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00:00Well, let's speak to Oliver McTernan, he's Director of Forward Thinking and he joins
00:04us now. Oliver, great to have you. Thanks so much for your time. The Israeli government
00:09has been threatening to launch a renewed offensive for weeks now. Is that what's happening here?
00:16Are these strikes a precursor to something bigger, do you think?
00:20Well, I fear the strikes that we've witnessed last night were predictable. The message I
00:27was getting from inside Israel was that this month it is extremely important for the political
00:35survival of Prime Minister Netanyahu that he has the budget vote coming up. Now, to
00:42secure that vote, which if he had not secured it and failed, it would mean elections. Well,
00:49to secure it, he had to placate the more extreme elements in his coalition. And that meant
00:58returning to the war goal, his first goal, which was to see the total demise of Hamas.
01:04I fear that's what we were witnessing. I would really worry about the plight of the hostages
01:14with the sort of level of bombardment we witnessed last night. It's very difficult
01:19to see the chances of, if this continues, the chances of hostages returning home safely
01:26to their loved ones.
01:29Indeed. Do you, though, think that this is preemptive of something bigger? Do you think
01:35that Israel is trying to launch another offensive here?
01:39Well, hopefully not. I mean, what we're witnessing, and I think what should be disturbing us all,
01:49is we're witnessing a total disregard for the international norms that governed relationships
01:56on a state level. We're seeing the Geneva Convention being totally ignored. I mean,
02:04the obligations under the fourth convention, the Geneva Convention, is basically Israel
02:11has an obligation to protect civilians and their dignity, an obligation to see that they
02:17have food, water, medicines. And for the past couple of weeks, we've seen that being totally
02:23ignored and to more or less the international community being silent about it. Now, again,
02:29last night, the bombing, I think it's not going to, it's likely to slip into another
02:38full scale war, at least until the end of the month. And if Netanyahu succeeds in getting
02:45his budget through, who knows, he may then return to a more diplomatic approach and try
02:50to negotiate to see some sort of ceasefire. But what's totally lacking at the moment is
02:58a political vision. There's no political horizon for the day after in Gaza. We get these ceasefires,
03:06these pauses, but we have the Arab plan rejected by the Americans. What we need now,
03:13what should be going on is serious negotiation and discussion as to how we take this forward.
03:19And I think at the end of the day, we will see a continuation of the violence. We will see
03:25Israel never enjoying the security it has a right to until we see the end of occupation
03:32and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Well, I do want to circle back to what you said
03:37earlier about Netanyahu being under enormous domestic pressure. He needs to keep his right
03:43wing allies on side ahead of these key votes coming up in the Knesset. We also have his
03:48ongoing corruption trial. He was supposed to testify today in court. That didn't happen,
03:54supposedly because of the strikes that were carried out. Is the aim of these strikes to
03:59distract people? Israel has tried to justify the strikes, saying that Hamas refused to extend that
04:06first stage of the ceasefire. But is it meant to serve as a distraction from all the things that
04:11Netanyahu has on his plate? Well, his critics within Israel, and I think when I say his critics,
04:19the people who are really concerned about the future of their country and the direction it is
04:24going in, they would say yes, that he is using the war to secure his political survival.
04:33I think the issue of the ceasefire and how it ended right at the beginning in two months ago,
04:43when this was initiated, the ceasefire, we were told that the Americans guaranteed it,
04:50so that it would be stage one, which we've seen through stage two, would be this negotiation for
04:56permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal. Now, Netanyahu suddenly decides, well, I'm not keeping
05:03to that agreement. That, I think, undermines any chance of future agreements. People would be
05:09worried, even if the Americans guarantee it, that will this hold? And I think it's put us in a very
05:16precarious situation, an uncertain future. And I wish I could be more hopeful, but I'm not.
05:24I do want to get your thoughts on a separate but very connected line that we are following. Of
05:30course, the Houthis have vowed to step up attacks in response to what's going on in Gaza, just the
05:37day after the US carried out airstrikes in Yemen. Trump has warned that Tehran will be held
05:43responsible for any further attacks that the Houthis carry out. Do you think that Trump will
05:50make good on those threats towards Iran? And if so, what sort of escalation could we possibly see here?
05:57Well, first of all, I hope he will not make good those threats, because I think it's based on a
06:04wrong analysis. The public narrative we hear time and time again is that the Houthis, like Hamas,
06:12like Hezbollah, are all proxies of Iran. They're not proxies of Iran. They're all organizations
06:19or movements that basically are addressing what they perceive to be grievances in their own
06:26situation. The relationship with Iran, I think, is an alliance of convenience, just as in my own
06:34country of origin, Ireland, the IRA had an alliance with Gaddafi. They weren't proxies of Gaddafi.
06:40So I think that analysis that is pumped out time and time again is wrong. And I think if America
06:47acts on it, it is a very foolish act that risks destabilizing the whole of the region, the Middle
06:54East, Gulf region. But Houthis are part of the axis of resistance. So would you say that they
07:01aren't attached to Iran? No. You know, there's obviously, I would say, alliances in which
07:11Iran probably supports them militarily or money. I don't know the actual facts. I don't think any
07:18of us are privy to that. But they don't take directions from Iran. You see, also,
07:24people are forgetting the religious differences between Tehran and especially Hamas and Houthis.
07:32You know, it's assuming that they're all of one ideology. The most deeply worrying thing
07:39I think we have to address now is this narrative that what Israel is fighting in the front line
07:46is a battle for civilizations. It's not. This isn't about radical Islam. It's about grievances.
07:53Oliver, great to get your insight. Thank you so much for your analysis. We're going to have
07:56to cut the interview short there, but great to have you on the program. Thank you.