## 13

## TOWARDS LIBERATION

June 21, 1999

> Amid increasing signals of an impending Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, speculation flourished both within and outside Lebanon that Hezbollah’s primary raison d’être would soon be removed. Such a scenario did not, however, appear to be particularly worrisome to Nasrallah in the statement that follows. After all, the party had by this time already built up a substantial political machine, alongside an effective network of social services, an array of revenue-generating entities, including the increasingly formidable construction company, Jihad al-Bina, and an expansive framework for allocating charitable contributions from across the world. Moreover, repeated Israeli air strikes during the previous seven years—sometimes directed at non-Hezbollah, non-Shiite areas and infrastructure—had only bolstered the view in Lebanon that, even after a withdrawal from the south, Israel would continue to represent a threat to the country. The real problem for Hezbollah, then, was that an overall regional normalization with Israel appeared closer at hand than ever before, especially along the all-important Syrian track.

> Indeed, just before this interview with the government-controlled Syrian daily Teshreen—one of Assad’s primary mouthpieces—Syrian Ambassador to Washington Walid Mualim told the journal Middle East Insight that “Hezbollah is the national resistance movement of Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah’s [leadership] understands that every agreement accepted by Syria, Israel, and Lebanon will obligate it as well.”1 Mualim’s clear signal that Hezbollah’s right to bear and use arms, hitherto effectively guaranteed (and to a certain extent contained) by Syria’s control over Lebanon, would end if a peace agreement was signed, provided an ultimatum which Hezbollah, despite its substantial guerrilla capacity, could do little to resist.

> Still, renewed Syrian–Israeli negotiations, after several years of inactivity, were yet to come, restarting “where they left off,” according to Assad’s dictum, only in December 1999. In past rounds of discussion, however, an agreement had proved elusive. Ehud Barak’s victory in the May 1999 Israeli elections, though—laden as it was with the promise to withdraw from Lebanon within one year and conclude a peace agreement with Syria—had pointed an energetic way forward; and Mualim, not to mention Assad, with his public description of Barak as a “strong and sincere man,” had made it clear that the opportunities presented by Barak would be taken up with equal vigor.

> Nasrallah accordingly presents a somewhat scaled-back set of “minimum demands,” short of what he expected from any peace agreement: “Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the western Bekaa; withdrawal from the Golan Heights; and the return of Palestinian refugees to their country, because Lebanon rejects the plan to settle Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.”

> His focus is, however, primarily on the domestic factors associated with an Israeli withdrawal. In this, he eagerly points to Hezbollah’s reaction to the largely uneventful pullout of Lahd’s SLA from the mainly Christian southern city of Jezzine on the night of June 1—an event which defied expectations of a Shiite-led bloodbath, and which represented a major public opinion coup for the party in the eyes of multi-confessional Lebanon. “Even the Israelis,” Nasrallah proudly tells his interviewer, in a further pitch to the Lebanese public, “said that Hezbollah was demonstrating what an eventual unilateral Israeli retreat from south Lebanon would look like.”

TESHREEN: Are we on the threshold of a new phase, now that Barak has won power in Israel?

HN: There is no doubt that the next phase, following Barak’s election, will be a very sensitive one, especially given that a number of Arab governments are pinning their hopes on the enemy once again. We also expect, and it is only natural for us to do so, the American administration to start applying pressure on involved parties in the region, and especially on Lebanon and Syria, to give concessions under the pretext that Barak’s administration now needs help to succeed. They also tell them that they should give the so-called moderate wing in Israel a chance, although it is not exactly moderate as far as Israel is concerned. This is the situation in which we find ourselves and, in my opinion, it is no worse than the Madrid Conference or the Oslo Agreement.2 As far as Lebanon and Syria are concerned, they are in a better situation now, and therefore have a better chance of holding fast and not submitting to the enemy’s will.

TESHREEN: Why did the Israelis withdraw from Jezzine?3 Do you believe that they want to foment sedition and provoke discord and infighting in Lebanon as soon as they leave?

HN: Certainly, the Israeli enemy’s intentions are beyond doubt and always bad and satanic; but, in fact, when we look at the Jezzine experience, we have to keep in mind that everything is possible, and see the events in Jezzine in a positive light. According to specific information at my disposal, Antoine Lahd’s militia had reached a point where they could no longer remain in Jezzine, and had two possible courses of action to take. Either the Israeli troops enter the area—which they had not previously done, instead relying on the presence of their security apparatus and agents in the area—and reinforce the militia by deploying in various positions and helping defend them, or Lahd’s militia leaves the area entirely.

