3:01
Anshel, that miserable thing to do to a correspondent on the spot going to ask you to talk about the upcoming election and it's even worse. It's an Israeli election and no one can ever predict an Israeli election even like the day of but you know it's coming in maybe in October from our perspective as wondering about the isolation of Israel. Is this one of those elections where as long as Netanyahu loses in that moment, then you know with one bound Israel is free global standing transformed. Is that how it works? No, Israel's uh challenges, Israel's
security challenges, diplomatic challenges will all remain on the day after Netanyahu, assuming there is a day after Netanyahu. But yes, the new leader when there is a new leader visual whether it's Gaddy Eisenkot who's now uh gone ahead in the polls and Napali Bennett who was just a few weeks ago the front runner if it's one of them they will have an opportunity to try and reset some of these uh some of these issues but the challenges will remain the same and also a prime minister Eisen or a prime minister Bennett will have to take will have to make decisions
which will be unpopular around the world there's no question about it there's a kind of fantasy I think in the has to think that it's all Netanyao. Just get rid of Netanyahu. Everything will change. That's just not true. It's not true. I mean, he is representing some level of public opinion in what I agree is a very divided country, Israel, but he stands for something and he's he's it isn't just Netanyahu. It's more than that. It was very striking, David, when we were there and we were talking about domestic politics. Anel took us on this
wonderful tour of different political leaders. But the message that really came across to me was how much Israel in the past 10, 20, 30 years that Netanyahu has been dominant over Israeli politics, the whole country has shifted to the right. When I was last there and Anchel took me to a fantastic uh pollster and she was explaining how yeah it may be incredibly divided internally but in terms of foreign policy actually there's a fair amount of unity. Isn't that right, Anchel? I think that's very true. It's about the lack of having a diplomatic policy along with the military policy
and that's where we're beginning to see the difference between some of the candidates and Netanyah I was at the launch of Gaddy's party this week and there was a line in his speech which said we shouldn't just be pursuing war for war's sake and that's where you begin to see the shift where the alternative leaders are starting to talk about the fact that yes we have to be very tough and we have to prepare to go to go to war, but we also have to have these diplomatic options alongside our military policies. And that's where you're beginning to see the divergence. It's almost like
kind of Voldemort. People are too sort of that people are even his worst opponents are frightened of Netanyahu's political skills. I mean, nobody wants to exclude the fact that he could win again. So, if he wins again, what happens to policy? Does it get even more hardline? Do we see even more hardline people in the coalition? Well, I don't think there are more hardliners in Israel than Antihow can bring in. I mean, he's broken all the walls and brought in all the previously unmentionables into his current coalition, but we will see a doubling down on
these policies. And if that is the case, and if does win and is reelected with his current coalition, then that can only mean further isolation for Israel. Is Israel's future standing inseparable from the future of the Palestinian people, or have we just decided that we, you know, it's a busy world. we don't have the kind of the width to think about the Palestinians. I think it is inseparable. Yeah. I think I thought actually from October the 7th onwards that it showed terrible massacre event that it was. It showed you actually that there has to be some kind of agreement here. I go back to the old insight that you know
either Israel absorbs all the Palestinians a and accepts them as full citizens in which case its identity as a Jewish state is really under or it absorbs them or does you know rules over them in which case it becomes an apartheid state or it finds a settlement and there is kind of no other way. Um and I think you know I agree with you that the fickleness of the world of being obsessed by Gaza and then kind of forgetting about it is pretty shocking. But the energy for the Palestinian issues I don't think going to come from Gaza. I think it's going to come from the West Bank if Netanyahu is reelected because the settle
settler movement there is really is really strong and that's there's sort of movement in that
