(CR note: I’m making this special Deep Dive podcast available to non-paid subscribers. For more content like this, please consider becoming a paid member.”
With a Daily Newsletter, Deep Dives, and now the Trial Balloon podcast, there has never been a better time to upgrade to a paid subscription.
To make the offer even better, I am reviving my ‘Crazy Upgrade Pricing’ of $19 for the first year — 81% off the regular price:
If you like the content I deliver & want to support the effort, now is the time.
I first met Dan Perry in Romania 1990. He was the AP Bureau Chief, and I was freelancing for the summer. There’s no one I’ve met who better understands collectively Israel, the Middle East, and the U.S.
So after the Hamas attack and Israel’s declaration of war, I knew whom to call.
Dan was awoken on Oct. 7 “by rocket fire over central Tel Aviv, with the Iron Dome system zapping the incoming missiles out of the sky, leaving debris to rain down on nearby streets. It is now evening, and air raid sirens continue to wail as volleys arrive from Gaza.”
About Dan: Among other roles, he led the Associated Press coverage of Israel and the Middle East — from Pakistan through north Africa — for much of the 2010s. Today Dan lives in Tel Aviv and writes the excellent Substack “Ask Questions Later”. His columns appear in the Times of Israel and Newsweek, among other places. He appears frequently on the in i24 global television network.
Transcript
Chris Riback:
Dan, good to see you.
Dan Perry:
Chris. How are you?
Chris Riback:
We are talking on Sunday evening Israel time. How are you doing?
Dan Perry:
I'm all right. My family's fine, but obviously it's a very tense time and I mean there's a feeling of danger in trepidation throughout the country, especially in south obviously.
Chris Riback:
How'd you learn of the attack?
Dan Perry:
I was awoken by the combination of a sirens wailing, an iron dome explosion over our apartment and my wife trying to rouse me for my slumber,
Chris Riback:
And that's in Tel Aviv. What time was it around?
Dan Perry:
I don't even know, but I mean from reconstructing events, it must've been around six 30 or 7:00 AM on Saturday.
Chris Riback:
Do you feel this is Israel's 9/11? It's been called that.
Dan Perry:
Yes, it's a terrorist attack. Attack, pure and simple that has about it the sense of a reshuffling of the deck and the crossing of a Rubicon and a national reckoning to come after a time of uniting and mobilization that is a little bit jarring given that the country's just gone through these incredible divisions because of internal politics. So that whole melange is what we're looking at here,
Chris Riback:
Which is part of what I want to talk with you about among the many roles that you play for me in my life, is that I go to you not infrequently for context around all things that intersection of Israel and Middle East and the US and the world and philosophy and music sometimes too.
Dan Perry:
Can't we just say the world in all things?
Chris Riback:
Yes, we could say that. So on that context, help me understand the time before October 7th, you wrote just recently, just as those attacks by Al-Qaeda launched a new chapter for the United States. So this attack ends Israel's patience with the strategy it has pursued since Hamas expelled the Palestinian authority from Gaza in 2007. That strategy was to accept Islamic militant rule in the neighboring strip, strictly control who and what goes in and comes out and accept the occasional round of rocket fire. That's what existed 2007 until early morning October 7th.
Dan Perry:
Yes, yes, I wrote it so I believe it
Chris Riback:
Was it the right strategy.
Dan Perry:
I haven't been shy about criticizing the strategies of Israel and other countries, but this one is a genuinely complex matter because Israel didn't really know what to do with the fact that this terrorist group, which is sworn to its destruction, had taken over this neighboring territory and it was left with not a lot of good options. So the option they chose, which is not to go in there and fight them door to door and street to street, which would've led to massive casualties on all sides, especially as these vicious cynics are completely em embarrassed to hide among civilians and families and dare you to create collateral damage. Given all that, they didn't want to go in and invade it, so they had to find a way to live with it, and their solution was, as I wrote, to basically blockade it, which of course brings suffering to the people there, but at least it prevents them from importing weapons and developing a sparta from which they attack you, which to a degree we say they've done. Anyway. What I know for sure is that given that wars erupted in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, two of them real serious wars with thousands of casualties in 2008 and 2014, and that Hamas is still in charge and that the long suffering people of Gaza, 2 million of them, many of whom I count as my friends, are under the boot of Islamic fanatic terrorist group that is running a police state par excellence where they can kill you for having a beer.
