and also ahead, republican presidential candidate nikki haley is addressing the backlash over her comments about the iowa caucuses. we ll show you what she said and which gop rival called her a phony. good morning and welcome to way too early on this friday, january 5th. it is a friday. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day with us. we ll begin with news here that as israel s defense minister is outlining his vision for the next phase of the war against hamas. under the plan the idf would shift to what appears to be a scaled down new combat approach, focusing on the, quote, erosion of terror hot spots in gaza. in the north troops will conduct raids and special operations while in the south the main
the biden administration is pushing for? the first half of it, jonathan, the idea that israel will henceforth focus more on discreet attacks when they have really good intelligence, that s something the united states has been asking for literally for three months. so better late than never, i guess, but i wish that had been israel s strategy from the get go. their political plan that somehow these local committees inside of gaza are going to take on a large political role, that s laughable. that s not going to happen. they would be seen as collaborators, they would be killed. so that s still not a serious policy coming out of israel what happens the day after. so i still think we re looking at a prolonged israeli occupation. and richard, let s speak about the relations right now between washington and jerusalem. certainly president biden has made no secret about his unhappiness of how some of how israel s conducted this war. we know he s not a fan of prime
evacuate gaza from camps in egypt or other countries are causing rifts with washington, europe, and the united nations. how does he even begin to navigate this? i ve got to tell you, chris, it s almost impossible because to the administration, to the biden administration s credit, they have warned netanyahu last december, december of 2022, to be very careful with the coalition that he was on the verge of forming with the extremists. now comes payday, and they re making all these moronic extremists dumb ideas and and making all these stupid ideas, flatten the gaza strip. starve the population, deny them water. deny them food, nuke them one idiot sorry for the expression minister said, so now the u.s. has a handful because on the one hand, they have warned netanyahu and he did not heed the advice.
back if that means they re in range of hezbollah missiles. and you ve got the houthis and shipping, that s a real concern. at the middle east shows is an enormous number of non-state actors which are hostile, many of them are backed by iran who as we saw on the bombing in i, some of them are anti-iranian. and what makes me worried is if you have that many players, that many decision makers with capabilities, the odds that bad things won t happen, you ve got to be concerned. yeah, and certainly the white house continues to say they don t necessarily think that the gaza violence is expanding, but senior officials i speak to worry about the possibility of that widening conflict. richard, let s go back to what the minister of defense in israel is proposing both for this next phase of the campaign and what a post-war gaza looks like. what s your take on that? and does that align with what
focus will be on eliminating hamas leadership. the proposal also talks about post-war gaza, explaining that hamas will no longer be in charge while israelil keep security control of the strip and only take military action when necessary. according to theplan, there will be no israeli civilian presence once the war is over. palestinian entities likely made up of local civil servants or communal leaders would run the territory with israel providing some guidance. the defense minister says some next phase of the war has not yet begun. his plan still needs to be approved by israel s war and security cabinets. the defense minister unveiled that plan ahead of u.s. secretary of state antony blinken s visit. blinken is making his fourth trip to the region since the war broke out. he s expected to arrive in turkey later today and will visit several other countries nearby including israel.