Speaker 1: I'm Weskasova today on the Big Take. Bloomberg's Israel Bureau
Speaker 1: chief Ethan Brunner is here to tell us about Israel's
Speaker 1: preparations for a ground invasion of Gaza and about the
Speaker 1: intense diplomatic efforts behind the scenes to try to prevent
Speaker 1: this war from spreading. Ethan, you're in Tel Aviv. What
Speaker 1: is life like there right now?
Speaker 2: It's very grim, to be honest.
Speaker 3: I live fortunately in really one of the liveliest downtown
Speaker 3: areas of any city in the world. Where I live,
Speaker 3: a confluence of people heading to the beach, normally outdoor cafes,
Speaker 3: incredible restaurants, beautiful shops. And this morning when I walked
Speaker 3: from my apartment to the office, it was essentially empty.
Speaker 2: It felt like it was yom ki poor here.
Speaker 3: Schools are still closed here, many shops are closed, restaurants
Speaker 3: are not open. People have a set of mourning because
Speaker 3: of the hundreds of debt. And the other thing is
Speaker 3: that there are so many people who've been called up
Speaker 3: and to reserve military duty that families are split and nervous.
Speaker 3: There is an incredible sense of betrayal in the country,
Speaker 3: a feeling that everything has gone terribly wrong, and it's
Speaker 3: really a very funereal feeling right now in Israel.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a lot of soldiers being called up into service,
Speaker 1: and of course Israel's been talking about a possible land
Speaker 1: invasion of Gaza for several days. They've been telling people
Speaker 1: in Gaza in the north to leave, to go to
Speaker 1: the south. How is that actually going? How can so
Speaker 1: many people leave and are they able to leave?
Speaker 3: Well, it's an enormously problematic request.
Speaker 2: Obviously.
Speaker 3: The Israelis have essentially asked one point one million people
Speaker 3: to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip and
Speaker 3: go below the river that divide the strip into north
Speaker 3: and south. About a half a million seemed to have gone.
Speaker 3: This is a standard thing, all oh, every time Israel
Speaker 3: has dealt with these kinds of situations It happened in
Speaker 3: southern Elebanon as well, in which you tell people to
Speaker 3: leave because we are going to come to carry out
Speaker 3: military activities and we don't want you to die. And
Speaker 3: the people have nowhere else to go. They don't have
Speaker 3: house insurance, they don't have a lease on their house,
Speaker 3: they don't think they're going to get their place back,
Speaker 3: and so they some of them don't leave and in
Speaker 3: this case.
Speaker 2: Also, Hamas has tried very.
Speaker 3: Hard to prevent them from leaving, so it looks like
Speaker 3: about half have left.
Speaker 2: But it's a very messy situation, of course.
Speaker 1: And why is it that they want people to evacuate
Speaker 1: the north specifically.
Speaker 3: Well, Hamas has been running all of the Gaza Strip
Speaker 3: for sixteen years. Their offices and operations are centered in
Speaker 3: Gaza City, which is in the north, and that's where
Speaker 3: they plan to carry out their first apparently ground activity.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to exactly what the goal is that
Speaker 1: they would move people to the south, they would destroy
Speaker 1: the North, and then what happens after that.
Speaker 3: Well, they of course haven't told us, but I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the idea is that the more of Hamas's
Speaker 3: governing and military infrastructure that they can physically destroy, the
Speaker 3: more leaders that they can kill, the further they will
Speaker 3: be to their goal of making it impossible for Hamas
Speaker 3: to rule in the Gaza Strip and to inflict the
Speaker 3: kind of harm it did on Israel in the future.
Speaker 1: That is their goal, and is the assumption that Hamas
Speaker 1: fighters would remain in the north under siege or that
Speaker 1: they would to move south.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think they're expected to move south. Hamas
Speaker 3: has been waiting for years. I mean there have been
Speaker 3: This will be the third major ground invasion by Israel.
Speaker 2: The first was an eighth nine that was one in fourteen.
Speaker 3: Hamas has done a very clever job of building underground
Speaker 3: tunnels in which they from which they would emerge in
Speaker 3: order to confront oncoming troops and kill them. So they
Speaker 3: and they they put out a little tape the other
Speaker 3: day showing their fighters emerging from these holes in the
Speaker 3: field and taking over a tank and killing the soldiers
Speaker 3: in the tank and saying and then they wrote in Hebrew, welcome,
Speaker 3: We're waiting for you.
Speaker 2: So, of course that's the Israelis. Don't assume that they
Speaker 2: will leave.
Speaker 3: No, the Israelis assume that they will stay, and they
Speaker 3: assume that it will be tough and that they will win.