I have to conclude after 17 years that it may be time for a change because this has not worked out well. Now, what that change should be really is, I mean, I think we pundits and analysts should know our limitations. This is such a complex matter that is for military strategists. Clearly the blunt approach of going in there with the tanks and rooting them out is going to lead to massive casualties right now for many Israelis, the heart says, yes, do that. This can't continue, but the head says, wait a minute. Whereas psychologically, we may feel like this can't continue.
The landscape hasn't changed. Are we prepared because we've just absorbed 600 people murdered to lose 6,000 soldiers where people and to kill God knows how many on the side, including inevitably civilians because as I say, Hamas will be fighting behind human shields. That is what they do is an open question. Is there a clever way to go about this? I suspect there is. Is there a way to find a different kind of accommodation with Hamas that would be a different thing than a blockade, but in some ways would be shameful because they're evil perhaps? I think there's a number of options on a table. What is for sure is the complicating this equation is the fact that they appear to have taken several dozen hostages.
Now, there'll be another set of recriminations about the spectacular and humiliating failure at every level in Israel, the intelligence, the tactics, and as I say, the overall strategy that enabled these irregular militants to blast their way across the border fence, drive in there by the hundreds, take over towns and kine for hours and hours, massacre people in the streets and then march them back across miles of open territory, unimpeded. It's mind blowing that they failed degree, but that they have, there's hostages and Gaza, and this probably is going to limit Israel's options to a degree or the current government of Israel, a collection of fanatics and felons and fools is so, so populated by tough talking ultranationalists who've never served the day in the army because of excuses about their religion that you'll be hearing that Israel should ignore the hostages and act as if that isn't really a thing and go ahead and let them be executed and what can I say that reflects the moral level of the people who have assembled in this government?
Chris Riback:
Okay, so there's a lot there. There's the terrible reality that you just described about the hostages. There's the intelligence failure you've written. Others have written that intelligence failure and we'll understand much more about that over the weeks and months and even years to come, but likely did not occur within a vacuum that there has been a lot of context. You've written about it, you and I have discussed it around Israeli domestic politics, around Middle East politics. We haven't really gotten a chance to talk about the pending Saudi Arabia, Israeli US agreement around peace trade, military recognition, something that would involve the Palestinians, and there's the geographic reality, which give this to me just quickly for any of the US audience who might not be as keenly aware of the geography as you're looking at the map of Israel, you've got the Gaza strips of the Southwest, you have Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon, and I guess going through Syria and on the other side of the Golan Heights and to the east, you have the West Bank.
Over the last several months and over the summer and including as recently as today, there are regular assaults between Palestinians and Israelis and the settlers. You have the continual threat from Hezbollah to the north. I believe some rockets have been sent into Israel today. What does the geographic reality mean? I ask this because let me quote you again. You also wrote, one might ask why Hamas decided to roll the dice this way. Since the group's leaders must know that they're risking their continued control of Gaza, and it's 2 million long suffering people, as you just described, logic dictates the group is hoping to expand the fighting into a major regional conflict. For example, by compelling Hezbollah to open up a northern front from Lebanon or by sparking a third Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and even dragging Israel's 2 million Arab citizens into the fray. How realistic is contagion, Dan?
