Is Netanyahu set on the full occupation of Gaza?

0:00Jon Sopel:Paying for college doesn't have to be complicated. With Earnest private student loans, there are no surprises, just low rates and zero fees. Check your eligibility at earnest.com slash go. Loans made by Finwise Bank, member FDIC, and are subject to credit approval. Terms apply. This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:20Lewis Goodall:Cities like broken skeletons laid waste by war. Graveyards of life and lives. The streets, homes and coffee houses of old now cast to the ground.

0:34Jon Sopel:That is Emma Murphy from ITN's News at 10 last night. A report of her overflying Gaza with the Jordanian Air Force as they're preparing to drop aid by parachutes onto the wasteland that is now Gaza.

0:53Lewis Goodall:In the last 24 hours, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has briefed his cabinet that he intends not to scale down the war, not to reduce pressure, but that he wants to take over Gaza in its entirety, arguing that Hamas still poses an existential threat to Israel. But after 20 months of endless bloodshed, of humanitarian disaster, and given Hamas is still there, isn't this just Einstein's definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Welcome to The News Agents.

1:38Jon Sopel:The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And from Benjamin Netanyahu's office has gone a message to the head of the IDF, the head of the Israeli defence forces, to plan for this idea of the full occupation of the Gaza Strip. Now, until now, we have seen that action has been pretty extensive by just look at the pictures from over Gaza and you can see the scale of the destruction, but that they're going to try now to go into areas where the last remaining hostages may be held. And there had been a sort of cordon sanitaire around those areas for fear of putting those hostages' lives at risk. But now, as Lewis was saying, nearly two years on from October the 7th, Benjamin Netanyahu wants to go further in his bid to dislodge Hamas from its military and political control of the Gaza Strip.

2:37Lewis Goodall:I think what many people will find extraordinary, certainly what I find extraordinary, is the idea that after all of this time, after everything that we've seen happening in Gaza, that Netanyahu's response and the Israeli government's response would be, let's go a bit further. Let's turn the screws even more. Particularly when you can leave aside the humanitarian situation, which we know is appalling, is dire. We know civilians are getting killed routinely on a daily basis. We know that kids are suffering from extreme ill-nutrition and indeed many experts say widespread famine. Leave that aside for one second if you can.

3:18Lewis Goodall:But just in terms of Netanyahu's own stated aims, I'm at a loss. I'm at a loss. Because after 20 months of endless, endless warfare, what can you do that you haven't already done? I mean, most international experts and military experts and critics at home say that Hamas is already decimated. Its leaders are mostly dead. its arsenal is severely depleted if not completely exhausted and indeed don't take my word for this or anybody's word here i am very struck by israeli internal criticism of netanyahu's government because it can be very tempting or we can fall into the trap of sort of just talking about israel and netanyahu as if they're sort of synonymous and his government is synonymous which they're not So what happened yesterday, very, very rare intervention.

4:08Lewis Goodall:More than 600 retired Israeli security officials, including 19 former heads of intelligence agencies. These aren't some sort of lily liberals out there. These are people who epitomise the Israeli state, who have worked at the centre of the Israeli state, released a video urging President Trump to tell the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza. They said it is our professional judgment that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel. This war started as a just war, they said. It was a defensive war. But once we achieved all the military objectives, once we achieved a brilliant military victory against all our enemies, the war stopped being a just war.

4:48Lewis Goodall:It is leading the state of Israel to the loss of its security and identity. So if they're saying that, if they're saying that they've won already, what is Netanyahu really hoping to achieve?

4:58Jon Sopel:OK, let's put it in its worst possible light of what Netanyahu is trying to achieve. He's trying to stay in the saddle a little bit longer. He's trying to stave off the threat of prosecution in this corruption inquiry. Yesterday, we know he tried to sack his attorney general, the person leading the investigation into the wrongdoing. He's tried to fire him and the Supreme Court of Israel says, sorry, you can't do that. You haven't got the authority or the power to do that. And there is now an appeal going to the Supreme Court, which will be heard in due course in Israel of whether Netanyahu can do that.

5:34Jon Sopel:I suppose the other thing is that, you know, Hamas still seem to have some degree of command and control in Gaza, even after all the destruction. we have seen the statement from and I think this was significant last week from Arab League members Egypt Qatar others saying Hamas has to disarm and has to relinquish political control and get out of there before there can be any sort of peace settlement but what does that peace settlement look like and what does it look like if Israel is taking over control and you know a lot of this goes back to almost the flippancy of Donald Trump in the early days where he was saying, yeah, you know, get rid of all the Palestinians from Gaza.

