October 17, 2025 • 50 mins
Two years after Oct 7, a US-brokered ceasefire takes hold in Gaza: living Israeli hostages are freed, the IDF pulls back to a predefined "yellow line," leaders fly into Sharm el-Sheikh to toast Donald Trump, and we hear talk of a "new Middle East." But how durable is this peace and what do we make of India's tightrope act?
In this episode, Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan break down:
- What the Gaza deal actually does and what it carefully avoids
- Can deal ensure lasting peace or is this yet another ebb in the decades-long cycle of violence
- Who governs Gaza next: PA technocrats, an interim force, or a messy vacuum
- Whether two years of devastation have become recruitment fuel for Hamas or its successor
- What's at stake for India and why PM Modi chose to skip the Egypt summit
Tune in!
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound Mixed by Rohan Bharti
In this episode, Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan break down:
- What the Gaza deal actually does and what it carefully avoids
- Can deal ensure lasting peace or is this yet another ebb in the decades-long cycle of violence
- Who governs Gaza next: PA technocrats, an interim force, or a messy vacuum
- Whether two years of devastation have become recruitment fuel for Hamas or its successor
- What's at stake for India and why PM Modi chose to skip the Egypt summit
Tune in!
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound Mixed by Rohan Bharti
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to Season three of
Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army,
Navy and Air Force to decode all things to do
(00:21):
with India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
is in Our Defense. Welcome to an Our Defense. There's
a new dawn in the Middle East, said US President
Donald Trump this week as he welcomed and hailed a
(00:44):
ceasefire negotiated by him. This one actually was negotiated by him,
actually to end fighting in Gaza that's been going on
for the last two years. As part of the deal Hamas,
which carried out the October seven terrorist tack on Israel,
killing more than one thousand Israelies, has released all living
hostages it had from that day of the attack, and Israel,
(01:05):
which has been bombing Gaza relentlessly for the last two years,
it has agreed to sort of fall back to a
yellow line, the line in Gaza beyond which Israel will
not operate at least for now. Several things have happened
this week. Actually, So Trump was in Israel where he
was welcomed at the Israeli Parliament. He was there with
his family, Vanka Trump was the Jared Kushner was there,
(01:25):
some of his officials or they were hailed. They were
hailed Natanya who placed him. Then he went to Egypt
where there was a World summit where India did not
send Prime minister another remodi. And that's something we'll talk
about in this episode. Uh, but is this really a
New Dawn? Is this something that actually is what Trump
(01:49):
claims to be lasting peace in Gaza? Will this deal
ensure that? I don't know? And that's why I have
with me San to answer those questions.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Hey, they good, They're good to be back New Dawn
O DWN.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh that's a good question. Actually it's a very good question.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
You know, I think Trump's going to be a very
getting very sound sleep this week. I think He's been
praised left, right and center by several people, something he
deeply enjoys. Natanya, who said that he has moved the
world in ways that he has never seen any previous
US president. D Shaba Sharif who was there at the
(02:29):
Egypt conference. He called him a man, a great pan
of peace uh, and also gave out a nice lecture
again praising him. Uh. He's very very happy this week.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think delighted. He's delighted, Dave. And you know last
week it was he was down in the dumbs because
he didn't get the right They rushed that peace deal through.
You remember that famous the slip Rubio handing in the
slip to say that, look, you got to announce it.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That's a familiar playbook. We've seen that play out in
India and Pakistan as well. But you know, we'll come
to that later. But the fact is that the guy
has pulled it off. He has negotiated a historic end
to fighting. I don't call it. It is a red
letter day in the Middle East, But I don't see
it as being a permanent settlement for the Middle I mean,
(03:16):
there is no permanent solution. The permanent solutions, as we've
all seen in the past couple of years, they've all
turned out to be very very temporary breaks in fighting us.
But this one seems to be more permanent than the
previous ones that we've seen.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And we'll do decode exactly that, but just a bit
more on Trump. Also, by the way, he has yet
another conflict to resolve, and we will actually want to
discuss that this week. But then we thought we'll talk
about Gaza because I personally have a lot of questions,
which one is this is not? The second conflict is yes.
He actually told reporters there's one more conflict going on.
I'm going to resolve that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And there's there's North Korea. That's the ten. So there's
number nine which is half back, and number ten which
is North Korea South Korea.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He loves solving conflicts and as the White Horse has
called him, right, But before we talk about the Gaza
dels and the fact, the very interesting fact that it's
quite vague, which actually is what I think sort of
helped both Ishma sort of come on board. But before
we do that, I want to talk about the fact
that PM Modi was not present at the Egypt summit.
(04:21):
The reasons would be fairly obvious. I think the southburg
would be very worried that Trump. Knowing what Trump does,
he would have just pulled sort of pmod and Shaba
Sharif and made them shake hands and done so they
sent the Minister of State instead. At the summit. However,
Sashi Taru made a very interesting tweet which I think
is worth discussing, is that do you think that this
(04:43):
was necessary? India could have, for example, have had bactional
talks with the US and made it very clear that
do not do something of that sort. Because Sashi is
the road, for example, says he doesn't say it is.
He says this could be a mised opportunity in the
sense that in the future, what India has to say
(05:03):
on this matter, on this conflict may not be taken
as seriously because you did not send your premier to
the summit. You'll take on this.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Well, they've a good question. But you know, the thing
is that you're dealing with a very unpredictable American president,
an American president who's predictable only in his unpredictability. Right.
He's a reality show post right, and he makes his
own rules. He makes these rules as he goes on. Now,
I think South Bloc has kind of figured out Trump
(05:32):
right now. And you know, Prime Minister Modi he's a
long term player. He's looking at a big and both
both the politicians they're looking at legacy, right, Trump is
looking at his legacy. He's unfortunately got a very short
period of time to carry out his legacy, which is
about another three and a half years. Prime Minister Modi
has been there for eleven years. He's got another four years,
(05:53):
possibly another term after that, who knows. But the fact
is that he's a serious politician, right, And a lot
of other politicians in the world. You may argue about
them being dictators, and you know Hi Jinping for instance,
bloodmir Putin. These are serious politicians. They don't like this
kind of unscripted stuff where you know, you pull somebody
over there and you push them together and which Trump
(06:15):
revels them. You know, it's another way of Trump asserting
his power and his influence. Where you saw the way
he treated the UK Prime minister Kstam. I don't think
a UK Prime minister has ever been treated that humilating.
And you saw the what he did to the Pakistani
prime minister. South Block is right in figuring out, look,
if Prime minister he was as you said, what was
(06:37):
to prevent him from say, oh, he listen, why didn't
you just meet Shabaz over a year in front of
live cameras. Yeah, that is something that we would not countenance,
and I think that is why they made sure that
not even foreign a suggestion curvent. It was a Minister
of State who went there as the Prime Minister's emissary.
But you know, the thing is that I think we're
(06:59):
going to see very few unscripted interactions between Trump and
Prime Minister Mode because they obviously worry about the impact
of this on Prime Minister Movie. He is not given
to such spontaneous spontaneity, you know, addressing, you know, reporters
of the cuff everything for him. He likes it to
be scripted. In a sense, Trump is exactly the opposite.
(07:22):
He's you know, shoots, he plays it by the year,
and he invents his things as he moves on. You know,
So this kind of unpredictability would not work. And I
think it's the right thing that the Government of India
did in not sending the Prime minister, ensuring that the
Prime Minister neverment. And you know, like I said, it's
going to be fewer and fewer of Trump and Prime
(07:46):
Minister Mody interactions in this kind of a light because
simply because Trump is fixator on the thing that he
is the peace president he needs to get Nobel in
twenty twenty six. This time, they're going to file the
nominations in time. I'm sure January first, twenty twenty six
is the cutoff date. Trump is surely going to be
there for the one of the front runners for twenty
(08:07):
twenty six, and you have to give it to him, right.
Nobody thought the Israel Hamas t would be worked out
this way, And there is some truth to the fact
that he may have played a role in some of
the other conflicts. The rest of it is like it's
about fifty or sixty percent of it is overinflated. This
is what American presidents do most of the time, true, exactly,
except for you know, two very in your face conflicts.
(08:30):
One was, of course, the Israel Hamas thing, which showed
no signs of ending. Biden couldn't solve it. And the
other ones, of course, the Russia. You trained, if Trump
can crack Russia Ukraine for instance, there's nothing to prevent
him from being a sure shot Nobel contender for twenty
twenty six Longest War in Europe entering year four next year.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah right, yeah, I mean with other conflicts and the
India Pakistan, which again he loves claiming that he helped stop.
It's just you always usually plays the role of let's say,
like a postman, Yeah yeah, it is from one country
and give it to them and you just sort of
they did that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
In ninety nine as well, if you remember in Gargil Cargil,
it was slightly different because at that time, just twenty
five years back, India was not in the position then
that it is today where the the the US President
was a kind of uh, you know, whats adoptive father,
especially when it came to Pakistan. So he had to
(09:25):
kind of call Navassehreif and give him a dressing down
in the White House, that very famous meeting where he
entered not from the front door, he entered from one
of the side entrances, just to make that displeasure known.
But Pakistan is the satellites you know country, literally, it's
it's a US ally and is it is bound to
be pushed around, kicked around the way India will never accept,
(09:46):
you know, So that that was something that we would
never countenance the fact that you know, India would be
pulled or you know, all of those things. And this
is going to get tougher for the US to carry
out this kind of diplomacy with India. You know, we
are clearly not a country that is when to be
pushed around the way that the US would with other allies.
(10:07):
I think our position is very clear on that. We
are not, you know, a lackey of the United States, right,
we are a separate pole. There are people who say
that India is a swing state, and you can't be
a swing state and a third pole. Right. We may
not be the most powerful economy in the world. We're
(10:27):
still number three, but we're getting there. A couple of
years from now. There would be no peace deal. There
would be no deal in fact, without India being on board.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, right, So going to Israel and Hamas and Ghaza
and looking at the last two years, and then we'll
talk about how we came to this deal and in
the future. You've said something very interesting after after we
stopped recording last week where we're talking off camera, and
that's something and that's the reason I wanted to do
(10:59):
this episode as well, is that the last two years
of conflict has sort of interesting as like the Gaza
issue to the to the level it never was before
this year itself. For example, You've seen several countries UK, France,
Canada just to name a few, who in the UN
have said that, okay, we will recognize Palestine as a state.
