118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad)

33:20But in Germany, which presumably were the spearhead of our national security, to be involved in that kind of thing when your closest aides or your cronies are benefiting financially from making those deals, that, to me, is not pardonable. Now, when you have leaders committing crimes of this nature, you enter the field that is already called grand corruption. This grand here is well-tailored with grand strategy. There is a grandness to this, but the problem with grand corruption is that unlike any other field of corruption, lesser officials cannot use their power to distort the legal procedures to fire the prosecutors, to go after the courts, to select the juries.

34:15This is not the case when the leader himself is the head of the police indirectly. And when it happens at that level, you cannot really take action. That is why all incidents of grand corruption that we know of were not in the defense area. There are only two instances of the many scandals that I know that went up as high up as to the number one. In South Africa, in the purchased submarines, and in Israel. Here in England, it's ministers. In Greece, it's usually ministers of defense, top generals. But the big ones stay away. The Berlusconis of this world, they go into other fields which are no less lucrative.

35:02Netanyahu got implicated in defense. And to me, not only to me, that's a weakness, a moral weakness, and it's very, very grave. We have to say in his defense, he hasn't yet launched his own Bitcoin and made billions in a few days on the back of it and said that it's just peanuts. But anyway, we'll part that there. Can we go back to October the 7th and actually bring it forward to the ceasefire? I know you weren't directly involved, but from your experience, both alongside the prime minister and as part of Mossad, give us your sense of how that might have been put together. Who was involved? What the sort of process would have been that led while this horrific war was going on that led to that ceasefire?

35:48Well, it is very interesting to look at, to watch how it evolved over time. It started very badly, as you know, to such an extent as some people have said, Israel was traumatized and the early decision-making was affected by this shock, what had happened to us. As I said, the degree, it's not only the barbarism, but the scope of the number of people had been killed on the first day. all civilians, women, children, and the numbers, and the fact that Israel's territory was invaded. And their ambition was to reach very far. And it was done almost jointly from all fronts. The Hezbollah for the north started to bombard our villages.

36:34Then the Iranians led indirect, but they also fired a few things. So at certain moments, we were attacked from all directions at the same time. That's a nightmare. Now, the Israeli reaction followed three steps, which led ultimately to the ceasefire. The initial one was defensive, to blunt the invasion and to turn them out. It took a few days in which many died gallantly. The valor of the Israeli reservists who all flocked to the south took up their arms, and on their own initiatives without command. They all, you know, met essentially until the military. And at one point, there were no one left in occupation of the Israeli villages or kibbutzim or settlements.

37:24But at that very moment, we already started to attack from the air. And air attacks have a limited purpose, but they already cause damage. The collateral damage involved in that is always there. So although we attacked from the air the Hamas targets, there already was a beginning of what would amount to a pretty heavy punishment. And it took a few days more for us to go on the offensive, namely to prepare, because they were not even prepared the plans for how to enter the Gaza Strip with which forces according to which plan. And we started the grand maneuver, so to speak. And it went on and on and on, and it became very prolonged, because this is urban warfare.

38:15And we all know from other examples that there are no easy way of about it, and you have to go after them individually. We were surprised by the scope of the tunnels, although we knew, but little did they know how extensive they were. We were surprised by some of their munitions. We had many small surprises, but this was done systematically. But at the same time, almost four days into the war, the question begged itself whether we should open a second front with the North. And some people had proposed because we knew that we had as contingency plans some of those jazzy means that we employed this booby trap communication gear that essentially decimated their command.

39:02structure. So the option was to do it right away at the beginning. We would have succeeded in some extent, but the decision was taken not to, so as not to spread ourselves too thin, because we really stretched, so first concentrated on the South. In the interim, Iran at one point challenged us directly with those ballistic missiles barrage. And they were disabused of what they thought they scored very little. Turned out our air defenses intercepted much of what they did. But still, one cannot take away from them that they attacked us directly with heavy missiles, hoping to create large damage, again, to Israeli population centers and to especially to certain targets.

