Please note that this episode was recorded before the Twelve-Day War with Iran.
In this episode, Richard Pater speak with Professor Kobi Michael about the trajectory of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. In the conversation, recorded during a media briefing hosted by BICOM, Professor Michael outlines the emerging trilateral cooperation between Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, reflects on Qatari involvement, and discusses the prospects for further hostage releases.
Prof. Kobi Michael is a senior researcher at INSS and a visiting professor at the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales. He served as the Deputy Director-General at Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs and as the Head of the Palestinian division at Israel’s National Security Council.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
Richard Pater:
Welcome to this BICOM Briefing. My name is Richard Pater. I am the director of BICOM based here in Jerusalem. Delighted to welcome, Professor Kobi Michael and to the briefing. Kobi, thank you very much indeed for agreeing to do this. By way of background, Kobi is a senior researcher both at the Ion Assets Think Tank and the Discovery Institute.
In the past, he has served as the Deputy Director general at the Ministry for Strategic Affairs, and before that was the head of the Palestinian division at Israel’s National Security Council. So perhaps, Kobi, if I can ask you just to make some opening, comments and share your overall assessment of the latest, the current military campaign the IDF has underway in Gaza and how I mean, maybe if I can ask you the appointed question, how close is the IDF to defeating Hamas? And what does that, what that look like?
Professor Kobi Michael:
Good morning. And thank you for having me. We, and our 20 months, after October 7th, 23 and, actually, we have entered to the longest war that Israel, has faced, since, ever since its establishment in. We came to be even longer than the War of Independence.
That used to be the longest one. And this is something that indicates about, the the complication or the complexity of, the situation because, you know, many people in Israel and mainly abroad, do not truly understand why the hell it takes such a long time. But, unfortunately, we are dealing with, I would say the most complicated urban warfare ever in the entire humanity.
Humanity. It cannot be compared, nor to, Afghanistan, neither to, Iraq, Mosul, Fallujah, or any, any other, Cser or arena, in the last, in the last century. And even beyond that, we are talking about, the most populated area in the entire globe, 365km², with more than 2 million people.
And we are talking about a very, radical, extreme, violent, determined ideological, religious, two organization which, is in the very same time, even an effective, sovereign in, in this piece of land in the very same time, Hamas is does not stand alone in the sense that Hamas is, a component, even a crucial component in a much broader, camp axis, which is known as the resistance axis, led by Iran, which is now, in the, in the news.
Okay. In the headlines, but, Iran, seeks to, to, establish its hegemonic in the, in the broader Middle East. And the Iran, uses the strategy, among some other things, but uses the strategy of, of proxies where Hamas is one of the proxies that, Iran uses, and, and therefore, from the first beginning from October 7th, 2023, the war against Hamas was not limited to Hamas or to the Gaza Strip.
From the first beginning, it was, a much broader war, a regional war when Israel faced, a multi-front war and the I would say that this regional war was even, sort of a global war in some occasions. They even say that this is something that looks like the beginning of World War three. And, if now, Israel or the United States or both of them will attack militarily Iran, we are involved.
World three, there is no doubt about it. Okay. Because this is not only Israel, Iran or the United States, Iran we have here Russia and China, and we have many other players. And, this war will have further impact, which will be global impacts for, the long run going back to the Gaza Strip.
Hamas for, I would say almost two decades worked very hard in order to fortify itself, to build itself as an organized terror military by, using all the resources, in order, to build the capacities, mainly with regard to the very well developed, infrastructure of, of tunnels, that, eventually and makes the war in the Gaza Strip, a war from house to house.
It means that, Israel cannot isolate part of the Gaza Strip and, and to run or to conduct the war in this isolated part, without, citizens and without, the civil, humanitarian facilities like, hospitals, schools, mosques, and some other, facilities and, to take the time to destroy the, the terror infrastructure and then, to continue going on to another part of the Gaza Strip to isolated and, to do it until, finishing the entire war or the entire work in, in the Gaza Strip.
This is not the situation. Hamas is so deeply embedded in the civilian society, and Hamas uses all the humanitarian facilities, built hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, cemeteries and residential houses. You know, we are talking about, an infrastructure of more than 700km of tunnels. It is something that, I mean, that we have never knew in the, in the, in the history of, of wars or even if, in history, of other things which are not wars.
