Lawfare Daily: Trump's New Plan for Gaza, with Joel Braunold

So, besides the end of the song and the new "Bundestliga" song, as far as the "Türstet", "Mutigreach-mental" and "Sport Directors". Because all the games are played, then it's even more like the kick-based side. And if there is a kick-based song, what is that?

The kick-based is the fourth fan of "Fußball Manager", and that's the first one.

It's very simple. You can just take a look at your own rules. Or, then, the real "Bundestliga" profile is in their cards. So, at the same time, that you know your "Fußball Wissen" and "The Count on Love", the "Bundestliga" song on "Tak" is the end of August, where all the games are included in their own league,

and both from "Tak 1" and "Mitterball", the kick-based side, just download it and let it go. Good kick, and what is it?

“Why can't we go to the production of "Fußball Manager"?”

Why can't we go to our date when we see an "Bundestliga"? All right, let's go. But there's no "Fußball Manager". "Key" from "AWS" means "Sock for Klarheit". And make sure to let us know what "Key" means by "Key" means. With one set of "Aginsons" and "Umpathons" and "Key Tools" and "Services",

you can see on their own "Vickeln", "Kaufen" or "Pardonnance" as well. Many will think about it more about it. With "Key" from "AWS". The Israelis think this is all a con, but they realize that they need to do something. But their own politics won't allow them to do something.

And the port of peace is stuck now that they've got this agreement that President Trump has announced and has loved. But what can they deliver? It's the law fair podcast. I'm senior editor Scott R. Anderson, joined by contributing editor Joel Brunald, a managing director of "The Center Project".

“But so far, in "Labbin", the negotiations are slow,”

and a difficult and the Israelis are very sensitive before the election for anything leaking about what they're agreeing to. And any leaks will just make them not be willing to do anything at the table given the sensitivity of everything happening right now. Today, we're discussing the Trump administration's new plan for Gaza.

Why Israel isn't on board. Joel, it has been an eventful couple of weeks, slash months in the last time we caught up on the state of the kind of Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. We have not won, but two frameworks, this administration has kind of held a historic, a more recent one,

and related to Gaza, earlier one from last month in Lebanon. Both of which have gotten hung up on kind of a similar problem of sequencing between disarmament and Israeli withdrawal to some extent, although it's in what different ways. So let's walk through and talk to people about what these two deals are,

and how they fit into the broader picture. Let's start with the Gaza deal, which of course is the product that's come out in the last two weeks. That's particularly notable, particularly because we're seeing this unique political alignment with a very open break by the Israeli government

from the plan, and less so interestingly by Hamas and other parties in Gaza, traditionally much less aligned with the Trump administration around this. Let's start with how do we get to the 15-point plan, to this idea that we need a 15-point plan, and how does it replace the 20-point plan that we're all familiar with

from the beginning of this administration? So the 15-point plan, which I will urge the listeners to look at, you can go to the board of pieces x-page, and it is the pinned tweet. The pinned post at the top is the text of the 15-point framework between the board of peace and Hamas,

as well as an explain of what's going on.

And the first point of that explainer tells you what it is.

It fundamentally is, as I'll read from the plan, all parties we affirm that commitment to the President Trump's comprehensive plan to achieve peace in Gaza, which constitutes together with UN Security Council Resolution 20-03, the greed upon international framework guide in the implementation of this process. Through this process, the parties aim the end-to-end cycle of destruction,

secure the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, restore normal life, enable Palestinian governance, reconstructions, security recovery, and economic development. Rehabilitate damage sectors and facilitate launching a credible political pathway that achieve self-determination and status.

“Okay, why is that very long preamble, very important?”

If we remember when we were debating in discussing the 20-point plan, we said it was really a three different plans that was squished into one. Point one was a hostage prisoner release deal that was based out also undergarred the principles that no Gaza's would be forced to leave Gaza, that there would be some level of amnesty for Hamas if they would go through this

and that there would be an eventual withdrawal from Israel from Gaza. Okay, that was sort of part one that just the commitments that those were where we were aiming towards.

Point two, the Phase two, which was always the one that was bedevilling everyone,

was who would replace Hamas as governance in Gaza, what would we construction look like, what would a decommissioning instead of disarmament we used as empty commission that

who was very involved on the Northern Irish Peace process, sort of brought into this equation saying don't use disarmament and use decommissioning. It's more of an acceptable process where you don't give up, welcome weapons,

“but you make them inelpable. What does that process look like?”

And then there was a third part of the 20-point plan, point 18-19 in 20,

which really looked towards creating a political horizon for the entire Palestinian National project. And the third part was, you know, how does Gaza link into the wider regional integration? How does it link the West Bank? Two Gaza and all the other things. So what the 15-point framework is, is basically a recommitment of the 20-point plan and the implementation framework for Phase two. So it's very important to sit within that context.

Now, since the 20-point plan was announced and started sort of just a little over a year ago, we did, of course, have the hostage release and prisoner release. There was an increase in humanitarian delivery and Israel was supposed to, in the beginning, withdraw to 52% of Gaza that was called the yellow line. Now, the yellow line was demarcated within the maps.

