00:00So many of us right now wondering why is the ceasefire breaking down just three weeks
00:06after President Trump's visit to the Middle East and that big summit, of course, that happened in
00:11Sharm el-Sheikh. And if you listen to Elon Levy, he says Israel are completely committed to the
00:18ceasefire and it's all Hamas's fault. I'm not surprised that the ceasefire appears to be
00:22collapsing for our eyes. That's not a surprise. If you look at the way the ceasefire was designed,
00:27the structure of the ceasefire, it was always designed to be fragile. Beyond the structure of
00:33the ceasefire, I think there are two crystal clear elements that demonstrated that the ceasefire was
00:38probably going to collapse on the day it was signed. I think the first piece of evidence we have is the
00:43fact that there has been a ceasefire technically between Israel and Lebanon for the last 11 and a
00:49half months. And yet in that timeframe, Israeli strides on Lebanon have been fairly routine,
00:55fairly regular. Now, if you ask US officials or you ask Israeli officials, is that ceasefire still
01:02intact? They'll say yes. If you ask the residents of Southern Lebanon, is the ceasefire still intact?
01:08They would say absolutely not. So I think if you look at this ceasefire and compare it to what happened
01:14in Lebanon, there's no reason to think that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire would be different.
01:18The second element, I think, is that if you look at the six months preceding the conclusion of this
01:26ceasefire, you'll see that Israel resisted US diplomatic intervention to reach a ceasefire.
01:33Now, the reason Israel did that is because the US diplomatic intervention didn't constitute actual
01:39pressure, right? There was intervention, but not pressure. When the US applied pressure,
01:44the Israelis agreed to a ceasefire, right? Hamas is the weaker party. They had agreed in large part to the
01:51ceasefire many months ago. I think the problem is that the US hasn't sustained that pressure. And I think
01:56politically, when you look at the fact that Israel doesn't want the ceasefire to move to phase two and
02:03phase three, particularly Netanyahu doesn't, and you look at the US-Israel relationship, you'll see that the US-Israel
02:10relationship will supersede a US commitment to a Hamas-Israel ceasefire and the work necessary to
02:17maintain it. So I'm not surprised that this happened overnight. This had been my view well before the
02:24agreement was reached and even when the agreement was reached.