And, the problem becomes to be even more complicated because all the, the, the axis, the entrances to these tunnels are hides, or hidden in, these civilian facilities and in residential houses. We have so many evidence that, I mean, there are so many occasions where, we found, the the holes. Okay, that, that were used as entrances or, exits of these tunnels in, in children rooms, in bedrooms of private houses.
Not talking about, hospitals, clinics, schools, and the some other things. It means that all the Gaza Strip and then I, I would like to emphasize that all the Gaza Strip is infected by Hamas, all the Gaza Strip is Hamas. And in order to destroy this infrastructure of tunnels, in order to dismantle Hamas as an organized, effective military and governmental entity, you have to destroy the infrastructure of the tunnels because this is the center of gravity.
This is the most effective or the most crucial center of gravity that Hamas holds. And, and, and in order to do that, we have to reach through the tunnels, mainly through the strategic tunnels, though the tunnels, which are used as, as big compounds, that, are used for, storage, you go for of rockets, that are used as operational rooms.
We, and these are strategic tunnels feed the, the tactical tunnels. Okay. Therefore, if we will destroy the strategic tunnels, we don’t have to destroy necessarily the tactical tunnels, because the tactical tunnels will become useless without the strategic tunnels that feed them. But we have to reach to the strategic tunnels. And even when when we are talking about the strategic tunnels, the last one was uncovered.
It was two weeks ago when we bombarded the the tunnel that was used by Hamas in water. And, Shabani, the, the commander of the Rafah brigade, in the in the middle, in the middle, between between the the the two, two departments, the emergency room and the Department of the European Hospital in Communist, which is one of the biggest hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
And and this tower was just beneath the, the the emergency room of the hospital. Okay. And we bombarded, by the way, without harming the hospital itself, which is, I would say, something which is, not less than magnificent. But, we killed how much? And, he’s going in the tunnel. Then he goes, we go and, and, therefore we have, we have, to, to work very hard in order to reach to all of these places, and, to, to destroy all of these, all of these tunnels.
And the idea that Hamas uses these places, and uses the civilians as human shield, and the they don’t care to sacrifice their people. And by the way, they say that loud and loud and clear publicly. Yes. I want to say that. And his brother, how much generosity and how you say the and the and I need to say that that they are willing to sacrifice more 100,000 people.
Okay. For the for the sake of the of the victory. And, therefore and they are I mean, the, the international media and some, some politicians in the, in the West and all the humanitarian in aid organizations and of course, the UN, they, they play to the hands of Hamas when they, when they echo the narrative of Hamas and when they, use the figures, the fabricated figures, which are provided by, by Hamas with regard to the number of the fatalities and the casualties, and and that they, they, they buy the narrative of Hamas and use that in order to pressure Israel and in order to demand from Israel to stop the war. And they present, a sort of a picture or an image that, that all the casualties there, and the Palestinian casualties are, an immediate result, of the Israeli brutality. Okay. Without mentioning the responsibility of Hamas and the main responsibility and the first responsibility is the responsibility of Hamas, in this regard.
So, now, we are, in a situation where I think it’s pretty understood that, nothing, probably will come out from the negotiation with Hamas. And this is the reason that Israel increases the military pressure on Hamas. And I think that the it is not enough yet. And, one of the problems that, that we had, at least according to my understanding, is that we didn’t pressured enough from the first beginning of the war.
And I think that we, we were supposed to do that from the first beginning. And this war should have lasted not more than one month, two months. And from the first beginning, Israel should have declared loud and clear to Hamas and to the entire world. You have three days, one week to bring back all the hostages, to dismantle yourself.
Because of our Jewish mercy, we will enable you to live peacefully. The Gaza Strip and the war would have been ended after two weeks. If you are not going to do that, we are going to open the gates of hell on your hands. We are going to eradicate you. We are going to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, and the Gaza Strip will never, ever will be under Palestinians sovereignty.
This should have been the Israeli ultimatum to Hamas and to the entire world and the United States of America should have pressure. Qatar, the main sponsor of Hamas, from the first beginning until today, the United States of America doesn’t pressure enough Qatar a bigger pressure today, harder pressure today in comparison to almost two years ago. But it is not enough yet.
It is not enough yet. And Qatar has an interest that Hamas will remain in power, not only in the Gaza Strip, by the way, but in the entire Palestinian arena. And not only Hamas is, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but not only in the case of Palestine, but in, in the global overview that Qatar has with regard to the political Islam, with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, does utmost efforts in order to enable the political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, to penetrate and to establish themselves and to conquer the entire free world.
