Bibi, one more time? Israel’s election launches

0:00Dell PCs, with Intel inside, are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all-night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken. The times you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto-update throwing off your momentum. them. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work. Built with long-lasting battery, so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built-in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it.

0:36They don't build tech for tech's sake, they build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work at dell.com slash dellpcs. That's dell.com slash dellpcs. Built for you.

0:55The Economist

1:02Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:10Rosie Blau:Today on the show, will America keep supporting Africa's counter-terrorism efforts? And as the World Cup approaches, Cape Verde is competing for the first time.

1:26Rosie Blau:First up, though...

1:34Rosie Blau:It would be an understatement to say that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is a political survivor. Though the collapse of Israel's government has repeatedly been predicted in the past couple of years, and many have wished for it, only now begins the campaign. and the fight for Netanyahu's future.

1:55Anshel Pfeffer:Today, the Knesset Israels Parliament will begin voting on a dissolution bill.

2:03Rosie Blau:Anshol Fefer is our Israel correspondent and the author of a biography of Benjamin Netanyahu.

2:10Anshel Pfeffer:This may bring the election forward perhaps to the beginning of September. As it is, the election is supposed to take place at the latest by the end of October, So whatever the date turns out to be, it's already needy in election season. As so many Israeli elections over the last decade or so, this will also be yet again a referendum on Netanyahu as prime minister. So his career, his political future is on the line.

2:40Rosie Blau:Just tell me what's triggered this vote now.

2:43Anshel Pfeffer:So the most immediate trigger of the vote is a dispute between Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties of his coalition. He promised them four years ago that this government would pass a law exempting students of religious seminaries from national service, serving in the army mainly. He's failed to do that so far, and they've finally given up on waiting. And this also may be the end of his very long and very strong alliance with those ultra-Orthodox parties, though it's hard to see who they will link up instead of Netanyahu if this is the end.

3:20Rosie Blau:We've got a campaign coming. Gaza is obviously going to feature hugely. What impact do you think it will have?

3:28Anshel Pfeffer:As far as Israelis are concerned, Gaza still means one thing, and that's October 7, 23, the surprise attack by Hamas, the massacre of over 1 ,200 Israelis on that day, and everything that led up to it, the failures of intelligence, the policy that Netanyahu had of basically allowing Hamas to entrench themselves in Gaza. Those are still things that greatly concern Israelis, why it happened, how to prevent it from happening again. Netanyahu has so far refused to even set up a national commission of inquiry. That is something that all the opposition parties are demanding. So I think that will almost certainly dominate a large part of the election campaign.

4:11Rosie Blau:You say that Netanyahu has refused to set up a commission of inquiry. Essentially, what I think you're saying there is that there has been no reckoning about what's happened in Gaza. There's been no proper discussion about the conduct of the war.

4:26Anshel Pfeffer:You're talking here now about two things. You're talking here about what happened on October 7 and everything that led up before October 7. Then you're talking about the conduct of the war, which is everything that's happened in Gaza over the past two and a half years. and that's something that obviously the world is much more focused on, the fact that over 70 ,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians, have been killed in Gaza, the destruction of much of the area, the fact that the population there were brought to the brink of starvation. And that, I don't think, will be very much in this election because Israelis are still so fixated on what happened on October 7 and also because Israelis regard the war in Gaza.

5:06Anshel Pfeffer:It doesn't matter whether these Israelis are pro-Netaniao or anti-Netaniao, overwhelmingly regard the war in Gaza as a war that Israel had to fight because of what happened, because of the Hamas attack. The debate on how that war was conducted and all the bad things that happened, the destruction, the death in Gaza, I think is something which will play out in Israel for years to come. And it needs both a different government that is capable of starting this national reckoning. And I think also for all of Israelis, the processing of the trauma of what happened and that's, if at all, it's only starting now.

5:41Rosie Blau:And will Lebanon or the conflict in Iran play a part? So the fact that Israel is still fighting or there are just brief lulls perhaps

5:50Anshel Pfeffer:in the two inconclusive wars, one in Lebanon against Hezbollah and one with Iran where Israel was fighting together with America, they will also overshadow the election. A majority of Israelis believe that it was justified to go to war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Iran over the nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But they, at the same time, don't see what these wars have achieved because those threats still exist. So the criticism is not so much of Netanyahu going to war, but failing to prosecute that war in a decisive manner.

6:21Rosie Blau:We should remind ourselves that even before October the 7th, Netanyahu was very controversial, not least for the judicial reforms he was pushing through. Remind us about those.

6:32Anshel Pfeffer:So very quickly, when the Netanyahu government came to power in December 2022, they pushed a raft of what they called the judicial reform, which was basically a series of laws aimed at weakening the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal establishment. That sparked many months of very bitter and large protests in Israel that still, I think, will be an issue in this election. And I think there's also a broader issue in this election where it's a referendum of not just on Netanyahu, very much will be that, but also on this coalition of religious and far-right parties which set out to achieve these radical changes in Israel and which at least half of Israelis are against.

7:16Anshel Pfeffer:And I think they'll be voting on that as well when this election is held.

7:21Rosie Blau:Anshel, a basic but important question. Will Netanyahu himself stand?