The first course of action is not possible, because Israeli public opinion would not have accepted Israel’s expansion into new areas of Lebanon, or the ensuing increase in [Israeli] casualties due to the nature of the terrain there. Furthermore, the Israeli defense minister has already said that they want to reduce the number of forces in Lebanon, and a deployment of forces in Jezzine would have meant putting additional forces on the ground.

Now that the first course of action has been debunked, the second—a total withdrawal from the area—becomes inescapable. Antoine Lahd had asked to withdraw from Jezzine before the Israeli elections, and had insisted on it, but the Netanyahu government asked him to delay doing so until after the elections. Netanyahu considered any withdrawal from Jezzine to be a defeat for him personally, and therefore a move that would negatively affect his already poor chances of re-election. This is why—as soon as the elections were over, and before Barak even had time to assume the premiership and form a new government—Lahd’s militia announced its intention to withdraw. This withdrawal actually proved extremely humiliating for them, because our resistance fighters did not allow them to do so in peace; they pursued them, destroyed their weapons, and inflicted heavy human losses on them. Even the Israelis condemned the way this humiliating withdrawal had proceeded, and said that Hezbollah was demonstrating what an eventual unilateral Israeli retreat from south Lebanon would look like.

In fact, Antoine Lahd’s militia withdrew from Jezzine, on the one hand, because they could no longer afford to stay there due to the resistance’s activities and, on the other, [because] the enemy’s government had tried to reach an agreement with the Lebanese government that would have allowed it to withdraw based on a partial settlement. This agreement, which they called “the Jezzine first option,”4 would have required the Lebanese government to put special security arrangements in place and make a number of commitments to Israel, and a lot of pressure was brought to bear on it, and on the Syrian government, to go along with it. But the steadfast official positions, in both Lebanon and Syria, prevented this partial agreement from seeing the light; and when the Israelis and Antoine Lahd realized that they had failed to impose their will on the Lebanese government, they had no choice but to withdraw.

They hoped to be able to foment sedition, dissent, conflict, and infighting in Lebanon after their withdrawal, and in my opinion it was the resistance’s alertness and wise stance, the official Lebanese position, and the understanding between the resistance and the state, that had actually thwarted Israel’s and Antoine Lahd’s plans.

What we have witnessed in the past few weeks, therefore, is the liberation of another part of Lebanon’s territory, and today Jezzine is enjoying a period of peace and security, without a single problem on the horizon. As far as Jezzine’s inhabitants were concerned, the much-talked-about fears in the first few days proved to be mere figments of the Israelis’ and their agents’ imaginations.

TESHREEN: There are calls for mercy, and for pardoning those members of Lahd’s militia who surrendered to the Lebanese authorities. What is your position towards these individuals, especially in view of the fact that you submitted a proposal to parliament that involves possible pardons?

HN: We draw a distinction between two groups of enemy agents: the first includes those young men who remained enemy agents and members of an agent militia up to the very end, and chose to stay behind with their families when the bulk of this militia withdrew from the area. We do not consider these people as having repented their actions, because they stayed in this agent militia and serviced the enemy until the last moment—the last possible chance and the last shot. These men should be held accountable for serving as enemy agents and committing treason, and calls for pardoning or showing them mercy are unfair and based only on sectarian, electoral or political considerations. For the sake of Lebanon’s national interest, these people ought to be punished and tried according to this country’s laws, and this is what we have demanded. As for excusing them by saying that they had joined the militia in order to earn their daily bread, I am very sorry to hear such words coming from the mouths of people who hold prominent political and religious positions in Lebanon.

If we pardon these enemy agents after they have betrayed their country, and carried arms with the enemy against their compatriots, simply because they wanted to earn their daily bread, then we have to pardon all the thieves in Lebanon, or 90 per cent of those who are currently in Lebanese jails or are being tried for theft in Lebanese courts; 90 per cent of all thefts in Lebanon are committed for reasons of daily survival, and being a foreign agent and committing treason are far more serious crimes than theft. One robs a bank or steals a piece of jewelry, and the other betrays a country and consorts with an enemy, which threatens this country and this nation. Therefore, if we are required to pardon enemy agents and absolve them of their guilt for reasons of daily survival, then we have to pardon all thieves, murderers, and criminals in Lebanon who have received heavy sentences for their abominable crimes. We say no: those who chose to remain enemy agents until the very last moment should be punished in the same way that agents are anywhere else.

