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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody. Today's Pacshow. What do we have great, Yes, we do.
We got a bunch of guests and we got a lot of big news. So we're going to start the show with a full breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire deal, how it came to be, the different phases, some of the remaining question marks. We've got two different guests to give us analysis on that. Doctor true Tu Parsi and
Shila van Ephraim. We've had him on before. He's like a liberal Zionist who has a great view of the Israeli domestic political situation, which is becoming increasingly relevant as Netnyahoo is sort of I guess pumping the brakes on the deal.
Anyway, we'll get into all of the details there.
We're also going to break down for you the confirmation hearings that happened yesterday. We got Lil Marco all grown up and facing not very contentious hearings. Actually he's you know, he's a senator. He's got respectability, so even though he's a warhawk, they I'll like him in there. You also had Pampondi, who of course is Trump's nominee for Attorney General.
So we'll take a look at that.
Vivek has emerged sort of Trump is pushing for him to be in the mix for that Ohio Senate seat that is being vacated by Jadie. Vance will break that down for you. Take a look at John Stewart ripping Republicans over their desire to withhold aid to California, or at least to put a bunch of stipulations to that aid to California and to la as they struggle continue to struggle with those horrific wildfires. Mister Beast might buy TikTok,
the latest TikTok. I mean, I don't know that that's all that likely, but we wanted to cover TikTok again because the band is said to go into effect on.
What Sunday, Sunday, January nineteenth, So you know.
This is happening absent some significant development. So we'll give you the latest on that and a little bit of breaking news here. Fashakir, who is now the head of More Perfect Union but previously ran Bernie Sanders' twenty twenty presidential campaign. He has just jumped into the race for DNC chair and he's going to join me here live.
A little bit of an exclusive. He just announced yesterday.
I don't know if he's done any other interviews yet, Okay, so maybe the first. So I got a lot of questions for him. Be really interesting to hear what his vision for the Democratic Party is. Before we get to any of that, though, we have some big plans for the inauguration coverage next ye.
Yes, that's right. Make sure you guys are tuning in. We'll be streaming it here live on the channel. We'll give you our instant reaction to the inaugural address. Excited to see it. Already, Washington is a buzz. It's going to be a cold one for any of you who out there who are attending. Please check the weather. It's going to be somewhere in the teens with the wind chill. Oh it's yeah. It's going to be a brutal inauguration for the people who are attendant.
Donald Trump to be out for that one.
Please if you're doing that. I've attended several of these inaugurations. People are never prepared. They're from Florida or whatever, like, oh, it'll be you don't know what you're talking about, all right. Take it from a guy from the South. It's brutal up here, especially whenever there's windshill. This might be snow the next day and all of that. So please stay safe out there and make sure they can make all of that.
Yeah, it's one thing when you're moving around that outside and it's cold, but at inauguration you're gonna have to like walk to where you're going to stand and then you're just gonna stand there.
You will walk for miles because the metro will be unusable and you will be standing in place like yards hundreds of yards away from the only porta Potti. So again, you need to make sure that you know what you're getting into. I hate to be a buzzkill, but I've seen too many.
Didn't you look up the history of like the yes, I did.
This might be the second coldest, might be third coldest inauguration on record. For what we we have Ronald Reagan's second inaugural nineteen eighty five. It was a minus four degrees that morning. They actually canceled the inaugural parade because it was just too damn cold. So wow. Anyways, we will have all of the coverage here Live that you can that you will need. Will cover the ceremony obviously, but I'm really interested to see what the actual inaugural
address will be. I still think American Carnage is one of the most unique inaugurate inaugural addresses literally ever given in US history, just because of the tone. I mean, there's literally never been a president who has come in even FDR in the middle of the Great Depression, gives us optimistic speech. Trump chooses the opposite. I think fundamentally that was actually a political genius point and it's one that he has used now to come back and assume
the Oval office. So anyway, giving away some of my commentary, but I think you guys are really going to enjoy our coverage. And then the next day on Tuesday, we'll do a live show as well, because we are expecting a flurry of executive orders and there's gonna be news coming in. It's gonna be it's gonna be real a really big week here for the show. So sign up up if you can Breaking Points dot Com, et cetera, and we will be live here no matter what.
All right, let's get to some rare but excellent news that's right in the Middle East. A ceasefire deal has been achieved. There are a couple of question marks and caveats. We'll get to those in a moment, but let's start with the celebration and the streets of Gaza. I mean, these people, these Palestinians, have suffered, They've been in terror and by the way, Israel is continuing to bomb in the Gaza strip up until the moment when the deal is supposed to go into effect, so there's still plenty
of carnish there going on. But we can go ahead and put these celebrations up on the screen. People are just a buliant that there might be some break in the horror that they have suffered for more than a year. At this point, I mean, you see these little children. This is a reporter for Al Jazeera who is reporting that the ceasefire deal has been achieved.
He has a crowd around him.
