We Are '30 Seconds To Midnight' In Middle East As Israel-Hamas Gaza War Could Expand: Expert

Forbes Breaking News

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the resignation of Benny Gantz from Israel's emergency government, the proposed ceasefire deal, Israel's ongoing ground campaign in Rafah, and more.  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript   Stay Connected Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

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00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, senior editor at Forbes. On Sunday, Israeli war cabinet member

00:08Benny Gantz announced his resignation from the emergency war government. This produced

00:14shockwaves across the media. And here to explain more is Dr. Jonathan Shanzer. He is the executive

00:21vice president for research at FDD. He was also a terrorism financial analyst for U.S. Treasury

00:28in his past life. And he's here to give us the 50,000 foot view about what all of this means

00:34for the future of the war in Israel and what we should all know. Jonathan, thank you so much for

00:39joining us. My pleasure. So let's start very, very broadly. What exactly is this emergency war

00:48cabinet? Sure. Well, there are actually three people that are making or that have been making

00:54the major decisions in this war. There has been a unity government, which is a much wider

01:00patchwork of politicians that joined the government in the aftermath of 10-7 to project a certain

01:07amount of unity. But there have been three people that have been making the decisions. The first,

01:11no surprise, that's Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. The second, probably also no

01:17surprise, and that that's Yoav Galant. He's the defense minister. But they brought in the former

01:24chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, a guy by the name of Benny Gantz. He controls

01:32somewhere around eight seats out of the 120 in Israel's legislature in the Knesset. He does not

01:39make up a huge component of the government, but his participation in that war cabinet was seen as

01:48perhaps a means to legitimize the decisions that were being made, that it was maybe a reflection

01:53of the center left or maybe just the center of Israel. And he, about a month and a half ago,

02:00came out and said that he was demanding of Netanyahu that he needed to see a plan for the

02:07end state in the Gaza Strip. He needed a plan for how to defeat Hamas, and he needed a plan for how

02:14to get the hostages home. He did not get that. After several weeks of waiting, he didn't get

02:21a satisfactory answer. In the meantime, there were signs that he was working perhaps more closely

02:27with the White House against the Netanyahu government or perhaps against Netanyahu himself.

02:34He was invited to Washington last month. He came actually over the objections of the prime

02:40minister, who was clearly and visibly unhappy about all of this. And then several weeks later,

02:46we see his announcement. One last thing I'll just note is that he was actually supposed to make his

02:50announcement on Saturday, but that was the day that Israel went in and saved those four hostages

02:57in that daring rescue operation. And so in other words, when Gantz was about to make his

03:03announcement, it was overtaken by events. It was not the day for him to make a major announcement

03:09like that. It was going to be overtaken by the headlines. So he postponed it by a day, but the

03:14end result was the same. We knew that he was going to do this. And so now there's an open question

03:19about whether someone else will come in and be part of these war cabinet deliberations. And then

03:23I think there's also the bigger question, which is, will the Netanyahu government begin to unravel?

03:30So far, the polls show that Gantz is the one that has lost the support of the Israeli public,

03:37not Netanyahu. But of course, again, that comes amidst this daring rescue operation that undeniably

03:44lifted Netanyahu. The question is how long it keeps him up in that higher number

03:51range, or whether we begin to see that support flag over time as people begin to forget about

03:57that rescue operation. So Gantz had said last month that he wanted to see a plan for the hostage

04:03release and basically a plan to end the conflict in Gaza, and he did not get that.

04:09What does his resignation mean for the future of this war in Gaza? Or what do you think it means?

04:16Actually, very little, I think, at least for the short term, medium term, long term, we don't know.

04:22But I think it's fair to say that the Israeli people are defiant right now. They're getting

04:30a lot of pressure from the US, from the UN, from the International Criminal Court, from the

04:35International Court of Justice. There is really a well-coordinated campaign right now to try to

04:41force Israel to stop fighting a war that it neither started nor wanted. But the Israeli public wants to

04:49finish off Hamas. They don't want to let this terrorist group continue to exist in the Gaza

04:55Strip and to be able to rebuild its capabilities to be able to attack again and to kill 1,200 people,

05:01as we saw happen on 10-7, or to be able to kidnap 240 people, as we saw that happen on 10-7.

