00:00You know, one of the, I guess, surprising images that came out from overnight was the fact that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were present during that Israeli cabinet meeting.
00:11Is that just not a reflection of just how much pressure the U.S. administration has applied to both parties, including the Israeli prime minister, to get this deal across the line and how personally vested President Trump is in this process?
00:24Yes, I think this was an attempt to use that personality politics to force this right-wing Israeli government to do something that's not in its own political or even its strategic instincts, which is to sign on to a deal which doesn't give them certainty that Hamas will be disarmed.
00:41And it doesn't exactly give certainty that all the hostages will be released on the timeline that this plan promises.
00:47So I think this was the type of personality leverage that the Trump administration is very comfortable with being deployed against Netanyahu and being deployed against his far-right allies, who, after all, today voted against this very deal.
01:01One thing that my colleague Dan Williams was saying is there hasn't been strong signaling from Hamas's part that they're actually willing to lay down arms.
01:14And they're obviously conflicting reporting on this front.
01:17But what exactly happens to Hamas from here?
01:20Because they've lost one of their key tools of leverage, which is the hostages.
01:25Yes, and that's a major issue for Hamas's strategy going forward.
01:31Without the hostages, as you noted, they don't have that direct leverage over Israel's political system like they did prior.
01:38But they still clearly have the ability to threaten Israel through guerrilla attacks and insertion strikes.
01:43And that means that the Israelis are still going to have to do one of two things.
01:47They'll either have to come up with an appeasement strategy for Hamas to get them to back away from an armed confrontation,
01:52or they'll have to go back to a military-first strategy by putting more and more pressure on Hamas to see if they can break Hamas's political will to continue this armed struggle.
02:02But it's important to note that Hamas is not a monolith.
02:06There's a political and there's a military wing.
02:08The political wing was nearly assassinated in Doha a few weeks ago.
02:12The military wing, on the other hand, they're hardliners.
02:15They're still in the Gaza Strip.
02:16They're still holding out to try to carry out the armed struggle in the future.
02:20For the militants, the hardliners within Hamas, this is a tactical pause, an opportunity to rearm, reorganize, and recruit for the next phase of the struggle.
02:30Whereas some of the leaders within the political wing of Hamas do seem to suggest that they're open to some sort of new process for Hamas to still exist in the Gaza Strip,
02:41but not as an armed faction or not as part of an armed struggle, rather perhaps as a normal political party or simply an appendage of a new type of governing organization for Gaza.
02:52Is there anything that Arab states can do to restrain the military wing of Hamas that you were just referencing?
03:01There's some limited influence that they certainly have on the personality front.
03:05Of course, Egypt is critical for the resupply of this military wing.
03:09If Egypt is still tightly controlling the Rafah border in the Sinai, it's very difficult for the military wing to resupply.
03:16That also goes for humanitarian aid and, of course, reconstruction aid writ large.
03:21It's important to note that Hamas is very good at using dual-purpose reconstruction aid to build weapons,
03:28you know, using things like sewer pipes to make rockets and things like that.
03:32If reconstruction aid is not flowing in at scale, Hamas can't rearm.
03:36For that matter, Hamas will also be blamed by the population of Gaza, where it's hard to get polling out of Gaza right now,
03:43but many Gazans are very angry at Hamas after two years of war, and if they are seen as an obstacle to reconstruction aid,
03:49that'll weaken their legitimacy further and make it harder for them to rearm and reorganize.
03:54So it's really through that capacity to control the borders and to control aid that Arab states can wield some influence over Hamas.
04:01Interesting. What do you make of the announcement that the U.S. are looking to move 200 troops already based in the Middle East
04:10to coordinate a multinational force?
04:12There's also some reporting that maybe some Arab states may be a part of this force
04:17that will be there to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire.
04:21How much impact is that actually going to have, do you think, on the ground?
04:24Well, from a security standpoint, not a whole lot.
04:27And we actually saw a security violation almost right as the ceasefire is being implemented, a sniper killed an IDF soldier.
04:33And I think violations like that will be happening back and forth, even during this ceasefire process.
04:39And so what the American troops would be there to do is to observe those sort of violations
04:44and then report back to Washington as to who is to blame for the violations.
04:48They're also supposed to be creating this implicit threat to Hamas that the United States might take greater steps.
04:54Now, I'm very skeptical that the U.S. would ever get militarily involved in the Gaza Strip.
04:59But this is also supposed to be a signal to Hamas that the United States does have an interest in the Gaza Strip
05:04and is willing to deploy at least some forces into the area to monitor ceasefire violations
05:10and potentially to back Israel again if it seems like Hamas is responsible for the unraveling of the ceasefire.
05:17It's also likely that they are there to help try to put together some kind of security force,
05:21very likely Arab-led, could involve the Emiratis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians,
05:25who could be a security force to take over Gaza in the much more distant future,
05:30probably six months or more down the line.
05:33But I think the United States troops that are there are going to be part of trying to build up that force as well.
05:37So, let's all start with that, ladies and gentlemen,
05:46we've been talking about a new scenario.
05:50We've been talking about a new scenario with the Gaza Strip.
05:54We can see that it's a very different scenario with the Gaza Strip.
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