AIJAC hears from top analyst

Ehud Yaari, renowned journalist, author, AIJAC Fellow and senior Middle East correspondent for Israel’s Channel 12, addressed an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) supporters luncheon last week.

He focused on the state of play in Gaza and Israel and the opportunities opened up by the virtual collapse of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” across the region.

“What has happened since October 7 is that great opportunities have opened for a dramatic change, almost transformation, of the lay of the land, the political lay of the land, in the Middle East,” Yaari said. “Those opportunities should not be missed,” he continued, warning of Israel potentially missing the window due to domestic turmoil and political divisions.

On Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Yaari lamented that he’d become afraid of losing power and changed dramatically. “I was not an enemy of Bibi. I used to have hundreds of conversations with him… over the years, and I had huge respect for his intellect and skills, knowledge, his understanding of history. But he’s a different man since he was brought to trial.”

Regarding Gaza, Yaari said, “Hamas has been decapitated and destroyed. Not completely… but they do not have a chain of command, they do not have a strategy, they do not have an arsenal of rockets.” Almost all of the terrorist organisation’s military and political leadership in Gaza have been eliminated, and the surviving figures can be counted on two hands at most, he said. “It’s not an organisation which reminds you of what they were on October 6.”

“The leadership of Hamas outside the Gaza Strip is involved in major power struggles amongst themselves,” Yaari explained. “Quite a few of the top leaders… are now mourning the decision to attack on October 7.”

Yaari said that it was the position of not only Israel, but Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states, that Hamas must be fully disarmed. Both in terms of funding and policing, nobody will move until Hamas is removed entirely from Gaza, after which many Arab countries are willing to send police and funds. The current Israel operation, aside from exerting pressure to get the remaining hostages released, is “to get Hamas to the point that they are willing… to announce disarmament [and] remove themselves from the Gaza Strip…  then, there are plans.”

One such plan, by a US general, would involve recruiting thousands of local Gazans to serve as police. “Everybody is waiting for Hamas to be removed, and nobody will remove Hamas except [Israel]. And it takes time.”

In terms of the Palestinians in general, Yaari said, “we cannot really move before we have a serious reform of the Palestinian Authority. It’s corrupt. It’s dysfunctional. You cannot count on them, not in the West Bank, and certainly not in Gaza.” They failed to even deal with terrorist cells in Jenin, he explained, and there’s no serious plan of succession when Mahmoud Abbas dies.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has still not recovered from the shock and devastation inflicted by Israel, Yaari stated. On top of leadership decapitation, mass casualties and the loss of much of its arsenal, Hezbollah has suffered existential setbacks in the Lebanese political arena, according to Yaari.

“The first setback,” he said, “was that the combined pressure by the US and Saudi Arabia… led to the election of a president, the commander of the army, [Joseph] Aoun, who Hezbollah did not think in their worst dreams could be elected.” Alongside the new Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, both are talking about the disarmament of Hezbollah and the monopoly of force by the state.

“Hezbollah is lying very low, and they are about to have [another] setback,” Yaari said – they are very likely going to lose badly in the upcoming general elections.

In both Lebanon and Gaza, the Israeli army is able to operate, even when ceasefires are in effect, ensuring no return to the status quo ante, Yaari explained.

Another major blow to the resistance axis is the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. “The Syrian army, the number one ally of the Iranians for decades… is no longer,” Yaari said. All former Syrian army equipment has been or is in the process of being destroyed, and Israel has taken up security positions inside Syria and established ever-closer relations with the Druze and other minorities near the border.

“I have now proposed that we initiate a dialogue with the new authorities… in Damascus, in order to sort out the relationship, prevent clashes, avoid misunderstandings. We have common interests in blocking the Iranians and Hezbollah, in preventing activity by Palestinian armed organisations from Syria,” Yaari said. “Israel can solve much of Syria’s energy problem… by providing gas from our Eastmed fields.” Israel could also help Lebanon in this regard, he said.

Within Iran itself, Yaari said, there is a behind-the-scenes debate in the regime about the future and how to support regional proxies or whether to change policy entirely. “The Iranians are asking themselves at the highest levels of the Government, ‘what’s next’?”

“Iran is on the backfoot, on the defensive, extremely anxious and nervous, and that’s the time, probably, that they would be willing to make sufficient concessions on the nuclear issue,” he asserted. “I see a lot of signs that the Iranians understand that they don’t have much of a choice.”