TRIGGERnometry - The Untold Story of the Gaza Ceasefire

00:00:00.960 It would be good to start with the remarkable attack that Israel launched against top Hamas

00:00:10.380 leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha. It outraged everyone. It obviously outraged the Qataris,

00:00:17.060 but it really outraged the United States. Emirati dignitaries that I've spoken to recently,

00:00:23.560 they say that very quickly it went from the Gulf seeing Iran as the primary threat to Israel being

00:00:31.100 the threat. How to de-radicalize the Gazans? I have no idea how you would even begin to do that.

00:00:37.980 Hamas is definitely radical. They don't live in the real world. They live in a fantasy,

00:00:41.600 and it will be hard to get rid of them. Maybe there is some optimism there then. It's not all

00:00:46.420 But you have to get rid of Hamas. Of course. Everyone agrees.

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00:01:37.200 Well, it's another big day in the Middle East, and it's another appearance for Thomas Small of the

00:01:43.660 Conflicted Podcast and Trigonometry. I get that call from Constantin, and I think,

00:01:47.140 oh no, not again. Oh, everyone's going to hate me again. I don't think anywhere. I thought our

00:01:52.280 episode with you about Syria when the Assad regime fell is one of our absolute favorite interviews,

00:01:58.100 one of the best we've ever done. Got huge viewing as well. So we're sitting here in the days after

00:02:05.120 the hostages were finally released, thanks to the U.S. administration. What happened? What do we

00:02:10.720 know about how this came about? Oh my God. Just like in the Syria one, you ask this question,

00:02:16.300 and I think, well, where do you begin? Where do you begin? Okay, in the beginning,

00:02:20.500 God created the heavens and the earth. You know, it is a sort of biblical story, almost,

00:02:26.840 the story of this conflict. And I wanted to start with a little bit of theology,

00:02:31.500 just to kind of set some guardrails here. Yeah, let's lose 90% of the audience. Go on.

00:02:35.480 So in the book of Genesis, right, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is shrouded with a

00:02:41.600 certain danger. If you eat of it too precipitously, you are banished from paradise, and you do not have

00:02:49.140 access to the tree of life or wisdom. So if we're going to talk about this most intractable,

00:02:54.000 most polarized and divisive conflict, can we agree not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil

00:03:01.000 too soon and draw moralizing conclusions? Because I don't know how to do that about this conflict,

00:03:07.020 because it's so incredibly complicated. Both sides have reasons to hate the other side,

00:03:16.380 and the egregious injustices perpetrated by both sides going back decades, maybe centuries. You know,

00:03:23.820 the ledger is red on both sides. So that's my first thing to say. I'm not here to celebrate

00:03:30.040 one side winning over the other side or anything like that, because frankly, it's early days. We

00:03:35.420 don't even know if this war is over. I mean, I know, I saw, my heart was moved to see the images

00:03:41.560 from Tel Aviv, from Jerusalem, of the hostages being returned. You know, it's great. The Israeli

00:03:47.340 people are rightfully very pleased to get their hostages back, rightfully pleased that, at least

00:03:53.360 for now, the war is over. I think everyone was very war-weary there. The Gazans, some of them were

00:04:00.300 celebrating as well, we saw. Why? I'm not quite sure. Gaza is rubble. And now, for them especially,

00:04:09.520 in a way, a new chapter of their suffering will begin as everyone decides what happens to Gaza. So,

00:04:16.300 I just don't want to be in that space of, you know, who knows what's going to happen. As for...

00:04:21.100 She left his Palestine flag outside. No, no, no, no. I don't fly any flags here.

00:04:26.100 I am joking. Your point is you're not on a team, which is why we are here.

00:04:29.680 Yeah, I'm not on a team. So where did this start? This ceasefire. Well, from the very beginning of

00:04:34.060 the conflict, there have been negotiations about how to end the conflict, from the, you know,

00:04:39.360 literally within the first week of the conflict. Qatar mainly acting as a mediator.

00:04:46.300 Sort of more or less trusted mediator, trusted by the United States, more or less.

00:04:51.880 Trusted more and then maybe less by the Israeli government, acting as a mediator alongside other

00:04:58.140 mediators or patrons of Hamas's political wing, on one hand, like Turkey and Egypt,

00:05:06.960 and its sometimes kind of allied backers, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. So all of this has been

00:05:14.860 going on from the beginning. So this ceasefire now that's happened, this hopeful, this peace plan,

00:05:20.140 it's not like, it's not like it came out of nowhere. Donald Trump, the President Trump,

00:05:25.100 likes to think that he kind of pulled this peace out of his hat, like it was his to give.

00:05:28.960 I give you peace. But it's been negotiated constantly in the background from the beginning.

00:05:35.540 This specific plan, where do we start?

00:05:41.100 I think it would be good to start with the remarkable attack that Israel launched against

00:05:54.080 top Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha on the 9th of September, so just over a month ago.

00:06:02.020 Because that really changed everything in a big way.

00:06:09.840 When it happened, I mean, it was kind of remarkable. The Israelis used these stealth jets,

00:06:15.920 they flew down the Red Sea, and then they launched these missiles. And I'm not a military guy,

00:06:21.320 but apparently they launched them sort of over Saudi Arabia. They launched them so high

00:06:26.000 that they technically were not going over Saudi airspace, so they could deny

00:06:29.980 violating that airspace. And then they struck Doha, killing a Qatari official, a security officer,

00:06:40.900 and I think five others. None of them top Hamas leadership. From what I have been told

00:06:46.600 from friends in the region, the top Hamas people had actually left their mobile phones

00:06:54.740 on the table of the room that had been targeted, so they were thought to be there,

00:06:58.640 and had gone to a mosque to pray. It was prayer time. So maybe God saved their bacon. I don't know.

00:07:03.860 But they didn't die. Probably the wrong way to describe that.

00:07:06.400 Yeah. Now, the reason that those Hamas leaders were there is because they were participating in a

00:07:16.660 negotiation, a ceasefire and peace negotiation with Israeli counterparts mediated by Qatar.

00:07:23.560 So when this attack happened, it caused a tremendous uproar, outrage, because it really did sort of cross

00:07:33.540 every recognized line of international law and diplomatic kind of manners, if you like, to attack,

00:07:42.520 to try to assassinate the men that you had agreed to negotiate with, you know, to negotiate something

00:07:49.560 like the end of a war with. That just doesn't happen, not supposed to happen. It outraged everyone.

00:07:55.960 It obviously outraged the Qataris, but it really outraged the United States. It really outraged the White House,

00:08:05.560 because they did not know that this was going to happen. And from what I understand, the Israelis

00:08:11.820 designed this attack precisely so that the White House would not know in advance of the attack enough

00:08:20.080 to warn the Qataris, because they knew. I mean, Israel, I don't know if you know this, it's a close

00:08:25.380 ally of the United States, a very close ally. They have a special relationship, and they work very

00:08:31.380 closely on security things and military things. So the Israelis know the United States military

00:08:37.680 architecture, its ecosystem in the region. They knew which way its, you know, radar systems are

00:08:45.600 pointed. And they chose the Red Sea, and they chose precisely that route of attack so that

00:08:50.680 the White House would not know about the Pentagon or the CENTCOM would not know about it in time to

00:08:56.760 warn the Qataris. And the Qataris say that when they did get the call from the White House saying,

00:09:02.140 by the way, there's a, you know, that it was happening at the same time. So at some point,

00:09:07.240 the White House realized, you know, the CENTCOM realized this was happening. They called the

00:09:10.960 Qataris, but it was too late. So Donald Trump was extremely upset about this. And I don't know,

00:09:19.640 you know, you recently had Prime Minister Netanyahu on this program. Maybe he explains to you what he

00:09:25.860 was thinking. The people I've talked to in the region cannot, for the life of them, understand why

00:09:32.660 Israel did it, especially given the fallout. So do you have an idea? I'm actually, this is me turning

00:09:39.280 the tables. Can you, do you have an idea of why they did that? No. Just no? No. Okay. So,

00:09:45.820 well, I don't know either. Israeli policy over the last eight months or so has become increasingly

00:09:56.340 difficult to understand. I mean, everyone knows the allegation that Netanyahu, desperate to stay in

00:10:03.500 office, fearing that the minute he leaves office, he will be holed off to prison or at least subjected

00:10:09.280 to a humiliating court case or three court cases that are pending. People alleged that, you know,

00:10:15.320 he was extending the war, postponing the war, doing what he could to make sure the war wouldn't end in

00:10:20.800 order to stay in office. I used to think that that was maybe just sort of conspiracy theorizing. But

00:10:27.920 frankly, I do wonder now. For whatever reason, he launched this attack, which failed. And for the

00:10:35.400 first time ever, Israel struck a GCC capital. And not just any capital, the capital of the country

00:10:43.320 in which the largest U.S. military base in the world is housed. They did that without warning the

00:10:50.600 White House. So the missile struck was 30 kilometers away from that base, Al-Udeid base, without warning.

