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Israel's Scorched Earth Doctrine with Amjad Iraqi
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Amjad Iraqi, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and Al-Shabaka policy member, joins our latest episode to explore the regional chaos that the US-Israeli war against Iran has created and the Israeli strategy behind it.
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Transcript
Israel's Severe Approach Post-October 7
00:00:00
Speaker
But since October 7, Israel has really taken a much more severe approach, where the concept of burning the lawn, of really trying to burn everything at its roots, not just in terms of specific military goals, but destroying the entire civilian infrastructure, the idea of really trying to collapse the social, political, and even environmental issues. structures that maintain these places, trying to burn that to its roots has now become a very clear goal. We've seen this in and full force in Gaza. We've seen this to some extent in parts of the West Bank. We're seeing this now unfolding severely in southern Lebanon.
00:00:35
Speaker
And now we can see elements of this also inside Iran.
The Scorched-Earth Strategy in Gaza
00:00:43
Speaker
From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine.
00:00:52
Speaker
With the genocide in Gaza entering a new phase, one that hides under the cover of the sham of the ceasefire, the Israeli regime's scorched-earth strategy has extended to well beyond its immediate neighbours.
US-Israel Conflict with Iran in 2026
00:01:04
Speaker
In late February 2026, the US and Israel went to war against Iran, fulfilling the decades-old dream of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Since then, over 1,500 have been killed in Iran, including hundreds of children in a strike on a girls' school in Minab in southern Iran.
00:01:22
Speaker
In retaliation strikes, a dozen have been ah killed in the Gulf and more injured. Numbers from the Israeli regime are difficult to confirm because of the military censor, but reports so suggest several dozen Israeli deaths and over 4,000 injured.
00:01:37
Speaker
The region and indeed the world has been plunged into chaos, something Israeli politicians have been known to use to their advantage.
Regional Dynamics with Amjad Iraki
00:01:45
Speaker
Joining me to discuss this and more is Amjad Iraki, Shabaka member and crisis group senior analyst for Israel and Palestine.
00:01:54
Speaker
Amjad, thank you for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine. Thanks so much for having me, Ar.
Trump's War Goals and Diplomatic Confusion
00:02:01
Speaker
So, Amjad, it's difficult to understand US President Trump's mind.
00:02:05
Speaker
I think that's an understatement of the century. He says one thing one day and another thing the next day. And some analysts argue that this is a deliberate tactic of diplomatic confusion.
00:02:17
Speaker
But it does increasingly appear that he wants an off-ramp from this war. He went into it with no clear goals, as is evident from his administration's flip-flopping publicly on what those goals are.
00:02:29
Speaker
One day it's regime change, the next day it's to prevent Iran from nuclear weapons, which apparently already was achieved last year. But I think what's been lost in all of this, or at least not paid enough attention to, is what does the Israeli regime want from this war?
Israel's War Objectives
00:02:44
Speaker
That's a really important question, precisely because so much of the coverage has tended to focus on what Trump will and won't do, what he does and does not want. i mean, on the one hand, we know, we should take into account that there are naturally U.S. interests and agendas at play, independent of Israel. We've seen this through many American wars where there are always neocons and war hawks who have grand global designs in which Iran does play a critical role.
00:03:09
Speaker
So these interests are at play even if they are not necessarily clear and and they kind of operate on their own track even as they obviously are in constant dialogue with Israeli interests and agendas.
00:03:19
Speaker
And with that said, i agree. The question of what Israel wants, there are two ways to kind of potentially approach it. I think from the get-go, both in the rhetoric and in the way that Israel launched its operation on the 28th of February, it was very clear that they were looking for regime collapse.
00:03:37
Speaker
ah People started debating, you know, what is regime change, regime destabilization. But you know And one can debate these degrees, but the idea of collapsing the Islamic Republic as much as possible to dissolve or disintegrate its institutions and its mechanisms of leadership was very clearly a key goal. And we've seen this also in other places where Israel has done this, like in Lebanon, certainly in Gaza, and so on.
00:04:02
Speaker
With that said, you know there are also other sort of degrees which Israel is also trying to pursue things. So i mean, tactically, they're talking about, there's a common phrase of military degradation. So naturally striking Iran's military capacities, ballistic missiles, which was one of the kind of key issues on the Israeli agenda.