Speaker 2: That's what they assume.
Speaker 1: As you say, Hamas knows every corner of Gaza. Is
Speaker 1: there a danger that Israel's defense forces are walking into
Speaker 1: a trap that once they're there, it could be very
Speaker 1: difficult for them to prevail.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely a danger that they could be walking
Speaker 3: into a trap and that they could not prevail. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's no doubt that this is something that the that
Speaker 3: the Hamas fighters have been preparing for for a long time,
Speaker 3: so there's every reason in the world to be afraid
Speaker 3: of it now.
Speaker 2: That is also why the.
Speaker 3: Israelis have been pounding so heavily from above and insisting
Speaker 3: that people leave in a way they haven't done before,
Speaker 3: in order to clear the field for their arrival.
Speaker 2: And they've got a plan.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you whether it's a sane plan, but
Speaker 3: they have a plan.
Speaker 2: They are just.
Speaker 3: Feeling an extraordinary level of rage and humiliation and anger
Speaker 3: and desire for revenge for what happened to their unsuspecting civilians, kids,
Speaker 3: grandmothers on Saturday, October seventh. It was one of the
Speaker 3: most brutal things one could imagine.
Speaker 2: So that's the first thing they.
Speaker 3: Want to say to these people. You know, we're not
Speaker 3: afraid of death either. Okay, we're gonna We're willing to
Speaker 3: go in and lose our guys because we're going to win.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing.
Speaker 3: The second thing is we have to assume that they
Speaker 3: have some notion that they.
Speaker 2: Might actually be able to win.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is, after all true that the Israeli
Speaker 3: army should be more powerful than the Hamas military, which
Speaker 3: maybe has thirty or forty thousand men under arms, and
Speaker 3: we know of three hundred and sixty thousand Israeli reservists
Speaker 3: who've been called up. A population of ten million here,
Speaker 3: a population of two million there. So it seems like
Speaker 3: Israel should be able to win if it's willing to
Speaker 3: sustain losses, and that's what it says it is Ethan.
Speaker 1: Is there any more information about how Hamas was able
Speaker 1: to breach Isra's military complex on October seven?
Speaker 2: The details are emerging slowly.
Speaker 3: They have let out some, I mean, a number of
Speaker 3: things happened. It was a fairly sophisticated breach, so that
Speaker 3: there were at least twenty five hundred, perhaps three thousand
Speaker 3: militants who took part, and they used drones to take
Speaker 3: out cameras and guns and other things on the border,
Speaker 3: and they then messed with this communications equipment that people
Speaker 3: have on the bases. They showed up early at the
Speaker 3: basis and killed the guards and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a little hard to imagine that people
Speaker 3: could just wander onto military bases anywhere, especially in a
Speaker 3: place that's as heavily guarded as Israel. And I think
Speaker 3: that the crazy but nonetheless important answer to how this happened,
Speaker 3: that the most important answer is not technological. The most
Speaker 3: important answer is conceptual, which is that the Israeli military had,
Speaker 3: over the last two years come to the conclusion, and
Speaker 3: not just the military, the entire security and governing apparatus,
Speaker 3: that Hamas had lost interest in any serious military fight,
Speaker 3: and so therefore it was a fairly relaxed atmosphere in
Speaker 3: the south, and they had got to move many of
Speaker 3: their more operational aspects to the West Bank.
Speaker 1: Ethan. All of this, of course, is complicated by the
Speaker 1: many hostages that Hamas took into Gaza.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3: We've just learned that the Israeli Army has now identified
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety nine such hostages, and that the
Speaker 3: number is.
Speaker 2: Likely to grow still further. We believe that there.
Speaker 3: At least three dozen countries that are represented among the hostages,
Speaker 3: so and I think more than thirty of them are American.
Speaker 3: So it's a very complex picture, indeed, and the desire
Speaker 3: to sort of cut a deal to get them out
Speaker 3: is very high. I think that in Israel it must
Speaker 3: be I must be understood that in Israel, the anger,
Speaker 3: and the desire to not appear soft is so great
Speaker 3: that there is a quiet acceptance that the hostages may
Speaker 3: be sacrificed in this operation.
Speaker 1: After the break, the US defends Israel but urges caution.
Speaker 4: What happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and
Speaker 4: the extreme elements of Moss don't represent all the Palestinian people.
Speaker 4: And I think that it would be a mistake to
Speaker 4: for Israel to occupy Gazagam, but to going in and
Speaker 4: taking out the extremists. The Hesboah is up north, but
Speaker 4: Hamas down south is a necessary requirement.