00:10:56.880 And it has, in the last five weeks, set in train, America's alliance system in the region is on life

00:11:08.400 support now, which is strange. You'd be surprised to hear that because yesterday, the day before, we saw

00:11:12.720 Donald Trump in Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, sorry, in Egypt, acting for all the world like the great,

00:11:20.800 you know, world king that he thinks that he is. But behind that is an American administration

00:11:28.720 extremely worried that Israel's reckless attack on the 9th of September has permanently altered

00:11:38.560 the perception of American power in the region, which was already very much on shaky grounds since

00:11:45.200 the Biden administration had come to power and had reneged on some weapons contracts, weapons deals

00:11:52.720 that the first Trump administration had arranged with the Emiratis and the Saudis. Do you remember

00:11:57.920 when Biden was running for office? He called Saudi Arabia a pariah state. And they very much hold

00:12:05.920 the Gulf countries over the coals for the Yemen war, the situation in Yemen, which, you know, of course,

00:12:12.000 latterly has been proved to have been foolish, given the reckless behavior of the Houthis in the last

00:12:16.880 two years, holding Red Sea shipping to ransom and firing, you know, weapons, missiles at Israel and

00:12:22.480 things. So, the relationship was already sort of under strain. A pivot was occurring in the direction

00:12:28.640 of China and other, you know, growing powers in our multipolar world. But the attack on the 9th of

00:12:37.120 September really made people sit up and think, okay, we have got to do something about this. Eight days

00:12:44.720 later, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia announce a new military cooperation agreement that includes extending

00:12:55.200 Pakistan's nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia. Quite a remarkable thing. Now, you know, everything I know

00:13:02.960 about the inner workings of Gulf diplomacy and military come from my friend and co-host on the

00:13:08.080 Conflicted podcast, Eamon Dean, who I spoke to at length this morning to pick his brains so that I

00:13:13.040 would help to help me understand better what's been going on. So, everything I say is really, I have to

00:13:17.360 say, I have to credit him with the insider knowledge. But he told me a remarkable story that for five years now,

00:13:26.880 he believes, he speculates with a wink, he believes based on what he has heard. But it's speculation,

00:13:35.040 but he believes that for over five years now, there have been nuclear weapons

00:13:43.840 inside Saudi Arabia, certainly earmarked for Saudi use. It's not clear. But that, and this was

00:13:53.920 precipitated originally by the Biden administration's change in policy, by earlier than that, some

00:14:02.960 attacks that Iran launched against Aramco facilities in the east of Saudi Arabia, which were devastating

00:14:10.400 and really limited the amount of oil that could come out of the kingdom for about 20 days, something

00:14:15.280 like that, severely shaking, you know, the industry there, which is its lifeline. So, you know, the

00:14:23.200 kingdom was already thinking, we need to protect ourselves. And, and since it had funded the Pakistani

00:14:31.360 nuclear program starting in the 70s, and it had always had a very close relationship with Pakistan

00:14:36.800 on this level, this idea kind of the idea being, you make 10 nuclear warheads, we get one of them, you

00:14:43.040 know, so, and that, so they have about 18 now maybe with their name on it. But the idea being now that

00:14:48.560 that those are like actually physically going to be transferred to Saudi Arabia and may have been

00:14:54.160 transferred there as early as 2020. Now, the announcement, eight days after the attack, the

00:15:03.360 Israeli attack on Doha in Qatar, was that's a major, major change to America's

00:15:12.800 security arrangement in that part of the world. It's saying, we don't trust you because you don't

00:15:21.440 have control of your most important ally. For that reason, at the end of September,

00:15:27.520 on the 29th of September, we saw this remarkable scene of Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House,

00:15:33.200 in the Oval Office, calling the Qatari Prime Minister, his counterpart in Doha,

00:15:38.560 and giving him a public apology, a kind of groveling apology, promising never to do it again,

00:15:45.200 basically, the same day that Donald Trump announced his 20-point peace plan, which,

00:15:53.200 over the next week or so, then came into effect on the 10th of October. So, that is the immediate

00:16:01.120 context of what's happened. That, on the one hand, war weary, not making many military strategic gains

00:16:10.960 inside Gaza, you know, not really since last summer, July-ish, 2024, have the IDF really made a

00:16:21.040 significant strategic sort of gains on the battlefield in Gaza. It's been kind of just

00:16:26.320 a kind of horrible status quo, maintaining a certain degree of destruction, you know,

00:16:33.840 reminding everyone what they can do, what they do do, you know, participating in negotiations,

00:16:41.440 possibly not always in good faith, possibly, you know, who knows? Certainly, trying to assassinate

00:16:47.920 the negotiators in Doha suggests that the accusations before that, that the Israelis were

00:16:53.280 not negotiated in good faith might be true, maybe in an attempt to extend this war, I don't know.

00:16:58.720 So, war weary on the Israeli side, Israeli people are very war weary, they're increasingly Netanyahu

00:17:04.320 wearied, he's sort of, you know, his coalition is weakening, starting in the summer, when some of

00:17:10.320 these right-wing partners drifted away from him. So, on the one side, on the other side, you know,

00:17:15.360 Hamas, totally under pressure. The United States, given what Israel did in September, just said,

00:17:25.280 okay, we've got to stop this war, and we must do something about the very destabilizing effects

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00:19:17.760 today's episode.

00:19:20.400 And one of the things I read, and it's interesting that you've given so much time to the attack on Doha,

00:19:26.880 because one of the things I read was that in some ways it was foolish and everybody,

00:19:33.040 you know, even lots of Israelis thought it was a big mistake. But it's in some way precipitated

00:19:38.560 this resolution as far as we've got. And we'll talk about your point about whether this actually

00:19:42.880 is the first step towards peace or a temporary thing that there's a setback later. But one of

00:19:48.320 the things I read was that what happened was that attack happened. Obviously, the Qataris were very

00:19:54.960 pissed off. Trump was annoyed. But in the same time, he used it as an opportunity to say to the

00:20:01.840 Qataris, we'll protect you, but you have to deliver the hostages.

00:20:05.600 Well, not you have to. You know, you have to put pressure on Hamas to deliver the hostages.

00:20:11.600 Now, there has been this idea that maybe even the White House colluded in the attack

00:20:18.320 to put Qatar under that kind of pressure. But from what I understand, that is not the case.

00:20:24.560 Interesting.

00:20:25.040 And though, yes, in the end, because of the attack and the fallout, the strategic fallout,

00:20:30.880 the shifting alliances. And it's not just Saudi Arabia, Qatar itself, the Emirates, Turkey,

00:20:36.720 lots of powers who had already been preparing the ground for diversifying their military arrangements

00:20:44.080 as American power weakens relative to the rising powers of China, India. You know, basically going

00:20:51.200 back to the beginning of the Cold War, America has sought by hook or by crook to maintain control

00:20:57.840 over what's known as the Rimland, that part of the Eurasian continent that kind of rings from the south,

00:21:06.880 the, you know, Russia to contain it. If we can kind of create enough networks of alliances

00:21:13.840 to contain the big beast at the center of the continent, then we'll be okay. Well, in the meantime,

00:21:21.360 because of economic growth, the different civilizational states of the Rimland are more

00:21:27.280 and more powerful and more and more assertive of their independence, especially as politics,

00:21:33.120 the economy of America, the culture of America, it's all quite wobbly and they don't know how much

00:21:39.040 they can trust it. So there was already a rethinking going on. But the attack on Doha is totally

00:21:46.800 changing. It changes everything. America was there. You know, it is insane. It is crazy that this has

00:21:53.520 happened. And I think one thing that should make us doubt the idea that the White House was sort of part

00:22:03.680 of the plot in order to put, you know, pressure on Qatar is that it's assuming that what Netanyahu or

00:22:12.480 what the Israeli government was trying to do was stop the war. You try to stop the war by trying to

00:22:17.760 assassinate the people negotiating the end of the war. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily,

00:22:24.160 that doesn't really add up. And from what I understand, it put America in such an awkward and

00:22:31.120 embarrassed position and so rapidly led to a changing geostrategic reality there that the

00:22:37.040 Americans just shouted, stop, first and foremost, to the Israelis, but also putting, putting pressure

00:22:46.480 on Qatar and Turkey. And there's just, you know, to just let's stop this now so that we can regroup.

