Lessons for Israel from the U.S. invasion of Iraq

Israel says it will "intensify its ground operations" to eliminate Hamas.

But if it does, what then? Is there a plan for the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war?

Today, On Point: Lessons for Israel from the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Thomas Warrick, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003.

Barak Greenapple, expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations and regional geopolitics. Former negotiator between the Government of Israel & the Palestinian Authority.

Hiba Husseini, served as legal advisor to the peace process negotiations from 1994 until 2008. She has a law firm in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On Monday, Hamas released video footage of three of the Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7th. One of the three women in the video speaks emotionally to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and plead for a ceasefire. It’s not clear if she had been told to send that message.

The video prompted family members of the almost 240 hostages – including infants, children, and the elderly – to urge the Israeli military to bring their loved one's home.

(HEBREW)

"We ask the prime minister and defense minister to leave no stone unturned until the world knows what they are doing to our children, our families, and all of the hostages,” one mother said.

“These are crimes against humanity. Against women, children, and the elderly. These acts are unforgivable.”

CHAKRABARTI: The next day, Tuesday, a series of Israeli airstrikes bombed the densely packed Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Israeli Defense Force say it was targeting Ibrahim Biari, one senior Hamas commander said to be responsible for the October 7th attack. The IDF says Biari was at a refugee camp.

The Gaza health ministry says the strikes killed at least 50 civilians and injured more than 150. At the nearby Indonesia hospital, Dr. Suaid Idais told British news outlet ‘The Guardian’ that the explosions shook the entire refugee camp.

(ARABIC)

“They were just in their homes. They were targeted while they were in their homes,” he said.

“All martyrs, children, women, the elderly. We have no idea what to do. The injured are everywhere.”

CHAKRABARTI: Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht accused Hamas of “hiding, as they do, behind civilians.”

BLITZER: Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas commander, knowing that a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and Children presumably would be killed. Is that what I'm hearing?

HECHT: That's not what you're hearing, Wolf. We again were focused on this commander. Killed many Israelis. We're doing everything we can. These are, it's a very complicated battle space. There could be infrastructure there, there could be tunnels there and we're still looking into it, and we'll give you more data as the hour moves ahead.

BLITZER: But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children in that refugee camp as well. Right?

HECHT: This is the tragedy of war, Wolf. I mean, we, as we've been seeing for days, civilians are not involved with Hamas. Please move south. Sadly, they are hiding themselves within civilian population and again, we are doing this stage by stage and we're going to go after every one of these terrorists who were involved in that heinous attack on the seventh of October. 

CHAKRABARTI: This is On Point. I’m Meghna Chakrabarti. At this moment, it may seem impossible to imagine an end to the Israel-Hamas war. But people deeply familiar with the aftermath of terrible conflict insist that, in fact, the war’s end must be imagined, visualized, and planned for now.

Because if it isn’t, the war’s aftermath could be longer and more destructive than the war itself.

And how do these observers know? Well, one of them worked at the U.S. State Department in 2003. He led a team charged with planning how to rebuild post-invasion Iraq. And he watched in horror, as that plan was ignored by the Bush Administration, and Iraq fell apart.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (CHEERS)

DICK CHENEY: The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators, the United States when we come to do that.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Things change. We had a plan that anticipated I think that we could proceed with the occupation regime for much longer than it turned out the Iraqis would have patience for.

ROBERT PERITO: And their basic approach was that they couldn't really foresee exactly what was needed. So they were going to wait until they got there and then they were going to make recommendations.

KANAN MAKIYA: Everybody agreed that Saddam should go. Everybody would like to have democracy afterwards. Nobody had a clue what the challenges are ahead.

NABIL MUSAWI: We’re asking British and United States to the principal system for us, how to go through democracy...

PAUL BREMMER: And the American officials who were up there on the platform didn't have answers.

NABIL MUSAWI: He was working with the wrong Iraqis. We're talking about the Iraqis who brutalized, traumatized this nation for 35 years.

PAUL BREMMER: Shortly I will issue an order on measures to extirpate ba'athists and Ba'athism from Iraq forever.

GEN. JAY GARNER: Yeah, it got scrapped and all that happened in about a week's period.

INTERVIEWER: How did you feel about that?

