Episode 28: The Gaza Paradox

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As hostage talks seem stalled and the war grinds on into its 22nd month, doubts about Netanyahu’s strategy and intentions have become ubiquitous.

Netanyahu has given many reasons to distrust him, including his simple refusal to explain the strategy for removing Hamas and Israel’s vision for a post-Hamas Gaza.

But it isn’t enough to criticize Netanyahu’s strategy or even to argue he doesn’t have one. To offer an effective critique, critics need to suggest a better strategy for removing Hamas and securing a better future for Gaza.

So far, criticism of Netanyahu has either avoided this step or suggested that Hamas cannot, in fact, be disentangled from Gaza, that Gaza’s future is inevitably a Hamas future.

In this episode, we dive into these questions. We ask what it would mean for both Israelis and Palestinians if Hamas is, as the critics claim, unremovable.

This episode was sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan of Houston, Texas, strong supporters of Israel who recognize Israel’s centrality and vitality to the Jewish world. They asked us to say that they are proud to sponsor this episode of “Ask Haviv Anything” because this podcast makes understanding the Middle East a bit easier. They have dedicated this episode to the courageous and incredibly imaginative women and men of the Mossad, who make television look boring and simplistic in comparison to their daring exploits behind enemy lines.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Ask Haviv Anything. Episode 28, the Gaza Paradox.
0:12.3	We're going to get into some of the questions raised by the latest round of negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza.
0:20.3	Really important and significant questions that we don't
0:22.7	have good answers to. It appears to be that the negotiations were moving ahead very well.
0:28.0	On June 29, President Trump said that it would take a week or within days there would be an
0:33.1	agreement. Netanyahu, I'm recording on July 14th. Maybe you'll hear this or it'll go out on July 15th.
0:39.3	Netanyahu said on July 10th that a deal would be struck within a few days.
0:43.3	Everything we have learned since then has told us that a deal is actually farther away.
0:48.3	The stickler, one of the major points of disagreement, is the question of the IDF's deployment during a ceasefire.
0:57.0	It's really the question of Hamas' capacity to use a ceasefire to rehabilitate itself.
1:03.0	It's a question of what happens at the end of the ceasefire.
1:08.0	60 days that gets out 10 living hostages. Well, what about the other
1:11.8	ten? All of these questions are things that are being debated right now among Israelis,
1:17.1	and they're things we don't have good answers to. I think that one of the most important
1:20.5	aspects of these negotiations is being missed. One of the really fundamental senses of how the Israelis understand what's
1:30.3	happening. What's at stake for Gaza? And in the general debate, the public debate about these negotiations,
1:37.3	I think some really fundamental things are missing. I think people are talking in ways that misunderstand Hamas.
1:45.0	There are a couple of things that the world is missing, the discussion is missing, that we have to put back on the table.
1:51.0	Consequences to a deal, to a lack of a deal, consequences to a Hamas that rehabilitates in Gaza.
1:59.0	Consequences that people who care about Gaza, I think, aren't noticing.
2:03.6	Consequences that the debate around Netanyahu, especially after the big New York Times investigation this past week,
2:09.6	that argues that he has essentially prolonged the war for his own political needs, I think are missing.
	...

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