Samuel Ramani, Associate Fellow at the RUSI think tank and CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk, discussed the expected outcomes of the upcoming Gaza peace summit in Egypt. He anticipates that phase one of the agreement — including hostage releases and a roadmap for humanitarian aid, is likely to move forward. However, the disarmament of Hamas and Israeli troop withdrawals necessary for large-scale aid delivery remain highly challenging, largely due to deep mistrust and political resistance.
00:00Let's get more on all of this with Samuel Romani, an associate fellow at RUCI, a think tank here in London, and CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk.
00:07Great to have you with us again, Samuel.
00:09So what do you expect to come out of this big summit happening today in Egypt?
00:13And what are the immediate challenges, the most pressing practical challenges in getting the ceasefire deals terms implemented, particularly over aid?
00:23Well, basically, the big thing that we're going to be seeing is the phase one implementation taking root.
00:28So the hostage releases, the prisoner swaps happening, as well as the roadmap to try to provide unconditional humanitarian aid.
00:38I'm quite confident that the first two things are going to happen, notwithstanding the history of Yaya Sinwar being released and October 7th happening,
00:45and some of the difficulties that we had the last couple of times with Hamas releasing the hostages one by one or two by two.
00:51I think those two are going to be resolved.
00:53The aid issues are going to be much more contentious, because it requires a disarmament of Hamas, an Israeli troop withdrawal,
00:59and also coordination between the Israelis and the United Nations over key channels like Rafa.
01:06And given the mistrust between Israel and the UN, given Hamas' resistance to demilitarization,
01:11and given the hard-line pressure on Netanyahu not to withdraw fully,
01:15it could be difficult to get aid flowing into Gaza to the extent needed to avoid an even worse famine and to improve the situation.
01:22And another major longer-term challenge, how Gaza will be run, with many calling this U.S.-led Board of Peace a neo-colonial construct.
01:31And what's the role of the PLA going to be, the authority, and also for neighboring Arab states in reconstruction,
01:38which some people are saying could take up to 15 years just to clear the rubble?
01:42Yeah, so the reason why I didn't really emphasize the governance plan so much as an immediate outcome
01:47is because I think that it's probably going to be a vaguer roadmap with fewer details about exactly what's going to happen in terms of the transition.
01:55And obviously, this is going to be in subsequent phases.
01:58I think it's going to be kind of a tetracrotic administration.
02:02You're going to have the United Nations in.
02:03You're going to have various international stakeholders coming in, Gulf investors,
02:07and then, hopefully, a movement towards some kind of Palestinian self-rule, most likely the Palestinian authority.
02:16But the Palestinian authority is not going to be initially part of that transitional process.
02:21Mahmoud Abbas is very unpopular, especially in the Gaza Strip.
02:24And there are also doubts amongst many Palestinian nationalists that if Abbas is seen to be acquiescent to this transition
02:32and acquiescent to Israel's occupation and dealing with the Israelis, he may lose his legitimacy.
02:39So I think it's going to be very hard to come up with a real workable long-term plan for Gaza.
02:43And the Palestinian authority, whether they engage with this or whether they don't engage with this,
02:47are going to be kind of burnt either way.
02:48And, of course, the underlying conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians going back a century,
02:54that's not in any way solved.
02:56And our hopes now for a two-state solution just as far away as they've ever been.
03:01And what about the West Bank? Is that more likely to be annexed now?
03:06Exactly. I mean, I think that the two-state solution is extremely far away.
03:09The division between the United States on the one side opposing a Palestinian state
03:13and the European-Arab consensus, which used to be favouring it,
03:15is not likely to be resolved any time soon.
03:19I think that there is also, unless there is a movement towards the Palestinian state,
03:24the progress of the Abraham Accords, like an Israeli-Saudi normalization,
03:27is also unlikely to take place.
03:29So this is not going to be a summit or a peace plan that's going to necessarily bring the region together
03:35and resolve a lot of the core issues that we've seen.
03:38Also, I don't think it's necessarily going to resolve some of the issues resolving Iran.
03:42We saw Israel, for example, striking Hezbollah in Lebanon,
03:46injuring a UN personnel person over the course of the past 24 hours.
03:51So we should be realistic of what this is going to do.
03:53This is going to end the war in Gaza temporarily, release the hostages,
03:57ease humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
03:59But the hardest questions are still to come.
04:01And instability in the Middle East and the prospect of a recognition of this conflict is very likely.
04:05Samuel, thank you so much for your insights.
04:07Samuel Romani, Associate Fellow at RUSI and CEO of Pangaea Geopolitical Risk.
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