A full-scale war in Gaza not to be ruled out – ex-Israeli PM

SS:The latest escalation in Gaza broke out after two Hamas commanders were killed in a botched Israeli special forces raid. Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in response while Israeli planes bombed a hundred of sites in Gaza over the past few days. As a military man, tell me, why provoke Palestinians if it’s known in advance that any sort of undercover military action there will end up in heavy response from the militants?

EB: I can’t fully explain the Palestinians’ behavior but that threatens the normalcy of life of our citizens around the Gaza Strip, and they compelled the IDF to respond very aggressively. They struck mainly through air attacks and destroyed some sensitive installations of Hamas. Of course, it doesn’t end the whole story. As of now, it’s much quieter now and let’s hope that it will remain quiet. If it doesn’t remain quiet I will not be surprised if the government orders the Israeli Defense Forces to hit even harsher or harder which may cause more collateral damage and more damage to Hamas, and will escalate in the direction which is bad for both sides.

SS:Egypt and the United Nations have been trying to broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel for several months already, and just when it seemed to be agreed upon Israel conducted this secret raid in Gaza. From the outside it looks like Israel is kind of sabotaging the peace efforts - in your opinion is Israel really interested in any ceasefire?

EB: Oh no, it’s just a coincidence. This kind of operations are quite rare, and when they are needed they are needed for good and crucial security needs. They usually never come in the public eye  - the guys know how to do it without being exposed along the way. So it’s basically something that happened against our wish, for sure. But it happened in the moment which was sensitive and probably helped this take another 24 or 48 hours before the ceasefire came into force.

SS:Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman has resigned and he called the ceasefire, which Hamas and Israel have eventually signed up to, “a surrender to Hamas terror”. Do you agree?

EB: Yeah, you know, I belong to the opposition in Israel, so I’m harshly criticising our government for not being not more aggressive but more thoughtful in our attitude towards Hamas. So I agree that our government is basically yielding to Hamas under fire. It’s not a secret that Yehiya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, he decides when to open fire, he decides when to stop it, and he might decide when to resume it - it’s not our government. But my criticism is not about our government that didn’t order the armed forces to take over Gaza, - because our armed forces can take over the Gaza Strip within several days, - but the question is what shall we do afterwards. No one will come to replace us to sit on our bayonets and control Gaza. So we don’t have anything to gain from re-conquering the Gaza Strip. My complaint about the current government that they haven’t been using the last four years since the last wider operation to make sure that we’re capable of driving a wedge between almost 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Hamas. It’s in Israel’s interest to weaken Hamas. It’s in Israel’s interest to make sure that life is normal, that there’s enough electricity, enough equipment in hospitals, the quality of water is good. We’re not interested in human suffering in Gaza. And our government has somewhat failed to do it. They failed to realise that strategically we have to strengthen Abu Mazen in Ramallah and to weaken Hamas in Gaza, not the other way around.

SS:Lieberman’s party has left the coalition government, and the Jewish Home party threatens to follow suit unless its leader Naftali Bennett gets the seat of defense minister. Could this be the beginning of the end for Netanyahu’s coalition? How could its potential downfall affect or impact the peace process?

EB: You know, in Israel we are going to have new elections by the next October. So it’s only the question when the election will take place - in 4 or 5 months from now or in 10 or 11 months from now, that’s the whole difference. But as one of the informal members of the opposition in Israel I really believe and hope that this event will accelerate the falling down of the Netanyahu's government that will be replaced by a better government for Israel and Israelis. 

SS:The army wanted the ceasefire, but obviously Netanyahu’s allies do not, there were demonstrations in Israel demanding war - do you think the Israeli public wants another Gaza operation?