00:22:52.880 Yeah, it was really interesting because I was watching a press conference that Donald Trump did

00:22:59.040 on Air Force One flying, I think, from Israel to Egypt. And he spoke about the Qataris and he was

00:23:05.680 effusive in his praise for them. He was glowing in this praise. I was actually quite taken aback.

00:23:12.080 The Qataris really helped us with this deal. And the Emir is an amazing man who really helped us.

00:23:19.840 You have to understand, his country is right in the middle of everything, more so than any other

00:23:25.520 country, more so than UAE, where you have to fly an hour and a half to get there, more so than Saudi

00:23:31.280 Arabia, where you have to fly an hour and a half to get there. His country, you walk across a line

00:23:36.240 and you're there. So he's in the middle of this unbelievable hostile territory with people on all

00:23:43.360 different sides of the, you know, of the opinion and the question. They were a tremendous help.

00:23:50.160 Qatar was a tremendous help to getting this done. I hope people can realize that it's very,

00:23:57.040 it was very tough and very dangerous for Qatar. They were very brave and their leader,

00:24:02.880 the Emir, was very, very brave. And Qatar should start getting some credit.

00:24:08.640 So do you think that they have essentially played a crucial role in these peace talks?

00:24:15.120 The Qataris, absolutely. No, they definitely have. They were always both immediate. I mean,

00:24:20.800 the Qatari, the role that the Qataris played in regional politics and in global politics is

00:24:26.640 very interesting and weird and difficult to suss out, you know, because on the one hand, they have,

00:24:34.240 they have positioned themselves as the place that talks to everybody. If you want to talk,

00:24:39.360 the Americans want to talk to the Taliban, the Americans want to talk to Al-Qaeda. If Iran wants to

00:24:44.080 to talk to Saudi, you can do it in Qatar. It's like the Mos Eisley cantina of the world,

00:24:51.040 like scum and villainy, they're all there. You can find everyone there. On the other hand,

00:24:55.840 Qatar, particularly through Al Jazeera, both Al Jazeera's, the Arabic Al Jazeera and the English

00:25:03.440 Al Jazeera, which in different ways to some extent communicate radical politics to the world. Arabic

00:25:10.640 Al Jazeera tending towards radical Islamist politics, English Al Jazeera tending more towards

00:25:16.400 radical liberal politics, you know, like what I think trigonometry might call woke politics,

00:25:22.960 or in general, you know, left-leaning metropolitan elite internationalism, that kind of politics.

00:25:28.800 So it's both a mediator, trusted by everyone, and it seems to have its foot on the pedal of

00:25:35.600 of its own politics. Its money, of which it has huge amounts because of the largest,

00:25:42.320 you know, natural gas fields in the world, is spent on, you know, endowing NGOs that again seem

00:25:47.520 to be politically slanted, endowing departments in universities across the West that seem to be the

00:25:53.520 same departments that encourage students to think very critically of the more widespread conservative,

00:26:00.560 liberal Western tradition. So Qatar is a funny thing. You would think that Donald Trump wouldn't

00:26:06.480 like Qatar that much, at least on that level of politics. So another indication that Benjamin

00:26:12.480 Netanyahu really, really pissed off Donald Trump is precisely that effusive praise for Qatar, that he,

00:26:20.160 you know, I don't know, Donald Trump, you know, maybe he has something like a narcissistic personality

00:26:26.000 complex. I don't know. But you don't stab that guy in the back. You know, he does not take that kind of

00:26:32.720 chicanery lying down. So I think Netanyahu was put in the naughty corner, and Trump went straight to his

00:26:41.040 other closest, you know, ally in the Middle East, where the military bases, where all the NGOs are, where

00:26:47.600 lots of politicking is done, Qatar, and was able, by forcing it, to get this deal done.

00:26:55.600 And then it came into effect a few days ago. Because it's been fascinating watching Trump's

00:26:59.440 rhetoric. If you see his speech that he delivered at the Neset, but also with this particular press

00:27:04.640 conference, not only did he praise Qatar, and he was fulsome in his price. But another thing that

00:27:10.080 shocked me is he came out and celebrated Turkey's role in this and was saying, you know, Erdogan,

00:27:16.640 you know, he played a fundamental part in getting this deal over the line.

00:27:21.360 He's a tough cookie, but he's been my friend. And every time I've ever needed him, he's been there

00:27:26.240 for me. So I just want to thank President Erdogan.

00:27:30.960 It's very surprising. You know, I think I may have talked about this the last time I was here,

00:27:43.680 but if not, I should have. So, you know, before the terrible events of the 7th of

00:28:00.400 October 2023, before the beginning of the war, beginning with the signing of the Abraham Accords

00:28:08.320 between the Emirates and other Arab countries and Israel, which seemed to be creating a new

00:28:14.320 a new regime, a new order in the Middle East, a new Middle East, one in which Israel would be

00:28:20.640 integrated economically, and something that's called the India-Middle Eastern and European

00:28:26.640 Economic Corridor was going to be created, a sort of riposte to, answer to, rival to China's

00:28:34.240 Belt and Road Initiative, which is much bigger. But nonetheless, by linking India, the Middle East,

00:28:39.840 and Europe in this big trading network, free trade, whatever, you know, lots of new infrastructure

00:28:44.880 going to be laid down. So that was on its way. Saudi Arabia had its ear to the ground, was gently,

00:28:52.960 gently, probably going to be signing up to the Abraham Accords. The Palestinian issue was part of

00:29:00.640 the reason why they were taking their time. They did want to see some movement from the Israeli

00:29:06.480 government towards some kind of recognition that eventually a Palestinian state would emerge.

00:29:14.480 This is not something that Benjamin Netanyahu or the Israeli right have ever wanted, but it seems that

00:29:18.800 they were actually willing to think about this in exchange for this economic integration. Well,

00:29:27.360 the thinking goes that Hamas, in collusion to some extent, at least strategically with Iran and Hezbollah

00:29:34.640 and the rest of the axis of resistance, so-called, launched the 7th of October attacks in order to

00:29:41.440 destroy that, so that that economic integration would not take place. Now, following the terrible

00:29:50.000 attacks, there was the war. Hamas took hundreds of hostages, refused to give them back. Israel invaded,

00:29:59.200 launched devastating attacks, the war's gone on and on and on. In the meantime, Israel took the war

00:30:04.160 outside, started cutting off the heads of the axis of resistance, one after the other, quite amazing to

00:30:10.400 watch from the sidelines, changing everything, changing everything. Climaxing earlier this year when they

00:30:17.600 attacked Iran, destroying its ballistic missile kind of capability, and then with the United States in that

00:30:24.320 phenomenal display of American military wizardry attacking the nuclear program there. So it was

00:30:30.880 like this incredible thing Israel was doing. At the same time, the other states in the Middle East,

00:30:38.160 all of whom were very enthusiastic about this economic integration plan, and kind of remained so,

00:30:46.960 because they know that there's money in economic integration, trade, growth, and you know,

00:30:52.240 they're Middle Easterners. They know how to make money. They love it, right? So they're basically,

00:30:56.160 in theory, they still want this to happen. And they're watching as like, Hezbollah is taken out.

00:31:01.280 Well, that's quite good. Maybe that can sort out Lebanon. So now we have access to, you know,

00:31:05.600 Lebanese capital, Lebanese banking, not know how that's good. Oh, wow, the Assad regime falls.

00:31:10.720 That was to some extent facilitated by the removal of Hezbollah from the scene, which allowed

00:31:15.920 Jolani, as he then was, as we talked about last time. So Syria is now, maybe Syria can be brought

00:31:21.680 into this new plan. Oh, wow, our biggest geostrategic rival, Iran, who's been trying

00:31:26.880 to stymie these efforts for years. It's totally hobbled. So on the one hand, they're watching this

00:31:31.120 happen. And that's good. On the other hand, they're watching an extremely powerful Israel

00:31:38.240 behave in increasingly un-cocked or half-cocked ways, behaving with an aggression, culminating in

00:31:47.680 the Doha attack, where they didn't even bother including the United States in their thinking.

00:31:51.520 And they're also, I imagine, watching their own population, that people talk about the Arab

00:31:58.640 street becoming increasingly radicalized by the horror that they're seeing out of God.