6:23Jon Sopel:And he posted that really appalling AI video of him and Netanyahu in sun lounges with dollars raining down on the Gaza Riviera. And you can see that for a lot of people in Israel on the ideological hard right, that was not seen as a

6:40Lewis Goodall:joke that was seen as an invitation yeah and look i think john you just um put your finger on it and actually i think this is what is most disturbing about netanyahu in particular i think there are people in his government who are mad i think they're genuinely mad i think they're ideologically crazed there are far-right people in his government that are so indifferent to human life we get very caught up i think in this question about calling it a genocide or not and the technicality of that in the legal definition. In a way, I agree with what Bernie Sanders said about this, which is you can argue about that all day long.

7:14Lewis Goodall:It doesn't get you very far. What I think we can all say is that much of the action which has taken place and the indifference to Palestinian life, which has become more and more self-evident, is monstrous. It's monstrous because we're in a situation where children are being killed, apparently indiscriminately. Again, this is well-documented by not only journalists but international organisations. And Netanyahu, I don't think Netanyahu, I think what is particularly awful or despicable even about what Netanyahu is doing is not that he actually believes that Hamas can be destroyed. You can't achieve security.

7:48Lewis Goodall:Netanyahu, I think, knows this. You can't achieve long term security down the barrel of a gun. Look to endless international internal political problems and you see evidence that in our own country, Northern Ireland. How did Northern Ireland, how did how did the IRA stop being a threat to the British state and to British citizens? It wasn't when we sent 30 ,000 troops into Northern Ireland. It was when there was a political settlement. Netanyahu knows this, but we know that he is thinking and is motivated by his short-term political future to stay in office for as long as possible. And to prize that above not only, never mind Gaza, but actually the security of his own country is a truly, I think, appalling act.

8:29Lewis Goodall:And again, this doesn't require me to say this. This is all being said by people in Israel, not least the hostage families who are deeply, deeply hostile to Netanyahu. But you're even seeing, I noted reading in Eretz today, the Israeli newspaper, that we're in a situation now where actually Israel is even starting to struggle to get some of his own soldiers, the IDF, to return to Gaza. They are exhausted by the operation. They no longer see the utility in the operation. and you know you've got full-time soldiers who are deep patriots you know you could be not be more patriotic than these soldiers who in the idf who you know whatever one thinks i mean obviously there will always be bad actors many will feel that they are doing their patriotic duty asking doing what their government is saying increasingly saying that they won't go back three conscripts sentenced to jail last month for refusing to re-enter gaza on mental health grounds prompting a public outcry that led to the cancellation of their jail terms netanyahu isn't just increasingly setting himself against Gaza, against international public opinion, which we should talk about, but against many in his own country.

9:35Jon Sopel:You said it was monstrous and you said Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel. Both of those statements are true. You know, an equally effective way of undermining Hamas, rather than starving the Palestinian people, would have been to put so much food and aid into Gaza that actually undermines the scarcity that Hamas could create and therefore have control over. If you just flood the zone with as much food and aid as you could possibly ever wish for, then Hamas is undermined in having that political control of controlling the food supply. And so that would have been a very effective way of doing it, instead of which they've gone for the opposite.

10:18Jon Sopel:And so what you've got now is an ever-growing gap, it feels to me, between the Israeli government, which is acting out of this narrow self-interest as you define it. I mean, mad? I mean, yeah, I think the policy that they're going for is mad because, you know, I say this as someone Jewish, I don't think that if Ben Gavir and Smotrich got their way and they reoccupy Gaza and they reoccupy the West Bank and they ban all Palestinians, do I believe that Israel is a safer country and that the Jewish homeland is more secure? Absolutely not. I think it puts Israel more at risk. I think the hatreds will be even greater.

11:03Jon Sopel:I think the demand for vengeance will be swift and it will be painful in the long run. So I think that, you know, rather than people keeping quiet about this, I think people need to speak up for what some of what is happening in Israel right now in the name of the Israeli government. um i don't know whether they're mad or not but they are bloody dangerous in what they are doing and netanyahu seems to be going along with as you say lewis he's a much more sophisticated politician than that but it seems that short-term survival is the all-important thing and doing enough to keep donald trump on board yeah i mean what some of these people are is that they think

11:41Lewis Goodall:that they have a generational maybe even once in a century opportunity to achieve the aims that they've always wanted to do so they're some of these people i think including i mean you mentioned bengavir the israeli security minister i think they're sort of drunk on the opportunity that they have i mean you know as evidence for that you know in the last 24 hours bengavir choosing out of nowhere to visit the al-aksa mosque in jerusalem people don't know about that it's the third most holy site in islam there has been a decades-old status quo agreement arrangement with muslim authorities of palestinians that the al-aksa compound is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there he decided with some of his followers just go and pray there and let everybody know that he'd done it now this might seem innocuous to us who are not sort of drenched in the history of this but it is not innocuous to Muslims to the Muslim world to the Arab world and what it is doing it feels as if they want to show that they are at this moment of maximal power that they're rubbing others Muslims face in their power.

