00:00Nouria Tazan, many thanks for that live update.
00:04For more, let's cross to Washington.
00:05H.A. Hellyer, Senior Fellow in Geopolitics at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
00:13Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
00:16Thank you very much. Always a pleasure to be with you.
00:21The optics of this are startling.
00:24Is it a moment when the world can exhale, can breathe a sigh of relief?
00:29Dare I say it, can celebrate?
00:34So let's be very clear here.
00:36Our bar is extremely low.
00:38There's been two years of this genocidal war on the people of Gaza by the state of Israel,
00:46where tens of thousands of noncombatants in Gaza have been killed.
00:52We don't even know the full number yet.
00:54Your correspondent mentioned 1,700 people who had been released today, who had been detained from Gaza.
01:02It should be noted they were detained illegally by an occupying power after October 7th.
01:08So these were people that had nothing to do with October 7th.
01:11And they were detained, and now they're being released.
01:14And they were taken, it seems, so that they could be released in exchange for Israeli hostages and prisoners.
01:20So it's a very low bar where people are happy and relieved that there won't be a continuation of the bombardment in the same way that there has been.
01:31They're happy that there won't be a resettlement of Gaza, at least during this administration,
01:37which was actually quite likely up until a month ago.
01:42They're happy that there won't be hundreds of people being killed every day.
01:48But this is not the end of any occupation.
01:51Let's be very clear here.
01:52About half of Gaza will still have IDF troops controlling on the ground.
01:59And, of course, the entirety of Gaza remains under Israeli occupation,
02:04an occupation that has been described as illegal by the International Court of Justice
02:09and is part of the territory of the state of Palestine.
02:14This peace in the Middle East sign that I see on the screen right now,
02:18we're simply talking about a hostage prisoner exchange
02:22and hopefully a downgrading of fighting and bombing.
02:28We're not seeing a peace process actually being put into place
02:32where a Palestinian state could come into existence and the end of an occupation.
02:38Yeah, because these are live images from Sharm el-Sheikh that we're watching.
02:43And Donald Trump was asked when he sat down with his Egyptian host, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,
02:51when does phase two begin?
02:52He says it's already started.
02:54And we saw earlier among those he was shaking hands with,
02:58the former UK prime minister, Tony Blair,
03:01who's been tipped to be part of this outside body that helps to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.
03:12Has phase two begun?
03:14Phase two has not begun.
03:16I don't know why anybody thinks that it has begun.
03:19I think people are hoping that phase two is going to start,
03:22but that also it's going to look very different from what has been described in Washington
03:27and by the Trump administration and the Israelis.
03:31Phase two cannot be a reconstruction of Gaza with some sort of 2025 version of a British viceroy,
03:42i.e. Tony Blair, running the Gaza Strip with a bunch of foreign leaders
03:48and with a few Palestinian technocrats or something.
03:52This isn't going to work on the ground.
03:56But also, more than that, we're talking about several generations of people now in Gaza
04:03that are going to be recovering from the last two years.
04:07This isn't going to be something that people recover from or heal from
04:10over the coming days and weeks or months.
04:13We're talking decades of recovery on a personal level.
04:18And then reconstruction is going to take a very long time indeed.
04:22And that's just presuming that there isn't going to be more destruction and attacks on Gaza itself.
04:30And again, I will repeat this.
04:32About half of Gaza continues to be under, I won't say Israeli occupation,
04:37because it's the entirety of Gaza that remains under Israeli occupation.
04:41But about half of Gaza will still see IDF troops on the ground
04:44until certain milestones have been met under this plan.
04:47And those milestones, I think, are very, very difficult to imagine
04:51without having a Palestinian state as part of the process.
04:55Hamas will not disarm, and we will not have an international stabilization force
05:02that will be able to ensure that it disarms unless there is a Palestinian state at the end of this process.
05:08H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:12H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:13H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:14H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:15H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:16H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:17H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
05:18H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for being with us from Washington.
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