It's very difficult for international journalists to get into Gaza, and actually the only way that you can really do it is to go on what's called an embed with the Israeli defense forces, the Israeli army.
You tell the difference then and an attack.
Riend should I feel I ought to get my eart.
Zanni Minton Beadows is the editor in chief of the Economist.
So I went in with three colleagues and we went in a convoy of three humv's in an armored vehicle. Why on that one, And we were joined somewhat unusually by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, who is the head spokesman of the IDF.
This journey she's taking into Gaza is one very few foreign journalists have been able to make since Israel's bombings began.
And we crossed what's called the Netzareem Corridor, which is essentially a road that the Israelis have built that bisects Gaza.
You can see offence. Now, this is the this is the border, and this is where we put on.
And we crossed on this bumpy road for seven kilometers to the Mediterranean Sea, and every single building I saw was flattened or heavily destroyed. I literally did not see an intact building. My colleagues who had been in Gaza before said it was very, very difficult to recognize here.
It's just it's it's sort of very organized and complete destruction, where on both sides of the roads what you see is just piles of rubble.
We know that around sixty percent of all buildings in Gaza have either been damaged or destroyed, and where I was, it was essentially flattened. I'm not a war correspondent, I'm not someone who does this regularly, but I was very, very struck by It's a devastation.
Now there's a real risk this devastation could spread. Iran's Supreme leader has vowed to retaliate against Israel after the head of Hamasa's political bureau was assassinated in Tehran last week. But while tensions escalate, the fight over who will control Gaza in the future is continuing too, from the streets of Jerusalem to the Knesset, Gaza and the West Bank. Zanni Minton Bedos has been speaking with dozens of people about what will happen to Gaza when or if the
fighting stops from Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am today. What is the future for Gaza? It's Wednesday, August seventh. Zanni, thank you for coming on seven am. It's excellent to have.
You on, very nice to join you.
So, Zanni, on this reporting trip, you had this very specific question in mind, which is what happens on the day after? So who would be in charge of Gaza in the days and weeks when and if there was a ceasefire? And what would a credible plan for security in Gaza actually look like? Why was that the driving question for you?
I have been very struck in all of the reporting and discussion about what happens next in Gaza that when you talk to people, the day after is usually a shorthand for a very ambitious vision of the past to a future Palestinian state, a two stage solution, all of which are extremely important, but they are very much medium term goals. And what I was interested in was what actually happens on the literal day after, What happens if there is a ceasefire, or even if there isn't a
cease fire, what happens when the fighting ebbs? What does the next months, the next six months the next year look like in Gaza, how does one even begin to provide relief and reconstruction and what do you need for that to happen.
Well, let's talk a bit more about what you were told, because you pose this question to both Palestinians and Israelis, so politicians, military people, for Pentagon official, you spoke to a whole range of people. So can you just run me through what the possible scenarios are for the future of Gaza.
I mean, Actually, one of the earliest conversations I had, and one of the most clarifying, was with Dana Strule, who is a woman who until about six months ago was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the US Pentagon, and she very clearly laid out for me that there were essentially five options in Gaza.
One that Israel continues to provide security in effect as an occupying power, and that is something that is utterly unacceptable to Palestinians for obvious reasons, and frankly, it's unacceptable to most countries around the world. The second option, which is something that you hear a lot about from Israeli politicians, is that some kind of international probably Pan Arab coalition would come in and provide security in Gaza. That's what
Israeli politicians hope. It doesn't seem at tooll clear to me that that's very realistic. Then there are two options which people talk about, but neither of which are terribly attractive.
The first is that security is provided by.
Some kind of private contractors, outsourced. The second, which is the one that is really really unattractive, is the return of Hamas as the de facto governing power. Nobody wants that, but that is in effect what happens absent anything else.
And then the fifth, which is the option that Palestinians in the West Bank, the Americans and actually most of the international community other than the Israelis are keen on, is that security is provided by Palestinian forces essentially created from the West Bank, from the fatal led West Bank government, and drawing on the people within Gaza who used to be part of the security establishment, the policeman, the traffic wardens who were there in the past.
Providing that.
Those are effectively the five options. The alternative, if you don't have any of that, is that the place becomes a lawless zone run by criminal gangs, a kind of mogadissue on the med As someone put it very graphically to me, that's what happens if you don't have one of these other solutions.
Okay, well, let's explore a bit further than this idea that the Palestinian authority could take charge of Gaza. You spoke to several representatives, including the new Justice minister. Can you tell me a bit about him and his vision for Gaza.
So Chakrabille Alazaim he was one of the most prominent lawyers in Gaza. He's a very much part of the Gaza elite.
Guests like Tony Blair, John Kerry, like Katherine Ashton.
I went to visit Chakabille in Ramala.
He was just an extraordinarily eloquent, mild manner, thoughtful and indeed optimistic person.
This is my home, so that's quite a house.
This is this woman in pool.
His home which he showed me, this extraordinary sort of grand villa was completely destroyed by the Israelis.
Yes, that's it now, Oh my god, that is it.
And that is a completely destroyed pile of rubble. He stayed in Gaza after October seventh until he, like everybody else, was forced to flee his home and having been asked several times to join the Palestinian authority and had always refused, But now after October seventh, he decided it was time to serve and he joined the new Palestinian government in March. He is Justice Minister and he is very passionate about playing a role in.
The future of Gaza.
He was very clear to me that the only legitimate option was for Palestinians and the Palestinian government to provide security for Gaza.
I think let's put aside the leadership which might be Hamas. I'm talking about the normal policeman, traffic policeman or a security or whatever. Those are civil servants and those deserve to be given their chance to continue serving. And those people can provide the security, and they are well known to the people, They have their own respect.
And what will be the relationship between the civil police and Commas.
I don't think that Hamas will or should be in the picture on the day to day running of the life of the civilians in Gaza.
Do you think you can make any progress on the path you've laid out without actively talking to Hamas.
I don't think so. I don't think so. But I'm willing to do whatever I'm asked by the Prime Minister and the President in order to achieve what we are supposed to achieve.
But there's questions about their legitimacy and there's questions about their capability. The PA hasn't itself had any elections since two thousand and six. This is not a kind of legitimate democratic government in any meaningful sense. The PA itself is being sort of systematically undermined by the Israelis. Israel, for example, hasn't distributed the Palestinian's share of tax revenue to which they're entitled. As a result, the PA hasn't been able to pay for civil servants. They are on
partial pay. So this combination of a very very weak government, one beset by weakness, by corruption and by lack of legitimacy, there's a real question about, you know, whether it can even sustain governance in the West Bank, never mind in Gaza.
After the break. What the Israelis have planned for Gaza Zanni. On your reporting trip, you went to Gaza and the West Bank, and you also went to Israel. So tell me a bit about what it felt like to walk the streets there.
For israelis it feels as though it's really October seventh has just happened. Everyone knows someone who was directly affected on October seventh, So you're lot.
You know, you walk through.
The streets of Jerusalem and you come across people protesting for a ceasefire against Natanya who's saying, we need a ceasefire, bring the hostages home. Then a little further on you see another protest by the families of fallen soldiers against the ceasefire, saying that that would mean that their relatives died in vain.
My brother got into ASA to protect us, to bring back the hostages, and if we're we stop the fire now, then it died for nothing.
I was very struck in conversation off the conversation I had in Israel, with all manner of people, people in favor of the government, all serried ranks of the opposition, ordinary people. Virtually no one brings up or mentions gars and civilians. And when you think about how that is understandably the focus in the rest of the world with the death told now you know it his figures provided by the Hamas led Health Ministry, But forty thousand people
approximately have died. That is not really focused on in Israel at all. The perspective is completely different, and that's the thing that struck me the most. Israel is a traumatized society, understandably so, a society focused on its own security and the fact that it is surrounded by countries and organizations that want to attack it. But it is one where the plight of and the aspirations of Gaza and civilians are just not part of the conversation.
So tell me then, what are Prime Minister Benjamin netna Who's plans for Gaza.
Well, there are no official day after plans. That's part of the problem.
Is all will fight until we destroyed Hamasa's military capabilities and a rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home.
Prime Minister Natanya, who talks about total that's what total victory means, and we will settle for nothing.
Less total victory becomes an empty phrase after a while. Prime Minister nat and Yahoo is widely unpopular and it's causing huge frustration within Israel.
A large majority of Israelis want and Yahoo to resign. So if you were to look around at the rest of the Israeli leadership, as you did, you spoke to politicians from the left to the far right. What are some of the ideas that you heard there for the future of Gaza.