The yellow lines get become very important to this conversation. The yellow line, as understood in the document, is 52% of Gaza. Israel remains on 52% of Gaza. The rest of Gaza is Hamas control. Now, before the Board of Peace made this agreement with Hamas, a few weeks ago, like almost 10 days ago, there was a move in the Israeli cabinet

to enable the ISF, the international security forces, which is,

basically, the international group that will go in, not create a peacekeeping role,

but to sort of be a between forces between Israel and Hamas, and sort of do that. So, not an internal securityizing DDR, sort of role of disarmament, but really to sit between the forces, Israel's cabinet agreed to extend the immunity laws to the eventual ISF, but they made some conditions, all soldiers that are part of this need to be have countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel,

and are not trying to hurt Israel in an international form or read no Turks and no cutaries, but before deployment, the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister all need to agree.

“So, it was really just sort of a technical move, but I think that the Board of Peace was banking that,”

as the Israeli acquiescence that we were moving into face to, so then what happens? The Israelis were convinced, totally convinced their security, their intel groups and everyone else, that there was no way that Hamas would agree to ever give up their weapons, that it was just that the Americans want a full skull. And, learn behold, Hamas finished its some part of its internal elections.

Hire was elected who is sort of the Gaza main representative and still one of the last survivors of the October 7 leadership, and he, you know, is doing his toll. He sits with Hidh, to die in the Foreign Minister of Turkey and a few others, and learn behold, the Board of Peace actually manages to get a commitment from Hamas to agree to this 15 point plan. And, if you go through all 15 points, it's actually pretty detailed with international verification

regimes, when Engage will come in, which is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, who will pay the debts that the Hamas government put up amounts of, you know, no more than 400

million, how well decommissioning work, you know, there'll be stores in warehouses before their decommissioned

“under the Shahzir protocol, the responsibility of the police, you know, genuinely, and honestly,”

this is not a nothing document. This is a pretty detailed as it goes document, but the core way that the document works is that as Hamas decubitions its weapons in point by point in different areas of Gaza, so as they do, you know, do our baller, for example, and then it is verified by an international committee of verification, which includes the guarantors, Tarky, Kata, Egypt, as well as the US and others, then Israel will start withdrawing from the yellow line. Okay,

so that is the mechanism that was somewhat agreed within this document. So Hamas agrees and President Trump announces on Trump's social historic agreement, and to his credit, this is a big deal. Trump's entire mechanism on the 20-point plan, if you remember, was just to say, look, we've all agreed to phase one, let's just put in phase two and three and we'll get that, we'll use them and we'll lots of skeptics and everything else, but you know what?

He used him and meant him over the past year and some of the pressure that Israel moved beyond the current yellow line of 52 and now occupied 70% Gaza that they would continue to kill, continue to do airstrikes. You know, it was sort of putting pressure on Hamas to move them and now Hamas is moved and there's agreed to do this sort of disarmament process. So the momentum thesis worked, right? It sort of moved in, but it was curious about why now,

why did Hamas agree now? We are 90 days before Israeli elections at the time where there was the least amount of Israeli ability to agree. So Hamas agrees and there was complete silence from Jerusalem. You know, the right wing of the cabinet, but bend this, not to which

President Trump absolutely not and Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming under increasing pressure to say something. There's a meeting between Nicolae Meladenov, the high representative of Gaza, our allies then the CEO of the Board of Peace and Prime Minister Netanyahu in which afterwards Meladenov tweets saying that Hamas needs to complete its disarmament before this was drawn seemingly indicating that he's now changed to a agreement, though they keep talking about the same

yellow light. And it seems like there are two different yellow lines. There's the yellow line of the 52% and the yellow line of the 70%. Of the Hamas agrees is well steps up its airstrikes on Gaza. So it looks like they're just continuing to step up their airstrikes on Gaza in order to force Hamas out of compliance. So there's a lot of pressure on the Americans to get Israel to stop

basically imploding the 15 point plan before it's even had a chance to stop. The one thing coming

out this meeting is that strike procedures change from the head of southern command to the head of the

“entire of the idea. So now if you want to commit to striking Gaza, you now need the permission”

of the chief of stuff of the idea, which as you can imagine is pretty significantly high up the decision making check. So it seems like at least the meeting has now prevented as well from just going off the Hamas targets as they saw fit, but now it's somewhat more of a restrainer. So finally, Netanyahu's forced to say something because this is becoming a huge political issue in the campaign. You know, you're going to withdraw, you're going to give, you know, Hamas is lying to the international

community. We're not going to believe them. And Netanyahu two days ago says we reject the 15 points. We have nothing to do with it. We reject it. It's nothing we don't agree. To which the board of peace doesn't infuse on channel 12 with our midsegal saying Israel's not party to the board of peace anyway. So this is really an agreement to us and got and Hamas, which is a curious thing things that the idea of course needs to agree. Otherwise this whole thing doesn't really work.

