Transcript: Webinar – October 7: The World Two Years Later

Click here to watch the webinar.

PANELISTS

Michael Makovsky, PhD

JINSA President & CEO

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

JINSA Distinguished Fellow; Israel’s Former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish

JINSA Julian & Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs; Former Head of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff Operations Branch

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TRANSCRIPT

Please note quotations have been edited for flow and clarity.

Blaise Misztal:

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining JINSA for this webinar on the somber second anniversary of the horrific October 7 attacks, reflecting on where we are, how we got here, and then what still remains to be done. I’m Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s vice president for policy, and then honored to be joined by an all-star lineup, headlined, of course, by our president, CEO Dr. Mike Makovsky; John Hannah, the Randi and Charles Wax Senior Fellow here at JINSA and, of course, Elliot Abrams, former U.S. Special Envoy for Iran, and a member of JINSA’s Iran Policy Project. Thank you all for being with us.

I know hindsight is 20-20. And October 7 was such a tumultuous day, it’s maybe hard to put ourselves back in the mindset of that day. But if you were to have thought on October 7 where things would be in two years, how things would have progressed over two years compared to where we are today, where did you think we would be and compared to where we are, and what sort of has surprised you about the last two years?

Elliott Abrams, maybe I could start with you.

Elliott Abrams:

Okay, I think most Israelis would have believed, and I thought, the war would be over. I did not think this would be a two-year war, and it could be a more than two-year war, in Gaza. I think also that Israel’s regional situation is better than I would have anticipated. That is with the destruction of Hezbollah, and of the Iranian nuclear program with the cooperation of the United States, I think the regional situation is better. I would also, I think, not have anticipated that what I might call the diplomatic situation would be as bad as it is. The recognition of a state of Palestine, the non-existent state of Palestine, by so many new countries, and the outbreaks of antisemitism, I would not have anticipated that would be so bad.

Misztal:

Mike, any other surprises to raise?

Michael Makovsky, PhD:

Elliot took most of my answers, but I’ll just add one, because I agree with everything he said. I would just add just a little more granularity. Elliot said we didn’t think the war would go on this long, and it might go on longer. I’ll just remind the audience, and I know Elliott, John and you all, when we went to Israel after October 7, in early November, I was told that the major operations in Gaza would be over by the end of December. Then, when I was there in December with John and Elliot, we were told that it would be over, major operations in Gaza would be over, by the end of January. And there was a general who’s a friend of ours that we met with who was more of an outlier, and said March of 2024.

So not only was October 7 a surprise for all sorts of reasons, and they didn’t have, clearly didn’t have a plan of how to respond to this—there was no viable plan of attack that was prepared, which was also a surprise I might add, and was of the reasons they waited till the end of October to start the ground operations. Let me just add, on the success, I didn’t think Lebanon would go so well, so fast. Obviously, I didn’t predict Assad falling.

I did think eventually it would have to go to Iran. And we had an idea of when that was going to happen, roughly, but I didn’t think that war would go as well [as it did]. But let me just add one substantive point in addition to what Elliott mentioned, and that has to do with Qatar. I really thought, and Blaise, you and I wrote an op-ed the New York Post that came out, I think, four or five days after October 7, and one of our arguments was ‘you have got to put pressure on the Iranians, and you have got to put pressure on the Qataris, if you want to try to get the hostages out.’ And maybe we overestimated the Iranian influence. I don’t know, but I never really felt until perhaps in the last week or two, or the last few weeks, that the proposition of pressuring the Qataris was really tested.

You don’t know, counterfactually, what would have happened, but I knew that the Biden administration was not going to pressure the Iranians, but Biden, and then now we have the Trump administration, I really thought that the U.S. would come down a lot harder on the Qataris. It might not have succeeded, but I just don’t see a lot of evidence of [us trying] that, and that’s been a big surprise.

Misztal:

John, anything that hasn’t been covered yet that surprised you in the last two years?

John Hannah:

Just to footstop the point, I mean, I remember appearing on a webinar that Mike moderated on October the 9^th [of 2023], that morning. You know, I was pessimistic. I thought this would be one of Israel’s longest wars. I probably gave it a couple of months it would last, because both Elliott and I have been involved in much shorter wars than that, in which the United States and the international community came down very quickly, like a ton of bricks on Israel when you started to see mounting civilian casualties. The thought that we would be here two years now with Israel sustaining this effort is a huge surprise to me. And while the U.S.-Israel relationship has had some real stresses and strains over the past two years, it’s, for the most part, it’s survived. Israel’s gotten a lot of the weapons it needs, with a few exceptions, and it’s gotten the American diplomatic cover it needed to continue this struggle despite a huge and very costly international backlash against Israel.

