taking power or playing a major role in the Gaza Strip. And he therefore doesn't really see any, he doesn't offer any alternative. What's left is essentially return of Israeli occupation as it existed before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, and even more so before the Israel Israeli partial withdrawal from the cities in 1994 or 95. And so we're talking about resumption of, of direct Israeli occupation, that's kind of where it's leading at the moment. Doesn't mean we'll necessarily get there; a lot depends on the Trump administration, on the hostages.

You asked about the public pressure. There is the public versus the coalition, but I'll also say, although Netanyahu is an extremely political animal and I tend to look at much of what he does within that context, he's not only that, he also does, I think, view this moment as a, correctly, as a momentous one in Israel's history in the region's history, and from his own point of view, I think a moment to erase Oslo, to erase things that he always objected to. The creation of the Palestinian authority was a product of Oslo. Netanyahu was vehemently opposed to Oslo as head of the opposition. When he became prime minister, before he was elected, he'd said he'd respect any international agreement Israel signed, including Oslo, but he always objected to it.

And so if you ask me what is his goal here, really, I believe that is taking over the Gaza Strip That does not mean that's, that's not the end of history; that's not the final moment of what might happen next, and it doesn't necessarily mean settlements—but that is at least where it leads at the moment.

Daniel Byman: Let me ask you another kind of, I'll say, big framing question as we go forward. One thing that Israeli leaders talked about for many months during the latter part of the, of the recent wars was that this isn't a Hamas vs. Israel conflict. This is an Iran versus Israel conflict. And that Hamas, Hezbollah, various entities that Iran supports are being directed by Tehran, and this is part of a much broader campaign.

Is that framing still there, and what does this mean for possible Israel around confrontation in, in the coming months or, or longer?

Natan Sachs: Yeah, I think this is a very important point. I think you know, there are two very sort of vehemently held points of view. One is that the Palestinian question is the core issue of all Middle Eastern affairs. And the other, which some Israelis aspire to, is that it's completely marginal, it's not a major issue. It's actually about something else completely.

I'll save you the suspense. I think both are true. The Palestinian issue is extremely important and also motivating for many people in the Middle East. And of course, it is not remotely the only issue in the Middle East nor the sole question of Israel and its neighbors. Iran vs. Israel is at least as consequential.

And one way to to see that is if you look at this war, it's often called, especially in Israel, the Seven Front War. So besides Gaza, it’s also Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran, directly and to a certain degree, the West Bank. And even in the West Bank, in all these contexts, it is Iran related. So in the West Bank it's Iranian money, literally sometimes buying operations from local organizations or gangs. In Syria, it's militias tied to Iran, in Iraq, of course, in in Lebanon, Hezbollah, in Yemen, it's the Houthis. In other words, everywhere. Iran has a serious foothold, you saw active and sometimes extremely bloody war. And everywhere did not Jordan, Egypt, other places, you simply did not see the same thing. And in that context, it is, I think obvious and correct to to say that at least to a large degree, this is an Iran v. Israel war, although of course the Israeli-Palestinian aspect is major.

Now, needless to say, the Israelis view that, the Israelis not only fear Iran, but see Iran's fingerprints and almost anything in the Middle East regarding them—and not without cause, I should say—and therefore view this war in that context. Already on Oct. 8, Hezbollah had joined the fight. Had Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and Gaza, been more strategic about this, he may have been able to orchestrate a truly multi-front war where, where Hezbollah is actually invested in fighting it full on, and it would've been a very, very different reality for Israel.

But as it turned out, Israel was far better prepared for Hezbollah, not only than it was for Hamas, of course. But also then most of us understood Israel had actually been extremely well prepared. The pagers is sort of the most famous aspect of it, but it's only one aspect. Israel had been able to infiltrate from an intelligence and operations perspective Hezbollah operations and Iranian was able to hit devastating blows at Hezbollah, decapitate, not just Nasrallah, it's head, but its whole upper echelon. And in Iran, strike in Iran twice overtly over Iranian airspace, taking out much of its air defenses.

Since then, the fall, the Assad regime has dealt another blow to the Iranian access, and that is tied to the weakening of Hezbollah. It is not unrelated. And subsequently, Israel, almost immediately taking out the Russian and advanced air defenses that the Syrian military had. As a result, Iranian airspace and Iranian facilities are far more vulnerable than they were in the past, both because Israel can fly over Syria with much more ease on their way, but also because Iranian defenses themselves have been deeply damaged by Israel—I imagine they're trying to rebuild them—but in particular the radars of the air defenses in Iraq.

All this to say that the context of this war for Israelis and not without reason is much, much broader than Gaza, and that's without diminishing in any sense, neither the human suffering or the importance of both the Gaza question and the broader Palestinian question.

From the Israeli perspective, this clear win so far against the Iran axis—much more complicated than Gaza since there's no alternative, but to Hamas—but in the Iran case, a clear victory, a very different position than Israel was prior to this war, especially with the, the destruction that Israel brought on Hezbollah is extremely consequential and really changes its position regionally.

But it of course is no guarantee for the future. Hezbollah will try to rebuild. Iran, obviously will try to rebuild its capacity. It also still has a, not only active nuclear program, but also is much closer to constructing a bomb if it shows to do so than it was in the past. In terms of fissile material and other elements, it is extremely close. It's almost a threshold state, essentially.

So the temptation and the logic of trying to strike the military facilities is there. I would not be surprised if there's an Israeli strike, much less surprised than I would've been in the past, partly because the deterrent that Iran had mostly in the form of Hezbollah, and secondarily in the form of ballistic missiles from Iran itself. Both of those have been damaged dramatically by Israel and also proven to be ineffective in actual, as an actual deterrent.

Big questions remain. First of all, would it happen? It depends, also on the United States, of course, will a green light be given by Washington? It's quite likely, but it depends on whether Trump manages to get a deal with Iran, which he's also interested in. And the second question, would a Trump led America join in the fight? And if a deal is not forthcoming between the United States and Iran, on, on the nuclear question, which Trump explicitly is, is after, he has also suggested that is in the cards as well.

So the stakes are very high and I think it's quite possible. In one respect, the Iranian deterrence, the Hezbollah deterrence, they are not as high as they used to be. You could see a strike with Iran, less capable to strike back in the short term, and therefore less devastating more from the Israeli perspective. What they do in terms of the nuclear program after, in the day after a strike there is, is a second question in a much more complicated one.

Daniel Byman: Natan. Thank you so much. This has been a fantastic I'll say overview of everything going on for Israel, unfortunately for the world. I think we may have to have you back soon to, to do an update because I know that a lot's gonna change in the next few months and if the past is any guide, probably not for the better. But thank you very much for joining us,

Natan Sachs: Dan. Thank you very much for having me. It's, it's very rarely good news, but I'm always very happy to speak to you nonetheless.

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