The Israel-Hamas War’s Next Phase, Poland’s Democracy Test, Australia’s ‘Indigenous Voice’ Referendum, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the war between Israel and Hamas reverberates across the globe. Poland holds its most consequential elections since the 1989 Revolutions. And, Australians vote on whether to include permanent First Nations representation in Parliament. It's October 12th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week. I am Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, we're going to start, of course, in Israel and its war against Hamas, particularly in Gaza. As we were taping this podcast, the two sides were exchanging blows, but a lot of attention was focusing on the virtual sealing off of Gaza by Israeli forces, what that means in terms of the prolonged fighting, but also humanitarian impact. There have been some calls around the world for bigger international action to step in to try to maybe create some sort of a ground for ceasefire. What are prospects of anything like that happening?

ROBBINS:
Well, Bob, first, let me say even nowadays, afterwards, it's really hard to comprehend the scale of the carnage and loss in Israel. More than 1,300 people dead, 150 people taken hostage. As far as we know, most of them, civilians just going about their lives, young people, elderly, young children. This really is truly a horror, and the suffering in Gaza is horrifying. The Israelis relentlessly pound neighborhoods from the air. I mean, people refer to this as a refugee camp, but this is really a densely populated neighborhoods. Israel's also cut off all water and fuel and shipments of goods, and the Gazan Health Ministry said today, Thursday, that more than 1,300 Palestinian civilians have been killed since Saturday and more than 6,000 wounded and its health system is just collapsing. So this is an absolute horror for civilians upon both sides. I mean, as for your question about a ceasefire, it's really hard to predict anything in the midst of a war. There was this report that came out from the Syrians that Israel had bombed two airports, probably true. We'll probably know this by the time this airs.

MCMAHON:
And by the way, airports seen as conduits for arms going to say Hezbollah and so forth.

ROBBINS:
Absolutely conduits from arms from Iran going to-

MCMAHON:
From Iran.

ROBBINS:
Going to Hezbollah. And you can understand the strategic logic of it, but I'm just offering this right now, we can talk more about that. I'm offering this right now as an example of how quickly things are moving and how hard this is to predict. In the past, this was the pattern in terms of a ceasefire. The two sides would exchange blows, and then some sort of ceasefire would be negotiated. The Egyptians would step in usually, and the Americans would pressure and a ceasefire would be negotiated. And right now there's some talk driven by the Americans about setting up a humanitarian corridor or through Egypt. There's this Rafah Border Crossing from Gaza into Egypt to allow a safe passage for Americans and Palestinian civilians out of Gaza.

The Egyptians have reportedly been insisting that they'll only open the border crossing if it's also used to deliver aid to Gaza. And they're right now saying they're directing international aid flights to the Sinai so they can get aid into Gaza. But there seems to be no agreement in this. But I think that's about as far as the diplomatic negotiations are going on right now. No broader ceasefire talk from the Israelis. Israeli troops are massing at the border with Gaza and what looks like the prelude to a really enormous ground invasion. And if you take Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his word, he's determined to, quote, "Crush and eliminate Hamas."

MCMAHON:
Which is not something they've said before. They've gone back into sort of "mow the grass" or whatever other terms have been used.

ROBBINS:
It is a pretty horrifying term in its own right.

MCMAHON:
Right. But it was all about curtailing their ability, deterrence and so forth. And this is about elimination.

ROBBINS:
They've always called Hamas terrorists, and I don't think it's an inappropriate term for them, but they have preferred dealing with Hamas than having total chaos in Gaza. And that's been this very difficult relationship with them. And let's keep in mind that Hamas has vowed the destruction of the state of Israel. So now they're talking really differently. I mean this notion of crushing and eliminating, but I don't really know what it means. Does it mean capturing or killing its leadership? It's not clear if its top leaders are even in Gaza. Inflicting so much damage to Hamas' fighting force that it can't reconstruct themself and attack Israel again. And Hamas, of course, is more than a military force. It runs schools and hospitals. It runs the government of Gaza. And are the Israelis having made this decision in the past that they prefer Hamas as bad as Hamas is to total chaos in Gaza, are they determined to do what it takes to go back in and reoccupy Gaza and hold it?

They withdrew in 2005 for a reason, and if they don't want to keep the place, do they have a plan for who they do want to run the place that would be better than Hamas? What we do know is that Israel's determined after this horror and really what was a massive intelligence and military failure to reestablish their military supremacy, which is fundamental to their deterrent in the entire region. But I certainly hope somebody's thinking through their plan for Gaza.