00:32:03.200 That's happening as well. And so, you know, if you are an Arab state with the responsibility of

00:32:11.280 governance, especially in the Gulf, especially if you're Saudi, again, the biggest one, you know,

00:32:15.760 the most important one, you're in a bind. You do want that economic rally. The crown prince of

00:32:22.320 Saudi Arabia, you know, Mohammed bin Salman, has just staked everything on economic growth,

00:32:26.880 on normalizing Saudi society, on making it an ordinary place that gets along with people, that

00:32:31.840 has put, you know, religious fanaticism behind it, all those things. He wants this. So on the one hand,

00:32:36.960 Israel's actions to hit, to sort of attack the axis of resistance is good. But on the other hand,

00:32:45.440 in the context of the war, Israel's entrenchment, its sense of itself as alone, its sense of itself

00:32:52.480 as in an entirely defensive position, not able to trust anyone, returning to older strategic models

00:33:00.240 of weakening, destabilizing the region. So if, you know, if the region is not united, we're safe,

00:33:07.440 behaving in ways. And, you know, imagine if you're Saudi Arabia. So in June, you see the

00:33:13.760 Israelis attack Iran, destroy all of its ballistic missile capabilities. Well, if you're Saudi,

00:33:18.960 you also have a sophisticated ballistic missile capability, which you've gathered over the decades,

00:33:23.120 from China, from other places, including the ability to maybe launch these nuclear weapons,

00:33:28.320 which you don't have. And you think, oh my God, if they can just in a day or two destroy Iran's

00:33:37.120 capability, ballistic, what about ours? Well, I guess they probably won't, right? Then Doha attack.

00:33:45.280 Oh my God, they've just attacked a GCC capital. Then they could, they might attack us. Who knows what

00:33:54.000 they will do? So Israel, Israel's policy, you know, and we can understand why this happened. I mean,

00:33:59.120 I have some sympathy to the Israeli position. You know, they're in war. They do face enemies

00:34:04.960 from all sides. As a result of waging this war, they have seen this remarkable global upsurge in

00:34:11.600 anti-Israeli activism sentiment, increasingly anti-Semitic activism sentiment. They understand

00:34:17.920 in their minds, old historic norms are coming back. You know, they've, so they have that sense of,

00:34:24.800 of being, um, and battled, you know, they have like fortress Israel. Well, America wants that

00:34:35.360 economic integration. They want that plan. They want it. So they want Turkey and the Saudis and the

00:34:42.720 Emirates and the Qataris and the Syrians big in a big, this is a big thing. They want this here.

00:34:47.600 They want that for the region. It's part of America's strategy for responding to the rise of

00:34:54.080 China. They're, they, they're trying to do what they can to, to maintain that rimland strategy,

00:34:59.760 bringing India in, et cetera. And, and so that's why we see why Donald Trump is praising precisely these

00:35:05.440 characters, which brings us very neatly onto the future. Uh, because one of the, we recorded an

00:35:12.800 episode with just me and Francis talking with no expertise whatsoever, just, you know, but, but,

00:35:17.920 you know, if you read the Trump 21 point plan, I mean, one of the obvious things that's not there at

00:35:23.520 the moment was the disarming and the dismantling of Hamas. It sort of says it's going to happen,

00:35:28.080 but that was kind of part of the package and thank God the hostages are now back with their families.

00:35:34.080 Thank God. All of that. It's a great first step, but I did say at the time, like, I, I don't know if

00:35:39.760 we have any evidence that this is necessarily, you know, done and the Abrahamic Accords 2.0,

00:35:46.240 which is really what you're talking about, this regional integration, Israel becoming one of the

00:35:51.040 many countries, uh, working together, not just economically, but also let's be honest,

00:35:56.160 a lot of the Gulf countries care more about the threat of Iran than they care about Gaza or Israel,

00:36:01.360 right? That's a big driving force. They have, but certainly Emirati dignitaries that I've spoken

00:36:07.280 to recently, you know, they, they, they say that very quickly it went from the Gulf seeing Iran as

00:36:13.920 the primary threat and happy more or less to work with Israel behind the scenes to counter that threat

00:36:19.360 to Israel being the threat. Israel behaving like Iran was destabilizing the region. And they don't want

00:36:26.880 that they want the region to be knitted together. Sorry to interject because from what I've been

00:36:32.160 reading and the people I've been talking to a lot of people and a lot of leaders within the Arab world,

00:36:37.280 when you say Israel, do you more specifically mean Netanyahu as in they can't trust him?

00:36:42.720 I suppose. Yeah. I mean, that that's the problem, but you know, because Benjamin Netanyahu has been in

00:36:48.160 power for so long in Israel and he, you know, and he's a survivor who knows what the hell,

00:36:53.520 how's he going to slip through this one? You know, it'll be fascinating to watch. He is Israeli

00:36:58.400 policy. It's like making the distinction between Russia and Putin. Well, he's been in power since

00:37:02.080 1999. He kind of is Russia. Yeah. And to do justice to Benjamin Netanyahu, you know,

00:37:07.040 he is there because the people have actually voted in a such a way that he could cobble together

00:37:12.480 coalition. So he's not like Putin in a dictator in that way, but he has put his stamp so firmly on

00:37:17.280 Israeli policy that it would be hard to disassociate Israel as a state and practicing statecraft from

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00:38:46.960 So coming back to the future then.

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00:39:15.760 Hamas have handed over the hostages, which was their only leverage as far as I understand, right?

00:39:20.400 So is it now inevitable that we see them disarmed and dismantled?

00:39:29.120 I wish I could say that that was inevitable.

00:39:30.960 Yeah. And also, you mentioned that the suffering of the Palestinian people, the next phase of it is

00:39:36.960 about to begin. You know, I'm sure you have very good reasons to say that, but there's loads of

00:39:42.400 people celebrating now. Which is not the first time people have celebrated something without

00:39:45.920 knowing why. But what is your concern? What are the immediate threats to this peaceful transition?

00:39:53.600 If I said about to begin, I should have said it's already begun. So immediately, Hamas.

00:39:58.640 Yes. And remarkably, based on a clip that is circulating with Donald Trump's approval,

00:40:04.240 like apparently Donald Trump said, well, yes, Hamas are now kind of reestablishing

00:40:10.000 their authority so that they can, you know, end the chaos, which is kind of amazing.

00:40:14.240 Again, a sign that maybe Donald Trump is really annoyed with the Israelis. But already, Hamas is

00:40:22.880 trying to reestablish a monopoly of force on the territory that the Israelis have withdrawn from.

00:40:28.080 What you mean is they've come out of the tunnels and started killing all their opponents,

00:40:31.200 which is what they've been doing.

00:40:32.160 Exactly. They're killing other Gazans now, executing so-called collaborators with Israel in public,

00:40:41.120 and also entering into fights with clan militias. So Gaza, like most of the Middle East, particularly

00:40:47.680 the Arab Middle East, is very tribal and there are hierarchies and established families that over the

00:40:53.280 course of the war, some of them established kind of local ruling networks of their own,

00:40:59.680 armed militias to support that, often working with the IDF. And so now there's fighting there going on.

00:41:07.360 And Hamas, it seems to me, is not going to, well, it's not likely to just stop existing. They've

00:41:18.880 existed for a long time. They've survived this war, which in their, I think, quite perverse way of

00:41:27.040 thinking, they will think that they've won simply by surviving, by discrediting Israel to the degree that

00:41:34.080 they allowed, in a way, or they manufactured the discreditation of Israel, knowing very well the

00:41:42.560 kind of response that the 7th of October would elicit from Israel. You know, the first point in the 21-point

00:41:51.040 peace plan, the first point is, you know, a de-radicalized Gaza where everyone can live in peace, joy, and harmony, or something. You know, then that de-radicalized line, I mean, and that's the kind of,

00:41:52.080 that's the nub of the problem to some extent, from, let us say, the Palestinian side. The Gazans,

00:42:10.480 even before this war, were very politicized, very radicalized, really. And their, their political

00:42:20.800 perspective was one in which the state of Israel was an enemy, a kind of total enemy.

00:42:27.360 And should not exist.

00:42:29.760 And, and let's say, should not exist. Which is, you know, it's funny, it's one of these things, it's like a,

00:42:37.680 it's like almost like a truism. Because obviously, if Israel didn't exist, this problem would not

00:42:43.520 exist. You know, that's the, so you can't really argue with it. But that would, you know, how many,

00:42:48.080 about how many, you know, conflicts could you say that? Let's, let's solve the problem with Iran,

00:42:52.880 by Iran shouldn't exist. Well, yeah, that's true. If there was no Iran, then there would

00:42:57.280 be no Iran problem. But, but in general, you know, over decades of propaganda, not just from Hamas,

00:43:02.720 predating Hamas in the good old PLO days, when Pata and Yasser Arafat, drawing on a more secularist,

00:43:08.640 left-wing, third-worldism, anti-colonial kind of way of thinking, that kind of radicalism,

00:43:14.640 convinced the Palestinians to think of the Israelis in that way, not wanting any, really not, not

00:43:22.880 ultimately feeling that, that a just solution would involve a solution that benefited both sides.