(11:20):
Uh So that two state theory is is quite close
to being a reality, though I think practically speaking it's
going to be impossible to do. But again that's something
we'll discuss in the later half. But why do you
you why do you say that this this has happened
in the last two to two years because what began,
what we thought initially was Israel going to be like
(11:41):
you know, Ki will only attack Hamas because of the
dastardly terrist attack that they did. But instead of over
the last two years, what Netna who has done is
actually taken Iran it's biggest rival, and it's sort of
tried to destroy its access of resistance. You have the
hu this, you have the has well La House of
Fasad In said, yeah, it has fled the scene, like
(12:01):
you said when one of our recent discussions. So how
do you now view now that the fighting has sort
of stopped the last two years and what exactly has
gone down in Gaza?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, firstly, they've what were the compulsions of as and
war when he launched that dastardly attack on Israeli civilians.
And you know, I came out with those seven or
eight broad sweet predictions in the course of a YouTube
discussion about two years back while the attacks were on.
We were trying to make sense of what was going on,
(12:33):
and I didn't have anything else except for the feed
that I was looking around my social media where I
saw unprecedented barbarity, the way Israeli civilians were being killed, men, women, children,
hostages were being taken. Something kind of you know, clicked
and I said, look, there seems to be a certain
method to this madness. The fact is that they wanted
(12:55):
to target Israeli civilians. They wanted to take them as
human shields, which meant they knew exactly what would follow.
You cannot murder twelve hundred Israeli civilians, the largest massacre
of Israeli civilians since the Holocaust, and not have the
State of Israel come after you, which is exactly what happened.
And Hamas anticipated that they took these hostages two hundred
(13:17):
and fifty one hostages as human shields. But I think
even Yaya Sinver didn't predict this kind of Israeli retaliation
in the sense that they thought it was just going
to be another hostage standoff, right, lasting a couple of
days and weeks. He never he grossly underestimated the appetite
(13:38):
of the Israeli state to wage a war of attrition,
and wars of attrition, For those who are watching our
generally wars that continue for months and years. We all
thought that wars of attrition were a thing of the past.
But as the Russians have shown us, as Israelis have
shown us, these are very much in the realm of
possibility and we actually seen them play out. And that
(13:59):
is where Yeah, and were miscalculated. Now, why did Hamas
carry out that attack. They carried out the attack because
they felt the Palestinian issue was taking a back seat.
You may hate the guy, but you have to understand
the motivations behind the Palestinians. There are a bunch of
smart people and they figured out that they need to
kill a lot of people to internationalize the Palestinian issues.
(14:23):
It's as simple as brutal, as barbaric as that, and
if you look at it, two years from now, he's
succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I call aason, We're a
suicide bomber. He's blown himself up, He's destroyed Hamas, He's
destroyed Hamas, the Gaza Strip, even what's left of everything.
But he was playing at some great civilizational battle with
(14:46):
Israelis where he thinks that all of this is acceptable damage.
While he may have miscalculated the size of the retaliation,
I mean two years from now, you have to actually
look at the way things have to. So many tens
of of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinians have died. Something
like sixty or seventy thousand people have died. The Gaza
(15:08):
Strip is just troubled. Ninety percent of the buildings are
all destroyed. It's going to take twenty years to clear
and clean them and rebuild that place. But the Hamas,
in its barbarity, had a plan. This is exactly what
they wanted. They wanted to internationalize the you know, resurrect
the whole Palestinian thing. And while you may argue that
(15:30):
Israel has succeeded, it is today the most pre eminent
military power in West Asia. I don't think even the
Turks would want to take them on. The Iranians are shattered,
right they've lost all the nuclear capabilities. They are a
shadow of their former self, all of their so called
access of resistance. It's in smoldering ruins. The House of
us Are, which has stood for half a century, is collapsed.
(15:52):
Which is why I say that, you know, sinwar is
a bit like that Serbian nationalist Gavriel Princes who fired
and shot and killed the Archduke fransfer In and started
the First World War r the Second World War. And
what we miss is that countries like the Arab countries
West Asia is a very fragile society. They're primarily tribal
(16:15):
societies where they're living in territories that have been drawn
by the European powers. Psychic pickered lines and all that.
There's just absolute straight lines that the Europeans were basically
carved up the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed
after Gabriel Princeps in famous bullet, the Ottomans collapsed, the
(16:39):
great Pawers just devoured the what was left of the
empire they built. They drew those lines. They said, this
is Syria, this is Iraq, this is Saudi Arabia, this
is Jordan. They created countries where nothing had existed, but
an empire, and when you carry out such great acts
of violence like you saw in theeen ninety one the
(17:00):
Gulf Storm one, then you had two thousand and three
the US invasion of Iraq, cut to the war in
Syria with the Arab Spring, and now what Hamas did
in two thousand and twenty three. These are huge tectonic
events that reshape the destinies of all of these countries investation.
(17:21):
You know, I can bet the ten years down the line,
we'll still be talking about the seventh of October, because
it is that kind of a you know, a break
in a continuum of ten twenty years. And you know,
like I said two years back, the whole region, it's
it's all about violence and counter violence. And you know,
(17:42):
you'll have one struggle, then you'll have a peace process,
then there's going to be a ten to twenty year break,
and then there will be another upsurge of violence. And
every cycle of violence is sewn in the previous circle
of cycle of violence, and which is what we're seeing
over you know, sixe thousand people dead, seventy thousand people dead.
(18:02):
What's to prevent another Hamas or you know, a far
right even further right from what the Hammas is today.
The Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a far
more extreme version of the Palestinians. The PLO right Hammas
is far more extreme to that. Tomorrow they might be
(18:23):
another extremist outfit which is even more right wing than Hamas.
And this is the pattern that we've been seeing, you know,
in the Middle East, West Asia for so many decades. So,
I mean, the Trump peace plan, it's great, it's a
pause in the fighting. It's stopped the whole thing. But
I don't give it a you know, something more than
ten or fifteen years. It's just a matter of time
(18:44):
before something else happens, because you know, the ground swell
is there. There is, you know, an underlying current of
hatred violence. It is of course the whole thing of
the State of Israel that the Arabs have not reconciled
to the State of Israel. And one of the reasons
(19:04):
that Jayasin we carried out that attack was because he
feared that the Arabs were coming on board with the
Abraham Accords. Two big countries, three Muslim countries had recognized
the two Arab three Arab countries, in fact, had recognized
the State of Israel. It was only a matter of
time before you would see one of the most historic
(19:26):
handshakes of the twenty first century, which is the Saudi
Arabians and the UI recognizing the State of Israel. He
had to stop that, and that's the reason he did
seventh of October twenty twenty three. Of course, you had
many other collateral because of that, which was the India
Middle East Economic Corridor, and that's off the table now
till the Southeast and the UE doesn't come on. But
(19:49):
this gives us a chance now to relook at things.
Now possibly at some point the Southeast might come around
to recognizing Israel. And of course, you know, getting that,
I make back on track. But that was that one
big flashpoint. And now you're going to see a couple
of years of peace and then who knows what happens
after them in West Asia. You know, you can't look
(20:11):
beyond ten or fifteen.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Years, right, right, But you know, there's another thing that
happened in the last two years. So we're talking about
the military setbacks that has faced, the military destruction that
Hamas is Hamas's face, but there's also been a large
scale destruction in Gaza there are very valid accusations of genocide,
(20:34):
of a Humanitian crisis that was fomented on purpose by Israel,
to the point that you now have several Western countries
not being able to ignore that anymore, except perhaps the US.
I think many countries have spoken out about this and
spoken out against Israel on this, which makes me think,
and I wonder why no one's talking more about this.
Isn't this the perfect recruitment tool for Hamas or a
(20:57):
future Hamas or of Hammas too, get more people to
join that cause, and then you know, yeah, that's exactly
about that.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, I see, I give it about ten fifteen years
from this peace process. I mean, this peace process is great,
but it is not going to permanently solve this problem.
Even if there is a Palestinian state, it is going
to be a state that is going to be, you know,
riven with resentment and deep seated hatred and anger, and
that's going to remain there because, you know, the fundamental
(21:29):
problem is that the Arab countries have not reconciled to
the existence of Israel. The leaders may recognize that they
may shake hands with Israel, but the Arab populations have
not reconciliate, and you will always find groups that will
you know, seduce people like this Isis will come up,
they will be Hamas, they will be all of these
guys al Kaala will come up and say that, look,
(21:52):
you know, the existence of the state of Israel is
anithma to us, and which is why you have all
these kinds of slogans like from the River to the
ce and what does all this mean. It actually means
the destruction of the State of Israel. So they're not
reconcilt to the nineteen forty eight you know, reality and
(22:14):
events like this only make the two state solutions seem,
you know, very distant. You know, a dream of nineteen
sixty seven. Basically you have an Israeli state, a Jewish state,
and a Palestinian state existing side by side as for
the nineteen sixty seven borders. But so much has changed
on the ground now. I mean, there are Israeli settlements
(22:36):
in the West Bank. The Palestinians they don't want this
half eaten mouth, eaton state. They want all of it.
They want to reclaim what Palestine was before nineteen forty eight.
You know, that's where the you know, logic is. So
these are irreconcilible differences. They had the best deal in
nineteen ninety two, the Palestinians, they didn't take it, which
(23:00):
is the Oslo Accords, with supervised by another US president,
Bill Clinton. And because of that, you've seen this entire
thing play out of the last three four decades, the
rise of Hamas for instance, and this weaponization of Palestine
in victimhood, which has resulted in this catastrophe of the
seventh of October.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah right, you'll talk more about this.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
But after a quick break, I was alone in the car,
sixteen to eighteen hours of no sleep, just driving and
competitive driving. Those temperatures, those temperatures, those altitudes. During the
transfer stage. I turn a corner and I see this
real kid. Okay, he's got a mirror under his arm,
(23:44):
and mirror like a mirror, okay, And the mirror is
slim and long, and it's about the length of the road.