39:55So that was a very complicated thing. But what brought about the ceasefire is that dimension that no one attracted into it, the hostage-taking business. Hostage-taking is a worldwide practice today done by criminal organizations or terrorist organizations. We are not the only one to be subject to that. It was part of their plan to take hostages, again, elderly, young, women and so. They abused them terribly while they were in captivity. And the issue of bringing about the release of those hostages became the driving factor. With the passage of time, that is the single issue that brought about this ceasefire.

40:41The desire of the other side to stop our offensive against them and for us to have our hostages back, those alive, alive. So that's led to what is essentially an interim agreement, a ceasefire, and not a final cessation of the hostilities. Uzi, the big fact of the scale of destruction in Gaza, the 46 ,000 deaths, the 60 % of the buildings gone, those images that you and I would have been looking at over the last few days of what Gaza looks like, the scale of that destruction and the International Criminal Court rulings, the challenges now coming from so many countries against Israel. I mean, I can understand very strongly the trauma that Israel feels that you feel.

41:33But have you found a way of also talking about or thinking about what people in Gaza feel and the trauma that they've experienced since? Of course. Of course. Listen, we are close. This is a reality. What Gaza is like is not a new thing to us. Who are the people there we know? The politics and the history of what has happened It's clear. And the kind of condition that those people are going through, one can imagine more than you think. Sometimes we take into Israeli hospitals people who are brought from Gaza discreetly to be operated in Israel and so forth. The human condition, the desperation, the destruction, the pain.

42:17One doesn't have to have a big imagination to know what's going on. But let's understand what is happening here. In the first place, it is the deliberate strategy of the Hamas to use those people as human shields. That is to say, instead of making it sure that their civilian population is immune or protected and taken away, they do the exact opposite. They place their facilities within those populated centers. They place their command position in hospitals, expecting us that because it is a hospital, we won't touch that. So in a way, they are deliberately exposing them to danger, and that confronts you with a choice.

43:08What are you to do? What are you to do, for example, if suppose you are a policeman and somebody stands ahead of you, holding a hostage to protect his body, and says, there I go, don't touch me. Well, as we've seen in films and also in history, sometimes people say, okay, we will not touch you and you'll get away with it because others might be hurt. But sometimes you take the risk. I think we obviously are not going to completely get to the bottom of this issue. But I guess many people will feel that they can understand better the early stages of the conflict. but after this number of people have been killed, Ismail Haniyeh has been killed, Shinoah has been killed, Hezbollah has been crippled.

44:01I suppose the question is, why did it continue so long? And why is there many people in Israel saying we want to go back to war again? Because the sensation is when can this stop? I mean, what's the end state? What's the point at which this can finish? It should be finished, obviously. But let me explain, I think that one has to focus the question a little bit in a wider scope. It is not just the two first days in which the Hamas committed those atrocities. Not at all. For the last a year and almost a half, the Hezbollah and others were daily bombarding Israeli cities, settlement's population.

44:47There were daily deaths of children, women, civilians in Israel, all those throughout the war until the very last day, even the last hour before the ceasefire went to effect, they still fired a symbolic missile at Tel Aviv. So it is an artificial and wrong editing of the situation, as if attacking civilians and causing death and destruction was confined by the Hamas only through the first two days, whereas we, when in fighting for the duration, were causing more damage in Gaza. True, this is what we did in Gaza, but that was done, and you should have been in Israel to see it, when at the very same days, again, civilians in Israel, and the misery among those Israelis displaced, the hundreds of thousands whose homes were burned, businesses were burned, farms were burned, they are inhospitable now, neither in the north nor in the south.

