Robert Greenway
speaker
38 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Robert Greenway’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, it's hard to envision that we're going to get to the next phase of this. And there's a lot of reasons for it, not least of which is what's playing out in real time, is that Hamas, unfortunately, has little left other than corpses to trade. And the way in which they transfer it, all it does is aggravate and exacerbate the tensions for Israel.
So where I think we're headed next is, frankly, a resurrection of military operations or resumption of military operations at scale and incrementally against Hamas. While diplomatic talks are ongoing. But Hamas, again, has very little leverage left to play. And Israel's interests are inimical to what Hamas is attempting to achieve.
And they have greater latitude now that Hezbollah and Iran are less capable and less likely to engage in offensive military operations. So they may have a freer hand in doing so.
It splits a near fine line. Everyone in Israel wants a return of the hostages and or the remains. No one wants to see terrorists released and traded, but they accept the price necessary to pay. But the tolerance is drawing very, very close to almost no support to sustain it, especially when
Hamas continues to drip the remains of hostages out and violate terms of the ceasefire agreement and then publicly advertise they're resurrecting their military capability. So the pressure actually is increasing domestically on the Netanyahu government to resume military operations, recognizing that there's very little return that Hamas can provide and they're unlikely to do so.
So it's actually moving the opposite direction right now.
Yeah, so most of their military capacity has been eliminated as a result of military operations, but clearly there remains remnants, and those are now on display every time they do a transfer of remains. The second, when Israel was pulled and withdrew elements of their forces from Gaza and stopped their overflights for intelligence purposes,
Hezbollah is using this or Hamas rather is using this to resurrect their capacity. So they're drawing on a population that is displaced, homeless, and they were aggravated to begin with. They're certainly more likely to be motivated now. And Hamas is the only organized function that has resources and has been dispersing aid and is obtaining additional funds.
And as long as that's the case, they're the only show in town. So they are resurrecting their capacity. It'll take time to do so. But this all, of course, comes under the clock. And the Netanyahu government knows that time is not on its side.
And so long as Hamas only has remains to offer and will do so in an episodic fashion, the pressure is going to continue to increase for Israel to take care of it. And the support they're getting from Washington under the Trump administration just makes it easier for them to do so.
100%. And not only do I expect there'll be no complete withdrawal, I don't suspect that they'll give up the Philadelphia corridor, which divides Gaza from the Egyptian border. And for context, this is where the infrastructure to provide a chief amount of the external support of arms, munitions, and rockets has historically come from. It's very unlikely that they're going to do so.
That is essentially the second phase. And no one really anticipated we ever get to that in any case. So I suspect that not only will we not, I think in short order, we would expect, I would expect a reversal.
Well, it's complicated. In theory, they could do it from the maritime domain. It's a little more complicated. It's more challenging to do so, but it is also not unprecedented. Beyond that, they'd have to reuse the materials that are already present. And so it's not a winning proposition. It's also why they want a stop to the intelligence overflight.
It's also why they want a complete withdrawal and they want to resume and restore Hamas control over the Philadelphia corridor. And again, Israel is unlikely to do so. And I don't think that they will.
No, the odds, again, were extremely remote. I put them at essentially zero when this began. I thought it was encouraging to see the exchange of hostages. And again, a new administration in Washington certainly has opened up the door to greater leverage against Hamas. But again, it's an impossible scenario in which Israel would vacate and essentially restore conditions that led to October the 7th.
That is the least politically acceptable outcome in Israel. Those that supported any sort of two-state solution or peace process were exactly the casualties on October the 7th and the inhabitants of the Kibbutzim. And they were the direct target of their attacks. And so there's no segment of the population now that supports a withdrawal Or continued negotiations essentially with Hamas.
And so you're right to be cynical about it. And in the end, it comes down to motive, means and opportunity. The motive is going to endure on the part of Hamas and the Palestinians, unfortunately, in Gaza. It's now a matter of denying them the means and the opportunity to restore the capacity to lead to another October the 7th attack.
Yeah. Well, it's a great point. I say two things. First is, I don't know that a resumption of military operations means that they necessarily go on the offensive. This could well look like a continued attrition. And as long as the external support is denied by Israel, you don't necessarily have to do large-scale military operations or a significant campaign.
What it could look like, again, is a sort of a siege on Gaza where they would no longer be provided the material to launch rocket attacks and conduct operations against the Israelis. And then you could see surgical operations against its leadership, strikes that were enabled by overflight operations, which almost certainly will continue if the ceasefire discussions break down.
I don't know that it means you're going to see a resumption of a ground campaign, and I don't know that that's necessary from an Israeli perspective.
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