Latest / FDD Morning Brief / Groundhog Day in Gaza | feat. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

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Groundhog Day in Gaza | feat. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib · FDD Morning Brief

• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, good morning.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Monday, May 11th.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The multi-pronged lore in the Middle East is now 947 days old.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hope everyone had a nice, Mother's Day weekend.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Jonathan Shanzer.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, yet again to the FDD Morning Brief.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well,
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranians finally responded to the latest end of conflict offer from President Donald Trump and no surprise their response was quote totally unacceptable and quote that's what the big fellow said.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said that on true social which means that we are pretty much exactly in the same spot we were when the first ceasefire was declared and then extended multiple times.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words we're still at war with an nasty regime.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: of history as my old friend, Michael Adine, a blessed memory used to say, faster please.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Aim Foxman died this week, and the longtime leader of the ADL, the anti-deformation leak, presided over the golden age of American jewelry, speaking to both Jewish and non-Jewish communities nationwide.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm often asked to explain the spike in anti-Semitism first, but it's acknowledged that we live in a time of major upheaval between COVID, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the October 7th Wars, and the advent of AI.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember a more chaotic moment in my lifetime.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They look for someone to blame.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jews have historically been that scapegoat for many.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the recent violence against Jews stems from something else.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll recall that it erupted just as the attacks of October 7th had been halted.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But not before some 1200 Jews were killed.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1962, a man named Richard Rubenstein wrote, quote, once the fantasy of murdering Jews has become a fact, it invites repetition and quote.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, Hamas showed the world that mass slaughter of Jews was still possible, and it sparked something terrible.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you asked me, this could be the only lasting legacy of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7th attacks.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He invited Ruin on his own terror group, not to mention his ballad and their patron regime in Iran.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But more than two and a half years later, the violence continues against Jews thousands of miles from the front, defeating the Iranian axis is now imperative, not just to neutralize the military threat, but to defeat the hatred that it promotes too.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the game.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's do this.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's make the oldest hatred old again.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now for your headlines, headline one, Turkish Foreign Minister Haqqan Fidan, surprise!
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He met with a group of Hamas officials in Ankara over the weekend.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Senior Psycho and Head of the Terror Group, Shura Council Muhammad Darwish, led the delegation, Gaza was the main topic of conversation, including efforts to deliver humanitarian aid, how to end the war and how to establish lasting peace.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure Hamas or Turkey are interested in ending the war or establishing peace, but the very presence of Hamas in Turkey for the umpteenth time tells us something important that continued legitimization of Hamas by the Erdogan government is a serious problem.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: How that guy sits on the board of peace is beyond me, how we continue to treat that government like an ally is also a headscratcher.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are we going to wake up here in Washington?
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully, before it's too late.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Headline 2, New York Times reported over the weekend that Russia is shipping drone components to Iran through the Caspian Sea bypassing the Strait of Formus sources told the times that this work around is helping the regime rebuild the arsenal it lost during Operation Epic Fury.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do I even need to say it?
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course I go.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Russia and Iran together with China are in access and not just any access, but in access of aggressors bent on undermining the United States
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey line three, here's another wild weekend story, the Wall Street Journal ran an exclusive on Saturday detailing out the Israeli setup a secret military post in Iraq that hosted special forces and served as a logistical hub for the Israeli Air Force.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently the Iraqis almost discovered the base in early March, prompting the Israelis to launch a round of air strikes to keep their cover.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just one full move after another these days for the Israeli.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow!
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Headline 4, with elections slated for the fall, he had political debate is erupting in Israel over Hamas in the October 7 attacks.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to new reports, Hamas planned the attacks when Nathta Ali Bennett and yet Irla Pied were in office over there in Israel.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, beating Natsangyao's supporters from the recruiter weaponizing this, saying that if their weakness invited these attacks, Bennett and Le Pied.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not convinced of the significance here, and here's why Hamas was always hatching military plans against Israel, and it always will, regardless of who's in power and Jerusalem.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, look, regardless buckle up, a lot of finger pointing over 10-7 is coming soon to a political feeder near you, and I got to say it's not going to be pretty.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: headline five this once from over night it appears we may have blown through our munitions stock file much faster than we should have so says senator mark Kelly after a classified briefing set aside for a minute that the senator should absolutely keep his mouth shut about such things if we have reached critical levels in our munitions stocks we need to fix that asap and it pains me to say this but asap could mean weeks months or even years
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: On that lovely note, it's time for our interview and that interview was with the guy who forgot more about Gaza than I ever learned.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about Ahmed Fuadach, a team.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and he's the guy behind this thing called realign for Palestine.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's quite a bit happening on the Gaza front right now and not much of it is generating big headlines because the Iran war is just eating all that up.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's do this.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get up to speed on Gaza.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's welcome Ahmed Fuadach, a team on to the show.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the program.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You repeat a fender.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm in for it all, Cateeb.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's to be really a boss.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's do this.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with something that nobody seems to be able to explain maybe you can.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is happening inside the 47% of Gaza that is controlled by Hamas?