45:54They're all people who are now, as I said, internally displaced. And the fact that civilians were targeted, you see, in our case, our account is that this is collateral damage. We were not after civilians, certainly not after babies and that. Yes, the commanders, yes. But that was decapitation. Decapitation as a process is understood. And, you know, why did somebody go after bin Laden? Although sometimes you hold the heads responsible, particularly when it comes to those. That's another issue. When you talk about the civilian population in Gaza, this is very much collateral damage. Should have been avoided, can be avoided, and hopefully we will not return to this kind of condition which coerces us to go and confront this difficult situation.

46:55Just on that though, Izzy, just listening to you explain that, there is a danger though, you said earlier that Israel's a democracy, you had a dispute with Netanyahu because you felt that he was making decisions that weren't necessarily governed by Israeli law. Whereas on the other side, you're talking about what you might say a combination of terrorist organizations and political rogues, as it were. I'm sure you don't want to have that sense of moral equivalence. But looking from here, and I accept we're not in Israel, and I can imagine how horrific it has been to be in Israel. But when you do see the state of Gaza now, it's very hard to hold on to the idea that Netanyahu and his team were sitting there with regard to the humanitarian effects of what they were doing.

47:45But in a sense, they saw, right, the whole of Gaza is basically attacking us. The whole of Gaza is Hamas. But you and I know that's not the case. Yes, again, I grant you, I understand what you're saying, and I understand. Why are you saying that? I can't understand. I'm trying to tell you what it looks from Israel's point of view, because again, you're not looking at the full scope. The full scope is, look at how Metullah, why don't you go and film Metullah? Metula is completely destroyed like Gaza, except that there were villas and not this kind of dense. Or the city of Kiryat Shmone. Entire cities have been burned and leveled off.

48:30And in the south, you have at least four areas of urban which are about the size of Gaza. But somehow, it is a concentration of people in Gaza which has been watched. We have civilians hurt at the same time And again, in our case, those civilians were deliberately targeted as such. And there is another thing, Rory, I want to tell you. Look at the context. Somebody had made the statistic that is, I don't know if you said that, in the course of one day on that early October 7th, we lost a number of fatalities that we've never had in one single day in our entire history. Only at the time of the Holocaust, you had that number as a daily production, death production.

49:20But remember, again, what memory this evoke. The Hamas are not saying that, and they do not do that because they say we have an issue with Israel or because it is the occupation. They say we are here to see Israel destroyed. I hate to see that. But this is what the Iranians say they call for our complete demise. It is not even the kind of evil that Churchill had said about the Germans should ever invade Britain. The expectation was not to destroy Britain and its population. Here you have people who ideologically mean what they say. They would like us, as a collective entity and as individuals, to vanish.

50:16And they effected a very brutal offensive of a limited nature, which they thought was conducive to that future option. We failed to deter them from that kind of attack. Now, should they want a repeat, they would have to factor into that the price tag is at least on the same order of magnitude as the one exacted now. Okay, let's just take a quick break. Back in a minute.

50:51Let's fast forward to the future. So one proposal for what can happen now, if the ceasefire is successful, hostages returned, humanitarian access happens. One proposal, which you and I have discussed in the past, is that the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, but Fatah, moves into Gaza, that there will be some elements of Hamas who will still be in Gaza, that they will be supported to try to establish Palestinian control in Gaza, maybe supported by Egypt or UAE or Saudi. Can you talk to me a little bit about this scenario? What is this vision? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Do you think this is practical?

51:40What are the political challenges around it, just so people can understand what options you think there are for Gaza now? As you know, this is a very fluid time, and there's certainly room and need for action by leaders and by people capable of effecting action. And there are many, many possibilities. And they're all extremely complicated because of the microeconomic or the micropolitical difficulties that each one has in terms of practicality. But on the whole, in very simplistic terms, there is a course of action which would be positive, and that is possibly through the benefit of other actors from the Middle East.