They do it in the UK, they do it in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in Sweden, in Italy, and, and the and the free world, the Western Wall, led by the United States of America, continues appeasing the Qataris, continue appeasing the materials. Who is Qatar? Such a funny country of less than 400,000 citizens and more than 1.5 million modern slaves, Qatar cannot survive two hours without the IT.
Without the United States. An American ultimatum to Qatar. You have two hours to, to freeze all the bank accounts of Hamas in Qatar, to, to, to take out all, Hamas leaders from the Qatari soil and to shut down Al-Jazeera with regard to the incitement from the Gaza Strip that impacts the entire Arab world.
And if you are not going to do this in two hours, you are going to remain alone, and we will see how long Qatar can remain alone. I can promise you, not more than two days. But instead of doing that, the, the American, the, the American, administration with the under Biden or even today under Trump continue glorifying Hamas air Qatar is our best ally.
Very important contribution to the, to the mediation and and the very, very crucial contribution to the to the national interests of the United States and so on and so forth. So, I think that now we are in a situation where Hamas is in the worst strategic position since the opening of the war, since October 7th, because Hamas, was I would say, or Hamas suffers from, from very, very, crucial, I would say losses of capacities beat with regard to, to, their leaders and their combatants or with regard to their capacities of, self manufacturing of weapon, with regard to the weapon that they used to have, mainly the strategic weapon and the long range rockets and some other strategic capacities that they used to have. All of that or most of that was, destroyed by. Yeah, by the IDF. They, they lost their, command and control capacities, actually, after, the targeting of them.
How much in Warren Shabana? We used to be the commander of Rafah Brigade. Hamas has been left only with one senior experienced commander who is, as a dinner Haggadah, the commander of the ill for Gaza brigade. And, I really doubt, that, as Hadad is able to control the the rest of Hamas in the center of the Gaza Strip, I mean, the south of the Gaza Strip, if Hamas is still there in the south, because we control very, I would say, efficiently the, the South, the, the, the rough area and the there is almost no Hamas there at all.
So they lost their command and control capacities and capabilities. And, it is true that they, have succeeded to recruit, youngsters in the ages of 16 to 18 because they have a lot of money. Part of the money is money that was produced by, the looting, of the Humanitarian Aid convoys and trucks and then the selling the monetary and aid, in, in very high prices to the civilians of Gaza.
And they use this money in addition to the a lot of money that they used to have before, in order to, recruit the youngsters, that have nothing to do, but these youngsters and although we are talking about thousands of them, there are not experienced, they are not trained. And actually they became to be a sort of a sort of a, you know, for cannon flesh.
Okay. Which are used for guerrilla general purposes, almost, committing suicide. Okay. Against, against the IDF. But, one of the most significant losses of Hamas is, the, the law, the idea that they lost their, I would say almost absolute control that they use, the they used to have, with regard to the Humanitarian Aid because, once the, the centers of, of, Humanitarian Aid that were established that were built, in the, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip and, are operated by the, the American company and are secure the envelope of these, center distribution centers, the envelope of these centers is, is secured by the IDF. And now we have, the militia of, Yasir AbuShaban in Rafa area. These, these developments, are very concerned develop developments for Hamas because, Hamas loses control over the territory, over the population, over the humanitarian aid supply and the the I would say that, the the fear, barrier that was there, that prevented the, the, the Gazans, the citizens to act against Hamas, to protest, to organize themselves, to try to build an alternative.
Okay. This, fear, became to be more and more fragile. I mean, people are doing much, much more these days. And, if they experiment with, and Yasser, Yoshinobu Shabab, group will, will be a successful one, then it’ll be duplicated to other parts of the Gaza Strip. Now, we have to understand that this experiment is, at least to my understanding, a sort of an outcome of a trilateral, cooperation.
An Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian, I mean, the person in authority, cooperation. And, this is something that enable Israel, to continue saying that, the alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in the so-called the day after, will not be Hamas leader Abbas, and it will enable the Palestinian Authority to say that nothing can be done in the Gaza Strip without out the deep involvement of the Palestinian Authority, and both sides will be happy with that.
Okay. But then I think that, there is an understanding in Israel that, in order to, to enable, to build, a reliable, valid, functioning alternative governance to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, we have to do it, first, on a very gradual basis. Secondly, very carefully. And thirdly, we have to, to, to to take into consideration the idea of legitimacy.