The second group includes those who have given up their activities as enemy agents and remained in the occupied areas, including Jezzine, but have in the past few years ended their relationship with the Israeli enemy; these deserve different treatment. As for those enemy agents who are still in the occupied areas, we call upon them to give up their treasonous activities and surrender to the resistance or the Lebanese army. We promise to work with the legal authorities to reduce their sentences substantially, and possibly hand down a minimal sentence on them, although we had requested that those who fled from the militia within a specific period be granted a full pardon.

People have incorrectly interpreted one of our important proposals—and although the relevant text is amply clear, they are still interpreting it the wrong way: the pardon proposal we submitted to the National Assembly did not mean that all enemy agents ought to be pardoned. We were saying that those who did not kill people (military elements, officers, and [presumably, associated] individuals) or whose crimes did not exceed a certain acceptable limit, could be granted a pardon if they escaped from the militia and surrendered to the resistance or the Lebanese army within a period of three months after the law has been enacted. The aim behind this proposal is to give those Lebanese individuals who want to abandon their activities as enemy agents, help dismantle Lahd’s militia, and unmask Israeli schemes in Lebanon, the chance to do so. In this case, we would support granting those people a pardon, reducing their sentences, and rehabilitating them; but this offer only extends to those who abandon their service to Israel, not to those who stay in its service until the last moment.

TESHREEN: Do you, therefore, believe that the Jezzine withdrawal was the result of the resistance’s activities, and not of other reasons?

HN: Of course, there are no other reasons.

TESHREEN: Why did the Israelis shift gears and choose this particular time to withdraw, given that the resistance has been going on for years?

HN: The Israelis did not change the way they think; when they occupy an area, they hold onto it until their last breath, and leave it only for a hefty price. When they withdraw without preconditions and without asking for a hefty price, it means that they came under pressure and were badly hurt. Although the resistance has been [in south Lebanon] for many years, the cumulative effect of its operations on the one hand, and Israeli losses and the fate of their agents in south Lebanon on the other, took their toll. Let me say, in this context, that one should not measure the impact of events in south Lebanon based only on the number of operations or of Israelis killed and wounded, for there is something more important than that—namely the psychological aspect. This factor is very important for the Israeli military establishment, which relies on its ability and power to hurt the enemy (…) and what happened has debunked the myth of the army that cannot be defeated, and dealt a severe blow to the high morale that the Israeli military boasts about.

For example, in the Ansariya operation,5 the Israeli soldiers fell into a trap set by the resistance deep into the liberated area, which means that the resistance was waiting for them to arrive, in spite of the diligence and meticulousness with which they had planned their operation—at the highest military echelons—and the precision of its execution. Thus, the fact that this operation failed, as did many others they attempted behind our lines, is a very considerable psychological coup against the Israeli military establishment. Furthermore, all the measures that Israel put in place on the frontlines6 failed to stop the Lebanese resistance fighters from reaching the Lebanese–Palestinian border, and many of our operations were actually carried out close to that border. We filmed those operations and showed them on television, which prompted the Israeli Commander of the Northern Region to declare: “Hezbollah can infiltrate our lines but we cannot infiltrate theirs; Hezbollah knows what is going on here, but we do not know what is going on there.” A few days later, we read in the newspapers that Shaul Mofaz, Commander of the Israeli army, had said that there was not a single army in world capable of defeating Hezbollah.7 But when his officers and soldiers, hunkering down on the frontlines, hear this admission their morale will undoubtedly sink even lower, because what he is in fact telling them is “It is not just us; no other army can defeat Hezbollah.”

What is important, in the final analysis, is that the Israeli army has humiliated itself and lost its strongman image, and you know as well as I do that this army’s strength resides mostly in its aura, well before its size and the lethality of its weapons, [an aura] it heavily banks on. This is why I say that the Israelis have endured a lot in Lebanon. I read something that Uri Lubrani, the expert and coordinator of Israeli affairs in southern Lebanon, has written recently, to the effect that Israel had no way out of Lebanon except through an understanding with Syria. He said that Israel had to admit that the only solution to the catastrophe in which it finds itself in Lebanon (he considers their situation in Lebanon to be a catastrophe) is by negotiating with, and paying a heavy price to, Syria, if the objective is to extricate Israel from the quagmire in Lebanon.

