I'm Weskasova today on the Big Take. Bloomberg's Israel Bureau chief Ethan Brunner is here to tell us about Israel's preparations for a ground invasion of Gaza and about the intense diplomatic efforts behind the scenes to try to prevent this war from spreading. Ethan, you're in Tel Aviv. What is life like there right now?
It's very grim, to be honest.
I live fortunately in really one of the liveliest downtown areas of any city in the world. Where I live, a confluence of people heading to the beach, normally outdoor cafes, incredible restaurants, beautiful shops. And this morning when I walked from my apartment to the office, it was essentially empty.
It felt like it was yom ki poor here.
Schools are still closed here, many shops are closed, restaurants are not open. People have a set of mourning because of the hundreds of debt. And the other thing is that there are so many people who've been called up and to reserve military duty that families are split and nervous. There is an incredible sense of betrayal in the country, a feeling that everything has gone terribly wrong, and it's really a very funereal feeling right now in Israel.
You mentioned a lot of soldiers being called up into service, and of course Israel's been talking about a possible land invasion of Gaza for several days. They've been telling people in Gaza in the north to leave, to go to the south. How is that actually going? How can so many people leave and are they able to leave?
Well, it's an enormously problematic request.
Obviously.
The Israelis have essentially asked one point one million people to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip and go below the river that divide the strip into north and south. About a half a million seemed to have gone. This is a standard thing, all oh, every time Israel has dealt with these kinds of situations It happened in southern Elebanon as well, in which you tell people to leave because we are going to come to carry out military activities and we don't want you to die. And
the people have nowhere else to go. They don't have house insurance, they don't have a lease on their house, they don't think they're going to get their place back, and so they some of them don't leave and in this case.
Also, Hamas has tried very.
Hard to prevent them from leaving, so it looks like about half have left.
But it's a very messy situation, of course.
And why is it that they want people to evacuate the north specifically.
Well, Hamas has been running all of the Gaza Strip for sixteen years. Their offices and operations are centered in Gaza City, which is in the north, and that's where they plan to carry out their first apparently ground activity.
Can you explain to exactly what the goal is that they would move people to the south, they would destroy the North, and then what happens after that.
Well, they of course haven't told us, but I mean, I think the idea is that the more of Hamas's governing and military infrastructure that they can physically destroy, the more leaders that they can kill, the further they will be to their goal of making it impossible for Hamas to rule in the Gaza Strip and to inflict the kind of harm it did on Israel in the future.
That is their goal, and is the assumption that Hamas fighters would remain in the north under siege or that they would to move south.
No, I don't think they're expected to move south. Hamas has been waiting for years. I mean there have been This will be the third major ground invasion by Israel.
The first was an eighth nine that was one in fourteen.
Hamas has done a very clever job of building underground tunnels in which they from which they would emerge in order to confront oncoming troops and kill them. So they and they they put out a little tape the other day showing their fighters emerging from these holes in the field and taking over a tank and killing the soldiers in the tank and saying and then they wrote in Hebrew, welcome, We're waiting for you.
So, of course that's the Israelis. Don't assume that they will leave.
No, the Israelis assume that they will stay, and they assume that it will be tough and that they will win.
That's what they assume.
As you say, Hamas knows every corner of Gaza. Is there a danger that Israel's defense forces are walking into a trap that once they're there, it could be very difficult for them to prevail.
It is absolutely a danger that they could be walking into a trap and that they could not prevail. I mean, there's no doubt that this is something that the that the Hamas fighters have been preparing for for a long time, so there's every reason in the world to be afraid of it now.
That is also why the.
Israelis have been pounding so heavily from above and insisting that people leave in a way they haven't done before, in order to clear the field for their arrival.
And they've got a plan.
I can't tell you whether it's a sane plan, but they have a plan.
They are just.
Feeling an extraordinary level of rage and humiliation and anger and desire for revenge for what happened to their unsuspecting civilians, kids, grandmothers on Saturday, October seventh. It was one of the most brutal things one could imagine.
So that's the first thing they.
Want to say to these people. You know, we're not afraid of death either. Okay, we're gonna We're willing to go in and lose our guys because we're going to win.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is we have to assume that they have some notion that they.
Might actually be able to win.
I mean, it is, after all true that the Israeli army should be more powerful than the Hamas military, which maybe has thirty or forty thousand men under arms, and we know of three hundred and sixty thousand Israeli reservists who've been called up. A population of ten million here, a population of two million there. So it seems like Israel should be able to win if it's willing to sustain losses, and that's what it says it is Ethan.
Is there any more information about how Hamas was able to breach Isra's military complex on October seven?
The details are emerging slowly.
They have let out some, I mean, a number of things happened. It was a fairly sophisticated breach, so that there were at least twenty five hundred, perhaps three thousand militants who took part, and they used drones to take out cameras and guns and other things on the border, and they then messed with this communications equipment that people have on the bases. They showed up early at the basis and killed the guards and that sort of thing.
I mean, it's a little hard to imagine that people could just wander onto military bases anywhere, especially in a place that's as heavily guarded as Israel. And I think that the crazy but nonetheless important answer to how this happened,
that the most important answer is not technological. The most important answer is conceptual, which is that the Israeli military had, over the last two years come to the conclusion, and not just the military, the entire security and governing apparatus, that Hamas had lost interest in any serious military fight, and so therefore it was a fairly relaxed atmosphere in the south, and they had got to move many of their more operational aspects to the West Bank.
Ethan. All of this, of course, is complicated by the many hostages that Hamas took into Gaza.
Yes, that's right.
We've just learned that the Israeli Army has now identified one hundred and ninety nine such hostages, and that the number is.
Likely to grow still further. We believe that there.
At least three dozen countries that are represented among the hostages, so and I think more than thirty of them are American. So it's a very complex picture, indeed, and the desire to sort of cut a deal to get them out is very high. I think that in Israel it must be I must be understood that in Israel, the anger, and the desire to not appear soft is so great that there is a quiet acceptance that the hostages may be sacrificed in this operation.
After the break, the US defends Israel but urges caution.
What happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Moss don't represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that it would be a mistake to for Israel to occupy Gazagam, but to going in and taking out the extremists. The Hesboah is up north, but Hamas down south is a necessary requirement.
Even there's a very big diplomatic push by the US and other nations to try to keep this conflict from spreading. Can you tell us exactly what's happening with that now?
Indeed, in fact, it's a mixture of diplomacy and military show of force. So the United States has moved two large battle fleets to the Mediterranean, each of the two anchored if you like, by a large carrier, in one case Gerald R.
Ford and the other Eisenhower. The point of their being there.
Is to say to his Bellah in Lebanon and to Iran, the sponsors of his and Lebanon that they ought not to consider entering into the Fray while this is happening, which in fact they have to some extent. There have been exchanges back and forth, but Southern Lebanon most days, Israel has been relatively contained in its response in order to also not let it escalate. But I have to tell you that there is also a school of thought in Israel, which is, let's take them all on. Okay,
we can't live under this kind of threat anymore. You know what, We're going to all get into uniform and we're going to do this. Now, that's not the dominant school of thought here, but it is out there, and the Americans are here, and Lloyd Austin, the Sector of Defense, came and said, do not do that.
Do not get try to get his bullat involved.
It is too dangerous. But interestingly, it seems that the Americans are also saying to the Israelis, if.
You act that way and then his ballad does begin.
To rain thousands of missiles down on you, we're here and we're going to take part.
The world has just witnessed a great evil, the deadliest attack on civilians in the history of the state of Israel. And the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust. So make no mistake, the United States will make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself. Israel has a right to protect its people.
At the same time, we have Anthony Blincoln, the Secretary of State, who's been on a shuttle diplomacy for a bunch of days. He's been to six or eight countries, and he's gone to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Jordan and Egypt and Kochtar, and his goal is to try to get sympathy for the Israeli perspective and get support for Israel's desire to destroy Hamas.
There are two very different visions for the future and what the Middle East canon should be. There's a vision that we very strongly espouse that has countries in the region normalizing their relations, integrating working together in common purpose, and upholding and bringing forth the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people.
That's one vision.
It's very clear. There's another vision that Hamas has demonstrated in the most horrific way, and that's a vision of death, of destruction, of nihilism, of terrorism.
And from what we can tell it's not going very well. The countries that he's going to are more worried about the civilians in Gaza that Israel is bombing from the air than feel the need to express horror at what happened on October seventh in Israel.
So it's complicated.
German Chancellor Olaf Schultz is due here today and it seems very likely at this point that President Biden will be here on Wednesday. There's an expectation that will delay any major ground endeavor until all those people leave. But they're all here in a kind of joint effort to show solidarity with Israel in the wake of this massacre, and I think also importantly to get Israel to be careful in what it does in Gaza, or as careful as possible.
Even their messages to be careful. But what's specifically do they want Israel to do or not to do.
I think that they themselves don't know, And just as I think Israel's kind of guttural assertion that they're going to destroy Commas down to its fingernails is something that's just kind of I don't mean it's meaningless, but I don't think they fully understand what that involves. I think that the American and Western European, Eastern European as well,
perhaps let's say it's allies in Europe. They want Israel to know that they too were horrified, deeply horrified by what Hamas did, and that it's fine for them to go do real damage to Hamas, but that it at the cost in civilian life has to be limited.
At the same time that this is going on, we're starting to hear more and more from Iran, which is issuing sort of dire proclamations. What are we to make of that?
I think we're going to be taken pretty seriously.
To be honest, I think that Iran has, from art what we've been able to learn, has been funding his Bellah at about a billion dollars a year, has been funding Hamas at about one hundred million a year, and it uses these militias to poke and to plan to do harm to Israel, and I think they mean it. So we believe that Hisbella has between one hundred and one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles on launchers underground in southern Lebanon, some of long range with GPS
guidance that could come to Tel Aviv. And you know Secretary Blincoln who's traveling around the region and his assistants and aids are hearing and are very worried that Iran would tell urge his Bellah to start raining five or eight thousand missiles a day on Israel. And Israel has, as we know, a good air defense system, several of them, but it's at around ninety percent efficiency. When it's flooded,
it's probably down to eighty percent efficiency. If you have five thousand missiles coming in in a day and you have eighty percent capture, that means you have a thousand missiles falling on your country.
It's going to kill a lot of people.
People are scared about this, and the concern is that if Israel does too much in Gaza kills too many people that will be unleashed. So the Israeli argument is, if we don't really do serious harm in Gaza, our enemies won't take us seriously.
And here is the debate.
As we mentioned earlier, US Secretary of State Blincoln had been going country to country and he said he wanted to share with the Israelis what he had learned in speaking to those leaders. What did they talk about?
Well, of course these are private conversations, but there was a very telling kind of pairing of tweets on the old Twins now X, in which you have a picture of Secretary of Blincoln and Mohammad bin Selman, the Crown
Prince of Saudi Arabia, sitting across from each other. So the account of that Tony Blincoln showed a picture of them talking and underneath it said we're here to talk about the terrible terrorism that occurred to Israel, And under NBS's picture there's a thing saying we're here to talk about how to stop the killing of innocence in Gaza. So there's a very very different view of what the core of this conflict is and of these events is about. And I think that that is what Lincoln is finding.
He's finding it difficult to get the rest of the region to embrace the Israeli American belief that the savagery of what happened on the seventh of October is all that you need to know in the way that it's like al Qaeda or isis.
That is not how most people in the region.
Indeed, I think in the world for better or for worse, view the legitimacy of the Israeli American.
Argument when we come back is a ground invasion of Gaza inevitable ethan. Right now, Israel has the sympathy of most Western nations. If Israel does proceed with the ground invasion of Gaza and many civilians there are killed, is there a danger that Israel will lose some of that sympathy.
Yes, there is a danger. In fact, I think that it has begune. The loss of sympathy has begun.
It's ten days, eleven days since the horrible events of October seventh, and Israel has already killed some three thousand people in Gaza. We believe that five or seven hundred of them are children. Israel is arguing that it has an obligation to take on Hamas the way the United States and the Iraqi Army took on the Islamic State in Mosl in twenty sixteen and seventeen.
That, yes, many.
People were killed along the way, but this is an act of supreme nobility in order to save humanity from an evil force that is coming after all of us. That is the Israeli argument with regard to Hamas and it is not my sense that most people abroad are embracing it, despite the sense of sympathy they have for Israel.
And do you think that this diplomacy and the possible arrival of the president of the United States and Israel will do anything to alter the course of Israel's actions one way or another.
It's a very good question, Wes, and I do not know. These are extremely historic moments, and in Israel everything feels on the table, everything is up for grabs. There is a sense that this government under Benjamin N'itanya, who has been incompetent in some core issues, and that now that Israel is facing a kind of external threat, that major decisions have to be made and nobody knows what.
They're going to be.
I think that it's very unclear whether Israel can be rained in. My instinct is it cannot be at first, but that it will ultimately be. But I you know, I have learned that predicting things in the Middle East is a fool's Errand.
You said whether Israel can be rained in exactly what would that look like? How could Israel go after Hamas without civilians being killed?
I mean, there are of course various levels of the kind of military activity that can carry out. It can decide that it is going to over the next six months take out every leader it can. It sort of bombed from the air. But I mean, the problem is that because what happened on October seventh involved thousands of commandos who had been training for a very long time, they see an infrastructure that they that is going to come after them again if they don't take it out,
and one has to be understanding of that. So how they can destroy that infrastructure and not kill a lot of people. I don't think it's very likely.
Do you think that it's inevitable that Israel will move in on Gaza?
I do? I think?
I think for Israel not to carry out a ground invasion at this point would be seen internally as a terrible betrayal of a national mission that is widely viewed here.
Yes, that's my sense. Now.
It may be that they'll only go in for a week, but I can't imagine them not going in at all.
And these concerns about this conflict spreading and possibly becoming a much wider war.
They are very real. They are very real fears. And I live here and I'm afraid I'm afraid that his below will start to rain down five to eight thousand missiles a day on this country and will not be able to stop it totally. So yes, I think it's a real concern. As I said to you earlier, there is a school of thought here also.
That says, bring it all on. We can take it.
Yes we'll lose people, Yes there'll be damage, but we're going to do things. We're going to eliminate these terrorist threats to us in the future, and we're going to send a message to those who hate us that we are not afraid to die. You and I talked some months ago about the fact that the sort of capitalist innovative class essentially here in Tel Aviv took to the streets to stand up to an attempt to weaken the Supreme Court and the judicial system under Prime Minister Netanyagu.
What has happened in the of these months is a kind of civil organization that has found a cohesion and patriotism that I think could serve this country for.
A long time to come.
And one of the most interesting things that has happened since the attack of October seventh is that the organization focused on demonstrating against this government, turned on a dime and became a fundraising civil help organization for the army and whoever needed it in the South. They've raised tens of millions of dollars. They're driving around distributing equipment and
food and so forth. And there is a sense that the core values of this country are going to be held onto and whence this thing is over, democracy and those kinds of issues are going.
To be re established on some level.
I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen, but there is a sentiment that's driving a fair amount of activity here which is are powerful.
Ethan. Thank you. It's always good to speak with you.
Thank you, Wes Sam.
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