SPEAKER: I thought it was a mistake at the time.

SPEAKER: By doing that, you have made those people part of the problem instead of the, making them part of the solution.

GARNER: I don't mean this at all condescending. But when you're teaching a youngster to ride a bicycle, you don't keep your hand on the seat the whole time. At some point, you have to take it off. (GUNFIRE)

DONALD RUMSFELD: Stuff happens and it's untidy and freedom's untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things and that's what's going to happen here.

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: What was the plan with regard to a possible negative reaction from the Iraqi people? And also specifically, what was the plan with regard to securing any weapons of mass destruction? I frankly feel we were never given real answers to that. And I have a feeling that it's because there wasn't a serious plan and I think at this point, we're paying a serious price for it.

CHAKRABARTI: Tom Warrick. Welcome to On Point, and I wonder if that brings back memories.

TOM WARRICK: Yes, Meghna, good to speak with you. And yes, it does. I recognize individually many of the voices that we've just heard are friends of mine or people I worked with as we tried to work our way through what was going to happen after Saddam Hussein was eliminated.

It was clearly a very difficult time.

CHAKRABARTI: Good or bad memories, let me ask.

WARRICK: Some of both. There were some real heroes and patriots on all sides, on both the U. S. side, the international side and the Iraqi side. A great many Iraqis lost their lives not just during the war, but in the chaos that followed afterwards.

And as I look back, there are clearly a number of lessons that would I think be important for whoever is going to be thinking about post-war Gaza to bear in mind. History teaches there have been some good examples, and there have been some bad examples. Challenge right now is to come up with something that will make the sacrifices and suffering that we've already seen, and that is yet to come.

Something that really does turn the corner towards a better future for the peoples of Israel, the Palestinians and the entire Middle East.

CHAKRABARTI: You're listening right now to Thomas Warrick. He's currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, but in 2002 and 2003, he worked in the U. S. State Department, as I mentioned, and he led what was called the Future of Iraq Project.

And just to jog our memories a little, the Future of Iraq Project was a State Department initiative, lots of working groups with various experts, both U. S. and Iraqi, trying to plan every little thing that would need to be done after the U. S. invasion of Iraq in order to shore up, rebuild infrastructure of the country, and create a functioning democracy there.

Now, for those who remember, the Bush administration essentially dumped the Future of Iraq program plan. Threw it out in favor of giving the lead to the Defense Department and then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Tom Warrick, fair summary that your plan and your group's plan was never fully or even partially enacted in Iraq.

WARRICK: Parts of it were and it was interesting. The things that were done, for example, to stabilize Iraq's currency after the war, that ended up going quite well. We had brought in experts in economics, Iraqis who had worked at the United Nations, and they did a superb job changing Iraq's currency from something that featured Saddam Hussein's picture on it to something that had much more acceptance among the Iraqi people.

There were other examples where people that we worked with ended up becoming cabinet ministers, members of parliament, leaders of civil society. But unfortunately, during the very crucial early months, there were a number of really flawed ideas or indeed the absence of ideas. And people lost track of what was really essential to do after the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was taken down.

There were a host of things that should have been done that just weren't.

CHAKRABARTI: And in going back and watching and listening to the many hours of publicly available video from that time period, it's not by accident that a lot of the bites I chose there involved questions of where's the plan?

What's the plan? Because things were changing so often, ideas were instituted and then thrown out, de-Ba'athification happened and then didn't quite, didn't work at all as Paul Bremmer at the time had hoped it would. So we'll talk more about the importance of having a plan from the beginning in a second.

But Tom Warrick, I wonder if the first lesson that Israel might garner from your experience regarding Iraq some 20 years ago comes from the fact that it seems like there was a massive divide in opinion in terms of how to manage post war Iraq, between the Defense Department and the State Department.

I think that goes without saying, and the administration went with the Defense Department, so having that massive divide in what to do hampers any ability to effectively plan for a post war scenario, does it not?

WARRICK: It does, indeed. And in fact, from what we're seeing so far, I'm watching the Israeli government go through almost exactly the same sequence of steps that the U.S. government went through back in 2002, 2003. For example, initial planning for post conflict Gaza looks now to be worked on extensively by the Israeli Defense Forces, J5, their planning directorate. And the military, which in advanced societies usually does a great job of doing military planning, always seems to have challenges when it comes to having the civilians take over.