I guess I’m surprised that the IDF had as much trouble as it had with this bunch of kind of B-league terrorists in Hamas. It’s been a much more difficult and problematic struggle, for some good reasons, having to do with the hostages and the tunnels and all of those things. But also, I think, for some other reasons that have to do with the way the war was fought.

[I was] so surprised by that problem, but also surprised, frankly, by this extraordinary, unbelievable military success everywhere else in the region that I think had in the end will be the lasting strategic impact of October 7: how Israel, in the space of maybe 18 months, came down from the lowest point in its history to, you know, kind of rising again, reestablishing Israeli deterrence and dominance militarily, [and] intelligence-wise, across the entire Middle East – against not only its most dangerous foes for the last several decades, but America’s most dangerous foes as well. The military and intelligence prowess has just been absolutely phenomenal.

As Mike said, we were there in Israel in December, Elliott and I [went again] there in January. We were there to try and figure out, what does the “day after” in Gaza look like? How do we deal with the strategic problem of humanitarian assistance? [That was an issue] we knew would grow with time. It had been an issue in Israel’s past conflicts, and we thought we needed a plan to deal with that, to ensure that Israel would have the time and space to continue the fight against Hamas, even as Gazan civilians were being dealt with on the humanitarian side, and to begin figuring out, how do you – even while you’re fighting – begin to build some kind of political alternative that other Gazans might be able to be attracted to, and that could possibly get the buy in, particularly of the Arab states, but others in the international community.

The inability of the United States and Israel to get together, for a variety of reasons, on some kind of common strategy to fill that void and that vacuum, figure out what are we working toward, what does Gaza look like in the day after, how do we combine a military strategy with a political strategy to undermine and defeat Hamas – I was a little bit surprised that we weren’t able, between Washington and Jerusalem, to come up with some kind of coherent idea that we could sell internationally.

Misztal:

On that score, I think our colleague in Israel, retired IDF Major General Yaakov Amidror, has been proven right when he relentlessly says it’s not yet the “day after”. I guess there’re two things that I was surprised none of you seem to have mentioned. One is on U.S. policy. Is there no aspect of U.S. policy that has surprised you over the course of the last two years, whether it’s the highs of President Trump joining in with Operation Midnight Hammer and joining the Israeli campaign against Iran, or the lows of the arms embargoes at the end of the Biden administration? Secondly, sort of the massive spike in global antisemitism. I have to say, having here at JINSA written on past conflicts in Gaza, obviously, the success of Hamas propaganda in terms of the numbers of civilians killed and their ability to sort of control the narrative of the conflict isn’t surprising. But that we now have kids on U.S. college campuses saying, you know, we’re going to celebrate our martyrs to mark October 7 and sort of evincing not just support for the Hamas narrative of what’s happening on the ground, but actually support for Hamas itself, maybe I was naive, but that still seemed unthinkable to me on October 7. But I would be curious for your thoughts on that.

Abrams:

There was a possibility, always, of U.S. support declining, but I wouldn’t say I’m surprised. Joe Biden had always been very pro-Israel, and remained pretty much pro-Israel. Yes, there were times when he was persuaded by his staff to withhold certain weapons for a while, but he fundamentally stood with the Israelis.

With Trump, one has to remember again, I’m not saying that this was an obvious prediction, but when he came down the escalator in 2016 in that opening statement, he talked about the Iranian nuclear program. So was it shocking that after Israel’s success, he went in and took out the remnants of that program? I would say, not shocking. Gratifying, but not shocking. On the other part of your statement, I agree with you. I mean, I think it was John that said, ‘we always thought, you know, Israel couldn’t go beyond two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, at the outside, before the diplomatic pressure forced it to stop.’ That didn’t happen. But what did happen was this amazing outburst of antisemitism, particularly in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States. I certainly didn’t predict that. You know, we can analyze the reasons for it. We’re all using the word antisemitism, and it’s the right word. It’s not anti-Zionism. It’s not criticism of Israel. It’s antisemitism. In retrospect, we can say, well, if a four-week war is going to be a problem for Israel, not only diplomatically, but in public opinion terms, what would a 100-week war be? Well, it’s nevertheless a real problem. It’s a problem in the United States. I think it’s a calamity in some other places like France and England for those Jewish populations.

