| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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This fall, Ceasefire, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| And we welcome back to the program David McCofsky. | ||
| He's a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute here in D.C., focusing on Arab-Israel issues, Middle East peace. | ||
| Mr. Makofsky, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in D.C. this week. | ||
| Lots on the table for him to talk about with President Trump. | ||
| What sort of expectations did you have coming in to this week of meetings? | ||
| And what do you think will come from it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, this could be a rolling picture. | |
| I wouldn't be surprised if they do another round or two rounds this week. | ||
| There's like three live wires kind of that they have to deal with, different baskets. | ||
| One is obviously the Gaza ceasefire question and the release of hostages and all that is connected to that. | ||
| Second is the whole issue of Iran in the wake of the U.S. attacks on Ford and the like, which is how do they envisage future, will there be negotiations with Iran about their nuclear program or not? | ||
| Or will there be repeated bombings by Israel? | ||
| I don't think anyone envisages the United States getting more involved in this. | ||
| And the third is the question of opportunities regionally for what they call expanding the Abraham Accords, which is something that Trump started in his first term, which is a series of peace normalization deals between Israel and Arab states. | ||
| And what could be done with things that people couldn't even imagine in Washington a year ago, which is could there be a non-belligerency with the new Syria? | ||
| It's not the Syria that was under Iran's thumb. | ||
| Could there be some arrangements with the new Lebanon, which seemed fantastical to even consider when it was under Iran's thumb and under Hezbollah? | ||
| These are things that are now in play. | ||
| So I would say three different baskets. | ||
| They have to sort through all of them. | ||
| Let me start on that first basket. | ||
| How do you go? | ||
| What's the path from ceasefire to peace in Gaza? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, that's a great question. | |
| And the truth is that no one knows 100%. | ||
| I mean, the plan now is to do a 60-day ceasefire where you would release half of the living hostages, which is about 10 of the 20. | ||
| And it's a hellish situation for anyone who's left there, of course. | ||
| There's also another 38 dead bodies that they're trying to retrieve. | ||
| 18 would come out in the 60 days. | ||
| And the question is, if during this 60-day cooling off, could there be some understandings beyond the 60 days? | ||
| Could there be a transition for a day after, so to speak, in a post-Hamas Gaza? | ||
| And that is a huge question, which I'm happy to discuss with at length. | ||
| What do both sides say they need to get to that peace? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, basically, It's the right question because right now the problem is that all the negotiations seem very binary in that Hamas says, well, I know it's after 60 days. | |
| Israel's out of Gaza. | ||
| And Israel says, well, I know what's after 60 days. | ||
| Hamas is out of Gaza. | ||
| So is there some situation that both are out of Gaza? | ||
| Could there be, if Hamas really is disarmed, will there be the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank? | ||
| Could they come in? | ||
| Could there be Arab governments and security forces that would provide economic assistance to help start a reconstruction process and to alleviate a lot of the misery in Gaza? | ||
| I mean, these are questions. | ||
| And right now, each side has been very binary, saying, we know what has to happen. | ||
| You have to leave. | ||
| And until they solve that impasse, you know, negotiations in Doha, which we hear Steve Woodcoff, the president's Middle East envoy, is going to now, you know, seem very limiting because they could agree on 60 days, but they can't agree much beyond that at this point. | ||
| Staying on Gaza for another minute. | ||
| In Gaza, this is the headline from the Washington Post front page. | ||
| In Gaza, a fatal rush for aid in hot zones. | ||
| U.S.-backed relief project routes crowds through militarized landscape. | ||
| It's a story about an investigation they did into the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. | ||
| What is that for folks who don't know? | ||
|
unidentified
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Look, this is a huge point, and it's good that you're raising it. | |
| Look, it's clear that what Israel has seen is that it sees that the UN trucks are being hijacked by Hamas, and they're selling things on the black market to keep Hamas going. | ||
| And so Israel's conclusion is Hamas not just embeds itself in a civilian population, the only army that wears a uniform during a ceasefire and takes them off during the fighting, but that they're using the aid in order to maintain their control over the Palestinian people. | ||