And the level to which your mind can play checks
on you is apparent by just the details, so that
this kid, who obviously can't carry a mirror that long,
is running along the road with the mirror under his arm.
(24:06):
What freaked me out is how clearly I could see myself,
my car, the ox slides in the mirror. I slammed
the brakes the moment I slammed the bricks, obviously, I
guess adrenaline whatever kicked in and the kid was gone.
But that is the extent to which we end up
(24:27):
pushing ourselves sometimes and like the crazy, crazy experiences that
we have as a result, and the mixture of no
sleep and I mean almost being in a stage driving
in the flow state while being completely exhausted.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Welcome back, Synthipa. I now want to move on to
the deal, the actual deal itself, and I want from you.
So before in the first half, you talked about how
this is perhaps the best at at sort of bringing
peace to this Middle Eastern conflict that's been reading for
half a century now. So in order for us to
understand that, for our listeners and viewers to understand that,
(25:10):
can you sort of compare it to the previous efforts
that have been made and why do you say this
one perhaps is the best attempt? Before we then talk
about the fact that a lot of work is still
to be done. So there's a writer's There was a
writer's analysis where the agency quoted an expert, a foreign
policy expert who said that it's hard to remember international
(25:30):
agreement that left so much to be worked out later
because some context for our listeners and viewers. So, for example,
Hamas has not expressly agreed to the clause about disarming itself.
Is there says that's the most important clause. Hamas we
all know, sees itself as part of a future administration
(25:51):
for Gaza. Israel will never accept that. So those sticking
points remain. But before we talk about that, those sticking points,
just sort of give us a quick recap of the
previous agreement, previous attempts at sort of bringing peace to
the region. Why do you think this stands out and
what do you think this still has yet left to do?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, you know, I think the biggest difference between this
new piece deal of twenty twenty five and the Oslo
Accords of nineteen ninety two was the fact that those
accords didn't come after this kind of violence and bloodshed. Right,
So the first thing that this accord had to do,
if you see, it's a three stage accord, which is
a phase one, Phase two, and phase three. Each phase
(26:32):
is contingent upon the previous phase being realized. So the
first phase is of course to end the fighting, to
stop these rallies from attacking targets inside Gaza. The second phases,
of course, the reconstruction, you start clearing the rubble, rebuilding.
And the third one is of course the longer term
thing of you know, governance and getting the economy and
(26:54):
all that growing. It's very ambitious in its size, scale
and scope, in a way that the Oslo Accords were
where you actually created this nascent Palestinian state. You gave
them the West Bank, you gave them Gaza where of
course the Palestinian authority, the PA, lost control over the
Gaza strip because Hamas took over. Both are very very
(27:17):
important landmark achievements. But this one came, like I said,
came after so much of blood. But you've not seen
this kind of bloodshed in West Asia since possibly the
nineteen seventy three Yom Kippur War. Every other thing has
been you know, low levels of violence simmering over the years.
See what happened in seventy three was that the Arab
(27:39):
countries made one final attempt to fight Israel. So from
forty eight you saw three wars forty eight nineteen forty eight,
then you had nineteen sixty seven, which was a catastrophe
for the Arab countries there because Israel defeated all the
countries around them and redrew the map of you know,
(28:00):
West Asia. Then you have seventy three where the Egyptians
were most strongest militarily surprised the Israelis, but then they
got overwhelmed militarily and Israel, you know, overpowered both Egypt
and Syria in nineteen seventy three. Post that, the Arab
countries have kind of gone on to a path of
supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization the PLO. They gave up
(28:23):
the armed struggle against Israel, and you had this kind
of low level insurgency stroke terrorism where you know, high
profile hijackings and shootouts and assassinations were carried out by
the PLO and Israel was fighting that. Of course, the
other big thing was the arrival of the Islamic Republic
of Iran in nineteen seventy nine. That was the single
(28:45):
biggest tectonic shift which favored the Palestinian Liberation Organizations because
Imam hominy Atolah how many actually backed the PLO. I mean,
this is one of those conundrums we've discussed in the
past where the number one Sunni Arab cause is picked
up by a country that is neither Sunni nor Arab,
(29:05):
which is the Shia Iran. Right, Ishiarran takes this up
because it's all about the leadership of the Islamic world.
Who's the leader going to be? Is it Soau, the
area which holds the two Holy Mosques, is it Turkey,
which is the Ottoman Empire, which believes it's still the
heirs of the Ottoman Empire. Or is it Iran, which
is you know, a continuation of the Persian Empire, the
(29:28):
seat of all Shiadam all of that. So it just
a three cornered contest between these three countries. Now, the
Palestinian cause is the biggest cause in the Muslim world today.
The Iranians picked it up. You come down to about
through the eighties, you see violence, you see you know,
stone throwing, this kind of thing, terror attacks, Yasser Arafat
(29:52):
around whom the PLO revolves, and then finally the oslo
A Cords ninety two and after that you had some
amount of peace. It was a big breather for India,
for instance, because when we re established, we re established
contact with Israel. Formal diplomatic recognition of Israel came after
the nineteen ninety two oslow course, and India's you know
(30:17):
thing has been very consistent. From the past. We've been
tilting heavily towards the Palestinian cause, but post nineteen ninety
two we became more you know, course, more friendly to Israel,
and they're one of our top strategic partners. We are
Israel's largest defense exploer, you know, customer. So there have
(30:39):
been very deep relations that have been built up between
India and Israel. But at the same time, even the
present government has continued a policy of recognizing the two
nation settlement, which is Israel on one side and the
Palestinian an independent Palestine on the other side. So, in
terms of looking at these two accord the Oslo cards
(31:01):
Visavi this, I mean, the obvious difference is that it's ended.
It's come after such great suffering, such great tragedy. I
mean physical destruction of the Gaza strip. I mean you've
seen the visuals. There is literally nothing standing there, no
buildings there, everything has been bombed and ground to dustin
(31:21):
fifty sixty thousand people killed. And that is also the
biggest problem, which is actually going to work against the
second and the third phases of this agreement. Phase one
is of course, the immediate stop to the hostilities, the
prisoner exchange, the hostage exchange, the remains, the repetration of
the remains of the twenty odd hostages that still are there.
(31:45):
They possibly don't even know where those bodies are buried,
right of the hostages which they took in the seventh
of October. So you're looking at a peace process that
is staggered over several years. It goes down to twenty
twenty seven. There are a lot of moving parts to this.
And the thing is that Trump believes that he can
(32:05):
oversee this through his presidency, so which is why it
is very cleverly structured. It ends in about twenty seven
to twenty eight, and he's going to be the head
of the peace board that is going to oversee this,
and they're going to be no American boots on the ground.
Very interesting, they're no American boots on the ground. But
(32:27):
at the same time, it is going to oversee the
reconstruction of the Gaza strip, this three phase plan without
forcing the Palestinians out, and that's a very big thing.
Because a couple of months back, everyone heard Trump saying,
you know which country was going to take the Palestinians.
It was very loudly asking Willship take them? Will some
other country take them? Something like that. So which was
(32:48):
you're talking of the forcible displacement of the Palestinians. Now,
to give your viewers an idea, how big the Gaza
Strip is. The Gaza Strip is about four hundred square kilometers.
It is the size of the Indian Union territory of Pondicherry,
but with double the population. Now Pondicherry has about a
(33:10):
million people, the Gaza Strip has two million people. It's
one of the most densely populated places on Earth. And
with this peace plan, this Trump supervised peace plan, you're
looking at reconstruction and you know all of those funny
things he said about it being the riviera of the
(33:31):
you know, West Asia, and it is a real estate
developer's view on how to settle conflict, right I mean.
And the reappearance of Jared Kushner that was very interesting
when I saw him in that when the peace deal
was being negotiated. Was it the twenty ninth of September?
Around that time, I said there's something here because Kushner
(33:51):
has vanished in the second Trump presidency. He was nowhere
to be seen, and now he's reappeared, and it's very
clear that has brought him back to oversee not just
this peace deal, but also the unfinished legacy of the
Abraham Accords, which is the final act of the Abraham
Accords is like we discussed Saudi Arabia and the UA,
(34:14):
you know, normalizing relations with Israel. But of course the
quid proko for that is that Israel has to allow
the creation of a Palestinian states. And that is that
will you know, that is a solution that will bring
lasting peace to the Middle East. But this agreement, the
Trump and Supervised agreement, doesn't create the Palestinian state. It
(34:36):
creates the conditions that will enable the creation of a
Palestinian state. So it is all about exchanging the prisoners, remains,
stopping the fighting, rebuilding all of the devastation, and hopefully
setting in place the process that was stalled after the
Oslo Accords of the nineteen ninety two. So the next stage,
(34:57):
after this peace accord, both sides can sit and then decide, Look,
how realistic is a two state solution is it even possible.
Will Israel, for instance, which is which has the most
right wing Israeli government in its history, will they agree,
for instance, to take back the settlers. There are hundreds
of thousands of settlers in the West Bank. Prime Minister
(35:21):
Nathania who depends on the survival, on his political survival,
he depends on the right wingers for his survival. So
what kind of compromises are they going to make? It?
Is this just going to be another two three year
term before Trump moves out and then they do business again,
you know, take up the deal again with another American
(35:42):
president who comes in. So lots of unanswered questions. But
short answer to your long answer to your short question,
and my short response to that is it is as
historic as the nineteen ninety two Oslo agreement in the
sense that it ends, this ends these massacres, ends this violence,
sets the path for reconstruction, rebuilding. It is a historic agreement.
(36:07):
But it all, you know, it all depends on how
they're going to implement it. It is so complicated in
its execution. It's very easy to put it on paper,
you know, phase one, phase two, phase three. But at
the end of the day, there are humans involved in this,
A lot of humans. Families have died, Entire communities have
been wiped out on both sides, on both Israeli and
(36:29):
on the Palestinian side. How is all this going to
happen like clockwork, like they've outlined in that, you know,
and without phase one being done, phase two cannot start.