Makovsky:

Just on the antisemitism, I’ll say, I was very surprised. Jews got massacred, and there’s a surge of support for the killers, and just an unbelievable spike in antisemitism – as we saw the other day, still playing out, like in Manchester. It made me realize something I hadn’t thought about enough, something that Elliott has written about. What Jews need to do is teach our make sure our children learn about Judaism and that they’re proud to be Jewish. And I think that’s where we should be putting effort. There’s so much money that has gone into fighting antisemitism, and I think that if you want to fight antisemitism, you should make sure to send your kids to Jewish day school and Israel and, as Elliot has also mentioned, the Jewish summer camps. I encourage you to read his book about this kind of stuff.

I would also add that I give a tremendous amount of credit, and I don’t think they get enough, to the Trump administration’s activities against these universities. They’ve made it clear that they won’t tolerate antisemitism. They’ve shown there’s a cost to mistreating Jewish students. They’ve been able to do it in a way that it’s hard for a non-government entity to really do. Now, some might say they have other motives. Whatever it is, I think what the administration has done on this is worth more than hundreds of millions of dollars that have been poured into confronting antisemitism. I give them a lot of credit for it.

And on the flip side, I really thought the Biden administration would have talked about antisemitism more, that they would stigmatize it far more than they did, because they hardly did it at all. You saw some Democrats do it, and you obviously saw Republicans. But I really was disappointed, until the Trump administration came in, that there wasn’t a bigger federal effort to confront a scourge that has really been an unbelievable stain on America. I never thought I’d see such a thing. I give the administration credit that they’re confronting what I think too many people were complacent about, and I and I include myself in that.

I really was extremely disappointed in the Biden administration, how they just seem to tolerate and say almost nothing. But I do give credit to the Trump administration for doing something. It’s not a partisan statement, it’s just a fact. I would have expected more from Biden, because he’s not an antisemite at all, and I don’t think Harris is either, but they just don’t want to talk about it.

Hannah:

One thing – I don’t know how surprised I was, but it was a pleasant outcome of this. Having relatively low expectations about how the Arab states would have responded to a two-year war, the most brutal war ever against Palestinians. You had, you know, five or six Arab states and some level of peace agreements and normalization agreements with Israel. All of them complained. All of them got behind talk about genocide. It was kind of standard-issue stuff that you would have always expected from the Arabs. But the fact that, in particular, the Abraham Accords countries held as well as they did and stuck to their guns—some of them, particularly the Emiratis, got engaged in Gaza on the humanitarian front—even while the Israelis were fighting.

In that huge moment in April of 2024 when we finally, for the first time, crossed the threshold of a direct Iranian massive projectile attack against Israel, you actually had a number of Arab states standing up and participating [in Israel’s defense] and putting some of their own assets into the mix. You know, at the crunch moment when Israel was under attack in the middle of this war with the Palestinians by Iran, some of these Arab states, including ones not yet normalized with Israel, actually stood up and were accounted for on the right side of the equation, which has been a positive thing.

I think once we get past Gaza and are able to begin to put this in the rearview mirror, I think people will be so relieved. Hopefully there will be a degree of cooperation between Israel, the Arab states, and the United States, and moving to something better. I’m reasonably optimistic that the door remains open to a pretty significant push again on Israel’s relations with the broader Arab and Muslim world.

Abrams:

One thing I would like to add, we’ve talked about Israel’s military achievements, obviously, October 7 was a systemic failure, but since then, there have been incredible achievements. But I wonder if it’s fair to say that those incredible achievements have been those of the intelligence community, Mossad essentially, and the Air Force—not the army—in Gaza. And this, I think, has occasioned a debate in Israel about what has happened to the army over the last 10 or 20 years. It moved from being ready to fight a ground war to fighting terrorism; saw a diminution in the size of the standing army; and there’s a debate now about whether the standing army has to be larger. I think one of the things that’s been happening over these two years is the opening of a discussion and debate about tactics. And it’s more than tactics, the whole strategy that was adopted by the Israeli land forces for how they were going to build themselves and whether that turned out to be a mistake.