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, unfortunately, it's not really much that's positive.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We continue to have most of the population.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, most probably we're talking 70% living in some sort of tent, shacks,
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: mass accommodations that are remnants of the displacement from the war.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've been hearing a lot about the racked and bug infestation that are unfortunately now truly out of control.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have gotten in touch with many people across the Gaza Stripton trying to understand the extent of the problem.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it has to do with just the physical
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: breeding environments.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it has to do with the sewer that's now mainly everywhere.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it to do with the Uncollected garbage, the UN Development Program, UNDP, has dispatched some garbage cans in different parts of Gaza to try to at least centralize where the garbage is, but that hasn't actually addressed the processing of garbage.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then you have the issue of unemployment, you have the issue of unequal distribution of the aid and the incoming supplies.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when we're talking about the daily trucks that are going into Gaza, those are generally two categories.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have humanitarian supplies for the UN and the dozens of not hundreds of humanitarian organizations.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you have commercial goods
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what's interesting is that since the ceasefire back in October, we've seen the number of these merchant supplies in the form of trucks be the overwhelming majority of,
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: the supplies going into Gaza.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And some of those are as benign as, you know, underwear and socks and basic clothing and sanitation supplies.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But some of them include items that you may not necessarily associate with
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: area that just experienced them, destructive war, like pistachio butter and peanut butter and things like that.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, those items are being taxed by Hamas continuously, her truck.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: anywhere between 20 to 30% and then when you want to offload those goods into Gaza, that's also another 20% tax.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're looking at around 40 to 50% effective taxation rate.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that has made everything expensive.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then finally, the financial sector in Gaza has been in free fall.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything is now down to those two and a half year old notes.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody uses these
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the majority of the population now use apps to pay for anything and everything through the Bank of Palestine or a few other Palestinian-inspired apps, but those are inaccessible to a large number of the population.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so in effect you have a significant number of guysons cut off from financial transactions and from the financial sector adding to really
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, this, to some extent, this just reminds me what they were doing on a larger scale and they controlled 100% of Gaza.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were taxing things coming in through the tunnels and then, and so they were extracting taxes from the smubblers and then they were extracting taxes from the people and billing their coffers and basically just ensuring misery, it sounds pretty,
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: similar to what they were doing before.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let me ask you, I mean, when we talk about the similarities, are they getting ready to fight again?
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, is that something that they're capable of?
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've heard about, you know, that Hamas is trying to, you know, rebuild some of that tunnel network that is still under the ground beneath them in the territory they control.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's the question of renewed rocket capabilities.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, they're cut off from Rafa, right?
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which used to be, I guess, the primary line for replenishing weapons.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We understand that the Egyptians were probably key to that Sinai smuggler.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, without that, are they capable of rebuilding their military capabilities?
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was was important to remember that quite a bit of their infrastructure for doing so as far as the workshops, as far as the talents, as far as the know-how, have been taken off the battlefield through, let the process of elimination through attrition.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to know that quite a bit of their tunnel networks in the green zone beyond the yellow line is being systematically eroded and eliminated.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so ultimately no matter what they have within the red zone,
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: That being cut off from the rest of Gaza and indeed from accessing the borders with Israel, accessing Egypt, ultimately renders those tunnels to being storage for storage or for defensive operations, in case of a renewed Israeli attack.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of the unexploded munitions, that is I think the number one source for accessing the raw material, just the raw explosive powder and items and being able to turn that into propellant for rockets and the explosive material for the warhead.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: the unfortunate realities that with the massive amount of destruction from all the bombardment, you have quite a bit of piping from plumbing that could be recycled for bonds.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have or for IEDs, for bonds for rockets, you have quite a bit of aluminum, a lot of wiring,
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But still, I would argue the main risk right now from Hamas is that we saw this two weeks ago when the so-called popular army or popular forces, I should say.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of these really back militias in South Eastern Rafa, that is trying to harass Hamas on a regular basis.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: the green zone, and in recent weeks we've seen some of them do more daring attacks against Hamas and Gaza, probably to probe the terror groups' defenses.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen Hamas and Hanunas be able to mount a pretty capable defense of an attack against standing coming convoy.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they used an IEB to ambush the pickup trucks that had the militia men on it.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we saw a classic ambush in which multiple snipers, multiple machine gunnets began immediately firing upon the convoy followed up by several RPG rounds.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so,
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: What was interesting about that particular battle, and I'm posted about it, is that we didn't really see Israeli drones interfere or come into the rescue of these militias, it was a very much so Amano Tamano fight and equal fight.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, what that showed.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that Hamas, in terms of experience, in terms of knowing the terrain, in terms of having weaponized the damage and infrastructure, they very much so retain a defender's advantage.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I would argue that's the more dangerous.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: aspect of well that that's interesting though because i do think you know you're watching some of these malicious getting in some reps so i speak right i mean they're not exactly practice fighting forces how moss is the one that has the experience on the battlefield so the fact that these malicious are even engaging and learning
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: how to fight in this terrain under these circumstances.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: To me, I think it's probably a positive sign, even if Hamas is getting the better of them for now.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're watching the beginning potentially, some kind of,
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: internal battle for the heart and soul and the minds of gozans which to me I would argue was probably a positive if you know your goals to get rid of a pamas which I think it probably is so alright well let me ask you this we've been hearing about some kind of new U.A.E.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: funded police force
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: that is reportedly set to be formed in the yellow zone.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the 53% of Gaza that's controlled by the IDF.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's going on with that?