MCMAHON:
And it does bring to mind also the broader role in the region because anytime you talk about Palestinians, you have to inevitably, unfortunately talk about Palestinian refugees. Palestinian refugees have been distributed throughout the region, obviously from Lebanon to Jordan. Egypt, it seems to be pretty clear it does not want to stream of Palestinian refugees coming from Gaza. But what is the region able to do? And it's been raised that the timing of this attack, among other things, was to once and for all nip this effort to create a Saudi-Israeli peace deal. Although it seemed to have been planned for many, many months even before that kind of initiative got momentum. But it does seem like it's changing some calculus in the Arab world. Do we have any sense of what the Arab nations might be thinking about doing?

ROBBINS:
Well, I think you're right about changing the calculus. I just got an email before we started this that there was some think tank in Washington that was canceling an event they had planned to discuss the non-proliferation implications of an Israeli-Saudi deal. Of course, they were talking about civilian nuclear component to it. I mean, everything we knew about what was going on about the normalization of Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors has been transformed by this. But we don't know transformed in what direction. I mean the Israelis believed, and certainly that's what happened with the Abraham Accords from the Trump administration on. They believed that they could normalize their relations with their neighbors one by one, and basically ignored what was going on with the West Bank Palestinians and ignore what was going on with Gaza.

And that was enabled by country after country, or by country that we're basically looking past the Palestinian or ignoring the Palestinian question. And this is obviously cannot be ignored. So we don't know what's going to happen with this. Is this the end of this normalization? I can't imagine that rational governments anywhere would want to throw in with Hamas. I mean, this is horrifying terrorist attack of the thing that they've done. At the same time, ignoring the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank, the plight of Palestinians everywhere, the plight of civilian Palestinians in Gaza, there is a message here, we don't know what it means for the diplomacy moving forward.

MCMAHON:
Adding to the complexity is, we mentioned in passing, the role to Iran. So there were reports that Iranians... Saudi normalization is proceeding despite what happened, including a call by leaders of the two countries, I believe in the past twenty-four hours, which is unusual. And we mentioned the reports of Israeli attacks in Syria against Iranian supply chains. Will other countries be willing to kind of tighten the grip on Iran? There was a report as we came into this podcast about Qatar agreeing with the U.S. to seize the distribution back to Iran of $6 billion in humanitarian funding that had been freed up. So maybe the U.S. is going to be able to exert some pressure as it has in other places in terms of money flows. But Iran is playing its cards pretty carefully right now and has this leverage with Hezbollah and southern Lebanon.

ROBBINS:
Well, the U.S. so far has insisted, and we were hearing the same things out of Israel that there's no sign that Iran planned this particular horrifying attack, but money's fungible and Iranians have been supporting both Hamas and Hezbollah for a very long period of time. Interestingly, the U.S. is not calling Iran out on this. I don't think they want to widen this war, but they've also sent an aircraft carrier group into the region to send a clear message to the Iranians, they don't want this conflict to spread. 

So suspending this money, this was of course Iranian money for oil sales to South Korea that was being held in Qatar. It was going to be released as part of this prisoner swap deal that was made. Treasury always insisted they'd keep a very, very close eye on how it was going to be spent for food and medicine supposedly. And immediately after this happened, it turned into a political fight here in Washington with people saying, "This would never have happened if we hadn't given them that $6 billion," which of course hadn't been dispersed. But I don't think the administration had any choice. And I think the sign that Qatar was willing to do this, I think is really also an important sign. But everything we knew is really up for grabs right now.

MCMAHON:
And again, we said at the outset, reverberation across the globe, it also gets into age-old issues involving sectarian differences or darker chapters in which there were surges in antisemitism or surges in anti-Muslim activities, including attacks and things. The world's becoming a more tense place, I think, not just the region.