52:27A process would be put in place in which order would be restored to Gaza. a leadership that would come and be responsible for the Gazan interest should come from the Palestinian Authority, whoever the Palestinian Authority elects, hopefully responsible people who do have national positions and aspirations, of course, why not? But they should not be Hamas, not because the Hamas is some kind of a label, but because Hamas, by its very principle, does not call for a resolution of the conflict. It calls for the destruction of Israel. They do not say that their being there would be as part of a party that would do anything but call for action to bring about Israel's destruction.

53:19So you're not bringing into the leadership a kind of a poisonous pawn. But if they renounce, for example, if they just did, the neat thing that leaders have done in history. You know, former terrorists who employed terrorism and were brutal and everything, then upon the changing circumstances and came involved, said, OK, the role of violence has ceased. Now I'm part of another process and I do not renounce, but I'm in favor of peace. What kind of peace? Suppose it is the long formula, the old formula, which is at two entities, which is the one of partition. That has always been, since the British in mandate and since the UN decision, always, whenever they came to finding a formula, how to settle the issue between the rivals for sovereignty over Palestine or the Holy Land, it was one of partitioning along the lines of demography.

54:20Sometimes, and that has been the case. Today, this is called the two-state solution. Today, it rests on the United Nations Security Resolution 242, which said essentially that one should go back to approximately the 67 borders. But let me add to you a very creative idea that had been injected, that if there would be some Israeli who would hold on to territories that we occupied in 67, there would be a swap. so that if we take some land, we'll also give some land. That principle had been inserted by Clinton and is a possibility. So essentially, there would be this. One could adjust the borders to the current realities.

55:07One could arrive at all the stages that the Oslo process in its various configurations as late as Annapolis about 15 years ago to have final borders declared. to have a peace between the two parties and to have a normal relationship. That is not a pipe dream. Now, one should work towards that possibility. I think that the Israeli government would go for it. Yes, we have some extreme fringe in Israel, which is always less than 10%, which have either messianic ideas that they believe that they're not really influenced by realities, And they would like to annex. Okay, so, but they've never been the majority, far from it.

55:58And they've never been even seriously considered. At this moment, they emit some voices. But when reality comes in, Netanyahu himself, throughout his career, when he dealt with certain efforts, he talked about another entity. He called it a state minus, and he meant that the Palestinians would have a state, but possibly demilitarized. But there is open-mindedness, and this is what we ought to do. So, Rory, I think that, first, on the inclusion of Hamas, it would be self-defeating. That's the point. We should not take that as a reality because it would ruin the process from the start. It should be the Palestinians, and they should be as demanding as they can, and they should feel as nationalistically as they can.

56:50And we know some of them. And they do have people who care for their own interests, and this should be nurtured. The creativity should come from the fact that now we have a constellation in the Middle East in which other participation could assist that process, ranging from the local partners in the Middle East who have normalized their relationship with Israel all the way to involvement of other interested parties which often involve the United States, Europe. We've had such international involvement throughout because of the significance of the Middle East. So all help would be welcome, I think.

57:33Thank you so much for your time, Uzi. And I want to, my final kind of little set of questions. First of all, are you reasonably confident that this current ceasefire agreement can and will hold? Do you think we will get anywhere near that two-state solution that you talk about in your lifetime? And my final point, if there presumably does have to be an election eventually in Israel, who would win it? Well, no, I'm not sure that this hostage issue would be fully resolved. And the built-in problems are there that even with that malice, there is a chance that it will not be consummated. And therefore, it could collapse under its own weight.

58:25So we have to brace ourselves and hope for the best and try to help this happen. But should it be concluded, then, of course, one would have to move on from where we stand, and it is extremely difficult to affect this process. Much depends on the role that the United States would choose to act. Will it succeed? Well, if nothing is done, then a war would be resumed. This is the natural product of no action. You need active intervention to sustain stability and to move on a very fragile and a very thin ice to move forward, each time overcoming the complications. Now, things that have been done before.