00:04:19
Speaker
But even now, you know the the goals are slightly shifting. The fact that now that the Israeli government is s saying that they want to reopen the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians have been ah tightening since ah since the start of the war, which wouldn't have happened if the Israelis and Americans did not launch the assault. But that itself is showing there's a certain fluidity. But regardless of this, you know these kind of different military specific military objectives, there is a more underlying kind of doctrinal agenda at play.
From 'Mowing the Lawn' to 'Scorching the Lawn'
00:04:47
Speaker
um And many Palestinians and analysts have been describing this, that there's been there's a very clear massive shift from what Israel used to describe as mowing the grass or mowing the lawn and to what is now increasingly becoming this kind of scorching the lawn or burning the lawn.
00:05:04
Speaker
Now, the metaphor is quite powerful in capturing the idea around what this military method is supposed to achieve. That it's the idea that you are surrounded by these constant threats and this regrowing grass that you just have to keep cutting down every now and then. Palestinians are very familiar with this in Gaza and the West Bank.
00:05:21
Speaker
and especially against like non-state armed groups. But since October 7th, Israel has been, as we've witnessed in Gaza, has really taken a much more severe approach, ah where the concept of burning the law and really trying to burn everything at its roots, not just in terms of specific military goals, but destroying the entire civilian infrastructure, the idea of really trying to collapse ah the social, political,
00:05:50
Speaker
and even in like environmental structures that maintain these places, trying to burn that to its roots has now become a very clear goal. We've seen this in and full force in Gaza. We've seen this to some extent in parts of but and parts of west of the West Bank. We're seeing this now unfolding severely in southern Lebanon. And now we can see elements of this also inside Iran.
00:06:12
Speaker
And so this doctrine, this idea that if you want yeah not to overstretch the metaphor, now that Israel wants to have this clear line of vision stretching from the Gaza coast all the way to the Iranian border,
00:06:27
Speaker
that itself is kind of underlying all this. Now, whether or not they can succeed, and this is up for debate and dispute, and just because they set the agenda does not mean they're necessarily achieving it, and there's much to say on this.
Iran's Resistance and Israel's Capabilities
00:06:39
Speaker
ah But I think that that drive and the um impunity with which they've been able to pursue that strategy is, I think, what we're really seeing unfolding here.
00:06:50
Speaker
But of course, Iran isn't Gaza and it's not Lebanon. You know, I think in all of this, Iran has been seriously underestimated. It's managed to sustain a response with a relatively small amount of cheap missiles and drones, which are very costly to intercept.
00:07:07
Speaker
And by some reports, it would seem that Iran is holding back on some of its more powerful weaponry, which indicates that it's prepared for a longer war. Do you think the Israeli regime is capable of maintaining a longer war? And does it want to?
00:07:23
Speaker
It's tough to say. um On the one hand, we have to acknowledge that Israel has defied a lot of predictions and expectations of overreach, of fatigue, of internal implosion, and even the depth of its impunity, which is certainly not new to Israel, but the but the extent to which has been able to enjoy that over the past two and a half years.
00:07:44
Speaker
in Gaza, in Lebanon, and even now in Iran, i think it has surprised even a lot of people who thought that some factors would end up curbing or limiting some of those Israeli some of that israeli um military kind of campaign. So in this respect, it's hard to make those kind of predictions. There's much unpack there.
00:08:02
Speaker
On the other hand, there's also the fact that Israel is not very fond of long wars. They like things that are short, decisive, overwhelming, disproportionate in the hopes that they can achieve as much as possible, however limited, within ah the space of a couple of weeks.
00:08:18
Speaker
Israel is good at long occupations, ah as Palestine knows very well, as of course Lebanon is also known, but it certainly cannot do that in Iran. It's not a neighbor for the obvious reasons. It's not a direct bordering neighboring country. It's a country that's massive you know massively times the size of Israel. it just just cannot achieve that. there Nor can American forces potentially do that. Iran is also not the same as Iraq and the dynamics are very different.
00:08:43
Speaker
And yet, whether Israel can keep going with this, i mean, there are a couple of limitations nonetheless. One thing that my colleagues often say is that there's a game of mathematics. So there is, in the end, a hard, you know there's hardware involved in this war.
00:08:55
Speaker
What missiles do you have? What are the interceptors that Israel uses, for example, with Iron Dome to actually shoot down many of the Iranian missiles or Hezbollah's missiles and rockets?