He's taking off his flat jacket there and then they actually, I think, like carry him off on their shoulders. People here parading through the street so happy. Part of the ceasefire deal is not only the you know, a cessation of the carnage and the bombing and the snipers, but also increased food aid. We know that resources have been just incredibly, incredibly scarce. More of the children of Gaza out in the street dancing, and you know, it's just
it's so beautiful to see them so happy. Doctors in the hospital also celebrating. I cannot imagine what these people have seen, what horrific wounds they have treated, the number of dead they have had to carry out. Huge crowd
celebrations here as well. Everybody recording and filming this moment when they feel that at least they're set to get a respite, and then this is some I don't know if it's Hamas or Palestinian Islamic ji Hud, but some fighters who are feeling comfortable to emerge here as this deals announced, which you know that was included very intentional because, as we've been saying from the beginning Saga, Israel was not able to wipe out Hamas.
They In fact, Tony.
Blinken just came out this week and said, actually, we estimate that they have recruited about as many fighters as they have lost. So you know, it's predictable from the beginning that accomplishing that objective, that maximalist objective from Israel, at least through military means, was going to be impossible.
And yet we do have this ceasefire deal that has been achieved, you know, in large part because Donald Trump was willing to actually apply a little bit of pressure to the Israelis into Benjamin Natyaho specifically, let's put this ceasefire agreement up on the screen so you can see these phases, and this is going to be relevant as we talk about how this might unfold and some of the question marks and caveats to this actual deal. But let me just read through the outline here. This is
the draft. This, by the way, is the exact same deal that was crafted back in May under Joe Biden that Hamas agreed to and the Israelis backed away from. So we've had months of slaughter and carnage to achieve nothing other than additional horror.
This was the original deal.
So in any case, Phase one forty two days, Hamas is going to release thirty three hostages, including female civilians and soldiers, children and civilians over fifty. Israel is going to release thirty Palestinian prisoners. For every civilian hostage and fifty for each female soldier who's being held hostage.
There'd be a cessation of fighting.
Israeli forces will move out of populated areas but remain on the edges of the Gaza Strip. Displaced Palestinians will begin returning home, and more aid will begin entering into the strip. Okay, that's Phase one forty two days, and that is set to go into effect Sunday. If BB nine now, who doesn't blow up the deal, which we'll
talk about in a moment. Phase two forty two days declaration of quote sustainable calm, Hamas freeze remaining a hostages, both soldiers and civilians in exchange for a yet to be negotiated number of Palestinian prisoners in a full with all of Israeli troops from.
The Gaza Strip. Phase three.
You have the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, and we're not sure how many there are of those at this point, exchange for bodies of deceased Palestinian fighters. Implementation of a reconstruction plan in Gaza. Still very little details in terms of how that will work and who will govern in Gaza, and all of that is still major question mark. Border crossings for movement in and out of Gaza are reopened.
I referenced before we can put this up on the screen, this tear sheet, and we talked about this a little bit, and Ryan and Emily talked about this a little bit as well. This is behind the scenes of how the deal went down. As I said, the contours of the steal have existed since May when Hamas agreed to it, and BB nine Yahoo and Besililsmochurch and Ben Gaver, who was out there bragging about how he tanked multiple potential
ceasefire deals. They were the primary obstacles them and the fact that the Biden administration was never willing to apply any pressure whatsoever and actually are out now admitting that they never applied any pressure whatsoever, so they say in this article from the Times of Israel and the similar
things have been reported in other outlets as well. A tense weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast Envoy Steve Whitcoff led to a breakthrough of the hostage negotiations, with the top a tous President elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premiere in a single sit down than outgoing President.
Joe Biden did all year.
Two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday, Witcoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in those hostage negotiations as mediators try to secure a deal before Trump' January twentieth inauguration. On Saturday, Whitcoff flew to Israel for meeting with Biebe at the Premiere's Jerusalem office. During the meeting, Whitcoff urged Netnyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement. The two Arab officials on Monday told The Times of Israel on condition
of anonymity, so that is how it went down. And you know, the Biden people aren't really even disputing this.
No, but there's a lot of consternation here there absolutely because they're so upset that Trump is getting credit for the deal. No honest analysis can say that they had anything to do with the completion of it. I keep thinking about this. So Brett McGirk and a lot of people who are watching the show, they may don't even know who he is. Brett McGirk has been involved in US Middle East policy since I was a small child. He has worked for every US president since George W. Bush.
He was in Iraq and you worked for the poetry.
Literal Eastern disaster that this country has gotten involved.
He was working for the Coalitional Provisional Authority in three when I was in grade school. Has basically not left government service since living in Doha basically for the last two years trying to get a cease fire deal. Steve Whitkoff built the fon ten Blue casino in Las Vegas. Okay, just so we're talking about here, the guy who built the casino was able to close this deal in two months.
And I'm like, okay, so, so either you know these foreign policy people are idiots, their bosses are you know, just have no experience. Maybe the myth of like people who have no experience in government are actually better at government. All of the above. I mean, obviously, I mean simplifying this, But how extraordinary is that?
I mean, I think the obvious answer is they didn't want because if you did, it was achievable. And you know, people were mocked, like myself for saying like, no, if you want this to end, it will end, period. And you know, there were all these people on like, oh, you.
Think he's just got a magical ceasefire button in the office or you could just pick up like yeah, actually I do, Yes, I do think that. I do think that if Joe Biden picked up the phone or one of his credible emissaries or its Tony Blinker or Jake Sullivan or whoever the hell picked up the phone and said we're done. It's over, we are not shipping any more weapons. You are going to wrap this up. You are going to accept this deal that Hamas has accepted and deal with the political fault.
Yes, I do think it would have been over, and that has now been one hundred percent proven correct. Now in terms of some of the remaining question marks. Okay, number one, I think the most obvious thing is like what did what is Trump offering in exchange for this? And there's three things that people float. Number one is Saudi normalization. Number two is joining Israel in strike on Iran,
which horrible, disastrous idea, terrible. Number three, which to me seems and it may be all of these, maybe some combination of these, whatever, maybe something else that we haven't even thought of. Number three, which was reported that Mary Maddison, his major major toner, wants him to allow annexation of the West Bank. There are already signs that Israel's ramping up drop sites, done great job reporting on increased incursions and brutality in.
The West Bank.
Obviously settlements have expanded there massively over actually in every single Israeli government, So that seems a very likely outcome as well. So that's question number one. Question number two is this morning reporting net Yahoo is now throwing sand in the gears, pumping the brakes once again claiming that Hamas is renegging on the agreement. I mean, listen, that's probably bullshit. Hamas is saying, no, we're not. They have agreed to this specific deal since May, so you know
that they're backing out of it now. I highly highly doubt. This is one of the things that we'll talk to Shiel about today, which is, you know, the domestic situation because bb is seeing his coalition kind of collapse. You know, the right wing ben Kaver and Smotrich in particular very upset with this deal because it's it sort of reminds me, you know, not that they're totally analogous situation, but it sort of reminds me of when Biden pulls out of Afghanistan.
Anytime you end a war, it's a mess and you have to reckon with the reality. You can no longer live in the fantasy of like, oh, we're going to completely defeat Hamas and it's going to be, you know, the end of any Palestinian resistance. When you actually end a war and have a cessation of hostilities, you have to grop with what the actual reality is and what
you know in terms of their state of military goals. Yes, they inflicted untold suffering and carnage on the Palestinian population, but they did not achieve the political goals that they set out, So you have to grapple with that, and you know, the far far right in Israel does not want to grapple with that and wants to continue the brutality and the carnage basically and definitely, I mean, they're
very upfront. One thing you have to give him as honesty that they want to completely resettle Gaza, completely push out the Palestinians who live there. So his government is kind of it's teetering, and so he's pumping the brakes and claiming that Hamas is renegging. So that's one thing to watch whether this thing actually moves forward, whether there's
a delay, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing is that the people in the BBHO coalition, including Smotrich, are claiming that they have been promised that after that initial phase one where some number of hostages are released, and I think it's what lasts for like forty two days, that they have been promised, Israel will go back to fighting, will go back to the war.
In which case this is not a ceasefire.
It's that quote unquote humanitarian pause which we had so much discussion of early in the war. And troublingly, President Trump's incoming National Security advisor Mike Waltz also made similar signals that that may also be the way that they are thinking about this deal in a recent interview. Let's take a listen to his comments.
From your perspective. If this deal goes through and we enter what's characterized as the first phase, does that effectively mean the war's over is Does a ceasefire mean that Israel's its work is done in Gaza for the foreseeable future.
Well, I certainly think Hamas would like to believe that, but we've been clear that Gaza has to be fully demilitarized, Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute, and that Israel has every right to fully protect itself. So you know, all of those pieces, all of those objectives are still very much in place. Look,
I mean, the October seventh was a terrible day. They put everybody in a terrible position, including the Palestinian people of Gaza, whom they regularly hide behind and are willing to sacrifice and have sacrificed for their own sick ends and objectives. And so we need to get our people out, and then we need to achieve those objectives in this war.
So he's asked there straight out, does this mean the end of the war, and he's basically like, no, we're going to quote unquote demilitarize Gaza, which is again the maximalist rhetoric that the Natanyahu government has been engaged.
But let me give the caveat, which is he didn't say, yeah, we're going to allow them to go back in. I am skeptical of how all this is going to play out. I think the most likely scenario is the one that you're saying that the government of the BB nine now government will survive, that they will just simply have to go in after forty two days. All the caveats here already we have. It's this is of us pressure. The thing is that we understand about Trump is it's not
just about the hostages. It's about chaos. He doesn't want to deal with a massive reignition of protest movement or of the you know, the seeming fall apart of his framework that he puts forward, all the rhetoric that they are using. Let's we've heard all this crap before, right, The Taliban will never govern in Afghanistan until, yeah, you got to cut some deals with the Taliban. I'll be like, oh, they've changed their stripes. So we're dealing with the political party.