Speaker 1: Even there's a very big diplomatic push by the US
Speaker 1: and other nations to try to keep this conflict from spreading.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us exactly what's happening with that now?
Speaker 3: Indeed, in fact, it's a mixture of diplomacy and military
Speaker 3: show of force. So the United States has moved two
Speaker 3: large battle fleets to the Mediterranean, each of the two
Speaker 3: anchored if you like, by a large carrier, in one
Speaker 3: case Gerald R.
Speaker 2: Ford and the other Eisenhower. The point of their being there.
Speaker 3: Is to say to his Bellah in Lebanon and to Iran,
Speaker 3: the sponsors of his and Lebanon that they ought not
Speaker 3: to consider entering into the Fray while this is happening,
Speaker 3: which in fact they have to some extent. There have
Speaker 3: been exchanges back and forth, but Southern Lebanon most days,
Speaker 3: Israel has been relatively contained in its response in order
Speaker 3: to also not let it escalate. But I have to
Speaker 3: tell you that there is also a school of thought
Speaker 3: in Israel, which is, let's take them all on. Okay,
Speaker 3: we can't live under this kind of threat anymore. You
Speaker 3: know what, We're going to all get into uniform and
Speaker 3: we're going to do this. Now, that's not the dominant
Speaker 3: school of thought here, but it is out there, and
Speaker 3: the Americans are here, and Lloyd Austin, the Sector of Defense,
Speaker 3: came and said, do not do that.
Speaker 2: Do not get try to get his bullat involved.
Speaker 3: It is too dangerous. But interestingly, it seems that the
Speaker 3: Americans are also saying to the Israelis, if.
Speaker 2: You act that way and then his ballad does begin.
Speaker 3: To rain thousands of missiles down on you, we're here
Speaker 3: and we're going to take part.
Speaker 5: The world has just witnessed a great evil, the deadliest
Speaker 5: attack on civilians in the history of the state of Israel.
Speaker 5: And the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the end
Speaker 5: of the Holocaust. So make no mistake, the United States
Speaker 5: will make sure that Israel has what it needs to
Speaker 5: defend itself. Israel has a right to protect its people.
Speaker 3: At the same time, we have Anthony Blincoln, the Secretary
Speaker 3: of State, who's been on a shuttle diplomacy for a
Speaker 3: bunch of days. He's been to six or eight countries,
Speaker 3: and he's gone to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and
Speaker 3: Jordan and Egypt and Kochtar, and his goal is to
Speaker 3: try to get sympathy for the Israeli perspective and get
Speaker 3: support for Israel's desire to destroy Hamas.
Speaker 6: There are two very different visions for the future and
Speaker 6: what the Middle East canon should be. There's a vision
Speaker 6: that we very strongly espouse that has countries in the
Speaker 6: region normalizing their relations, integrating working together in common purpose,
Speaker 6: and upholding and bringing forth the rights and aspirations of
Speaker 6: the Palestinian people.
Speaker 5: That's one vision.
Speaker 6: It's very clear. There's another vision that Hamas has demonstrated
Speaker 6: in the most horrific way, and that's a vision of death,
Speaker 6: of destruction, of nihilism, of terrorism.
Speaker 3: And from what we can tell it's not going very well.
Speaker 3: The countries that he's going to are more worried about
Speaker 3: the civilians in Gaza that Israel is bombing from the
Speaker 3: air than feel the need to express horror at what
Speaker 3: happened on October seventh in Israel.
Speaker 2: So it's complicated.
Speaker 3: German Chancellor Olaf Schultz is due here today and it
Speaker 3: seems very likely at this point that President Biden will
Speaker 3: be here on Wednesday. There's an expectation that will delay
Speaker 3: any major ground endeavor until all those people leave. But
Speaker 3: they're all here in a kind of joint effort to
Speaker 3: show solidarity with Israel in the wake of this massacre,
Speaker 3: and I think also importantly to get Israel to be
Speaker 3: careful in what it does in Gaza, or as careful
Speaker 3: as possible.
Speaker 1: Even their messages to be careful. But what's specifically do
Speaker 1: they want Israel to do or not to do.
Speaker 3: I think that they themselves don't know, And just as
Speaker 3: I think Israel's kind of guttural assertion that they're going
Speaker 3: to destroy Commas down to its fingernails is something that's
Speaker 3: just kind of I don't mean it's meaningless, but I
Speaker 3: don't think they fully understand what that involves. I think
Speaker 3: that the American and Western European, Eastern European as well,
Speaker 3: perhaps let's say it's allies in Europe. They want Israel
Speaker 3: to know that they too were horrified, deeply horrified by
Speaker 3: what Hamas did, and that it's fine for them to
Speaker 3: go do real damage to Hamas, but that it at
Speaker 3: the cost in civilian life has to be limited.
