On Israel with Ben Caspit, an Al-Monitor podcast

Ben Caspit speaks this week with former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who was one of the main architects of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. Beilin is pessimistic about the government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett launching any sort of talks with the Palestinians. “Since 2014, when the Secretary of State John Kerry-initiated talks stopped, we don’t have any peace process. I am sure that eventually we will have such process — I hope so. But I don’t know when talks will be renewed, since on the Israeli side there is no partner.” Beilin adds that “the non-partner is saying very clearly for the first time in many years that he does not even intend to meet with the other side.”

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Eytan Schwartz, who heads the Tel Aviv Municipality Media and Communications Department. Schwartz and his colleagues at the municipality dissociate themselves from the term “The State of Tel Aviv,” which implies that Tel Aviv residents allegedly do not carry the burden of Israeli society and are removed from the difficulties and challenges other Israelis cope with. Schwartz says that such a judgmental approach is unjustified. “In Tel Aviv, we feel part of Israeli society and part of the Israeli mosaic.”

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, currently the director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center. Kuperwasser, who previously headed the strategic affairs ministry and also the IDF research division, is considered a top expert on Iran’s nuclear program. Kuperwasser says that, from Israel’s point of view, none of the current options regarding the Iranian nuclear program are good. “The option that should have been up for discussion – a better, longer, stronger agreement, that guarantees that Tehran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons in the future – this option is currently not on the table,” he laments. Given this reality, Kuperwasser argues that the only option Israel can hope for is the collapse of talks. A return to the original nuclear deal will offer Iran, in ten-years-time, the possibility to construct a whole arsenal of nuclear weapons. In contrast, without an agreement, Iran will strive to become a nuclear threshold country, aiming for one nuclear bomb, he explains. 

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Ben Caspit hosts this week on his podcast Israeli diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid of Channel 13 News and Axios. Ravid just published his first book, which is about the Trump and Netanyahu era and the Abraham Accords. "For me, the Abraham Accords were really the biggest break-through in Middle East peace in 25 years, and I wanted to be the person to first write as detailed-as-possible account of how these accords came about," he says. Ravid thinks former President Donald Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed are the people who deserve the most credit for them.

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On his podcast this week, Ben Caspit hosts Brig. Gen. (res) Prof. Jacob Nagel, the former Israeli acting National Security Advisor. The ups and downs in the talks conducted these days in Vienna, says Nagel, are not real drama. These are well-orchestrated stories that the Iranians are running, with all the climax points fixed well in advance. Nagel explains that the way things stand now, there is no returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement, adding, “Even the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, Robert Malley, understands that.” The reason, he says, is that the mistakes made at the time enabled the Iranians to advance their nuclear ambitions over the years.

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Dr. Raz Zimmt, an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Zimmt says that the strategy espoused at the time by then-President Donald Trump and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against Iran was obviously flawed, as it did not reach its objectives. While it’s true that Iran’s economy was severely harmed, that was the means, not the goal. Iran’s nuclear policy did not change and the regime was not replaced. Or to be more exact, the policy changed in the wrong direction, as far as the US and Israel are concerned.  

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Yonatan Adiri, a leading Israeli digital healthcare entrepreneur. Adiri, a former adviser of late President Shimon Peres, explains that most of Israel’s startup leadership is avantgarde, pushing forward visions for the next internet wave. "Companies like Wix or Fiverr or Mymed, and so many other across biotech, across bioinformatics, across infrastructure, all these companies are building the tools for the future," he notes. Adiri adds that those who control the tools for the future, like cyber and software service companies, are the ones likely to win, and this is precisely what current Israeli tech is doing. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg. The minister explains that while Israel is a small country in terms of population and its contribution to global pollution, it is also very fragile in terms of the effects of climate change such as bush fires and floods. The latter are expected to increase heavily in the upcoming years, which is why Israel must react rapidly. Zandberg says that Israel must now invest most of its resources not in looking for more natural gas marine fields, but in developing renewable energy resources, with emphasis on solar energy. "We have to do this very quickly, because we are way, way behind," she notes. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Lt. Col. (res.) Peter Lerner, the former director of international media at the IDF's spokesperson’s office. Commenting on Israel’s repeated failures in the field of public diplomacy, Lerner says that “In Israel, we are very good at improvising, we are fantastic with innovation, but public accountability, responsibility and transparency are limited. We do have a hard case to make, but we can also do better on public diplomacy.” Lerner cites as a negative example the case of Israel’s ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely, recently attacked by BDS activists when coming out of a university lecture. For Lerner, immediately after the incident, Hotovely failed to enter into a “media-crisis-mode,” and she also focused her reactions on Israeli media, instead of addressing primarily the British press.

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Ben Caspit hosts this week on his podcast David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Commenting on recent signs of tensions between Washington and Jerusalem on the Palestinian issue and other topics, Makovsky says that “We have a situation where both President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have an understanding, to try to maintain a public sense of harmony and avoid airing dirty laundry in public. An understanding on both sides to keep disagreements private.” Makovsky further notes that while rooting for the Bennett-led government and hailing its success in passing Israel’s state budget, the US administration is now concerned it could take moves it could not have taken otherwise. 

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