05:07So the Israeli public is basically with Netanyahu. Now, that doesn't mean that he as a person is

05:16as wildly popular as some might think. I think he still has baggage, and any leader that's been

05:21around for as long as he has, he's going to have as detractors. But the Israeli public is not

05:27interested in capitulating, and they're not interested in bending a knee, not to the United

05:31States, not to the UN, not to anybody, when it is their security that is at stake here. And so I

05:38think it's for that reason that Gantz may have miscalculated. It could be the beginning of the

05:44unraveling. It could be. But at least for right now, short-term, we really don't have any indication

05:50that this government is that much less stable. I do think, though, that Netanyahu is going to

05:55have some tough choices about who he brings in to replace Gantz. You know, if the idea is to bring

06:02in somebody with the kind of credibility that Gantz had as a former chief of staff of the army,

06:07that's going to be harder to replace. I think there are fewer and fewer people of his ilk

06:13that have the ability to step into that role, and that may be something that Netanyahu misses. But

06:18again, I don't see the Israeli public bending here a whole lot on the question of the war aims itself.

06:26You referenced the polling, which I think is really interesting, because

06:30prior to Gantz's resignation, there had been some reports suggesting he was popular enough to mount

06:35a real challenge in an election, a challenge against Netanyahu. Does that still hold?

06:42Could he still, in an election, become the next prime minister of Israel?

06:47Yeah, I mean, anything's possible. But I think that one of the things that made him popular was

06:53that he was actually part of the government. Then as soon as he steps away from the government,

06:57he begins to lose support. And it's amazing, but we think about things here in the United States,

07:02we talk about our two parties, right? And it's complicated enough when a third-party person

07:08comes in and begins to eat away at some of the votes that would normally go to the Republicans

07:13or the Democrats. In Israel, you've got like a dozen parties, and it is three-dimensional chess

07:20trying to figure out who's going to win. And if you decide if you're going to vote for one party

07:25because you like that party, or do you vote for another party because you think it's the one that

07:29will bring in the party that you like into a coalition, it is incredibly difficult to game

07:34all of this out. And so when we look at these polls, whether the past polls when Gantz was in

07:40government or the polls now where he's out, it's still a crapshoot. No one really has any clear idea

07:46how Israelis will vote until the day that they walk into that polling station and pull the

07:51trigger. The last thing I'll just say on the politics is there's actually a new party that's

07:55being formed right now in Israel, and it includes the former head of the Mossad, a guy by the name

08:00of Yossi Cohen, who is incredibly popular and charismatic and good-looking. We have Naftali

08:06Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, who served for a year in between Bibi's terms,

08:13and a number of other potentially very powerful figures that have been in the Israeli political

08:19arena for quite some time. They're going to start pulling in numbers, but no one has any idea whether

08:25they will pull enough. Again, once those polling stations open, people start making some interesting

08:31decisions. This is not anything remotely close to what we deal with in the U.S. It's far more

08:38complicated, and I never try to predict who's going to win anything in the Israeli elections.

08:43And a lot of the time, as we've seen in the past, they actually end up being a draw,

08:47where the Israelis go to the polls and the numbers are inconclusive, and they have to go do it again.

08:53It'll be interesting to see how this one starts to play out, but right now, there is nothing

08:58forcing the Israelis to go to elections. Right now, all of this is just sort of idle chatter

09:04until someone else decides to depart the coalition, and that's not happened yet.

09:10In his resignation, Gantz did suggest or maybe push for an election in the fall,

09:15and we saw on Saturday night, after the news of the hostages, the four that had been rescued,

09:21there were protesters that filled the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,

09:25some in support of a deal for further hostage release, but others calling for an election.

09:31Are these calls for elections a distraction from the broader conflict and the push for a ceasefire?

09:40Well, it's interesting. In the 10 months leading up to the 10-7 attacks of last year,

09:46there were protests like these massive protests out on the streets, people calling for Benjamin

09:53Netanyahu to resign, primarily because he was actually trying to reform the judiciary. He was

09:58trying to overhaul it in ways that felt anti-democratic to a large number of Israelis.

10:04I believe that in many ways, those protests actually yielded the 10-7 attacks. I'm convinced

10:12that the enemies of Israel were watching the unrest, and they were thinking that this was

10:16actually an ideal moment to attack, and so when we see these large protests coming out into the

10:24streets again, I do think it's a distraction. I do think that it gives the enemies of Israel a

10:31sense that perhaps there is another opportunity, that the Israeli people are divided, that they

10:37are split over their own leadership, let alone what the way forward would be for victory in Gaza

10:44or in any of the other fronts that have opened that Israel is fighting on. There are, by the way,

10:49six or seven of those by my count right now, and so yes, I think that it could be a distraction.