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And is that going to be part of this militia, I don't know, patchwork that you were just discussing?
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's what's so interesting about this is that the announcement came out of nowhere, and I'm hooked into a lot of the folks that are involved with a board of peace and involved with the people that have their ears to the ground, people that are really connected to just like what's happening and could see the news happening.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: before it even becomes news online or in newspapers.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this truly surprised me, I would argue in a positive way.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number one is that I am pleasantly surprised that the UAE
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: was able to inject that much money into, ultimately, this is part of the transitional process in Gaza.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: At a time when Abu Dhabi's facing a lot of challenges of its own and no one would really fault them for being focused on rebuilding their own infrastructure, preparing for renewed confrontation with Iran.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number two, is that this,
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: very much so doesn't address the fundamentals of is this how is this going to interact with the international stabilization force if that's even still a thing.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: will this force be deployed inside the red zone, or will it actually be deployed in the green zone?
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: My, what I've gathered thus far and I would say quite a bit of this is speculative and analytical.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it is by talking to people since this announcement, which I've actually, I knew about it a day before and I started asking immediately and nobody knew anything about it, including people who are part of the Board of Peace,
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: There might be a shift, because of the paralysis in the process, because of how mass is unwillingness to disarm.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: There might be a shift in how this police force is structured in what it's mandate become from going into the red zone, where the majority of the population is,
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: not actually having it work with either the anti-Hamas militias or these really military for it to be perceived as legitimate.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cannot be seen as coming on the backs of Israeli tanks.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cannot be seen as a puppet of these
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: phases in which parts of the green zone where the population will be moved to to temporary housing small communities, that's where the police force will start.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: based on rejecting good guys like basically that the the non-involved the people that are not associated with Hamas you get them out of Hamas's range and then you have this force protect them that's basically so it's it's maintaining the the side of the good is that essentially it
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: precisely that and the idea is very much so and the idea is but but when you bring people across the yellow line is something I've been advocating for since the ceasefire you check who's coming in you verify their identity you make sure because once they cross the yellow line they're truly in safe zone and we've seen the Israelis hardened the yellow line not just with the dilly yellow blocks but they're digging trenches they're putting the sand berms they're they're really making a
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: stronger, enforceable, and it's hard to traverse without verification.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this, in that sense, I actually think this police force, as a starting point, could be incredibly positive to operate from the yellow zone.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And from the green zone, rather, across the yellow line.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then if there is in fact some sort of a clearance operation,
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: of how mass sector by sector in the red zone, either by these railies or by the international stabilization forces or by whoever, however, that ends up looking, then actually we could be talking about a methodical process of reclaiming territory.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's, of course, again, not entirely clear, but
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's an effort underway right now to quickly define the mandate of this force, without interference from the Egyptians of the Jordanians who are tasked with training it.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, we don't want this to be just a carbon copy of what the Palestinian Authority is in the West Bank in Tagaso.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a question.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not what I plan to ask you, but I got to say you've just kind of, I don't know, you've sparked something.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's my question.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like if I'm looking at this the right way, I think I am from the perspective of just hard power.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have one Palestinian entity.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have two Palestinian entities.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have three, right?
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got West Bank, and then you've got the red zone, and then you've got the yellow zone.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each one with a different set of rules, a different set of leaders, military, right, hard power, et cetera.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: This, to me, feels like a pretty significant setback for the Palestinian cause, this idea that you've got just all these different moving parts.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I reading this right?