00:43:30.720 And of course, on the Israeli right, which became increasingly prominent from the 1970s onward,

00:43:36.240 similar ideas were, you know, grew and became entrenched as regards to the Palestinians,

00:43:42.320 especially within Benjamin Netanyahu and the coalition of partners that he's had for many years

00:43:47.680 now. So, it's kind of balanced in that way. Neither side really believes that the other one

00:43:52.080 should exist, or it would be better if they didn't exist, you know. But how to de-radicalize

00:43:59.120 the Gazans? I have no idea how you would even begin to do that. They're going to be more radical now.

00:44:05.040 Although, you know, Amen, my co-host and friend, you know, he said there is hope, possibly, that the only

00:44:11.680 people that the Gazans in general hate more than the Israelis now after this war are the Hamas people.

00:44:20.080 They might actually just hate Hamas even more when they begin to realize that none of this was

00:44:28.240 necessary. It was a war of choice. There was no need to launch the 7th of October. It has achieved

00:44:35.600 nothing for the Gazans. Hamas would counter, oh, it's achieved a whole lot. I can promise you in the

00:44:41.520 long-term, Israel's standing in the world. Kyrgyzstan has promised us a state.

00:44:46.960 All of that's happened. But that's a whole interesting sort of another story that is part

00:44:51.760 of this peace plan. Because in, I think it was August of 2024, around that time, the Saudis,

00:44:59.440 eventually working closely with the French, developed their own strategy for peace. And they

00:45:05.360 launched something called the Global Initiative for the Two-State Solution or something. And it was this

00:45:10.800 process, often called the Saudi-French Plan, that culminated in July in the New York Declaration,

00:45:18.400 at which many states said that at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, that they would

00:45:24.160 formally recognize the state of Israel, which happened. Now, that was a whole other means of

00:45:29.760 putting pressure on Netanyahu, on Israel, basically to stop in its tracks any talk of annexing Area C of the

00:45:39.280 West Bank or Gaza. They were just basically saying, we will not allow this, especially if you want

00:45:46.880 this big opportunity of economic integration. So that was a part of the way in which this peace plan,

00:45:54.000 the one that is now in effect, came about. The Israeli right was being checked by this initiative that the

00:46:01.200 French and the Saudis, especially the Saudis put forward, to make it clear that Palestinian statehood

00:46:08.800 of some kind remained their preferred goal, their preferred outcome.

00:46:15.680 Well, come back to Hamas though, right? Because if we're talking about deradicalization, it would seem

00:46:20.320 to me the very first step of deradicalization, whatever the process is, would be to not have the

00:46:25.760 people who are doing the radicalizing in charge of that territory. Not only that, I would imagine

00:46:31.680 it remains a war goal of the Israeli government to destroy the people who did October the 7th.

00:46:37.520 And that's kind of fair enough, right? You would think. I also, from what I understand,

00:46:42.320 there's not a lot of love for Hamas in the Middle East among the Arab states.

00:46:45.760 Oh God, no.

00:46:46.480 I mean, they hate Hamas almost as much as the Israelis seem to do, from what I gather.

00:46:52.480 Oh, if you're an Emirati, you hate Hamas more, way more, because you hate the Muslim

00:46:56.960 Brotherhood. You hate Islamism. You hate that whole 50-year litany of horrors that in your mind,

00:47:03.680 as an Emirati or as a modern, secular, inclined, middle-class Gulf Arab stroke Arab that knows

00:47:10.640 what's going on, you just sort of see the Islamist decades as tremendous number of lost opportunities

00:47:17.680 resulting in only destruction. So yeah, you hate Hamas, but how are you going to get rid of them?

00:47:21.680 Well, the IDF has failed to get rid of them in two years of really relentless war. The IDF,

00:47:33.680 I mean, who had a better... How much of Hamas is still there, though?

00:47:37.120 I don't know. I wish I knew. I don't know. I mean, the last time, from my knowledge,

00:47:42.880 the last time that the IDF itself mentioned the degree to which it had degraded Hamas's military

00:47:51.600 capacity was last July, at which point they had said that something like 20 of 24 brigades had been

00:47:59.680 sort of smashed, meaning they were limited to just kind of like chaotic insurrection. They weren't like an

00:48:07.440 actual war brigade linked properly to Central Command. And 14,000 fighters had been killed or wounded.

00:48:15.840 And, you know, so that... But from what I understand, they haven't really announced anything

00:48:22.000 more like that since. So that's why I said at the beginning that from what I understand, the Gaza

00:48:27.840 situation as a military adventure, a military operation has been kind of stuck. You know,

00:48:33.840 Hamas has been in its tunnels and or wearing civilian clothes, kind of, you know, infiltrating or just

00:48:40.720 blending in with the populace. You know, the 7th of October caught the Israelis really with their

00:48:48.320 pants down. You know, they didn't... And the way that the war has unfolded shows that they actually

00:48:56.560 didn't possess the level of intelligence that they had for Hezbollah, for, you know, for Iraqi Hezbollah,

00:49:09.360 even it seems for the Houthis, that their eyes were on those enemies, and they thought Gaza

00:49:15.120 was under control. They did not see that threat there. There were, you know, they thought that the

00:49:20.480 relationship that had been built up between the Netanyahu government and Qatar and the civil society

00:49:25.920 elements of Hamas that were being funded by Qatar money through the Israelis, even though everyone

00:49:32.080 knew that Hamas, the military wing of Hamas, was probably getting some of that money. But technically,

00:49:36.320 it was to pay so... They thought that was all working, you know, and they just kind of didn't

00:49:41.920 have their eye on the wall. So when they decided, well, we're just going to degrade Hamas, destroy it,

00:49:46.400 defeat it, destroy it, they didn't have the intelligence. They didn't even know where all the tunnels are.

00:49:50.880 To this day, they are tunnels that they don't know where they are. And now we see soldiers coming out

00:49:56.480 of those tunnels, or fighters at least. So Hamas is there. I don't know how big it is, but it's there,

00:50:01.760 and it's now trying to take over Gaza again. Who's going to get rid of them? I don't believe that some

00:50:08.000 kind of quote-unquote international peacekeeping force or whatever made up of Jordanians and Emiratis and Saudis

00:50:15.040 are going to get involved in... Well, they don't get killed, or they'd be attacked.

00:50:20.880 Of course, that's what I mean. No one is willing to lose their boys fighting in Gaza,

00:50:28.800 which would invariably involve killing civilians because of the demographic situation, the density,

00:50:35.600 and the very, you know, real strategy of Hamas to use civilians in such a way that they will

00:50:43.760 definitely die. So no one wants that blood on their hands, especially in the Middle East when,

00:50:48.640 you know, the feeling on the street is still very pro-Palestinian, you know, in a general sense,

00:50:53.360 and in a general sense, anti-Israel. So it's hard to be seen to be doing things that benefit Israel in

00:50:59.680 that way, in that conflict, but also get you stuck in Gaza. So I don't know. I'm pretty, myself,

00:51:07.440 pessimistic about this. I think America will be able to put the pressure that it would take on

00:51:18.880 the Israelis to kind of keep them from reigniting hostilities. I don't know that. I think that's

00:51:27.440 possible. Israel is very dependent on the United States. As for Hamas itself, maybe they just do

00:51:37.680 build up. Maybe a civil war breaks out inside Gaza and that results in, you know, in some,

00:51:45.760 in the defeat of Hamas from amongst the Gazans, maybe helped by Palestinians in the West Bank and other

00:51:53.520 groups. But it's a really, everyone was very happy yesterday, you know, and I was happy,

00:52:00.480 but I also thought, I don't see how this is really gonna, gonna end. I mean, the sixth,

00:52:06.800 I think the sixth point of Trump's plan is a general amnesty offered to any Hamas member

00:52:12.000 who swears to change his ways. You know, basically, was it something like who, who,

00:52:16.880 who is committed to coexistence and gives up all his weapons and there'll be an amnesty. You know,

00:52:22.480 in general, Hamas has been told that if they do that, they lay down their weapons and they,

00:52:27.520 that they will, you know, without Israeli reprisals, they would put on buses,

00:52:31.760 bust to Egypt, and then sent where, you know, Iran, I don't know, Algeria, wherever they want to go.

00:52:39.200 So that has, that offer has been made. They know that's kind of on the table. They can just get the

00:52:43.440 hell out. Will they? I don't know. And even if they did, then you have the Gazan population.

