The Untold Story of the Gaza Ceasefire - Thomas Small

30:38A sort of riposte to, answer to, rival to China's Belt and Road Initiative, which is much bigger. But nonetheless, by linking India, the Middle East, and Europe in this big trading network, free trade, whatever, you know, lots of new infrastructure going to be laid down. So that was on its way. Saudi Arabia had its ear to the ground, was gently, gently, probably going to be signing up to the Abraham Accords. The Palestinian issue was part of the reason why they were taking their time. They did want to see some movement from the Israeli government towards some kind of recognition that eventually a Palestinian state would emerge.

31:23This is not something that Benjamin Netanyahu or the Israeli right have ever wanted, but it seems that they were actually willing to think about this in exchange for this economic integration. Well, the thinking goes that Hamas, in collusion to some extent, at least strategically with Iran and Hezbollah and the rest of the axis of resistance, so-called, launched the 7th of October attacks in order to destroy that, so that that economic integration would not take place. now in the meantime you know following the terrible attacks there was the war uh there you know Hamas took hundreds of hostages refused to give them back Israel invaded launched devastating attacks the war's gone on and on and on in the meantime Israel took the war outside started cutting off the heads of the axis of resistance one after the other quite amazing to watch from the sidelines, changing everything, changing everything, climaxing earlier this year when they attacked Iran, destroying its ballistic missile kind of capability, and then with the United States in that phenomenal display of American military wizardry attacking the nuclear program there.

32:40So it was like this incredible thing Israel was doing. At the same time, the other states in the Middle East, all of whom were very enthusiastic about this economic integration plan, and kind of remained so because they know that there's money in economic integration, trade, growth, and they're Middle Easterners. They know how to make money. They love it, right? So they're basically, in theory, they still want this to happen. And they're watching as like, Hezbollah's taken out. Well, that's quite good. Maybe that can sort out Lebanon. So now we have access to Lebanese capital, Lebanese banking.

33:17No, that's good. Oh, wow, the Assad regime falls. That was to some extent facilitated by the removal of Hezbollah from the scene, which allowed Jolani, as he then was, as we talked about last time. So Syria is now, maybe Syria can be brought into this new plan. Oh, wow, our biggest geostrategic rival, Iran, who's been trying to stymie these efforts for years, it's totally hobbled. So on the one hand, they're watching this happen. And that's good. On the other hand, they're watching an extremely powerful Israel behave in increasingly un-cocked or half-cocked ways. Behaving with an aggression culminating in the Doha attack where they didn't even bother including the United States in their thinking.

34:02Francis Foster:And they're also, I imagine, watching their own population, the people talk about the Arab street becoming increasingly radicalized by the horror that they're seeing out of God. That's happening as well. And so if you are an Arab state with the responsibility of governance, especially in the Gulf, especially if you're Saudi, again, the biggest one, the most important one, you're in a bind. You do want that economic rally. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, has just staked everything on economic growth, on normalizing Saudi society, on making it an ordinary place that gets along with people, that has put religious fanaticism behind it, all those things.

34:44He wants this. So on the one hand, Israel's actions to sort of attack the axis of resistance is good. But on the other hand, in the context of the war, Israel's entrenchment, its sense of itself as alone, its sense of itself as an entirely defensive position, not able to trust anyone, returning to older strategic models of weakening, destabilizing the region. So if the region is not united, we're safe, behaving in ways. And imagine if you're Saudi Arabia. So in June, you see the Israelis attack Iran, destroy all of its ballistic missile capabilities. Well, if you're Saudi, you also have a sophisticated ballistic missile capability, which you've gathered over the decades from China, from other places, including the ability to maybe launch these nuclear weapons, which you don't have.

35:39and you think, oh my God, if they can just in a day or two destroy Iran's capability, ballistic, what about ours? Well, I guess they probably won't, right? Then Doha attack. Oh my God, they've just attacked a GCC capital. Then they could, they might attack us. Who knows what they will do. So Israel's policy, and we can understand why this happened. I mean, I have some sympathy to the Israeli position. They're in war. They do face enemies from all sides. As a result of waging this war, they have seen this remarkable global upsurge in anti-Israeli activism sentiment, increasingly anti-Semitic activism sentiment.

36:26They understand in their minds, old historic norms are coming back. So they have that sense of being embattled. They have like fortress Israel. Well, America wants that economic integration. They want that plan. They want it. So they want Turkey and the Saudis and the Emirates and the Qataris and the Syrians. This is a big thing. They want that for the region. It's part of America's strategy for responding to the rise of China. They're trying to do what they can to maintain that Rimland strategy, bringing India in, etc. And so that's why we see why Donald Trump is praising precisely these characters.