12:45Lewis Goodall:This is dangerous. Your word is right, John. And by the way, I'm saying all this, and it is always important to reassert, I talk about some of the Israeli actions being monstrous. Well, obviously, what Hamas has done is monstrous. What happened October 7th is monstrous. But the point is, is that what Israel has done and is now proceeding or arguing that they will continue to do is to empower Hamas further and not just empower Hamas. And I say this as someone who, I'm pro-Israel in the same way that I'm pro-Palestine. I don't want there to be a contradiction between those two things there ought not to be a contradiction between those things any person who i think is reasonable and looks at this situation this long historic situation with logic and reason would be in that position but what i think is so tragic about what netanyahu has done and is now proposing to accelerate and intensify is to blacken israel's name the state of israel which had previously you know in decades gone by been a symbol of hope for so many and of democratic liberal tolerance for so many is to blacken its image and its name in the international community where actually saying that you are a friend and ally of israel becomes problematic and that hasn't been done at hamas's hand that's been done at netanyahu's hand because he has managed to alienate through the actions of his own government and with what has happened in Palestine with the killing and maiming and you know starving of innocence it is inevitable that that is going to tarnish Israel's reputation for perhaps a generation just look at the polling again don't take my word for look at the polling of it particularly among young people around the world and that is not easily recoverable and it's all very well for ardent Israeli hawks in the west or for people in the Israeli government to turn around and say that's an appalling thing you're rewarding hamas by taking that position by being so anti-israel you have done it you have done it by acting in the way that you have done none of this is easy nothing would have been easy after october the 7th but if you think back to the solidarity and sympathy that israel rightly enjoyed in the wake of october the 7th that has been squandered not by hamas but by netanyahu and

14:54Jon Sopel:government and what has been so extraordinary and jarring these past sort of appalling nearly two years since october the 7th which you know was terrible i mean terrible what happened on october is that you've seen the cleverness of israel in terms of the way it has undermined hezbollah the way it has weakened Iran the sort of axis of kind of the firewall around Israel has been weakened enormously with clever pinpoint precision strikes with unbelievable intelligence gathered with real targeted attacks and you look at what they are doing in Gaza and you think oh my god what is this all about and seeing starving children is just beyond the pale well

15:44Lewis Goodall:Well, I mean, you know, to try to reinforce what I said when I talk about the alienation of international public opinion, who has called, who has called, which politician has called Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? Obviously, one thinks of Jeremy Corbyn or Zahra Sultana or perhaps Hamza Yusuf and so on. Who else on the American side? Not just AOC, not Bernie Sanders, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now, if you've lost Marjorie Taylor Greene, right, then I think that that does tell you something about what has happened to the image of Israel in the international community.

16:20Jon Sopel:and that has another important consequence because donald trump wants to keep the maga base happy and there are splits emerging understandably rightly who are saying you know what israel we love you we support you you are just going way too far right now and this needs to stop you need to get food into the population of gaza you need to rethink what you're doing yeah and i think that

16:47Lewis Goodall:this is reflective this new situation israel finds itself as as something of a of a pariah really in the views of many i don't say that lightly or with any relish it's reflective of you can see the conundrum that starmer faces starmer in in suggesting that he'll recognize palestine which you know was a huge step albeit a conditional one getting much criticism which i can understand from people who say look this is rewarding hamas hamas will be jubilant about this that you are rewarding them for their heinous crimes on october the 7th but again it doesn't consider what israel has done since october the 7th to put starmer in that position it is not a position that starmer wanted to be in or to be doing it in this way but such is the political revulsion not just within the labor coalition but look at the polling that the british public is actually generally horrified by what they're seeing in terms of Israeli actions in Gaza.

17:47Lewis Goodall:There is such now political pressure to do something, anything, to make a gesture, to recognise that suffering, that given Netanyahu is not willing to do anything to listen to any European governments, the only card that Starmer really has to play is recognition of the Palestinian state at a time when Hamas, undoubtedly a terrorist organisation, is still at the heart of whatever is left of the Palestinian state. But that's not Starmer's fault. That's the fault of the situation in which he finds himself, which is not of his making. It is a situation largely made, as I say, by Netanyahu himself.