Misztal:

You just very successfully preempted my next question, for which I thank you. Focusing on the war since October 7, all three of you have basically described, to be Dickensian about it, a tale of two wars, right? It was the best of wars regionally, and it was the worst of wars in Gaza. What do you ascribe that to? How can we hold in our minds these two very different outcomes, or sort of operations, that Israel has launched: the extreme success against Hezbollah and Iran, and the fact that Gaza is still dragging on. Is it as simple as underinvestment in the ground forces? Is there more to this story?

Hannah:

At the sort of most basic, highest level, you get what you pay for. And Israel invested the last 20 to 40 years in the Iranian challenge and understanding it at a granular level, how they would attack, constantly refining, constantly seeing that as the biggest threat, together with the obvious Hezbollah threat on the northern border. How do you deal with those, neutralize those, when it was a matter of, you know, ‘when the fight comes, not if it would come.’ They invested over the course of decades, both on the intelligence side and on the capability side of what it would take to get that job done.

I think in Gaza, it was just a basic kind of failure to focus and to invest. What we hear from some Israeli colleagues is that the Shin Bet, the intelligence service, didn’t have a single live human source inside of Hamas. [That is] despite the fact you had thousands of Gazans going back and forth across that border into Israel every day, going to hospitals, going to work inside of Israel. Instead, Hamas was able to turn some of those workers against Israel, rather than vice versa, in terms of Israel understanding fundamentally how Hamas was thinking, operating, planning. Israel was surprised by the fact they had something like 400 miles of terror tunnels, some of them built at extraordinary depths of 200 feet.

This terror kingdom underground was somehow a surprise and a shock to Israel, and this is a place directly on their border where they’ve sent their citizens to populate every virtually every last inch right up to the border, controlled by this terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. So, the underinvestment in dealing with Hamas, understanding Hamas, [lack of] plans on how you were going to destroy and defeat Hamas and essentially eradicate it and take over Gaza was, at the most basic level, I think the fundamental problem.

Makovsky:

I agree with John. I would add, based on what we know now, there’s going to have to be a thorough inquiry. I think the IDF has done something, there hasn’t been a national inquiry in Israel about this. So basically, we don’t know everything, but based on what we know—as John pointed out—certainly from the intelligence [standpoint], they didn’t draw the appropriate conclusions, because they had a fixed idea. Also, it was always seen as a secondary, even maybe a tertiary, theater for them. And Iran, Hezbollah, those were the two main things, and they thought they had the south settled. They had Iron Dome protecting them from the missiles. They had these anti-tunnel sensors in the ground, so they didn’t worry about an invasion through the tunnels. And they had this expensive fence that they installed with technology. They thought, ‘okay, that thing is settled. We don’t have to think about it.’

There is one thing I haven’t really reconciled, and hopefully we’ll learn about. Someone I know for a long time runs a commodity trading company. He told me, you know, his job is to minimize, manage, risk. I think what they call it is tail risk – you know, things that are a lower probability, but also could have significant implications. And [Israel], even if they thought [a Hamas invasion] was a low probability event, they still didn’t do enough, it seems like, to protect that border. That’s surprising.

They just didn’t have a plan of what to do if there was going to be a war. As John said, they’ve been planning about Hezbollah for a long time. They were planning for Iran, and even on that, they had to adjust the Iran strategy based on recent developments. So they expanded how they thought about what they could do in Iran, but they weren’t really thinking about a war in Gaza. That had a big impact.

Misztal:

In light of that, I want to ask all of you where we are in the war in Gaza now, two years on. President Trump has put forward his 20-point plan. I guess Hamas has given an answer, or answered, I don’t know if it’s given an answer. Where do we think this goes from here? Elliott Abrams, you wrote about this recently in the Free Press, which I think directly led to the decision for the Free Press to be bought for $150 million. Correlation must be causation there.

Abrams:

That will be an interesting thing to watch, including, really being serious, over the next six months, the coverage of Israel. [It] has been, at best, tendentious over the last two years, for NBC and CNN and all of them.

Where are we now? By the weekend, the President put forward a plan, and he said he wanted it to get done by Sunday night. This is now Monday, and nothing’s happened. And now he said, ‘well, it’ll be a few more days.’ The essence of the plan is the Israelis pull back in exchange for getting their hostages out. That has not happened, and instead, what Hamas is doing is obviously trying to stretch it out and negotiate a better deal.