37:16Francis Foster:Which brings us very neatly onto the future, because we recorded an episode with just me and Francis talking with no expertise whatsoever. But if you read the Trump 21-point plan, I mean, one of the obvious things that's not there at the moment was the disarming and the dismantling of Hamas. It sort of says it's going to happen. Well, that was kind of part of the package. And thank God the hostages are now back with their families. All of that, it's a great first step. But I did say at the time, I don't know if we have any evidence that this is necessarily done. And the Abrahamic Accords 2.0, which is really what you're talking about, this regional integration, Israel becoming one of the many countries working together, not just economically, but also, let's be honest, a lot of the Gulf countries care more about the threat of Iran than they care about Gaza or Israel.

38:11Francis Foster:That's a big driving force. They have, but certainly Emirati dignitaries that I've spoken to recently, they say that very quickly it went from the Gulf seeing Iran as the primary threat and happy, more or less, to work with Israel behind the scenes to counter that threat, to Israel being the threat. Israel behaving like Iran was, destabilizing the region. And they don't want that. They want the region to be knitted together. Sorry to interject, because from what I've been reading and the people I've been talking to, a lot of people and a lot of leaders within the Arab world, when you say Israel, do you more specifically mean Netanyahu, as in they can't trust him?

38:52I suppose, yeah. I mean, that's the problem. But, you know, because Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power for so long in Israel, and he's a survivor. Who knows what the hell, how is he going to slip through this one? It'll be fascinating to watch. He is Israeli policy.

39:08Francis Foster:It's like making the distinction between Russia and Putin. Well, he's been in power since 1999. He kind of is Russia. Yeah, and to do justice to Benjamin Netanyahu, he is there because the people have actually voted in such a way that he could cobble together a coalition. So he's not like Putin in a dictator in that way. But he has put his stamp so firmly on Israeli policy that it would be hard to disassociate Israel as a state and practicing statecraft from his own personality and his own policy preferences. You shouldn't have to rearrange your life to deal with hair loss. With HIMSS, expert care is right there when you need it.

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40:56Francis Foster:So coming back to the future then. Hamas have handed over the hostages, which was their only leverage as far as I understand. Right. So is it now inevitable that we see them disarmed and dismantled? I wish I could say that that was inevitable. Yeah. And also, you mentioned that the suffering of the Palestinian people, the next phase of it is about to begin. You know, I'm sure you have very good reasons to say that, but there's loads of people celebrating now, which is not the first time people have celebrated something without knowing why. but what is your concern what are the immediate threats to this peaceful if i said about to begin i should have said it's already begun so immediately hamas yes and remarkably based on a clip that is circulating uh with donald trump's approval like apparently donald trump said well yes hamas are now kind of uh re-establishing their authority so that they can end the chaos, which is kind of amazing.

42:01Again, a sign that maybe Donald Trump is really annoyed with the Israelis. But already, Hamas is trying to reestablish a monopoly, a force on the territory that the Israelis have withdrawn from.

42:13Francis Foster:What you mean is they've come out of the tunnels and started killing all their opponents, which is what they've been doing. Exactly. They're killing other Gazans now, executing so-called collaborators with Israel in public. and also entering into fights with clan militias. So Gaza, like most of the Middle East, particularly the Arab Middle East, is very tribal, and there are hierarchies and established families that over the course of the war, some of them established kind of local ruling networks of their own, armed militias to support that, often working with the IDF. And so now there's fighting there going on.

42:52And Hamas, it seems to me, is not likely to just stop existing. They've existed for a long time. They've survived this war, which in their, I think, quite perverse way of thinking, they will think that they've won simply by surviving, by discrediting Israel to the degree that they allowed in a way, or they manufactured the discreditation of Israel, knowing very well the kind of response that the 7th of October would elicit from Israel. The first point in the 21-point peace plan, the first point is a de-radicalized Gaza where everyone can live in peace, joy, and harmony or something. Then that de-radicalized line.

43:48That's the nub of the problem to some extent, from, let us say, the Palestinian side. The Gazans, even before this war, were very politicized, very radicalized, really. Their political perspective was one in which the state of Israel was an enemy, a kind of total enemy. And should not exist. And let's say should not exist.