EB: You know, we have a phenomenon that we’re acquainted with, unfortunately. We probably had half a dozen of rounds in Gaza in the last ten or fifteen years. Basically everyone is elated and applauding when you enter Gaza and start a major operation. But usually afterwards, when it becomes clear that the only achievable result is to bring back relaxation under basically the same terms, there’s a lot of frustration. So what we see in our streets is eruption of emotions because the government really abandoned for eight months now the people around the Gaza Strip. You know, when Netanyahu visited the football matches in Moscow, the people around Gaza were suffering, but he never came to see them. He prefered to fly to Moscow to see football matches there. So it’s basically the feeling of frustration, life’s not normal, children are traumatized, you always have to be within 10 to 15 seconds from some shelter, that disrupts normal life. There’s a price for it, and the government pays the political price for being unable to shape a consistent strategy vis-a-vis Hamas in Gaza. The consistent strategy doesn’t have to do with the shooting, the actual shooting or choosing targets as a matter for the generals. The government doesn’t shoot targets, but the government should shape a strategy which aims at weakening Hamas and strengthening Abu Mazen, and that’s what they are failing to do.     

SS:70 years ago, Israel started with a handicap: surrounded by enemies, having to fight to prove its right to exist. Now, look - it’s still the same for Israel, it hasn’t normalised its existence, there’s still not a single friendly neighbour, the Arab masses hate you, terrorists target you. Sure you can bomb them all away like you did in 1967, but does Israel have a chance to become an accepted player in the neighbourhood, not just the toughest and scariest kid on the block?

EB: I’m confident that we can. It might take time. We’ll need patience. Nations do not develop better positions with their neighbors overnight. And you have to bear in mind that the way the person cannot choose its parents a nation cannot choose its neighbours whatever they are. But there’s a huge difference. 70 years ago when the UN General Assembly decided about the partition plan making two states in Palestine, Jewish State and Arab State, Israel accepted it despite the fact that our state was supposed to be three cantons, hardly connected, without even a road to Jerusalem. The Palestinians rejected it and even tried to killed the baby Israel before we could stand on our feet. So we won against all odds and we’re not going to be apologetic about it anymore. The moral burden of responsibility for the whole tragedy is on the other side which rejected proposals from our side at that time and later. Fifty years later I was Prime Minister and I proposed to Arafat to put an end to the whole conflict through some compromises, and he rejected it and turned deliberately to terror. So we do not feel morally responsible. But at the same time it’s not true to say that nothing has changed. Fifty years ago, at the Six-Days War - our most brilliant triumph - the Israeli government immediately said that except for Jerusalem we hold the rest of the occupied territories as a deposit for negotiating peace. The Arabs gathered in Hartum and decided that no recognition and no peace negotiation should take place, and whatever is taken by force will be brought back by force. Since then we’ve had 40 years of peace of the strongest Arab country Egypt. 40 years of peace  - it’s not an ideal peace like between EU and, let’s say, Belarus, but it’s peace. And it stood even when the Muslim Brotherhood under Morsi were in power in Egypt, they didn’t dare to conflict. We have 25 years of peace with Jordan, the longest border. Not just my government but Bibi’s government tried to make peace even with Assad (the father, not the son). And we failed. And for 15 years we’ve had a Saudi Arabian proposal for peace in exchange for basically borders based on the 1967 agreement between ours and the Palestinian state with some land swap. And there’s an Arab League proposal. So we cannot say that nothing is changing or had changed. It’s true that there are always new enemies - the recent one was Al-Qaeda and later Daesh, - and we’re still not fully quiet, but we’re strong and we’re fighting. My differences is with my own government is that I believe that Israel is so strong - we’re the strongest country thousands miles around Jerusalem, we can afford considering how to negotiate peace out of strength and self-confidence. We don’t have to risk ourselves, but we need to change the situation dramatically even if it takes time and a certain number of compromises.

SS: As we’ve already mentioned, Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors have always been bad. Most of them still don’t recognise the State of Israel. But lately we’ve seen PM Netanyahu paying a visit to Oman, first in two decades, then these overtures to Riyadh... Is it working? Can we really talk about Israel’s normalisation with the Arab world?