But basically again, doesn't really dictate which yellow line we're talking about. So

“for all this is at the end of this very long sort of answer, here is what I think is going to”

happen and it's going to go up. Okay. The head of the Shabak, the Israeli sort of domestic secret police who really responsible for a lot of security visibly in the Palestinians and like Mossad that operates beyond the Israeli borders called the Hamas signing of this a diplomatic October 7th, which by the way, an absurd thing to say, a horrendous thing to say. But it was like we were surprised and again they've destroyed us internationally. So many ways Hamas, if you don't

believe that Hamas is serious, they've basically learned of Israel to say yes and throw the blame game over to Israel. Knowing that Israel can't agree to this in the next 90 days, they say yes and throw the blame game back over to the Israelis. So learning from the mediators and everyone else and the guarantors, Hamas says yes, now Israel has to be the one who looks like it's belligerent rather than Hamas. And as well as like, well they're not, you can't believe them and the

board of pieces like, well you didn't believe us when we said we could get hostages and the bodies of hostages and we did. So let us try and do this. So A, the Israelis think this is all a con, but they realize that they need to do something, but their own politics weren't allowed them to do something. And the board of pieces stuck now that they've got this agreement that President Trump has announced and has loved, but what can they deliver? So in the next 90

“days, here's what I think they can deliver. One, as we've seen, I think there can be pressure”

to prevent targeted assassinations which aren't imminent threats. So really to a strain is really activity on that side. I think too, while it wouldn't happen before the election, this ambiguity about the yellow line, I believe that the Trump administration is going to put significant pressure on the next Israeli coalition, whoever they are, to pull back from the 70

percent of Gaza that they've got back to the 52 percent of Gaza, because there are no IDF troops

supposedly deployed between the 52 and 70 percent, they're just sort of moving these concrete blocks further and further pushing Gaza, Gaza's and civilians into a small and small area. So therefore that that won't once again go back to 52 percent and use that as a deposit to Hamas to say, okay, look, we've demonstrated that as well as we're as drawn, now let's start a decommissioning process. The last thing I'll say, what this has done, right? Ultimately, it's really got rid of something

that I like to call the President thesis. So the President thesis said that if you could get this Israeli government to agree to something, then the next Israeli government would be able to do it even more. So whatever you can look in now, lock in because it'll make it easier later on for a new Israeli government because they can't be snipe by the right. In many ways, the 15 points in the Hamas decommissioning link to Israeli withdrawal, despite the fact that it was this is

really government who signed it, and despite the fact that this Israeli government signed that there would be a pathway to a Palestinian state, 90 days before the election, there's no way that they can agree to it. And instead of this being an enabling move, it's actually a disabling move, because what will happen now is that BB will run on, I will not agree to this, and we'll say that

concept that you can get precedents right now to lock in as much as possible is no longer really holding true. And it's not holding true because President Trump's popularity in Israel has dipped, because of all this stuff to do with Iran and America not sort of fulfilling what the Israeli commitment they thought it was. And so unless President Trump enacts some very significant political cost for Netanyahu, which is unclear if he will join an election campaign, the aim of trying to

push Israel today before the elections, in order to open up space for a new Israeli government,

is somewhat depleted. It is a wild story with a lot of moving pieces. That's an amazing overview

“of where we are on this agreement. I think one thing as we look forward to think about is what is”

the state of these institutions that we understand are supposed to play this central role if we have to make it to this next step. We know we have the Board of Peace operating, we have a lot of novice kind of the special envoy heading up that effort on the diplomatic front. We know we have now askag, a Promenaskag, an NKag, a body set up of Palestinians and tend to fill the governmental role that Hamas now has formally seen it as if I think July 6th of I recall correctly, basically

saying our civil authorities are disbanded, but we still have our paramilitary and security forces still armed, at least until this agreement is implemented. And then the ISF that's supposed to come in

and play that mediating role, presumably I think still provide some security for the people doing

disarmament inspections, things like that. We know we are some country commitments about that, but we haven't really seen it as far as I'm aware of much touch retaining operational. So,

“where are these three key institutions now and how close are they actually being able to deliver”

themselves if the parties ever come to the table to say, "Yeah, we're already moved to this next step." So, let's start with NKag. So, NKag is 15 commissioners that are Palestinian headed up by Ale Shah. NKag plays, you know, they've been stuck in Cairo, they haven't been allowed to go into the strip. The Israeli fairies there, if they go in before, well, the cynical one is like, we don't want any Palestinian governance, we want Palestinians to leave nor to go back in, right? And we can see that on

as well not allowing, you know, there's a big push to allow patients to leave Gaza to get cancer treatment or students to go abroad, but there's no guarantee from Israel that they can come back in, right? So, there's still, even though there's a commitment that from the board of peace and in the 20 point plan that Gaza and should be allowed to return, there is still no Israeli counter commitment and so there's still this tension from coming in and so NKag's inability to enter is can be seen as

the Israelis are just blocking any potential future. But there's also a non-synical risk there. They don't want to Lebanization model where you've got a civilian government that has international impromptu, where you've got Hamas really controlling everything behind the scenes with their armed militias anyway because that would give Hamas sort of a diplomatic community which is what they really don't want to have. So, NKag, the past year, it's been sitting in Cairo, they had some conferences,

they've done some stuff in Cyprus, they're really subservient to NKlam Aladdin over the board of peace. Legally, they have the ability to run Gaza but there's a liaison committee between Nikolai's

