00:00Lots of developments, albeit a little bit of calmness between the United States and Iran, given the latest escalations.
00:07I want to start with the Board of Peace in Gaza and the plans there.
00:12President Trump taking this as a win, essentially, before any details emerge.
00:17How likely is it, do you think, that we see both parties, Israel and Hamas, come to the table and
00:24agree, actually agree, to have Hamas disarm weapons?
00:31I think with anything to do with Israel and Hamas, a degree of caution is warranted.
00:39There's zero trust between the two parties.
00:43The degree of hatred between them is really quite extraordinary.
00:50The other aspect is that President Trump has made major statements in the past that have indicated that he's actually
01:00been able to bring peace to Gaza and they haven't quite worked out.
01:05As we have it at the moment, Israel occupies nearly 70 percent of Gaza and it would be most unlikely
01:16to start withdrawing from that unless it really did feel that Hamas was completely under control.
01:22Now, Hamas has been prepared to make this statement that it will give up its weapons and that it will
01:29also give up political control of Gaza, but the extent to which it will do it in full is very
01:38uncertain.
01:39You can give up some weapons, but not all of them.
01:41And the other aspect that I should mention, of course, is that Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing an election in
01:48three months' time and he won't want to go into an election with his opponents being able to say that
01:54he's agreed to a deal which doesn't absolutely guarantee Israel's security.
02:00Yeah, of course, and that is something that is happening very soon, but ahead of all of this, let's just
02:06assume that they get through those disagreements and there's a huge layer of complexity, as you've mentioned, with Hamas disarming
02:13and Israel agreeing to pulling out.
02:15But let's just theoretically assume the deal does go forward, they go through all these layers of approvals, and then
02:23we start seeing countries in the region get involved, the Gulf countries, Egypt, Turkey.
02:27Does that mean a new regional architecture, or is it just going to be continuously Israel and Hamas with third
02:35-party players?
02:38I think the most important aspect would be the international stabilization force, which is referred to in President Trump's 20
02:48-point plan that he announced last year.
02:51And that includes Indonesia among other countries, but we don't know at this stage anything about the contribution that they
03:02would make and just how exactly they would work.
03:06Gaza is not a large area, but it has a huge population, and the international stabilization force contributors would want
03:15to be quite clear that the danger to their troops who are going into Gaza would be minimal.
03:22So we don't have any indications of that at this stage as to just how that can be guaranteed.
03:30But we do have, as well, though, a Palestinian technocratic committee, a 13-person technocratic committee that is prepared to
03:42run the administration of Gaza.
03:44And we also have an overall coordinator, the Romanian diplomat, Mr. Ladov.
03:54And so all of the technical aspects are in place.
04:00The technical security aspects are in place.
04:02It's a question of just whether they can operate.
04:09Just quickly on, you know, this is all happening in the midst of a wider war in the region, Iran
04:16and the United States.
04:17Why do you think President Trump made this announcement now?
04:20Do you think it's a win in the midst of all the losses that the U.S. is facing right
04:25now between itself and Iran?
04:29Well, there's no doubt that President Trump is looking for wins at this point.
04:34The war against Iran is going very badly.
04:39President Trump keeps making optimistic statements.
04:43But the war is the most unpopular in American history.
04:48And he's losing popularity himself as a result of it.
04:52So being able to announce a win in Gaza, first of all, it changes the conversation.
04:57But it does actually potentially give him something to be able to say that he has achieved in the Middle
05:03East.
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