Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. October seventh, twenty twenty three, one year ago today.
Very early this morning, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip began shooting thousands of rockets at Israel. Mus fights has broke past the Gaza Israel Borda.
Entering Israel by land, air and sea.
Taking people hostage, gunning people down in the streets of their talents, gunning them down in their.
Homes, dragging Israelis men, women and children across the border with Gaza. It was the culmination of decades of festering tensions. Last October seventh, over one thousand Israelis were killed and about two hundred and fifty taken hostage, and within hours Israel declared war on Hamas, immediately consuming the Gaza Strip in violence. Fighting has escalated in the Middle East as Israel ramps up its attacks on the Islamic militant group Hamas.
Palestinian death toll has past for thirty thousand. The hunger situation in northern Gaza has become increasingly dark. What was once a home and a warehouse sheltering displaced people is now a pile of rubble.
Morgues overflowing families crammed into overcrowded schools, desperate for food and water.
Almost forty two thousand people have been killed by Israel's operations in Gaza, according to the Hamas run health ministry. The fighting has since drawn in the entire region and its animated activists around the world, and things have escalated in recent weeks. Iran fired some two hundred ballistic missiles on Israel in response to the attacks on Hasbulah and the killing of a Hamas leader. The two nations are
now engaged in direct armed confrontation. Israel also sent troops into southern Lebanon last week and is waging an air offensive there aimed at Hasbulah. More than fifteen hundred people have been killed in Lebanon by Israel's airstrikes in recent weeks, and around one million have been displaced, according to local officials. Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas continue to exchange fire in Gaza.
The notion that Israel had kind of become comfortable in its place with having militias next to it.
Hamas and Gaza his in Lebanon.
There was a notion that, okay, they were dangerous, but we could take it we're fine, We've got it under control. That was all reversed by what happened.
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerat. Today on the show, I'm joined by Bloomberg's Israel Bureau chief Ethan Brahner to take us from then to now, to reflect on how the October seventh attack has transformed the region and to talk about what comes next. Ethan, it's been a year since the October seventh attack, and a broad question to start, I'm just curious how much Israel has changed since then.
David, I would say that the October seventh attack was one of the most impactful acts of terrorism.
In decades anywhere on the globe.
Israel became a broken society as a result of what happened on October seventh. It fractured the place numerous places in numerous ways. It gave the citizens a sense that they couldn't trust the contract that they had with their state and their army. And it also gave the impression around the region that the vaunted Israeli security.
Apparatus was today a paper tigers.
So it was absolutely a very very significant event.
Could people have imagined how wide how broad this military campaign has gotten.
I think that when.
Israel was penetrated on October seventh, and there was this incredible sense of vulnerability and this notion that it was time to rethink the strategy of the country.
Everything was open. There was an.
Amazing sense of vulnerability, which made it hard to imagine too many daring actions right away. But I think that the notion that Israel had kind of become comfortable in its place with having militias next to it Humas in Gaza, his Bellah in Lebanon, there was a notion that, okay, they were dangerous, but we could take it. We're fine, We've got it under control. There deterred. One phrase that you heard is better comas and chaos in Gaza. That
was all reversed by what happened. All of this became a sudden notion that Israel needed to rethink how it moved forwards strategically in the region.
And that's what we've seen.
We've talked about the effect that this has had on Israeli society. Let's look at Palestinian society. How much has that been disrupted by what's happened in the last year.
Oh my god, it has been a horrible year to be a Palestinian on the ground. So let's begin with Gaza. Israel the same day began bombing very intensively, and then within a few weeks brought its true and tanks and artillery to bear as well down hard on Gaza. So we now have a section of tiny coastal strip with two point two or three million people that have lost over forty one thousand people as fest we can tell, and large portions reduced to rubble, I mean.
Truly unlivable. This has been a terrible.
Time to be in godz of people have been uprooted constantly, many many, many homes and institutions have been destroyed. In the West Bank, where Palestinians had been until the seventh of October, a couple of one hundred thousand coming into Israel working the economy was actually doing much better than
in previous years. All of that shut down, there were huge numbers of checkpoints, people couldn't move, people couldn't work, people couldn't make any money, and settlers, Jewish settlers started to express their anger about the Palestinian attack on Israel, and there were cars burned and so forth, and the fact that this.
The police force, which.
Is led by a very right wing member of the Israeli government, did little to get in the way of those settler activities made it all the worse.
So it's been a terrible time to be Palestinian.
I remember, not long after the attack, he wrote about how it kind of led to Israel coalescing around what a lot of Israeli saw as this existential threat in Gaza. How has that sense of unity shifted?
That is absolutely true.
Let's remember that before October seventh, the previous eight or nine months, the country was deeply divided over plans by the Natanyahu government to shift the role of the courts, and from the point of view of many who were liberals and on the left, it was an attempt to reduce the democratic nature of Israeli society. So there was an incredible amount of division, and many believed that that division offered Israel's enemies the reason to believe that this was a.
Good moment to attack.