Will Egypt and Qatar be able to force Hamas into greater compromises? Again, we’re going to find out in a few days the Egyptians and the Qataris may be talking to the wrong Gazans. That is, they’re talking to the guys who live in the Four Seasons hotel, you know, in Qatar, not the guys on the ground who are actually commanding forces. Now, I do think the Qataris are under pressure from the President, because my own view is, after the Israeli attack on Hamas in Qatar, in Doha, the Qataris went running to the president to say, ‘defend us.’ And the president did. He issued that executive order saying we’re going to defend Qatar. But I think he exacted a price, which was ‘deliver Hamas. I want a deal. I want to bring the war to an end.’ Well, the deal is there on paper, the 20 points.

Every government has said, ‘we agree,’ and Hamas has said a kind of a ‘yes, but.’ I think the coming days will determine whether this really begins with the exchange of Israeli hostages for convicted Palestinian terrorists, or is this going to be dragging on, in which case the president has said, and I think he will do what he said, he’ll say to the Israelis, ‘you have no choice but to keep on fighting, and we will, we will back you up.’ I think we can say what the people of Gaza want at this point. They want the war to come to an end, but that may not be what’s left of the high command of Hamas want. They may want to just keep on fighting, whatever the Egyptians, Qataris, or Gazans say.

Misztal:

John, maybe, just to put the same question to you differently: as Elliott Abrams said, maybe we’ve been talking to the wrong Gazans, but if we do have this split between Doha and Gaza [in the] Hamas leadership, is there anything more the U.S, can do in terms of putting pressure on Hamas to make a deal happen? At previous instances, President Trump has said there would be hell to pay if there wasn’t a deal. Is the U.S. capable of making Hamas pay hell? Or is the most that we can do to let Israel keep doing what it, you know, has been doing up until now?

Hannah:

Yeah, it’s a very good question, because, as you say, if I had $100 every time the president said there would be hell to pay for Hamas, I’d have a reasonable night out and dinner with a good bottle of wine. So, I’m not sure there’s much he can do. He can hold that threat that Elliott mentioned of basically greenlighting resumption of an all-out Israeli military offensive into Gaza City, maybe eventually into the central camps to conquer all 100 percent of Gaza. But I think it’s kind of overlooked and discussed. There’s a point 17 in this plan that basically says Hamas won’t have a veto over this process if, for whatever reason, they end up endlessly delaying or rescinding any acceptance of the deal, it doesn’t stop the plan from going forward.

In parts of Gaza where the IDF is in control, it can begin handing off to the elements of a new apolitical, technocratic Palestinian committee that would run day-to-day affairs and liberated sections of Gaza, bringing in, you know, the board of peace that President Trump and Tony Blair will be In charge of distributing money and funds and overseeing the day to day governance. And then this so-called international stabilization force, presumably primarily made up of Arabs, would come in together with some trained up new Palestinian police from Gaza, to try and effectively impose law and order and protect the borders, Israel’s border with Gaza, and maybe the border with Egypt as well.

I think the more you can do, even with the IDF in place, if the Arabs really now have decided enough is enough, we’re prepared, for the first time in history, to really take onto our shoulders responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians—because they’ve proven time and time again they’re incapable of doing anything constructive for themselves—if they’ve decided now, ‘we’re prepared to really put not only political, diplomatic, economic skin into this game, but on the security front as well, to come in and start building this alternative, not allow Hamas to have a veto and allow the Israelis to keep putting pressure on them to implement this point 17 of the of the Trump plan that says we go forward with or without Hamas’ – that would be a huge deal.

I have to say, I’m skeptical and a bit pessimistic that the Arabs are prepared to do that while the IDF continues military operations. But I do think that’s a point that the U.S. has briefed to the Arab states, and hopefully they’ve assented to. There might be some ability to pressure that and move forward, even if Hamas doesn’t want to move forward.

Misztal:

Maybe digging a little deeper on this, we have a question from [the audience] asking what the main sticking points of the negotiations in Egypt are, and what has brought Hamas to the table right now? Elliott, do you have any insights to offer?

Abrams:

What’s brought them to the table? I think, is this combination of pressure from Qatar, Egypt, and really, if you look at the so-called New York Declaration, from the whole Arab League, which is really saying, ‘now stop the war.’ And the war is going badly for Hamas. Their losses are very large, and they presumably want to stop those losses, and they must have some sense of public opinion in Gaza and the loss of popularity. So, they’re fighting for survival, and that means that they don’t, for example, want to lay down their arms, they don’t want to give up more territory. They don’t want to give up a place in Palestinian politics.