00:09:06
Speaker
That takes time to produce, that takes money to produce. And there's a concern among in Israel, for example, if they actually have enough in stock. So that mathematics of the hardware is could potentially be at play, whether it it may sort of slow down the war, it may have to force it to stop, it may cause more casualties. But this is a factor to keep an eye on, even if we don't necessarily always know the full facts.
00:09:29
Speaker
And the other dynamic of this is that there are, you know, even though Israel has been able to defile our expectations there, ah there sometimes is a point of diminishing returns. And I think a war with Iran, which is very different from many of the other enemies that Israel has fought against, that Israeli society, even as they're in support of the war, as time goes by, they do grow fatigued.
00:09:48
Speaker
you know The military does rely on society to be on board, to take part as soldiers and as reservists. It requires them to keep enduring the idea of going into bunkers, of having their life entirely disrupted.
Impact of Strait of Hormuz Closure on Energy Markets
00:10:01
Speaker
But Israeli society, in the end, they do want to go back to some semblance of normalcy. And the longer that that is denied, the more you see those frictions coming out.
00:10:10
Speaker
And then the other is, of course, is the economic repercussions of what is happening. mean, one of Iran's key leverages, as we mentioned, is ah closing off the Strait of Hormuz and the massive um repercussions on the energy markets, on the global supply chains, is inevitably going to affect Israel as it is affecting everyone else in the region. so And there's much more to say, but like these these are points which are which will gradually raise the cost as time goes by. So even if Israel is able to succeed and, know again,
00:10:38
Speaker
degrading Iran's military capacity in some form, weakening its ah its political leadership in some ways. But there are other prices that it also needs to constantly weigh out. And this is, again, at a scale that is not like in Palestine. That's not i the same as Lebanon.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, you know, whatever the outcome of this war, it's going to have serious and long-lasting consequences regionally, but but also beyond. You know, Iran is forcing Gulf states to think about the cost-benefit calculation for hosting U.S. military bases on their territories. um It's also smashed the UAE's image of this safe haven in a in an otherwise volatile region you mentioned just now the consequences on supply chains and and the hodmose straight um being closed off what are some of the other longer-term consequences that you've been thinking about in in all of this
00:11:30
Speaker
The Gulf aspect a very crucial one. So for years, we've seen several Gulf countries, which it's hard to describe them as in one block all the time, but among the collective interests that they share, that they have tried to set themselves as this different kind of model for geopolitics, for diplomacy, and for trying to engage with multiple actors. You know, we talk a lot about the Saudi Iran detente that existed before this current war, for example. and trying to position themselves between both ah alliances with the United States and also the push towards normalization with Israel, with also trying to create some kind of different sort of ah terms with ah with the Islamic Republic and other and China and Russia, so on and so forth. This war has really changed that quite significantly. i mean, since since the Gaza war itself,
00:12:19
Speaker
Gulf states, if Iran used to be their primary concern in the region, we've seen over the past two and a half years that they now see both Israel and Iran almost equally as as severe threats.
00:12:31
Speaker
They do not trust Israel to actually maintain the kind of stability that they had promised or that they sort of espoused during the during the main drives and pushes for normalization. And even though you know today the Gulf states have reserved most of their public denunciations against Iran itself, because Iran is actually firing quite constantly to the Gulf states in order to sort of increase this regional price. The irony is that Iran is in many ways responding in kind to Israel of this kind of burning of the law, that if you're going to attack us, then we will burn everything around us. So you know there's a specific kind of theory that is there for the Gulf states. That has not changed the fact that they really are questioning, or many of the Gulf states are questioning more and more how they see Israel in the region. One of the you know one of the kind of outliers on this is the United Arab Emirates, which is much more open about its very close alliance with Israel and with the United States. And countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, you know they have vested interests with the US. But they have a different way of trying to position themselves. So I think where the gulf how the Gulf ah has to rethink the their theories of how do they ensure their security and their stability their stability, that they cannot really put their trust in either the Iranians, nor in the Israelis, nor in the Americans, who are not prioritizing Gulf Arab states as they are with Israel. So where that will lead, I think it's unclear. And I think there are many colleagues and experts, even in the Shabaka, who can be much more attuned on this than I am.