EB: You know, it’s better than what we worried about, and less than what I hoped for. You know, we basically visited Oman… 22 years ago I was Foreign Minister of Israel under Shimon Peres, and we travelled all around the region. We met informally with Arab Leaders all around. So it’s not something new. But basically, there is some truth in what you said. In the last 3 years, there is a great common interest to Israel, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. It is to corner, to put at bay the Iranian hegemonic and nuclear intentions, to struggle together against radical Muslim terror, and to create counterweight to the Shia banana, which stretches from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut. So these elements are on the table, they should be used, and we seem to be missing it. The reason is, it cannot fly together, we cannot widen these common interests without being ready to deal seriously with the Palestinian issue. Not because the autocrats in the Sunni Arab world have certain sentiments for the Palestinians, probably they don’t have. But their peoples have. Those autocratic leaders, be it in Saudi Arabia or in the Gulf, they cannot sit safe on their own chairs and accept Israel publically as a legitimate member of the family of states in the region if the Palestinians are still under permanent Israeli control. And that needs certain change, and I think that what we can get from the Arab world, from this Sunnite alliance, is so important that it justifies certain compromises vis-a-vis the Palestinians in order to enable it to fly. For some reasons, our government are failing to do it, and I think that it could be changed.    

SS:Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert believed that Mahmoud Abbas is the only Palestinian leader able to bring the two-state solution to life. But his Fatah is actually at loggerheads with Hamas whose official line is to destroy Israel. How big of an obstacle is this Fatah-Hamas confrontation for the Israeli-Palestinian peace? Can Israel reach a peace deal with the West Bank Palestine, and ignore Gaza?

EB: I don’t think we can ignore Gaza, and when we left Gaza some 12 years ago, 11 years ago, more than 12, we hoped that the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah, Abu Mazen, will control the whole area. Somehow, at the right moment from their point of view, Hamas took over and changed direction. But Israel has an interest not in the continuation of these tensions, as some Israelis believe, including the government. I think that our real interest is that somehow they will get united under Palestinian Authority, under Ramallah, under Abu Mazen. Because Abu Mazen, with all his weaknesses, is still a Palestinian leader which prefers cooperation and living side by side over violence. And he cannot stop all violence, and probably doesn’t want to stop all violence, and we have many complaints about him, but nothing can compare with Hamas. Hamas are murderers with whom there is even no possibility of any negotiations, and that’s what makes them the favoured player on the other side by our right-wing government! The right-wing government, they are talking about putting an end to it, they find themselves unable and unprepared to really try to destroy Hamas. At the same time, they focus their efforts at weakening Abu Mazen, and in this regard, Ehud Olmert is right. We have an interest together with Egypt, with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and others to strengthen Abu Mazen, to make him the one. He cannot come to Gaza on the Israeli bayonet, but together with the Egyptians and others, and Americans, we can create a situation where the Palestinian people in Gaza might have a second thought whether they should prefer Abu Mazen over Hamas.

SS:Trump is promising to release an actual Mid-East peace plan in a couple of months. But seeing how Washington has lost the trust of the Palestinian side after an opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, do you think, the United States can still be relied on for mediation? Will Palestinians even look at the plan that he’s proposing?

EB: I think that the Palestinians are over-exaggerating the meaning of the American statement, I think that this statement should have come 70 years ago, or 25 years ago, after the Congress passed the resolution. It was for many reasons delayed by previous Presidents. I don’t think that in any way the moving of the American embassy to Jerusalem excludes the possibility that once the Palestinians come to their minds and strike a deal with Israel, and the Americans will move their embassy to the Palestinian state to wherever their capital will be, if their capital will have part of it in the suburbs, the heavily populated Arab suburbs near Jerusalem or on the Eastern part of Jerusalem. I don’t see any reason to over-exaggerate, but I should admit that the real obstacle now to have the Trump plan being executed successfully is the loss of trust between Israeli leadership and Palestinian leadership, there is not a single drop of trust there, each side, whenever something is put on the table, try to prepare the blame game. Both sides assume that it will come to a deadlock, and the real game is how to make sure that the other side will be blamed for the failure. And recently, the Palestinians apparently lost trust in the American side as the honest broker, that’s quite a poor starting point, but still… Because I’m an eternal optimist in a way, I think that we should always look for a way to go over the obstacle and try, once and again, try to reach a relaxation. It’s better than war. I’ve spent my life fighting, I tell you, we are ready to fight, we are stronger, we know how to fight, but profoundly, we prefer and should prefer relaxation and normalisation of the relationship. Even if there is no partner now among the Palestinians who is ready and capable of doing it, we should probably take certain unilateral steps to start the divorce, the separation from the Palestinians, but do it in a way that will not destroy the chances of a Palestinian state in the future once they come to their senses and try to do it.   