It’s interesting to me that their stated position is, yeah, there can be a technocratic government that can come in and rebuild Gaza. That’s fine, but all of these decisions have to be made, according to Hamas, by all the Palestinian organizations together, presumably under the umbrella that they’ve always been trying to get into. They want to survive politically, and they want to survive militarily.

Misztal:

Mike or John, anything to add on the negotiations?

Hannah:

I would say, on the hostages, I still have to be convinced that Hamas is not going to try and demand a much greater Israeli withdrawal. They talk about, ‘we’re ready to go forward with the first phase, the hostage release, prisoners released, some level of Israeli withdrawal,’ but they talk about the appropriate field conditions and all of that. I think they’re angling for a much bigger Israeli withdrawal. But if the president is able to get all of those hostages out, able to get Hamas to surrender all of their leverage, even in the absence of a full Israeli withdrawal, that would be a huge development and achievement that I certainly wouldn’t have seen coming.

Misztal:

Mike, hearkening back to the oped from the days right after October 7 that you mentioned – if, in fact, the Israeli strike in Doha did have some sort of salutary effect in terms of putting pressure on Qatar to pressure Hamas leaders, that they have access to, to agree to this deal. We’re sort of stuck – Hamas is negotiating, and trying to draw out the clock.

Is there more pressure that could be put on Qatar to try to move things forward, and in light of what we saw last week, with the apology that Bibi had to give to the Qataris, and then, and then the sort of this broad security guarantee for the Qataris that President Trump issued last week. Do we think the U.S. would actually put that pressure on Doha now?

Makovsky:

I don’t think they will, but they should. We don’t know if it will work, but they can do more for sure. I mean, I wouldn’t have done that executive order, which is rather odd, about some security guarantee. I’d rather that was withdrawn already. I would rather we started moving our military assets out of Al Udeid, the U.S. military base in Qatar. Our colleague General Frank McKenzie, previous CENTCOM commander, wrote about a year ago that [in a U.S.] conflict with Iran, it’s going to be a vulnerability, which it obviously was. The Iranians attacked it. We withdrew 99.9% of our forces from there. We moved all planes from there. It was [of] no value whatsoever. It was actually a liability.

I’m not saying we should withdraw completely from there, but I think actually withdrawing our forces from there, which we should do anyway, because the conflict with Iran isn’t over yet. We could try to push the Qataris to kick out the Hamas leaders there. We should push the Turks to do the same with the Hamas leaders that are in that country. The folks in Gaza, the Hamas, when I say the folks, I mean the Hamas leaders such as they are in Gaza, aren’t going to listen to those people in Turkey or Qatar. But we should do it and see if it would help. I wish we had done it a long time ago, but I think there those are things I would certainly do.

I think you make it clear to the Qataris that our relationship with them really depends on this and their ability to get this done again. I don’t know if it will succeed, but you could try to squeeze more, because, look, it’s time to really end this war. And in, I think pull out all the stops. By the way, it’s not just Qatar, it’s also Turkey. Erdogan has been such a supporter of Hamas over the years. It will help signal to Hamas fighters how isolated they are right now.

Misztal:

Last round of questions maybe, and then happy to open it up to the audience for any questions that you might have. We had talked about at the outset the diplomatic isolation that Israel is suffering from now, and perhaps surprising, two years later – or maybe not, given what we’ve seen in previous conflicts.

Would this peace plan, if it goes forward, sort of help to end that? Or are there things that President Trump can be doing to help end that, beyond pushing this peace plan forward? How do we turn back the clock on that?

Abrams:

I think it does, if not, stop the momentum, it slows it down a lot. If there had been peace a month ago, for example, these recognitions [of a Palestinian state] by the UK, Canada, Australia, France, would probably not have happened. I think it makes it easier for those governments to push back on those elements of their electorate that are violently, literally violently, anti-Israel. So, I think it helps. But if you, if you look at the UK, for example, I mean, the Jewish community there is outnumbered something like 14-to-one by the Muslim community. There’s a lot of antisemitism. There’s a lot of anti-Israel protests, and all of that is within the Labor Party.

It would make it possible for someone, for the British government, for the Prime Minister, to push back a little bit more easily, but it certainly doesn’t solve the underlying problem of antisemitism in British politics. And it is the same in other countries, France, Canada, Australia – but it would slow it down.

Misztal:

John, would you expect some of these countries to walk back, maybe not the recognition of the Palestinian state, but the embargoes that European countries have now put on Israeli weapons? Would you expect them to lift those if there is a peace plan? Is that something that you’d have to have the US browbeat them about to sort of bring relations back to some level of normalcy?