ROBBINS:
Yeah, and DHS here in the United States has announced that they're increasing security around synagogues, and I'm sure that there will be lots of slurs directed as well at Palestinian-Americans and anybody who looks, quote unquote, "Arab." This is sort of political polarization reverberates here. But right now, I think more than anything else, we have to keep our minds and our hearts focused on the suffering of so many Israeli families and what they've gone through, and also the suffering of so many civilian Palestinian families and what everyone's going through right now. And let's just hope that there is a plan and a sound plan that leaves Israel strong and that doesn't destroy many, many more lives in Gaza.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it will certainly be coming back to this on this podcast. We should note that our cousin podcast, The President's Inbox, that Jim Lindsay hosts had Steven Cook and Elliott Abrams on talking about a lot of these issues in detail as well, and especially interesting discussion about Gaza itself and what is to become of that enclave. So stay tuned on the podcasting front.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, let's move over to Poland, which this Sunday holds parliamentary elections. Poland's Law and Justice Party, which has been in power since 2015 has, as we've talked about before, rollback political and civil rights curtailed the power of an independent judiciary. And it's been under EU sanction the bloc withheld billions in COVID funding for some of its worst democratic backsliding, but it's also regained a lot of goodwill without changing those policies, with its acceptance of one and a half million or more Ukrainian refugees. So what are the big issues in the campaign? And is Poland's already dangerously stressed democracy at even greater risk?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it's a recurring refrain as we talk about elections virtually anywhere these days, but especially in Europe, it's polarization and Poland, that is Law and Justice, really having a lock on conservative, older rural voters. And the center right civic platform known by the acronym of KO, is more popular in the urban areas, younger voters Poles who are abroad, especially in the EU, there are a lot of Poles who work throughout EU as they're allowed to do legally. And by the way, it's going to be something to watch the votes that come in from abroad and as they're counted belatedly and what they add up to. 

We should note the polling is indicating that the ruling party, the Law and Justice Party known by acronym PiS, is going to get roughly in the mid-thirties. I think one recent poll indicated 36 percent whereas the KO party gets around 29 percent, then it's time to look for coalition partners. There's always groups on the fringes or groups that have maybe more sort of narrowly focused issues that they want to hit home like anti-immigration, which is a prevailing theme in Europe. 

You can't talk about Poland just like when our recent conversation on Slovakia without talking about Ukraine, a frontline country that absorbed something like 3 million Ukrainian refugees and had, by the way before the Russian invasion, it had a pretty large Ukrainian population anyway that was working in the country, so it was able to absorb a bit more easily. But still 3 million is a lot in the country the size of Poland. It has soured a bit on its initially very rigorous support in terms of sending arms and so forth. It is more recently declined to allow the Ukrainian grain to be sold in Poland. Poland has a lot of farmers. Again, the rural constituency is a big supporter of the ruling Law and Justice Party.

So a stiffening on Polish attitudes towards Ukraine has been happening. I think we might be seeing that reflect in the referendum. It's interesting to point out that something like that might play out in the vote. It's interesting to point out that there's also referendum questions to be fielded during the voting. And many of the conspiratorial nature will say that the ruling party deliberately put these questions on there to draw people who will vote with PiS. These are questions about privatization of state owned enterprises; increase in the retirement age; admission of immigrants under the EU relocation mechanism and the removal of the barrier on Poland's border with Belarus, which was put up to stop migrants coming from non-EU countries. These are seen as calculated to bring people out who might be in support of the ruling party. We'll have to see. There's a lot of people in the opposition who are really alarmed about illiberal movements in Poland that very much echo what's happened in Hungary in terms of, as you noted, the courts seizing control of the Supreme Court level trying to really heavily pressure media.

There's an expectation if the ruling party wins, that it will really come after media, especially private media in Poland, which has been a pretty vibrant sector and really choke off the voices of independence and opposition to the government. So I mentioned at the outset of consequential, most consequential since '89, it does really seem that way because it's about democracy, it's about Poland hewing to rule of law and following its first of all its requirements and obligations under EU, but also as a NATO partner. And we've seen the ability of Hungary in terms of how it's pushed back against EU policies, especially on migration. We've seen Turkey as it's held up NATO accession for its own reasons, play a role here. Poland could be another spoiler in the works if things go the wrong way. We'll have to see. 

Two big party heavyweights to mention that are behind the scenes in some cases, Jarosław Kaczyński, seventy year old power behind the scene for the PiS party, he was a prime minister in 2006-2007. Donald Tusk, another previous prime minister, fairly-

ROBBINS:
And big player in the EU.

MCMAHON:
And big player in the EU, and essentially a bitter enemy of Kaczyński. He's sixty-six and he's a voice you've heard quite a bit on media. He knows how to articulate EU standards and EU norms, which resonates with a number of Poles. It's not clear whether it resonates with a majority of Poles. And a final thing to note, Carla, is whether as the votes come in the extent to which there will be any sort of charges of fraud, if the results don't go the way certain parties want them to go, it's a big test for Polish democracy.

ROBBINS:
So you mentioned, and we've talked about before, the fact that there's been this tension between Ukraine and Poland over grain shipments, and Ukraine even was going to take Poland to WTO, and there was that brief flurry when Poland was talking about cutting off weapons shipments and Poland's been a major, major supporter of Ukraine in this, and other than after the Balts, probably the loudest supporter and absolutely fundamental for Ukrainian refugees. 