And the Palestinian Authority in this regard is a sort of a legitimacy generator. Okay. First of all, in the Palestinian need. So secondly, vis a vis the region, and if Israel wants that, the, the pragmatic Arab camp, which is led by the Saudis, their gypsies, and includes the, the Gulf countries, Morocco, Jordan will be part of the, so-called day after and will enter the Gaza Strip in order to support, to train, to educate the the new governance, the alternative governance to Hamas and to enable the beginning of the reconstruction process, Israel has to assure that any alternative that will be built there will be perceived as legitimate in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority. And the Palestinian Authority will invite these Arab countries to enter the Gaza Strip as a mission force in order to support, and to train to educate this, the alternative governance. So I believe that we have here a trilateral cooperation, and we know that, yes, our Shabab, used to have and still has very good and close, connection, with, the Palestinian Authority, mainly with, Majid Faraj, the head of the, the general intelligence, but not only with him.
And we know that, he’s family is clan is tribe. Used to be a part of, the preventive, preventive, security or preventive intelligence led by Muhammad last, in the days of the Palestinian Authority. Sorry, in the Gaza Strip. So the heavy story, between of them, and, we see that Hamas is very, very concerned about this.
And, we see that Hamas, and it tries to do all the possible efforts in other, first of all, to, to dismantle this group or at least to, sabotage. It’s, it’s, work there. And to sabotage, the work of the of the, distribution centers. Do you want it to be on the aid, supply centers?
Because, if people and more people, more citizens will, use the services of these centers, it means that they will not need to use the services or so-called services of Hamas. Now, I think that, if we will, do simultaneously three things, we will get much closer to the end of the war, and we will increase dramatically the probability of releasing more hostages in brackets.
I would say, before telling you what I think we have to do simultaneously, what are the three things that we have to do in brackets? I would like to emphasize and to say that I never believe that we will be able to get all the hostages back, because I never believe that Hamas will be willing to release all the hostages, that Hamas is capable to release all the hostages.
Why? Because, we have experience with Hamas. We have to remember that until October 7th, Hamas held, in its captivity, two, corpse of Israeli soldiers and two, Israeli citizens, that were mentally ill. Okay. And they kept them for ten years and they didn’t make any, compensations. And, with regard to their demands, and they refused to release the two, the two corpse and the two EU citizens.
Ten years they kept in captivity Gilad Shalit for almost six years, five years in the House, because they know that all they did of of hostages is, one of the most sensitive issues, for the Israeli society. And they know that as long as they keep and hold Israeli hostages being alive or dead, okay, they are able to continue manipulating the Israeli society.
They continue. They are able to continue pressuring the Israeli society. They can continue deepening the gaps. And the crisis between, the the Israeli society, the IDF and the government. And this is something which they perceive and consider as very crucial in their war against Israel. Okay. All the idea of cognitive war, all the idea of consciousness, and this is, eventually, in their eyes, in their perception, the ultimate insurance policy that they have for their survival.
So, like to release all the hostages, they will continue only preventing us. And we will say that, the they are trying to find them, that, they have difficulties because of all the, the destruction in the Gaza Strip and so on and so forth. And they will not release all of them, and they will prevent Israel from attacking them because we are under agreement.
And they know that the United States and the entire international community, including the Arab countries, will pressure Israel not to attack, not to retaliate, even if they will, breach the agreement. And even if everybody understands that they are playing with us and they are manipulating us. So first of all, Hamas is not willing to release. Secondly, Hamas is not capable to release all of them because Hamas has never hold all of them since October 7th.
And, you know, just last week, or in the last ten days, we, we have, succeeded to bring home, six groups of, of, six bodies of Israeli hostages that were kidnaped and were murdered, by the way, in Gaza after October 7th by, double mujahideen. Capable mujahideen is an organization of fiction that was part of Fatah.
They left Fatah. They became to be, an independent terror organization, by the way, very extreme and even extremism, Hamas. And they are not under the control of Hamas. And they, they kept, the, the Israeli hostages and Hamas, even if Hamas, negotiates with, the mediators and with, and says that, it is willing to release the hostages and that, it, refers to the hostages as if all the hostages are in its hands.
