Ben Cohen

That disarmament never happened because yet again, the assumption was, well, Hezbollah might at one point, you know, they'll agree they're reasonable people.

They'll agree to give up their arms.

That didn't happen.

Nonetheless, the UN still deployed a peacekeeping force, UNIFIL.

I think it's about 15,000 peacekeepers in South Lebanon.

So you really had a headache here for the Israelis, because not only were they still facing at that time something like 150,000 Hezbollah missiles aimed at the north of Israel, but they also had to navigate and negotiate their way through this UN force.

which was effectively behaving as a buffer for Hezbollah.

I think the problem that the Israelis see in Gaza is a repeat of that.

Lebanon, but this time in Gaza.

Instead of Irish and French troops in Lebanon, we're going to have Pakistani, Azeri, Jordanian, and Eritrean troops, and we're going to try and go after these Hamas terrorists, and there's a danger that in doing so, we're going to kill

one of these peacekeepers, that the peacekeepers will be collateral damage.

So nobody wants it.

The potential donor countries don't want to put their troops at that risk.

And the Israelis don't want the diplomatic headache of having to go out and say, sorry, we killed your soldiers while we were carrying out our legitimate self-defense needs in going after Hamas.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that because I think that's a very important question.

And you mentioned those anti-Hamas militias, and those started emerging round about the middle of 2024 as the war was intensifying.

And you actually saw again at the end of 24 and at certain points in this year, 2025, you actually saw civilian demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas.

People who were absolutely tired of the war, tired of the displacement, tired of the bombing, and they were not blaming Israel.

These were Palestinian demonstrators going out and blaming Hamas for that situation and essentially saying, stop using us as human shields, stop using us as tools in this struggle, recognize us as human beings with human needs.

And one of their demands was to release the Israeli hostages.