Speaker 1: At the same time that this is going on, we're
Speaker 1: starting to hear more and more from Iran, which is
Speaker 1: issuing sort of dire proclamations. What are we to make
Speaker 1: of that?
Speaker 2: I think we're going to be taken pretty seriously.
Speaker 3: To be honest, I think that Iran has, from art
Speaker 3: what we've been able to learn, has been funding his
Speaker 3: Bellah at about a billion dollars a year, has been
Speaker 3: funding Hamas at about one hundred million a year, and
Speaker 3: it uses these militias to poke and to plan to
Speaker 3: do harm to Israel, and I think they mean it.
Speaker 3: So we believe that Hisbella has between one hundred and
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles on launchers
Speaker 3: underground in southern Lebanon, some of long range with GPS
Speaker 3: guidance that could come to Tel Aviv. And you know
Speaker 3: Secretary Blincoln who's traveling around the region and his assistants
Speaker 3: and aids are hearing and are very worried that Iran
Speaker 3: would tell urge his Bellah to start raining five or
Speaker 3: eight thousand missiles a day on Israel. And Israel has,
Speaker 3: as we know, a good air defense system, several of them,
Speaker 3: but it's at around ninety percent efficiency. When it's flooded,
Speaker 3: it's probably down to eighty percent efficiency. If you have
Speaker 3: five thousand missiles coming in in a day and you
Speaker 3: have eighty percent capture, that means you have a thousand
Speaker 3: missiles falling on your country.
Speaker 2: It's going to kill a lot of people.
Speaker 3: People are scared about this, and the concern is that
Speaker 3: if Israel does too much in Gaza kills too many
Speaker 3: people that will be unleashed. So the Israeli argument is,
Speaker 3: if we don't really do serious harm in Gaza, our
Speaker 3: enemies won't take us seriously.
Speaker 2: And here is the debate.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, US Secretary of State Blincoln had
Speaker 1: been going country to country and he said he wanted
Speaker 1: to share with the Israelis what he had learned in
Speaker 1: speaking to those leaders. What did they talk about?
Speaker 3: Well, of course these are private conversations, but there was
Speaker 3: a very telling kind of pairing of tweets on the
Speaker 3: old Twins now X, in which you have a picture
Speaker 3: of Secretary of Blincoln and Mohammad bin Selman, the Crown
Speaker 3: Prince of Saudi Arabia, sitting across from each other. So
Speaker 3: the account of that Tony Blincoln showed a picture of
Speaker 3: them talking and underneath it said we're here to talk
Speaker 3: about the terrible terrorism that occurred to Israel, And under
Speaker 3: NBS's picture there's a thing saying we're here to talk
Speaker 3: about how to stop the killing of innocence in Gaza.
Speaker 3: So there's a very very different view of what the
Speaker 3: core of this conflict is and of these events is about.
Speaker 3: And I think that that is what Lincoln is finding.
Speaker 3: He's finding it difficult to get the rest of the
Speaker 3: region to embrace the Israeli American belief that the savagery
Speaker 3: of what happened on the seventh of October is all
Speaker 3: that you need to know in the way that it's
Speaker 3: like al Qaeda or isis.
Speaker 2: That is not how most people in the region.
Speaker 3: Indeed, I think in the world for better or for worse,
Speaker 3: view the legitimacy of the Israeli American.
Speaker 1: Argument when we come back is a ground invasion of
Speaker 1: Gaza inevitable ethan. Right now, Israel has the sympathy of
Speaker 1: most Western nations. If Israel does proceed with the ground
Speaker 1: invasion of Gaza and many civilians there are killed, is
Speaker 1: there a danger that Israel will lose some of that sympathy.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is a danger. In fact, I think that
Speaker 2: it has begune. The loss of sympathy has begun.
Speaker 3: It's ten days, eleven days since the horrible events of
Speaker 3: October seventh, and Israel has already killed some three thousand
Speaker 3: people in Gaza. We believe that five or seven hundred
Speaker 3: of them are children. Israel is arguing that it has
Speaker 3: an obligation to take on Hamas the way the United
Speaker 3: States and the Iraqi Army took on the Islamic State
Speaker 3: in Mosl in twenty sixteen and seventeen.
Speaker 2: That, yes, many.
Speaker 3: People were killed along the way, but this is an
Speaker 3: act of supreme nobility in order to save humanity from
Speaker 3: an evil force that is coming after all of us.