00:13:59
Speaker
But I do think that that will be ah that will play such a critical role in how the Middle East shapes up ah in
Supporting Palestinian Policy Analysis
00:14:06
Speaker
the coming years. you know As much as many power dynamics have not shifted, a lot of different calculations and threat perceptions certainly have. And time will only tell as depending on how this war unfolds and not just vis-a-vis Iran, but we're seeing these different battles also in Syria, certainly in Iran. And of course, the constant concern about Gaza and the you know quote unquote ceasefire and how that ends up developing.
00:14:31
Speaker
If you're enjoying this podcast, please visit our website, al-shabaka.org, where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
00:14:45
Speaker
So Amjad, you recently wrote that within the Israeli regime, there are deep unresolved political, economic and social tensions that have been bubbling away. What are some of these tensions and do you think it will reach a boiling point?
00:15:00
Speaker
Whether it will reach a boiling point is a hard question. So the the internal fissures in Israeli ah politics and society and the military have been around for years. As you might recall, like in 2023, prior to October 7th, there was this major crisis within the Israeli state when the far-right government was was elected when they were pursuing things like what they call the judicial overhaul or judicial coup.
00:15:28
Speaker
You had these months where there were reservists who were refusing to show up for service. You had this massive increase in settler violence that was raising concerns even among the Israeli public for very different reasons and not for not in terms of the interests or the rights or the security of Palestinians. ah But you were starting to see this kind of this coalescing of a battle between sort of national religious vision of Israel with what Israelis would define as a kind of more secular liberal, but that is very much in the kind of Jewish Israeli bubble where naturally Zionism and Jewish Israeli dominance and supremacy were still the norm.
00:16:03
Speaker
but But this was nonetheless a serious battle happening within the Israeli system. With October 7th and the Gaza war, a lot of this was sort of pushed to the side. There became this massive unification towards what was essentially a very vengeful war, what was a pursuit of the annihilation of Gaza you as much as they could. a complete indifference to Palestinians and their humanity, wanting to see them either killed or expelled and so on. And again, and the extension of this to places like Lebanon.
00:16:33
Speaker
Now, but what those fissures look like, i mean, within the political spectrum, even though Israeli political parties are very much into this kind of right-wing spectrum, that they actually share a lot of ideas and policies,
00:16:49
Speaker
And even whether it was a Gaza war, even with this current Iran war, or even the current re-invasion and occupation of Lebanon, you're seeing this massive synchronization among the Israeli spectrum behind the very militaristic approach. And yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu is very much at the center of this. So the battles that happening between the politicians, for example, is less so about what the actual policies are being pursued by the government, but the fact that they are trying to claim themselves as the more trustworthy a leader to guide these policies. so even if So this is why you sometimes have this dissonance even with the Israeli public whereby 93% of Jewish Israelis, according to polls, fully endorse the Iran war, but has not actually made a huge shift in terms of Netanyahu's support numbers. So the policies are have quite the consensus, even if the particular individuals don't. And Netanyahu just having been prime minister for so long, it still remains very much at the center of this.
00:17:45
Speaker
That's similar to how the response was to the genocide in Gaza. I mean, overwhelmingly, the Israeli public was supportive of the genocide, but it was more about how the genocide was being carried out rather than the genocide itself.
00:18:00
Speaker
Exactly. and And to what degree of cost is it coming to us as Israelis, whether they're reservists for day-to-day life inside Israel? It is that you can inflict that violence outside if you want, but we don't want to feel it. We don't want to sense it. We don't want to have our soldiers coming back with you know what they would see as but as PTSD, that we don't want to have to deal with these repercussions. So that's where those fissures are.
00:18:24
Speaker
Now, relatedly as well, that seizure is also regarding the question about the ah conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, which again is a decades-long question mark, but that has increased, including during this war, whereby a lot of Israelis are feeling like, we have taken on the burden of all these multiple military campaigns.
00:18:42
Speaker
We are growing tired. We want the ultra-Orthodox to kind pay their dues and to no longer buck that trend. And this is an interesting figure even within some of the settler or national religious community. We're not necessarily like Karadim or ultra-Orthodox, but they are saying that we are pioneering the expansion of greater Israel. You now need to do your part. And we're seeing this in the Knesset, we're seeing this in public, and that itself is a friction that has not yet been resolved. And Netanyahu has been constantly kicking down the road because he relies on ultra-Orthodox parties in his current coalition, even though they're pulled out of the coalition, but they're still tacitly. supporting it. It's a bit of in-house politics, but that is a delicate balance that they're having to navigate.