18:24Jon Sopel:Look, the 19-year-old John Sopel went and worked on a kibbutz between Afullah and Bet-Shan in Israel. I went because I was slightly kind of interested in the whole idea of the idealism of the kibbutz movement, the equality everyone mucking in no one earning any more than anybody else it just seemed like a dream and there were young people from all over the world who were converging on these kibbutzim all across israel not all were jews there were many who weren't it wasn't a jewish kind of rite of passage thing i think boris johnson went to work yeah i think also there's that as well but but it was done because you felt this is a really interesting thing that they're doing There was an idealism around that time.

19:08Jon Sopel:It was also the first signs of, you know, peace being made between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. And it just seemed really positive and upbeat. If I was 19 again, I know admittedly a difficult concept to think of. Would I be heading off to a kibbutz now? I don't think so.

19:25Lewis Goodall:Right, we will be back after this, where we will be getting a voice from the West Bank from Palestine with the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, self-styled Hossam Zomlong.

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20:29Lewis Goodall:This is The News Agents.

20:33Jon Sopel:Well, let's speak now to Hussam Zomlot. He is the head of the Palestinian mission in the UK. So, if Britain recognises Palestinian statehood, he would be the ambassador and previously head of the PLO General Delegation to the US. And you're speaking to us now from Ramallah in the West Bank. So we're really grateful for you to find the time. Look, we've heard in the past 24, 48 hours that Netanyahu's latest plan is to take over all of Gaza. What does that mean? What will it do? That means what we have been telling and warning the world since October 8th, that Israel will target not Hamas, will target not any specific group, but will target the Palestinian people.

21:24And this is exactly what has been happening. And this latest episode of Israel wanting to retake the entire Gaza is just another confirmation that the plan is simple and straightforward. It's how this whole situation started and how Israel is pressing ahead with it, which is depopulation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. And I don't need to list for you how Israel tried the mass killing in Gaza, and then it shifted to mass destruction, not just lives, but livelihoods, to make sure that people have no infrastructure, no hospitals, no schools, no water, no sanitations, no nothing. and then now mass starvation.

22:11All is tailored to gear towards the depopulation of Gaza. And this whole idea of a military retake of Gaza is to implement that plan.

22:23Jon Sopel:Do you think that anyone can act as a break on what Netanyahu does? Could Donald Trump say, no, this is too far. You can't do this or Europe or anyone else? Indeed. And that is exactly the one lesson we learned after the horrors of the Second World War, that there is something called the global order, the post-World War II rules-based global order, not just the U.S., but the rest of the world. And we have conventions, we have rules, and we have responsibilities by contracting parties of the international system. This includes an immediate dispatching of international peacekeeping forces to protect children, to feed families, to make sure that genocide never happens again, never again.

23:08That's why we built the United Nations and that's why we came together in the 40s. so short of that the international law is very clear we at least must immediately stop providing any actor in the international system that is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide and mass mass murder and of course policies of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing we must stop providing them with the tools so this is i'm describing to you john the The only way to enforce the international will on Israel is by collective action by the international community to stop him.

23:46Jon Sopel:So that's my follow up question. You said, yes, the international order can do this. Do you see the international order and particularly the United States as willing to do this? Well, it was at one point. And you may remember that it was President Trump and the US that enforced a ceasefire in January. and it was celebrated worldwide, supported worldwide, and supported by us as well. That saw the exchange of hostages, the release of hostages. It saw the beginning of bringing life back to Gaza. And that's exactly what Netanyahu didn't need, didn't want, I mean, according to the plan we started describing.

24:25And he breached that ceasefire. That was the third ceasefire that was breached. So answering your question, yes, if the U.S. wishes to do so, the US would enforce and force Netanyahu to seize file.

24:37Lewis Goodall:Mr. Zemlach, the position of the Israeli government and Netanyahu, as we now know, is to say that they want to continue the war until such time as Hamas has been destroyed, saying that Hamas still poses a significant threat to Israel. What is your understanding of the current capabilities of Hamas? What is left of Hamas as a military force? No, the question is what is left of the Palestinian people, my friend. This is targeting the Hamas has been a doctrine by Israel for the last 22 months, and it's not supported by facts on the ground. Facts on the ground confirms all through the last almost two years, Israel is targeting the Palestinian people.

25:20This is absolutely, bluntly clear. They will not stop unless and until the ideologues, the fanatics in that government, and you know many of them, including Smotrich and Bingvir, do what they say. And we need to listen to what they say from the beginning for 22 months. First, they say in Gaza, there are no innocent people. There are no children. All of them are human animals and must be targeted. Second, they say that the Palestinian people must leave and we must resettle Gaza and build Jewish settlements in Gaza. They are doing it. So this is the real plan. This is the real plan that they have.