Speaker 3: That is the Israeli argument with regard to Hamas and
Speaker 3: it is not my sense that most people abroad are
Speaker 3: embracing it, despite the sense of sympathy they have for Israel.
Speaker 1: And do you think that this diplomacy and the possible
Speaker 1: arrival of the president of the United States and Israel
Speaker 1: will do anything to alter the course of Israel's actions
Speaker 1: one way or another.
Speaker 3: It's a very good question, Wes, and I do not know.
Speaker 3: These are extremely historic moments, and in Israel everything feels
Speaker 3: on the table, everything is up for grabs. There is
Speaker 3: a sense that this government under Benjamin N'itanya, who has
Speaker 3: been incompetent in some core issues, and that now that
Speaker 3: Israel is facing a kind of external threat, that major
Speaker 3: decisions have to be made and nobody knows what.
Speaker 2: They're going to be.
Speaker 3: I think that it's very unclear whether Israel can be
Speaker 3: rained in. My instinct is it cannot be at first,
Speaker 3: but that it will ultimately be. But I you know,
Speaker 3: I have learned that predicting things in the Middle East
Speaker 3: is a fool's Errand.
Speaker 1: You said whether Israel can be rained in exactly what
Speaker 1: would that look like? How could Israel go after Hamas
Speaker 1: without civilians being killed?
Speaker 3: I mean, there are of course various levels of the
Speaker 3: kind of military activity that can carry out. It can
Speaker 3: decide that it is going to over the next six
Speaker 3: months take out every leader it can. It sort of
Speaker 3: bombed from the air. But I mean, the problem is
Speaker 3: that because what happened on October seventh involved thousands of
Speaker 3: commandos who had been training for a very long time,
Speaker 3: they see an infrastructure that they that is going to
Speaker 3: come after them again if they don't take it out,
Speaker 3: and one has to be understanding of that. So how
Speaker 3: they can destroy that infrastructure and not kill a lot
Speaker 3: of people. I don't think it's very likely.
Speaker 1: Do you think that it's inevitable that Israel will move
Speaker 1: in on Gaza?
Speaker 2: I do? I think?
Speaker 3: I think for Israel not to carry out a ground
Speaker 3: invasion at this point would be seen internally as a
Speaker 3: terrible betrayal of a national mission that is widely viewed here.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's my sense. Now.
Speaker 3: It may be that they'll only go in for a week,
Speaker 3: but I can't imagine them not going in at all.
Speaker 1: And these concerns about this conflict spreading and possibly becoming
Speaker 1: a much wider war.
Speaker 3: They are very real. They are very real fears. And
Speaker 3: I live here and I'm afraid I'm afraid that his
Speaker 3: below will start to rain down five to eight thousand
Speaker 3: missiles a day on this country and will not be
Speaker 3: able to stop it totally. So yes, I think it's
Speaker 3: a real concern. As I said to you earlier, there
Speaker 3: is a school of thought here also.
Speaker 2: That says, bring it all on. We can take it.
Speaker 3: Yes we'll lose people, Yes there'll be damage, but we're
Speaker 3: going to do things. We're going to eliminate these terrorist
Speaker 3: threats to us in the future, and we're going to
Speaker 3: send a message to those who hate us that we
Speaker 3: are not afraid to die. You and I talked some
Speaker 3: months ago about the fact that the sort of capitalist
Speaker 3: innovative class essentially here in Tel Aviv took to the
Speaker 3: streets to stand up to an attempt to weaken the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court and the judicial system under Prime Minister Netanyagu.
Speaker 3: What has happened in the of these months is a
Speaker 3: kind of civil organization that has found a cohesion and
Speaker 3: patriotism that I think could serve this country for.
Speaker 2: A long time to come.
Speaker 3: And one of the most interesting things that has happened
Speaker 3: since the attack of October seventh is that the organization
Speaker 3: focused on demonstrating against this government, turned on a dime
Speaker 3: and became a fundraising civil help organization for the army
Speaker 3: and whoever needed it in the South. They've raised tens
Speaker 3: of millions of dollars. They're driving around distributing equipment and
Speaker 3: food and so forth. And there is a sense that
Speaker 3: the core values of this country are going to be
Speaker 3: held onto and whence this thing is over, democracy and
Speaker 3: those kinds of issues are going.
Speaker 2: To be re established on some level.
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen, but
Speaker 3: there is a sentiment that's driving a fair amount of
Speaker 3: activity here which is are powerful.
Speaker 1: Ethan. Thank you. It's always good to speak with you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Wes Sam.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take.
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Speaker 1: supervising producer, Vicky Virgolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron, I'm West Kasova.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another big take.