59:13In our history, we've done many, many frustrating experiences, but we've had some good ones. And, you know, I did not expect the peace with Egypt. You know, when Sadat was assassinated, I was having lunch with the American CIA station chief in Israel. We were both surprised. But look at the surprises. First, the peace with Egypt, just a few years before, came as a surprise, a pleasant surprise, an important surprise. But so was the assassination of the architect of that peace, of Sadat, Hubei, Islamicists. So all these spoilers and all these things happen, and we have them around. So we need luck and also creativity and the usage of interests and the judicious employment of leverages and enticement and all that.

1:00:09And we can move on to have a positive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It is in Israel's absolute interest to resolve its crisis and century-old dispute with the Palestinians. And Bibi's survival? Well, you know, there is a race here. I used to say, back in 2015, people were concerned what will happen if he'll get elected. I said, if he gets elected, that increases his chance of being re-elected. And after that, each time, his chances increase because incumbency has its advantages. So in effect, I said, prepare for Bibi as prime minister in perpetuity. So my audience was shocked. I myself, I don't take myself that seriously, but it turns out that I was coming to being close.

1:01:09But no, he'll depart from the scene sooner or later. There have come variations. He could withdraw out of his own volition because he would be exhausted, but he could also fight it out because he believes that he still can and even be good for the nation. He could be chased out by the criminal investigations that are afflicting him. He could lose his support from his base because the base is eroding. And it takes a Bibi to defeat Bibi. There is no opposition. One of the problems we have in Israel is deficit in leadership. None of the leaders of the opposition has the stature, the background, and the political strength of Bibi.

1:02:00And that's his success because he essentially neutralized them all. That's his political savvy. But he will have to leave the scene. At the moment, he is really causing more damage to Israel than good. But he's still there, and he still feels that he has other battles to win, not only the one to stay in office. He still wants to see us addressing the Iranian threat, which he believes is no less a peril to Israel than other things. So we have to wait and see, but there is an end to that story. Two quick last questions for me then. First one, what do you mean when you say Bibi is doing harm? What is it that he's doing which is harmful in terms of Israel's direction at the moment?

1:02:46You see, when he appointed as the minister for national security, this person who's called Ben Gvir, by all accounts, he knew who he was. Israel is a small place. We know each other. We are very incestuous. We all know each other. This guy is a thug. He's a clown. He is a provocateur. You don't do that. It is a mark of utter irresponsibility to the nation to give the portfolio of national security to this kind of a guy. He did it only because he needed this man's votes for his own personal staying. But that is a damaging thing that he did. He knew he got, the man has corrupted the police. he started to appoint his own kind he's a man who's been convicted scores of times this is not just an omission at the margins this is an act I would, you know, comes close to, I don't know reckless I think, you know, we used to refer to Caligula's appointing his horses as senators as to be a kind of a metaphor to what Bibi might do But, you know, Caligula's horses were not damaging the state.

1:04:08Benkvir has pure damage to Israel's interest, and he knew it. So in that sense, he's doing damage. Another thing is that it was evident that he was prolonging the war, although it could have been stopped earlier, because it served his political interest. And even the case of the method of negotiating for the hostages' release was affected by some considerations of his own political expediency. This is pure damage to Israel itself, and he's guilty of that. Okay, my final question then. Reflecting on styles of national security advisors, I wonder whether you could reflect on the difference between Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance as models of how you do the job of a national security advisor.

1:05:01All these characters who have become typical bureaucrats in the modern age sometimes compare themselves one to another. All countries have those kind of guys which do the thing. And they often refer to the big examples that we know in the American case, although I take interest in the British as well. And of course, they are different. And also my French friends and my European friends all have them. Kissinger was a certain type of national security type. He was extremely active. He was first national security advisor, then he moved to the State Department and became minister, secretary of state.

1:05:41And he liked to play the game of countries. You know, he was a student of meternich and European history, and he liked all those machinations. By the way, he is the grandest strategist of them all. And when he writes, he writes historical grand history. And nobody writes like Kissinger. Cyrus Vance wouldn't be able to write even a chapter, but he was a superb lawyer, an extremely straight shooter, and very direct, very correct. The prototypical, legally trained then with defense and foreign affairs. So they're completely different. But if you ask me, I got to know many of them, but I also knew the history of.