00:52:50.400 You know, they've been through the ringer. Their own willingness to be friendly towards Israel is,

00:52:56.320 you know, really up. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I would feel particularly friendly

00:53:02.080 towards Israel, you know, at the moment if I was Gazan. So I'm pretty pessimistic about it.

00:53:06.480 Yeah. And it's also as well, we've touched on this country, but it's Iran. And I mean,

00:53:12.000 the question is, how do you solve a problem like Iran? Now, Trump has been fairly bullish in some

00:53:16.480 of his interviews saying, you know, in particularly in his speech that he did at the Nestle, where he

00:53:20.000 goes, you know, I think they would want to make a deal. You know, we want to, you know, Iran to make

00:53:24.560 a deal and so on and so forth. I mean, is that realistic? I don't think so. I think that speech was

00:53:30.880 actually, he was saying the word Iran, but I think he was talking to Netanyahu. I think

00:53:36.880 Trump was making it clear what he wants for the Middle East, which is this big,

00:53:40.560 happy, peaceful economic cooperation agreement. And he's making it clear that he agrees with

00:53:48.320 those other allies in the region in the Gulf, in Turkey and elsewhere that are telling him

00:53:54.400 the biggest obstacle to that now is Israel. Trump believes that he agrees and he's making that clear.

00:54:00.240 Of course, if Iran wants to sign up, that would be great. I mean, that's extremely unlikely.

00:54:04.960 But, you know, Iran is still licking its wounds from what happened to it over the last two years.

00:54:10.960 So, there's this very precious moment, really. You know, there's a peace agreement being

00:54:16.480 negotiated right now between Israel and Syria, negotiations in which Israel has been playing a

00:54:23.600 very, very interesting game. Not really wanting peace, you know, intervening in the south of the

00:54:31.680 country, that whole business in Soweto with the Druze and, you know, not just welcoming

00:54:38.560 the opportunity to participate in a new regional geopolitics that is one of economic growth and

00:54:46.720 sort of respect of borders and all these things. Despite what the new Syrian government

00:54:51.200 is saying and agreeing to, this new Syrian government has been bending over backwards

00:54:55.920 to get Israel to agree, to recognize them and to be at peace with them. And the Americans are totally

00:55:03.440 behind the new Syrian government, totally behind. You saw, you know, we all saw how Donald Trump sort of

00:55:09.200 talks about the new president, Shara, and he loves him. And, you know, it's just kind of remarkable

00:55:13.600 everything that's happened. And it's, well, the White House and its other partners in the Middle

00:55:20.320 East would like Israel to get on board that train, like, soon. Whether it will happen, I don't know.

00:55:26.960 Because in that speech he talked about it was time for the war to end. He made that particularly

00:55:32.240 clear. It had gone on too long. But my only concern, well, there are many concerns, but can you really

00:55:38.320 have peace in the Middle East when you have the Ayatollah and his ilk in charge of Iran, when you

00:55:44.480 have that extremist rhetoric, when you have them willingly funding terrorism? Or can you get to a

00:55:50.960 point like Trump says, where you have peace through strength, where you basically say to him, if you

00:55:56.080 step out of line, you're going to get a bloody nose? I think economic growth and the opportunity to

00:56:03.280 watch your own personal wealth go up as business and other commercial opportunities, employment levels

00:56:10.880 go up. And I think that if that region, if the Sunni, you know, whatever, if the main heart of the Arab

00:56:19.520 Middle East with Israel attached and Turkey at the top can be knitted together in a powerful economic, you know,

00:56:26.480 cooperation arrangement, that it also integrates India, this exploding market, and Europe, a dying

00:56:35.680 market. But if that can happen, then with prosperity will come a neutralization of the attractiveness

00:56:45.680 of that radical Islamist worldview. We've seen it happen in the Gulf. The Gulfies, they're not radical

00:56:51.440 Islamists anymore. If you want smart, fearless commentary on the craziest things happening in

00:56:58.240 media, politics, and online culture, you'll love the Brad vs. Everyone podcast, hosted by Brad Palumbo,

00:57:06.240 an independent journalist who calls it like it is. The podcast covers viral madness from across the

00:57:12.640 political and cultural spectrum, and no one's safe. He goes after Gen Z TikTok scammers and far-right

00:57:20.160 grifters. He'll take apart progressive media darlings and MAGA influencers, all from a place of

00:57:27.120 sharp moderation, not blind loyalty. Think of it like Trigonometry's younger American cousin. Same

00:57:34.000 instinct for cutting through the noise, same appetite for the stories everyone else is too scared or too

00:57:40.400 biased to cover. If you like your commentary honest, sharp, and entirely uncancellable, find Brad vs.

00:57:47.280 everyone on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

00:57:52.240 So, which is, and whilst I'm agreeing with you, but you look at some of these Hamas members. Let's

00:57:58.640 take some of the head of Hamas. Some of them are literal billionaires. They have more money than

00:58:03.920 that you would be able to spend in a million lifetimes. Yet it didn't stop them from being any

00:58:08.240 more radical Thomas. Oh, but he's at the leadership. I mean, come on, that's true.

00:58:12.880 How much money do you think that Khamenei and his family have in Iran? How much money did Bashar al-Assad,

00:58:18.640 how much money does he have now when he's, you know, I don't know, in his spa in Moscow,

00:58:23.120 wherever he is. So, at the top, of course, they've got money. I'm talking at the bottom.

00:58:27.040 That kind of radical way of thinking appeals to people who have nothing to lose. And there have

00:58:35.280 been a lot of people in the Middle East and in the Muslim world for the last hundred years that

00:58:38.960 have kind of nothing to lose because of bad governance, because of all the sorts of historical,

00:58:43.680 you know, historical inheritance and all that sort of stuff. But with prosperity will come less,

00:58:49.760 you know, less willingness to listen to those voices.

00:58:52.720 And, of course, the demographics of the Middle East are interesting because you have a very young

00:58:57.120 population who, as I understand, a lot of them don't want to fight their granddad's war.

00:59:02.320 They just quite like to make money and be comfortable. If for people who are listening,

00:59:05.920 you're nodding along vigorously or whatever your face there means,

00:59:09.520 to what I'm saying. You're agreeing with me?

00:59:11.280 Absolutely. Sorry, 100%. No, I think that, I mean, I don't know. The Arabs that I know,

00:59:15.680 the Muslims, I mean, in the Middle East, they just would like normal lives, please.

00:59:19.840 Mm-hmm. So that being the case, you're making me very pessimistic about this because

00:59:24.880 everyone hold hands, sing Kumbaya, Abraham Accords 2.0, Abraham Accords on steroids,

00:59:29.600 whatever you want to call it. That seems like an amazing thing. And I think Jared Kushner has been

00:59:34.400 instrumental in all of this, orchestrating all of this. And when I speak to Arabs, when I speak to

00:59:39.200 Israel, everyone respects him. And he's clearly had a huge part to play in this. So that, you know,

00:59:43.360 the fact that he's involved is great hope, I think. But you can't build this castle on a rotten

00:59:54.080 foundation. And if Hamas remains in place in Gaza, you're going to get more terrorism. And if you get

01:00:00.720 terrorism, that makes the economic cooperation impossible. Because the moment Israel starts

01:00:07.520 bombing Hamas, they kill Arabs. And the moment you kill Arabs, the Arab world naturally feels

01:00:14.080 upset. And then all of this breaks down. So you can't do this until you get rid of Hamas.

01:00:19.440 And that's where maybe perhaps we can ask a little bit of a more optimistic question is,

01:00:25.280 given that Hamas has no leverage left, is that where maybe some of the solutions are now lying?

01:00:31.440 Absolutely. I mean, if I had a solution to the Hamas problem, I would be one of those

01:00:35.280 billionaires at the top of the tree. I don't know. I don't have a solution. But you know,

01:00:39.360 I say I'm pessimistic. By temperament, I'm optimistic, in general, in my life. So I sort of want to believe

01:00:46.640 that maybe Gulf money, more American, Egyptian, Turkish, Qatari pressure. I don't know if you saw the

01:00:54.240 extremely warm greeting that President Trump paid to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian

01:00:59.600 Authority yesterday, you know, the hug, the embrace, the warmth, you know, President Trump

01:01:05.040 very much signaling that he is not against the Palestinians, that he wants the Palestinians. You

01:01:11.280 know, the plan calls for the formation of an apolitical, technocratic Palestinian committee

01:01:19.040 to oversee Gaza during the transition. Now, I don't know. I've never met an apolitical

01:01:23.920 Palestinian. I don't know whether you're going to find one of those. But there are technocratic

01:01:27.120 Palestinians living in Amman, living in Dubai, you know, economists, business people. And

01:01:32.800 apparently, you know, the Gulf partners to this deal are already recruiting, reaching out,

01:01:38.800 finding the figures. We all heard it said that Tony Blair might chair the supervisory

01:01:44.800 committee that oversees that committee.