And that handoff is what many of us are most concerned about.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today, Tom Warrick joins us. He's currently at the Atlantic Council. But in 2002 to 2003, he was at the U. S. State Department heading the Future of Iraq Project, which was the State Department's effort at coming up with a post invasion plan, when the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. And given that experience, Warrick has a series of suggestions for the path forward for Israel, the region and the world at the end.

I know it's unimaginable right now, but when the end of the current Iraq-Hamas war comes. Now, Tom Warrick, I'd love, we're going to go through some of your suggestions here that you recently published in the New York Times, but I'd love you to couple them with stories from inside the room in 2002 and 2003, because, for example, one of your suggestions is listen to what Gaza's residents want, that ordinary Gazans must have a say in their future.

That brings me right back to 2003, when we were hearing things like then Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in that montage we played earlier, say, "Oh we've been talking to Iraqis and we are certain that they will greet the United States military as liberators," right? That was true for a hot second, maybe, but it was definitely not how the Iraqi people felt.

The arrogance there felt dramatic and spectacular then, even more so now, do you get the sense that Israel, Israeli leadership, is in any condition at the moment to even think that listening to ordinary Gazans is a worthy thing to do now?

WARRICK: Some Israelis are, others, obviously, less. And certainly, the terrorist attacks of October 7 have forever changed the thinking of millions of Israelis and that's one reason why it seems like post-war Gaza is so far away. And that it will be hard to imagine how to make things better. And then you have statements by. Israeli officials that matched something of what we were hearing from U.S. officials after 9/11, when it talked about a war on terror and eliminating Al-Qaeda.

What we also though, those of us who were working on this on the inside, knew that there was no single thing called Iraqi opinion. Neither is there a single thing today called Gazan opinion. Hamas has a great deal of support from people inside Gaza, but there are also people inside Gaza who do not support Hamas.

It would be a mistake to overstate the influence of either side. The reality is complicated, but it's actually important to understand the reality and not try to reduce it to soundbites or bumper stickers, because that's what gets you into making just enormously unrecoverable strategic mistakes.

And so the thinking that U. S. forces would be greeted by flowers and sweets, as one Iraqi once put it, before the war, yeah, there actually were some Iraqis who thought that way, but there were also many Iraqis who regarded the U. S. as an invader.

CHAKRABARTI: And because of the lack of comprehensive planning, right after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the chaos that emerged turned many ordinary Iraqis who might have been sympathetic to the United States or quote-unquote, grateful, completely against the U.S. They were saying things like, "This is your democracy. We don't want your democracy." I wonder, we can speak in broad terms like the Iraqi people or the people of Gaza, which I know you're trying to avoid, and I appreciate that, but similarly, I find myself saying Israeli leadership or the Israeli military, equally broad terms.

I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, if you ever had any interactions with, since you were at the State Department, with then Secretary of State Colin Powell or the President George W. Bush himself. With the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, one on one or at least in person. To get a sense if any of those key leaders was really committed early in the invasion to comprehensive planning for the day after, if I can put it like that.

WARRICK: Everybody had a slightly different view of what their priorities were.

Certainly, Secretary Powell, for example, in the crucial months before the invasion, was focused almost exclusively on winning Security Council authorization for the invasion that was to come. That was his top priority. And as we all know, France blocked it in the Security Council and so we never got what was called the second resolution.

What happened though was there were several key officials in the Department of Defense who were deeply and personally committed to a vision for post war Iraq that turned out to have been fundamentally flawed. They very much wanted to believe what some Iraqis were telling them.

And I've got no doubt within Israel there are similar voices today, putting forward completely unrealistic ideas for what could be done to end Hamas's terrorist threat to Israel. And there are also going to be Israeli leaders who I think have a deeper understanding of what the challenges are. I've noticed we've started to hear some really interesting key phrases from U.S. leaders who are talking to the Israelis.

Secretary of State Blinken said at a congressional hearing just the other day that Israelis understand they do not want to occupy Gaza. That is a sign of reality that's not going to be the best solution from the Israeli standpoint.

But then that leaves the question of, okay, if not Israel, then who?

CHAKRABARTI: Then what? Yeah.