| And so what the U.S. and Israel try to do is, what about if you created a different type of an aid, which was protected by a private security company and which would be focused both largely in the south but also in the north, that would not be hijacked by Hamas. | ||
| And they, you know, they will say we have distributed over 50 million meals to Gazans. | ||
| But there are organizations that say, yeah, but the security situation around it isn't good because people are rushing the aid and the security system isn't ready for that. | ||
| Others will say, no, Hamas is firing at these people because they don't want to see an alternative humanitarian aid distribution program. | ||
| So what we have is different versions. | ||
| Journalists are trying to get at the heart of this. | ||
| But there's differences. | ||
| I would say to your question, though, John, that at the core of this idea is that Israel is clearly trying to look at southern Gaza, the area between Khan Yunis and Rafa, as a kind of with this thing called the Morag corridor between there and the Egyptian border as a Hamas-free zone. | ||
| That's to say, anything there are people who've been vetted. | ||
| They are not out to kill anyone. | ||
| Again, hard to do because Hamas doesn't wear uniforms. | ||
| And so that's at the heart of the fight in Doha, too, in the negotiations, is this zone going to be expanded as a no-go zone for Hamas and aid could be distributed freely or not? | ||
| This is what they're discussing there. | ||
| David McCoffsky is our guest of the Washington Institute, a distinguished fellow there taking your phone calls this morning as we go through a lot of issues related to Middle East peace, the U.S., Iran, Israel. | ||
| And I want to move to Iran. | ||
| There's been questions in this country about the effectiveness about the U.S. strikes in Iran. | ||
| With Benjamin Netanyahu in town, what has he said about the effectiveness of strikes? | ||
| What have Israeli intelligence officials told Israelis about the effectiveness of those strikes? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that the tone coming out of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission has been that the program has been set back a great amount. | |
| Now, how much is a great amount? | ||
| Is it years? | ||
| I mean, you know, this is all being debated. | ||
| I think the big issue is where's a stockpile of what's called 60% enriched uranium. | ||
| It's about 400 kilo, 908 or something pounds of enriched uranium that at a certain point, if there is a reconstituted program, that would be used. | ||
| I think it's pretty clear. | ||
| I mean, the president likes to use the word totally obliterated. | ||
| These words are going to be debated. | ||
| But I think it's clear that the big facilities, Ford, Natan's, Isfahan, which is the conversion plant, that those areas have, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency that is supposed to be the reputed expert, they have undergone severe, severe damage. | ||
| So how many years, you know, we could debate it, but I do think there's no comparison to what was now. | ||
| So it is a historic moment. | ||
| And the question is, how do you seize upon that moment to create more stable arrangements going into the future? | ||
| And that's why the issue of negotiations with Iran has come up. | ||
| Will they agree to talk to the international community, to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Atomic Energy Agency on the basis of zero enrichment and surrendering their stockpile? | ||
| Those are the big questions. | ||
| And I think Netanyahu is saying, okay, I'll back off. | ||
| I'll back off. | ||
| But I want to see that this isn't just a time-wasting exercise. | ||
| Talk to them. | ||
| Trump claims last night that the Iranians asked for a meeting and Steve Witkoff said, well, I'll meet them in a week or so, I think was the direct quote. | ||
| So we'll see if those negotiations bear fruit. | ||
| Some people think, no, they just want to waste time and Israel is going to be back at it. | ||
| But I don't think the United States isn't going to be in the picture anymore. | ||
| From our perspective, Ford was unique because only the B-2 bomber and something called the MOP, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, could hit Ford. | ||
| But now that it's been hit, I mean, Israel did 95% of the work in this war anyway. | ||
| I don't expect the United States is going to be involved again. | ||
| Benjamin Netanyahu seemed optimistic that negotiations would bear fruit to the point where he nominated Donald Trump apparently for a Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| Here's that moment from yesterday's meeting between President Trump and the Prime Minister. | ||
| President has an extraordinary team, and I think our teams together make an extraordinary combination to meet challenges and seize opportunities. | ||
|
unidentified