Without phase two being done, phase three cannot happen. So
it's very ambitious in its scale and scope. It's the
perfect real estate redevelopment plan for Gaza. But how it
(36:52):
plays out on the ground, I mean, that remains to
be seen.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, that remains to be seen, which is perhaps why
I think it's futile to ask you the question of
the practicality of the two state solution because it all depends,
like you've said right now, on the several moving parts
that you can't really predict right now. But the one
thing that we know is going to happen in Israel
in a year's time our elections. Yes, And that has
(37:15):
led to somebodies that you know, Israel or Natanya, who
may feel the need to be perhaps to not perhaps
follow some conditions of the of the of the of
the current agreement based on whatever technicalities that he can
point out here. They have not met this one. So
you know, we will keep continuing our invasion. Do you
think that's also a reality, and that the upcoming election
(37:38):
is Israel also play a vital role in deciding the
future of this piece attempt.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Well, absolutely, And you know, let's not forget that before
the seventh of October, Prime Minister Nathan Yahoo was a
deeply embattled politician. He had been indicted by his parliament
of very serious charges of corruption against him. But since
then he is kind of resurrected himself as a politician,
as a war politician, and he's kept fighting two years
(38:07):
and he's brought Israel to the stage when it has
actually got all the hostages back, it's going to get
the remains of the other hostages also. So in a sense,
there is an element of mission unaccomplished if you look
at it, which is the destruction of Hamas, which he
had been asking for, and in fact, one of the
twenty points of the Trump agreement was for Hamas to demilitarize,
(38:29):
to surrender its weapons. Now we don't see that happening,
and a group even as badly off as Hamas, it's shattered,
all its leaders are killed, an entire generation of leaders
has been wiped out. But Hamas has not surrendered yet,
you know. And for a guerrilla group, a terrorist organization
call it what you may, it wins by not losing,
(38:54):
you know that that's its biggest victory, by surviving, by existing,
Its existence is all about, you know, survival, and that
is what Hamas has also done. It has very canarly
agreed to certain it has agreed to those twenty points,
but it is not it's silent on the question of
demilitarization and you know, surrendering his things. And that is
(39:15):
the biggest h objective that Nathan Yaho has not been
able to accomplish so far, which was of course, he
will protect Israel, They will erect those security fences and
you know, ensure that there is no repeat of another
October seventh kind of an attack. But you have, of
course the demilitarization of you know, destruction of all the
(39:38):
tunnels and ensuring that kind of thing never happens again.
All that will happen. But as long as you have
a group like Hamas still there intact in whatever form, uh,
it will regenerate itself. It will as you mentioned, not
have the a shortage of recruits that are going to
be thousands of people will come again and they can
(39:58):
you know, rebuild themselves, and that that is the biggest
worry for the state of Israel right now. A reborn
Hamas with you know, younger Kado's or you know, not
just Hamas, even his Bola for instance, across the world.
Because finally, it is what I call it, this battle
is all about TFR total fertility rate. It is very
(40:21):
very young populations that you kill, they go to war,
they die, they're reborn again. Because you know, the TFR
on both sides, on both the Israeli and on the
Palestine sides are very high. It's about three for Palestine women,
three for Israeli. So it is a question of, you know,
(40:43):
how long this will continue. And I don't see any
end in sight because you know, like I mentioned, this
is just going to be a cease fire for the
next ten years or so. Who knows what's going to happen.
They will be you know, another Hamas, or they will
be a far more right wing Israeli state that's determined
to wipe out the Hamas kind of. It's it's a
(41:03):
cycle of violence and kind of counter violence. And it
is you know, in a sense, one of those very
very bloody wrestling matches which you will have a break in,
but then the match then, you know, resumes after a
couple of years. And I don't see any big, great
(41:23):
solution in that, because the state of Israel is at
the end of the day, it is constrained by its geography.
It is only the size of the Indian state of
believe it or not, Meghalaya. It's just about twenty thousand
square kilometers. It cannot grow much bigger. Of course, there
is a very you know, vocal section within the Israeli
(41:44):
right wing which call for a greater Israel, saying that
they need to spread into the other countries like Syria
and you know, grab parts of Syria and then you know,
expand the state of Israel so that they become bigger
than their enemies. And but I mean that that seems
to be you know, more like a you know, a
fantasy for now. But the fact is that you're looking
at a very young population, a very radicalized population, and
(42:10):
there is a potential of conflict just down the end
of the road.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Cycle of violence. And I think then the West pit
described this perhaps would be just just another ebb in
that cycle of violence. Right, Okay, last points on the
as we end this episode, and this is about India
circling back to India on the issue. Two tangents a
one sort of I want like a brief history of
(42:36):
India's stand on the issue. That has been that we
have consistently been for the two state solutions. So when
I say history of what I want to understand from
you is how did we birth this stand? And how
and why have we consistently maintained that, like you said
earlier through governments, it's never changed at all, even though
(42:58):
like you said, we have tilted from one set to
the other. Uh, based on our interest obviously, but the
stand has been pretty partic clear that we are for
a two state solution. We support the peaceful existence of
a Palestinian state on its thos. So the history of that,
that's that stand. And second, you know, you quite you
at times get a sense that India seems not to
(43:20):
have too much of a stake in the in the
Israel Gaza situation, about what's happening in West Asia, UH,
and you know, things like PMOD not going for the
Egypt summit sort of furthers that sense, even though we've
discussed that the reasons for that were purely about Trump
and nothing to do with it. Was is the risk,
the very very high risk about what could happen, But
that census is furthered. And for example, if you see
(43:43):
how India has spoken out or or has behaved about
the Russia Ukraine War, it is again even more dark
because there you have somebody who's been a dependable ally
for several several decades now, so you you've you've taken
a stand.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So it at times.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Seems as though India does not really seem care much
about what happens there. Would you say that sense is
accurate or doesn't really have a lot at play in
the region.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Well, India does have a lot at stake in the region,
you know, because it's not just about the Palestinian cause
or you know, something as direct as the fact that
we have a very large, you know, minority population that
is Muslim and which could be influenced by events like this. Uh.
These are of course very big concerns, but there is
(44:30):
also the fact that West Asia remains very important for
India's energy security. We have excellent ties with the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and Ue and all of the regional
all the GCC countries, excellent ties with them. These have remained,
you know, the case for decades now. And at the
same time, we have a very large expactriate population there
(44:50):
which sends a lot of money back home, remittances back
on over one hundred billion dollars. So we import a
lot of energy from West Asia. So it's really important
for us not to alienate West Asia when it comes
to a core issue like Palestine, and that is the
reason that we've kind of pushed this too stage solution
(45:10):
two state solution. From nineteen forty eight, we were not
we did not recognize the state of Israel. We were
more pro the Palestinians because we saw them as something
like what India's freedom struggle was in forty seven, and
that was where a lot of our sympathies lay. And
there was a historic kind of thing to this recognition
(45:34):
of the Palestinian people as being you know, victims of
post colonial societies. And later it's only after the Oslo
Cords that came in ninety two that India finally re
established diplomatic ties with Israel. There had been you know,
small on and off kind of ties, you know, security
(45:54):
exchanges and some ammunition being sent by Israel. And Israel
has always looked at India, as you know, very favorably,
despite the fact that we voted against them or several
times in the United Nations. So what has happened in
the past is after nineteen ninety two, both countries have
kind of come together very very you know, close strategic
(46:16):
partners in a way that we are not with even
the West, the Americans, or say the British. India Israeli
ties have been at a historic high. And of course
the fact that Prime Minister Nathaniel and Prime Minister More
they have a very you know, a bromance of sorts
going right, and it hasn't hit a dead end with
(46:38):
other such romances as we've seen in the past, right
that is, it's one of those things. So I was
just joking with a couple of friends. I said that
possibly Nathaniaho skipped the summit and he must have texted
Prime Minister More you stay away. I'm staying away from
this circus. You stay away from it. This is Trump
is unpredictable. He did mention that you should have asked
(47:00):
I would have told you how to handle him. So
but I mean, but the fact is that, look, Israel
is a great strategic part, but it's a small country, right.
I don't see the Prime Minister of India sitting there
in a in the White House making a call with
Trump holding the receiver. I mean, that kind of thing
is unimaginable in our context. Right, We've not even done
it when we were a week third world country in
(47:23):
the seventies, right, Missus Gandhi stood up to Nixon and Kissinger.
We are certainly not going to do it in twenty
twenty five. But in the last couple of years, what
we've seen is we've dehyphenated the Israel Palestine. Yes, we've
walked a very tight, tight trope actually on this. The
fact is that we've said, look, our relations with Palestine
are independent with the Palestine people are independent of our
(47:47):
you know, negotiations are ties with Israel. And so you
saw Prime Minister Moi going there for the first time.
I think it was in twenty fifteen that he made
his first trip to Israel, and then he made an
other trip to the West Bank. I think it was
a year later, so you made sure that it was
on the same trip, though it wasn't on the same trip.
So he's made sure that there are two separate things.
(48:09):
But it is a consistent line of the Government of
India that the two state solution is the only solution
that will bring lasting peace and I don't see any
government or party in the future, you know, going back
on that taking a u turn on the two state solution.
It's a different matter that we have increased our abstensions
(48:29):
at the United Nations in favor of Israel when certain
resolutions have come up, so we've seen as taking a
more pro Israel line, but at the same time, we've
not diluted our fundamental principle of the two state solution.
And I think if that comes about, I think there'll
be no country happier than us in India because that,
you know, it is one of those sore points that
(48:52):
have been hanging around for eight years. And when you
have such raw wounds there there is a raw gangayiness,
wounds that have still not been resolved, there is always
the potential for it to cause trouble like we've seen
in the seventh of October. So that is the hope
that we've always had, you know, with the Oslo cards
(49:13):
and now with this new Trump and fast peace plan.