Dan Perry:
You know, it is. I mean, you're asking me to read the minds of people who are fanatical and somewhat reckless, but also not unintelligent in how they pursue their goal. And their goal is for the Middle East to be up in flames and for the Jewish state to be well diminished and if possible eliminated and they're willing to pay almost any price for it. Not that they have asked the population that will suffer in their son, both Hamas and Hezbollah to a certain degree, take orders from Iran, especially Hezbollah. If Iran wants to create a multi-front war for Israel, then it certainly could. Hezbollah would probably comply. That would be devastating for Lebanon. There's a point where Israel's going to feel it has to make a point and strike back very hard. I think we're probably there already, but if Hezbollah starts firing rockets at cities in Israel and you have hundreds more killed, if not thousands, if not more, then that will lead to a very dark place.
Dan Perry:
The basic fact of Israel's geography as you described, and as you put it, is that Israel is vulnerable. I mean, at its narrowest point without the West Bank, it's about 12 miles wide. So obviously it can be potentially bisected, it can be invaded the borders despite the fact that the country is not that large snake all over the place, and so the West Bank border is long, even a Gaza border, which is only 50 kilometers from north to south and a few kilometers east to west until the sea, clearly they failed. They failed to police property. So I think,
Chris Riback:
Didn't you tell me a story once about being in a helicopter with, was it with the Israeli leader, prime Minister
Dan Perry:
Shamir? Yes.
Chris Riback:
Tell me that story.
Dan Perry:
This was about 30 some years ago. Look, here's the thing about the West Bank. If Israel controls it, that's not a crazy idea because then it's no longer 12 miles wide. It's valuable strategic territory as a buffer so that it has a way to defend its heartland from attack. However, it comes with too many Palestinians who don't want Israeli rule and whom Israel does not want to give citizenship to. So it's an undemocratic situation that is unstable and tends to break out in occasional bouts of violence. So to me, whereas the military occupation of the West Bank is still not a good thing, but is somehow defensible, the effort to settle the West Bank with Jews, thus making it officially a binational state where one nation at least a part of it in West Bank doesn't have the same rights, is a very, very bad idea, and it's fundamentally unstable.
So the issue is the people on the ground as opposed to the territory, and Shair was a prime minister in 1988 when I was the political reporter for the Jerusalem Post, and he invites me up on his helicopter ride above the West Bank, which I thought was very nice of him, but I disagreed with him then as I disagreed with Inania Hu, now that the least bad option is to keep this territory and settle it would Jews, I think that is the worst option and it would be even better just to pull out. So there we were above the West Bank and Shamir looks down and it's difficult to hear if you've ever been in a helicopter with or without a prime minister. People can't talk. You have these headphones on and there's a lot of gesturing and finger pointing. He points to the ground and I could see he was trying to say, see, it's empty down there, meaning there's no demographic problem.
And that was very telling because the right-wing policy in Israel has been predicated from the beginning on just ignoring the fact that there's these people there who don't want you there and you don't want them, and that's not going to lead to good karma. Despite the stupidity of creating an undemocratic binational reality in West Bank through settlement, the idea that Israel could benefit from having this territory is not insane, considering that without it, it's so small in the middle and so vulnerable to attack from enemies who clearly have not all been persuaded to become Zionists quite yet. So that's the fundamental problem Israel faces. It's carrying out some, its basic policy towards the Palestinians has been unwind, but the problem that it aims to fix is a real problem that doesn't have an obvious best case solution.
Chris Riback:
Now talk to me about Israel. Its current, most recent domestic politics you've been writing. You and I have been discussing a ton about it three weeks ago in a piece on how you felt that Yahoo was trying to undermine Israeli democracy with bills on the judicial system and more you wrote in Israel, that's a recipe for true disaster. The country of 10 million is reputedly one of the world's nuclear powers and is a global hub of technological innovation that also sits smack in the center of the Middle East. Tinderbox Netanyahu, a criminal defendant on trial for bribery heads, a coalition bristling with ex-cons, fanatics, and racists who wanted to cement Israel's awkward rule over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians arrestive population with a history of exploding in violence. If anyone wants more background on your views on the coalition, they can go to ask questions later, your excellent sub blog and see some of the pieces that you've written explaining why you've had concerns about the coalition. But you wrote, and this is just a little bit prescient, such outcomes have ripple effects. A Middle East war almost exactly 50 years ago caused a global oil crisis. More recently, the Middle East gave us deadly global terrorism and terrorists including 9/11, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and trillions of dollars poured down the drain by American governments in rather futile wars. Be very, very careful with the Middle East. Two questions. One...