7:26Anshel Pfeffer:Well, there are rumors swirling around of Netanyahu, both for health reasons and because he's facing corruption charges, which Netanyahu denies. He perhaps will try and find a plea bargain and part of that will be resign and not stand again. Those rumors are around. I am not convinced that Netanyahu is even capable of resigning. This is a man who's been for 40 years now in frontline politics. This will be his 12th election campaign as leader of his Likud party. He'll be 77 when the election finally comes. I don't think he has a life outside of this. And I'll be surprised if he resigns, but the rumours are there.

8:04Rosie Blau:And what's your prediction? Who will win this election?

8:08Anshel Pfeffer:Anybody who's covered Israeli politics for any length of time, and sadly I've had to dedicate my entire career to covering them, knows that you never bet against Netanyahu. He's lost before. He's failed to win elections. But he's also achieved some unimaginable comebacks. so I'm not going to put any money on that. But it certainly is a tall order. Almost all the serious pollsters are very clear that his coalition doesn't have a majority, but he does have an advantage in the fact that he's going in and serving prime ministers. So it means that not only does the opposition have to win in a majority, they have to be able to build a coalition around another prime minister who will then receive the confidence of the Knesset and replace him.

8:51Anshel Pfeffer:And that is much more difficult than just winning a majority in total.

8:56Rosie Blau:Anshil, thank you very much.

8:58Anshel Pfeffer:Thank you for having me, Rosie.

9:16I was in Jacquesville by the sea in Ivory Coast.

9:21Rosie Blau:Tom Gardner is our Africa correspondent. It was a grey, foggy morning just after sunrise, and I was peering through the undergrowth out towards the sea, where a motorboat was coming to shore.

9:40A dozen or so men were on board, dressed in army fatigues, their faces covered by balaclavas. and I watched them as they leapt onto the shore, disembarked and began prowling through the thick forest, firing their guns. Eventually they reached the building which I was standing near and broke down the door. I had to cover my ears as they shot their guns inside the building. each room one by one they cleaned of terrorists to use the word they chose and rescued the hostages tom what was going on well this was actually a training exercise it's held annually in africa and it's called operation flintlock it's run by the american special forces and they train dozens of mostly West and North African special forces and have done every year, practically since 2005.

10:45It's sort of a mixture of a boot camp and a networking event. So as countries in the region are threatened by jihadist militant groups in particular, this is an opportunity for these special forces under American guidance to train, swap ideas, build relationships. And the Americans provide much of the funding and logistics with the support as well of several NATO partner countries.

11:14Rosie Blau:It's interesting to hear that this is run and part funded by the Americans, given all that we've heard about cuts in overseas aid from the Trump administration. Is this going to continue? It did feel for me a bit like a throwback. I think a lot of the budgeting came from before the Trump administration returned to office. So whether it continues long into the future, given NATO rivalries and the general pullback from much of the African continent on the Americans' part remains to be seen. But for now, it was certainly billed to me by the officials and officers I spoke to as an opportunity for America to continue to demonstrate its strength as a security partner, particularly in comparison to rivals such as Russia and China.

12:07Rosie Blau:So who is actually involved in this exercise? Well, there's about 1 ,500 soldiers. What was interesting for me, covering the crisis in West Africa and the Sahel region, where jihadist groups have been running on off for sort of best part of a decade now, the three countries most affected by jihadism, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, they declined to participate. And that's despite recent American efforts to restore security cooperation with their ruling military government. So they were invited. They chose not to attend. And why didn't they attend? Well, starting from 2020, these three countries cut ties with Western government.

12:55So they booted out in particular French troops who'd been aiding the fight against jihadism, but also American ones, also UN peacekeepers. So there's a lot of, frankly, bad blood really between these three governments who've drawn much closer to Russia in recent years, and in general, the West and Western aligned countries.

13:17Rosie Blau:And of those that were there, you've already mentioned the amphibious mission, But what else are they learning? Well, Flintlock has evolved over the years. This year, a course on using drones for surveillance and reconnaissance was introduced. That was definitely a big thing. Apparently, it was very popular with the African militaries that were present. Drones are currently being used by Johannes militant groups to great effect. So there was a lot of interest in skilling up in that regard. The Americans as well, they say they've been putting more resources into countering jihadist online propaganda.

13:54That's something that has become a real aggbar, particularly that there is evidence and a sense that a lot of this has also been amplified by the Russians. So that's become a key priority. So for the first time, local social media influencers were invited. So all of this, to me, seemed in a way as, you know, like something of a relic of a kind of bygone era of American-led multilateralism.

14:19Rosie Blau:In terms of content or in terms of its mere existence? It's mere existence, certainly. But also, I mean, elements of the exercise that were emphasized to me by American officers included, you know, training local armies in human rights, the rule of law, for example. There was one American officer who gushed about the work they were doing to engage with local communities. Another one mentioned to me that this was an opportunity to get 30 plus countries to into a room to talk to each other, sounding rather like the UN, not really like a member of Trump's so-called Department of War. So in that respect as well, I think it felt a little bit out of sync with the times.

15:07Rosie Blau:So Tom, what impact did training exercises like this have on Africa's efforts to counter terrorism? Well, I mean, the short answer is they have not been massively effective. I mean, if you consider that these exercises began in 2005, and over the subsequent two decades, a huge amount of resources and money have been invested by the US and other Western allies, particularly the French, in counter-terror, in training. But at the same time, over that period, jihadism has continued to spread, not just in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, which are really fragile these days, but also some of the coastal nations, including Ivory Coast, which has experienced attacks on its northern border, Togo, Benin as well.