01:01:46.560 I'm sure there are celebrations up and down Gaza.

01:01:49.120 I know, it does sound crazy, but maybe it would happen. Maybe Tony Blair will get some,

01:01:54.240 his soul will be at rest for the mistakes he made in 2003, if he can bring peace to the Middle East,

01:01:59.440 at least that corner of the Middle East. So, it's possible, it is possible that Hamas will be convinced

01:02:07.840 in the same way that the Fatah, you know, the PLO was convinced in 1982 to leave

01:02:13.120 Beirut and fly to Tunis and all that. It's possible that that might happen with money and a promise of

01:02:20.720 amnesty, a promise that the Israelis won't hunt them down and kill them, all the sort of promises

01:02:25.440 that they might, maybe it will work, then maybe money will flow into Gaza, the school curriculum

01:02:32.800 will change, it will no longer emphasize all the things that it has emphasized, rebuilding will come,

01:02:39.120 employment opportunities will come, and a Gazan generation will just say, you know what,

01:02:45.200 let's let bygones be bygones, especially if there is a Palestinian state. However,

01:02:51.680 Frankenstein's monsterish, it's like, you know, it's going to be strange, you know,

01:02:55.040 any such state like that will be strange. But if they have something like sovereignty,

01:02:58.800 something like self-determination, and are supported now by France, the United Kingdom,

01:03:02.880 you know, the United Nations resolution. So, I don't know. Maybe there is, there's some optimism

01:03:09.040 there, then. It's not all optimism. But you have to get rid of Hamas. Of course, you have,

01:03:12.800 everyone agrees. Nobody except Hamas disagrees with that. Everyone agrees with that. I know,

01:03:17.760 but how, but the problem is, how do you do it? I don't know. Right? Because you can,

01:03:25.040 I mean, that, the route that you're talking about seems like the most credible, which is you

01:03:29.200 incentivize individual members of Hamas to stop fighting, basically. And you give them a golden

01:03:34.320 bridge out somehow. But if it's, it's not, if it's not a carrot, it's going to be the stick.

01:03:40.080 And we've had the stick for two years. I know. And, and, you know, Hamas,

01:03:44.480 you got to hand it to them. They, they took, you know, they took a weaker situation,

01:03:53.120 and they have maximized its potential. And there they are, two years later. The whole enclave is,

01:03:58.880 well, not the whole, in fact, it can be exaggerated, but a lot of the enclave is in rubble.

01:04:03.440 There are people, you know, very much impoverished, maybe 100,000 of them dead.

01:04:12.400 And they're still there. It's amazing what you can achieve when you don't give a

01:04:15.200 fuck about your people. It is amazing what you can achieve when you give a fuck about

01:04:19.520 radical dreams that, that you think are inevitable, you know, that kind of,

01:04:25.520 radicals are a funny people. I'm just not a radical. I don't understand those politics. I've

01:04:29.760 never understood the, the animated, the animating Damon, you know, that, that fills people. And

01:04:36.000 it's not just Hamas. I don't know if you've noticed, it's kind of everywhere. And I just don't

01:04:39.680 understand it. You know, it's easy for me to think, am I just a cowardly person? You know,

01:04:44.080 every time you ask me to be on trigonometry, I say, I don't want to, people will hate me. So maybe I'm

01:04:48.000 cowardly. Maybe I just know too much to be radical because radical politics tends to clash

01:04:55.840 with reality a lot of the time. So I don't understand it. But Hamas is definitely radical.

01:05:01.120 They don't live in the real world. They live in a fantasy. And it will be hard to get rid of them.

01:05:06.080 Do you think part, I think from everything that we've spoken about, the solution to this really

01:05:12.560 is the Palestinian people. It's the people in Gaza. I think if hopefully there's enough of them

01:05:20.080 to say no more, we do not want Hamas, that's a moment I think things will really change.

01:05:25.680 They will have to fight though. Hamas will not allow that to happen. Hamas is a totalitarian

01:05:33.520 institution. So they will have to fight. So which puts the countries who want this problem solved

01:05:41.440 in a bind, because then what are you going to do with those people? Are you going to arm them? Are

01:05:45.600 you going to help militarize them? Are you going to help them become some kind of fighting force so

01:05:49.920 that they can take on Hamas? We have to remember that when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005,

01:05:56.160 and in 2006, there were elections across the Palestinian territories. And in Gaza,

01:06:01.440 Hamas won those elections. But how fair were they? The PLO,

01:06:06.000 aided by Israel on the one hand and America on the other hand, did arm anti-Hamas factions inside

01:06:12.640 Gaza. There was a war in order to overthrow Hamas and remove them from the scene. And those factions

01:06:18.960 lost. And that increased Hamas's power. What it had to do to win that civil war that was aided and

01:06:26.960 abetted by outside powers made them more powerful. And also, who is it that's doing the fighting? We

01:06:32.480 have a saying in Russian, which means you remove a wedge using another wedge, right? So if you've got

01:06:39.920 these jihadis of Hamas, it's not going to be grandmothers with scarves that's fighting them. It's

01:06:47.520 going to be other people who are radicalized and other people who have their own very powerful

01:06:51.920 ideology. Are they going to lay down the weapons even if they win? Do you see what I mean?

01:06:56.160 It may not be. I mean, it's possible. And maybe, you know, the massive kick in the balls that the

01:07:03.120 last two years has been for Gazans, it may be that it might have kicked the ideology right out of them.

01:07:10.320 And it may be that like these clan militias, which are much more old school, patrimonial,

01:07:18.720 you know, maybe in an Italian context, we might call them mafia kind of arrangements, you know,

01:07:24.000 the old school way in which in lawless stateless zones, power, power structures are formed. It may

01:07:32.400 be that that takes and that more of the youth of Gaza will be organized through these clan networks

01:07:43.440 that might join forces and fight Hamas. It's possible. Maybe the Emirates or Qatar or Egypt send

01:07:50.960 in their own special forces to help organize those efforts. At the moment, you know, anything's on the

01:07:58.640 table. And right now, phase two of the peace plan is being negotiated by both sides, by all sides,

01:08:05.040 all parties. Part of phase two is to determine how to get rid of Hamas. Maybe Donald Trump is a miracle

01:08:12.720 worker. Maybe he can bring, you know, maybe he can convince Hamas to go off and become beach rats,

01:08:21.920 you know, on an Algerian beach somewhere. I don't know. Maybe he can do it.

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01:08:58.160 Moving over to the UK, particularly, something that I found very interesting is the rhetoric by

01:09:04.640 the hard left, the Jeremy Corbyns, the Zahra Sultanas, where there has been no mention really of a ceasefire.

01:09:12.080 And if it has, it's begrudging. And they're still saying that they're going to march for Palestine

01:09:18.400 every week. And according to Zahra Sultana, last week there was a march on Saturday in London,

01:09:24.400 half a million people turned up. I don't know if that's true or not, but let's just say she's

01:09:27.920 accurate with her assessment of the numbers. Does that surprise you?

01:09:31.920 If you are a Palestinian activist or a pro-Palestinian activist, your primary stated goal has always been

01:09:46.960 that Israel withdraw from its occupation of the West Bank. Before the Gaza War, that's what pro-Palestinian

01:09:54.400 activists were seeking. That Israel stop its illegal occupation of the West Bank and withdraw to the

01:10:03.120 1967 border. That's the demand. So that demand doesn't change just because the war in Gaza has

01:10:10.880 stopped. So, I mean, the pro-Palestinian activists will continue their campaign to get Israel to withdraw

01:10:18.160 from the West Bank. But if you think about it, half a million people weren't on the streets

01:10:24.080 before this war started. Did you not expect just a little bit of the kind of

01:10:31.280 lessening of the tension, the heat being taken out of these demonstrations?

01:10:36.240 I mean, I guess unless you sense, you smell that the opportunity for what you hoped. So you hoped that

01:10:45.280 this war was going to result in Israel withdrawing from the West Bank and the

01:10:53.440 Palestinians having a properly sovereign state with full autonomy. That's what you want. Now,

01:10:59.440 at the radical fringes of the pro-Palestinian activist movement, you might also dream of the

01:11:04.560 state of Israel going away and all the Jews being kicked into the sea or slaughtered. But most pro-Palestinian

01:11:10.720 activists would be more happy if Israel would withdraw from the West Bank. Now, I don't see that happening.