SS:So let’s talk a little bit about Iran. You said that Iran doesn’t present any existential threat to Israel. I agree. However, the current Israeli government is just obsessed with the threat from Iran, it’s always Iran this and Iran that and the bomb and whatnot. Why is Israel so nervous about Iran’s influence in the Middle East?

EB: Basically, we don’t like the Iranian behaviour, don’t be misled by my remarks. You know, Iran is a major threat to the stability in the Middle East, and to Israel, in the longer term. What I’ve said is that as long as this agreement is still in power, and as long as the Iranians are following, basically, the letter of this agreement, it delays their potential threat to Israel by years, probably, a decade, probably, more, it’s too early to know. We shall never let the Iranians resume their effort to become a nuclear power, and we should be ready to coordinate with the United States, or even independently, to block them from becoming a nuclear military power. But having said that, I don’t think that there is any immediate existential threat from Iran in the short- and the mid-term level, and we have other problems, like, you know, creating this alliance, regional alliance with the moderate Sunnites, to promote the arrangement with the Palestinians, to prepare the ground for a separation or a divorce of the Palestinians, to help the situation be that we will have one Palestinian partner, not two of them, and so on. So we have different priorities! You know, we have a populist extreme right-wing government, ultra-nationalist, which got the satisfaction, the sense of direction and identity from identifying demons from the outside and demons from within. That was the practice of authoritarian movements all along history, at least in the last 200 years, and we saw it in other places leading to nowhere. And we still believe that we are strong enough, we are so strong that we can afford being much more realistic, not being always worried and kind of haunted by demons around us or traitors from within, there are neither demons nor traitors, but real threats that should be dealt with. 

SS: Mr. Barak, I just have time to one last question. So I’ll ask you to answer briefly if you can. Israel has praised the United States for resuming sanctions against Iran. At the same time, Tehran has reiterated threats to resume uranium enrichment. You have said the Iran deal was bad, but until now it prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Is it still better for Israel to have some deal in place than no deal at all?

EB: There is difference I see between, you know… First of all, I don’t like to deal with milk that has already been spilled, so I saw that the Iran deal was bad, but once it was signed, it became part of the reality. I saw that President Trump had other ways to resume negotiations about spreading terror, or developing missiles, or any other issue, which was outside the deal, and to try to negotiate it, but once he announced the sanctions, they are part of the issue, part of reality. It creates certain economic stress within Iran. But our experience make it very little hope that this will destroy the ayatollah’s regime. And they will find some way to overcome, I don’t believe that they will break out and try to resume a fully-fledged nuclear effort, but some new arrangement probably might be found down the street. I think that we should be clear: I have nothing against the Iranian people, they are gifted, great people, it’s only about the ayatollahs and the ayatollahs’ intention to develop nuclear weapons and their threats to eliminate Israel. We are strong enough, we are not afraid, but we have to make sure that, either independently or together with the United States and the world community, we will make sure that Iran will never cross the line into military nuclear capability, and I think that this is achievable.  

SS:Mr. Barak, thank you very much for your interview, for your insight, pleasure talking to you. We were talking to Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister, discussing the latest escalation in Gaza and whether it's pushing the Israeli-Palestinian peace further away. That's it for this edition of SophieCo. I'll see you next time.