Yoaz Hendel on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, US relations, and the haredi draft - interview

Discussing Iran after its massive attack on Israel in April, but before its October 1 attack on the Jewish state, former MK Yoaz Hendel said, “They fired 300 threats at us, and our response was weak.

“I thought we needed to destroy their nuclear project, and I was not the only one. But their [the government] policy has been to always procrastinate out of fear. The failure to make a decision has a price. They had also facilitated Qatari funds to Hamas and allowed Hamas to continue, and this led to October 7.”

Speaking before the Lebanon invasion, he stated, “Ignoring Lebanon [for 11 months] and Iran has led us to our current bad strategic situation. If we don’t destroy the main enemy or cause it to pay a price. This war didn’t just start now. We are in the middle of the war. The North is at war” even if the government has ignored it.”

In addition, Hendel stated, “If we keep picking procrastination, it will be very hard to guarantee that another October 7 will not happen even worse in the future and it will be harder to get the northern residents back to their homes.”

He argued, “It is better to take the initiative. We have opportunities. We can destroy Iranian infrastructure. We won’t have a better opportunity. There is no better chance than when Iran [and its proxies] attack us. It is harder to think on our own about one specific day to just send the air force [to preemptively strike], but it is much better to do it when they are already attacking you.”

Hostage and ceasefire deal

Known as a nuanced analyst, Hendel was pressed that there seems to be no good solutions for returning the hostages along with defeating the Gaza terror group permanently; it seems that Israel must choose one or the other, and to date has forsaken the remaining 50 live hostages and 50 or so dead hostages.

Hendel responded, “If Hamas is not offering a reasonable deal, then we cannot do a deal, and we cannot stop fighting.

“But we also have a reciprocal social contract to return them [the hostages]. If there is a good deal, we can get the hostages back and stop the war temporarily,” he said.

Moreover, he stated, “Hamas may be internally debating whether to drop the assets of the hostages because they see that things changed in Israel and that Israel now has the upper hand.

“I was skeptical before about the first hostage deal [in November 2023] about our ability to stop the war and still be ready to go back in after. But retrospectively, it worked really well, and we went back into the fight,” Hendel observed.

More specifically, he said, “I would be ready to accept Phase 1 [which includes Gaza Strip withdrawals] as long as we can go back. But you cannot do negotiations through the media, saying what terms are and aren’t acceptable. This is part of the difficulty of having a problematic government – they need to go home… They haven’t gotten a deal. They need to get the hostages back, while properly balancing Israel’s long-term national interests.

“We can’t let Hezbollah and Iran threaten us – the northern residents won’t go back to the North. Part of Zionism is being able to live freely in our homeland and being ready to defend all of it. We are failing at this. If we don’t destroy the enemy’s capabilities, we will remain stuck.”

The day after in Gaza

Regarding who should replace Hamas for managing Gaza politically, Hendel said, “There is again a vacuum in decision-making. Just procrastinating. What is the goal of the IDF? When you say nothing, that is not a solution. But no one is telling the IDF what to do.

“We need to move the civilian population to another sterile place. Then, anyone who is walking around, we can shoot them. They can be moved to humanitarian areas,” he recommended.

Slamming the government again, he said exasperatedly, “It’s all politics and trying to cover. They are afraid to say who will be there. They stutter.

“Look, there will be Arabs there who don’t like us. You can play with it: Fatah, hamulot (family tribal units), and give them new looks and economic and political situations, but they could end up becoming Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Or they could say they are Hamas, but be the Palestinian Authority. The identity question is a joke and shows a basic lack of understanding,” he asserted.

“We can’t decide how they define themselves.”

Most importantly, he said, “The name may change, but whoever it is will hate Israel. Whoever it is, only fear will work. We need to scare them” into deciding not to attack Israel.

Handling US relations 

Moving on to handling relations with the US at a macro level, he stated, “We need to work with both parties and whoever is running the government. No one knows who will win the election; it is complex. Even if it is Trump, who is Bibi’s dream, no one can say it will be an open check.

“The first ‘Don’t’ came from Trump, and they [Iran] didn’t listen. Iran attacked the Saudis in 2019,” and Trump did very little, Hendel warned.

Despite the great importance of decades of strong relations, “at the end of the day, the US and Israel don’t always see their interests the same way. When [former prime minister Ehud] Olmert attacked [Syria’s nuclear program] at Deir ez-Zor, [former Republican US president George W.] Bush tried to stop him, but we attacked anyway… We need to do what is in the Israeli interest.

“There will either be a big war now or there will be a big war with Iran soon, so we need to produce on a homegrown basis more quality and quantity of munitions... Right now, Israel is weak and we are only dealing with this after we became more desperate. We have ignored this dilemma for too long. The political echelon needs to decide to invest in a larger independent defense sector.”

Haredim in the army

Haredim joining the IDF “won’t happen suddenly… many haredim still live in an October 6 world… They think this time period will pass and things will go back to the way they were,” with full de facto exemptions from army service, said Hendel.

He rejected this view, saying, “It’s not logical that a mother cannot sleep because her soldier son is in Gaza, but a Haredi mother can sleep fine, and this does not matter to them.

“It all comes down to God, money, and politics – like medieval times. We cannot rely on convincing them [to serve in the IDF]. We tried for many years and it did not work. It will be based on carrots and sticks. Whoever does not serve, unless they get a real exemption, won’t get many basic entitlements: no Bituach Leumi payments, no institutional payments, losing the ability to vote or run for elections.”

He said Israeli-Arabs must also serve, though they could do “national service” instead of service in the IDF.

Where is Hendel’s political career after his year running the Be’eri Battalion?

After MK Gideon Sa’ar and his New Hope party joined the government, elections currently appear distant. But when they do come around again, Hendel now literally has his own “army” of potential activists and volunteers.