Hannah:

Yeah, I think you’d certainly have to prioritize it and have U.S. backing to really work for it. I think you’ve got a good case, I think there’s going to be such enormous relief, if and when the killing actually stops here and we have a ceasefire, we have an end to the war, to have Israel, the United States, these Arab states and stakeholders, together with some Europeans, really working together to try and push towards some kind of better “day after” in Gaza, potentially. [Maybe also] restarting some kind of discussion between Israelis and Palestinians with Arab backing for what the future might look like. And in the context of, obviously, some kind of big push on Israel’s deeper and further integration into the region, getting that normalization train back, pumping and running, and particularly with the Saudis. But it doesn’t seem to me it was an accident [there were] Indonesians and Pakistanis at that meeting in New York with President Trump when he unveiled this plan a couple of weeks ago.

I do think you know, you can imagine if things you know, God willing, are able to somehow move forward in a positive trajectory on this plan, in six months to a year, we’re talking about a quite different kind of environment and region and ecosystem in which Israel’s relations certainly within its neighborhood, even the situation of the average Palestinian in Gaza, and then hopefully Israel’s relations with the broader world, with a big American push and sponsorship, I think we could be looking at a much improved situation.

Misztal:

Mike, pivoting a little bit – we talked about the spectacular success that Israel had with Operation Rising Lion against Iran. But as we wrote in a paper right after that campaign ended, it’s not over yet. And so, we’re talking about Gaza, but what’s needed to keep the focus on Iran and make sure it doesn’t rebuild and that we don’t end up at October 7 all over again? What do we need to be paying attention to?

Makovsky:

Yeah, look, I think while President Trump is president, I have confidence he’s invested in [ensuring] that Iran will not make a lot of progress towards a nuclear weapon. If Iran tried to do something reckless on that front, at a minimum, I’m sure he would support Israel from doing something, and maybe even U.S. force again. So, on the nuclear front, we want to be very vigilant that they don’t do anything. Clearly, it seems like the Iranians, they don’t think this war is over. They clearly want vengeance. I mean, they were so phenomenally humiliated, it’s hard to imagine how much they were humiliated. Within 48 hours, Israel had complete air supremacy, which meant for 10 days, they just flew over a lot of the Iranian airspace at will. And it’s an unbelievable humiliation for this Iranian leadership, those that are still living after this war.

I think the Iranians are not finished on the nuclear front. They’re going to want to try to rebuild. I think the U.S., at least for the next few years, will stay vigilant. This is a very vulnerable regime. Now, it was vulnerable before the war, before June. A country that has one of the highest natural gas reserves in the world cannot even provide electricity to their people. They’ve arrested thousands of people after this war because they’re seeing spies everywhere, and they’re paranoid by nature, this regime.

This is a weak regime, and what I hope the U.S. would do is, and Israel needs to help [with], really to squeeze this regime, and really try to keep the pressure up and undercut the regime, to increase the odds that the Iranian people will rise up and bring it down. No one knows what triggers revolutions. You don’t know what might do it, or when. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen in 20 years. But I think what U.S. policy has to be is to really keep the pressure on this regime, because they’re going to try to restore [what they had]. Maybe they’ll try to wait out Trump, and then they’ll try to build up their [nuclear] program after that. The Iranian regime is on their back foot, and the ultimate solution for the nuclear threat of Iran is the collapse of this regime.

Misztal

Anything to add on that?

Abrams:

No, and I need to apologize and jump off, I’ve got to get physically to another place.

Makovsky:

Elliott, before you get off, did I characterize your book directly, if I may ask?

Abrams:

Yeah. Very, very quickly, it makes an argument that, as you said, the main thing Jews can do is strengthen their own community, strengthen Jewish identity, strengthen their ties to Israel.

For the United States as a country, for American society, the thing to do is to enforce existing laws, regulations and rules, something that wasn’t being done – particularly the rules on college campuses. And I join you in what you said about the Trump administration, in insisting that colleges enforce the rules that are on the books about how the university is run, about what’s permitted and what isn’t permitted, about how students need to treat each other.

Makovsky:

By the way, Blaise, if I could add. I put the onus on the left, and I criticize the Biden administration, but I do think what we have seen certainly in the last year, is a rising antisemitism also on the far right. I think it’s incumbent on Republican leaders to ostracize those folks that are platforming or spreading antisemitism. Tucker Carlson is the obvious place you could start. And I think that could only come from, you know, respected Republican leaders.

Misztal:

With just a couple of minutes left, Mike and John, I’ll maybe put you on the spot and ask you for your best predictions when we do this webinar for the third anniversary of 10/7. A year from now, where are we going to find ourselves?

Hannah:

Well, I mean, you know, it obviously all depends. And we’ve got, for the first time in two years, we’ve got an American president who is quite powerful, certainly powerful in this region, with virtually all sides, the Arab side as well as the Israeli side, and he’s shown himself willing to use that pressure and leverage to advance a plan that he has put on the table, that he’s going to be the chairman of the board, literally, of the board of peace. It doesn’t solve all your problems, but it goes a long, long way to have the president now invested and engaged. Question is, can he stay interested, engaged, invested, continuing to push all sides forward, by sheer force of will, toward implementing this plan.

On the Arab side, I would also say this is something reasonably historic, that you have this group of Arab states friendly to the United States, well disposed toward Israel, and the things that Israel has accomplished in the broader region now, all agree about the basic end state of this war, which is the hostages are returned, and Hamas has no role to play inside of Gaza, politically or militarily, and saying that they’re prepared to put real skin in the game to get the Palestinians to a better day after here, let’s see if they’re prepared to go with that. That’s an important development, and again, it creates a possibility that we haven’t had for a very long time, if ever: an American-backed, Arab-backed, Israeli vision for how we’re going to move forward. So I think the prospects for being in a much better place a year from now than we are today, whether or not Hamas ends up agreeing to all 20 points in this plan, are better than they’ve been at any point in this war.

Misztal:

Mike, do you share that optimism?

Makovsky:

I do. You should never get too optimistic about the Middle East. I think, obviously, we all learned that lesson, but John put it well.

The focus so much is on Gaza, and it’s important, for a lot of reasons: for Israeli society, for Palestinian lives, for Israel’s standing in the world. All sorts of things. But also, as John mentioned earlier in this webinar, it could lead to other things. Hopefully, maybe if we could settle this, then there could be normalization with the Saudis. I think, based on what the Indonesian leader said in New York, you can maybe see it there also and in other places. So I think there’s a lot of good things that could come out of resolving the situation in Gaza.

The Iran issue, I think, strategically, remains the biggest issue still. The regime is still in power. They want vengeance, we can’t get complacent about that at all. We have to enforce existing sanctions against the Iranians. And I think that will remain that, I think a year from now, I think that will still likely remain the biggest strategic question.

I think the Israelis have learned, obviously, from October 7 that complacency is an enemy. But I don’t think the Israelis are going to be complacent on Iran. I don’t. Also, our understandings of interactions with senior U.S. military folks, like at CENTCOM, I don’t think the U.S. military in the Middle East, the CENTCOM command, I don’t think they’re complacent either. I think what we do have to worry about here is in Washington, that there isn’t a complacency, even if the Gaza situation is settled, even if you could turn to [Saudi Arabia -Israel] normalization, which I know, we all hope, you know, will happen.

There are always other things that we still need to be worried about, such as the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, and, you know, maybe a rise of Turkey, more and things like that. And the Houthis. I think we’re going to see the Israelis, no matter what happens with Gaza, I think that my expectation is that Israel is going to continue attacking the Houthis unless the United States says that they’re going to take care of this. I think, I think the Israelis are [in] a long-term campaign.

And if I may add one last thing on this, it would be useful for the U.S. officials, not just to be vigilant and not complacent about Iran, but we should really kind of think of this another conversation about what, what the last two years—particularly the last year, particularly June—says about Israel, what it says about Israel in the region, and what a valuable ally [Israel] can be, and that it could maybe relieve our burden in the region. We need to continue to support them, but I think we should think about Israel as a partner even more so than we thought before in the region, and maybe lessen our burden a little bit.

I think there’s a lot of good things that could be happening. So overall, I’m mostly optimistic.

Misztal:

Well, thank you, Mike and John. I think one area that we didn’t mention, but is going to be very critical for both Israel and the United States, in the region, is Syria. For all those of you in the audience, I would commend the paper, the magnum opus really, on Syria that John just released last week called Course Correction. You can find it on our website, jinsa.org, along with all of our other analysis on everything that has happened since October 7. So thank you for joining in and looking forward to seeing you on the next webinar.

Have a good afternoon, everyone.