So you're right, I did talk to I felt like I'd been on a sort of tour of Israeli politics, which is which is complicated. There are a lot of different parties on the kind of left, center left, even center right. You have a recognition that you need to focus on security, but then you need to have some prospect for a better life for gas and civilians. But there are very different means to getting there.
I'm Tally Bennett, a former Prime Minister of Israel.
We went to see enough Tally Bennett, the former Prime Minister, at his house just north of Tel Aviv.
We'd identify competent officials at various levels.
So now Tally Bennett was one of the very senior politicians who was very willing to go on the record and lay out clearly what he thought should happen.
We should take a piece of Gaza, let's say, from Gazawadi northward, and then set the stage and say the following. It's going to take a while. Bear with us, our friends, but at the end of it, we're going to form a Gaza two point zero here.
So his was a sort of a piece by piece approach, getting rid of competence properly, as he put it, and then starting again with a part of Gaza and then moving on to another part. But he also had the hope and expectation that there would be Arab forces coming in to provide governance.
You got to bring in a bunch of competent regional players and find competent local leadership, and that would be appoint that it could not, in the first instance, be democratic on that plot of land, let's call it Northern Gaza, and then all of Gaza gradually set it on its feet and learn the lessons from post World War two reconstruction.
Would your partner for civil governance in Gaza be the Palestinian Authority? That's what the Americans are very keen to happen, that the PA is the partner. Do you think it can be the partner?
I think certainly not in the foreseeable future, because they have proven to be deeply corrupt, deeply incompetent, and I'm fairly confident that we can, once we defeat Hamas, will be able to find reasonable.
Players and The obvious question there is if you're quote unquote starting again, or what are you starting with When people in Gaza are being killed at the scale they are, who would actually be left?
Well, that's right, and I think to be fair to Naughtarlie Bennett, he would have prosecuted this war in a very different way. He acknowledges that nine months on this is much harder than if his approach had been taken
from the very beginning. But yes, you're right when you talked to Israeli politicians about what this Gaza two point zero, if you will, would look like, the Israeli military was still engaged in combat with Ramas, there were rockets falling, there were ghaz and civilians being killed, and there's a kind of, you know, an irony right that in sort of air conditioned offices and buildings in Israel, people are
talking about Gaza two Oh. Meanwhile, you know two million people are living in the most horrific conditions still under attack within Gaza.
So Zanni just finally he laid out five different possible scenarios for Gaza at the beginning of this conversation, after the reporting that you've done, do you have any kind of answer to the question of what happens on the day after.
So I was in Israel at the end of June. That's several weeks ago. Now, clearly a lot has happened since then, both in terms of, you know, rising tensions with Chris Bulla, the assassination of Hania. The place right now, as we are speaking at the beginning of August is very very much on tender hooks. I think there's a real expectation, of course, of Iranian retaliation. The risks of a wider regional conflict are much greater, I think than
they were just a few weeks ago. But the prospects of a ceasefire, which is I think a prerequisite for much of the day after conversation that I was having, have become much more distant when you know, the main interlocutor on the Hamas side was just been inssassinated.
Someone said to me, Gaza.
Will go from being the world's largest open air prison to the world's largest refugee camp, and that is a.
Really, really grim prospect. But right now.
I don't see many grounds for feeling much more optimistic. You can't help but be there and sort of be blown away by the potential, by the natural beauty of the place, by the it's tiny, right, the whole area is really really small. It could be so much more, but right now I left. Yeah, not hugely optimistic.
Well, Zannie, thank you so much for your reporting and for your time.
Thank you very much, thanks for having me.
You can hear Zanni Minton Beddow's full report on Guys on the Economist podcast The Intelligence. The episode is called Gaza After the Dust Settles. It's a fascinating listen special thanks to Hardipet. Also in the news today, the Reserve Bank of Australia has kept interest rates on hold at a rate of four point three five percent. The Australian Bureau of Statistics last week showed inflation at three point eight percent, which was in line with the RBA's expectations.
On Monday, the share market dived in response to a weakened US economy, and Google has been labeled a monopolist in a landmark decision in the United States. The US Justice Department in States had sued Google, accusing it of illegally maintaining dominance in online search by paying companies Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to have Google be the default search engine on their devices. The ruling is the first antitrust decision of its kind against a technology giant
in decades. The judge will now decide what penalties Google should face. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.