--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As we enter month two of this war between Israel and Hamas, protesters all around the world are chanting ceasefire now.
--:-- Jonathan Guyer: It's coming from Jewish protesters too. We are proud Jewish people standing in solidarity with Palestinians demanding a ceasefire immediately.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's not just protesters, it's the Pope. It's the UN Secretary General. And the unfolding catastrophe makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing hour.
--:-- Jonathan Guyer: It's the Queen of Jordan. I think Israel deserves more from its allies than just unequivocal support.
--:-- Jonathan Guyer: I think it deserves some uncomfortable truths. Because if you are a real friend, you support your friend when they're right, but you also tell them when they've crossed the line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Israel and the United States aren't having it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The possibility and impossibility of a ceasefire coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're listening to Today Explained. Sean Ramos for I'm here with Jonathan Geyer, who writes about U.S. foreign policy for Vox.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: We asked him if all these people calling for a ceasefire, from protesters to politicians to the Pope, are really asking for the same thing.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Well, I think they're all seeing the same thing, which is 10,000 fatalities, 25,000 injuries, 60 or 70 percent of Palestinians in Gaza have been internally displaced.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So everyone's seeing this tremendous tragedy and violence in Gaza. And people want to see humanitarian aid get in and some sort of pause.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I mean, there's the whole semantics here is a humanitarian pause, the same as a humanitarian ceasefire.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But the real thing is there's just not enough water, electricity, food, basic goods for Palestinians in Gaza who have been for 31 days under bombardment.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And that's why we've started to see the Biden administration kind of incrementally, minutely shift its language from categorically rejecting any call for a ceasefire with now the president himself, Biden, saying there needs to be a pause.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Secretary of State Tony Blinken sort of saying there needs to be some kind of humanitarian update to what's happening.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And it seems like that is in large part in response to these massive protests.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Obviously, a huge factor here for Israel, one of many, is the hostages who remain in Gaza.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: How do they factor in to calls for a ceasefire or humanitarian pause, what have you?
--:-- Sean Ramos: So there's a paradox here, Sean, in that Israel is not going to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas unless these 240 or so hostages are released.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Well, there'll be no ceasefire, general ceasefire in Gaza without the release of our hostages.
--:-- Sean Ramos: At the same time, Hamas is not going to release the hostages, as they've said, unless there is a ceasefire.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Why don't you just release the people who are abducted?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Okay, we want, first of all, we want to stop this daily death in Gaza, daily killing in Gaza. It is our priority now.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But there's real risks to these Israeli and international dual-national hostages.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: We know that something like 40,000 housing units in Gaza have been destroyed.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: With this scale of fatalities of over 10,000, it's just not clear yet whether some of these Israeli and international hostages have been caught in this rubble, in this tragic conflagration.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Hamas military's wing says nine hostages, including four foreign nationals, were killed in IDF strikes in the Gaza Strip over the last day.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We've established this all sorts of entities, political groups, political leaders, the Pope, the Queen of Jordan, whomever, calling for a ceasefire.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Who's in the opposite camp? Is it just the United States and Israel?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So there was a United Nations General Assembly vote. The resolution was calling for a humanitarian truce.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It passed by a long shot. The result of the vote is as follows. In favor, 120. Only 14 countries were against it, among them United States and Israel, but also Croatia, Czech Republic, Guatemala, and then several Pacific Island countries, Fiji, Micronesia, Marshall Islands.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: What was interesting is also 45 abstentions, among them Ukraine.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Draft resolution AES-10L25 is adopted.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But truly, the United States is Israel's most prominent, most powerful backer.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And I think the case could be made that without the United States' support, this military campaign in Gaza wouldn't go on very long.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: If the United States stands with Israel, we will not ever fail to have their back.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: We'll make sure that they have the help their citizens need and they can continue to defend themselves.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Okay, so the United States is the most important ally.
--:-- Sean Ramos: What exactly is the stated position of the United States?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Something called a humanitarian pause?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: The Biden team, they haven't really defined what they mean by a humanitarian pause here.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But we can see them kind of continually adjusting and reshaping their rhetoric recognizing just how severe the situation has become and just the cost of it continuing
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It is certainly accurate to say that President Biden brought up the idea of humanitarian pauses with the prime minister
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: That is something that we've been talking to him and to his War Cabinet about for quite some time.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: My sense is what the U.S. administration is most concerned about is that Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't have a measurably achievable plan.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: His two stated goals for this military campaign are to eliminate Hamas and get the hostages back.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And in many senses, those are in contradiction with one another.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And without an exit strategy or a day-after plan for Gaza, some experts are saying there may not even be a day after in Gaza, given the scale of the attacks so far.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: What would have once been a bustling street in Gaza is now a gray, burnt landscape.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Has Prime Minister Netanyahu been swayed at all by the Biden administration asking for a humanitarian pause?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Well, all indications show that Netanyahu is doubling down and putting out trial balloons of a military occupation of Gaza after Hamas is eliminated.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we've seen what happens when we don't have it.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And the sort of bear hug method that Biden has pursued, which is holding Israel close and supporting it in international forums while being kind of critical and maybe setting guardrails in private situations, doesn't really appear to be working, especially as the conflict enters its second month and the Israeli attacks on Gaza continue unabated.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: That will not happen.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You know, on paper, Jonathan, calling for a ceasefire doesn't feel like super divisive.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: What you're saying is, let's stop killing people.
--:-- Sean Ramos: How is it landing in this super divisive conflict?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Divisive is the watchword.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I've seen protesters, including Jewish-American protesters who are calling for a ceasefire, being called pro-Hamas, being called anti-Semitic.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I've seen a number of former Trump officials really railing on this point.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And maybe it goes without saying, but I do think it's important to note that this kind of dissent, this kind of political activity is totally within the bounds.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I mean, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's Secretary of State, negotiated the ceasefire.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: This is very much within the bounds of U.S. policy.
--:-- Sean Ramos: What makes this time different?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So I spent a bunch of time looking through ceasefires 2009, 2012, 2014, and as recently as May 2021 when Biden and his team were in office.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Obviously, Israel's calculation has really changed here after the atrocities of October 7th.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It's no longer the old policy of you can keep Hamas in power and kind of incrementally deal with them.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: The stated policy now is to get rid of Hamas.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And the hostage crisis obviously exacerbates tensions, raises emotions, and changes the strategic calculus here.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But what I found most interesting is, you know, these ceasefires, they hold up until they don't.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And I was trying to figure out, you know, what can make it work? Why haven't they worked?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And what experts told me, current and former officials who were involved in these negotiations, is that they never worked because there wasn't a bigger political process, a political horizon that could lead to a Palestinian state.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So at the end of the day, these ceasefires weren't tied to a bigger goal that could bring stability for Israelis and Palestinians.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Okay, so it sounds like the ceasefires that might work are the ones that actually lead to a long-term solution.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: As impossible as that might seem in this particular moment.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Tell me what seems much more possible is that this goes on.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: What happens if we don't get a ceasefire and we're in month three, month four, month five of this?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I fear it's going to look a lot like today, but worse with civilians, Palestinians in Gaza dealing with the worst parts of it.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Already supplies are so meager for people in hospitals, for everyone in Gaza is truly suffering.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: The potential for a broader Middle East war is real.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon that resorts to terrorism, quite frequently has stayed out so far.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: They're a relatively pragmatic actor, but they may get involved.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I'm equally concerned about countries like Egypt and Jordan, which are not democracies by any stretch of the word.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But if there are mass protests in the streets, it could really expose how brittle these regimes are.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And that's why we've seen the foreign minister of Jordan, the Queen of Jordan, and others speak quite forwardly about the need for a ceasefire.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We're going to ask if anyone in the region really wants this conflict to escalate when we're back on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
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--:-- Sean Ramos: You are listening to Today Explained. My name is John Alterman.
--:-- John Alterman: I'm a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Sean Ramos: John's had all the big D.C. jobs, think tank, professor, State Department, legislative aide to a senator.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But lately, he's been doing lots of interviews on this war.
--:-- Sean Ramos: So I'm Mr. Gloom and Doom.
--:-- John Alterman: Our guest earlier in the show, also named John, said that if there's no ceasefire, things can certainly get worse.
--:-- John Alterman: And there's always the possibility of a regional escalation.
--:-- Sean Ramos: As a Middle East expert, what do you think of the possibility for a regional escalation?
--:-- John Alterman: Well, there's a possibility. There's two ways things could escalate. They could escalate because of calculation or miscalculation.
--:-- John Alterman: It seems to me that all the body language I'm seeing from the bad guys in the Middle East, Their calculation is, doesn't really make sense to escalate, certainly right now, partly because things are going their way, partly because the risk of escalation would be greater than the reward.
--:-- John Alterman: So I think I saw Hassan Nasrallah speak last Friday.
--:-- John Alterman: I got the sense that he wanted to make some noise, but didn't want to get into a real fight with the United States.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Let's listen in. some claim that we are about to engage in the war. I'm telling you, we have been engaged in this battle since October the 8th.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I have looked at what the Iranians have said. The Iranian feeling is the ball is kind of moving in their direction.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Israel is growing more isolated. The U.S. is growing more isolated because of its ties to Israel.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Everybody's talking about Iranian presence in the region and all these proxy forces they've been supporting.
--:-- Sean Ramos: So from an Iranian perspective, things are actually pretty good.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Why would you want to risk that and risk a fragile economy when things are actually moving in a good way?
--:-- John Alterman: So I think the risks of escalation by calculation are relatively modest right now.
--:-- John Alterman: The risks of escalation by miscalculation are serious and rising.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You have a lot of guys with guns who are committed to deterring other people to show that they're not pushovers.
--:-- Sean Ramos: One of the problems with that is partly you have a command and control problem that can the Iranians or their proxies control all the guys with guns who might have an idea to do something stupid or heroic?
--:-- Sean Ramos: That's one set of problems.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You have a problem of weapons that go off in the wrong direction or kill more people than you thought would be the case.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You have the problem that when the U.S. responds, if the U.S. responds to something, it can be taken not as a defensive move by the United States, but as an offensive move that requires them to act to show that they're not being intimidated, which requires the U.S. to act.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And you can get into a spiral very quickly.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And it's something we're going to have to be very, very cautious about.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Again, calculation, I think nobody wants it to go in that direction right now.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Miscalculation. It is an enduring problem.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I mean, you mentioned Iran. It sounds like they're sort of content with the status quo.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We heard about the Queen of Jordan earlier in the show.
--:-- Sean Ramos: What about the other Arab nations in the region? Where would they like to see this go in the coming weeks and months?
--:-- John Alterman: So there's partly a difference between governments and people.
--:-- John Alterman: On the governmental side, they all hate Hamas.
--:-- John Alterman: Hamas is all the things they most fear. It's an armed group embracing political Islam supported by the government of Iran.
--:-- John Alterman: That's a trifecta. If you're an Arab government, that's exactly what you don't want to see.
--:-- John Alterman: I think the Arab governments quietly would love to see Hamas destroyed.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There's a different issue with Palestinians.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And a week ago, we interviewed, or two weeks ago now, I interviewed the foreign minister of Jordan, and he almost didn't use the word Hamas.
--:-- Sean Ramos: He kept talking about Palestinians.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There's a lot of sympathy for Palestinians, for the Palestinian cause, as a moral issue.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There's been almost complete dehumanization of the Palestinians.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And people are asking legitimate questions.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Is this war going to end this, or is it going to lead to more of this?
--:-- Sean Ramos: What about 6,000 Palestinians who've died in the days since this terrible nightmare engulfed all of us?
--:-- Sean Ramos: They have families too. They have names. They have faces. They have memories.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You've spent time inside the United States government.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You've surely been watching the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, jet-setting around the Middle East, constantly looking very stressed out.
--:-- Sean Ramos: What do you make of the job he's doing?
--:-- John Alterman: I think he has.
--:-- John Alterman: I mean, first of all, he works for the president, and then the president set the course of embracing Israel and showing, I share your pain, I feel your pain, and using that as the foundation on which you're going to try to shape Israeli policies.
--:-- John Alterman: Today, in my fourth visit to Israel since October 7th, I reiterate that in all my discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, the Security Cabinet.
--:-- John Alterman: I re-read and made clear our support for Israel's right to defend itself, indeed its obligation to defend itself
--:-- Sean Ramos: The challenge he has is that the gap between Israel and Israeli actions and Israeli sentiments and the neighborhood is growing wider and not narrower
--:-- Sean Ramos: The Israelis are still bent on revenge, bent on deterrence, bent on teaching Palestinians a lesson.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And the Arab governments are saying the violence needs to stop right now.
--:-- Sean Ramos: The problem is not that Blinken isn't effective enough.
--:-- Sean Ramos: The problem is the problem he's trying to solve is getting bigger and not smaller.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We've been clear that as Israel conducts his campaign to defeat Hamas, how it does so matters.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It matters because it's the right and lawful thing to do.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It matters because failure to do so plays into the hands of Hamas and other terror groups.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There will be no partners for peace if they're consumed by humanitarian catastrophe and alienated by any perceived indifference to their plight.
--:-- Sean Ramos: When that time does come, when everyone can agree that this violence needs to stop, that there does in fact need to be a ceasefire, whether that means that the hostages are returned in a way that Israel finds amenable, or whether it means some kind of apology is happening in here, what happens next?
--:-- Sean Ramos: If Hamas is somehow eradicated, what comes next in Gaza?
--:-- Sean Ramos: How do we get to a point where we can prevent further violence there?
--:-- John Alterman: So I just read a sort of chilling piece from a friend and colleague of mine, Nathan Brown, who's at George Washington University in the Carnegie Endowment, who argues that there may never be a day after in Gaza.
--:-- John Alterman: That Gaza may be suffering for months and years with this unstable situation, a destroyed infrastructure with no viable governance structure, that it's not clear we're going to get to that point.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I hope we do get to the point.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I think there needs to be a replacement for Hamas, which is importantly palatable to Palestinians as well as palatable to Israelis.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I think it's going to take a long time to get there.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It's going to be incremental.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Part of the problem is the Palestinian Authority is both weak and illegitimate.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It needs to be both stronger and more legitimate.
--:-- Sean Ramos: NARAYA AL- The P&A is crumbling.
--:-- Sean Ramos: That's a reality.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Not totally its fault alone.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It does need to regain its standing with its people.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And I think the only way that can happen is if that, in addition to reforms, which are essential within the P&A, but also an ecosystem that enables it to go to its people and say, look, there is hope for you.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I will deliver this endgame for you, which means your security and your statehood and freedom.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I think there's an Arab role in doing that.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There's a European role in doing that.
--:-- Sean Ramos: There are roles for other countries.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But it seems to me that if you extinguish the flames of Hamas, you still have the embers of Hamas.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And unless you're able to create an alternative for Palestinians that gives them a political horizon, that gives them a sense of, they actually have a future that doesn't involve suffering and dying.
--:-- Sean Ramos: Unless you can supply that, the flames of Hamas or some successor are going to come back.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And at this point, you know, when I talk to folks on both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side, they say, nobody's ready to talk about coexistence.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But it seems to me that in the longer term, that's the only solution.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It's not an easy solution.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It's not a happy solution.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It means people have to get a lot less than they want.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But a lot of diplomacy isn't about asserting what you want.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It's about ensuring that you get what you need.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And we're not at that point.
--:-- Sean Ramos: People are still talking about what they want.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I think we will come to a point when people are tired and frustrated and worn out enough that we can shift the conversation to what do I want, to what do I really need?
--:-- Sean Ramos: And that's when you're going to have some possibilities.
--:-- Sean Ramos: You know, in terms of an actual ceasefire, in my experience, Hamas has been in a lot of confrontations.
--:-- Sean Ramos: They never like to talk about a ceasefire.
--:-- Sean Ramos: That's a little formal.
--:-- Sean Ramos: That's old school.
--:-- Sean Ramos: They'd use other words for pause, for quiet.
--:-- Sean Ramos: They use tahtiyah.
--:-- Sean Ramos: They use hodna for sort of a truce.
--:-- Sean Ramos: They have all sorts of euphemisms for ceasefire, which doesn't require actually having a negotiation for the Israelis.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But I think we will get to points where the violence will dip.
--:-- Sean Ramos: The U.S. will try to negotiate it.
--:-- Sean Ramos: The U.S. will try to bring other partners, the Qataris and others who are in touch with Hamas.
--:-- Sean Ramos: I think we will get there.
--:-- Sean Ramos: But there's a broader question about what's the U.S. relationship with Israel going forward.
--:-- Sean Ramos: That partly depends on where Israel is going forward, where Israel is in the world going forward.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And a core goal of Hamas is to ensure that Israel is isolated in the world.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And they see this as an isolation that can last decades into the future.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And a core tactic is to use Israeli strength to get to that outcome.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And I'm not sure that the Israelis have figured out a way to combat that.
--:-- Sean Ramos: John Alterman is the director of Middle East Policy at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
--:-- Sean Ramos: It's a big D.C. think tank.
--:-- Sean Ramos: And even big DC think tank people have podcasts, John's is called Babbel, translating the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Ramos: This one's today explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos: We were produced by Avishay Artsy and Isabel Angell, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman.
--:-- Sean Ramos: More tomorrow. Thank you.