WARRICK: Exactly. And there are very preliminary talks about what that might look like. But the thing I worry about, Meghna, is those really interesting high level talks that high level officials like. have to be matched by a lot of very serious, very detailed planning for what I would call the basics.

One of the things that happened in pre-war Iraq planning was that some of the ideas that were being discussed at high level meetings were so, I have to say, fun and interesting that they simply soaked up all of the time of high-level decision makers. And so the military plans got extensive airing.

The diplomatic track got extensive discussions; humanitarian assistance got all the time that it needed. And post war planning, if it came up, was like three minutes at the end of an hour and a half meeting. That is exactly what gets you into these forever wars, in these situations where the failure to plan adequately ends up crippling what happens afterwards.

CHAKRABARTI: So I want to be sure I heard you correctly, that in these meetings, sometimes post-war planning. would be almost an afterthought at the end of the meeting?

WARRICK: It would be on the agenda. We would get that far. But a host of decisions really have to be made right now by the government of Israel, by governments like the United States, Britain, Germany, France.

In the Middle East and getting those decisions talked through and getting people to a place of consensus that they can then start putting together the money, the people, the equipment, all of the things that are going to be necessary to try to secure the post war. All of that takes time, and the idea that we can wait until after the military victory is won is one way to assure that the post war will not go well.

And so these things have to get the attention they need right now even though other subjects have this tendency to dominate high level policy discussions.

CHAKRABARTI: We're going to hear from an Israeli in just a moment. But I want to ask you briefly about another one of your suggestions. It's actually the first one, end Hamas's culture of economic corruption in Gaza.

And the reason why I wanted to spend a minute on that one is that it seems as if the importance of that also comes straight out of the United States mishandling of post war Iraq, right? Because there were massive failures there in partnering with Iraqis who either would not or could not end Iraq's post or Saddam Hussein era history of corruption.

And it just got worse in Iraq as billions of U. S. dollars were poured into post war Iraq. How much do you think that hampered any possibility of faster and more cohesive reconstruction of the company. And do you think that's a lesson that is urgently needed to learn in the Israel-Hamas situation?

WARRICK: Oh, absolutely. I was for 10 years the Department of Homeland Security Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Policy. And people in the United States, and even more so in Israel, have a deep understanding of the way Hamas rules Gaza. It is corrupt to its core. Everything is in the service of Hamas having its military capabilities and the ability, as we saw on October 7, to carry out truly horrific terrorist attacks.

But Hamas controls much of the budget, the hiring. Things can't move in many cases without Hamas getting its cut. And it's going to be essential from Israel's standpoint that this culture of corruption be ended. This has turned, this is going to turn out to be one of the hardest things to do.

As we discovered with Iraq, we knew going in, those of us who were involved in real post war planning, knew how deeply corrupt Iraq had been under Saddam Hussein and his family, who had amassed enormous wealth by the way they had structured the entire Iraqi state. And one of the most important things in the real State Department plan that never actually has been made public, was the idea of coming up with a system that would end that type of corruption.

Instead, what happened set up Iraq for what's called the Muhasasa system, whereby the political parties control government ministries. And this has been the subject of numerous demonstrations by the Iraqi people who want to be out from under this system. It was not inevitable.

It was the byproduct of U. S. government decisions about how money would be handled within the Iraqi government. This is enormously important for Israel's long term security and for the people of Gaza to have a more prosperous future and to be able to rebuild, that we get this right.

CHAKRABARTI: So let me ask you, your question, your suggestions, Tom, include, as I mentioned, end Hamas's culture of economic corruption in Gaza, listen to what the Gazans want, as we talked about. Change the educational curriculum, find a path for Gazans to write a constitution that leads to healthier democracy, show Gazans that Israel is prepared to help rebuild the Gaza Strip economically, and border security for Gaza that Israel can live with, and not a siege.

On paper, these look like hard won and intelligent suggestions based on your experience. But I've got to ask, you talked about the disconnect between what happens in discussions at roundtables versus what's actually happening on the ground. And for as long as the Israeli military is making decisions like we saw yesterday and sending missiles to a refugee camp killing dozens and dozens of people just to get one Hamas leader, as long as it's razing Gazan neighborhoods.