1:06:31I regarded as the best national security advisor that America had Brent Scrowcroft, which was a man who was managing things from behind, doing things quietly, doing the necessary staff work, not trying to play himself, being at the margins, but doing a good service to the president and the national security machinery that makes decision. Soscraft was my example as the effective NSC. Now, I don't know the guy who's in, that would be an interesting thing. Trump had experimented with some. And about the British, well, you know about so much better, but they are also some formidable characters whom I admired greatly.

1:07:19I just wanted to just catch you on the Kissinger thing, because I don't know whether you're prepared to repeat it on the podcast, but you were very interesting about the question of being too clever by half and telling one story to one person, another to another, and why that goes wrong. This comes into the ethics and the practice and theory of how to work with partners, allies, and so forth. Usually, assumably, partners and allies are friends of yours and not enemies. The common is greater than the different. And the things that you share, interests, are more than the ones you have in dispute.

1:07:55So basically, attitude should be one of being cooperative, honest, direct, and act loyally as you should, as allies should. And that is also true on the level of the functionaries themselves. But everyone is in a while. Well, it so appears that Machiavellian considerations and the values of deceit and not telling the truth and deceiving one another enter into play. And some even prosper in using that because there are some advantages to hiding from one another, not trusting one another, as well as there are disadvantages in being too confiding and trusting because then they are duped. I've always thought that one should give a chance to be innocent, naive, and direct and honest, even near the expense of your own interest.

1:08:57For example, whenever we were meeting with some of our American friends after something went wrong, we were quick and I insisted on admitting our mistakes. Well, why should you not do it? We got something wrong. We found up something. So say it. There is no penalty in saying that. But be truthful. Be surgically correct. You gain more by that than by trying to cover or deceive or do that. And in many, many cases, I found that this management of either relationships, personal or institutional, is advantageous. It pays off. Although, there are always exceptions. When the exception becomes President of the United States twice, then it has a big effect on the world.

1:09:52Well, you know, the Trump period, I don't know how to look at it. Is it the kind of world we're getting into, which would be affected by so many eccentricities and things like that? I don't know. I hope it is the exception from the historical rule, and we'll go back sometimes to the more boring world in which, you know, things are within boundaries. Well, listen, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you very much. All the best. Thank you, Uzi, very much. I hope you enjoy the play this afternoon and thank you for sparing the time. Oh, yeah. I do look forward to enjoy the play and the rest of my days here in London.

1:10:30What's the play? Well, you know, Hamilton, like all good tourists. Oh, okay. But I know the end. Yeah, but you get there in a very interesting way. You'll enjoy it. You learn a great deal by coming. And what you learn here is not necessarily good theater, but also good political views, politics at the highest level. And Shakespeare is his greatest when he does the political plays. And let me add you one thing. I do number myself among those who would like to see a restoration of the memory of Richard III, who was given a very bad press, and he deserves so much better. Now that is because even Shakespeare got his history wrong.

1:11:16And on that, Uzi, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, Alisson, what did you think of that? I thought it was very, very interesting. Do you know what I actually think? The Israeli government propaganda machine will think I'm crazy to say this. I think they should put him up. When they're trying to justify Israeli actions, I think they should put him up because he does it without the sort of ideological overlay and with at least an understanding of the, not the other side, the other sides of this very, very complicated picture. You know, I think it is really interesting that he, when we talked about this political intelligence interface, I was fascinated by the fact that, listen, Bibi's got a point.