TESHREEN: What is the secret behind the resistance’s success, and behind this large number of successful operations that inflicted such heavy losses on the Israelis? Did your intelligence information play a role in this success?

HN: In my opinion, and based on my close observation of the resistance’s operations over the past 17 years, more important elements than mere technical details have led to the success of the Islamic Resistance, and the most important of them all is loyalty. This group of fighters does not go to war in order to flex their military muscles, score a publicity coup or achieve material advantages; they fight and do jihad with serious intent and a deep conviction that the only way to regain their usurped territory is by waging war on the enemy. This serious intent is the culmination of disciplined behavior, such as maintaining confidentiality and secrecy, which makes it impossible for the enemy to infiltrate the resistance. When a group of resistance fighters enters an enemy location, the local inhabitants do not feel their presence; neither do the army or other resistance groups. They do their job quietly and in secret, and the success of their operations is commensurate with the secrecy of their movements. Our fighters go in and out, in and out of the occupied areas, and the enemy never has prior knowledge of their movements.

Secondly, the fact that the resistance cares about the people on the Lebanese side of the border has helped them carry out their operations with a greater degree of precision, and has made the people like them and feel the need to protect them. Had they cared less about the fate of the local population, which has been on the receiving end of Israeli shelling and attacks, the people would have just wanted to get rid of the mujahidin, and would have blamed them for all their woes. This mutual affection and cooperation between the mujahidin and the local inhabitants has given the resistance a lot of leeway as far as its movements are concerned.

Thirdly, constant improvement and creativity. Fighters in south Lebanon and the western Bekaa Valley do not see themselves as mere receivers of orders; even local resistance commanders consider it part of their responsibilities to sit and think together, study various options, and figure out what the best courses of action are, and how to improve the resistance’s operations. There is no single group charged with figuring out how to improve our operations—it is everybody’s responsibility to do so. Shaul Mofaz recognized as much when he said that he was facing a group of fighters that depended on creativity to develop their operations and tactics.

In any case, though such descriptions are a source of strength for us, the most important remains what makes us serious, loyal, and faithful: the mujahidin are, in fact, individuals who seek martyrdom. There are two categories of fighters in the south: fighters and officers whose objective is eventually to go back home; and those whose objective is martyrdom, pure and simple. The latter have a far higher morale on the battlefield, and regardless of the kind of weapons they carry, their faith and spirit make them strong and steadfast, and allow them to deal the enemy a severe blow. How else do you explain the fact that when Israeli warplanes bomb a road that one or two mujahidin have used, or drop 20 missiles on an artillery site, the mujahidin return to those same sites as soon as the raids are over to launch a counterattack?

TESHREEN: We would like to turn now to the April Understanding.8 Israel has violated this understanding dozens of times. How has the resistance responded to that, and how will it do so in the future?

HN: We believe that the Understanding was motivated mainly by Israel’s fears that their settlements in northern Palestine would be shelled by Katyusha rockets. However, although they are violating this Understanding, we do not respond to every one of these violations, because if we did it would upset all existing considerations. From time to time, and especially when Lebanese civilians are targeted, we shell their settlements, breathe life into the Understanding once again, and impose a measure of self-restraint on those Israeli soldiers and officers who do not hesitate to target civilians. This, in my opinion, is the only way to keep the April Understanding alive.

TESHREEN: The April Understanding is therefore useful to you. How do you make use of it?

HN: In general, the Understanding has provided a good measure of safety to the civilian population, which is what we were looking for in the first place, in spite of Israeli violations.

TESHREEN: Our next question concerns Hezbollah’s future. What would this future be if a just and comprehensive peace is established in the region?