I mean, the Arabs themselves. Is a long history of like I have a Muslim brotherhood and then you have the political arm of it, and you just deal with them, and you say that these are the people that are it, the terrorists, We're just gonna ignore them. So there is wiggle room here. I think. Another thing is forty two days is a long time, all right, So that's a lot of people for people in Israel who have to ruminate on what's happening. Do we really want to go
back to this? How many what was it? I think Ryan said this, five hundred IDF soldiers have been killed since that ceasfire deal has been on the table. So if you're an Israeli family, you want your guys to go back into the brink. Their economy is teetering, by the way. You know, you have all these young men who are in military service. Is a huge economic shortage, a labor shortage in Israel. They've got financial problems with their own The war costs what hundreds of billions of
shekels like per day or whatever. So if you put all this stuff together and you actually put you know, tamp things down to restart. It is going to require a lot that's here then here in our domestic political situation, there are a lot of things that going to happen. One of the reasons why that they don't necessarily want to do this is when those IDF soldiers pull out and people start to go back in. Now, the camera's going to come out. Now, the BBC crews are going
to be able to go in. Now, Clarissa Ward and Trey Yanks and all these guys are not going to be having IDF military escorts. They're going to be on the ground doing whatever they want to do. And now we're all, you know, mass Gray, who knows what they're doing. Israelis are free.
Yeah.
So when we get the full picture of all of this, will Trump really want to be in the Oval office and allow again this cast this is put humanitarian things aside. Do you want to see, you know, a full on reignition of the conflict. And then you know, look, forty two days is not just a long time for the Israelies. Forty two days a long time for Israel or for Hamas for positing in Islami jihad. That's forty two days of stockpiling weapons, building IDs, redoing battle plans, they get
to go back into North Gaza. I wouldn't want to be an IDF soldier that has to go back into territory that he just walked out of that was allegedly secured. So there's a lot of things that could happen here which may lead to implementation of Face two or some sort of new Face to agreement. I wouldn't count the Arabs out of this either, the UAE, the Saudis, and others. They have got much better relationship with Trump than they ever did with the Biden administration, and they do not
want to see this war continue. Remember also that there's a they have leverage on us as well through oil and others. Biden was never really able to pull any of this off. I mean, that's really what I can come down to. Like, clearly the Biden people either didn't want to see fire deal or were just so inept and incompetent or unable to like see American power for what it was that they weren't able to get this done. And I mean that's just I can't get away from this.
It's like, Oh, America is a superpower. I always thought it was. It's like, it turns out whenever you do provide somebody like ninety eight percent of their political support and their weapons, Yeah, and all they ca Yeah, you just be like no, it's not happy, yea, and then it won't happen.
Now that's why I mean, I think they did not want to see fire deal. I mean, that's that's the conclusion that I've effectively come to, because I mean, they had every opportunity to secure one, and you know, they have at least somebody with three brain cells to rub together to figure out that that was a possibility. I
think all of the intense conversations blah blah blah. In fact, there's even reporting that Blink and some of the comments that he made actually undermined some of the negotiations that were ongoing.
And yeah, I think that was intentional.
I think they did not really want a ceasefire deal, and that's why there was no ceasefire deal. Just to make the the a little bit of the countercase. Well, here's what I'll say about in response to you, Sacker, which is, I think it's clear this will whether it the deal continues into phase two, it will come down to Trump because I think BB Night, now, who left
his own devices, they're going back in. I mean he's basically promising, he is promising parts of his coalition were going back in in an attempt to try to rescue his own political career. So you know, what they're going to see over forty two days time is effectively Hamas retaking control of government, and for the Israeli right, that is not going to be an acceptable outcome. So I think there will be tremendous pressure on BB Night now who to go back in in some fashion?
You know?
Is that the.
Complete war that has been operable for most of this conflict post October seventh, is that more of the you know, sort of typical like more limited, I mean still horrible, but more limited, like mowing the grass type of operations. Is that retaking the Philadelphi cord or like what does that look like?
I don't know, but I think there will be.
I think without Trump exercising significant pressure after that phase one, this war will restart. And so then it comes down to how he perceives his own interests and how he thinks about this deal, which is why it is troubling that the comments here from Mike Waltz, because the other way Trump might look at this is I get to say I got the hostages out, and there will still be some hostages remaining, but the Americans will be out, and the women and children will be out, the elderly will be out.
He can say I got I got the hostages back.
I got a deal where you know, Biden was never able to. He's able to embarrass and humiliate Biden, which is something that I'm sure he enjoys. And you know what, whatever motivates him to get some peace with the Palestinians, go for it, go for it, right. But but you know he's he's got other interests like Barry Maddison and others in his coalition who very much want to see a return.
To these hostilities. You see.
You know, it's interesting reading Ben Shapiro's analysis slash Cope about this deal. He very much is looking at it this way of like we'll get some hostages out and then they're.
Going to be well, there's a lot of wish casting out.
Yeah.
Can I end with this before we get to Trita Parsier. Yes, If you guys want Trump to go in the direction, look, Donald Trump is never gonna be the greatest friend to the Palatine people. But let me tell you what Trump loves being called a peacemaker. Give him credit for the deal. Go out there on social media, especially if you're a leftist, and be like, thank you Donald Trump for actually getting this done. You humiliated Joe Biden. You used this framing
in particular. For anybody out there who is prominent. Go on television, give Donald Trump credit for the deal, because right now there's an entire Israeli right wing cope by Ben Shapiro and others like no, no, no, be like, but listen, you have to create political space to reward people for doing things that are good, even if you don't like those people. I'm going to take it upon myself. I've been trying. I'm from my Twitter account and others.
I'll be like, this is great, fantastic. Nobody I'm here sending mega hats. I'm serious, Like you guys think I'm joking. That is how Donald Trump will arrive at the political calculus of the Like, you know, I got a lot of credit for this. They call me a peacemaker. It's a power. What did we always say? How powerful of a message? It is no war broke out while I was president. You can quibble with it if you want, but people liked it. You did the AOC Facebook group
while I was out. What did all those people say? So again, leftists especially people are out there on the center, non politically engaged folks, give Donald Trump credit. Actually creates some media buzz around this. And I guarantee you if that gets in front of the people in the White House communication shop and others, they will print it out and show it to him. And now you got two pronouns in front of you instead of one from Ben Shapiro, which is just a criticism of the deal.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not usually this transparent about it, but like I care some. I mean, he's I don't want this sword to continue. It's just let's end it.
Obviously how he operates too, Like it's not hard to figure out the way that his ego operates. I mean, this is part of why he cares TikTok, because it's like, oh, people there like me, I like TikTok. Now he's inviting the freaking just talk dude operation. It is what it is, so take advantage of it. I think that's all So so true. The one just last note because I thought
this was hilarious. Tom con who's like a total psycho right wing Zionist, hates the deal, of course, so rather than criticizing Trump, he goes on Twitter and.
He's like Joe Biden's surrender.
Deal blah blah.
It's like, dude, Joe Bien had nothing to do with this. So if you don't like it, there's one place to point your finger. And this it has scrambled a lot of brains to see and and like I said, there's baby now pumping the brakes. Question marks about what was given, like what is the Faustian bargain that was made here? What is Israel getting on the other side of this?
Does a continue pass Phase one? A lot of questions, But I'm truly just I'm so happy that at the very least Palestinians and Gaza are going.
To get some Yeah, you get a ford to day break.
Respite after suffering for so long. So I you know, I'm happy to see them having some reason for joy and celebration there in the streets.
Absolutely right, Let's get to our guest Street Departson.
Very fortunate to be joined this morning by doctor Teresa Parsi of course, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Always great to see UZR.
Good to SEEZR.
Likewise, thank you first just your top line reaction to the contours of this deal and also you know your your sentiment about whether it's going to be fully implemented.
Just phase one.
We now see BBNA and Yahoo trying to make trouble here in the final days. Just give us your type top line reactions.
I think, first of all, obviously we should be very happy that this slaughter finally, hopefully is coming to an end. But looking at not just the contours but even the details of the deal, it's quite clear that this is really not particularly different from what already has been on the table for quite some time. And I think it really shows that President Biden could have done this very early on. Every day he could have decided that he's going to put in a stop to killing, and every
day he decided not to. And I think that's going to haunt the United States for some time, just as much as the Iraq War and unnecessary decisions there haunted the United States and continues to haunt the United States now when it comes to Phase one, clearly, the way that BB is trying to sell it at home is to say that this is just going to be phase one. But if you take a look at what happened in Lebanon, we saw a massive amount of violations of that ceasefire, but it.
Was more lower level violence.
The higher level violence did cease, and I suspect that we will see the same thing in Gaza. Now, the question I think that is really essentially is why did Trump decide that he wanted this.
If it is.
Because he wants to push for an expansion of the Abram Accord more normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, then I don't see how it would be to his interest to see this only be implemented in stage one. Then he will likely want to see it fully implemented because the demands from the Saudis side not only for an end to the violence, but also some semblance of a pasting and state has significantly increased because of what Israel has done.
So I think it very much.
Depends on what Trump's calculations are in the long run.
Right, So that's one of the things that we wanted to talk to you about. Doctor Parsi is in terms of the lessons here for Donald Trump but also for the prior administration. The ability to compel a deal so quickly tells us a lot about the ability of American power to be utilized when it wants to be. So what can we learn from that going forward with the Israelis? And I know in your own study of our past relationship with Israel when we have done this in the past, Well, I.
Think the bottom line is this idea of some sort of a beer hulk strategy was the original in here because instead of actually pursuing us interest, laying down firmly what we want and what we don't want, and if these Raelies want to go in a different direction, well good luck to you, but you're not going to do it with our weapons. Instead, the Biden illustration had a strategy of thinking, let's just say yes to everything these Raelis want. Let's blame every problem on Hamas, even when
it's Israel's fault. Let's make sure that we veto every resolution at the UN and that miraculously will give us credibility so that these Raelis actually will listen to us when we say no, which we nevertheless almost never did. Anyways, why did the United States need credibility. Did we start off from a point of no credibility with this rule, So we had to build up this credibility in order to be able to afford to say no. That is
just completely preposterous. The United States had credibility, and the United States never used the leverage through the arm cells that we had in order to be able to compel Israel to move in a direction that was not only not violent international law and committing war crimes, but also making sure that it didn't.
Lead to something that would be bad for the United States.
And one of the key things the administration itself said was that it did not want to see an escalation of the war in the region.
Yet in their exit interviews they.
Brag about the fact that they never publicly criticize the Biden the Israelis for bombing is Lebanon, for expanding the war. So I think the bottom line lesson is if you center your policy on American interests, you're going to get a much better outcome. Then if you essentially abdicate your responsibility to the American people and defer to foreign leaders, friends or foes, it does not matter.
So doctor Parsi We've just witnessed the world superpower that was the primary architect of the post World War two international order oversee a slaughter of predominantly women, children, and the elderly.
For over a year. I mean, what does that mean for the world moving forward.
I think it's a disaster.
And I think one of the things we have to keep in mind is that, yes, in the American tradition, though the United States played, as you pointed out, a critical role in creating the post World War two security and international architecture, we nevertheless have been kind of dismissive of international law. And to large extent, it's because we
were so powerful. Not only could we violate it, but we never really viewed it as being something that could infringe upon our We would never allow it infringe upon our sovereignty. Reality is that we are now moving into a multipolar world. In that multipolar world, the United States relative power compared to what it was before, it's not
going to be the same. As a result, the ability of American power to constrain other countries' rivals of the United States is going to be more limited than it was before, and it's not going to be able to be pervasive as it was before, which means that we actually will develop an interest in international law as an alternative path to be able to constrain the actions of rival streets in a way that we in a unipolar era did not have the same interest the need for.
And this is then very damaging to the United States because we have under the Biden administration, who was supposed to correct everything Trump did wrong during his four years by exiting the Paris Agreement, Yvon Deal et cetera, et cetera, actually work tirelessly to hollow out international law VETO and all of those Yewan resolutions, the one that they did, except they then immediately turned around and said that it's
not binding, which was completely legally ridiculous as well. We've seen their reactions to the ICC, to the ICJ, all of those different things. I understand from an immediate political interest, folks on the right and the left may not like, but in the future world, what we are not going to be as powerful as we have been in the last few decades, We're actually going to need some of those constraints.
I think that's an fantastic point. And just generally going forward, what does this mean now? For US policy in the Middle East. The last two years, if we zoom out, have been extraordinary, not only with what's happening in Israel. We now have a completely new regime in Syria, of which of course Israel is also involved in. So what is the landscape that Donald Trump now has to deal with in the next four years.
It's a completely different landscape. On the one hand, as you pointed out, the Turks are in a very significant rising position because their allies, this al Qaeda offshoot, has won in Syria and has taken over that country, which actually it's interesting. You know, the Turks are now going to be much stronger rivals of the Banyans, but they're
also bumping up against Israel in Syria. The Israelis have annexed even more territory of the Syria state, and the current Syrian leaders are trying to present a view of unifying Syria being Syria nationalists, which is very interesting giving
that they came from Al Qaeda. Al Qaida was a movement that viewed itself as universal, that rejected the very existence of these type of states, rejected the idea that there should be states of this kind, because there should just be one Muslim entity in Uma essentially, but now they are trying to present themselves as Syria nationalists.
Well, how's that going to work out?
When these Raelis are not only keeping the goal on heights, but they're actually taking additional Syrian territory. At some point it's going to create tensions between Syria and Israel, which means that it will create more tensions between Turkey and Israel. And on the other hand, then you have the Turks wanting to defeat the Kurds in Syria that the US has been supporting, and incidentally, it now seems likely that the Iranians are going to be supporting the Curds further.
And guess who else the Israelis. So what you have is a massive mess. And I think Trump's initial instinct when all of this started to unfold, by saying this is not our fight, we should not be involved, it is the right instinct and take a more passive and not try to think that, you know, whoever wins in Syria is going to get some sort of a major price, because there isn't a major price.
My last question for you, doctor parcis there's been a lot of speculation about what Trump may have offered the Israelis in exchange for you know, them agreeing to this deal that they've been rejecting now for months.
At this point.
You mentioned one of those potential things, the Saudi normalization deal. Another thing that's been mentioned is West Bank annexation, and the third thing that's been mentioned is joining with Israel in strikes against Iran. I'd love for you to weigh in on that third possibility, your assessment of the likelihood there and what that could potentially mean, because we know that Trump did have a very hawkish record vice of the Israel in his first terms.
Right.
Yeah, First of all, let's be clear, we don't know yet if actually anything problems. It may very well have been that Trump's envoy told Natanyago enough is enough. I have fifteen months of these killings and we don't want to have to deal with this messagey longer. So you have to put an end to it without necessarily making any promises. Now, Trump has himself on his social media suggests that he's going to take advantage of this development
and move towards further integrating Israel into the region. That could actually be very good news, but it depends on how it's done, if it's just going to be an expansion of the abram of course, which in my view had several significant flaws. The first one being that it really shoved the palestiniums under the rug, expecting that they simply would not exist any longer or be a factor.
And that was a major, major miscalculation, because we saw two or seventh, which to some extent actually was a result of the effort to completely try to push the
palestadiums society. The other thing was that the United States was giving massive concessions to these different states in order for them to normalize with Israel, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, what the Biden administration has been discussing is to give a security guarantee to these Saluleis, meaning that the United States would send its women and men off to die and kill for.
The Saudi dictatorship.
This would deepen America's military involvement in the region beyond anything we have seen in the US's history in the Middle East. That would be not only a massive mistake, it would be completely contradictory to Trump's instincts and what he has been promised, which is to actually bring us troops home from the Middle East and get less entangled in the conflicts of the region. If we actually offered
a Saudis a security guarantee, we will get more entangled. Moreover, the BIDE Admistration was even considering giving these a Saldi's nuclear technology, the same nuclear technology that the United States fort twenty years to prevent the Iranians from having. Now we're actually granting it to a country that has said that it might build a bomb and whose track record informed policy is highly questionable, particularly mindful of his history
with al Qaida. These are ridiculous, unthinkable concessions. If it is so that the Saudis and the Israelis want to normalize, then go ahead normalize. Why should the United States not only give concessions but commit them, commit itself to the security of these states in order for them to come to peace with each other?
Yeah, well said great, See you, Sarah, Thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having.
For more on the Israeli domestic political situation. Hre fortune to be joined this morning by shil Ben Ephraim. He is the host of a couple of podcasts with regard to Israel. Israel Explained and also history in the land of Israel.
Great to see you, Jail, good to see you.
Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, of course.
So let me go ahead and put guys eight ten up on the screen to start to break down some of the internal tensions within the net Nyahuo coalition and some of the breakdown over this reported ceasefire deal. So Smochrich here says, quote, the deal is bad and dangerous for Israel. Security will remain in the government only if there is absolute certainty of a return to fighting with
great intensity. So could you tell us some of the fault lines here within the Natyahuo coalition and whether he can actually survive politically moving forward with this ceasefire deal.
Yeah, So this has been moving very fast. You know, if we'd had this interview yesterday, I'd be giving you
a very different answer from what I'd be giving today. So, as we know, domestic Israeli politics are one of the major reasons the previous attempt to reach a deal, the previous very serious attempt to reach a deal from you know, May until August failed and that's because Natanielle was very reliant on two extreme right wing parties, one run by Betzalel smart Rich and the other run by Itamar ben Kvie,
and both of them are opponents of a deal. Now, over the last few months, Natania has made an effort to expand his coalition so that he has a little bit of cushion against their influence. One of the major reasons for that was so that he would have the room to be able to make a deal, and he did that by bringing in Guidon Star's party was a formerly could minister who then became a member of the opposition, said he would never sit with Antania and so on and so forth, and he was he was brought in.
We could also manage to bring in members of the ben Vere party into the coalition Cohen and Idan Roll from Ya La Pede's opposite party as well, so he had a little bit more cushion. And what he managed to do is he managed to get smot Rich to say that he would stay in the government if there's a deal, while Benver threatened to leave. But now there's been a lot of pressure on smot Rich, much more than he expected to leave as well, and now he's leaning towards leavings. So today is in a lot of
trouble because he can't lose both. He can only lose one, even though he's padded his coalition.
Interesting, so we've seen a bit of a freak out inside of Israel. Can we put this next one, for example, up on the screen just to show the audience and example of what things look like inside. For for example, here we have Elon Levy. The biggest boost of global jihad will come from hamastaging a victory parade him in the rubble. The free world is going to pay a terrible price for pressuring Israel to leave the Hamas regime in power and sort of pressuring Hamas and working to
remove it. So there is certainly a constituency, like you said, inside of israelits pushing it back against this deal. How does that influence then Netanyahu's ability to stay in power? Like you said, if he does lee, if he does lose two of these members, or even if he does manage to hang on, he's still got some forty two days more pressure to resume the war and to continue it. How what will that look like?
Yeah, So the plan that Nitaniel had was he will he will pass the deal and then improvise for forty two days and see what he can do. Now there's there's a couple of things that could happen. One is he could have some kind of excuse to break the ceasefire and Hamas usually don't and here to see spires all that religiously ironically, you know, consider their ideology. And Israel could find some pretext for restarting the war over
those forty two days. They hope, or Nathaniel was hoping that Trump might give him some benefit that will allow him to keep the coalition. For example, annexing West Bank settlements is something I've heard talk about, or attacking Iran, either allowing Israel to attack Iran, or even better for Nathaniel's perspective, attacking Iran himself using the US. So then if you get that, then you can say, well, I got these benefits in return for the ceasefire. I have
all these achievements. And also now as a matter of national security, we need to take out the Iranian nuclear program, so we need you to stay in the government. And so Smotrich and Nathaniel have been talking about those sorts of things. But Smothering has been under so much press sure from his own party and from his own like you said constituency that that that deal is being frayed. So that has been saying for a long time that he will be able to restart the war after the
first phase. But that's not what the deal said. The deals is completely different. The deal says that there will be negotiations for a second phase and that it will be reached and that's guaranteed by the mediator, which includes the United States. So he's this game that he's been trying to play right now, he's kind of being forced by public opinion on the right to make a choice,
and that that's where he is right now. If he comes out and says there's not going to be a second phase and we're going to restart the war, then there's really no reason for Hamas to agree to anything. And Hamas also is pausing, you know, problems now with how how heavy the highest heavy hitting prisoners are going to be, how many people they've killed, how well known they are, And Hamas is also going to play all sorts of games during the ceasefire. And that's why that
is going to have a pretext. If you want to say Hamas have broken the ceasefire, Hamas are demanding too much and and restart. So really at this point Thatandel is going to have to choose does he want the wrath of Trump or does he want his coalition to to collapse most which is putting him in that position. And that's why we're starting to see Nathaniel start to backtrack from the deal. Yeah, that's why we're we haven't seen anthanielle come out and say we've reached the deal. I'm happy that.
Let me actually jump in on that, because that is the latest reporting his office put on a state saying Hamas's renegging on the understandings and creating a last minute crisis that is preventing an agreement, so giving himself a pretext to potentially back out of the deal and lay the blame at the feet of Hamas. There's also the Jerusalem Post reporting that he's sort of playing fast and
loose with some of the terms of the deal. So he's saying, contrary to misleading reports, Israel's not withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor. Israel will remain in Phase A of the quarter for the entire.
Forty two day period.
That's different from the terms of the deal as has been publicly reported. In addition, he's saying no end to the war until Hamas agrees to Israel quote achieving the wars objectives of destroying Hamas as a militant group, disarming Gaza, and deposing the local government. There's very small likelihood Hamas would agree to a deal that includes requirements of their own destruction. So, you know, do you think that this deal even ultimately goes forward?
What do you make of this.
Last minute squeamishness and the fact, as you said, that Phoebe himself has not come out and said.
Hey, congratulations, there we have a deal. We're moving forward with us.
Yeah. So did the real problem here separating the normal shall we say, Middle Eastern last minute negotiation tactics which are always like this, and the coalition crisis in Israel. It's very hard to separate those two. There's a certain amount of brinkmanship that goes into the last minute of any hostage deal that looks a lot like what we're seeing now. And then there's also the internal political squabbling that has actually prevented previous deals, and to some extent,
they also serve each other. The internal tensions also allow Israel to demand more and get it in the last minute from Hamas, So there's a little bit of that going on. But also it's important to note that Daniel is not exactly lying in what he's saying. What he's doing is what is he's trying to pretend that there's no phase two. In Phase one, Israel does remain in the Philadelphia carridor in phase two, it's it removes itself
from there. So what he's saying is he's pretending that only Phase one exists and Phase one doesn't, which also serves him in his negotiations with with Smooth Rich, who says that he's willing to stay through phase one. So there's a there's some improvisation here and and pretense. And as for destruction of Hummaus, that's not in the agreement, as you noted, no ordering to agree to destroy themselves. And that's a game that he played last time when he scuttled it as well, he said you know that
he's not going to stop until Hamas is destroyed. So it's very hard to separate between the two. So as for will the deal go forward, my guess is yes. I would have been much more optimistic yesterday. I think that it's a little bit out of his hands. I think that once everyone's announced it, once the sides of agreed, once Trump has put his prestige into it, if he
breaks it, the price will be quite high. His best chance for re election might be to stay with Trump, stay with this deal, get as much as he can from Trump improvised through the first stage, and hope that he can either get Hamas to break it in a way that can convince Trump, or that Trump will offer him enough so that he can come and say to
the public, look at all that I achieved. And it's important to note that both Ben Clear and Smotage are saying we're leaving the government, but we're not going to vote to topple it. And at the opposition, the left wing opposition or you know, such as it is, centrist whatever, yeah, are saying that they will provide a safety net for Nathanielle. So even if Ben Gear and smothers to leave the government, the government's not going to fall, at least not yet.
They have a minority government, which is very weird in Israel, but it's possible. And then if he gets enough, he might be able to get someone else to come in and get a majority again. So if I was him facing these two things, I would take the deal and try to get as much from Trump and then try to re establish my coalition with other parties or bring ben Gira Smotriz back in. And I'm guessing that's what he's going to do. And so he's gonna try to get as many concessions as he can. Go to the deal,
stay in the government. They'll survive because no one's going to topple him in the meantime because he has a safety net, and then he'll improvise and find a way to survive. Nathaniel always finds a way to survive.
Yeah, yeah, that's a fair bet. Generally, thank you so much. It's always so useful to have your analysis.
We appreciate you, Johns, appreciate you man.
Thank you anytime, have a onon full bit.