So I dismissed, and believe me, I'm not a political expert about Poland, I dismissed a lot of this as posturing to get ready for the election playing to the agricultural base. Am I wrong about this? If this PiS wins again, are they going to change their tune on Ukraine? Are they really wavering here because this is a really bad time to have another country wavering, particularly when the U.S. Congress is wavering on support for Ukraine?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and as we said with Slovakia, there's an element of that of posturing before elections. We don't know what way Slovakia is going to turn still as they coalesce their government under Fico. However, you raise a good point. And it's extremely possible that once the votes are counted, and let's say the ruling party prevails and comes through again, they could turn around and continue to be largely in support of Ukraine. And among the reasons for that is unlike Hungary to date, the Poles regard Russia as pretty much a strong enemy state. Putin is an enemy. There's not a softening towards Putin. You're not having the relationship you had with Hungary's leader Orban and Putin, that you're having with Kaczyński or any Polish leader that I've seen. 

And in fact, ahead of the elections, they released a paper that seemed to show that Tusk would have turned over part of Polish territory to Russia in the event of an expansion of the Ukrainian war. It was a way of showing that they are first and foremost about Poland's national security, very nationalistic in their posture. And so by the same token, they've also very much played the EU card effectively. One of the reasons that they've been very effective at staying in power is they've doled out largess at the state level. They've paid out money to people who are on fixed incomes and who are in the lower echelons of wages and so forth. And they provided a lot of state benefits that people like and that have created a sense, a body, a residue of goodwill towards the party. 

So, I think you're going to see that aspect of pragmatism even while they try to use the authoritarian playbook of knocking out independent voices, consolidating power in the courts, suppressing media voices. It's a combination of those things that I think you're looking at. The U.S. is going to be very mindful of the NATO role and especially of the stance on Ukraine. And so I tend to think your inkling is the right one, Carla, as far as the Poles are going to go.

ROBBINS:
Well, I think the Poles are the highest net recipient of aid from the EU, and I would like to believe that they've done the right thing for the right reason for Ukrainian refugees, but they've not been so great when the EU has been talking about refugee rights, even the rights for Ukrainians. I thought there's been a lot of green-washing going on there, but they're one of the strongest supporters for Ukraine. So let's see how this election turns out because certainly with the world's attention turning to the Middle East, Ukraine is going to continue to need U.S. military support. It's going to continue to need everybody's attention as well.

MCMAHON:
It's a fascinating balance of national interests and broader collective interest. So they very much have bought into NATO's collective security defense and then even lobbied for NATO to accept Ukraine. By the same token, it's one thing to support Ukraine's sovereignty, but another thing to support Ukrainian grain sales and things like that. And it is very much an electoral balancing act, I think, going on.

ROBBINS:
I'm shocked to find out that...

MCMAHON:
It is shocking.

ROBBINS:
That an agriculture lobby might have power. Trade talks in the United States, nah. 

So Bob, like the Poles, Australians are heading to their ballot boxes this Saturday, and they're going to be voting on a referendum to change Australia's constitution to ensure first nation's representation in parliament. And unlike a 1967 referendum on indigenous rights that got the support of 90.77 percent of Australian voters, these polls show that this reform is unlikely to pass. So I've got two questions. What would this referendum change practically? What do we mean by voice here and how would guaranteed representation work? And why is establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice so controversial in a democracy like Australia?

MCMAHON:
That is the crux of it. Yes. It's a country that has lagged in some ways, in way it's treated the constitutional powers of its indigenous population, certainly compared to its neighboring New Zealand. And they actually have a treaty with the Maoris there and a different stance, different legal stance towards them. And also you get a sense that there's an identity, the New Zealand identity, Maoris are bound up with it in a way that the indigenous in Australia are not with theirs. 

Just to point out a few things really quickly, Carla, about the condition of indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, they represent less than 4 percent of the population, yet constitute more than 33 percent of Australia's adult prison population. The indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people's life expectancy as measured in 2015, 2017 was about eight years lower than for non-indigenous Australians. And they suffered disproportionately from physical and mental health disease burdens that have really inflicted quite a bit on this population. So again, the thought of getting some formal representation in Australian parliament is something that will allow them to have this voice and this way of addressing these problems that are not getting any better.

ROBBINS:
One would hope more public policy attention.