HN: What Lebanon wants officially is now clear to all. It has three minimum demands: Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the western Bekaa; withdrawal from the Golan Heights; and the return of Palestinian refugees to their country, because Lebanon rejects the plan to settle Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. One cannot look at the situation from a narrow angle: there are now around 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, and these people should have the right to return to their homes and reclaim their property.9

If this happens, then there are two factors to consider when talking about Hezbollah’s future: the first is the political factor. I am not worried, in this context, as far as the future is concerned, although some would like to provoke people’s insecurities and fears. The situation is not what they think, for although it is true that Hezbollah is above all a resistance movement, and has mujahidin who sacrifice themselves, it is also a large Lebanese, popular and political Shia mass movement that has representatives in the National Assembly and participates in municipal elections.

We are very concerned about what takes place in our country in the local, media, political, social, and cultural domains, and regardless of whether it is large or minor. We are citizens of this country and therefore care about its future. In my opinion, Hezbollah has a good and prosperous future, and I am not worried at all from this point of view. I also expect the Lebanese people to recognize Hezbollah’s jihadist role, and the state to appreciate the favor that Hezbollah has rendered to this country.

As for the military factor—in other words our field operations—we do not usually speak about this topic in public, and I believe that keeping it secret and under wraps, regardless of the reality on the ground, is in the interest of both Lebanon and Syria.

TESHREEN: You regularly express your appreciation for President Hafez al-Assad’s positions and his role in ending Israeli hegemony over Lebanon. What is the secret behind this deep appreciation and respect?

HN: To express my real thoughts, and reflect an accurate measure of my feelings towards President Assad, I will give you a very simple example. When Israel invaded and occupied large parts of the Bekaa Valley, Mount Lebanon, and Lebanon’s capital city in 1982, a contingent of multinational forces arrived to bolster this occupation, and many Lebanese groups opted to cooperate with it.10 Israel succeeded in imposing a president of the republic and the humiliating May 17 Agreement on Lebanon.11 Had there not been in the region a state by the name of Syria, led by a president of the stature of Hafez al-Assad, Lebanon would still be wallowing in the Israeli era.

I think this example gives you the right idea. In other words, had it not been for Syria, its steadfastness and the iron will of President Hafez al-Assad in the face of this American–Israeli onslaught, and had Syria not opted to adopt and protect the resistance and support its fighters, we would not have achieved what we did in Lebanon. It was the Lebanese intifada and the resistance that forced the Israelis to withdraw in 1985, followed by the withdrawal of the multinational [forces]. They are the ones who brought about the demise of the May 17 Agreement and the end of the regime that Israel had established in Lebanon. The Lebanese resistance and the handful of Palestinian factions would not have succeeded in doing what they did, had there not been a presence to protect, support, defend, and strengthen them, as President al-Assad’s leadership has done. What is also beyond doubt is that Iran also adopted a politically supportive position towards the mujahidin, although the special role that Syria played was the most direct and closest to where the action was.

It is only fair to say that the efforts that Syria exerted in Lebanon—efforts that have led to peace and security in the region—have been a major factor in reactivating the resistance and freeing the hands of many parties to refocus on fighting the Israeli enemy. The civil war drained everybody’s energies and preoccupied the Lebanese people; it was the country’s political stability and security, the resurgence of the state and its institutions, and the end of internal strife that made it possible for people to devote time to the resistance, and provided the right climate for building a consensus around it. We in Lebanon know very well that, after God Almighty, it is thanks to President Assad, to Syria, and to the Syrian army that we have durable security in this country.

TESHREEN: Did you find Israeli soldiers to be strong and courageous, or the contrary?

HN: Based on my experience, I would say first of all that Israeli soldiers only fight when they have material superiority—in other words, when they can muster large numbers of troops and move in units of 15 or 20 soldiers at a time. Although this method of security in numbers makes them better targets, the fact that they use [it] at all means that the Israeli soldier is fearful and cowardly.

Second, their defensive readiness and the readiness of their helicopters to ferry casualties. Whenever there is an engagement between one such Israeli unit and the resistance, Israeli artillery intervenes and starts pounding enemy positions, and helicopters appear overhead to cover it, although a typical battle would involve between 20 Israeli soldiers and only three to four resistance fighters. According to the mujahidin, when an Israeli soldier is wounded his unit’s position quickly becomes obvious, thanks to all the screaming and wailing, which the mujahidin make fun of. For example, in the recent confrontation that took place in Iqlim al-Tuffah,12 they started screaming even though their unit was a large one, and ours was small, and in spite of the fact that our unit leader had been twice wounded in the leg, which could not but have affected his small unit. The mujahidin are well able to inflict losses on the Israelis.