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But the President has already realized great opportunities. | |
| He forged the Abraham Accords. | ||
| He's forging peace as we speak in one country and one region after the other. | ||
| So I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. | ||
| It's nominating you for the peace prize, which is well deserved. | ||
|
unidentified
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And you should get it. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| This I didn't know. | ||
| Well, thank you very much. | ||
| Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful. | ||
| Thank you very much, Bibi. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for everything you're doing. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David Makofsky, what is that exchange? | ||
| Thank you very much, Bibi. | ||
| What does that say about the relationship between these two men? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, look, I think Netanyahu and Trump have had some rough times. | |
| I mean, he congratulated President Biden when he won his victory in November 2020. | ||
| And then the president, you know, former president at the time, Trump, refused to speak to Netanyahu for the next almost four years as a result. | ||
| I think Netanyahu is sometimes a bit unsure. | ||
| He sometimes feels on eggshells. | ||
| Sometimes they're very close. | ||
| But I think sometimes this kind of gesture or a gesture where he gave him a gold-plated beeper after the whole Hezbollah strike last year is that he's looking for ways to sometimes ingratiate himself with this president. | ||
| But by the way, almost all the foreign leaders do the same thing, except for Zelensky. | ||
| And I think that was a kind of a cautionary tale that no foreign leader wants to get on this president's bad side. | ||
| So if, you know, Ty goes to the runner here that they feel if it's a question of what to do, it's to try to ingratiate themselves with this president. | ||
| Plenty more we can talk about, but let me bring in viewer calls. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independence 202-748-8002. | ||
| We've got about 35, 40 minutes left with David Makofsky of the Washington Institute. | ||
| This is Max out of Silver Spring, Independent, Silver Spring, Maryland, I should say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| So I'd like to bring up the civilian death toll in Gaza since October 7th. | ||
| I think it's pretty clear. | ||
| I think we all understand that bombing civilians does not get rid of a terrorist organization. | ||
| In fact, bombing civilians, making them hopeless and living in despair for so long is what allowed Hamas, the terrorist organization, move in. | ||
| That's what they do. | ||
| They take advantage of those situations. | ||
| And I think Netanyahu has taken advantage of this situation, of the fact that Hamas exists to do the ethnic cleansing on the Arab people in Gaza. | ||
| It's also continuing in the West Bank, which we don't hear a lot about, but it's happening there too. | ||
| And I know you're going to bring up October 7th, and that's certainly fair. | ||
| But you also have to think about what the Zionists and what Israel has been doing to the Arab population there in the region since before the creation of Israel. | ||
| And I'd like for you, sir, to talk about why bombing civilians, killing 50,000 men, women, and children indiscriminately is going to get rid of Hamas. | ||
| Everybody knew that. | ||
| Wasn't it? | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| David Makofsky, give you a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, well, thank you very much. | |
| First of all, look, I've devoted my life to Israeli-Palestinian peace. | ||
| I believe in coexistence. | ||
| I've written books. | ||
| I'm very much identified kind of with the two-state solution. | ||
| I want dignity for both sides. | ||
| There's a terrible tragedy. | ||
| If one innocent person dies, it's one too many. | ||
| The question here is, that's why there needs to be a day after. | ||
| There needs to be a way out. | ||
| The figures of the Hamas-based Gaza Health Ministry, I think, are in question. | ||
| How many of those people are fighters? | ||
| The Hamas Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. | ||
| Is the number 30,000 fighters and whatever the number is, there's still civilians who are suffering. | ||
| I think we have to know that. | ||
| This is, like I said, this is not a state-to-state conflict where these people have thought a winning combination for them is to embed themselves in a civilian population. | ||
| I totally reject the idea of genocide and these kinds of arguments because genocide means you need intent. | ||
| I mean, the IDF has always dropped leaflets. | ||
| Now, just this morning, they told people, Kanye, please evacuate these zones because there's going to be an attack. | ||
| And also, there have been humanitarian corridors. | ||
| If you've been following this, and I mean, this was all on television. | ||
