00:00For more, we can speak to Oliver McTernan in London.
00:03He's the director of Forward Thinking.
00:04Oliver, thank you for speaking to Paris Direct again.
00:07Just real quickly, we've had a lot of momentum building towards ceasefire talks in the past.
00:15Several times, Trump had promised a ceasefire was on its way,
00:18only for the negotiations suddenly to collapse.
00:21Is this time different?
00:27Hello?
00:27Hello, Oliver. Can you hear me?
00:30I can hear you, yeah. Was that addressed to me?
00:32Yes, that's addressed to you. Is this time different from previous ceasefire negotiations?
00:38No, I don't think so. I think we've always had this precarious situation.
00:44What we've been witnessing, I think, over the past week is a blame game.
00:50It started with a unilateral ultimatum from Trump and Netanyahu to Hamas,
00:56do this or else they'll be all hell to play.
01:00Now, we saw Hamas, I think, rather cleverly played that game, put the ball back in their court by saying,
01:07OK, we're ready to release the hostages and we're ready to move on to look at the other points.
01:13But I think last night it changed again when Benjamin Netanyahu said, fine, release of the hostages within the next couple of days,
01:23so putting a condition on, but also adding as a prime objective of his the disarmament of Hamas.
01:31Now, I think that's put the whole process again in a very precarious situation.
01:38It would be a very unwise person who would bet on what the outcome of these talks in Egypt will be.
01:46Yeah. And President Trump getting unusually involved as well, talking about the line of where Israeli forces are to withdraw before these talks even begin on Monday.
01:57Why do you think he's made this renewed push now?
02:01And we haven't seen as much of an effort previously.
02:04Well, that's a very good question.
02:08I think he probably thought Hamas was near its end.
02:13And by him coming in first with the unilateral, I would say, ultimatum, not a negotiated proposition, but unilateral ultimatum,
02:25he thought that would put pressure on them.
02:27It did, in fact, put pressure.
02:29But I think the real pressure was coming from the people in Gaza, from their own relatives who are subject to the same horrific nightmare as everyone else in Gaza.
02:39But also, I think the Arab Muslim countries that were part of the discussion with the Hamas leadership in Doha over the past few days has actually helped to contribute it.
02:52It's given them a more political position.
02:54Now, I think Trump probably put all those things together and thought, good, this is my moment to come in.
03:02His immediate response, I thought, was exactly what was wanted, an instruction to stop the bombing.
03:08What worried me was the fact that Netanyahu seems to have ignored that instruction because we know that the bombing has been continuing.
03:18Now, whether Trump will want to continue if he sees that it's not going to be solved in the next few days, as he was predicting,
03:27but that it's the beginning, hopefully, of a long and torturous negotiation if we're going to get to the stage where we find solution.
03:37And I think that has to be recognition of the Palestinian rights to govern themselves, to have end of occupation, and to be able to choose their own political leadership.
03:49If we get to that stage, I think then Trump will go down as a significant player in finding a solution, a durable solution to this conflict.
03:59But forgive me if I'm wrong, that stage is very unlikely because it's not included in Trump's plan, is it?
04:05Well, his plan is really a replicate of what happened in 2003 in Iraq.
04:13The plan contains exactly the same mistakes.
04:17The partification, imposition of a top-down outside authority, Paul Brebner.
04:24Now, I would really advise anyone advising Trump to go back and read Thomas Ricks' book, Fiasco, which describes what went wrong in Iraq in 2003 and the consequences of which we are still having to endure.
04:43I think we're on the same path of making the same mistakes, and hopefully the discussions going on in Egypt now will actually alert the negotiators to this.
04:55You cannot impose a solution, and especially if it shows total disregard for international law and the rule-based order that grew out of the Second World War.
05:08Yeah, you've already touched on disarmament.
05:11What are some of the other sticking points in this peace proposal?
05:15Well, I think the whole concept, because it's a sort of colonial structure.
05:20Here you have President Bush or President Trump, flipping back to Iraq days,
05:27President Trump presiding over a colonial structure to govern Gaza.
05:35I've worked with Gazans for the last 20 years.
05:39Just before the pandemic, we did an 18-month review for the European Union, sponsored by the European Union,
05:50looking for the sort of evidence of a common Palestinian vision for the future.
05:57I saw that there.
05:58There are excellent people in Gaza, competent, capable, and elsewhere in the West Bank,
06:05who are well capable of being their own governance and having their own structure and developing their own state.
06:13The problem is they're not given the opportunity.
06:16The conclusion we came after the 18 months of intense consultation right across Gaza and the West Bank
06:24was that 90% of the problems in the economic, educational, all of the levels, 90% of the problems were occupation.
06:33And end occupation, Palestine can become a prosperous, independent state that would, in fact,
06:41be offering Israel the security it demands and it has a right to.
06:47And I think that's why there is some hope for peace, but there's also a lot of concern about what that peace will look like.
06:55And when you read the reports coming out of Gaza,
06:58Palestinians saying they are so desperate for this war to end, they want a deal, any deal.
07:05But the concern is that maybe this would put in place something that down the road will be seen as perhaps a catastrophe.
07:12Remember, this is the fifth war that Gazans have experienced in the last 20 years.
07:21Now, it's the worst.
07:22But each time, Gazans had the resilience to rebuild.
07:26What worries me about this particular situation,
07:30we're told on good evidence that 60% of Hamas fighters currently are orphans from the 2014 war.
07:41Now, when you see the death toll, and in particular, the number of orphans created by this war,
07:50one worries that that issue has to be addressed.
07:54And I don't think the 20-point ban is addressing it.
07:58Every time we've had a war in Gaza, the international community gives full attention while the war is going on.
08:05And then immediately it stops.
08:07There's a ceasefire.
08:08We turn attention elsewhere.
08:10I think to solve this issue, we need both moral courage of our political leaders as well as political courage.
08:21And I think those two things have been lacking, in my experience, over the past, I would say, since 67.
08:28We've lacked the moral and political courage.
08:31Political capital as well has not been there to really find a durable solution.
08:37And I really think that despite the challenges, that is a possibility.
08:43So right now you think the leaders have that political will and that moral courage?
08:48No.
08:49I think we're governed and have been governed, sadly, I think by what I would say domestic economic interests.
08:58That's always been the driving force of American foreign policy.
09:02They'll talk beautifully about, and Biden did, about our principles, our values.
09:07But in effect, the decision is always made in what are the economic interests.
09:14And we see that at play, not just in the Western world, but also in the Arab and Muslim world.
09:20That today, the decisions are made, basically, what are our interests economically?
09:28And I fear, you know, with President Trump's use of tariffs, that's going to be a big factor in determining what sort of push the Western leaders and Arab leaders will give to finding a durable solution to this conflict.
09:47Indeed. Peace at what cost? Oliver, thank you very much. Oliver McTernan from Forward Thinking. Thank you.
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