YouSaid · the spoken record

Hussein Ibish

lines on the record: 23
first: 2023-12-15
most recent: 2023-12-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Know on paper what a stable outcome would look like, whether it's achievable, it's a different matter. A stable outcome is a situation where you do have a two-state solution and Palestine no longer attracts all the passions and emotions of the region. In the process, Iran itself is defanged, but it's not only about that. It's also about figuring out what a regional security architecture that includes Iran could look like the path to that solution seems quite fantastical at present. Military conflicts are really hard. They are about land. They are about identity. They are about ideology. So sadly, what I see in months and years ahead is more conflict, more regional instability. And importantly, the externalities, the second order effects of these conflicts directly”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, many of those have failed. For example, in the Camp David Accords, Yasser Arafat felt that he could not make the decisions on Jerusalem without getting a consensus from the other Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, because of the religious implications of any deal. And on the Israeli side, they've been through the years, Israeli initiatives for peace. One was done by Prime Minister Olmer, but that fell apart for many reasons. But both sides have made compromises on the principled approach of land for peace. During the course of negotiations since 1967, in order to do that and get there, in my eyes, there's going to have to be elections which would allow for a credible Palestinian government to come to power that could negotiate peace. And are the Israeli side elections to bring forth a credible”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which have been the principal international basis for negotiations on Arab, Israeli, and Israeli Palestinian peace. That is an essential component of any movement forward. We have to get away from the illusion that you can solve the Palestinian problem through economic bridges or through investment bridges. We have to get back to negotiating table on the basis of land for peace and the two-state solution, which seems like an illusion right now, but it is the only approach that would allow for a democratic Jewish state to be living in peace and security besides an independent Palestinian sovereign state.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't think there should be any scenario, and I use the word should be any scenario that goes back to the status quo pre-October 7th. These policies have failed. There are frameworks in place that can be revised, revitalized to show a pathway forward. We've had some successes. We've had Jimmy Carter broker the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979. We had the Madrid Peace Conference. That led to the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty and resulted in a framework for peace that still existent if it is to be taken up by leaders on all sides. But there has to be some sort of consensus on the principles of what an Israeli-Palestinian agreement can look like on the key issues involving security, land for peace, land for peace is essential under UN Security Council Resolutions 242 338.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Iran's command and control come under attack. So Iran's going to keep them for the big one. And I think Iran at the moment assesses that the war in Hazara is not yet the big one. But importantly, what matters is what happens ultimately in Gaza and the West Bank. If the fighting there escalates significantly, if Hamas is indeed at the verge of extinction, perhaps the calculus will change in Tehran because they'll feel if one of our allies can be destroyed so massively, then perhaps our credibility is at stake. And if we don't do anything, then Israel will in turn feel the opportunity to go after other of our partners. And this will become extremely dangerous for Iran itself. The decision, I would argue, is very much Israel's at this point. Does Israel feel that once it has an if it manages to destroy Hamas, will it assess that it has to turn its focus on the others immediately? Because it”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those groups want to demonstrate solidarity and support for Hamas, but they also primarily want to advance their domestic interests. And so they're using this crisis to settle scores domestically. And they're using this crisis to primarily harass the US, especially in Syria and Iraq. The one arena to keep in mind is Lebanon, because there, Hezbollah is a uniquely formidable partner of Iran. Hezbollah is essentially the ultimate instrument of deterrence and punishment of Iran. It is an extraordinarily competent and skilled militia that has delivered quite well for Iran. But Iran itself seems unwilling to deploy Hezbollah in an old out war because it wants to keep Hezbollah in case Iran's leadership, Iran's territorial integrity,”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The conflict has already widened. There have been almost daily attacks in Iraq, Syria against US targets because the US is seen as complicit with Israel by Iran aligned groups. And there hasn't been fighting between Hezbollah and Lebanon and Israel with strikes deep in each other's territory. And what we see right now is the host is in Yemen essentially joining the fight. They have access to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, UAVs, and they are strategically located in Babel Mended, a key artery for global trade. And they're ideologically very much aligned with Hamas and Iran. Importantly, they have disrupted maritime traffic. They have boarded ships and so on. So the conflict in Haza has already taken a regional character. Now, the question is whether it will evolve into a all-out war. And here I'm a bit more skeptical. The reason being that”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think Israel would like to keep its options in place to attack targets at a time and choosing of its own. And right now, I think it is so preoccupied with the major effort in Gaza that it would prefer not to open up a second front itself. But it will open up a second front with the north and Hezbollah if Hezbollah initiates serious attacks.