00:00Rami Almagari reporting there. Well, Yossi Mechelberg is an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at the London think tank Chatham House.
00:09Yossi, welcome back. Good to have you with us again. So what would it take to end the suffering of people in Gaza and ensure a safe return of the remaining Israeli hostages?
00:21Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I think we saw that what stopped the first time the war, the ceasefire, it needed pressure from the United States.
00:32And we saw that the ceasefire actually on 19th of January started, agreed, you know, the day before President Trump was sworn in.
00:44And since then, seemed that a change of heart in the U.S. or a change of focus in the United States.
00:50And at the same time, Israel says that it has the green light from the United States first to resume the war.
00:58And now, as we just heard, dividing Gaza, creating a new corridor, the Morocco corridor, Philadelphia, too, that basically divides between Hanounis and Rafah.
01:12And this is ongoing, and more displaced people, more people are killed, more devastation.
01:17And I'm afraid that the only source of change right now, as we can see, goes through President Trump.
01:25And how much is the fact that Hamas clearly has not been dismantled a part of the reason that the ceasefire has collapsed?
01:33And what are Israel's objectives now?
01:37Now, yes, the objective from the beginning of the war, there were two objectives.
01:41First, it was the elimination of Hamas and then the return of the hostages.
01:48And we saw that Hamas, as an idea, as a political movement, even as to some extent as a military force, very difficult to dismantle.
01:58We see that actually more people are joining Hamas.
02:01Yes, it's not the same military force it was a year and a half ago.
02:05It used to operate before the war as a military force with chain of command.
02:10It more and more operates as a guerrilla warfare.
02:13But this probably will continue unless there is a political solution.
02:18And if the war continues, I'm deeply worried what's the fate of the hostages that it seems that the Israeli government is ready to sacrifice.
02:29This is not to say that Hamas is not a cruel enemy and has its own agenda probably to continue the war.
02:36But unless there is pressure from the outside to bring this war to an end,
02:40so the mediators, whether it's Qatar and Egypt and the United States, this kind of war can drag on for quite a long time.
02:49And talking a bit more about that international pressure, you mentioned the change of focus in the United States.
02:54But what about those efforts by the Qatari and Egyptian mediators in resolving this crisis?
03:00I think this is important, but you need willing partners.
03:05And also, as we could see, the one that can make change is the United States.
03:11So the combination of three of them, Egypt and Qatar, definitely has the influence on Hamas.
03:17The United States more on Israel.
03:20When they work together, we saw that the ceasefire was agreed.
03:23But it didn't go beyond the first phase, and already it's with the second phase.
03:31And again, the big fear of this kind of wars, never-ending war, and going on and on and on on some low level.
03:39But the suffering right now is immense if you see how many people displaced, the devastation, the ongoing killing.
03:46And it won't also lead to addressing the bigger picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
03:52Yossi Mechelberg from Chatham House, thank you so much for joining us.
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