Is it not completely ludicrous to think that the people of Gaza would cooperate at all with any Israeli efforts in post war planning because it's inevitable that they will just see it as a terrible reoccupation? Shouldn't someone other than Israel lead the post war planning?

WARRICK: Yes, is the short answer to that.

The question is how the handoff gets made and to whom. Among many people that I know of who are, who were in government then and are outside government now, you see a lot of ideas that sound really good on op-ed pages. But would break down the minute you tried to put them in practice.

Some people are saying we can turn, or Israel can turn Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority has its own problems with people in Gaza who, after all, voted against the party led by the current Palestinian authority in Ramallah. And so that's one challenge.

Other people say turn it over to the Gulf Arabs. I have to tell you that the Arab Gulf countries don't have hundreds of experts that they could send to Gaza. They need those experts for their own country. And they don't have people waiting around to do this kind of thing.

The United States would have its own challenges. I don't think we would be right to be leading any kind of effort for any sustained period. And, but these kinds of discussions and decisions have to be made. At the same time, somebody else has to go figure out how you're going to turn the water and electricity back on, they're going to have an effort which we failed at in Iraq in 2003 of preventing strategic looting.

And so somebody has to be assigned that task. You can go through the whole checklist and realize that each one of these ideas needs a 100-page plan to begin to appreciate the magnitude of this effort.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm glad you brought up the looting that took place immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, because I recall clearly, it wasn't just looting the grocery store.

It was massive looting in ministries, etc. But Americans acted surprised. They acted surprised that so much chaos had been pent up for a long time amongst the Iraq people.

WARRICK: No, this wasn't chaos. No, this actually wasn't chaos. And this is hugely important for Gaza. What happened in Iraq had also happened in Bosnia after the Dayton Accords.

There were a number of apartment buildings that were to be turned over to the Bosnian government. And the Bosnian Serbs went in and stripped out all the plumbing to render those buildings uninhabitable. That was a strategic decision that wasn't just a bunch of people who decided they needed scrap metal.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, point taken. Point taken actually, but therefore it once again makes it even more dismaying that the United States still acts in surprise after it happened in Iraq in 2003. I'm going to just introduce an Israeli voice. Now we have to take a quick break in a moment, but I definitely want to get him in here just so that folks know that we'll have more to hear from him.

Barak Greenapple joins us now from Tel Aviv. He's a former negotiator between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Barak, welcome to On Point.

BARAK GREENAPPLE: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: I do appreciate your patience and listening to what Tom Warrick had to say. We have to take our first break in just a couple of seconds here, but in a sentence or two, can you tell me if you think any of his suggestions are workable?

GREENAPPLE: So yes, definitely. We're happy to learn from all examples. Many things that Tom mentioned, I think, could be relevant in our case. Obviously, drawing parallels is always a bit tricky, but definitely very interesting. And I think we can elaborate on that, so thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so we'll elaborate on that in just a few seconds.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Can you tell me what you think the biggest differences are between what the United States faced, and I'll just say it failed at in post-war Iraq, versus what Israel and the Palestinian people must contend with if and when the Iraq-Hamas war comes to an end. The most obvious biggest difference is that there's a shared border there.

But what else does not apply in terms of the U.S. 's Iraq experience?

GREENAPPLE: So thinking back now, I think our situation is very different in from many perspectives, let's say. We're a different kind of stakeholder, obviously, in this situation, right? And Israel just experienced a post trauma on October 7th.

It's a day that we will never forget. And I think the Israeli perspective now is mainly focused around how can we secure this border. In a forward-looking manner, to make sure that something like this never happens again, not even in a smaller scale. So Israel is a different type of stakeholder in this situation and would like to ensure to secure a different interest.

Yes, definitely life in Gaza post -war is a main issue, is the main concern, could also affect the likelihood of something like this or a threat like that to be formed again in the future. But I think security will obviously lead.

CHAKRABARTI: It's clear that one of the things that Tom Warrick is trying to advance now is the view that Israel's border security with Gaza is intimately, essentially related to a sense of security within Gaza for the Palestinian people. You cannot really separate the two. Do you think that truth is adequately understood by Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?

GREENAPPLE: I think currently they understand the situation very well.

