Zvi Yehezkeli, Arab affairs expert, author and i24NEWS senior commentator spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News on the ongoing war in Gaza, Israel’s approach to the Middle East conflict over the past thirty years, and offered his suggestion for ending the war and solving the hostage problem.
Yehezkeli has authored two interesting books, for adults and children, sending the message, “I told you so,” in which he and others warned that what occurred on October 7th was going to happen, but, “We all fell asleep. It's like in one day the Holocaust happened to us. But to understand the Middle East and to understand what happened that led us to October 7th, I took all my 30 years in covering this conflict, as well as the eight years prior to that in the security services, and I saw that it existed throughout this period. There were many points that led up to that day. My obligation to the audience was to tell them, ‘It was written on the wall.’ Read it again, because it's going to happen again.”
Yehezkeli explains that it happened because “we live in the West and we want solutions. When there is a conflict with the Palestinians, we try [to solve it]. We tried in Oslo and we tried afterwards, but as Arafat told me in 2002, ‘It's not about numbers, even if you give me my 100%, it's not about numbers. It's about justice.’ They do not recognize our right to be here in Israel and it doesn't matter if it's in the 'West Bank' or in Gaza. Because we are Western and think that we can solve the conflict somehow, but it's not solvable, because Arafat, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), and Yahye Sinwar, they are all the same. They want to fight Israel and, when the West wants to live in a peaceful society, they don't understand that during that time, the East is fighting using democratic tools. That's the problem of democracies; they can't see on their screen that the East is fighting them.”
One of the most complex challenges, of course, is the hostage issue. He says that, “At the beginning of the war I suggested not fighting Gaza in the first days, because I believe, like the late Professor Bernard Lewis said to us, ‘see the Middle East in the same way that they see themselves, and not the way we see them.’ So, think Hamas and think Sinwar, what can you do during the very first moments after the war. Don't go to war automatically. Enact the business aspect beforehand. Give them whatever they want. Sinwar, what do you want? You want all the hostages, then give me all my hostages. Take all your prisoners. Let him take them to Gaza and then I will begin the war against Gaza. The first to be killed will be those 6,000 prisoners that killed thousands of Israelis. So, it's a war. That's the difference, if you are in a war or in some kind of military operation.”
Yehezkeli concludes by explaining that in Israel’s current situation, “recognizing the problem is halfway to the solution. If you can recognize the problem, then we can talk about a solution. There is no absolute solution, because it's a war, it's a Jihad. It's very complicated, but I do believe that if the Israeli government, and even the army leadership, recognizes exactly what the problem is, like what happened now in the 'West Bank', that there is a war and you're in a war, exactly like what's happening on the northern border, then you will see such a wake up to the new challenges. That is, after you recognize exactly what the problem is.”