00:19:27
Speaker
And the third as well is that the questions about what are the economic costs coming to Israel that maybe are not so obvious, but that may be playing a role. So if you go around to Israeli cities these days, you know a lot of things still seem quite you know, bizarrely normal.
00:19:42
Speaker
And that again, Israel was able to defy a lot of the kind of expectations that there'd be some kind of massive economic collapse, but they've actually been able to maintain themselves ah in sort in surprising ways and to insulate themselves from a lot of those economic costs. But if you kind of go into the more granular, what this means for kind of poor Israeli families,
00:20:01
Speaker
What it means for reservists for now, you know, about like who's supplying the kind of subsidies for them or the compensations for them. Where can they find jobs for people who are supposed to be in universities then pulled into the army? And now there are these socioeconomic ah repercussions that are still too early to fully navigate. And there's different analyses from different kind of experts, you know, i mean's it's still up for debate. But there is potentially kind of longer term costs that this will actually ah will end up unfolding.
00:20:28
Speaker
We haven't seen a massive change insofar as polling is concerned ahead of the ah Israeli elections, which are currently scheduled for October. Like the core camps have not significantly changed. You have different figures like Naftali Bennett, who is not in government at the moment, but is expected to be returning, was is expected to be a lead contender behind the Netanyahu and the Kruid Party. But in terms of the orientations of where the Israeli political spectrum is at, they have not really shifted, as most pollsters will tell you.
00:20:54
Speaker
ah Now, again, this could still change. And Israeli politics is extremely volatile. And the kind of the coalition dynamics there are always a bit of a question mark. ah But even if we're not seeing it right now, there may be something long term, but that itself has to be seen. But, you know, that war making and military violence helps to sometimes pause that somewhat, look but the repercussions do not go away so so quickly.
00:21:21
Speaker
And this leads me on to my next question, Amjad. As you noted, and the polls do show overwhelming support for the the war Iran amongst Israelis.
00:21:33
Speaker
um And you described it as this unity in inflicting violence upon others. But at the same time, there is that increasing fatigue. You know, schools have been closed, people are not going to work. um They're having to go to shelters several times throughout the night.
00:21:48
Speaker
ah Iran, with its low-cost missiles and drones, has successfully caused ah disruption to Israeli life. um And as as you noted, this is an election year for Netanyahu, and inevitably that's playing into its calculations for this war. So I know it's a bit difficult to to make predictions, but what do you sort of see?
00:22:13
Speaker
playing out at the elections. I remember when we had our ah podcast a few years ago in one of the Israeli elections as well, where making predictions back then was just as hard as it is today, and the volatility has not changed.
00:22:27
Speaker
Here it's, and in a way the answer but yeah answer I'm going to float now is different from what I might have said even a couple of months ago. um So even though you generally have a kind of baseline consensus among Israelis when it comes to Gaza or in the West Bank, the Iran and Lebanon factors Maybe be a bit more of a question mark. So as we've been saying, i mean the level of disruption that the Iranians are inflicting on Israelis is not is quite unprecedented, even for a lot of Israelis. I mean, there's a lot of aspects of normal lives that are able to continue. And they and Israelis have this astonishing capacity to normalize the abnormal, things like missiles and the sounds of missiles and sirens. ah But again, how long they can sustain that for a long stretch is a question mark.
00:23:08
Speaker
And even now, I think even though Israelis believe that they are right to launch this war to try to hit the Islamic Republic, there may be questions percolating again of, you know, how long can we can we sustain this? Can we trust Netanyahu to still guide this?
00:23:24
Speaker
And what is the end game towards this? Because if we were promised regime collapse in the first week, and now we're in a very different situation, and if there are costs are being felt in our pockets by those economic repercussions, if it's being witnessed in the divergence between Israeli and US interests, and so on, this might begin to have different effects, let's say for Netanyahu or for the Likud. But this is something that could potentially change in weeks. And it could also be something that doesn't change at all.
00:23:50
Speaker
The other issue is about Lebanon, because ah even as there is, i've again, a general kind of unity around invading Lebanon, occupying it, but even there, there's actually but much more underlying division because Israelis have experience with Lebanon. They've had a you know decades-long occupation. They've had multiple invasions of the country. And about a year and a half ago, they were promised that Israel had made a decisive blow against Hezbollah.
