Israel-Hamas truce extended: what to expect, with Jon Elmer and Ali Abunimah

I always love your analysis and your optimism and so far you've been pretty spoton and I hope you will be because with the scale of the suffering and the the misery that Israel is causing we need to be able to uh also focus on the Strategic and tactical victories which are clearly there but I want to ask you now this truce we heard today just before we we started this program that it's going to be extended for two days um we don't know what will happen beyond that we know that Israel says it's preparing for the next stage of the war and Kasam must be preparing for the next stage of the waram and the other resistance groups particularly SAR Al which belongs to the Palestinian Islamic jiad which plays an important role as well in terms of the military resistance if you were an Israeli general or if you were Muhammad de the chief of staff of the Palestinian uh Defense Forces as I like to call them uh what would you be looking at in terms of uh you know if the if this if this war were to restart at the end of a couple of days from now what what what do you think you would have learned you should uh and and what would you be uh what would you be trying to achieve well I mean I think the six weeks showed that you can't take and hold territory if the north is the example where they moved out um millions of people sent them on those virtual death marches um poured all of their armored vehicles into the territory in huge numbers um you know 15,000 air strikes um from all different types of planes uavs helicopters um you know reduced 50% of the buildings are are non-existent and then some other percentage of um are deeply damaged and need to be fixed and at the end of that you have the cassam Bri Gades actually working checkpoints to make sure that the aid trucks don't have any Israeli sensors buried in on them they have the capacity to fight um at at the same level that they did at the beginning of those six weeks so what does that tell you that the Israelis the this this the hints that they appear to be making are that they're saying that the the the war in the North is wrapping up this is the beginning of the end of the war in the North and so where we know right now about the war in the North is that they couldn't get into B banon we've seen them fighting on the outskirts of banon um we see them on the out skirts of the shotti camp running raids into Gaza City to attack the hospitals and so now they're saying that their goal is to move to K Yunis in the South K yunas is where Yahya sinir um and Muhammad de um were neighbors um and so they you know maybe the Israelis believe that they need to go in and do what they did to ishma hania's family house and like bomb it and make a press release about how they bombed uh hena's empy family home or uh worse they kill their kids like they did with when they tried to assassinate dayf in 2014 they just killed his children um if their plan is to move South um and not allow people to move back to the north um I I don't know that that situation looks um like a very very difficult situation and the ability to have military success to be able to pull back from the north and say we conquered the north just because we laid it to waste I don't see the Israeli generals having that I don't see that saving Netanyahu and gant's jobs I don't see that happening but I do see going to to the South is apparently what they're talking about doing yeah and not to mention the involvement of Lebanon and Yemen um and yeah and and we have to question we have to wonder what you know we've stressed from the beginning and this is something I continue to to say that none of this would be happening if the United States didn't want it to I talked a couple of shows ago about how uh Ronald Reagan picked up the phone in 1982 and ordered M minim Bean to stop carpet bombing West beut and is and bean had to obey because if the airlift of bombs from the United States stops then Israel will be out of weapons in a few days or a few weeks at most so you have to wonder if there is anyone in in Washington who is saying to the Israelis okay well obviously we're going to support you to restart the war because that's what we do but we don't want you carpet bombing civilians we don't want you uh doing all the things you did in the last few weeks I don't know if anyone is saying that because uh this is the same Administration that has been pushing the proxy war in Ukraine for you know almost two disastrous years in which they have lost at every turn and yet they keep pushing the ukrainians to feed more of the young people now increasingly their old older people I I saw a report now that the average a average age of the soldiers in some units in Ukraine is in their early 50s because they have run out of young people to feed into this meat grinder and none of this has deterred the psychopaths in Washington from continuing to pursue this mad proxy war against Russia that has led to nothing but utter Destruction for Ukraine so the question is are these same people the Anthony blinkin the Jake Sullivans the um Victoria nands the Joe Joe Biden himself to the extent that he's even aware of what is going on around him uh and and that's increasingly questionable we saw him yesterday I think they had some sort of Christmas tree lighting ceremony or something uh outside the white house the other day and there were people chanting um you know uh they were they were they were chanting and accusing Biden of genocide and he was standing there in a baseball CL cap uh clapping for them because he just didn't even un it appeared he didn't even understand what was going on he thought that they were there to cheer for him so uh given the complete absence of uh or someone in the comment is saying that that was in Nan Nan Tucket thank you for that correction but in any case uh Biden completely disconnected from from what was going on so the people in charge blink seems like a complete psychopath a total monster who will never back down and just escalate it every level so I think there's a real danger and this is what I worry about is that the the the the people in Washington who are effectively running the show will not take this truce as an opportunity to climb down the ladder but we'll instead see it as a Prelude to to more catastrophic escalation and we just don't know yet but I think we have to be prepared for that possibility I agree there don't seem to have um a lot of um uh ability to rein this in I think that a lot of it is in the hands of the resistance and I think there's um a increase there there's a ceasefire uh pause in the Gaza um in the Gaza front um but ansar Allah in Yemen um has really ratcheted up um the attacks they're requiring multiple us um uh missile destroyers to be down uh in the Red Sea taking down these ballistic missiles um that the um that aner Allah is firing from Yemen they're taking um Israeli owned Israeli billionaires ships um and trying to prevent Israelis from Shipping cargo through the Red Sea making jokes about how they have to ship all the way around uh the tip of Africa um come up around the other way instead of through the Red Sea um Hezbollah just released a an infographic yesterday of all of their attacks they're carrying out 30 plus attacks a day they've lost more than 80 Fighters um and they're at any other time again we would be calling that a war the West Bank is in armed struggle Janine five Fighters and Janine were killed U they had to call in an air strike because they were caught in an ambush in Janine um tarum uh tubas balata Janine refugee camp in the city of nablas they're fighting um at some point um I think the the um the ability for Israel to carry out this these attacks at some point um is going to be limited by the resistance and um and all we can say is we hope that that time comes sooner than later because um if Israel to were to fire up another round of massacring civilians in the way that we have just witnessed um yeah I don't know if any of us and any people in Gaza can handle that but I know that uh everybody thinks that the Kazam brigades are heroes in Gaza and you can you don't hear people running around cursing Hamas for starting this war um you have very deep support for the Kasam brigades and for the people that are fighting and you can see that on the street and you know you'll see it on the street the day the war ends as well um but to release these prisoners um and to continue to relase these prisoners so that there's no children uh Palestinian children in Israeli jails yeah you know that could happen within the next couple of days days with these exchanges that they will have emptied children out of the prison that's a significant accomplishment and they still have soldiers to trade from there thanks for watching this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel hit like leave a comment these engagements help us with the YouTube algorithm and it helps us to get around Silicon Valley 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