But you know, like I said, I mean if India,
if the two state solution takes off, we'd be the
happiest people.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
And I think more people in the world are sort
of coming to terms and realizing that now. Like I
said at the beginning, that several countries this year, yeah,
have leaned towards the two stage or you shouldn't. All depends,
like you said, on the several moving parts.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
That has that's right, and the recognition of the Palestinian
you know, of Palestine, the number of Western countries that
have come out in the openly to support them, that's
the word. One hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Countries now not to recognize it.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
So you know that that's where you are at today
in twenty twenty five years. It's such a tragedy that
it you know, it's so many lives have been lost
to that for this.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Yes, yeah, right, let's end it. There s the great chat,
as always had lots of fun and lots of great
insights from you.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Thanks so much, thanks for having me there, and.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Thanks as always to our listeners and viewers. That's it
for this week's defense tours. For more, tune in next week.
Till then, stay safe and not cross any boundaries for
the passport
This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to Season three of
Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army,
Navy and Air Force to decode all things to do
(00:21):
with India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
is in Our Defense. Welcome to an Our Defense. There's
a new dawn in the Middle East, said US President
Donald Trump this week as he welcomed and hailed a
(00:44):
ceasefire negotiated by him. This one actually was negotiated by him,
actually to end fighting in Gaza that's been going on
for the last two years. As part of the deal Hamas,
which carried out the October seven terrorist tack on Israel,
killing more than one thousand Israelies, has released all living
hostages it had from that day of the attack, and Israel,
(01:05):
which has been bombing Gaza relentlessly for the last two years,
it has agreed to sort of fall back to a
yellow line, the line in Gaza beyond which Israel will
not operate at least for now. Several things have happened
this week. Actually, So Trump was in Israel where he
was welcomed at the Israeli Parliament. He was there with
his family, Vanka Trump was the Jared Kushner was there,
(01:25):
some of his officials or they were hailed. They were
hailed Natanya who placed him. Then he went to Egypt
where there was a World summit where India did not
send Prime minister another remodi. And that's something we'll talk
about in this episode. Uh, but is this really a
New Dawn? Is this something that actually is what Trump
(01:49):
claims to be lasting peace in Gaza? Will this deal
ensure that? I don't know? And that's why I have
with me San to answer those questions.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Hey, they good, They're good to be back New Dawn
O DWN.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh that's a good question. Actually it's a very good question.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
You know, I think Trump's going to be a very
getting very sound sleep this week. I think He's been
praised left, right and center by several people, something he
deeply enjoys. Natanya, who said that he has moved the
world in ways that he has never seen any previous
US president. D Shaba Sharif who was there at the
(02:29):
Egypt conference. He called him a man, a great pan
of peace uh, and also gave out a nice lecture
again praising him. Uh. He's very very happy this week.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think delighted. He's delighted, Dave. And you know last
week it was he was down in the dumbs because
he didn't get the right They rushed that peace deal through.
You remember that famous the slip Rubio handing in the
slip to say that, look, you got to announce it.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That's a familiar playbook. We've seen that play out in
India and Pakistan as well. But you know, we'll come
to that later. But the fact is that the guy
has pulled it off. He has negotiated a historic end
to fighting. I don't call it. It is a red
letter day in the Middle East, But I don't see
it as being a permanent settlement for the Middle I mean,
(03:16):
there is no permanent solution. The permanent solutions, as we've
all seen in the past couple of years, they've all
turned out to be very very temporary breaks in fighting us.
But this one seems to be more permanent than the
previous ones that we've seen.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And we'll do decode exactly that, but just a bit
more on Trump. Also, by the way, he has yet
another conflict to resolve, and we will actually want to
discuss that this week. But then we thought we'll talk
about Gaza because I personally have a lot of questions,
which one is this is not? The second conflict is yes.
He actually told reporters there's one more conflict going on.
I'm going to resolve that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And there's there's North Korea. That's the ten. So there's
number nine which is half back, and number ten which
is North Korea South Korea.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He loves solving conflicts and as the White Horse has
called him, right, But before we talk about the Gaza
dels and the fact, the very interesting fact that it's
quite vague, which actually is what I think sort of
helped both Ishma sort of come on board. But before
we do that, I want to talk about the fact
that PM Modi was not present at the Egypt summit.
(04:21):
The reasons would be fairly obvious. I think the southburg
would be very worried that Trump. Knowing what Trump does,
he would have just pulled sort of pmod and Shaba
Sharif and made them shake hands and done so they
sent the Minister of State instead. At the summit. However,
Sashi Taru made a very interesting tweet which I think
is worth discussing, is that do you think that this
(04:43):
was necessary? India could have, for example, have had bactional
talks with the US and made it very clear that
do not do something of that sort. Because Sashi is
the road, for example, says he doesn't say it is.
He says this could be a mised opportunity in the
sense that in the future, what India has to say
(05:03):
on this matter, on this conflict may not be taken
as seriously because you did not send your premier to
the summit. You'll take on this.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Well, they've a good question. But you know, the thing
is that you're dealing with a very unpredictable American president,
an American president who's predictable only in his unpredictability. Right.
He's a reality show post right, and he makes his
own rules. He makes these rules as he goes on. Now,
I think South Bloc has kind of figured out Trump
(05:32):
right now. And you know, Prime Minister Modi he's a
long term player. He's looking at a big and both
both the politicians they're looking at legacy, right, Trump is
looking at his legacy. He's unfortunately got a very short
period of time to carry out his legacy, which is
about another three and a half years. Prime Minister Modi
has been there for eleven years. He's got another four years,
(05:53):
possibly another term after that, who knows. But the fact
is that he's a serious politician, right, And a lot
of other politicians in the world. You may argue about
them being dictators, and you know Hi Jinping for instance,
bloodmir Putin. These are serious politicians. They don't like this
kind of unscripted stuff where you know, you pull somebody
over there and you push them together and which Trump
(06:15):
revels them. You know, it's another way of Trump asserting
his power and his influence. Where you saw the way
he treated the UK Prime minister Kstam. I don't think
a UK Prime minister has ever been treated that humilating.
And you saw the what he did to the Pakistani
prime minister. South Block is right in figuring out, look,
if Prime minister he was as you said, what was
(06:37):
to prevent him from say, oh, he listen, why didn't
you just meet Shabaz over a year in front of
live cameras. Yeah, that is something that we would not countenance,
and I think that is why they made sure that
not even foreign a suggestion curvent. It was a Minister
of State who went there as the Prime Minister's emissary.
But you know, the thing is that I think we're
(06:59):
going to see very few unscripted interactions between Trump and
Prime Minister Mode because they obviously worry about the impact
of this on Prime Minister Movie. He is not given
to such spontaneous spontaneity, you know, addressing, you know, reporters
of the cuff everything for him. He likes it to
be scripted. In a sense, Trump is exactly the opposite.
(07:22):
He's you know, shoots, he plays it by the year,
and he invents his things as he moves on. You know,
So this kind of unpredictability would not work. And I
think it's the right thing that the Government of India
did in not sending the Prime minister, ensuring that the
Prime Minister neverment. And you know, like I said, it's
going to be fewer and fewer of Trump and Prime
(07:46):
Minister Mody interactions in this kind of a light because
simply because Trump is fixator on the thing that he
is the peace president he needs to get Nobel in
twenty twenty six. This time, they're going to file the
nominations in time. I'm sure January first, twenty twenty six
is the cutoff date. Trump is surely going to be
there for the one of the front runners for twenty
(08:07):
twenty six, and you have to give it to him, right.
Nobody thought the Israel Hamas t would be worked out
this way, And there is some truth to the fact
that he may have played a role in some of
the other conflicts. The rest of it is like it's
about fifty or sixty percent of it is overinflated. This
is what American presidents do most of the time, true, exactly,
except for you know, two very in your face conflicts.
(08:30):
One was, of course, the Israel Hamas thing, which showed
no signs of ending. Biden couldn't solve it. And the
other ones, of course, the Russia. You trained, if Trump
can crack Russia Ukraine for instance, there's nothing to prevent
him from being a sure shot Nobel contender for twenty
twenty six Longest War in Europe entering year four next year.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah right, yeah, I mean with other conflicts and the
India Pakistan, which again he loves claiming that he helped stop.
It's just you always usually plays the role of let's say,
like a postman, Yeah yeah, it is from one country
and give it to them and you just sort of
they did that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
In ninety nine as well, if you remember in Gargil Cargil,
it was slightly different because at that time, just twenty
five years back, India was not in the position then
that it is today where the the the US President
was a kind of uh, you know, whats adoptive father,
especially when it came to Pakistan. So he had to
(09:25):
kind of call Navassehreif and give him a dressing down
in the White House, that very famous meeting where he
entered not from the front door, he entered from one
of the side entrances, just to make that displeasure known.
But Pakistan is the satellites you know country, literally, it's
it's a US ally and is it is bound to
be pushed around, kicked around the way India will never accept,
(09:46):
you know, So that that was something that we would
never countenance the fact that you know, India would be
pulled or you know, all of those things. And this
is going to get tougher for the US to carry
out this kind of diplomacy with India. You know, we
are clearly not a country that is when to be
pushed around the way that the US would with other allies.
(10:07):
I think our position is very clear on that. We
are not, you know, a lackey of the United States, right,
we are a separate pole. There are people who say
that India is a swing state, and you can't be
a swing state and a third pole. Right. We may
not be the most powerful economy in the world. We're
(10:27):
still number three, but we're getting there. A couple of
years from now. There would be no peace deal. There
would be no deal in fact, without India being on board.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, right, So going to Israel and Hamas and Ghaza
and looking at the last two years, and then we'll
talk about how we came to this deal and in
the future. You've said something very interesting after after we
stopped recording last week where we're talking off camera, and
that's something and that's the reason I wanted to do
(10:59):
this episode as well, is that the last two years
of conflict has sort of interesting as like the Gaza
issue to the to the level it never was before
this year itself. For example, You've seen several countries UK, France,
Canada just to name a few, who in the UN
have said that, okay, we will recognize Palestine as a state.