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once one enters the fog of war, anything can happen, and there could be major miscalculations that can lead to a wider war. Right now, the geopolitical situation is such that Israel does not see an interest in escalation, especially on its northern front with Hezbollah. It does not want to face a two-front war that Hamas and Hezbollah. None of the Arab states want to see an escalation because such instability impacts their political, domestic situation and their economies. Even Iran doesn't see an interest in the war escalating in terms of bringing a larger confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah. According to some experts on Iranian policy that I've talked to, they advise me that Iran doesn't want to use the Hezbollah card against Israel.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Israel is to assure that Gaza does not become a launching pad against Israel's internal security and its citizens. That it can do by perhaps expanding the buffer zone within Gaza against Israel's southern border by demilitarizing the Gaza Strip. Obviously, another key goal is getting the hostages out.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that Hamas has not. So they are promoting their agenda to the forefront by this action. Israel's stated goal on the Netanyahu is the destruction of Hamas, but the question arises, can Hamas be destroyed militarily? And there's much to debate on that because it depends if you analyze Hamas as not only its terrorist wing, but if you analyze Hamas as also a political movement, it's very difficult to destroy a political movement. We've seen that in our counterterrorism policies since 9-11 with the Taliban, with al-Qaeda, with Hezbollah, with many groups. So the question arises, is Israel capable in its stated policy of destroying Hamas to really achieve that goal through military means? I leave that as a question mark. A second goal of Israel is”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hamas achieved their primary goal to end the marginalization of the Palestinian issue. Now the whole world is talking about and focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So whereas the Palestinian issue was put on the margins as a secondary or tertiary matter, it's now front and center in the Middle East. So they've already accomplished that objective. Secondly, as an Islamist party with a military wing, they have put themselves as the primary actor in defending the Palestinian cause. And therefore, they've achieved two objectives already. According to the Hamas Charter, they are against the existence of the State of Israel, but at the same time, they are part of the larger Palestinian movement, which includes Fatah and the PLO. So the issue here is that there's a basic division between the PLO and Fatah, who recognize the state of Israel 1988.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The anger, perhaps to create a new cycle of radicalization, a new wave of recruitment, and so on, of possible fundraising. So from Hamas's perspective, this did work. They defined success very differently from how you would. You would go and say it's about well-being and having cities that are functioning and people having access to services and so on. No, the ultimate goal here is the struggle in and of itself to keep that flame alive.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hamas's goal is to eradicate Israel. I don't think that everyone in the Palestinian territory agrees with it, but this is what Hamas, but also Hezbollah and other groups are aiming for. Beyond that, they've already achieved a number of goals. It has become a lot more difficult for Arab governments to justify their relationship with Israel. Israel today is struggling in terms of image in a number of places. There is strong support for Israel in many Western countries, but beyond that, there is a lot of criticism of Israel. And by forcing negotiations with Hamas over hostages, Hamas can say we're a legitimate actor. You have to deal with us in this conflict will shape the perceptions of two generation of Arabs. This war has placed Palestine back at the center of Arab political psyche and imagination. And there is enough footage of fighting to fuel”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then Iran had rebounded in Syria, al-Assad essentially won that war. The Hussein Yemen had finally come on top of that very brutal civil war that in Iraq, pro-Iranian factions had come on top of the power struggle there. And Lebanon, where Hezbollah was definitely becoming the dominant force there. So in a way, Hamas felt this is a positive regional landscape for it. And that's a time for Hamas to also emerge. So it's a mix of those factors.