So that happened, and then indeed there was an incredible, almost exit stential sense that this is a moment when the country needs to come together, and did come together.
Let's not forget there were two hundred.
And fifty hostages taken in, there were twelve hundred dead people. There was a sense of violation of group fate that took over. So that was true for many months. It remains to an large extent true. But you know, it's been a year and the question of how this war should go forward it has started to play again.
Everyone.
About a week ago we saw Israel launch this incursion into Lebanon, these targeted attacks. What does that say to you about the strategy going forward here? How much of an escalation is that as you see it.
Look, anytime you bring in ground troops and tanks, it's a massive escalation. It's a very big difference from just shooting from the air. But let's remember what Israel believes,
whether true or not, is another question. It believes that sixty five thousand residents in the north who've been internal refugees for the last year have not been able to live in their homes because of his Bella's firing missiles and the fear that his Bela right up against the border could actually come in in a similar maneuver of the October seventh.
But Hamastid in.
The south, so their belief is they need to quote unquote clean the area within a few kilometers of the border and make it impossible for his Belah to shoot and to use that as a staging ground.
So I don't know how long that will take.
And of course, if there are soldiers that are taken hostage or captured, I mean, anything could happen.
We really don't know.
The White House had counseled Israel against this latest incursion in Lebanon, an effort to avoid wider conflict that clearly failed.
After the break.
What's likely to happen next between Israel and the US and where this widening conflict could go from here. About a week ago, Israel sent troops into southern Lebanon in what it called an effort to combat his Bulah, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US and many other countries. This incursion was something that the White House had counseled Israel against. I asked Bloomberg's Israel Bureau chief Ethan Bronner, what it means that Israel went ahead with it.
The truth is that the United States has very rarely been able to tell Israel what to do militarily generally, I mean, in previous decades it had slightly more influence, it might be said. But what's interesting is over the last three or four decades, is Israel has become a powerful country, an important military force, an important intelligence force in the region, and the relationship between Israel and the United States has been less.
Of great power to junior partner.
Indeed, it remains that, but less of that and more of a shared strategic set of goals, and not always shared.
But in theory broadly shared.
I think Israel has decided to do what it wants to do more and more now. It is also true that, for example, although the US urged it not to go in on the ground, once it began its maneuvers on the ground, then the US said, this is part of its legitimate right to self defense. From what I can tell, and we'll learn more as the days and weeks go on, the US was especially eager to avoid a massive ground incursion, to limit it to more small groups, and that seems
to have been what happened. Whether that's a result of American pressure or not, I don't know.
I lent an ear to a lot of speeches at the UN General Assembly last month, and there were many world leaders calling for a two state solution, the US, of course among them, perhaps more loudly than it has. Ever, what do people say in the region about the prospects of that happening.
It seems unlikely in the short term.
I think that what the regional powers in the United States would like to get Israel to do, and so far they're not able to, is to talk about the expectation that there will be a two state solution down the road, preparations for it. This country has not been
willing to say it. Politically, it's a very unpopular stand because there is a belief here that what Hamas did, which was cheered by many who are not in Hamas among the Palestinians, that actually in the Palestinian political world there isn't really a desire to coexist with the Jewish state.
That is the prevailing view here.
I think it could shift with some work and some leadership,
but at the moment it doesn't seem very likely. The bigger question, also, though, is if, in fact, in the last few weeks Israel's ability to really send a message that Hisbella is not as strong as it was, that Iran is not as strong as it was, that actually Israel is the power again in the region, which some people are saying it's still early to say, but some people are saying, might that shift the power dynamics again so that a country like Saudi Arabia would quietly rebuild
its relationship with Israel.
It's not out of the question, Ethan.
What about the man who's been spearheading this war, Benjamin Netnyah, who just give us a sense of how much support he has, how unanimous his basive support is in the country as this conflict goes into its second ear So.
I wouldn't call his base of support nanis by any means. He has been quite unpopular for a long time. He's been in office for fifteen of the last seventeen years or something like that, and he does have an important base, but he faces fraud and bribery charges.
People feel that he's been in power too long.
That said, there is a sense that he's a guy who really can be counted on when things matter for the big geopolitical questions. Many people view it, not most, but many, and his popularity has risen the further we've gotten from October seventh.
Ethan, is there clarity on what it would take for this war to end as we see it wide in the way that it has. Do we know what the endgame is for Israel?
I think for now the endgame for Israel is to have his ballah at least ten kilometers away from the border and relatively disarmed, a sort of a notion that there's someone else in charge in Lebanon rather than them, and Hamas no longer a threat or in power in Gaza.
And indeed, one thing we haven't mentioned is the return of.
The one hundred or so hostages. Those I would say are the main goals. Return of hostages, return of residents to their home, and the dismantling of Hamas and as threats to this country.
That's what they're looking toward. Not an easy set of.
Goals, Ethan. Thank you very much, my pleasure, David. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited by Caitlin Kenny, Aaron Edwards, and Eric Gelman. It was mixed by Alex Segura, in fact check by Audrean Aa Tapia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Hanso. Our executive producer is Nicole beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.