(11:20):
Uh So that two state theory is is quite close
to being a reality, though I think practically speaking it's
going to be impossible to do. But again that's something
we'll discuss in the later half. But why do you
you why do you say that this this has happened
in the last two to two years because what began,
what we thought initially was Israel going to be like
(11:41):
you know, Ki will only attack Hamas because of the
dastardly terrist attack that they did. But instead of over
the last two years, what Netna who has done is
actually taken Iran it's biggest rival, and it's sort of
tried to destroy its access of resistance. You have the
hu this, you have the has well La House of
Fasad In said, yeah, it has fled the scene, like
(12:01):
you said when one of our recent discussions. So how
do you now view now that the fighting has sort
of stopped the last two years and what exactly has
gone down in Gaza?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, firstly, they've what were the compulsions of as and
war when he launched that dastardly attack on Israeli civilians.
And you know, I came out with those seven or
eight broad sweet predictions in the course of a YouTube
discussion about two years back while the attacks were on.
We were trying to make sense of what was going on,
(12:33):
and I didn't have anything else except for the feed
that I was looking around my social media where I
saw unprecedented barbarity, the way Israeli civilians were being killed, men, women, children,
hostages were being taken. Something kind of you know, clicked
and I said, look, there seems to be a certain
method to this madness. The fact is that they wanted
(12:55):
to target Israeli civilians. They wanted to take them as
human shields, which meant they knew exactly what would follow.
You cannot murder twelve hundred Israeli civilians, the largest massacre
of Israeli civilians since the Holocaust, and not have the
State of Israel come after you, which is exactly what happened.
And Hamas anticipated that they took these hostages two hundred
(13:17):
and fifty one hostages as human shields. But I think
even Yaya Sinver didn't predict this kind of Israeli retaliation
in the sense that they thought it was just going
to be another hostage standoff, right, lasting a couple of
days and weeks. He never he grossly underestimated the appetite
(13:38):
of the Israeli state to wage a war of attrition,
and wars of attrition, For those who are watching our
generally wars that continue for months and years. We all
thought that wars of attrition were a thing of the past.
But as the Russians have shown us, as Israelis have
shown us, these are very much in the realm of
possibility and we actually seen them play out. And that
(13:59):
is where Yeah, and were miscalculated. Now, why did Hamas
carry out that attack. They carried out the attack because
they felt the Palestinian issue was taking a back seat.
You may hate the guy, but you have to understand
the motivations behind the Palestinians. There are a bunch of
smart people and they figured out that they need to
kill a lot of people to internationalize the Palestinian issues.
(14:23):
It's as simple as brutal, as barbaric as that, and
if you look at it, two years from now, he's
succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I call aason, We're a
suicide bomber. He's blown himself up, He's destroyed Hamas, He's
destroyed Hamas, the Gaza Strip, even what's left of everything.
But he was playing at some great civilizational battle with
(14:46):
Israelis where he thinks that all of this is acceptable damage.
While he may have miscalculated the size of the retaliation,
I mean two years from now, you have to actually
look at the way things have to. So many tens
of of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinians have died. Something
like sixty or seventy thousand people have died. The Gaza
(15:08):
Strip is just troubled. Ninety percent of the buildings are
all destroyed. It's going to take twenty years to clear
and clean them and rebuild that place. But the Hamas,
in its barbarity, had a plan. This is exactly what
they wanted. They wanted to internationalize the you know, resurrect
the whole Palestinian thing. And while you may argue that
(15:30):
Israel has succeeded, it is today the most pre eminent
military power in West Asia. I don't think even the
Turks would want to take them on. The Iranians are shattered,
right they've lost all the nuclear capabilities. They are a
shadow of their former self, all of their so called
access of resistance. It's in smoldering ruins. The House of
us Are, which has stood for half a century, is collapsed.
(15:52):
Which is why I say that, you know, sinwar is
a bit like that Serbian nationalist Gavriel Princes who fired
and shot and killed the Archduke fransfer In and started
the First World War r the Second World War. And
what we miss is that countries like the Arab countries
West Asia is a very fragile society. They're primarily tribal
(16:15):
societies where they're living in territories that have been drawn
by the European powers. Psychic pickered lines and all that.
There's just absolute straight lines that the Europeans were basically
carved up the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed
after Gabriel Princeps in famous bullet, the Ottomans collapsed, the
(16:39):
great Pawers just devoured the what was left of the
empire they built. They drew those lines. They said, this
is Syria, this is Iraq, this is Saudi Arabia, this
is Jordan. They created countries where nothing had existed, but
an empire, and when you carry out such great acts
of violence like you saw in theeen ninety one the
(17:00):
Gulf Storm one, then you had two thousand and three
the US invasion of Iraq, cut to the war in
Syria with the Arab Spring, and now what Hamas did
in two thousand and twenty three. These are huge tectonic
events that reshape the destinies of all of these countries investation.
(17:21):
You know, I can bet the ten years down the line,
we'll still be talking about the seventh of October, because
it is that kind of a you know, a break
in a continuum of ten twenty years. And you know,
like I said two years back, the whole region, it's
it's all about violence and counter violence. And you know,
(17:42):
you'll have one struggle, then you'll have a peace process,
then there's going to be a ten to twenty year break,
and then there will be another upsurge of violence. And
every cycle of violence is sewn in the previous circle
of cycle of violence, and which is what we're seeing
over you know, sixe thousand people dead, seventy thousand people dead.
(18:02):
What's to prevent another Hamas or you know, a far
right even further right from what the Hammas is today.
The Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a far
more extreme version of the Palestinians. The PLO right Hammas
is far more extreme to that. Tomorrow they might be
(18:23):
another extremist outfit which is even more right wing than Hamas.
And this is the pattern that we've been seeing, you know,
in the Middle East, West Asia for so many decades. So,
I mean, the Trump peace plan, it's great, it's a
pause in the fighting. It's stopped the whole thing. But
I don't give it a you know, something more than
ten or fifteen years. It's just a matter of time
(18:44):
before something else happens, because you know, the ground swell
is there. There is, you know, an underlying current of
hatred violence. It is of course the whole thing of
the State of Israel that the Arabs have not reconciled
to the State of Israel. And one of the reasons
(19:04):
that Jayasin we carried out that attack was because he
feared that the Arabs were coming on board with the
Abraham Accords. Two big countries, three Muslim countries had recognized
the two Arab three Arab countries, in fact, had recognized
the State of Israel. It was only a matter of
time before you would see one of the most historic
(19:26):
handshakes of the twenty first century, which is the Saudi
Arabians and the UI recognizing the State of Israel. He
had to stop that, and that's the reason he did
seventh of October twenty twenty three. Of course, you had
many other collateral because of that, which was the India
Middle East Economic Corridor, and that's off the table now
till the Southeast and the UE doesn't come on. But
(19:49):
this gives us a chance now to relook at things.
Now possibly at some point the Southeast might come around
to recognizing Israel. And of course, you know, getting that,
I make back on track. But that was that one
big flashpoint. And now you're going to see a couple
of years of peace and then who knows what happens
after them in West Asia. You know, you can't look
(20:11):
beyond ten or fifteen.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Years, right, right, But you know, there's another thing that
happened in the last two years. So we're talking about
the military setbacks that has faced, the military destruction that
Hamas is Hamas's face, but there's also been a large
scale destruction in Gaza there are very valid accusations of genocide,
(20:34):
of a Humanitian crisis that was fomented on purpose by Israel,
to the point that you now have several Western countries
not being able to ignore that anymore, except perhaps the US.
I think many countries have spoken out about this and
spoken out against Israel on this, which makes me think,
and I wonder why no one's talking more about this.
Isn't this the perfect recruitment tool for Hamas or a
(20:57):
future Hamas or of Hammas too, get more people to
join that cause, and then you know, yeah, that's exactly
about that.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, I see, I give it about ten fifteen years
from this peace process. I mean, this peace process is great,
but it is not going to permanently solve this problem.
Even if there is a Palestinian state, it is going
to be a state that is going to be, you know,
riven with resentment and deep seated hatred and anger, and
that's going to remain there because, you know, the fundamental
(21:29):
problem is that the Arab countries have not reconciled to
the existence of Israel. The leaders may recognize that they
may shake hands with Israel, but the Arab populations have
not reconciliate, and you will always find groups that will
you know, seduce people like this Isis will come up,
they will be Hamas, they will be all of these
guys al Kaala will come up and say that, look,
(21:52):
you know, the existence of the state of Israel is
anithma to us, and which is why you have all
these kinds of slogans like from the River to the
ce and what does all this mean. It actually means
the destruction of the State of Israel. So they're not
reconcilt to the nineteen forty eight you know, reality and
(22:14):
events like this only make the two state solutions seem,
you know, very distant. You know, a dream of nineteen
sixty seven. Basically you have an Israeli state, a Jewish state,
and a Palestinian state existing side by side as for
the nineteen sixty seven borders. But so much has changed
on the ground now. I mean, there are Israeli settlements
(22:36):
in the West Bank. The Palestinians they don't want this
half eaten mouth, eaton state. They want all of it.
They want to reclaim what Palestine was before nineteen forty eight.
You know, that's where the you know, logic is. So
these are irreconcilible differences. They had the best deal in
nineteen ninety two, the Palestinians, they didn't take it, which
(23:00):
is the Oslo Accords, with supervised by another US president,
Bill Clinton. And because of that, you've seen this entire
thing play out of the last three four decades, the
rise of Hamas for instance, and this weaponization of Palestine
in victimhood, which has resulted in this catastrophe of the
seventh of October.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah right, you'll talk more about this.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
But after a quick break, I was alone in the car,
sixteen to eighteen hours of no sleep, just driving and
competitive driving. Those temperatures, those temperatures, those altitudes. During the
transfer stage. I turn a corner and I see this
real kid. Okay, he's got a mirror under his arm,
(23:44):
and mirror like a mirror, okay, And the mirror is
slim and long, and it's about the length of the road.
And the level to which your mind can play checks
on you is apparent by just the details, so that
this kid, who obviously can't carry a mirror that long,
is running along the road with the mirror under his arm.
(24:06):
What freaked me out is how clearly I could see myself,
my car, the ox slides in the mirror. I slammed
the brakes the moment I slammed the bricks, obviously, I
guess adrenaline whatever kicked in and the kid was gone.