00:24:16
Speaker
And lo and behold, that Hezbollah has actually been able to not only have the willingness to fight, but is you know is still still launching rockets, is ready for a guerrilla warfare. And this is not to say Hezbollah has not changed. It has been weakened, has been degraded. And there's an internal Lebanese dynamic that we shouldn't ignore here because there's also a lot of concern and fear and and resentment also among Lebanese about how Hezbollah is playing out in those politics. But for Israelis,
00:24:42
Speaker
you know the Lebanon comes with a lot of shadows and fears because theyre then the way that the Lebanon wars from the invasion of 1982 to longer occupation until 2000, to the 2006 war as well, where you know that also sets these new questions about what the Israeli military can and cannot achieve, these questions have not gone away. And so there is, i think, in some segments of Israeli society a few more questions than otherwise would have asked. And we have yet to see how this re-invasion is now playing out. For example, I mean, it's unclear if if Hezbollah fighters are actually inflicting more costs on Israeli soldiers on the ground.
00:25:19
Speaker
If the Israelis succeed in actually essentially seizing all of the territory up to the Litani River and maintaining occupation there, then maybe that will actually be a big boost for people like Netanyahu or... But but again, this is something that even Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, is actually openly calling for, of a long-term occupation up to the river.
00:25:37
Speaker
So again, i think we're still very much in a moment of flux where a lot of different things are could still shift and change. So that that's the extent to which external factors might influence internal politics.
00:25:50
Speaker
But the other another key piece, aside from some of the ones we mentioned about the you know the question of the Haredi draft and economic stuff, is actually Palestinian citizens of Israel and where they fit into the electoral map.
00:26:03
Speaker
I'm glad you mentioned that because that was going to be my my final question about, you know, we we saw recently announcements about a new joint Arab list among the Palestinians of Israel. Do you see that emerging in this election round? And if so, what kind of approach are they going to take?
00:26:26
Speaker
So the Palestinian citizens there, they will have an impact if they come out in large numbers to vote, and it will have a large impact if they don't come out to vote. And this is really a debate happening within the community right now. I mean, even before the Arab parties have nominally agreed to reunite as a joint list, which there's a lot to sort of unpack there. But...
00:26:45
Speaker
A lot of Palestinian citizens, they have no illusions about the Israeli political spectrum or about their right to vote. But there is a segment of the community that believes that there is a substantive difference between having a right-wing government and a far-right government. And the difference was a genocide in Gaza. And it's not necessarily that they have massive...
00:27:06
Speaker
differences of what they would like to see, let's say in the occupied territories. But it's that who has the confidence, who has the will, who has the ideological drive to pursue a lot of those decisions. but But that it becomes a serious debate whereby there's a strategic question mark of can Palestinian citizens play a role, but at least ousting this coalition and actually pulling back the Israeli spectrum from the Smotrich and Ben-Vir types and to actually make it more difficult for someone like Netanyahu to have an alliance with those kind of parties. I mean, again, don't want to minimize the way that there is that consensus in the Israeli spectrum, but there are degrees of violence with witnesses. So there is a fair argument among some segments, or to at least, if not to necessarily bring it yeah a bit more to the lesser degree of right, but maybe to at least disrupt the Israeli political system and create some instability in the way that you had also when there was something like five elections in the course of three years, that can at least make it a bit harder for Israel to maintain the current overdrive that they've been under the past two and a half years. So there's ah there's a camp there.
00:28:10
Speaker
Do you think that that is still an assumption that people hold, even though we've seen you know throughout the genocide that Israeli politicians across the political spectrum and Israeli parties across the political spectrum have been overwhelmingly supportive of the genocide? you know Had Netanyahu not been in power on October 7th, do you think there would have been a different response? And similarly, in this moment with the war on Iran, had Netanyahu not been in power, would there be a different approach?
00:28:41
Speaker
Do you think people still have that assumption or or or do you think that's been diminished somewhat? i mean it's hard to always debate the kind of factuals, but I mean, for those who would make the argument, they would say there's a difference. you know There's a difference between having Netanyahu as prime minister versus even, let's say, Bennett.
00:28:59
Speaker
So Netanyahu has experience and the confidence to to launch a lot of the operations they've done, whether it was in Gaza or in Iran. And he usually manages to rally the political and military echelons around him. But there are very few politicians who have that kind of...