Dan Perry:
I like how you summed that up.
Chris Riback:
Well, yes, that was your writing a little bit prescient. No,
Dan Perry:
No, just, I mean
Chris Riback:
Was it not hard to see is that
Dan Perry:
I'm saying I love to be called prescient, but really it's not being willfully blind. It's clear. I mean, the government was sitting on a can of gas and it was throwing lit matches around. You don't have to be prescient, you just have to not be an idiot.
Chris Riback:
Netanyahu has warned of a long and difficult war ahead given the, and we've all seen the protests every, I think Saturday night in Tel Aviv and elsewhere and the highways and blocking of airports. Will Israelis support him? What's the difference between supporting the war and supporting Netanyahu
Dan Perry:
To support Netanyahu at this point? I mean, I can hardly comprehend how a patriot could do that, supporting remedial action against Hamas and even simply to avenge what has happened here and to make the point that Israel cannot be attacked with impunity. I think that's something at this point, Israeli's mainstream of Israel will not only support but will demand and will be willing to pay a higher price for than before because there is a sense that this cannot go on. Now, I wouldn't recommend taking the position that something must be done. This stupid act is a thing, and so this stupid act must be done. The thing that they do should be a smart thing, and I would hope that at this point they're listening to some experts and to the military establishment because when the security establishment of Israel, and I'm talking about all the former ones, heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet and Army and police, pretty much all of them
And all of the current ones tried to warn the government that by sowing such divisions in Israel with the project of turning it into authoritarian fake democracy, they're projecting weakness, harming social cohesion and could invite attack. So these fools in the government refuse to hear that amid what is in Israel as in other countries, this fashion about disdain, the educated and the experts and the elites and the privileged. I mean, it doesn't get you very far. Generally it got Israel to October 7th. So hopefully right now they're listening to some members of the elite who might come up with a plan that would achieve an optimum of all the goals right now, which is to not kill more people, but to eliminate Hamas or weaken it spectacularly to deliver a message and to deter any such action anytime in the near future. On any one of the borders that you mentioned or fronts that you mentioned,
Chris Riback:
I mentioned a moment ago the Saudi Arabia, Israel, US trilateral negotiations that have been going on. Did that play a role?
Dan Perry:
Well, maybe. I mean, you got to ask yourself why Hamas did this when they knew that it would reign, hell fire back upon them. Well, that they don't care about the people of Gaza is manifestly evident, so that's not a problem, but they might care about losing their power. One idea was the one I just mentioned, that they were attempted by the weakness projected by Israel because of its reckless government sowing such internal divisions. Another possibility, and sometimes you can have more than one reason, is that Iran was compelling this maybe even ordering this in order to complicate what was looking like a potentially successful effort to bring about Saudis Israeli R response and normalization. The idea behind Saudi normalization, I think we really don't know for sure, but it kind of looked like they weren't going to demand much in the Palestinian front now for the Arab world, hoping that Israel will eventually be compelled to be rational and about the West Bank.
Dan Perry:
One of their levers was that Saudi Arabia had always made that a condition of peace and Israel wants peace of Saudi Arabia for Saudi Arabia to throw away. That card clearly frustrates both Palestinians who reasonably want Saudi Arabia to do their bidding and not throw away that card. Iran, which certainly does not want to see a strong axis based on mutual security assurances between the us, the moderate Sunni world and Israel that they don't want to see, and a multi-front war with half the region up in flames and Israel at war with Lebanon. Now because Hezbollah attacked it from Lebanon, clearly is a contact that makes it unlikely that Saudi Arabia will be jumping into a deal with, will be jumping into this frying pad. So that's a reasonable logic for Iran and its proxies 2% and I suspect it had a role in at least a time.
