00:00Stay with us, Doug, because I'd like to go across to our guest, Yasmina Aswagus, Middle East peace expert and visiting scholar at Princeton University.
00:10Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
00:12Now, Hamas has released all the living Israeli prisoners they were holding.
00:19Their leverage has now significantly been decreased.
00:24How do we know that this ceasefire remains hold?
00:26Well, the maximum pressure that Trump is putting in place now leads to a situation where effectively Hamas is maybe not disarmed, but clearly Netanyahu has no incentive on going back to war.
00:43Trump has announced that peace in the Middle East is now in place and his dream of seeing the new Middle East arise with probably Saudi Arabia, Syria.
00:55But also, as it was just mentioned on the show, this very idea of having Iran on the Abraham Accord is something he already mentioned actually last week at the White House when Netanyahu visited him and when Trump got him convinced of buying the Tony Blair plan.
01:16So what we're seeing today is very much this action plan going on and Jared Kushner and Steve Whitecoff in a very historical move actually negotiated head to head with Hamas and did not go through Qatar.
01:33It's the first time in recent history and the first time in this conflict that U.S. negotiators go head to head with Hamas leaders, in particular Khalil Al-Hayah, who actually survived the Israeli strike in Doha.
01:50I'm just curious, was it the Israeli strike in Doha that really pushed Donald Trump to arm twist Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire?
02:00Was that Netanyahu's essentially what got him to where we are today, to these hostages being released?
02:09Well, actually, exactly. The Gulf pressure on Trump after that strike that was not really either programmed or wished by Donald Trump led to a escalation and diplomatic dispute and Qatar got quite mad and they've expressed that this was their red line in mediating any sort of conversations.
02:34Let's also remember that Hamas was being hosted in Doha because Steve Whitecoff himself asked Al-Tani and the prime minister of Qatar to host them.
02:46And after that strike, eventually the Gulf state Islamic countries reunited in Doha.
02:52MBS and MBZ and MBZ of Abu Dhabi also supported Qatar in saying the Gulf country do not want to be destabilized by mediating peace in the region.
03:05This is their red line and war has to stop.
03:08It also has to stop if this current administration wants to see the Abraham Accords expanded.
03:14And it's about time to get Netanyahu agreed, get his agreement on a ceasefire plan and bring a very private diplomacy oriented team, that of Tony Blair, that prepared a plan of so-called reconstruction and governance with this idea of having a board of peace that is currently being constituted.
03:38But what about Palestinians having a seat at the table?
03:42Because Tony Blair, we know what most of the Middle East thinks of him.
03:46But what about Palestinians getting to have a say in their future?
03:51Well, in the current JITA plan, so the Gaza governance authority that would be a transitional body,
03:59the idea is to have some Palestinian diplomats, probably some UN diplomats that are obviously of origin, of Palestinian origin.
04:11But the very idea of the whole process is to build an engine that will be first protected by also Arab forces,
04:20because the whole idea is to re-govern Gaza, but also to make it safe for then the Palestinian authority to come back on the front row, if I may say.
04:37This is also why we're seeing an Arab summit taking place in Egypt, where you have Europeans at the table.
04:47And we know how France and other European countries have been very much in support of Mahmoud Abbas and Ramallah in the last few months with the recognition of the Palestinian state.
05:00So there is this idea of having a comprehensive peace with forces that also are here to support the Palestinian authority and ultimately taking Gaza back.
05:18Yasmina, Asra, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you for joining us on the program today.
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