“office and the PA because should the PA reform up to standard then ultimately that's what NKag will”

be working with in terms of illegal set of precedents coming from Romala rather than sort of new Kennedy school-esque or Tony Blair change institute-esque reforms that they're creating in Cairo. Right, so there's sort of in public policy school right now working out all the different things but there's been nothing operational. So they're ready to go and the main thing that they've done is to try and recruit a police force, they opened up applications, they had like 300,000 people

of life, they've got sort of a training, they're trying to kick off the training for who will be the civilian police who will be like the one gun, one power sort of underlying of Gaza and they need to do that but they don't really have civil servants, you know, as part of the whole

demobilisation, disarmament process, many of the Kama civil servants once vetted will basically just

switch over to work for NKag afterwards. So they're sitting there sort of working up the, you know, Dachlan who is, you know, an abassapone and fathach guy who sits in the UAE as an adviser to the man there, you know, he has a lot of allies on NKag as well, he and the UAE still control a lot of the economy that's still currently going into Gaza and interestingly he put his own reputation on the board for the 15 points backing it in some way. We're not really clear. It's not public how

he's done it but he basically after he's already rejected it publicly condemned Netanyahu saying that he's humiliating President Trump because Kali Dachlan put his reputation on the line as well. So that's NKag. The ISF, the US has been sort of slowly closing down the CMCC, the civilian military coordination center that was set up just after the 20 point plan and is

headquarters of the ISF, the International Security Forces, I think there's been a US general appointed

who will be the head of the ISF in some way and then there have been I know Uganda and Morocco have committed some level of troops but we're talking sort of under 200 troops in totality.

“I think our banyam might be around there, I've got to check like it's sort of level and so”

until the 15 point plan is agreed upon and then you've got the agreement of the Israelis to allow them in, they're sort of just sitting waiting as well in terms of what's going on and then the board of peace itself is this bizarre entity, right? So it technically has on it and represented with the World Bank that holds a trust fund for the reconstruction of Gaza but that operational fund seemed to be a JP Morgan chase account that they're using, it seems, and they've signed

at least some construction contracts for sort of a small pilot humanitarian city on the Israeli side of Gaza near Rafa that they're supposed to start with I think 10,000 people where the aim is to say if Hamas won't agree there are ironically they now have agreed to a 15 point plan that there'll be some sort of humanitarian city that encank and could start running as sort of a pilot program

“where everyone coming in is vetted and also on that who's going to live there. So there are militias”

anti Hamas militias that have weapons that as well as are labeled to operate on its controlled side of Gaza that have been attacking Hamas. Now as part of the disarmament deal of the 15 points they also have to give up their weapons and as you could imagine they are very not keen to give up said weapons saying Hamas is lying and will be killed but of course everyone has to give up their weapons according to a DDR deal and so you've got sort of these competing medalities

where as do we allow the Rafa humanitarian city to move forward, BB it seems in defence minister pushing to allow that to move forward now and we'll take focus off the 15 point plan where Hamas is agreeing to the 15 point plan why would you only start reconstruction on the Israeli side of Gaza these are some some of this sort of pressure points that are going on but the border piece itself you've got maladenov you've got Blair you've also got these very larger than life billionaire

figures like Mark Rowan and others he's sort of the Gaza Executive Committee who is basically

you know going to be creating mega deals for Gaza and everything else we'll see what happens there but the real operative part of the border piece seems to be it's professional secretary at which is our allies don't neglect maladenov that crowd but it's still not still not clear what kind of legal entity they are and that matters now from a US context as they look to try and

“get I think around 200 million in in peacekeeping support from the US federal budget in order to”

get that you know present trump has signed an executive order saying that they are able to receive defence articles but what's their legal standing you know you're far more skilled on this than I am Scott but there's a lot of still outstanding questions it's sort of very much run like a start-up rather than in the serious international agency so it's very unclear. Let's ship focus now from Gaza to Lebanon we've got a good sense of what the picture is

in Gaza and Lebanon a few weeks ago we were in not totally dissimilar position we've had for a while now a nominal framework trump administration trumpeted you know had a to reasonably high profile signing here in Washington DC in April or May as I recall of the steps towards this framework for trying to get is real to give up the 20% or so of Lebanon it is occupying and has been occupying for you know a better part of a year at this point. Hinging again on a process if it is an argument

this time headed up by the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Lebanese government and they're really to do assert themselves in this is really health territory and actually effectively disarm that seems to remain the hold-up so talk to us about the status of that framework agreement and where we seem to be stuck on it given that we haven't really seen that much progress at least from from an observer outside observers perspective for the last couple weeks. So you know as we mentioned

last time Lebanon was really the big question that is all had on the MAU with Iran they really wanted to have freedom of action and the trump administration created the separate formal government government track in order to disentangle the Lebanese that Iran dominated his bullet track

you know who basically is a ceasefire in Lebanon declared in Beirut or is it declared in Tehran

was really the question. The Israeli is if it's declared in Tehran it doesn't work but if it's

in Israel on a pretty mass popular level is that on the lessons after October 7th is that we should

“have these sort of buffer zones around us and one of those buffer out of the zones in the north”

sort of the place going up to Boofon Castle, Sassalitini as you said sort of that they're trying to hold onto right out. But the Trump administration created this process directly between Lebanon as well that you know their thesis is that if the L.A.F. the Lebanese dumb forces can disarm his bullet and move into those pilot zones then as well can start withdrawing from those pilot zones though the Israelis have been signaling both in the negotiations and publicly that everyone should

have very right sized expectations these pilot zones aren't within the kilometers that they care about so they're in the buffer zones as in they took more territory than they needed

at least in their own security envelope in order to give back that territory while holding onto

their own territory. So you know over anchoring in the negotiation discourse in order to sub-angular afterwards with the promise of normalization sort of being dangled out at the end once this whole thing is concluded. Where is it up to? So in the last the negotiations seem to be held in Rome in the last round the Israelis cut short the negotiations because they claimed that the Lebanese were leaking

“from the room and there was an incident as security incident where I think two Israeli soldiers were”

killed and four were injured as an ID went off as they were clearing some of the tunnels and houses and some of the villages and southern Lebanon. The Israelis claimed that this was a ceasefire violation and wanted to go back to striking Lebanon but interestingly the Americans reviewed it

and said it was not a ceasefire violation this was an ID that had been planted before. The ceasefire

was in how input and so shouldn't be counted and the Israelis didn't go on to commit strikes in south Lebanon. Now the Israelis meanwhile there is significant just like in Gaza political cost if you were to draw anything from Lebanon right now and there's also from early reports a real dissatisfaction with the job that the L.A.F. is doing claiming that they're not really challenging because below and there's just another version of the Unifile sort of forces that didn't

help after 2006 and so there's a lot of pressure on the Lebanese to sort of get this right. Now the Lebanese unlike the Palestinians have real diplomatic allies in the U.S. Ambassador in Lebanon, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey who also is a special rep now for Iraq, Tom Barak. People who are very close with President Trump and President Trump really does not like to see at least one his own language destruction and death and wants to see economic commerce, the president of Lebanon

got to go to the White House, you know I don't really see President Abbasor or the head of Khamaf being able to do that. So the Israelis don't get to somewhat dictate times as much and the U.S. seems far more willing to sort of put significant pressure that the people who actually get the most eye from the Americans on the Lebanese file are the French who of course are the former colonial power and France and like to think of themselves as being involved in that after the relationship

between Paris and Jerusalem just collapsing over the past few years. The French really have been banned from the room in many different ways and all of these negotiations are going on sponsored by the Americans between Lebanon and Israel. Slow process but again we see something that's

“very different than the Gaza context that I think is very important. One of the big critiques of”

Israel when they say well we just want Hamas to surrender and then we can rebuild the society and they point to what happened in World War II which a pan or Germany one Germany used to talk about this quite a lot. A lot of Israeli commentators do is that Germany and Japan were still countries. Right the governments might have been defeated but no one was talking about the end of Germany. I know it was divided into West and East Germany but the aim was that it was going to be

unifies and was still Germany, or Germany, not like by Germany. Same as Japan. Right so you know the aim was still Japan. So Israel has not agreed to a state of Palestine. So who do up people de-dearing into and that's why the logical thing is that it either remains in rubble which is what one form ahead of Israel's national security agency said or the Gaza and leave. Right the solution for this is that it's no longer a problem which is ethnic cleansing it's war crime it's all the things

that we know. In Lebanon there is an entity it's the Lebanese armed forces is broken is difficult and the and the terror agreement that ended the civil war that was negated in the Saudi Arabia obviously framework for how the Lebanese state can operate without malicious debt and there is a general sense within the region in the most parts of the region that isn't around that we don't want armed groups operating in sovereign spaces because it gives us well an excuse and others an excuse

whether it's the Houthis or whatever else to bomb those places and it would be good if sovereign governments were in charge of all of their territory. So there is a regional interest in the LAF succeeding and there is a US interest in restraining the idea to enable that time to succeed but should they not succeed I don't know how this gets better but so far in Lebanon the negotiations

leaking about what they're agreeing to and any leaks will will just make them not be willing to do anything at the table given the sensitivity of everything that's happening right now. So there's another front that we've seen pop up particularly in the US and media it gives ecosystem increasingly often of the last few months and that is the West Bank kind of simmering in the background not at the sort of active scale of conflict of Gaza or Lebanon but a place where we've seen increasingly aggressive