1:12:03You know, he's the first person I've heard say that in relation to this kind of relationship. And I think that kind of wealth of experience, his commitment to Israel, but with an understanding that the actions that you take have consequences. And I thought some of the ideas he was talking about at the end were really interesting. The idea of land for land, which was part of the Clinton deal. So yeah, I hope people will listen to that and digest and understand that's a serious guy with some very serious insight. It's also, I think, very worth listening to, even for people who are horrified by Israeli actions, because it's a reminder of the fact that here is somebody who's, in Israeli terms, is from the left, who is openly prepared to say that Netanyahu is corrupt.

1:13:00He didn't say this, but Uzi Arad has just been testifying in the corruption trial of Netanyahu's associates over the submarine deal. he's prepared to say that netanyahu extended the war for political reasons betrayed the hostages brought in a complete buffoon as his national security advisor but on the other hand it's a reminder that somebody with all those views is also very very firmly protective of most of the actions that israel took in gaza and wants to keep bringing it back to israeli casualties So I think all that's really worthwhile, because I think part of foreign policy is understanding mindsets.

1:13:40I mean, we're going to go on, I think, in the future and interview a lot of people. We're hoping to interview the Serbian president. We've got a Middle Eastern leader we're about to interview. There are African leaders we're about to interview. And we're now touching on this territory where often we're going to have moments in our interviews where people will be saying things that we profoundly disagree with. it's a question of journalistic ethics too, isn't it? How much time do you spend reinforcing the fact? I mean, I, for example, strongly disagree, as I imagine you do, with a lot of what Uzi was saying there.

1:14:14But how much time do you then spend fighting an argument which is going nowhere? I suspect that, you know, on the one hand, we're going to get people that we get right into us every time that we talk about Israel saying that we are very anti-Israel and we don't understand what it's like and da-da-da, because we're having this conversation rather than just sort of accepting as gospel his description of why Israel had to act as it did. And on the other hand, we'll get people who say that we didn't give him a hard enough time, because I thought what he was saying was, for part of the interview, was what you might expect from an Israeli government spokesperson.

1:14:51But around that, I think he was somebody of very, very strong view, a lot of integrity there, I thought. I think sort of almost viscerally offended when he was talking about the corruption, the corruption of leadership. And also that description, when we were talking about his resignation, because it was the big thing afterwards, was he sort of, he pulled away from Netanyahu because of Netanyahu's views on the Iran nuclear deal. But that was a very, very simple thing. You know, I'm sorry, Prime Minister, I don't think that's within the Israeli law. I'm not going to support it. You know, it's been so hard to get people to talk about Israel-Palestine without it just immediately being one side absolutely black and white.

1:15:35Final note from me, he laid out this very interesting account of what the future could be. And it was Palestinian authority and ultimately the offer of a two-state solution and them taking responsibility for Gaza. Just to put on record, there will be many skeptics out there who will say that is completely politically impossible. That Netanyahu, and particularly his coalition partners, are never going to accept that. That Smotrich, the finance minister, just wants to basically undermine the Palestinian Authority on every side. There'll be other people who'll say the Palestinian Authority has no way of establishing its authority in Gaza, that in practice Hamas is much stronger than they are.

1:16:19And they would get drawn into a bloody civil war if they tried to fight their way to dominance. and there will be other people who will say the Israeli public have no appetite at the moment for any conversation about a two-state solution and that he's being too optimistic that the world has moved on. But I still think for what it's worth putting my own cards on the table, his account is about the best you can hope for. And if we don't give it a go, what on earth can we do? I also like the fact that when he was talking about Sadat and Egypt and sometimes things happen that just completely take you by surprise, you don't expect them to have what they do and then they move in a different direction.

1:16:55So he was desperately trying to be optimistic. I guess the questions that you're talking about there, that's why ultimately these are going to depend on future elections. The nature of the governments that get chosen by the Israeli people, but also the nature of government that returns if and when they get through this current ceasefire process. And political courage and leadership, because even in the very best times, people like Rabin were taking huge risks, pushing for a two-state solution and ultimately getting themselves killed in the process. Well, thank you. Good. Excellent. Bye-bye. See you soon.