10:55It could undermine the stability of the government, but I think we need to acknowledge

10:59something here, that Israel is a democracy, a vibrant one, and the people obviously have a right

11:05to go out and protest whether there's a war or there isn't a war, and if they have strong opinions

11:11about their leadership, they have every right to express it. We just need to keep a close eye on

11:17the way in which these things are interpreted by some very vicious enemies of Israel.

11:24Jonathan, you mentioned the path forward, and of course today, U.S. Secretary of State Antony

11:30Blinken is in Israel, his eighth trip. He's pushing for a ceasefire deal. The U.N. Security Council

11:36approved that deal on Monday. What is your outlook for this conflict? Will we see an end anytime soon?

11:43Look, right now what we're hearing is the U.S. may be pursuing a side deal with Hamas, which

11:49on the one hand could release five hostages, on the other hand could be a real boost to the

11:54credibility or the street cred of Hamas in the Middle East, and I think that is highly problematic,

12:00and even I think the rumors of this could be potentially very damaging, because what we're

12:05looking at right now, and there are some quotes today in the Wall Street Journal from Hamas leader

12:11Yahya Sinwar, who essentially came out and said that he views the deaths of civilians,

12:18the bloodshed of Palestinians, as something positive for the war effort, that every time

12:25another Palestinian is killed, that what this does is it actually boosts his cause, whether

12:32it's here in the United States and people protesting for or on behalf of Hamas, or in

12:39the region itself, and that's what really concerns me right now, is we have a Hamas leadership that

12:45does not seem willing to bend, and the Israelis do not want to stop fighting until they get

12:51all the hostages back, and there's around 120 of them right now, but they also want Hamas to

12:57have lost its ability to fight moving forward, and I think that's where you're going to see that

13:02rub, you're going to see the friction there. Hamas believes that it's winning this war because of

13:08the terrible PR that Israel is incurring, and the pressure that is being placed on Israel by

13:14actors across the international system, and so if they think they're winning, and the Israelis know

13:18that they have the military capability to end this war, and the only thing stopping Israel

13:24from doing that is the international community, you can get a sense we're kind of at a three or

13:28four-way stalemate here, and so I think that the odds of that ending anytime soon are low,

13:35but then there's the other part of it, and I did already mention that there's five or six or seven

13:39different fronts that have already been opened. The Iranian regime has deployed all of its proxies,

13:45so these are proxies that are in Gaza, of course, that's like Hamas, and also those same proxies,

13:51Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they're in the West Bank, you have Hezbollah in Lebanon, you've got Shiite

13:56militias in Iraq and Syria, you've got the Houthis in Yemen, and you've got Iran itself,

14:01which recently fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. Even if this war were somehow

14:08brokered to, you know, a successful close by the UN or by the US, we have to remember here that

14:16there are still, you know, five or six other fronts that are still open and that are still hot,

14:22and the Israelis are going to need to figure out how to deal with them as well, so to me,

14:28as a long-time Middle East watcher, I don't believe that this thing can be wrapped up in

14:32a few weeks. I think there are going to be a lot of loose ends for quite some time. The big one

14:37is on the northern border of Israel with Hezbollah, that's a very powerful proxy of Iran,

14:43a massive military, a massive arsenal of rockets, they've cleared out 100,000 Israeli citizens from

14:50their homes along the northern border, they've burned hundreds if not thousands of acres of

14:56arable land. The Israelis are deeply concerned about that situation right now, and that's going

15:01to really, I think, prolong any end to this conflict. This is, you know, at least two very

15:09hot fronts right now with a bunch of others that could go hot at any moment. You bring up a really

15:14interesting point. We've really been watching Gaza quite closely. We saw the All Eyes on Rafa

15:19social media campaign a few weeks ago, but you are watching the northern border. So what exactly

15:25do people need to know besides what you just said about exactly what is happening on Israel's

15:30northern border? Sure. Well, I mean, look, first of all, Hezbollah is a wholly owned proxy of Iran.