44:21It's funny, it's one of these things, it's almost like a truism. Because obviously, if Israel didn't exist, this problem would not exist. So you can't really argue with it. About how many conflicts could you say that? Let's solve the problem with Iran by Iran shouldn't exist. Well, yeah, that's true. If there was no Iran, then there would be no Iran problem. But in general, over decades of propaganda, not just from Hamas, predating Hamas in the good old PLO days when Fatah and Yasser Arafat, drawing on a more secularist, left-wing, third-worldism, anti-colonial kind of way of thinking, that kind of radicalism, convinced the Palestinians to think of the Israelis in that way, not wanting any, really not ultimately feeling that a just solution would involve a solution that benefited both sides.

45:15And of course, on the Israeli right, which became increasingly prominent from the 1970s onward, similar ideas grew and became entrenched as regards to the Palestinians, especially within Benjamin Netanyahu and the coalition of partners that he's had for many years now. So it's kind of balanced in that way. Neither side really believes that the other one should exist, or it would be better if they didn't exist. But how did he radicalize the Gazans? I have no idea how you would even begin to do that. They're going to be more radical now. Although, you know, Eamon, my co-host and friend, he said There is hope, possibly, that the only people that the Gazans in general hate more than the Israelis now after this war are the Hamas people.

46:05They might actually just hate Hamas even more when they begin to realize that none of this was necessary. It was a war of choice. There was no need to launch the 7th of October. It has achieved nothing for the Gazans. Hamas would counter, oh, it's achieved a whole lot. I can promise you in the long term, Israel's standing in the world. Kyrgyzstan has promised us a stay. All of that's happened. But that's a whole interesting sort of another story that is part of this peace plan. Because in, I think it was August of 2024, around that time, the Saudis, eventually working closely with the French, developed their own strategy for peace.

46:50And they launched something called the Global Initiative for the Two-State Solution or something. And it was this process, often called the Saudi-French plan, that culminated in July in the New York declaration at which many states said that at the UN General Assembly meeting in September that they would formally recognize the state of Israel, which happened. Now, that was a whole other means of putting pressure on Netanyahu, on Israel, basically to stop in its tracks any talk of annexing Area C of the West Bank or Gaza. They were just basically saying, we will not allow this, especially if you want this big opportunity of economic integration.

47:35So that was a part of the way in which this peace plan, the one that is now in effect, came about. The Israeli right was being checked by this initiative that the French and the Saudis, especially the Saudis, put forward to make it clear that Palestinian statehood of some kind remained their preferred goal, their preferred outcome.

48:00Francis Foster:Well, come back to Hamas, though, right? Because if we're talking about deradicalization, it would seem to me the very first step of deradicalization, whatever the process is, would be to not have the people who are doing the radicalizing in charge of that territory. Not only that, I would imagine it remains a war goal of the Israeli government to destroy the people who did October the 7th. And that's kind of fair enough, right? You would think. I also, from what I understand, there's not a lot of love for Hamas in the Middle East among the Americans. Arab states. Oh, God, no. I mean, they hate Hamas almost as much as the Israelis seem to do, from what I gather.

48:38Oh, if you're an Emirati, you hate Hamas more, way more, because you hate the Muslim Brotherhood. You hate Islamism. You hate that whole 50-year litany of horrors that, in your mind, as an Emirati or as a modern, secular, inclined, middle-class Gulf Arab stroke Arab that knows what's going on, You just sort of see the Islamist decades as tremendous number of lost opportunities resulting in only destruction. So, yeah, you hate Hamas, but how are you going to get rid of them? The IDF has failed to get rid of them in two years of really relentless war. The IDF, who had a better... How much of Hamas is still there, though?

49:22I don't know. I wish I knew. I don't know. I mean, the last time, from my knowledge, the last time that the IDF itself mentioned the degree to which it had degraded Hamas's military capacity was last July, at which point they had said that something like 20 of 24 brigades had been sort of smashed, meaning they were limited to just kind of like chaotic insurrection. They weren't like an actual brigade linked properly to Central Command. And 14 ,000 fighters had been killed or wounded. And, you know, so that, but from what I understand, they haven't really announced anything more like that since.

50:08So that's why I said at the beginning that from what I understand, the Gaza situation as a military adventure, a military operation has been kind of stuck. You know, Hamas has been in its tunnels and or wearing civilian clothes, kind of infiltrating or just blending in with the populace. You know, the 7th of October caught the Israelis really with their pants down. And the way that the war has unfolded shows that they actually didn't possess the level of intelligence that they had for Hezbollah, for Iraqi Hezbollah, even it seems for the Houthis. That their eyes were on those enemies and they thought Gaza was under control.