“Israeli actions run settlements including in just last week or two really I think if I call correctly”

including a number of high profile conflicts with international media with at least one US Congress person who is there trying to represent of Rokana who had an encounter with security forces in settlers that got a lot of media attention here in the United States and it's an issue set that I think is rising on the list of at least the public profile here in the United States and to some extent

has never been that far down the list for a lot of the world even as Gaza has blown up Lebanon has

blown up the West Bank was always kind of visioned as the the number one problem before October 7th and has always sat there in the background so talked about what we're seeing there particularly as Israel enters this critical moment before the election where we know the status of settlement in the West Bank and of the West Bank itself is such a domestically significant political point. So the West Bank has not been calm it's never really been calm and it's definitely not been

calm since October 7th. While of course for obvious reasons to majority of the world's focus has been in Gaza you know the Israeli the finance and deputy defense minister but Salah Smartrich has seen this as his opportunity to try and collapse the Palestinian authority in every which way he can from trying to starve it from resources to encourage wildcat settlements to legalize what were in Israeli eyes illegal settlements and trying to as much as possible

to foreclose any potential possibility of a Palestinian state. He's doing that on bureaucratic levels at the settlement ministry you know he's posting pictures of peace now reports that show extreme growth of settlements as like campaign adds saying good right look I am killing this opportunity and you know the one line that Trump has put out is no formal annexation. So okay so there's lots

of lots of things up to the formal annexation that are basically formal annexation that they're trying

to do. It also seems that the other red line I'm going to get to the violence in the West Bank and one sec but the other formal red line it seems is this constant undergoing one of the only places where it's on the PA still touch right now is on into banking relations and economy. Smotchurch has refused for the past 10 months now to give any customs revenues to the PA despite their legal obligations to do so under the Paris verticals the PA is starving with money and he keeps

playing around with the banking immunity letters that provide the Palestinian economy as in shackles

“and you need to have a shackle based bank clear your revenues there are two Israeli commercial”

banks that have done it because Smotchurch kept playing around with not extending the immunity letters the basically risk analysis of those banks as they don't want to do this anymore and so they've now basically stopped doing that and that is this big push and it seems that this is an American red line to make sure that the Palestinian banking sector does not collapse before there is the election so that seems to be another red line. Whether it's not a red line it

seems is on the complete explosion of violence between settle communities and Palestinians. So whenever asked about settle violence against Palestinians, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been asked

a few times and other people have been asked the question or he always says oh it's 150 youths

they don't even in the settlements all the settlers are wonderful people. XYZ and the question always comes back well if it's 150 youths why can't you do something and any blames to courts while the courts are very leaning on them? Well I mean it doesn't really pass the smell test and it's very clear that there's been increasing amounts of violence in the West Bank that is happening now. The Israeli's claim that look the the area sea is a wild west the Palestinians

are trying to take over as much of that land as possible. You know the Osla courts said that area sea was Israeli at least administratively controlled and security controlled and that you know it's a wild west sort of land fight of who can create as many farms and facts on the ground. Palestinians like look we've got ancient towns and villages here and the Israelis not only in sea but also in B trying to push us off those towns and basically enabling settle communities

to attack farmers and scare them off the lands and try and get rid of as many of them as possible. And a very significant incident happened two weeks ago in the Palestinian town of Tel

“where a bunch of religious I think they most of them were from the settlements but some”

might have been from mainstream as well. Mainland as well decided to go on a hike that they did not coordinate with the idea and they went into a Palestinian village in area B or in the area sea but they went into the village that was clearly an intimidating thing. Think like an orange march

conflict the at one point a Palestinian grabbed a gun from one of the IDF soldiers who turned up

“there was shots fired the investigation shot is not clear about who killed the two Israelis”

what what they friendly fire was that the Palestinians shot one and then another one was killed and then for Palestinians were killed some of the videos pretty brutal it's unclear if you know it was somewhat somewhat similarly executed or whatever else happened and then of course as was expected there were riots across the West Bank of Israeli you know we used to say riots across the West Bank and everyone said oh Palestinians are rioting against it's not every time we now say riots

against the West Bank it is settler groups or religious groups coming from Israel rioting and Palestinian villages and the IDF struggling to control it and so again we saw multiple different price tag attacks and riots across the West Bank and this is a cycle and this is a thing that we see again and again in each time the intensity increases right increases increases and this has a number of factors so right now there is a small Palestinian farm that is being besieged by like

seven settlers that weren't allowed food or water to go in is really in case that appealing to the

“IDF to clear them out the IDF seemingly went there and took pictures with the people”

blockading them and then went home and they're still there blockading them and Jeremy Diamond from CNN spoke about this and lots of people and as of this recording it's still happening I get it seem like the IDF is just not interested or doesn't have the political capability of preventing what is an assault against the Palestinian local population with the aim of pushing them off that out right so that is happening and increasingly high-clip now we get spots when Rokahana's

dealt when in Americans killed but it's not an American or not the congressman this is an ongoing campaign we have seen a response from Israeli civil society of a growth and what's called civilian protection where you've got Israelis within international volunteers as well going to protect these villages they filmed them you've seen religious Israelis a group company Abraham take part in this lots of different so you have seen sort of a different form of

civil society sort of come up as they sort of push against this and this has become a cadence

“in the Israeli election campaign so you see central parties Eisencorp Bennett the Democrats led by”