This is not the situation. This is not the situation. Now, we have now we are with 53 hostages. 20 of them are alive, 33 are dead, or 31 are certainly dead, and two are probably dead. Okay, now, all of the the hostages that are dead, they are already buried in the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Strip of today, or the Gaza or let’s say, the Gaza Strip that we used to know when when Hamas or the other factions buried them is not the Gaza Strip that we know today, and they really don’t.
The option that Hamas will be able, first of all, to find the hostages that Hamas buried because the people of Hamas that buried the hostages are probably not with us, with us anymore. And secondly, they will have some huge difficulties to reach to the places of the other dead, buried hostages that were, kidnaped and were, a murder that they were buried by, by the other factions or the other two organizations that they, that they that have no obligations, towards Hamas and Hamas has no information about the, the places that the these hostages are buried. I say that in order to to to reach to the end of the war and in order to increase the probability to release more hostage also, just alive or dead, we have to do three things simultaneously.
The first one is to increase the military pressure to increase the military pressure. The second one is to continue, building them and operating the, the, the centers of, humanitarian supply to operate them and to convince the people of Gaza to use them because, as much as these centers will be more effective, as much as, the the scale of, of the activities in these centers will be will be higher and more intensive, Hamas will be weaker, and Hamas will continue losing assets.
And the third thing that we have to do is, to, to think and, to continue cooperating, with our partners here in the region, including the Palestinian Authority, with the backing of the United States, about, the, the alternative governance for the day after, if we will not do these three things. So will Timeously we will not be able to end the war soon, and we will decrease. We will decrease the probability for the releasing of more hostages.
Richard Pater:
Thank you. Daniel, do you have something else?
Daniel J. Levy:
Professor, thank you for the briefing. We’ve been seeing sporadic rocket fire coming out of the Gaza Strip, mostly unsuccessful. Could you possibly comment on that? Sorry to the maybe. Who’s firing, why they’re firing. What solutions could be?
Professor Kobi Michael:
What we see is, I would say, and, reflection expression of, the marginal capacities that Hamas is left with. We are talking about very, short range, rockets, not all of them, by the way, are, Hamas rockets.
Both of them are the rockets of the Palestinian state media and even of some other very marginal factions. But we are talking about, very few of them. They are not the effective, or not effective as we used, to know before. The Israeli, these Israeli, the IDF is very well prepared and, this is the reason that all of them were intercepted.
All of them. I mean, the, in the last two months or three months or so, and all of them are in the, in the envelope of the Gaza Strip. I mean, maximum Ashkelon city, which is, 12km from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They don’t and if they do have some, long range, rockets that can reach Tel Aviv beyond or Beersheba and beyond, they are not able to use them.
First of all, because, they’re not accessible to them. Secondly, because I think that, they prefer to keep them for the day in their eyes because once they, we use such a, such a rocket, which is, which is different from the, the short range rockets, then they will expose themselves and they will expose the place that they use the launcher that they use for this, a long range rocket and they will, they will lost it.
And they think that they want to keep, such a capacity. But, generally speaking, they are not capable as they used to be. And they think that, they, have a very significant shortage of weapon. And now they turned to guerrilla and tour warfare and mainly with explosives and anti-tank missiles.
Richard Pater:
One issue you haven’t you haven’t touched on was the, the anti Hamas protests that we saw within the Gaza population. Do you think that, has any sustainability, any ability to affect, real change? By the way, it was never very significant.
Professor Kobi Michael:
Okay. It was significant in the sense that it happened. But it was not significant with regard to the scale. But, I think that, we will see more and more of that because, as I explained before, when you have a militia of Yasir AbuShaban Rafah area that runs, Rafah area, vis a vis the local population.
And you have, the, the supply centers and, and the you, you face the, the people, see the the increase in military pressure, Hamas and the people understand that Hamas is losing everyday capacities. I think that, the, they are more capable and more willing to protest against Hamas. But the problem is that as long as they don’t see an alternative and unfortunately, there is still no alternative to Hamas, it is very difficult because it is also meaningless.
I mean, this is something that helps them to express their frustration, their anger, but it is not something that they can do with, okay, this is not a protest which is aimed to, to produce an alternative or to do something else because they see no alternative and they are not well organized. It’s very sporadic here and there.