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“they were looking at the weakening of the Palestinian Authority and say perhaps it's a time to assert ourselves as the real bearer of the Palestinian cause but there is a broader regional environment to consider here and that Hamas looked at the normalization deals between Israel and the UAE Israel and Bahrain Israel and Morocco and possibly between Israel and Saudi Arabia and say you know what the region the Arabs are moving away from the cause at least the governments are and so we need to remind everyone that the cause should be central to pan-Arab imagination and so on and that was a way to essentially put governments in front of their publics which remain overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and then I think there is another element which is Iran feels more confident in the region Iran has survived the Trump era of maximalist pressure”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hamas was facing a difficult internal debate. Is Hamas about Mukawamo resistance or is it about governance? And if it's about governance, Israel has won. It's because Hamas now is boxed into small territory. And you have a hard line faction in Hamas that refused it, that said, our purpose is much greater than that. Governance focusing on our population should be secondary, if not less than that, on our agenda. The important thing is Mukawama, the concept of resistance. So in a way, it was a way for Hamas to assert its identity. The second factor is that they thought that Israel had been distracted, distracted by its own domestic turmoil over constitutional reform that Israel had become complacent, that Israel saw that they had successfully deterred Hamas. Also importantly from Hamas' perspective,”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A few trends that are worth keeping in mind. One of them is the relative weakening of the core Arab states, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, over time, and the rise of the Gulf states, which have emerged as economic, geoeconomic, financial, and political powerhouses. For the past 20 years, Israel has also emerged as even before, but especially in the past 20 years, has emerged as a powerful economy and has regionally achieved quite a lot more integration, normalization deals, and so on. So there are imbalances of power in the region that fuel a lot of resentment.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Issue, which is land for peace. So they saw this as a growing threat that if this succeeded, movements such as Hamas and the Palestinian cause would be marginalized. So I think if you put those all together, you can see that there is a rationale on their part of moving when they did on October 7th.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The government is preoccupied with these things, and they interpreted this as internal weakness. Another factor, I think, in terms of Hamas's decision to go forward on this, they were noting the Biden administration really coming on board with the Abraham Accords and its major diplomatic initiative in the Middle East was the promotion of expanding the Abraham Accords to get Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations. This would be a historic event that would have major, obviously, political and geopolitical consequences. But it was being done in the eyes of Hamas and the opponents of the Abraham Accords to marginalize the core issues of the Palestinians. In other words, this was a pursuit of economic and transactional peace, but not land for peace, not addressing the core of the Palestinian”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Islam after Mecca and Medina. This was causing anxiety amongst Muslims and certainly this is something Hamas put into its calculation before it attacked. It's no accident that Hamas called their October 7th action the Al-Aqsa flood. They called it the Al-Aqsa flood in order to point out what they saw as Israeli policy was bent on was really mitigating the rights of Muslims in the holy city and the holy site. The third thing is that I think Hamas noted political divisions in Israel, the Netanyahu government policies on restructuring the legal order in Israel, reducing the power of the Supreme Court, increasing the power of Knesset, which is the Israeli parliament, has caused a major fura within Israel. And Hamas noted that the Israeli body politic is divided.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“History did not begin on October 7th. There's a very important prelude. I think what Hamas was observing with its own calculus in mind was that the Palestinian issue was being relegated to a tertiary status in regional politics. And they saw that this right-wing Israeli government under Prime Minister Netanyahu was continuing the settlement project, which is Israeli settlements continuing to grow in the occupied Palestinian territories. So one of the major backdrops of October 7th was the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the government in Israel also was pushing the envelope on the rights for prayer at the Holy Mount in Jerusalem, where the holy places of Christians, Jews, and Muslims are located. And one of the most important religious sites in Islam is the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It's the third most important religious site in”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the incident of October 7th has major geopolitical implications that, in my mind, are akin to the situation in October of 1973, the Yom Kippur War. Hamas's attacks on Israeli targets and citizens and military on October 7th achieved their objectives of killing and taking hostages, which has had a major impact on the Israeli body politic and on the situation in the region as a whole. The October 7th attacks are one of these events in Middle East history that caused shifts in the general political landscape, not only between Israel and the Palestinians, but in the region as a whole. So it's very consequential.”
2023-12-15 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Middle East risks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT