Israeli government to make 'difficult decisions' after 4-day truce, expert says
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00:00 I'd like to bring in Arik Rudnitsky, a researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center at the University
00:05 of Tel Aviv.
00:06 Good afternoon.
00:07 Thank you very much for joining us here on France 24.
00:09 This truce appears to be holding.
00:12 If this trend continues, are you hopeful that it could be extended to something more concrete?
00:17 Hello.
00:18 Well, I think that the entire Israeli public is waiting eagerly and anxiously to the actual
00:26 release of these hostages, the first batch that is expected, that was initially was expected
00:33 to return to Israel yesterday.
00:37 But for some reason, it seems that this deal was not set already for full implementation.
00:45 So therefore, I think that we should be very cautious and very humble with the expectations
00:52 of this deal to be implemented in the first place.
00:57 But anyhow, the Israeli government did point out a potential for additional or more humanitarian
01:08 gesture from the side of Israel in return for, in return to the actual release of more
01:15 hostages.
01:16 Because what we know is that if this truce is for four days and 50 or around 50 hostages
01:26 are expected to return to Israel, but according to the list prepared by Israeli authorities,
01:33 the list extends to almost 100 individuals that are under the age of 18 or women, meaning
01:43 that babies, kids and women.
01:46 So Israel has pointed out or noted to Hamas, signaled to Hamas that it is ready to proceed
01:55 on with this humanitarian gesture.
01:58 But this should not consider to be a ceasefire, but only a truce for four days up to a maximum
02:07 of seven days or even a bit more.
02:10 I want to ask you about that because clearly there is going to be sustained pressure on
02:16 the prime minister to extend this truce possibly, given that we will still, if everything goes
02:22 according to plan over the next four days and these 50 women and children are released,
02:27 there are still 190 hostages left in Gaza.
02:30 So clearly the pressure is going to ramp up.
02:34 Undoubtedly.
02:35 And I think that with all due respect to the external pressure exerted on the government
02:41 and especially on Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think that many in the Israeli public and
02:47 especially families of those hostages are exerting for, I think, for more than two weeks,
02:56 in the last two weeks we see unprecedented protest measures against the government or
03:05 actually going against the notion of releasing with batches only first the kids and the women.
03:12 We hear many voices that remind us that there are still some elderly and even soldiers that
03:19 are still kept hostages in the hands of Hamas.
03:23 And they say, well, why should we wait for, say, a couple of weeks from now just to have
03:31 any sign for that they are actually being alive at this moment?
03:36 So I think that the Israeli government will certainly go to or through very difficult
03:43 days in order to make bold and difficult decisions whether to continue the military effort on
03:51 ground, which is actually brought or make it possible for this truce and deal to take
03:58 place or give priority to one of the declared goals of this war to release all the hostages
04:07 or as many hostages as possible that are still kept in the hands of Hamas.
04:13 While you were speaking, we have Israel's defense minister who said that what we are
04:17 seeing now is a truce, a short pause, after which we will resume operating with full military
04:22 force.
04:23 My question to Riz, Arik, is that as this fight goes further south in Gaza, in the enclave,
04:30 which is very populated now with a lot of displaced people from the north, that the
04:36 death toll in Gaza could rise exponentially.
04:40 If that happens, won't there be more pressure on Israel to first call for a ceasefire, to
04:46 listen to calls for a ceasefire?
04:50 I think that the Israeli government cannot disregard the pressure from, the external
04:56 pressure with regards to the humanitarian crisis, which is obvious and no one can disregard
05:04 and ignore the crisis in the southern part in Gaza or the entire Gaza Strip.
05:14 This is why actually Israel has decided to more than double or even increase as much
05:21 as it can afford the humanitarian aid.
05:25 And actually the governmental cabinet had a tension meeting, a famous tension meeting
05:32 with the families of the hostages, which I mentioned before.
05:35 This is the, I think, one of the most important factors of pressure, actually exerting pressure
05:41 on the Israeli government.