MCMAHON:
There are a lot of raw issues here. There are a lot of concerns about what this means in terms of racial attitudes, if there's a big vote against and sort of a permanent holding the line against accepting what is a fact, which is this indigenous population that was there before the white settlers came in. There's a referendum question, I'll read it. It's, quote, "A proposed law to alter the Constitution to recognize First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice. Do you approve the proposed alteration?" And then it goes on to say that, "Giving this voice will then create representation in government." 

I don't have the details on what it means in terms of any sort of a quota, but there would be something that would mandate a representation in parliament, this so-called voice. And we're hearing that term a lot, the voice vote that's taking place, the Constitution does not recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia at the moment. Parliament would then be given the power to govern the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice, but it's got to pass a majority of a majority of states. So four of the six states, there has to be a majority in those four as the threshold for allowing this to pass. 

And the people who have been lobbying for and have just said, "This will go a long way towards indoctrinating an approach towards removing the inequalities, towards removing a lingering sense of policies and subjugating of Aboriginal people in a way that brings them into the common parlance and common policymaking of Australia." And also this identity question, I think there are some Australians who are perfectly fine with having them intertwine with the identity. Some according to some of the comments you see are not, and so there's questions about what it means to be a citizen and whether or not a vote yes will be somehow divisive in creating sort of different classes of citizenship. So it does stirs up a lot of concerns that we've seen in other countries, but I think it's-

ROBBINS:
Including here?

MCMAHON:
Including United States, including any countries that have had large indigenous populations. It's going to be watched very closely, in fact, not just in the region, but in the U.S., but in Canada, which has made major strides towards providing representation for its indigenous and has turned over a lot of territory to its indigenous population at its First Nations. So it echoes very widely. I even saw a report that just in recent months, the media mentions of Australia's vote have been cited hundreds of thousands of times in English language media around the world. So it's something that's coming up quite a bit, and it's going to be very consequential for Australians.

So at '67 it came up and it's a moment of identity for Australia. Well, Carla, it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected, "A 6.3 Earthquake Hits Afghanistan." So we've had a few devastating years under Taliban's rule, how is Afghanistan holding up after this natural disaster, which by the way, did not echo far beyond the region because of what happened in the Middle East.

ROBBINS:
Bob, we've talked about so many natural disasters lately. It's hard to get your mind around another one. And this earthquake, which is actually three earthquakes of similar intensity, which have rocked the country since Saturday, is apparently the deadliest to hit Afghanistan in decades. At least 2,500 people have been reported killed, 9,000 injured. Those numbers are going up. Twent or more villages were completely destroyed. But what makes this so especially difficult is a natural disaster in a country already suffering from a series of manmade disasters, twenty years of war, and now the Taliban's increasing repression. 

This is a country utterly unprepared to deal with even the normal needs of its people. Its healthcare system is financed nearly completely by foreign aid. But the foreign aid and the work of NGOs have been sharply cut as the Taliban has become even more repressive, doing things like banning girls from getting an education above elementary school and banning women from working with international organizations and with NGOs. Even the UN and its agencies cut their aid for 2023 from $4.6 billion to $3.2 billion this year because they find it so impossible to work with the Taliban and so impossible to raise money for the Taliban. So this was a disaster before and it's a greater disaster now. 

Philippe Kropf, who's head of communications for the World Food Program said it best, he called this a disaster on top of a disaster on top of a disaster. He told Reuters, quote, "We have 50 million people who do not know where their next meal will come from, and the World Food Program is only able to support 3 million people due to a massive funding shortfall."

MCMAHON:
And a shortfall, it's likely to get worse before it gets better because of just the crush of other emergencies among others, what we're seeing unfolding in Gaza potentially. So it just seems like there's no daylight for Afghan people to try to put things together. Even without natural disasters, the manmade disaster or the Taliban and what it's inflicting on the country has made it really difficult. It feels really awful to even contemplate what Afghans are dealing with. And at the same time, as many people have noted, this is one of the most rugged, durable people in the world. We hope they can draw on their reserves to get through this, and also that we can find some way of getting them the desperate relief they need.

ROBBINS:
Yes, and this country used to be the very center of our thoughts and conversations and such a focus of our military activity and our foreign aid activity and the notion that we can just walk away from something like this is, to me, it's horrible.

MCMAHON:
And it doesn't seem like many other countries are stepping into the breach as well in any fashion that's meaningful. 

And that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Russia's Vladimir Putin travels to Kyrgyzstan for the Commonwealth of Independent States Summit. And, Ecuador holds its presidential runoff election.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review. While you're at it, we appreciate the feedback. If you would like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous and Kaitlyn Esperon for their research assistance. Our theme music was provided by Markus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye.