I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. Two months ago, Israel and her mass agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire plan for Gaza. But since the truce began on October tenth, Gaza authorities say Israel has carried out now the eight hundred attacks, killing almost four hundred people, including a recent strike targeting as senior Hamas commander Israel. Meanwhile, his militants have reportedly violated the ceasefire, killing at least three Israeli soldiers, and as Amas refuses
to disarm, Washington seems to have gone silent today. Middle East correspondent for The Economist, Greg Carlstrom, and why plans for peace have stalled and who may end up running Gaza. It's Friday, December nineteenth. Greg. There is currently on paper a ceasefire in Gaza, but people is still being killed. Tell me a bit some of the reports you're getting from paple on the ground in Gaza right now? What's the situation like?
It's bleak, and particularly over the past few weeks. It's not just that there are ongoing violations of the ceasefire, both by Israel and by Hamas.
It's been sixty four days since a ceasefire was struck, but the child wreckage of this car as evidence of its weakness. Indeed, there have been Israeli strikes already on fifty one of those days.
It's also has a lot to do with the conditions in Gaza right now. We saw earlier this month a very strong winter storm that swept through that hit the eastern Mediterranean, and the images that came out of Gaza were really apocalyptic.
On Unis medics say eight month old were half Abu Jazzar died of exposure to cold after the floodwaters inundated have family shelter on Wednesday night.
Entire tent cities were flooded. People were trying to dig ditches with their bare hands to try and redirect at least some of the water away from their tents. They were standing all night holding their children in the air so that their kids wouldn't be in the freezing water. There were at least four babies that died of hypothermia. There were several other people killed when high winds knocked down walls concrete walls onto their tents or onto their shelters and crushed them to death.
I don't have a tent or anything to make her warm. I fed her and there was nothing wrong with her. When we woke up, we found the rain over her and the wind on her, and the girl died of cold. Suddenly.
This is what life is like in Gaza right now. Two months on from the ceasefire. There's been no progress on the sort of long term political goals, the effort at reconstruction, all of these things that were meant to happen in phase two of the sea they're just not happening yet.
So what I was saying progress on the second phase, does that mean we're still stuck in phase one of disagreement?
In practice? I think we are.
So you go back to what was signed in October and the way everyone interpreted it.
As you say, there are two main phases to it.
The first was what happened immediately after the deal was signed. The fighting largely stopped in Gaza. Hamas freed the remaining Israeli hostages from captivity. The Israeli army pulled back from the main population centers in Gaza to what's known as the Yellow Line, which is a boundary now that splits the half of Gaza controlled by Israel from the half controlled by Hamas. All of that, again happened in the first few days after this agreement was implemented. Phase two
is meant to play out over a longer term. What's meant to happen according to this deal is Israel carried out that first withdrawal once the hostages were freed in October. There are meant to be several subsequent withdrawals once international peacekeepers go into Gaza, and then once they certify that Hamas has gone through some process of disarmament. But Hamas, of course, refuses to disarm. It's been very clear about that throughout two years of war. It has stuck to
that position since the ceasefire took effect. And if they don't disarm, then that will preclude further is rarely withdrawal, or probably preclude any serious effort at reconstruction. And so that yellow line, which is meant to be again a temporary interim boundary between the two halves of Gaza, is
looking more and more like it might become permanent. And we've heard the Israeli Army chief among other senior officials start to talk about it that way, start to talk about the possibility that Israel will not withdraw any further from Gaza, and this is just going to become formalized.
So it seems like we're essentially at a stand off here. Israel and Trump say that they want her mass disarming, and that's non negotiable. Her mass wants to see Israel withdraw first. So is that where things are at greg a stale.
Might more or less.
And if you look at what the Americans are doing right now, I think it's very telling. The plan that some of Donald Trump's allies have been pushing in recent weeks. They have different euphemisms for it. They call it alternative safe communities, or model communities, or there's various terms of art. But the idea is to start doing small scale reconstruction on the Israeli controlled side of this yellow line, So in Israeli occupied Gaza, to build small villages or hamlets
that can each house a few thousand Palestinians. The idea is they would have a school, a clinic, other basic services, and this would serve as a model for reconstruction. If you listen to the way Trump's allies are selling it, there's a number of problems with this plan, starting with the fact that almost no Palestinians live in the.
Israeli occupied half of Gaza.
Almost the entire two million population is to the west of the Yellow line. So you would have to convince people to move into Israeli occupied territory. No doubt Hamas would try to dissuade them from doing that, perhaps it would even threaten their relatives who remained in the controlled.
Half of Gaza.
Then once they get there, it's not at all clear will they have any freedom of movement or will they essentially be locked in these towns which are again surrounded by Israeli controlled territory. It seems like a very unworkable
scheme in a lot of ways. But the fact that that is the focus for some of Donald Trump's advisors, I think it's almost a tacit admission that the rest of the ceasefire plan is not moving forward, that talk of new governance and reconstruction in the whole of Gaza is just not happening right now, and so they are looking for these small scale initiatives that they can show off, even though again it seems they're very unworkable.
Coming up one, no one wants to join Trump's peacekeeping force Greg, I want to talk about how the ceasefire is supposed to be being enforced at the moment. Who is responsible for shippeting things to the next phase.
Well, we're waiting for announcements on that. What is meant to happen according to the deal in theory is there's something called the Board of Peace. Donald Trump is the chairman of that board, and then there will be other world leaders and grandees appointed to the board.
The leaders of the Arab world, Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this, so it would be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump of the United States.
It's what I want is some extra work to do, but it's so important that I'm willing to do it, and we'll do it right. And we're going to put leaders from other countries on and leaders that are very distinguished leaders.
And then there will be a transitional authority it's called a government that will have Palestinian representation that will be in charge of running the day to day affairs of Gaza. Again, we're two plus months into the ceasefire. Now no one has been appointed to either of those bodies. Trump has
been teasing big announcements for weeks. He keeps saying that he's about to announce members of the board, but those announcements haven't come, and my understanding is they may not happen until after the new year.
Now, what's the delight great with nancying the board?
I think some of it is the usual Donald Trump chaos. I think he was very engaged in September and October in trying to push the ceasefire forward, and then once the deal was signed, you know, it seems as if he thinks everything is fixed in Gaza. Now we have peace in the Middle East and everything is wonderful. And I was speaking to an official from a country in the region last week and I asked this person, when was the last time your government heard from Donald Trump
personally about Gaza? And the response was in October when the deal was signed. So it's been two months where Trump has not personally reached out to one of the countries in the region that is supposed to play a big role in post war Gaza. That's one issue, and then I think there's just been a lot of as always in the Middle East, a lot of jockeying for power amongst countries in the region. Everybody wants to have a say in post war Gaza, but not everyone can
agree on who should have a say. So Turkey wants to play a major role in reconstruction. Israel as opposed to that because it thinks Turkey is too sympathetic to Hamas. There's been similar criticism directed at Katar and the Persian Gulf. Other Gulf states are all jockeying for power within this transitional authority, and so they just can't agree even amongst themselves on who they want to lead this effort.
US officials have talked about deploying an international stabilization force to calling it as early as January. So what details do need to be figured out for that to happen?
Very minor detail, which is who's going to join it, where the troops are going to come from. There's still no answer to that question yet. The Americans have been shopping this idea around, not only since the ceasefire was signed in October, but for months before that. It's been clear, I think to everyone that you would need some sort of international force to go into Gauza because the alternative is open ended Israeli occupation. This is going to be
an American led initiative. Trump is talking about appointing a two star American general who would oversee.
This future stabilization force.
None of the Arab countries really want to take part because they don't want the image of Arab troops policing Palestinians. That's going to be very unpopular with their domestic constituencies at home. The White House has been talking to other countries Muslim majority but non Arab countries, Azerbaijan, Indonesia.
There has been some outreach.
To Pakistan, I think as well, but no firm commitments from any of these countries. If you talk to advisors to the President of Azerbaijan, for example, they'll say, we're willing to send a contingent to Gaza, but it has to be part of a broader multinational force, and we don't want our troops to be policing in Gaza city, or in Rufa or in the populated.
Areas of Gaza.
They're willing to serve as maybe a monitoring force and a border security force along the Yellow Line and along Gaza's border with Egypt, but they don't want to be in a literal peacekeeping role where they are going neighborhood by neighborhood trying to disarm Hamas. So there's a lot of opposition from not just Arab countries, but anyone who's been approached about joining this force.
So as we approach the end of twenty twenty five, GREG, there's a lot to watch out for what the Stabilization Force may look like and what its mandate might be, as well as the Board of Peace that will act as a temporary government. So where does this leave Palestinians in terms of determining Gaza's future and their own future?
I think with a very limited role, unfortunately, in determining that. I mean again, there is meant to be Palestinian representation on this transitional government, but we don't know who these Palestinians will be. We don't know if they will be people from Gaza or from the West Bank or from the Palestinian diaspora. So how much say the Palestinians of
Gaza will have over their future is really unclear. And I think the longer it goes on like this, the longer we don't have any progress on Phase two of the deal, the more pressure there is going to be on people to try and leave Gaza, which of course has been the dream of the Israeli far right throughout the war. They wanted to expel huge numbers of Palestinians and then reoccupy and resettle Gaza. They weren't able to
do that during the war. But something I keep hearing when I speak to Palestinians is maybe Israel will achieve that through peace. What they couldn't achieve through war, maybe they will achieve through peace. I don't think imminently they're going to start building settlements and moving Israeli civilians into Gaza, but I do think that yellow line is going to
become a more and more formal boundary. And if you go back and look at the history of how the occupation started in the West Bank, I mean before there were civilian settlements there. It began with the military setting up outposts in the West Bank, and years went by and eventually you had what has become.
A large settler population now.
So even if that isn't the intent in the beginning, I think long term Israeli control of half of Gaza, it at least opens the possibility that at some point the right wing will get its wishes.
Greg, thank you so much. For your reporting this year. It's been really great and thank you once again for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me, it's always a pleasure.
Also in the use as in the Alberanezi has announced new laws to crack down on anti Semitism, including Tophane hate speech laws. The Prime Minister's five point plan also gives new powers to the Home Affairs Minister to cancel or reject visas for people who spread hate, and there will be an Education task Force led by David Gonski. His job will be to work with the anti Semitism Envoid Gillian Siegel on her recommendations to reform the curriculum
to better educate students on the Holocaust. We'll have a full reporting the government's response to the Bondai massacre with Paul bon Jordo tomorrow. And the funeral for the youngest victim of the Bondai attacks has been held in Sydney. Crowds gathered yesterday afternoon to commemorate the life of ten year old Matilda, who was killed by a government on Sunday. I met A Lahmed, the man who disarmed one of the government is still in the hospital and is suspected
to want to go a third surgery today. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.