But again, pre-October 7th there was an understanding that Hamas is weak. It's deterred. It will not operate or will not try any large operation for a host of reasons. And this conception obviously collapsed. And I think everybody was taken by surprise and shock.

Also, by the scale of this invasion. And I think obviously at the end of this war we cannot go back to the same situation we've been before. I don't know what's the reality we look like on the ground, but from the mindset standpoint of mindset, we'll be at a very different place of what is possible, what is not possible, what are we keen to allow, how will this relationship look like from the viewpoint of providing water, electricity, trade, other necessities.

It's going to look very different. I'm certain.

CHAKRABARTI: Barak, let me just ask you because we've been hearing this over and over again from people, most especially the Palestinian people themselves.

It's the idea, the assertion that true security for Israel in any post-war situation can only come with the end of occupation.

GREENAPPLE: So I would say carefully that even now in this situation you won't find a consensus around that in Israel. Obviously, the mindset at present is very different. People are worried, are concerned about the war, about the final outcome of the war, which is obviously very critical in shaping the reality post war.

And I don't think they're very much concerned or engaged themselves in thinking how exactly this reality is going to look like or let's say, what are the possibilities? What are the opportunities here? Because we're basically licking our wounds. We lost so many people. We have 240 hostages still in Gaza, women, children, elderly, disabled and possibly even more hostages.

I don't, I'm not sure we have the final number by now. And we would basically like to make sure that we see them all coming home. So we have different, bigger fish to fry, I would say at this point. There is a degree of understanding that pre-October 7th reality cannot continue, but does it lead people necessarily to the conclusion that now is the time to seek a political solution or the likes of it.

I don't think we're there just yet. It's very premature.

CHAKRABARTI: Barak, stand by here for just a moment. And Tom Warrick, hang on for a second as well, because I want to bring Hiba Husseini into the conversation for a few minutes here. She's joining us from East Jerusalem, and she served as a legal advisor to the peace process negotiations in the Middle East between 1994 and 2008.

Hiba Husseini, welcome to On Point.

HIBA HUSSEINI: Thank you very much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you first tell me a little bit about, Tom Warrick had mentioned earlier about the centrality of the Palestinian Authority in potential post war planning for Gaza. Do you think the PA is in the position or has the credibility amongst the Palestinian people themselves to take a major role here?

HUSSEINI: The Palestinian Authority has lost a lot of its legitimacy and credibility over the years. Because it couldn't deliver security for its own people and could not find a resolution to this prolonged conflict. So to take immediate, full immediate responsibility will be very difficult because even right now in the West Bank, the PA is not able to do, we see the Israeli incursions into the refugee camps every day.

The West Bank, cities are all shut down by the checkpoint. Israeli checkpoints. So to go into Gaza and assume responsibility will be, it has to have the resources. It has to have the legitimacy and it has to have the support from the international community.

So the PA can play a role as part of a larger group that would assume responsibility. I think the way I would look at it is we divide the issues into timelines and milestones. Following an immediate ceasefire, which I hope would be today rather than tomorrow.

Given the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we have to have immediate relief and humanitarian assistance, medical support, water, food, electricity, and so forth. So there has to be planning for this, and the PA should and must be part of this plan, along with other relief agencies like the UN, Red Cross, Red Crescent, other internationals.

Then we will think about the political sphere, the step number two, and step number two would be how to think about the structure of the governance in Gaza. And the structure and how we can connect the Palestinian authority to Gaza to reassume its role. Because I do not believe in any way that Israel can go back and reoccupy the Gaza Strip and deliver any kind of assistance or support or humanitarian assistance or even a horizon for a political resolution in the future.

CHAKRABARTI: I see. Hiba Husseini forgive me for having to curtail our conversation because I just have a few minutes left in the program, but I thank you so much for joining us today.

HUSSEINI: Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: Barak Greenapple, let me ask you one more question. Because it suddenly occurs to me that we've been having, I've been negotiating this entire conversation here with the undercurrent of a presumption that Israel is successful in its stated goal.

It's immediate stated goal, which is to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip. I wonder if in the event that Israel does not achieve that, which is, I would say, somewhat likely given that it's not just the leaders of Hamas, which are at issue here, but the forces and the ideas behind that animate Hamas, which you can't just bomb that out of existence.