But that is the extent to which we end up
(24:27):
pushing ourselves sometimes and like the crazy, crazy experiences that
we have as a result, and the mixture of no
sleep and I mean almost being in a stage driving
in the flow state while being completely exhausted.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Welcome back, Synthipa. I now want to move on to
the deal, the actual deal itself, and I want from you.
So before in the first half, you talked about how
this is perhaps the best at at sort of bringing
peace to this Middle Eastern conflict that's been reading for
half a century now. So in order for us to
understand that, for our listeners and viewers to understand that,
(25:10):
can you sort of compare it to the previous efforts
that have been made and why do you say this
one perhaps is the best attempt? Before we then talk
about the fact that a lot of work is still
to be done. So there's a writer's There was a
writer's analysis where the agency quoted an expert, a foreign
policy expert who said that it's hard to remember international
(25:30):
agreement that left so much to be worked out later
because some context for our listeners and viewers. So, for example,
Hamas has not expressly agreed to the clause about disarming itself.
Is there says that's the most important clause. Hamas we
all know, sees itself as part of a future administration
(25:51):
for Gaza. Israel will never accept that. So those sticking
points remain. But before we talk about that, those sticking points,
just sort of give us a quick recap of the
previous agreement, previous attempts at sort of bringing peace to
the region. Why do you think this stands out and
what do you think this still has yet left to do?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, you know, I think the biggest difference between this
new piece deal of twenty twenty five and the Oslo
Accords of nineteen ninety two was the fact that those
accords didn't come after this kind of violence and bloodshed. Right,
So the first thing that this accord had to do,
if you see, it's a three stage accord, which is
a phase one, Phase two, and phase three. Each phase
(26:32):
is contingent upon the previous phase being realized. So the
first phase is of course to end the fighting, to
stop these rallies from attacking targets inside Gaza. The second phases,
of course, the reconstruction, you start clearing the rubble, rebuilding.
And the third one is of course the longer term
thing of you know, governance and getting the economy and
(26:54):
all that growing. It's very ambitious in its size, scale
and scope, in a way that the Oslo Accords were
where you actually created this nascent Palestinian state. You gave
them the West Bank, you gave them Gaza where of
course the Palestinian authority, the PA, lost control over the
Gaza strip because Hamas took over. Both are very very
(27:17):
important landmark achievements. But this one came, like I said,
came after so much of blood. But you've not seen
this kind of bloodshed in West Asia since possibly the
nineteen seventy three Yom Kippur War. Every other thing has
been you know, low levels of violence simmering over the years.
See what happened in seventy three was that the Arab
(27:39):
countries made one final attempt to fight Israel. So from
forty eight you saw three wars forty eight nineteen forty eight,
then you had nineteen sixty seven, which was a catastrophe
for the Arab countries there because Israel defeated all the
countries around them and redrew the map of you know,
(28:00):
West Asia. Then you have seventy three where the Egyptians
were most strongest militarily surprised the Israelis, but then they
got overwhelmed militarily and Israel, you know, overpowered both Egypt
and Syria in nineteen seventy three. Post that, the Arab
countries have kind of gone on to a path of
supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization the PLO. They gave up
(28:23):
the armed struggle against Israel, and you had this kind
of low level insurgency stroke terrorism where you know, high
profile hijackings and shootouts and assassinations were carried out by
the PLO and Israel was fighting that. Of course, the
other big thing was the arrival of the Islamic Republic
of Iran in nineteen seventy nine. That was the single
(28:45):
biggest tectonic shift which favored the Palestinian Liberation Organizations because
Imam hominy Atolah how many actually backed the PLO. I mean,
this is one of those conundrums we've discussed in the
past where the number one Sunni Arab cause is picked
up by a country that is neither Sunni nor Arab,
(29:05):
which is the Shia Iran. Right, Ishiarran takes this up
because it's all about the leadership of the Islamic world.
Who's the leader going to be? Is it Soau, the
area which holds the two Holy Mosques, is it Turkey,
which is the Ottoman Empire, which believes it's still the
heirs of the Ottoman Empire. Or is it Iran, which
is you know, a continuation of the Persian Empire, the
(29:28):
seat of all Shiadam all of that. So it just
a three cornered contest between these three countries. Now, the
Palestinian cause is the biggest cause in the Muslim world today.
The Iranians picked it up. You come down to about
through the eighties, you see violence, you see you know,
stone throwing, this kind of thing, terror attacks, Yasser Arafat
(29:52):
around whom the PLO revolves, and then finally the oslo
A Cords ninety two and after that you had some
amount of peace. It was a big breather for India,
for instance, because when we re established, we re established
contact with Israel. Formal diplomatic recognition of Israel came after
the nineteen ninety two oslow course, and India's you know
(30:17):
thing has been very consistent. From the past. We've been
tilting heavily towards the Palestinian cause, but post nineteen ninety
two we became more you know, course, more friendly to Israel,
and they're one of our top strategic partners. We are
Israel's largest defense exploer, you know, customer. So there have
(30:39):
been very deep relations that have been built up between
India and Israel. But at the same time, even the
present government has continued a policy of recognizing the two
nation settlement, which is Israel on one side and the
Palestinian an independent Palestine on the other side. So, in
terms of looking at these two accord the Oslo cards
(31:01):
Visavi this, I mean, the obvious difference is that it's ended.
It's come after such great suffering, such great tragedy. I
mean physical destruction of the Gaza strip. I mean you've
seen the visuals. There is literally nothing standing there, no
buildings there, everything has been bombed and ground to dustin
(31:21):
fifty sixty thousand people killed. And that is also the
biggest problem, which is actually going to work against the
second and the third phases of this agreement. Phase one
is of course, the immediate stop to the hostilities, the
prisoner exchange, the hostage exchange, the remains, the repetration of
the remains of the twenty odd hostages that still are there.
(31:45):
They possibly don't even know where those bodies are buried,
right of the hostages which they took in the seventh
of October. So you're looking at a peace process that
is staggered over several years. It goes down to twenty
twenty seven. There are a lot of moving parts to this.
And the thing is that Trump believes that he can
(32:05):
oversee this through his presidency, so which is why it
is very cleverly structured. It ends in about twenty seven
to twenty eight, and he's going to be the head
of the peace board that is going to oversee this,
and they're going to be no American boots on the ground.
Very interesting, they're no American boots on the ground. But
(32:27):
at the same time, it is going to oversee the
reconstruction of the Gaza strip, this three phase plan without
forcing the Palestinians out, and that's a very big thing.
Because a couple of months back, everyone heard Trump saying,
you know which country was going to take the Palestinians.
It was very loudly asking Willship take them? Will some
other country take them? Something like that. So which was
(32:48):
you're talking of the forcible displacement of the Palestinians. Now,
to give your viewers an idea, how big the Gaza
Strip is. The Gaza Strip is about four hundred square kilometers.
It is the size of the Indian Union territory of Pondicherry,
but with double the population. Now Pondicherry has about a
(33:10):
million people, the Gaza Strip has two million people. It's
one of the most densely populated places on Earth. And
with this peace plan, this Trump supervised peace plan, you're
looking at reconstruction and you know all of those funny
things he said about it being the riviera of the
(33:31):
you know, West Asia, and it is a real estate
developer's view on how to settle conflict, right I mean.
And the reappearance of Jared Kushner that was very interesting
when I saw him in that when the peace deal
was being negotiated. Was it the twenty ninth of September?
Around that time, I said there's something here because Kushner
(33:51):
has vanished in the second Trump presidency. He was nowhere
to be seen, and now he's reappeared, and it's very
clear that has brought him back to oversee not just
this peace deal, but also the unfinished legacy of the
Abraham Accords, which is the final act of the Abraham
Accords is like we discussed Saudi Arabia and the UA,
(34:14):
you know, normalizing relations with Israel. But of course the
quid proko for that is that Israel has to allow
the creation of a Palestinian states. And that is that
will you know, that is a solution that will bring
lasting peace to the Middle East. But this agreement, the
Trump and Supervised agreement, doesn't create the Palestinian state. It
(34:36):
creates the conditions that will enable the creation of a
Palestinian state. So it is all about exchanging the prisoners, remains,
stopping the fighting, rebuilding all of the devastation, and hopefully
setting in place the process that was stalled after the
Oslo Accords of the nineteen ninety two. So the next stage,
(34:57):
after this peace accord, both sides can sit and then decide, Look,
how realistic is a two state solution is it even possible.
Will Israel, for instance, which is which has the most
right wing Israeli government in its history, will they agree,
for instance, to take back the settlers. There are hundreds
of thousands of settlers in the West Bank. Prime Minister
(35:21):
Nathania who depends on the survival, on his political survival,
he depends on the right wingers for his survival. So
what kind of compromises are they going to make? It?
Is this just going to be another two three year
term before Trump moves out and then they do business again,
you know, take up the deal again with another American
(35:42):
president who comes in. So lots of unanswered questions. But
short answer to your long answer to your short question,
and my short response to that is it is as
historic as the nineteen ninety two Oslo agreement in the
sense that it ends, this ends these massacres, ends this violence,
sets the path for reconstruction, rebuilding. It is a historic agreement.
(36:07):
But it all, you know, it all depends on how
they're going to implement it. It is so complicated in
its execution. It's very easy to put it on paper,
you know, phase one, phase two, phase three. But at
the end of the day, there are humans involved in this,
A lot of humans. Families have died, Entire communities have
been wiped out on both sides, on both Israeli and
(36:29):
on the Palestinian side. How is all this going to
happen like clockwork, like they've outlined in that, you know,
and without phase one being done, phase two cannot start.
