In a 23 August YouTube submission, David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, said this:
"Netanyahu's only goal has been to set the region on fire...
He's lost the PR War, he's lost the legal war and he's losing the military war. And his only chances of survival is to drag America into a direct confrontation with Iran. This is a fundamental threat to world peace, everyone should be hoping for his downfall.
I first met Netanyahu as an opposition leader in 2000. At that time he had just basically one pitch and that was 'Iran is the enemy and Hamas and Hezbollah are just its aircraft carriers.' So a central light motif of Netanyahu's policy, apart from doing everything he can to stop the creation of a Palestinian state, is to get America into an attack on Iran.
For Iran Israel is first America is next. So when Israel fights Hamas we're fighting Iran, when we fight Hezbollah we're fighting Iran. A war against Hezbollah is regarded as a matter of when not if.
If Israel has failed in its primary objective to dismantle Hamas, after 10 months of unleashing more bombs on Gaza than the Allies dropped on Dresden and Hamburg in the second world war, how on Earth does it think it will unseat or push Hezbollah back? Hezbollah is much better armed than Hamas, with very accurate missiles that can sneak under the Iron Dome system.
So the whole of Israel is vulnerable to a regional war on five fronts. This is fundamentally against all Western interests, particularly after a series of defeats for Western policy in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya. American foreign policy has basically laboured under a huge self-imposed burden. They had been trying to persuade Netanyahu to stop the war, but they provided no incentive for Netanyahu to stop the war.
And it still remains a bipartisan policy of whatever happens in the Middle East. However badly Israel has behaved we are going to support Israel. Which not even Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush, two Republican Presidents, allow themselves to work under.
If you remember Reagan stopped Yitzhak Shamir from bombing West Beiruit rout in 1982 because the scenes of the nightly bombing were so grim on CNN, that Reagan, as the sort of consumate television frontman, said 'no I don't want it, stop it!' and he stopped it. He stopped the shelling within 20 minutes. H.W. Bush threatened to cut Aid off for every settlement that was announced.
So, now you've got a President in Joe Biden who is an instinctive Zionist, a generational Zionist, who has given far more leeway to Israel, committing far more barbaric crimes over a much longer period of time... Nothing has been achieved except the deaths of 40,000 Palestinians, 100,000 wounded, and even that could be a huge underestimate!
It is in US policy's interest to deconflict the Middle East... All of this is absolutely against America's interest, and yet, it's default position is, 'we've got to protect Israel. Israel has to have the arms it needs.' So, it is fighting against its own policy. There's no coherence in American foreign policy.
The one obstacle to the deal is not the Israeli negotiators, not the Israeli Deep State, not even the Israeli Army, it's Netanyahu himself, because he fears his government could break up. As soon as the war ends this King risks being deposed.
After 10 long months, we've had some quite threatening and key statements... The first was his Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, saying that Israel could not achieve its objectives militarily. That's his own Defense Minister. And now you've got Biden himself, and the US, saying Hamas can't be defeated militarily. It's tunnel network was much more extensive than they thought.
The only way of getting the remaining 115 live hostages out is through negotiation... The resistance movement are very very much alive and still capable of firing missiles at Tel Aviv...
The one senior figure in Hamas that Israel has killed... wasn't hiding in any tunnel, he was openly operating in Tahan as a spokesman and as a diplomat for Hamas. It was the clearest indication that Israel was not interested in real peace talks and negotiations by basically killing the chief negotiator. And they didn't just kill Han, before that they had killed 60 members of his family, his sons and grandsons.
That act basically tore up negotiations, and any thought of returning the hostages alive, because, you know, one of the big, big tensions in Israel, is that, incredulously, Netanyahu's policy on the hostages was, that it is only because of our military pressure that Hamas will surrender the hostages. This is exactly the opposite way around. The main killer of hostages by far has been the Israeli Army bombing itself. Even three hostages who were trying to surrender got gunned down by Israeli soldiers! The only way of getting the remaining hostages back is through peace and through negotiations with Hamas.
It basically demonstrates the total folly, stupidity of Netanyahu's thinking, which is all about tactical strikes. It's not about the day after. Firstly you can't decapitate an organisation like Hamas or Hezbollah. So, every time you kill one person, two or three people will step up...
You've got this enormous pressure on Netanyahu himself now from a Western Alliance that backed him but now has, basically, had enough, and wants the whole thing to come to an end...
Also, most importantly, one of the war aims was to push Palestinians into the sea. If the war has been won by anyone it's been won by the people of Gaza, not Hamas. The people of Gaza saying, 'yeah, we're going to die here rather than repeat mistakes of 1948 or 1967.
Netanyahu had a plan to thin out the population of Gaza and tasked his right-and man Ron Durma with a plan for executing that, and it's clear from the bombing and from the pattern of strikes that the target wasn't Hamas, it was all the people of Gaza. That was a fundamental strategic error and it made the war an existential war for all Palestinians everywhere. Nnot just in Gaza but in the West Bank too.
Israel has really damaged itself in this war. It's under huge pressure now, basically just to wave the white flag...
Netanyahu isn't just a threat to the region, he's a threat to Israel itself.
Before this war Israel had, and has, total dominance between the river and the sea but Netanyahu wanted it all... I think it's no accident that regimes that are on the verge of collapse are at their most violent, and that is the case with Israel today."
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