| I mean, none of this is like secret stuff. | ||
| You know, how do you get 1.1 million people out of the way in northern Gaza where there was bombing that they came to the south? | ||
| That was in November 2023. | ||
| How in May, June 2024, you get 1.4 million out of the Rafah corridor out so they don't get hurt. | ||
| So I think this idea that it's all indiscriminate is really unfair. | ||
| And there needs to be ways to minimize, you want to bring the suffering to an end. | ||
| We want to bring this war to an end so that they have dignity. | ||
| And that's why I think bringing the Palestinian Authority back to Gaza with funding from the Arab world and maybe some security assistance is the best way to do it. | ||
| You're not going to bomb your way out of this problem. | ||
| But, you know, none of us in America, we wouldn't live with this kind of a group that just fires rockets at our civilian population and hides them in schools and mosques and hospitals and says that they are immune, that they found a winning formula. | ||
| So this is like a problem set from hell that I don't wish on anyone. | ||
| And I just wish for a more dignified future for both Palestinians and Israelis alike. | ||
| You said you believe in a two-state solution. | ||
| How popular is the idea of a two-state solution in Israel? | ||
| Is that something that's more popular from those who are outside looking in than the parties involved? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's true. | |
| No, you're right. | ||
| You're putting your finger on something very important. | ||
| Look, for an American audience watching this, we got to define it as this. | ||
| If a Palestinian state was Costa Rica, they would all sign up in Israel to say, great, let them have Costa Rica next door, a demilitarized state. | ||
| They don't believe it, that that's really what a two-state solution will look like. | ||
| In 2007, and I'm not just trying to bring up the past, but 2007 is where we're living in in a certain way, is Hamas because Hamas out-muscled, outmaneuvered Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, the mainstream group, and they threw them out of Gaza. | ||
| And so it was just a wait, wait a second, we've made a deal with the Palestinian Authority, with FATA, and now Hamas has overtaken it. | ||
| And these guys don't want to live in a two state. | ||
| So the Israelis would say, wait a second, if I didn't like the book in Gaza, do I want to see the movie in the West Bank? | ||
| Is that really the future? | ||
| I don't believe in this stuff. | ||
| So there's a sense of disbelief, and you can understand that. | ||
| And so therefore, the whole idea of two states is each side has to feel they're more secure and they're not more vulnerable. | ||
| And that is what has not been resolved. | ||
| I mean, to put this in sports terms, and I worked in the Obama administration for John Kerry. | ||
| You know, we try to hit the home run ball on the two states. | ||
| And before us, Condoleezza Rice tried. | ||
| And before her, Bill Clinton tried. | ||
| The United States had three efforts to try to create a two-state solution. | ||
| I was part of the third effort working for the Secretary of State. | ||
| And my feeling was, you know, it was a noble effort that we were engaged in to try to reach that two-states. | ||
| But when you try to swing for the fences, you know, you could strike out. | ||
| And sometimes you have to hit some singles and doubles. | ||
| You can't always go for the home run ball. | ||
| We have to think differently. | ||
| Abraham Lincoln said, you know, we have to think anew, we have to act anew. | ||
| And I think the idea of a regional dimension of this, trying to have peace also with Saudi Arabia and some of the other Arab states could contextualize this in a way that there would be much more resources at this and that Hamas would not be able to exploit this always for its purposes of violence and terror. | ||
| So we need to think differently than we've thought in the past. | ||
| This wasn't a possibility in the past. | ||
| I don't think there was a failure of imaginations. | ||
| The Arabs just weren't ready at the time, but they're ready now. | ||
| And so we got to think in a way that would bring more security. | ||
| But I think it would be a very wrong characterization of a listener to say, oh, these just people, all they want to do is bomb and kill. | ||
| That's not what we're talking about. | ||
| Most people want to know one thing. | ||
| What makes me and my family safe? | ||
| And whoever can offer that most convincingly, most people will take. | ||
| Doesn't mean that you won't have ideologues at the edges of this football field, so to speak, in the end zones. | ||
| But most people want to be in the middle of the field. | ||
| They just want to be safe. | ||
| This is Brittany waiting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with David Makofsky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Mr. Makowski. | |
| My question or I guess opinion about the two-state solution is that I feel like it's kind of a dead on arrival consideration. | ||
| I really believe that at this point, considering what's been going on in the West Bank, it seems like the one-state solution is the only real option in order for the Palestinians to remain on that land and the Israelis that are there. | ||
| I don't know how much each side would want that, but that seems like the only real option. | ||
| This doesn't seem to be rocket science to me. | ||
| It's been a very simple answer since 1947. | ||
| You can't occupy people indefinitely in increasingly inhumane conditions and think that that will have any good results that come from it. | ||
| As an American learning about this, I become very ashamed and extremely disturbed by what the United States has been perpetuating for this long, including what goes on in the UN, what's constantly vetoing any resolutions to this, and just all the diplomatic cover. | ||
| I mean, the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu is in this country and we have no inclination to arrest him as we should. | ||
| It's just, it's very weird and it sets this tone for the entire world. | ||
| And it's not a good reflection of the United States and the human rights that we claim to uphold. | ||
| But I believe that, sorry, inhuman occupation would be the only way to end Hamas and all these other groups that come up. | ||
| I think people that are oppressed are going to resort to means to liberate themselves. | ||
| I'm not agreeing with violence, but this is not anything new that's happened. | ||
| This happens throughout history. | ||
| So Brittany, I got your point. | ||
| David Makofsky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So look, I would say here, I mean, the word occupation, I think she's talking about the West Bank being occupied. | ||
| I mean, the idea of one state is to throw together two people who have their own nationalist aspirations. | ||
| Israel wants itself as a Jewish state, of course, with equal rights for its own citizens. | ||
| The Palestinians want a Palestinian state. | ||
| The idea is, like, you would say here, America and Mexico become one state. | ||
| Just work it out. | ||
| Somehow, you don't speak the same language. | ||
| You have, you know, very different nationalist aspirations, but just figure it out. | ||
| You know, the hard right in Israel also uses the word one state solution. | ||
| It's used both by the hard right and by people more on the left side in that left-end zone, I would call it. | ||
| And yet they mean very different things. | ||
| They use the same words. | ||
| They use the same words. | ||
| They say one state. | ||
| But when the hard right says it, they mean Israel dominates everything. | ||
| And people, others say one state is just give it up. | ||
| Just create a binational state, figure it out. | ||
| You don't speak the same language. | ||
| You have traumas that have inflicted a lot of pain on each other. | ||
| But somehow it'll come together. | ||
| No one has come up with a blueprint how this is going to work, by the way. | ||
| Nobody. | ||
| And yet they throw around slogans that sound nice on television without knowing what it means. | ||
| And so with respect, I really think you can't tell the Palestinians they don't have a right to their aspirations. | ||
| And Israel, you don't have a right to your aspirations. | ||
| The land has to be partitioned, and the goal is to have dignity for both sides. | ||
| If you were to go to WashingtonInstitute.org and check out your bio, it says this in your bio. | ||
| In the last several years, David Makovsky has made over 120 visits to American college campuses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Over 200 now. | |
| Over 200 now to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has done a TED talk on that issue to a college audience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Certainly a fraught topic on college campuses. | |
| What is the message that you bring to those talks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I often go with a Palestinian colleague, Raythel Omari, who was on the Palestinian negotiating team. | |
| And what we try to do is to model kind of, you know, civic discourse that, you know, that basically focus on the idea of what is realistic here, what could be achieved, not just slogans, and how can we promote the idea of coexistence? | ||
| Because there's a lot of shouting at each other on campuses. | ||
| And we just want to bring down the temperature and have like a more of a rational kind of discourse. | ||
| But from someone who was on the Palestinian negotiating team, I was on the American negotiating team. | ||
| We both care deeply about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. | ||
| And our view is, you know, just, you know, try to get people to just stay cool and discuss it. | ||
| Because in the Mideast, too often, it's just, it's all emotion. | ||
| Is that getting harder to do on American College campuses? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, it's much harder. | |
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's harder because people don't always want to hear it, like, you know, hear the possible policy arrangements. | |
| They often want to vent feelings in a way that does not always connect to policy outcomes. | ||
| And our goal is, you know, is more light, less heat. | ||
| And we just keep repeating that. | ||
| More light, less heat. | ||
| And let's talk about the zone of the possible. | ||
| How do we build a zone for coexistence? | ||
| How do we bring in the Arab world, Europeans, and certainly led by the United States, which is the leader in the Middle East? | ||
| What could be done to enlarge the circle of coexistence? | ||
| So, yeah, it's much harder after October the 7th because it's heat, not light, that often dominates the discourse. | ||
| Larry, Albany, Georgia, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I want to make two quick statements. | |
| I saw that the president from Israel was here talking to the president. | ||
| And the president knows he won't that Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| But I want to make two statements. | ||
| Number one, we are Americans and we believe in peace. | ||
| But what Donald Trump have done is the people in Ukraine, which we as American citizens donated money to help save these people. | ||
| And Donald Trump has turned his back on Ukraine. | ||
| And the reason he turned his back on Ukraine is because the fact that he wanted to take the uranium or something from him. | ||
| And now, one more thing about the Gaza spill. | ||
| The Gaza spipped, BB is killing a lot of Palestinians, and President Trump is not trying to make peace. | ||
| And what I want to tell you is this. | ||
| BB said that he felt like Donald Trump should have the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| And Larry, we played that clip. | ||
| Let me come back to Ukraine for a second and how the war in Ukraine has impacted how it's cast a shadow on what's going on in the Middle East. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, it's hard to know. | |
| I don't claim to be an expert on the Ukraine, so I'm going to start with that. | ||
| You know, I was glad at least to see the president say yesterday about the need for at least defensive weapons, which he hasn't always been saying recently, to help the Ukrainian people. | ||
| I think that there has been a connection where the Iranians have been giving drones to Russia that they have fired at Ukraine. | ||
| I was wondering in the 12-day war between Iran and Israel if Russia would try to come to Iran's defense because of the drone production. | ||
| And Iran was pretty much isolated. | ||
| Neither Russia nor China came to it. | ||
| And I think that's because they came to the conclusion they have other fish to fry. | ||
| So I think that's a point worth noting. | ||
| Damien Laurel, Maryland, Republican, good morning. | ||
| You're next with David Makovsky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Very interesting. | ||
| My thing is the way I see it, it looks like Gaza is just going to have to become part of Israel. | ||
| And the Palestinians are going to have to have some autonomy, but they definitely have to give up all of their independence. | ||
| And I can't tell anybody that's going to work this. | ||
| And Damien, we're losing you, but back to the idea of one state versus two states. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Look, I don't think Israel wants to annex 2 million Palestinians. | ||
| And the Israeli military is also very much aware of its own limitations. | ||
| I mean, you have people doing 300, 400 days of reserve duty since October the 7th. | ||
| The army does not want to become the military occupier of Gaza. | ||
| So I do think we need to think about transition to a post-war situation, but not one where, you know, the problem is that Hamas, in the Middle East, the people who fire the shots call the shots. | ||
| And that's for Americans. | ||
| It's very alien to us because we have government, we have federal government, we have state government. | ||
| But in the Middle East, Hezbollah, let's say, in Lebanon, they were not formerly the government, but they had the weapons. | ||
| So they told the Lebanese government what to do. | ||
| Now, actually, after the defeat of Hezbollah, the Lebanese government, for the first time, has a chance in 40 years to reestablish sovereignty over their own state. | ||
| So the question will be is, has Hamas lost that kind of veto by loss of its weaponry that enables Gazans to have a better future? | ||
| Maybe they want the Palestinian Authority to come from the West Bank and not to be terrorized by Hamas. | ||
| So this is a question, but I don't think Israel wants to occupy them. | ||
| I think they got out in 2005 and they don't want to go back. | ||
| I think they see this as a temporary deal and they want to get out. | ||
| Talking about the history of Israel, Dave Makofsky, one of your books from 2019, Be Strong and of Good Courage, How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny. | ||
| If there was a Mount Rushmore in Israel, who are the leaders that would be on Israel's Mount Rushmore? | ||
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I love that question because it's a term that I've thought of myself. | |
| And look, we chose four leaders. | ||
| David Ben-Gurion, who established the state in 1948, was an autodidact, totally self-taught. | ||
| He spoke, I think, 13 languages and believed that this Jewish state, which maybe the Arab states all rejected in the 1947 UN partition plan, will somehow find its place and Arab-Israeli coexistence would take root. | ||
| Menachem Begin, who had a partner in Anmur Sadat of Egypt, Anmur Sadat was a visionary, and he thought, look, there have been all these cycles of wars, 1948, 56, 67, 73. | ||
| I'm going to break from that. | ||
| I'm going to go to the Knesset. | ||
| I'm going to go to the parliament. | ||
| And Begin, who might have was a right-of-center leader, but actually was a partner with Sadat. | ||
| He said, okay, Israel will pull out the signature if it gets peace. | ||
| Again, they just want to know if they pull out of land, are they more secure? | ||
| They're more vulnerable. | ||
| And Begin, because he had these right-wing credentials, it's kind of like Nixon going to China. | ||
| He was the one who did this with Sadat. | ||
| And I thought that that took courage to go against some people in his base, too. | ||
| Third, I think Yitzchak Rabin, I had the privilege of traveling with Rabin. | ||
| And it was like being in the presence of Israel's de Gaulle. | ||
| He was this soldier statesman who believed he had won the 1967 war where Israel had an electrifying move had won on all three fronts against Arab states, but thought, hey, cash it in. | ||
| If you could secure Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, then give up the land. | ||
| You know, you're going to maybe have to amputate an arm to save the body, but it's worth it. | ||
| And Rabin had that stature. | ||
| And I'll never forget being on the White House lawn here under President Clinton in 1993 when the handshake happened with Rabin and Arafat. | ||
| Tragically, he was assassinated by a fanatic in Israel because of his belief. | ||
| But for me, he's very much at the top. | ||
| Ariel Sharon was someone who was a soldier all of his life, yet in 2005, he was the one who told Israelis, you don't want to be an occupier. | ||
| Israel should get out of Gaza. | ||
| He was the architect of the settlements in Gaza when he was the head of the southern commander in 1971. | ||
| But in 2005, he said, enough, let's get out. | ||
| I built the settlements in a different era before there was peace with Egypt in 1979, and before Sadat came to the Knesset. | ||
| We don't need these settlements. | ||
| And that took courage. | ||
| So these are people who all had to say sometimes tough things to their own people. | ||
| But that's why they're up on Mount Rushmore for me. | ||
| So with that said, how do you think Benjamin Netanyahu, 20, 30 years from now, will compare to those four men? | ||
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That's a great question. | |
| Great question. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think Netanyahu's self-image is that he, all of his life, all of his professional life, I know for an American audience, this will sound strange because we're not used to people being on the kind of the political stage so long. | ||
| But in Israel, you know, Netanyahu started in 84, Around then, as the, well, he was before that, he was the DCM Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. | ||
| But really, when he became ambassador to the UN, he becomes prime minister in 96. | ||
| And really, in the mid-90s, he hears about the Iranian nuclear program. | ||
| And he says, This is my role in life. | ||
| I'm going to save the Jewish people from annihilation. | ||
| So there'll never be another Holocaust like there was with the Nazis. | ||
| And so I think in many ways, what has just happened in the last few weeks, he sees as the ultimate vindication is this was his dream, that the nuclear program is in tatters. | ||
| You could argue, but it could be reconstituted at some point. | ||
| Yes, I mean, look, in 1981, Israel hit the Iraqi nuclear reactor. | ||
| In 2007, it hit the Syrian nuclear reactor. | ||
| And the media, within a few weeks, said, oh, but it could be reconstituted really quickly. | ||
| It was never reconstituted. | ||
| By the way, both of those regimes fell, both in Syria and in Iraq. | ||
| But anyway, the point is, I think Netanyahu's sense of himself is more as averting danger as he sees it. | ||
| Does he want to be now consolidate that and say, okay, now I want to turn all these battlefield successes into a stable peace? | ||
| I think, sure, he would love to be the guy to preside over normalization with Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And Trump view this is the Super Bowl of all peace agreements. |