Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 We're in the company of France 24's Philippe Touroff from our international affairs desk
00:04 and with Yossi Mekelberg, associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House, who joins
00:09 us from London once again.
00:12 Yossi Mekelberg, can you just quickly fact check for us, please?
00:19 Moving towards total victory, is that the case?
00:25 Well, you know, time will tell. The war is going on, raging only for four months and
00:34 Hamas is still fighting. The cost for Palestinians is immense and they're still firing rockets
00:42 on occasion. And it needs to define what does it mean, what does it mean, victory. He's
00:49 not only talking about victory, he's using the term going to crash Hamas altogether.
00:57 I'm not so sure there is the evidence of this. And even worse than that, what happens next?
01:05 He has no plan beyond that. Then he builds a lot of castles in the air about if Hamas
01:13 is crushed, then the entire Middle East will basically leap into the hands of Israel and
01:22 sign peace agreements and normalize relations with that. I'm not so sure where he's based
01:28 this, what he's based this on.
01:30 He talks about troops being ordered to prepare to operate in the southernmost city of Rafah,
01:36 where so many people are currently displaced. Is it about to get a lot worse rather than
01:42 better?
01:43 Well, most of the people in Gaza are already displaced people. Out of the 2.3 million Gazan
01:52 people, 1.7 million are displaced. Those are many of the Gazan people originally are refugees.
02:00 They were told go to safe places, move to safe places, including Rafah. Now, if you're
02:05 going to have a major operation, talking about, again, using the word crushing Hamas, and
02:12 you're looking for them in the midst of civilian population, I don't want to imagine how many
02:21 civilian casualties are going to be there. And this is one of the big dangers of taking
02:28 such a move.
02:29 And that is apparently, this is the mood where Netanyahu, in order also to exonerate himself,
02:35 wished to move with full military force. Again, there might be, and maybe it's wishful thinking
02:42 on my side, that this is part of his mind games with Hamas when it comes to negotiation.
02:48 But if it's not, then we can expect probably the highest total of casualties per day that
02:55 we have seen since the beginning of the war.
02:57 Right. So it could be brinkmanship or not.
03:01 Bob Turrell, Netanyahu saying victory over Hamas is a matter of months. Now, later there's
03:06 going to be another press conference, that of the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
03:11 This is the act he's going to have to follow.
03:12 Well, I actually feel a bit sorry for Antony Blinken, because he's been saying that he's
03:16 hopeful there is going to be a ceasefire and there's going to be progress on what Hamas
03:20 has come up with, which is this three-point plan for the hostages being held by Hamas
03:26 in Gaza to be exchanged, or at least a vast number of them, women, children, the elderly
03:31 and men under the age of 19, in exchange for 150 prisoners from Israeli jails, including
03:37 40 Hamas fighters who've been jailed for terrorist attacks against Israel.
03:43 Well, that looks pretty dead in the water right now with Benjamin Netanyahu just saying
03:47 I'm not going to give in to these lunatic demands or crazy demands by Hamas. And more
03:54 peace talks scheduled to take place tomorrow in Cairo, which have been brought together
04:00 by Qatar, which is like the king maker, the king peacemaker in all this, discussing with
04:04 both Hamas on one side, the United States and Israel on the other, to try to drop some
04:09 kind of working plan forward.
04:11 So I don't really know what those peace talks are going to come up with, if you listen to
04:15 what Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying tonight. But this is not really a surprise, because
04:20 the Israelis have already been saying before this press conference tonight by Benjamin
04:23 Netanyahu that the only thing they're really interested in is total victory, to crush Hamas,
04:29 and then to move forward by reorganizing the Gaza Strip, by demilitarizing the Gaza Strip.
04:36 But all that remains quite vague.
04:38 Yossi Mechelberg, the words used in front of the camera by Benjamin Netanyahu, if you're
04:42 Anthony Blinken, do they matter, or is it just chatter for now?
04:47 I think a lot of what you're saying is actually interesting also to listen to the questions
04:52 by some of the press, because much of the questions were actually criticizing, attacking
04:58 Netanyahu actually from the right. Why are you allowing more humanitarian aid to enter
05:06 into Gaza? Why you are not firing or getting rid of some of the more center right, Benny
05:13 Gantz and Eisencrott, and bring someone more right-wing like Lieberman?
05:18 So Netanyahu in this one, a lot of the bravado that we see here is also because he's talking
05:24 to his base. On one end it's the base, on the other he's sending messages to Blinken,
05:29 also to Hamas. You know, sir, we are not going to cave in to your demands. We have time,
05:37 we have the stamina. The question for how long, and also the pressure in Israel from
05:43 the families of the hostages. And we hear today that also the protesters that demonstrated
05:51 and protested the nine months before the war, they are going to renew their protest next
05:56 week and say that there is time also to look beyond the war and for a new government and
06:01 fresh election. And he's trying to deal with all of those pressures at the same time, I
06:08 don't think very successfully.
06:10 And we'll hear what Antony Blinken has to say later live here on France 24. Yossi Mechelberg,
06:14 so many thanks for joining us from London.
06:17 Thank you.