51:02They did not see that threat there. There were – they thought that the relationship that had been built up between the Netanyahu government and Qatar and the civil society elements of Hamas that were being funded by Qatar money through the Israelis, even though everyone knew that Hamas, the military wing of Hamas was probably getting some of that money. But technically it was to pay – they thought that was all working and they just kind of didn't have their eye on the wall. So when they decided, well, we're just going to degrade Hamas, destroy it, defeat it, destroy it, they didn't have the intelligence.

51:34They didn't even know where all the tunnels are. To this day, they are tunnels that they don't know where they are. And now we see soldiers coming out of those tunnels or fighters at least. So Hamas is there. I don't know how big it is, but it's there. And it's now trying to take over Gaza again. Who's going to get rid of them? I don't believe that some kind of quote-unquote international peacekeeping force or whatever made up of Jordanians and Emiratis and Saudis are going to get involved in the health.

52:03Francis Foster:They don't get killed or they'd be attacked. Of course. That's what I mean. No one is willing to lose their boys fighting in Gaza, which would invariably involve killing civilians because of the demographic situation, the density, and the very real strategy of Hamas to use civilians in such a way that they will definitely die. So no one wants that blood on their hands, especially in the Middle East when the feeling on the street is still very pro-Palestinian. you know, in a general sense, and in a general sense, anti-Israel. So, it's hard to be seen to be doing things that benefit Israel in that way, in that conflict, but also get you stuck in Gaza.

52:49So, I don't know. I'm pretty, myself, pessimistic about this. I think America will be able to put the pressure that it would take on the Israelis to kind of keep that to keep them from reigniting hostilities? I don't know that. I think that's possible. Israel is very dependent on the United States. As for Hamas itself, maybe they just do build up. Maybe a civil war breaks out inside Gaza, and that results in the defeat of Hamas from amongst The Gazans may be helped by Palestinians in the West Bank and other groups. But it's a really – everyone was very happy yesterday, you know. And I was happy.

53:45But I also thought, I don't see how this is really going to end. I mean the sixth – I think the sixth point of Trump's plan is a general amnesty offered to any Hamas member who swears to change his ways. You know, basically, what is it something like who is committed to coexistence and gives up all his weapons and there'll be an amnesty. You know, in general, Hamas has been told that if they do that, they lay down their weapons and that they will, you know, without Israeli reprisals, they would put on buses, bust to Egypt and then sent where, you know, Iran, I don't know, Algeria, wherever they want to go.

54:24So that has that offer has been made. They know that's kind of on the table. They can just get the hell out. Will they? I don't know. And even if they did, then you have the Gazan population. They've been through the ringer. Their own willingness to be friendly towards Israel is really up. I don't know. I don't know if I would feel particularly friendly towards Israel at the moment if I was Gazan. So I'm pretty pessimistic about it. And it's also as well, we've touched on this country, but it's Iran. And I mean, the question is, how do you solve a problem like Iran? Now, Trump has been fairly bullish in some of his interviews saying, you know, in particularly in his speech that he did at the Neset, where he goes, you know, I think they would want to make a deal.

55:08You know, we want to, you know, Iran to make a deal and so on and so forth. I mean, is that realistic? I don't think so. I think that speech was actually, he was saying the word Iran, but I think he was talking to Netanyahu. I think Trump was making it clear what he wants for the Middle East, which is this big, happy, peaceful economic cooperation agreement. And he's making it clear that he agrees with those other allies in the region, in the Gulf, in Turkey, and elsewhere, that are telling him the biggest obstacle to that now is Israel. Trump believes that. He agrees, and he's making that clear.

55:45Of course, if Iran wants to sign up, that would be great. I mean, that's extremely unlikely. But Iran is still licking its wounds from what happened to it over the last two years. So there's this very precious moment, really. There's a peace agreement being negotiated right now between Israel and Syria, negotiations in which Israel has been playing a very interesting game, not really wanting peace, intervening in the south of the country, that whole business in Soweda with the Druze, And not just welcoming the opportunity to participate in a new regional geopolitics that is one of economic growth and sort of respect of borders and all these things.

56:34Despite what the new Syrian government is saying and agreeing to, this new Syrian government has been bending over backwards to get Israel to agree, to recognize them and to be at peace with them. And the Americans are totally behind the new Syrian government, totally behind. We all saw how Donald Trump sort of talks about the new president, Shahra, and he loves him. And, you know, it's just kind of remarkable everything that's happened. And it's, well, the White House and its other partners in the Middle East would like Israel to get on board that train, like soon. Whether it will happen, I don't know.

57:12Because in that speech he talked about it was time for the war to end. He made that particularly clear. It had gone on too long. But my only concern, well, there are many concerns, but can you really have peace in the Middle East when you have the Ayatollah and his ilk in charge of Iran, when you have that extremist rhetoric, when you have them willingly funding terrorism? Or can you get to a point, like Trump says, where you have peace through strength, where you basically say to them, If you step out of line, you're going to get a bloody nose. I think economic growth and the opportunity to watch your own personal wealth go up as business and other commercial opportunities, employment level go up.

57:56And I think that if that region, if the Sunni, whatever, if the main heart of the Arab Middle East with Israel attached and Turkey at the top can be knitted together in a powerful economic cooperation arrangement that also integrates India, this exploding market, and Europe, a dying market. But if that can happen, then with prosperity will come a neutralization of the attractiveness of that radical Islamist worldview. We've seen it happen in the Gulf. The Gulfies, they're not radical Islamists anymore. If you want smart, fearless commentary on the craziest things happening in media, politics, and online culture, you'll love the Brad vs.

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59:37so which is and whilst i'm agreeing with you but you you look at some of these hamas members let's take some of the head of hamas some of them are literal billionaires they have more money than you would be able to spend in a million lifetimes yet it didn't stop them from being any more radical thomas oh but he's at the leadership i mean come on that's true you do how much money do you think the that the khamenei and his family have in iran how much money how much money did bashar al-assad How much money does he have now? And he's, you know, I don't know, in his spa in Moscow, wherever he is. So at the top, of course, they've got money.

1:00:11I'm talking at the bottom. That kind of radical way of thinking appeals to people who have nothing to lose. And there have been a lot of people in the Middle East and in the Muslim world for the last hundred years that have kind of nothing to lose because of bad governance, because of all the sorts of historical, you know, historical inheritance and all that sort of stuff. But with prosperity will come less, you know, less willingness to listen to those voices.

1:00:38Francis Foster:And of course, the demographics of the Middle East are interesting because you have a very young population who, as I understand, a lot of them don't want to fight their granddad's war. they just quite like to make money and be comfortable. For people who are listening, you're nodding along vigorously, whatever your face there means, to what I'm saying. You're agreeing with me. Absolutely. Sorry, 100%. No, I think that, I mean, I don't know. The Arabs that I know, the Muslims in the Middle East, they just would like normal lives, please. So that being the case, you're making me very pessimistic about this because everyone hold hands in Kumbaya, Abraham Accords 2.0, Abraham Accords on steroids, whatever you want to call it.

1:01:16Francis Foster:that seems like an amazing thing. And I think Jared Kushner has been instrumental in all of this, orchestrating all of this. And when I speak to Arabs, when I speak to Israel, everyone respects him, and he's clearly had a huge part to play in this. So the fact that he's involved is great hope, I think. But you can't build this castle on a rotten foundation. And if Hamas remains in place in Gaza, you're going to get more terrorism. And if you get terrorism, that makes the economic cooperation impossible because the moment Israel starts bombing Hamas, they kill Arabs. And the moment you kill Arabs, the Arab world naturally feels upset.

1:02:00Francis Foster:And then all of this breaks down. So you can't do this until you get rid of Hamas. And that's where maybe perhaps we can ask a little bit of a more optimistic question is, given that Hamas has no leverage left, is that where maybe some of the solutions are now lie? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if I had a solution to the Hamas problem, I would be one of those billionaires at the top of the tree. I don't know. I don't have a solution. But, you know, I say I'm pessimistic. By temperament, I'm optimistic in general in my life. So I sort of want to believe that maybe Gulf money, more American, Egyptian, Turkish, Qatari pressure.

1:02:37I don't know if you saw the extremely warm greeting that President Trump paid to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, yesterday. You know, the hug, the embrace, the warmth. You know, President Trump very much signaling that he is not against the Palestinians, that he wants the Palestinians. The plan calls for the formation of an apolitical technocratic Palestinian committee to oversee Gaza during the transition. I don't know. I've never met an apolitical Palestinian. I don't know whether you're going to find one of those. But there are technocratic Palestinians living in Amman, living in Dubai, economists, business people.

1:03:18And apparently the Gulf partners to this deal are already recruiting, reaching out, finding the figures. We all heard it said that Tony Blair might chair the supervisory committee that oversees that committee. I'm sure there's celebrations up and down Gaza.

1:03:34Francis Foster:I know, it does sound crazy, but maybe it would happen. Maybe Tony Blair will get some, his soul will be at rest for the mistakes he made in 2003. If he can bring peace to the Middle East, at least that corner of the Middle East. So it's possible, it is possible that Hamas will be convinced in the same way that the Fatah, the PLO was convinced in 1982 to leave Beirut and go to Tunis and all that. It's possible that that might happen with money and a promise of amnesty, a promise that the Israelis won't hunt them down and kill them, all the sort of promises that maybe Maybe it will work, and maybe money will flow into Gaza.

1:04:16The school curriculum will change. It will no longer emphasize all the things that it has emphasized. Rebuilding will come. Employment opportunities will come, and a Gazan generation will just say, you know what? Let's let bygones be bygones, especially if there is a Palestinian state. However, it's Frankenstein's monsterish. It's going to be strange. Any such state like that will be strange. But if they have something like sovereignty, something like self-determination, and are supported now by France, the United Kingdom, the United Nations resolution. So, I don't know. Maybe there's some optimism there then.

1:04:55It's not all optimism. But you have to get rid of Hamas. Of course. Everyone agrees. Nobody except Hamas disagrees with that.

1:05:01Francis Foster:Everyone agrees with that. I know. But the problem is, how do you do it? I don't know. Right? I don't know. Because you can, I mean, the route that you're talking about seems like the most credible, which is you incentivize individual members of Hamas to stop fighting, basically. And you give them a golden bridge out somehow. But if it's not a carrot, it's going to be the stick. And we've had the stick for two years. I know. And, you know, Hamas, you've got to hand it to them. There's a phrase that's never been acted on the show. You know, they took a weaker situation and they have maximized its potential.

1:05:41And there they are, two years later. The whole enclave is, well, not the whole, in fact, it can be exaggerated, but a lot of the enclave is in rubble. There are people, you know, very much impoverished, maybe 100 ,000 of them dead. And they're still there. It's amazing what you can achieve when you don't give a fuck about your people. It is amazing what you can achieve when you give a fuck about radical dreams that you think are inevitable. Radicals are a funny people. I'm just not a radical. I don't understand those politics. I've never understood the animating daemon that fills people. And it's not just to math.

1:06:22I don't know if you've noticed. It's kind of everywhere. And I just don't understand it. It's easy for me to think, am I just a cowardly person? You know, every time you ask me to be on Trichronomology, I say, I don't want to. People will hate me. So maybe I'm cowardly. Maybe I just know too much to be radical because radical politics tends to clash with reality a lot of the time. So I don't understand it. But Hamas is definitely radical. They don't live in the real world. They live in a fantasy. And it will be hard to get rid of them. I think from everything that we've spoken about, the solution to this really is the Palestinian people.

1:06:59It's the people in Gaza. I think if hopefully there's enough of them to say no more, we do not want Hamas, that's a moment I think things will really change. They will have to fight, though. Hamas will not allow that to happen. Hamas is a totalitarian institution. Yeah. So they will have to fight. So which puts the countries who want this problem solved in a bind, because then what are you going to do with those people? Are you going to arm them? Are you going to help militarize them? Are you going to help them become some kind of fighting force so that they can take on Hamas? We have to remember that when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in 2006 there were elections across the Palestinian territories, and in Gaza Hamas won those elections.

1:07:48But how fair were they? The PLO, aided by Israel on the one hand and America on the other hand, did arm anti-Hamas factions inside Gaza. There was a war in order to overthrow Hamas and remove them from the scene, and those factions lost. And that increased Hamas's power. What it had to do to win that civil war that was aided and abetted by outside powers made them more powerful.

1:08:15Francis Foster:And also, who is it that's doing the fighting? We have a saying in Russian, which means you remove a wedge using another wedge, right? So if you've got these jihadis of Hamas, it's not going to be grandmothers with scarves that's fighting them. It's going to be other people who are radicalized and other people who have their own very powerful ideology. Are they going to lay down the weapons even if they win? Do you see what I mean? They may not be. I mean, it's possible. And maybe, you know, the massive kick in the balls that the last two years has been for Gazans, it may be that it kicked. It could have been it might have kicked the ideology right out of them.

1:08:55And it may be that like these clan militias, which are much more old school, patrimonial, you know, maybe in an Italian context, we might call them mafia kind of arrangements. the old school way in which in lawless, stateless zones, power structures are formed. It may be that that takes and that more of the youth of Gaza will be organized through these clan networks that might join forces and fight Hamas. It's possible. Maybe the Emirates or Qatar or Egypt send in their own special forces to help organize those efforts. At the moment, anything's on the table. And right now, phase two of the peace plan is being negotiated by both sides, by all sides, all parties.

1:09:51Part of phase two is to determine how to get rid of Hamas. Maybe Donald Trump is a miracle worker. Maybe he can bring, you know, maybe he can convince Hamas to go off and become beach rats, you know, on an Algerian beach somewhere. I don't know. Maybe he can do it.

1:10:11Francis Foster:Why is your managed retirement account still using strategies that haven't changed in over five decades? Most IRAs, 401ks and TSPs are still using the default 60-40 strategy because it benefits corporations, not you. If you have over$50 ,000 in retirement savings, get instant access to a free two-minute report from Augusta Precious Metals that reveals how to take control of your financial future in one step. Visit TriggerGold.com or text Trigger to 35052 today. Moving over to the UK, particularly, something that I found very interesting is the rhetoric by the hard left, the Jeremy Corbyns, the Zahra Sultanas, where there has been no mention really of a ceasefire.

1:10:57And if it has, it's begrudging. And they're still saying that they're going to march for Palestine every week. And according to Zahra Sultana, last week there was a march on Saturday in London. Half a million people turned up. I don't know if that's true or not, but let's just say she's accurate with her assessment of the numbers. Does that surprise you? If you are a Palestinian activist or a pro-Palestinian activist, your primary goal has always been, your primary stated goal has always been that Israel withdraw from its occupation of the West Bank. Before the Gaza war, that's what pro-Palestinian activists were seeking, that Israel stop its illegal occupation of the West Bank and withdraw to the 1967 border.

1:11:50That's the demand. So that demand doesn't change just because the war in Gaza has stopped. So, I mean, the pro-Palestinian activists will continue their campaign to get Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. But if you think about it, half a million people weren't on the streets before this war started. Did you not expect just a little bit of the kind of lessening of the tension, the heat being taken out of these demonstrations? I mean, I guess unless you sense, you smell that the opportunity for what you hoped. So you hoped that this war was going to result in Israel withdrawing from the West Bank and the Palestinians having a properly sovereign state with full autonomy.

1:12:43That's what you want. Now, at the radical fringes of the pro-Palestinian activist movement, you might also dream of the state of Israel going away and all the Jews being kicked into the sea or slaughtered. But most pro-Palestinian activists would be more happy if Israel would withdraw from the West Bank. Now, I don't see that happening. I don't, you know, this opens up the conversation to, you know, Israel as a reality. When in 1947, the UN submitted its partition agreement, the Zionist leadership in Palestine, as it was then called, seeing the land that had been allotted to them, and it was like 55 % of the whole, although a lot of that was empty and kind of desert.

1:13:31But when they saw it, they knew that that was not a practical solution. That they knew that in time, if that state was to survive, they would have to get more strategic parts. So it helped that immediately the Arabs who rejected the plan ganged up, invaded the country. And in the course of a war, Israel was able to shift the dial a bit beyond the 1947 borders to get a little bit more strategic bit. And every time the Arabs have foolishly tried to be anti-Israeli in a militant way. Israel had launched a war in 1967 and kept increasing its strategic advantage, and having it, they're not going to get rid of it.

1:14:15So this is, I think, just a kind of a brute fact. And so that's the case. When people say that Israel has a right to exist, and it has a right to exist, of course, whatever that means. Sometimes there's like an atavistic caveman inside me who says, no country has the right to exist. You just got to hold it. If you can hold it, it's yours. That's how it is. It's a kind of dog-eat-dog world. But let's say it has a right to exist. But if it's going to exist there, this conflict is going to exist as well. It's built in because they are too vulnerable down on the coastal plain. And they cannot trust their neighbors.

1:14:57It's a big problem. It is. And what another problem is, is you see all these people coming out and coming on these demonstrations and you see the particularly young people's opinion and view of Israel. I mean, it's plummeted to the point where you're thinking to yourself 10, 20, well, not 10, maybe 20, 30 years time when these young people get into power and become the future leaders. Like, how viable is Israel diplomatically on the world stage? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I have Israeli friends, some of whom I love dearly. And I've watched them really struggle for the last two years.

1:15:38You know, people who, in a stupid way, just hate Israelis don't really understand the degree to which a lot of Israelis, especially those who we're likely to meet you know kind of from our point of view as westerners ordinary centrist educated people israelis tend to be educated they tend to be smart you know and they tend to be garrulous they like to talk about it argue debate you know they're not happy with the situation some of them you know whatever are obviously right-wingers and things but in general Israelis are not. They have done so much soul searching, they don't know what the future holds for them.

