Ben Rhodes

And look, I think what we cannot look away from is that the project clearly entails taking the entirety of the West Bank, taking, I mean, right now in Southern Lebanon, just to give you an example too, they're not just ethnically cleansing the population.

They are rendering it uninhabitable.

They're destroying tens of thousands of olive trees.

They're making it so people can't come back and live there.

And so some of this is just pure territorial expansionism.

Like we want this additional land, whether people live in the West Bank or they live in Southern Syria or they live in Southern Lebanon or Gaza or not.

Yes.

Now, it could not happen without us.

And look, I think on Netanyahu, I think this is another piece of this.

Number one, I think he's accepted a security.

Israel used to want stability, right?

We have a peace treaty with Jordan.

We have a peace treaty with Egypt.

It keeps the lid on things.

Now-

it seems like that's shifted to we want chaos and violence because it gives us this freedom of action.

Like there's a war in Iran.

There's a war in Lebanon.

Pay no attention to what the settlers are doing in the West Bank.

You know, if none of this was happening, maybe there'd be a little bit more international attention on the fact that Palestinians are being evicted from their homes.