00:29:16
Speaker
that that kind of gutsiness to take it. And Netanyahu has had this skill, and it's one of his big legacies and on on every front, with domestic legislation to military operations. So now with Bennett, now he might launch wars. you know We saw it during his government, he had like at least you know several military operations in the West Bank, certainly in Gaza. but There are different calculations, even in Bennett's head, compared to Netanyahu. And there's a different there's different limits to the confidence that someone like Bennett would have, orlippede or Lapid, or Gantz, compared to B. I mean, this is this is one potential argument.
00:29:49
Speaker
So even if Netanyahu is able to kind of shirk off a lot of certain pressures, there may be other politicians who won't. Again, this is, you know it's sort of scenario setting and you never really know. and But I do think that there's a case to be made that, yes, sometimes having different individuals means did the genocide last two years or did it last, you know, ah a few months? you know And, you know, it's not to minimize the severity of it, but like time does play play a role. And those kind of different pressures and calculations in Israeli political minds does play a role. So even even on the question of like Israel's relationship with the Gulf, if there's if someone like Smotrich does not really care about normalization with Arab states, someone like Bennett or Lapid, they do.
00:30:30
Speaker
There are other factors that could, in theory, have played certain limitations. um And you know there are many other realms to think about this, but I think that this is one of the cases that is being made again without reducing, again, the fact that Israel's state and society will will continue a lot of these these policies, but the degrees do matter and and they matter in Palestinian lives. They matter in the territory that Israel is able to take. It matters in the kind of limits and pressures you can apply onto to it.
00:30:59
Speaker
um but But of course, the counterarguments could also just as easily be made. mean like I mean, as we see, if Israeli society is so overwhelmingly in support of this, would they have done something different? It's unclear, or or maybe even unlikely. know Will, if there is a coalition that takes over this current Netanyahu one or the far-right one, Will they reverse a lot of the policies? Probably not.
00:31:21
Speaker
mean, we saw this also in the Bennett-Lapide government, where they actually sustained and even stretched the limits of some of those policies. So that opposing argument can certainly be made. And this is where Palestinian citizens really play in thing is that if they do come out in big numbers, the numbers game that exists in the Israeli political spectrum, because it's proportional representation, means that they potentially have a jamming role because also the anti-Dietanyahu opposition, the Zionist parties there, most of them, almost if not all, do not want to join with with Arab parties. and Even someone like Benitez said this very explicitly, which is quite different from his position when he and invited Ra'am, the islamist Islamist party, to come in. This has changed significantly.
00:32:00
Speaker
On the other hand, if Palestinian citizens are very disillusioned, if they don't believe they have any impact, if they don't believe they won't make a difference and their numbers drop, because of the proportional representation, that means that the other Jewish-Israeli parties will actually get stronger numbers. So that includes the more far-right, that includes the higher-edit parties, that actually the danger becomes that if they do...
00:32:22
Speaker
that the Palestinians do withdraw, that actually you would make it easier for some of these parties to form coalitions. This is where the numbers game, it does make a difference. And this is the difference between can someone like Bibi get 61 seats or 70 seats? Is down to 55 seats? So it's another game of mathematics.
00:32:41
Speaker
and it's unclear, or at least unclear to me so far, where Palestinian citizens lie in that debate. I think there a lot of polls seem to suggest that they will come out to vote, especially if the Arab parties do follow through on their commitment to come back as a joint list.
00:32:55
Speaker
But they need to make the case to Palestinian citizens who, even as they're observing all this, around them, and they are concerned that Palestinians, and they are concerned about the region. But actually, for most Palestinian citizens, when you ask them, what is their primary concern? And this is sort the severity to know the subject, but it is about actually what's happening in Arab towns and villages inside as Israel, which is the question of organized crime and gun violence and the depths to which that has dominated Palestinian life. So this is, i mean, this is a far subject from the Iran question, but this is where something that seems so small in the and the community, as small as Palestinian citizens, could have maybe not a decisive factor, but certainly a significant factor or a significant ah role to play in how a constellation may occur that that determines the fate of this Israeli election, that determines the fate of how the Israeli state proceeds in the coming years, and it determines the fate of
00:33:47
Speaker
ah Israeli and Palestinian relations with the wider region at a time of such massive seismic shifts. And I'm thinking, you know, with all the political repression and the chilling effect that's had on Palestinians in 48 Palestinian citizens of Israel, whether that's going to have an impact on them actually turning out to vote.