05:45 And Minister Benny Gantz himself said that if he has to provide or approve for more humanitarian
05:53 aid and reflects the position of the entire Israeli government in order to facilitate
06:01 or enable or to create a new situation, new reality that will facilitate the release of
06:08 more hostages, so be it.
06:10 So Israel has to deal with this factor.
06:13 But I think that the Israeli government and the army made it very clear that this is only
06:21 a limited truce, limited to four to seven days.
06:25 And this is the situation for the next week or so.
06:28 Arik, I know we're taking things minute by minute here and we will see what happens in
06:33 the next 45 minutes once those hostages hopefully get released.
06:37 But I know you're an expert in the region, so now that I have you here, I need to ask
06:41 you, once this war is over, I have heard from an Israeli who's saying if the prime minister
06:50 doesn't step down, he will be physically removed from office.
06:54 If Netanyahu is out of the picture, does that lay the groundwork for potentially having
07:00 talks, discussions for a two-state solution?
07:05 I think that we have to deal with both questions separately, although they are intertwined
07:11 one to another.
07:16 President American Joe Biden signaled explicitly at the very first days of this war to Israel
07:23 that at the end of this war, there should be a political settlement based on the two-state
07:30 solution.
07:31 This is number one.
07:33 Number two, will Netanyahu remain in power in order to cope and actually implement or
07:42 give some answers to the American and also demands by President Emmanuel Macron, the
07:51 French president?
07:53 This is still unclear to this day because according to recent polls, so we hear that
08:00 the political power or the potential political power of Netanyahu is decreasing significantly.
08:07 However, this is days of war.
08:10 What will happen after the war ends?
08:12 This is a totally different story.
08:15 Not to forget that throughout the previous months here in Israel, we witnessed unprecedented
08:21 popular protests.
08:22 Exactly.
08:23 We saw those.
08:24 We saw those.
08:25 Exactly, we saw those protests taking place, calling for—especially with the government's
08:30 plans to overhaul the judiciary.
08:33 I want to ask you, if there are, in an ideal scenario, those goodwill on both sides, on
08:40 the Palestinian side, on the Israeli side, to actually sit down and talk and discuss
08:45 a two-state solution in the future, who would spearhead this effort, given that the Americans
08:49 seem to have lost a lot of legitimacy over the past few weeks, given how it's handled,
08:56 you know, over—firstly, it hasn't called for a ceasefire and its support of Israel?
09:04 I believe that the entire paradigm should be different because we continue on thinking
09:10 the way we were—we thought back in the '90s, that we have an international sponsor, which
09:18 is the U.S., and we have the two sides, Israel and the Palestinian.
09:23 Now, the international landscape or political and geopolitical landscape is totally changed,
09:31 not only in the global arena, but also in the Middle Eastern arena.
09:36 Now we have new players.
09:38 We have Egypt after the Arab Spring events, a decade or so under Sisi.
09:44 We have the Gulf countries that play a significant role.
09:48 Actually, we cannot disregard— But we also have Israel, who has friendly
09:53 relations with many Gulf states now and potentially with Saudi Arabia.
09:58 Indeed.
10:00 Israel has relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
10:05 Looking forward for another normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, which is a significant
10:12 player in our region.
10:13 So we have many sponsors that can actually help the two sides or even to some extent
10:22 exert pressure on the two sides in order to reach this final settlement to the conflict.
10:31 Now remains the big question.
10:34 Can we put an end to this conflict, given the current configuration, not only in the
10:40 Israeli arena, but also on the Palestinian arena, taking into consideration that actually
10:47 the Palestinians are divided between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
10:54 which is—its political fate is unclear to this moment because we don't know, assuming
11:00 that Israel will fulfill one of its goals in order to distract and destroy Hamas, will
11:06 the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank take over the Gaza Strip?
11:11 This is unclear.
11:12 So I think that we have many questions pending for the future.
11:16 And still, the first thing is that the war is over and all hostages are back to their
11:22 homes here in Israel.