Jekwala and even some of the slightly more suffering like this is insane we can't allow this to happen and that you know this is the Lakudalang the Kahanist to run riot and this is what happens and I know we're going to talk about the election this is even led into the good primaries in some

way that I'll get to it a second but this is what's going on in the West Bank and the Palestinians

are appealing for international support and help there is clearly in Europe a move to do more settler sanctions amongst Democrats if you look at House Democrats over 180 of signed on to Jerry Nadler's Bell which is to codify the Biden settler sanctions and there's a clear indication from ram manual and others when he went to Israel the next Democratic administration is going to be unrelenting and sanctioning violence against Palestinians and maybe even just building in the

settlements but definitely against violence against Palestinians in a far more significant way than President Biden was really going after whether it's government officials or anyone else and making this absolutely clear that this is an unacceptable issue but is ongoing it's significant and it's also humiliating for the P.A. the Comprotectics people and you know this is this is something that dominates Palestinian media and the Israeli system the security system understands

how significant and serious this is which is why they're pushing for a return to administrative detentions for Israelis who participate in this something that the current defense minister in Israel is resisting for political reasons and without that tool in their toolbox they're in this very significant problem where they know who's committing it in some cases and it's not happening

we have seen two responses by the Israeli state that have been rare indictments never really

murdered but some manslaughter and others of some people have participated in this and also cabinet did pass some things preventing the establishment of settlements in area B and restriction of funding for settlers who do other things that go against the Israeli government right now but ultimately the general trajectory is establishment of as many settlements as possible right now legalization, massive funding and turning a blind eye or even an encouragement in many different

cases and the last thing I'll say is got on this and I know it's very complicated we don't have enough time to unpack all of this it's central command and as well as the West Bank area it's a very political position a lot and so I know we're getting to these red elections I'll save the piece of that the next next question but one of the biggest issues you've got is you have security squads that are sort of within the settlements that have been especially empowered after October 7

and then you have sort of often reserve or conscripts from the idea for there so who really has operational control when it comes to that are they listening to the settlers security squads are they listening to the idea that blurring of that line you know who's really in charge who you know again like the idea is naturally inclined because of who it's drawn from

Palestinians it's just yeah the Palestinian city residents there as well so the police law

“itself and the army itself is not incentivized to take this while it's particularly seriously”

so the background context of all of this as you've alluded to as I mentioned a few times is this pending election on October 27th we have a it's really elections fixed on the calendar were a little more than two months out at this point what are the dynamics leading into that we know Netanyahu I think in the polls I see lately is nomally trailing all is still fairly early the icing at the kind of leading opposition figure where does this fit in where did the dynamics

leading up to the election around these three areas that are so central to the broader Israeli Palestinian conflict and increasingly to U.S. policy whether the administration's policy in the case of the West Bank a strong political strain that has deep roots reach in the democratic party and perhaps in the administration and part of the republican party as well that's a lot and it's good for at least another hour so I'll just give a very basic overview because I'm sure

we'll do an election podcast at one point before the Israeli election so I've mentioned multiple times the liquid primaries so the liquid which is the largest party on the Israeli right the party of Prime Minister Netanyahu until this particular election cycle was probably the last major party that

“was still holding party primaries where it's well as a list system so you have to hold primaries”

if you want if you're not a personalised party which is one individual you have chapters and members you hold primaries right about what position you are on the list and Prime Minister Netanyahu this time is under a lot of pressure to refresh the list it's the same old names and you know as you can imagine any primary system where it's a small part of the population the ideological crazy is getting away same as everything else and so Netanyahu for a very good campaign against

this party to get a lot of power to deserve the top 11 of why is any of this relevant so one of the people campaigning in the primaries until today was the Defense Minister, you saw cats who was

not doing very well in the primaries okay and he decided as Defense Minister to basically run

in a primary as Defense Minister and curve policy to do that so there were three instances instance number one he goes on channel 14 which has developed pro Netanyahu television show he's on the equivalent of the fox five right so there wherever is and he basically announced his live on television that he's replacing the head of central command Avie Bluth who despite being a religious Jew who was generally seen as pro settler that he feels wasn't listening to him because

Avie Bluth wanted to return administrative detention to violent settlers or violent individuals who were in the settlements, it's unclear where they live, who were committing horrendous acts of violence against Palestinians and you saw cats that know and he's undermined me and so I'm going to replace him cause the huge for all the chief of staff of the idea said you don't have the power to do that and under no circumstances and so you know the idea was at war with the Defense Minister so that's

one two in a different campaigning event in the settlement city of Ariel the Defense Minister declared that he was comfortable signing administrative detention orders against Palestinians against Bedwinne Israeli citizens against Arab citizens of Israel but not against Jewish citizens of

Israel and that he would basically ethnically determine administrative detention again big for all

but you know he's trying to you know this is what the primary said and the third one he decided to have a primary jingle that's AI track was called bomb bomb bomb which just images of him blowing up villages and Lebanon and in Gaza and other things under a thing bomb bomb and it got to the point