01:11:17.360 I don't know. This opens up the conversation to Israel as a reality. When, in 1947, the UN

01:11:28.720 submitted its partition agreement, the Zionist leadership in Palestine, as it was then called,

01:11:36.720 seeing the land that had been allotted to them, and it was like 55% of the whole, although a lot of that

01:11:44.240 was empty and kind of desert. But when they saw it, they knew that that was not a practical

01:11:51.680 solution, that they knew that in time, if that state was to survive, they would have to

01:11:57.360 get more strategic parts. So it helped that immediately the Arabs, who rejected the plan,

01:12:03.920 ganged up, invaded the country. And in the course of a war, Israel was able to shift the dial a bit

01:12:09.680 beyond the 1947 borders to get a little bit more strategic bit. And every time the Arabs have

01:12:16.560 foolishly tried to be anti-Israeli in a militant way, Israel had launched a war in 67, 70, and kept

01:12:24.800 increasing its strategic advantage. And having it, they're not going to get rid of it. So this is,

01:12:31.120 I think, just a kind of a brute fact. And so that's the case. When people say that Israel has a right

01:12:40.320 to exist, and it has a right to exist, of course, whatever that means. Sometimes there's like an

01:12:45.520 atavistic caveman inside me who says, no country has the right to exist, you just got to hold it.

01:12:51.360 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

01:12:56.400 a right to exist. But if it's going to exist there, this conflict is going to exist as well.

01:13:02.560 It's built in. Because they are too vulnerable down on the coastal plain. And they cannot trust

01:13:10.720 their neighbors. It's a big problem. It is. And what another problem is, is you see all these

01:13:16.320 people coming out, and coming on these demonstrations, and you see the particularly

01:13:22.720 young people's opinion and view of Israel, I mean, it's plummeted to the point where

01:13:29.920 you're thinking to yourself, 10, 20, well, not 10, but maybe 20, 30 years time when these young

01:13:35.840 people get into power and become the future leaders. Like, how viable is Israel diplomatically

01:13:42.560 on the world stage? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I have a lot, I have Israeli friends,

01:13:48.800 some of them I love dearly. And I've watched them really struggle for the last two years.

01:13:53.280 You know, people who, in a stupid way, just hate Israelis, don't really understand the degree to

01:14:01.200 which a lot of Israelis, especially those who we're likely to meet, you know, kind of,

01:14:08.560 from our point of view as Westerners, ordinary, centrist, educated people, Israelis tend to be

01:14:15.280 educated, they tend to be smart, you know, and they tend to be garrulous. They like to talk about

01:14:22.880 it, argue, debate, you know, they're not happy with the situation. Some of them, you know, whatever,

01:14:27.680 are obviously right-wingers and things. But in general, Israelis are not. And they, you know,

01:14:32.960 they have done so much soul searching, they don't know what the future holds for them.

01:14:38.400 Most of them, I think, would really like Benjamin Netanyahu to leave. I think they would look out

01:14:45.280 now at the situation they're in and wonder if his leadership over the last 18 years or however long

01:14:51.920 was particularly wise and useful to them as a state. I mean, you had him on the show recently.

01:14:58.640 I know I don't want to insult a friend, but I wonder, you know. I mean, Eamon today said,

01:15:06.320 it was very interesting. He told me that if, as he speculates, based on things he might know,

01:15:12.880 if, in fact, the Saudis have had effectively a nuclear arsenal that they could draw on from 2020

01:15:19.920 to the present, and this happened without the Israelis knowing it or doing anything about it,

01:15:29.520 that that is yet another example of Benjamin Netanyahu failing to deliver his promise to

01:15:37.360 to secure the state of Israel. So maybe that persona that he's projected for so many years,

01:15:47.440 you can trust me because I'll keep you safe. I'll do what has to be done. Maybe that was all just

01:15:54.000 nonsense. And now Israel finds itself in a much weaker position after all of these years of his

01:16:00.720 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.

01:16:06.320 Much weaker position. Is that fair? I mean, Hezbollah is dismantled, right? Hamas is not still there,

01:16:12.640 but severely weakened. Iran is down in the dumps. In the process, he has scored many,

01:16:18.720 he has won many battles. He has won many battles. Israel wins wars. At least it has.

01:16:27.120 I'm not sure in this case that it has. I think France's point is incredibly apt, which is

01:16:35.840 Israel to the extent that, I mean, if I were the Israeli prime minister or

01:16:42.000 within the government, what I'd be thinking right now is how do we become self-sustaining?

01:16:45.760 Well, that's what I'd be thinking, right? Because you're not going to be like Donald Trump may well

01:16:52.320 be the last pro-Israel president America has for a long time, right? Just objectively speaking,

01:16:57.040 if you look at left and right in America and the extremist directions that they're both trending in,

01:17:02.160 you know, AOC and fucking Nick Fuentes or whatever, whoever is shaping the debate. Those are not two

01:17:10.240 groups of people who are pro-Israel, right? So, and then Europe is already gone from an Israeli

01:17:17.440 perspective, right? So I'd be thinking, you know, we need to get some of our own ballistic missiles and

01:17:24.640 some of our own defenses and some of our own, hard as that may be. Yeah. I mean, I would like to think

01:17:30.000 that like other Middle Eastern countries, because Israel is a Middle Eastern country, one of the

01:17:35.840 things that I've enjoyed over the last two years is watching kind of people aghast that Israel

01:17:44.640 behaves in the way it behaves. And of course, I think, well, it's just behaving like a Middle Eastern

01:17:49.440 country. That's how they all behave. Yeah.

01:17:52.080 Are you telling me that if on the 7th of October, Houthis had stormed the Saudi border en masse

01:17:59.600 and raped and killed and slaughtered, like if you're talking about equivalence, like 4,000 Saudi

01:18:04.720 civilians, that the Saudis wouldn't have just gone for it? Of course they would. So, you know,

01:18:12.720 it's a Middle Eastern country. So hopefully it will behave like other Middle Eastern countries, which is

01:18:17.360 arm itself to defend itself, but also make friends with its neighbors.

01:18:26.240 Well, right. That's a big hope. And if the Trump administration, together with his partners in the

01:18:32.400 Middle East can orchestrate Abram, of course, 2.0, you just have to get rid of Hamas.

01:18:38.000 You've got to get rid of Hamas, and you have to have a solution to the problem of Palestinian statehood.

01:18:45.440 Well, there we go. You thought it's all good, but actually everything's fucked. Welcome to

01:18:53.840 Trigonometry. That's why you watch. Basically, that's what Trigonometry is about. You thought

01:18:58.560 everything's fine. No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Yeah. But Thomas, it's always such a pleasure to have

01:19:04.000 you on the show. I think, actually we joke, but I think the depth of analysis that we've heard from

01:19:09.840 you today is probably more sophisticated than anything people have heard on this issue in the

01:19:15.920 entire week. Well, I know what I know, but I also rely on people that I know in the Gulf,

01:19:20.640 especially my friend Eamon, who knows a lot. But that's the value of it. That's the value of it. So,

01:19:24.400 of course, The Conflicted Podcast is brilliant. Yeah, everyone watch it. Everyone listen to The

01:19:28.160 Conflicted Podcast. Thomas, we're going to head over to Substack, where our audience have amazing

01:19:32.560 questions for you. Before we do, though, what is the one thing that we're still not talking about

01:19:36.960 that we really should be? Oh, dear. It's an increasingly difficult question for you.

01:19:41.520 I'm going to say the same damn thing I always say. We're not intelligently discussing the eclipse

01:19:46.880 of Christianity from Western culture enough. That is the salient problem of our age. We are

01:19:53.760 in the midst of this historic experiment of creating a thriving civilization without any

01:20:02.560 transcendent or contemplative center, and it's not going very well.

01:20:06.480 Now, the cruises are coming back, man. I don't know if you noticed.

01:20:09.520 It's making a resurgence in the U.S. Yeah, I watched some of that. In the UK as well.

01:20:13.120 I'm not sure if contemplative is what I would call it.

01:20:16.880 Yeah, reactionary and contemplative are different things. Fair enough. Well, there we go. Head

01:20:21.840 on over to Substack, where we're going to ask Thomas your questions.

01:20:26.480 The architect of the 7th of October was released in just such a hostage deal.

01:20:31.520 What are the chances of the newly released batch of prisoners leading to another generation of Hamas?

01:20:54.720 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick. I like to be

01:21:00.000 prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline. It's good to know, just in case.

01:21:06.960 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

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TRIGGERnometry - October 19, 2025

The Untold Story of the Gaza Ceasefire - Thomas Small

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