1:16:23Most of them, I think, would really like Benjamin Netanyahu to leave. I think they would look out now at the situation they're in and wonder if his leadership over the last 18 years or however long was particularly wise and useful to them as a state. I mean, you had him on the show recently. I know I don't want to insult a friend, but I wonder. Amen today said, it was very interesting, he told me, that if, as he speculates, based on things he might know, if in fact the Saudis have had effectively a nuclear arsenal that they could draw on from 2020 to the present, and this happened without the Israelis knowing it or doing anything about it.

1:17:14But that is yet another example of Benjamin Netanyahu failing to deliver his promise to secure the state of Israel. So maybe that persona that he's projected for so many years, You can trust me because I'll keep you safe. I'll do what has to be done. Maybe that was all just nonsense. And now Israel finds itself in a much weaker position after all of these years of his leadership. So I think they want him to go. I don't know how they're going to do it because he's a survivor.

1:17:52Francis Foster:Is that fair? Much weaker position? Is that fair? I mean, Hezbollah is dismantled, right? Hamas is not still there, but severely weakened. Iran is down in the dumps. in the process he has scored many he has won many battles he has won many battles israel wins wars at least it has i'm not sure in this case that it has i see i think france's point is incredibly apt which is israel to the extent that i mean if i were if i were the israeli prime minister or within the government what i'd be thinking right now is how do we become self-sustaining. That's what I'd be thinking, right? Because you're not going to be like, Donald Trump may well be the last pro-Israel President America has for a long time, right?

1:18:41Francis Foster:Just objectively speaking, if you look at left and right in America and the extremist directions that they're both trending in, you know, AOC and fucking Nick Fuentes or whatever, whoever is shaping the debate, those are not two groups of people who are pro-Israel, right? Right. So. And then Europe is already gone from an Israeli perspective. Right. So I'd be thinking, you know, we need to get some of our own ballistic missiles and some of our own defenses and some of our own hard as that may be. Yeah. I mean, I would like to think that like other Middle Eastern countries, because Israel is a Middle Eastern country.

1:19:20One of the things that I've enjoyed over the last two years is watching people aghast that Israel behaves in the way it behaves. And of course, I think, well, it's just behaving like a Middle Eastern country. That's how they all behave. Are you telling me that if on the 7th of October, Houthis had stormed the Saudi border en masse and raped and killed and slaughtered, like, if you're talking about equivalents to like 4 ,000 Saudi civilians, that the Saudis wouldn't have just gone for it? Of course they would. So, you know, it's a Middle Eastern country, so hopefully it will behave like other Middle Eastern countries, which is arm itself to defend itself, but also make friends with its neighbors.

1:20:11Francis Foster:Well, right, that's a big hope. And if the Trump administration, together with his partners in the Middle East, can orchestrate Abraham-Claude 2.0, you just have to get rid of Hamas. You're going to get rid of Hamas and you have to have a solution to the problem of Palestinian statehood. Well, there we go. You thought it's all good, but actually everything's fucked. Welcome to Trigonometry. That's why you watch. Basically, that's what Trigonometry is about. You thought everything's fine. No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Yeah. But Thomas, it's always such a pleasure to have you on the show. I think, actually we joke, but I think the depth of analysis that we've heard from you today is probably more sophisticated than anything people have heard on this issue in the entire week.

1:21:02Well, I know what I know, but I also rely on people that I know in the Gulf, especially my friend Eamon, who knows a lot.

1:21:08Francis Foster:That's the value of it. So, of course, the Conflicted podcast is brilliant. Everyone watch it. Everyone listen to the Conflicted podcast. Thomas, we're going to head over to Substack where our audience have amazing questions for you. Before we do, though, what is the one thing that we're still not talking about that we really should be? Oh, dear. It's an increasingly difficult question for you. I'm going to say the same damn thing I always say. We're not intelligently discussing the eclipse of Christianity from Western culture enough. That is the salient problem of our age. We are in the midst of this historic experiment of creating a thriving civilization without any transcendent or contemplative center.

1:21:50And it's not going very well.

1:21:52Francis Foster:Now, the cruises are coming back, man. I don't know if you noticed. It's making a resurgence in the U.S. Yeah, I watched some of that. I'm not sure if contemplative is what I would call it. Yeah, reactionary and contemplative are different things. Fair enough. Well, there we go. Head on over to Substack where we're going to ask Thomas your questions. The architect of the 7th of October was released in just such a hostage deal. What are the chances of the newly released batch of prisoners leading to another generation of Hamas?