Without phase two being done, phase three cannot happen. So
it's very ambitious in its scale and scope. It's the
perfect real estate redevelopment plan for Gaza. But how it
(36:52):
plays out on the ground, I mean, that remains to
be seen.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, that remains to be seen, which is perhaps why
I think it's futile to ask you the question of
the practicality of the two state solution because it all depends,
like you've said right now, on the several moving parts
that you can't really predict right now. But the one
thing that we know is going to happen in Israel
in a year's time our elections. Yes, And that has
(37:15):
led to somebodies that you know, Israel or Natanya, who
may feel the need to be perhaps to not perhaps
follow some conditions of the of the of the of
the current agreement based on whatever technicalities that he can
point out here. They have not met this one. So
you know, we will keep continuing our invasion. Do you
think that's also a reality, and that the upcoming election
(37:38):
is Israel also play a vital role in deciding the
future of this piece attempt.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Well, absolutely, And you know, let's not forget that before
the seventh of October, Prime Minister Nathan Yahoo was a
deeply embattled politician. He had been indicted by his parliament
of very serious charges of corruption against him. But since
then he is kind of resurrected himself as a politician,
as a war politician, and he's kept fighting two years
(38:07):
and he's brought Israel to the stage when it has
actually got all the hostages back, it's going to get
the remains of the other hostages also. So in a sense,
there is an element of mission unaccomplished if you look
at it, which is the destruction of Hamas, which he
had been asking for, and in fact, one of the
twenty points of the Trump agreement was for Hamas to demilitarize,
(38:29):
to surrender its weapons. Now we don't see that happening,
and a group even as badly off as Hamas, it's shattered,
all its leaders are killed, an entire generation of leaders
has been wiped out. But Hamas has not surrendered yet,
you know. And for a guerrilla group, a terrorist organization
call it what you may, it wins by not losing,
(38:54):
you know that that's its biggest victory, by surviving, by existing,
Its existence is all about, you know, survival, and that
is what Hamas has also done. It has very canarly
agreed to certain it has agreed to those twenty points,
but it is not it's silent on the question of
demilitarization and you know, surrendering his things. And that is
(39:15):
the biggest h objective that Nathan Yaho has not been
able to accomplish so far, which was of course, he
will protect Israel, They will erect those security fences and
you know, ensure that there is no repeat of another
October seventh kind of an attack. But you have, of
course the demilitarization of you know, destruction of all the
(39:38):
tunnels and ensuring that kind of thing never happens again.
All that will happen. But as long as you have
a group like Hamas still there intact in whatever form, uh,
it will regenerate itself. It will as you mentioned, not
have the a shortage of recruits that are going to
be thousands of people will come again and they can
(39:58):
you know, rebuild themselves, and that that is the biggest
worry for the state of Israel right now. A reborn
Hamas with you know, younger Kado's or you know, not
just Hamas, even his Bola for instance, across the world.
Because finally, it is what I call it, this battle
is all about TFR total fertility rate. It is very
(40:21):
very young populations that you kill, they go to war,
they die, they're reborn again. Because you know, the TFR
on both sides, on both the Israeli and on the
Palestine sides are very high. It's about three for Palestine women,
three for Israeli. So it is a question of, you know,
(40:43):
how long this will continue. And I don't see any
end in sight because you know, like I mentioned, this
is just going to be a cease fire for the
next ten years or so. Who knows what's going to happen.
They will be you know, another Hamas, or they will
be a far more right wing Israeli state that's determined
to wipe out the Hamas kind of. It's it's a
(41:03):
cycle of violence and kind of counter violence. And it
is you know, in a sense, one of those very
very bloody wrestling matches which you will have a break in,
but then the match then, you know, resumes after a
couple of years. And I don't see any big, great
(41:23):
solution in that, because the state of Israel is at
the end of the day, it is constrained by its geography.
It is only the size of the Indian state of
believe it or not, Meghalaya. It's just about twenty thousand
square kilometers. It cannot grow much bigger. Of course, there
is a very you know, vocal section within the Israeli
(41:44):
right wing which call for a greater Israel, saying that
they need to spread into the other countries like Syria
and you know, grab parts of Syria and then you know,
expand the state of Israel so that they become bigger
than their enemies. And but I mean that that seems
to be you know, more like a you know, a
fantasy for now. But the fact is that you're looking
at a very young population, a very radicalized population, and
(42:10):
there is a potential of conflict just down the end
of the road.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Cycle of violence. And I think then the West pit
described this perhaps would be just just another ebb in
that cycle of violence. Right, Okay, last points on the
as we end this episode, and this is about India
circling back to India on the issue. Two tangents a
one sort of I want like a brief history of
(42:36):
India's stand on the issue. That has been that we
have consistently been for the two state solutions. So when
I say history of what I want to understand from
you is how did we birth this stand? And how
and why have we consistently maintained that, like you said
earlier through governments, it's never changed at all, even though
(42:58):
like you said, we have tilted from one set to
the other. Uh, based on our interest obviously, but the
stand has been pretty partic clear that we are for
a two state solution. We support the peaceful existence of
a Palestinian state on its thos. So the history of that,
that's that stand. And second, you know, you quite you
at times get a sense that India seems not to
(43:20):
have too much of a stake in the in the
Israel Gaza situation, about what's happening in West Asia, UH,
and you know, things like PMOD not going for the
Egypt summit sort of furthers that sense, even though we've
discussed that the reasons for that were purely about Trump
and nothing to do with it. Was is the risk,
the very very high risk about what could happen, But
that census is furthered. And for example, if you see
(43:43):
how India has spoken out or or has behaved about
the Russia Ukraine War, it is again even more dark
because there you have somebody who's been a dependable ally
for several several decades now, so you you've you've taken
a stand.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So it at times.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Seems as though India does not really seem care much
about what happens there. Would you say that sense is
accurate or doesn't really have a lot at play in
the region.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Well, India does have a lot at stake in the region,
you know, because it's not just about the Palestinian cause
or you know, something as direct as the fact that
we have a very large, you know, minority population that
is Muslim and which could be influenced by events like this. Uh.
These are of course very big concerns, but there is
(44:30):
also the fact that West Asia remains very important for
India's energy security. We have excellent ties with the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and Ue and all of the regional
all the GCC countries, excellent ties with them. These have remained,
you know, the case for decades now. And at the
same time, we have a very large expactriate population there
(44:50):
which sends a lot of money back home, remittances back
on over one hundred billion dollars. So we import a
lot of energy from West Asia. So it's really important
for us not to alienate West Asia when it comes
to a core issue like Palestine, and that is the
reason that we've kind of pushed this too stage solution
(45:10):
two state solution. From nineteen forty eight, we were not
we did not recognize the state of Israel. We were
more pro the Palestinians because we saw them as something
like what India's freedom struggle was in forty seven, and
that was where a lot of our sympathies lay. And
there was a historic kind of thing to this recognition
(45:34):
of the Palestinian people as being you know, victims of
post colonial societies. And later it's only after the Oslo
Cords that came in ninety two that India finally re
established diplomatic ties with Israel. There had been you know,
small on and off kind of ties, you know, security
(45:54):
exchanges and some ammunition being sent by Israel. And Israel
has always looked at India, as you know, very favorably,
despite the fact that we voted against them or several
times in the United Nations. So what has happened in
the past is after nineteen ninety two, both countries have
kind of come together very very you know, close strategic
(46:16):
partners in a way that we are not with even
the West, the Americans, or say the British. India Israeli
ties have been at a historic high. And of course
the fact that Prime Minister Nathaniel and Prime Minister More
they have a very you know, a bromance of sorts
going right, and it hasn't hit a dead end with
(46:38):
other such romances as we've seen in the past, right
that is, it's one of those things. So I was
just joking with a couple of friends. I said that
possibly Nathaniaho skipped the summit and he must have texted
Prime Minister More you stay away. I'm staying away from
this circus. You stay away from it. This is Trump
is unpredictable. He did mention that you should have asked
(47:00):
I would have told you how to handle him. So
but I mean, but the fact is that, look, Israel
is a great strategic part, but it's a small country, right.
I don't see the Prime Minister of India sitting there
in a in the White House making a call with
Trump holding the receiver. I mean, that kind of thing
is unimaginable in our context. Right, We've not even done
it when we were a week third world country in
(47:23):
the seventies, right, Missus Gandhi stood up to Nixon and Kissinger.
We are certainly not going to do it in twenty
twenty five. But in the last couple of years, what
we've seen is we've dehyphenated the Israel Palestine. Yes, we've
walked a very tight, tight trope actually on this. The
fact is that we've said, look, our relations with Palestine
are independent with the Palestine people are independent of our
(47:47):
you know, negotiations are ties with Israel. And so you
saw Prime Minister Moi going there for the first time.
I think it was in twenty fifteen that he made
his first trip to Israel, and then he made an
other trip to the West Bank. I think it was
a year later, so you made sure that it was
on the same trip, though it wasn't on the same trip.
So he's made sure that there are two separate things.
(48:09):
But it is a consistent line of the Government of
India that the two state solution is the only solution
that will bring lasting peace and I don't see any
government or party in the future, you know, going back
on that taking a u turn on the two state solution.
It's a different matter that we have increased our abstensions
(48:29):
at the United Nations in favor of Israel when certain
resolutions have come up, so we've seen as taking a
more pro Israel line, but at the same time, we've
not diluted our fundamental principle of the two state solution.
And I think if that comes about, I think there'll
be no country happier than us in India because that,
you know, it is one of those sore points that
(48:52):
have been hanging around for eight years. And when you
have such raw wounds there there is a raw gangayiness,
wounds that have still not been resolved, there is always
the potential for it to cause trouble like we've seen
in the seventh of October. So that is the hope
that we've always had, you know, with the Oslo cards
(49:13):
and now with this new Trump and fast peace plan.
But you know, like I said, I mean if India,
if the two state solution takes off, we'd be the
happiest people.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
And I think more people in the world are sort
of coming to terms and realizing that now. Like I
said at the beginning, that several countries this year, yeah,
have leaned towards the two stage or you shouldn't. All depends,
like you said, on the several moving parts.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
That has that's right, and the recognition of the Palestinian
you know, of Palestine, the number of Western countries that
have come out in the openly to support them, that's
the word. One hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Countries now not to recognize it.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
So you know that that's where you are at today
in twenty twenty five years. It's such a tragedy that
it you know, it's so many lives have been lost
to that for this.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Yes, yeah, right, let's end it. There s the great chat,
as always had lots of fun and lots of great
insights from you.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Thanks so much, thanks for having me there, and.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Thanks as always to our listeners and viewers. That's it
for this week's defense tours. For more, tune in next week.
Till then, stay safe and not cross any boundaries for
the passport
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.