And they need to to be convinced that the, the protest can be used to promote an existing alternative. They have to see the generative. They have to see at least the, the, I would say the, the probability of such an alternative. And then they will be more motivated to, to, to increase the protest, to intensify the protest because they, they, they believe that this will take them closer to the, to the implementation, the, the fulfillment of, of the alternative to Hamas, but now lose the vacuum.
Richard Pater:
If I can just one more follow up. We discussed, very interesting. The the Shabab, clan in the Raffia area. And are there other can you give other examples of other clans in other areas that could potentially be kind of that local, that local leadership that you, that you described kind of within a, the trilateral arrangements?
Professor Kobi Michael:
Yes, of course. The Palestinian society, generally speaking, in, in the Gaza Strip in particular, is very tribal society. Okay. Yasir AbuShaban because a Bedouin from the Terrapin, clan, which is the biggest clan in the you know, I would say in the in the Near Middle East, Egypt, the Israeli, Negev desert, the Gaza Strip and South Jordan.
Okay. And they have connect channels between the different, rulers and sections of this tribe, the clans of these, tribes of this tribe, now, Israel has tried to do that even more than a year ago in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. But, unfortunately, we haven’t succeeded in doing that because had, those who, were willing to do that in the northern part of the Gaza Strip where mothers were butchered by Hamas, it was, in the days that Hamas was much stronger.
By the way, it is a lesson. Why? Why, yes. Or or should Yasir AbuShaban with succeeding in the area? Because Hamas is not there. Okay, we emptied the entire, the entire region from Morocco corridor to Philadelphia corridor. Hamas is not there. There are no citizens there. Okay. And we selected the the entire area. We build from from scratch.
We build, the, the supply, the distribution centers there. Okay. And then we brought in Yasir AbuShaban, who is originally from this area. And, we we gave him weapons and some other capacities and capabilities, and we asked him to take responsibility for a BNC. We are securing the envelope. They are building their capacities. They have their legitimacy among the the the local population because they come from there, from this population, okay?
They use their tribal connections in the area and they building capacities. And we are helping them to build these capacities. A year ago or more than a year ago, we tried to do the same. We’re in areas that Hamas still existed, and the IDF was not there in order to protect the locals. So they were butchered. But I’m us.
But if you ask me if there is a probability to, to, enlarge the model to to do it, to duplicate it in other places. Yes. If we will do in other places what we did in Rafah. Okay.
But on the other hand, and this is something that is really important to understand such a gang, okay? Such a group of people of Yasir AbuShaban. They cannot be the real replacement rate of Hamas in the entire Gaza Strip. This is a we have to be realistic, okay? They can control a very limited area for a very limited, function.
Okay. And, where they are secured and supported by the idea of in order to build a real alternative governmental alternative, a new governance to the entire Gaza Strip, it should be something else. It cannot be. It cannot be based on Yasir, AbuShaban, and people like Yasir. AbuShaban. Okay. We have to remember that. But if we will have on a very gradual manner, we will be able to build enclaves like the enclave that we built in Rafah area.
And we will use locals in order to run these enclaves with our support. Okay. In the or in the envelopes of these, enclaves. Then, the accumulation of such enclaves with the preparations, and the recruitment of, very, skillful people, that have the legitimacy and will be trained and educated by an Arab mission force supported by the Palestinian Authority, that Israel will do what it has to do in order to help them.
Then we are able, to begin talking about, the day after a new era in the Gaza Strip and all of these, groups like Yasir AbuShaban will be incorporated. That will be, absorbed. Okay, to the new to the new, governance of the Gaza Strip. They can be later on parts of their security apparatuses.
Okay. This is something that reminds me the principle of DDR. If you are familiar with the idea of DDR, which is the idea of, disarmament, Devonport ization and, reintegration, something which is, used in the, in, in countries that, went through a very, severe civil war or something like that, where, where ethnic and religious, armed groups fought each other.
Okay. And they are, this arming the, the, the, the groups and they build the, the, I would say the security apparatus, the security purposes, which are control by, by the state, and they create and they try to recreate the monopoly over the organized violence. So this is something that can be done in the Gaza Strip in the day after were such groups as the group of Gaza, will be embedded okay, in the security apparatuses of the next the governance.
Richard Pater:
Professor, thank you so much for, for today’s, thorough briefing. Really appreciate you. Thank you all for joining us. And, stay tuned for more briefings. And, Kobi, we look forward to coming back to you again in the future as well. Really great.
Professor Kobi Michael:
Thank you very much. Take care. Bye.