15:36And people need to understand this. And it also happens to have essential full control over the

15:43government of Lebanon. There is no government. In fact, I mean, there's not been a newly elected

15:48government in this country for several years running. They're in massive debt due to Hezbollah

15:53corruption. And so there's really there's no structure to work with right now. So there are

15:59all these different, including the U.S. government, the French government, they're all trying to work

16:02with the Lebanese to try to, you know, avert a full blown conflict. But they don't have legitimate

16:09partners to work with. And so, of course, those efforts are failing. I mentioned the 200,000

16:14rockets. That's obviously very concerning for the Israelis. That's something like seven times the

16:19amount that Hamas had at the beginning of the war in October of last year. That's a massive amount

16:25of rockets that can come into Israel on any given day if a full blown war begins. They also have

16:32what they call precision guided munitions, about 1500 of those that are extremely accurate and that

16:38can hit strategic targets in Israel, like their purported nuclear facility, for example, which

16:45could create a mass casualty event. And the Israelis have been very wary of what might occur

16:51if a full blown war erupts. You could see, you know, skyscrapers topple in Israel, sort of like

16:57what we saw on 9-11 here in this country. So there is a massive war that is just I mean, I talked to

17:04an Israeli diplomat the other day who told me that we're 30 seconds to midnight in terms of this

17:11conflict. And it would be, in my view, the largest and most destructive war that we have seen in a

17:18century in the Middle East. And, you know, obviously, there's a lot of competition for destructive wars.

17:25So this is a very scary one. And I think that, you know, the headlines have been misleading,

17:30that, you know, in Gaza, Israel's on the five yard line. They're very close to finishing off

17:35what they started, and they just need the US to essentially give the green light.

17:40But that does not really, I mean, it pales in comparison to what we could see on the northern

17:46border. That's where Israel has deployed a massive amount of assets. They've kept, I think,

17:51three quarters of their air force free, so that they are able to handle the northern border if

17:56and when that conflict erupts. We are 30 seconds to midnight from what you say could be the largest,

18:04most consequential conflict in the Middle East in a century. What could stop the hands of the

18:11clock from ticking all the way to midnight there? It's a good question. I mean, there is a school

18:18of thought that says, let Israel finish its war in Gaza. And then at that point, Hezbollah may

18:24stop fighting. In other words, it would be a sign from the US or from the West that, you know,

18:31Israel has the support of its allies, and that after that, Israel would be able to turn its

18:38sights fully to the north, potentially, again, with the backing of the West. That's one way this

18:43thing could work. Another way is, of course, a brokered solution, but that would mean that

18:48Hezbollah has to be willing to stand down and to evacuate its forces something like 10 miles

18:55north of the border. There is a river, it's called the Litani River. There is already a

19:00UN Security Council resolution that calls for no armed forces, irregular armed forces below the

19:07Litani River at that 10 mile marker. Hezbollah has been in gross violation of that Security Council

19:13resolution for nearly, I guess, gosh, two decades now. And so unless we're somehow able to convince

19:20Hezbollah to do that, I'm not sure how this is going to work, but diplomacy could somehow still

19:27prevail. The other way is to actually hold Iran accountable. And I actually think that this is

19:33really the answer that is needed here, that Iran needs to be convinced that if it continues to

19:39support all of its proxies that are waging war across the Middle East right now, that unless

19:44they bring those proxies to heel, that there could be a terrible price diplomatically, economically,

19:49even militarily. But right now, what we've seen from the US, from the UN, from the Europeans,

19:55is really an attempt to continue to engage with the regime. And I find this so shocking that the

20:01Iranian regime has not been held to account for a war that they have sponsored. You have

20:07to remember, it's their arms, their weapons, their money, their training, their ideological

20:13indoctrination that has Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, all of these proxies, they are doing

20:20this at the behest of the Islamic Republic. And for some reason, the pressure has not been on Iran

20:26to this point. I have long held from the moment that this thing erupted in October of last year,

20:33that unless we put the right kind of pressure on the Iranians, we're not going to get anywhere in

20:38terms of curbing this conflict. The pressure that we see on Israel right now, as it defends itself,

20:45is really hard to believe. I've never seen anything like this before. The mounting

20:49international pressure on a country that didn't want the war, that didn't start the war,

20:55and that's trying to recover hostages, how they're the ones that are receiving this pressure

21:00from around the world is shocking to me. The aggressor here has been Iran and its proxies.

21:07That's where I think the effort needs to be if we're to try to stop the clock at 30 seconds

21:12before midnight. The pressure needs to be on Iran. Dr. Jonathan Shanzer, thank you so much

21:18for joining us. We so appreciate your insight and hope to have you back soon. My pleasure.

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