“that Prime Minister Netanyye was like you need to concentrate on state security you can't be doing this”

and so he gave him a protected top ten spot on the list in order just to have him return he was missing cabinet meetings right that why am I saying all this as deeply darkly humorous and it's not humorous it's monstrous as this is it demonstrates to the state that Prime Republicans can affect security policy in the state as well and in all of the pretends that it doesn't just doesn't understand Israeli society in any way shape or forth okay so the elections are affecting every single

security decision right now it creates this Netanyye will do nothing that will challenge his coalition because he wants that block to be his block at the next one if he forces the block to split apart on an unpopular decision on Gaza on Lebanon on Syria on Iran then he knows that he's not going to be prime minister because as he said scope the polls right now demonstrate

that he is well short of 61 seats if he keeps his current coalition basically none of the

opposition parties want to sit with him and so his ability to maintain his grip on power is incredibly limited unless he gets like a big wave before the elections that he can get this coalition to return to power the other underlying dynamics of the election the Democrats which has run by Yegolan have finally reconstituted an actual Zionist left again which had been sort of dead they registered over 110,000 members 85,000 of them took part in their primaries they had a very

as you mentioned Guady Eisencott is sort of the latest main changer to Netanyye, he's a clipped

“Natali Bennett, Eisencott's a former Israeli chief of staff, he's a brief father he loved his son”

and his nephew in the recent war that's happened is a Masrachi guy comes from a lot as seen as a very working class serious in Hebrew you say Mamlahti like state like person and Netanyye hasn't managed to land a punch on him yet but it's early days in the campaign one very interesting development a guy called Yav Stiglitz who was the deputy interior security minister in charge of fighting crime in the Arab sector with part of the Asia-Test list has left the Asia-Ted in

it is extremely highly rumored that he will be joining the arm which is an Islamist Arab party which is somewhat crazy to think about so why is he doing this? Most math shows that you need a arm to join the coalition just like it did under Bennett in order for there to be an opposing 61 seablock and the Israeli population at large is still uncomfortable especially after September 7th relying on Islamist Arab votes or any Arab votes to be honest but Islamist Arab votes and so one way

that they're trying to think about this in a different way is what happens if a very popular

“member of you know a former deputy security minister joins the Islamist Arab list and the”

Arab community actually really appreciated because their number one concern right now is crime in the ab sector that they feel the pink there is a current security minister hasn't dealt with and that Yav was seen as very effective so should he actually join his number two arm still unclear if it's going to happen but rumours are it is demonstrates one that arm is not just subservient to the sure council which is sort of their religious council

where arm tries to move away from that and two are off is a real opportunity to have a government minister come from around because everyone knows Yav and he can just come back in and that gives it a safe way and it shows that the polling that's happened since that's gone in shows that the arm is gaining seats by doing that the Arab community likes having the Jewish community likes it and that that may offer an opportunity and so what's the Netanyahu response? The right

response not only is the religious to make a hand further but also to try and delegitimate the Democrats saying that they are no longer acceptable Zionist members of the coalition because they're all dirty leftists whatever else and that you know they'll be in charge and so this is sort of the campaign that's going on right now. The last thing that I'll to say on the Israeli elections two last things one is a bunch of middling centre-right parties all of

which are polling below the 3.25% threshold one has been against its party another is called the Reservoirs which is Yav's Handel and Shireli Chopper another is Gilad Ardhan and Yuli Edelstein all three of these want to be get in and get four seats to control the balance

of power and basically get to pick the Prime Minister so further all not passing threshold which

means that all of their votes are wasted. So in September you're going to have to choose final party lists we'll see if there are more combos and that's when the campaign really starts in an esteem will see. Last note about polling okay so when you look at the main the three sort of non-partisan channels all of them are sort of convalescing around the same sort of results when the Netanyahu coalition is polling between 52 and 54 the opposition not including

our votes is polling between I know 58 and 61 and then you know sometimes they pass the threshold sometimes they don't with our votes coming in between 8 and 10 okay but when you look at channel 14 which is the Netanyahu channel in the field of poll it shows a completely different universe where the coalition is polling at like 63 64 seats and sort of everything's in person. So what's going on because Phil says a serious guy so from speaking to some friends or

involved in the polling industry Phil has got a different panel about how he uses it he over indexes young and ultra orthodox to try and make up for what is the normal mistakes that the

liquid always seems to do better than the polling indicates because people come home to the

liquid and others however this election is being seen increasingly in existential ways by this rally opposition saying that if this coalition gets reelected after October 7th with all of the ideological firmness and extremism that is represented by bank variance, small twitch and others then there's many of them are like there's no point in staying and there's huge you know 23% of opposition bases have said that they consider

immigrating should they lose amongst a coalition it's like 6% and so there's lots of things there's people trying to fly is rallies in for the election who have left the country there's lots of different things going on but what we are sure of is that the turnout for this election is going to be somewhat different people think the previous elections and it's really about who stays home rather than who turns up. It's fascinating and we absolutely will have another longer

committed discussion on these really election as we get closer to the actual date and things shake

“out a little bit more up until then I think we are out of time for this session unfortunately”

Joel Brunnell thank you for coming back on the Lothar podcast. Always a pleasure going

thanks so much for having me. The Lothar podcast is produced by the Lothar Institute. If you want

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