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is that essentially where we're heading or do you see some way?
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: for, you know, all three of these entities to somehow come under one roof.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've seen some of the reports about, you know, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian authorities trying to groom his son who is a complete corrupt dirt bag.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's trying to insert new leadership that would, I don't know, somehow encompass all of this.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fantasy, right?
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what we're looking at right now are three distinct territories that are not under one roof.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This immense truth in what you're saying, but just real quickly, I would not consider the area of the area beyond the yellow line is a very temporary area that while it may and, you know, you never know if Israel and Palestine sometimes what's
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: that is emerging in the yellow line, in the yellow zone or the green zone, let's call it.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not talking about a new life.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about a min-skule amount of civilians that lives in their most of them either from belonging to families and the extended families of the militias or some of them are ones that have
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of struck deals with the IDF, if you will, as far as live and let live, but we're talking about a such a my new number of people.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the IDF is still clearing out tunnels.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The IDF is still clearing out the rubble.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there are some people actually, and I don't know how like this is a controversial opinion out there that says,
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The assessment of these really security apparatus is that it should no longer develop the yellow zone or the green zone, but for the time being, just keep it as a buffer zone, pending a resolution to what's happening in Iran, the Hezbollah theater, and that let's just keep the status quo, we'll strike hummus every now and then and whatever.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's that for that area.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as far as like Gaza and the West Bank,
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is something that I get in a lot of trouble for saying as somebody who is very, I can serve myself to be actually pro-Palestine, not quote, pro-Palestine, but that means being radically pragmatic that includes being against violence, against Hamas, against failures, engaging in introspection, after almost eight decades of failures.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's time that we acknowledge
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: the inherent differences between Gaza and the West Bank.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The separation, not just geographically, everybody talks about the geography, and yes, I would love in an arrangement.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: have them linked physically, a bridge, a tunnel, whatever.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I'm talking about is that there truly are substantive cultural differences that impact the political orientation of both places and that acknowledging that Gaza and the West Bank or what will remain of the West Bank
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: is like saying there's California and Texas, or there is, you know, New York and Texas, like they can exist under the auspices of a future state of Palestine, but to insist on a centralized governance, I think is no longer going to work.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Hamas, I think is a,
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Hamas basically, in a way, October 7th, they just burst themselves.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: They knew that they were failing in Gaza.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: They knew that they were being rejected by the population.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They knew that they couldn't sustain the con of armed resistance.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why they just decided to go with the suicidal nihilism, even though Senwara ultimately
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: may have had an end game of achieving, like what we've been seeing over the last two and half years of the mother of all battles and Gaza is supposed to be the beginning of the end of the state of Israel instead it actually became the beginning of the end of the Iranian axis of resistance.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I best is doing right now.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I best is they, I best is an irrelevant figure.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Palestinian Authority, it's administrative and executive bodies.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think are important to preserve.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even these railies, even the most hard line of Israelis realize that you don't want a situation where Israel administers parts of the West Bank and parts of the financial sector,
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: the health sector, just the basic arrangements, who's going to mint passports and IDs for, from an administrative point of view, I strongly believe that Palestinian authority in the West Bank can be very important and relevant in Gaza.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in terms of the political process and the Palestinian national project,
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what Abbas is doing and Fethah and inserting his corrupt son that I've dealings with 10 years ago, dealings with not financial, but dealings in terms of trying to get a humanitarian project in Gaza achieved only for him to really only care about the financial side of it.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is never going to be tolerated even by other members of Fethah themselves.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who is this new leadership?
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is an existential, I'll argue this is a far bigger existential crisis for the Palestinian people than out even the military occupation of the Palestinian people or kind of the loss of autonomy and control because between Fatih and Hamas,
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who else is going to rise to that occasion?
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think we've reached a point of political gridlock, geopolitical gridlock, border questions.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a crisis.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And well, I think we'll have you back on future episodes to track this thing.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we'll leave it here for now, though.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not easy answers here.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Board of Peace is going to need to step up.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: meantime, just want to thank you.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ahmed Fuad Ahlachati for joining us today on the FTD morning break.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Donald.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, it's getting more complicated out of Gaza, West Bank, all of that.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to stick a fork in the dough for now.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're done.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you still are in a kind of a learning mood after this, please visit our website at fd.org.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or if your attention span is feeling a bit short, feel free to scroll through our social media channels, not doom scroll, learn scroll.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can see those videos and graphics that summarize
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: As always, I strongly suggest that you head on over to fdd.org, so I should best to see exactly have a support of think tank such as hours.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great Monday and Tuesday for that matter.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: See you first thing on Wednesday morning, until then.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jonathan Shanser, signing off for FD.