I am not underestimating the Israeli soldier’s abilities; I am just saying that he hides behind his technology, his artillery, his helicopters, and his heavy gunfire, and the human element comes last in Israeli military estimates. This is why I know that it is possible to defeat Israeli soldiers if we know how to use the elements of the battle on the ground to our advantage.

TESHREEN: As the secretary-general of Hezbollah and a politician, how do you visualize the Zionist entity’s present and future?

HN: At this particular point in time, when many are talking about the need to accept the status quo, to live with it and acquiescing to any kind of settlement with Israel, my view is realistic, if somewhat different. Israel is an illegal and usurper entity built on false pretences, on massacres, and on delusions, and has therefore no chance for survival. Certain characteristics, innate to the nature of aggressive and arrogant peoples, have prevailed throughout the history of humanity. In this context, I read some of Netanyahu’s desperate statements that say that the Israeli people are sick and tired of Zionism, and that they only care about their own personal lives. I consider this statement as a confirmation of my belief that the Israeli entity’s nature is one that cannot change, and that although they are incapable of change, they are capable of regression. Today the Zionist society is ethnically (Sephardim and Ashkenazi), religiously (extremists, centrists, and secularists), and politically torn. Israel has never had a Knesset as badly torn as the current one, in which many groups have barely three or four seats each; this means that the Israeli street is itself badly divided, and that the system does not function as it did before.13 Many Mossad operations, for example, have proved to be total failures, and the chief of staff himself has said that there is not a single army in the world—he did not say in the Middle East only!—capable of defeating the resistance.

The Israelis are scared of war and scared of peace; or at the very least, they do not want peace as much as some Arabs want it. This is the typical behavior of a people that isolates itself, and of a racist people who live in fear of being done in.

TESHREEN: Your military operations are ongoing. Do you think the Israelis will pull out from the south? When will you escalate and intensify your operations, and when will you do the opposite?

HN: Any withdrawal from south Lebanon must be unconditional, because the Israelis have to pay the price for their occupation and, as I said before, the official Lebanese position rejects giving Israel any security guarantees. We want a total withdrawal from south Lebanon and the Golan Heights, and the return of the refugees; but since Israel will not get the security guarantees it seeks, it will find it difficult to withdraw without them. The only way they can be made to take a gamble and withdraw without guarantees is for the resistance to inflict heavy losses on them; and the Israelis know very well, as Lubrani has said, that the only way they can withdraw without taking a gamble is by negotiating with Syria and paying the price of this withdrawal.

As for the second part of your question, in reality any escalation or reduction in the number of the resistance’s operations is not contingent upon a political decision, but rather upon the situation on the ground, and the readiness of some of our operations. You and I assume that, because we do not hear of them, these operations do not exist; in fact, there are ongoing operations, landmine explosions and traps in the occupied territories all the time, and we can often clearly hear the sound of an explosive device hitting an Israeli patrol. Sometimes no Israeli patrols pass by, and the mujahidin do not detonate their explosives. People talk about the operations they hear about, and whether or not they are escalating; on the ground, however, these decisions depend on the results of operations. Furthermore, an escalation or reduction in the number of operations does not necessarily depend on the resistance, which is continually setting traps for the Israelis, but on the Israelis themselves who, for one reason or another, decide to reduce their movements; sometimes days will pass without any of their patrols passing along a certain road. They often avoid certain routes, and sometimes senior officers wear civilian clothes, drive taxicabs and place chicken coops and vegetable crates on top of them to trick the resistance into believing that they are just civilians, and [to have them] refrain from opening fire. The situation therefore depends on circumstances on the ground, rather than on political decisions.

TESHREEN: Finally, would you like to add anything to what you have already said?

HN: I would like to say that there is not a big difference between Barak and Netanyahu. In statements after his victory in the elections, Barak said that Jerusalem was the eternal capital of Israel, that settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be maintained, that there will be no return to the 1967 borders, and that no troops, except Israeli, will be stationed west of the Jordan River. What have they left to negotiate over in any eventual final status talks?

Netanyahu failed to win in the elections because of his own performance, not because of his policies, and Barak professes exactly those same policies: he says that he will continue on the same track, and that he is not willing to pay the price for peace. We expect an escalation in the south and more Israeli security operations, and should therefore be ready for them.