So if some sort of Hamas influence survives and persists in Gaza amongst the Palestinian people, how does that change or have an impact to what the post war planning has to look like?

GREENAPPLE: So I agree with you. It's really hard to predict at this point how the day after is going to look like precisely.

And we can build scenarios right now. We can try to game it out, but it's all built. It's all, to be honest, it's all based on very strong assumptions. So you remove one assumption and the whole scenario or model collapses. I think the hostage situation will matter a lot. Also, the degree of success of the ground operation.

But again, the ground operation doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's the hostage situation, which obviously is a main shaper of everything that's happening nowadays. And I don't think it's only Hamas. There's Islamic Jihad as well. And the fronts and other organizations.

There are many factions and armed people in Gaza. And we're not only talking here about military Hamas, there's a whole Hamas system, right? And the people estimate between 80,000 and 100,000 people who are affiliated with Hamas in different roles within their system. So what do you do with these people?

You have to do like a de-Hamasization of the strip. All of these questions are super complex. Who would be the negotiating partners? What would be the structure? How will Gazan's voice be heard? Who will be the representatives and what level of support will they receive?

So many questions at this point, I think it's really the time to raise all the important and interesting questions now. So we have to ask ourselves a lot about each scenario and be completely honest with ourself about what is realistic and what is less. And so far all the scenarios that I heard, all the models for the post-war planning. Can I tell you now that even one of them sounds completely implementable and even manageable or sustainable once established? I can't, I'm afraid I can't say that. It's very hard to know at this point, how will that look like?

But maybe to answer your question a bit more accurately. So obviously things are going to change. Israel was ready to provide natural gas to Gaza, right? So they can, the gas for Gaza project. So they can triple and quadruple their electricity generation. It was ready to supply more water, increase the volume of trade.

Allow more workers to come to work daily in Israel. So things were moving in a positive direction. I won't say that there weren't any problems, there were obviously, but there were some good prospects, I believe. And now none of that would be possible. And we have to, it's going to be a very different reality in terms of the relations between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

CHAKRABARTI: Huh. Barak Greenapple, former negotiator between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, joining us today from Tel Aviv. Thank you so much for being with us.

GREENAPPLE: Thanks so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Tom Warrick, I want to spend the last few minutes of the conversation with you. Because so much of the language that we've just heard over the course of the hour, it does, it sounds so strikingly similar to 2003 Iraq and the United States.

Barak Greenapple just talked about the idea of, is de-Hamasization possible? Of course, that immediately sprung to mind De-Ba'athification in Iraq, which backfired in the United States faces terribly. So with that in mind, Tom, I just want to play one last clip and get a thought from you on it.

It's from Kanan Makiya, you know him well, he's a respected Iraqi scholar and dissident. And back in 2002, 2003, he provided much of the moral reasoning used by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war. Makiya ended up bitterly disappointed in both American and Iraqi failures that dragged on for years.

Years and years after the invasion, but back in 2003, he told PBS's Frontline that he was hopeful, and he knew what was at stake.

KANAN MAKIYA: This is a huge engagement; American prestige is at stake. American credibility is at stake and American commitment to its own values, its own sense of what it's all about is at stake here.

And the benefit will be that the rest of the Middle East will suddenly have something upon which to cement itself, a hope for the future, which it doesn't have at the moment.

CHAKRABARTI: Tom Warrick, obviously, even though all that was at stake, post war Iraq was, it was a deadly and tragic failure. In this whole conversation, other than your bullet points, I haven't yet heard anyone say, it's realistic for us to find another path, to do a Marshall Plan for the Gaza Strip.

So what do you think is at stake? Is truly at stake if the world can't get together and achieve that for the Palestinian people.

WARRICK: So let me end this on a positive note. If we reflect on what was done for post war planning for Germany and Japan, post war planning on Germany started in the United States in early 1943, for Japan a little bit after that.

They had two years, and they had the U. S. Army and Military available, which obviously we don't have here, but if you look at the democratic prosperous countries of Germany and Japan today, it really shows that transformational change is possible, but it takes time. It takes resources.

It takes planning on all of these things will pay dividends in the end. There is some hope we will come out of this horrible suffering. That Israeli suffered and what's happening in Gaza today with better lives for everyone. But it is essential that we plan, resource and stay with this in order for the better outcome to be realized.