Chris Riback:
So to close out what's next and none of us knows literally, but generally the context, there's going to be a war and bombing and horrible civilian and military casualties. Here's what you wrote on the morning of October 7th. The challenge is this. The attacks have created a psychology of transformation in a genuine sense that there could be no return to the status quo ante, but the actual options on the ground remain as unpalatable as they were before. For Israel's response to be truly different from its policy to date, it would mean occupying the Gaza Strip and removing MAs from power presumably to reinstall the Palestinian authority. This would involve street by street fighting by Israeli soldiers against a force of tens of thousands that is armed to the teeth led by gangsters and fanatics who are absolutely ruthless about putting civilians in harms away. Israel can expect considerable losses on all sides.
It would probably dwarf what happened on Saturday. It also risks executions of the hostages held in Gaza, any operation that lasts long risk, expanding in three directions, the directions that we have described around Lebanon, the West Bank, and potentially Arab citizens. At the end of the day though, this is where I'd like to get your closing thoughts. The situation in Gaza is simply not tenable. 2 million people with no natural resources, intermittent electricity, no free trade with the world and no way out by land, air, or sea. Make no mistake, you wrote, Hamas is a criminal organization that seeks only war with Israel and cares not a fig for the people under its boot. But Israel's policy of trying to smoke Hamas out by putting pressure on the population was never going to lead to good things. It is without doubt time for a new conception. Can any of us conceive of what that new conception might be or that's the blank space that we're all staring into right now?
Dan Perry:
Yes, it kind of is. I'm in a somewhat in elegant position of saying this hasn't worked and we need something else. But I feel it would be unwise for me to start explaining what the strategy militarily should be to achieve that other thing because it's genuinely complicated and I conceded that from the beginning, but there are various possibilities, okay? Israel could put on the table a dramatic offer to assist Gaza economically on a condition that the PA was returned and make it so generous that the entire world and the entire Arab world pressure on Hamas to essentially hand power back over to the pa. It wouldn't be as crazy as you think because Hamas actually never did stop receiving salaries from the pa. The infrastructure is still there for an overnight altering of this situation. Also, Israel could sign a long-term hood with Hamas, which Hamas has sometimes dangled before it, which means we don't accept your right to exist.
Dan Perry:
We Hamas don't accept Israel, but we're going to put that aside for a couple generations and then see what happens. Now, this carries with it the elegance of doing a deal with the devil, but on the other hand, I don't think that would matter too much to people who are massacre yesterday in Israel. So it may be the practical thing, or you could do a very, very clever war that takes out Hamas from the air and in other ways through commando operations, whatever, without bombarding the civilian population. That's tough because they're hiding beneath hospitals. But some version of that, a more successful, a more pinpoint, more targeted version of previous tactics might be conceivable. I think if you look at the day after there's an open question about whether Hamas is still ruling Gaza. There's a chance now that the answer is no, whatever might be the price for them, and this may completely reshuffle the deck in Israel because it has clarified too many people in Israel that their true enemy is not the Supreme Court, and it's not a bunch of Israeli liberals shouting democracy, and it's not the pilots who religious figures in the government had the temerity to disdain and curse out and say, go to hell.
Dan Perry:
We don't need you. We're going to pray, and that's good enough. It isn't the moderate Palestinians in the Palestinian authority. It is rejectionist Islamic extremism and its manifestation in these terrorist groups that are willing to take anything down with them, including the Palestinian people and their pursuit of the knighted future, and I can only hope that leads to political change in Israel because this government must go.
Chris Riback:
Stay safe, Dan.
Dan Perry:
Thanks Chris. Thanks for having.
Thank you for reading my newsletter. I am reviving my ‘Crazy Upgrade Pricing’ of $19 for the first year — 81% off the regular price:
With a Daily Newsletter, Deep Dives, and now the Trial Balloon podcast, there has never been a better time to upgrade to a paid subscription.