00:34:06
Speaker
Because we know that they have been hard hit over the last years. There have been a lot of arrests for social media posts for really small things. You know, even just coming out and saying the word genocide has had and repercussions for certain individuals. So in my mind, that will undoubtedly have an effect on how people show up and if they do show up to to vote. And of course, it's important to mention that whether people vote or not is a contentious issue in the community. There are people that decidedly choose not to vote in the Israeli elections, Palestinian citizens of Israel. and So I'm just wondering if you think actually that might have an effect on on the numbers.
00:34:49
Speaker
It certainly may. I mean, since the beginning of the Gaza war, I mean, there's been ah a really terrifying paralysis among Palestinian citizens of Israel. yeah It's not that they were not witnessing all these things, but um there was a real fear that was informed by Jewish Israeli society and by the Israeli states, which so basically threatened the Palestinian community and to say, you don't get involved.
00:35:12
Speaker
Don't come out to the streets. We don't want to hear from you. We don't want to see you. And there were certainly arrests, but also, I mean, it wasn't even just about state repression in universities, in your grocery stores, in the public sphere.
00:35:23
Speaker
Everything, like there was almost this, ah called almost like a totalitarian pact on the part of Jewish-Israeli society that became enlisted in the war effort in the in the civilian sphere.
00:35:34
Speaker
For Palestinian citizens, if in the if in past wars used to come out to the streets and try to stir some um some good trouble, as it were, inside the country, the fear is very, very real. like They can see Jewish-Israeli society at its full capacity and being able to witness what they're able to do and the feeling that Palestinian citizens of Israel are next. And the far right is very explicit that you know the mixed cities and the Arab towns are a target, that they want to see those also come cleansed, that they want to yeah get rid of the weeds and you know um burn the lawn in in some respects you inside the States.
00:36:08
Speaker
And that has shifted a little bit as Palestinian citizens are able to kind of try to reassert some confidence and ability to step out. But that fear is still there. The threat is still there. That repression is certainly still there.
00:36:21
Speaker
And even now in the context of the Iran war, you know people are also running to their basements or running to bomb shelters or have no bomb shelters to run to. And so that's another kind of level of paralysis that is also occurring. So whether this how this affects the polls is a big question. ah And now coming back again to to this kind of micro issue whereby even the war has not necessarily stopped the issues of gun violence in Arab towns or the activities of organized crime families or crime organizations. and so Yet there's a sense that nothing has really shifted and there's no clear way out that not even the Arab political parties in Israel, they haven't really been able to set a different kind of agenda or make a clear different theory of change.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I'm sad to say also, this isn't just among Palestinian citizens of Israel, but among the Palestinian national movement at large, whether it's the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority or Hamas. that have not really been able to put forward something different and to recognize that whatever symbolic victories have been achieved over the past two and a half years, it has come at a very catastrophic cost.
00:37:21
Speaker
And at the cost of material power, material ground that Palestinians hold, um and the sense that we have not really been able to kind of create a different sort of direction or reunification after two and a half years of genocide of experiencing one of the worst periods in Palestinian history since the Nakhbev. But we're still kind of stuck in in certain modalities and ways of thinking.
00:37:45
Speaker
And it's not that that thinking is not happening at all. There are a lot of circle circles as one of them trying to push against this and interrogate these theories but we are still trapped in a situation whereby the political leadership and much of the public is still under attack does not have the space to do this in gaza people are thinking about survival you know or primarily you know the basic food and water. And it's not that they're not thinking about their you know political ideas or constant liberation, but your immediate needs are so essential. And so having to come to terms with with these tensions within within how Palestinians, whether inside Israel or in Gaza or in the West Bank or elsewhere, we having to come to terms that we need to really get down to the fundamentals that something has shifted in Israel, Palestine, in in the Middle East and in the wider world order that requires um
00:38:32
Speaker
new ways of organizing. It's hard to come up with clear answers and some of this is beyond us. But i think it's just very reflective at a moment whereby as much seismic change is happening from Israel to Iran, from the US to China, ah where we fit into this and how we can think about our agency and political power as much as possible.
00:38:50
Speaker
Those are the questions that need to be had forward. Amjad, we'll have to bring you back on the podcast later in the year to talk more about Israeli elections and and the consequences of the Israeli regime's scorched earth strategy. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode and look forward to having you on a again soon.
00:39:11
Speaker
Thank you so much. Always pleased to be here.
00:39:17
Speaker
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00:39:34
Speaker
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