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00:00Let's go to London, an academic and international negotiator, Nomi Bar-Yakob.
00:04Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:08Thank you very much, Francois, for having me on your show.
00:10How precarious is it at this point?
00:13It's not yet signed.
00:15No, it's not yet signed.
00:18And there's tremendous anxiety among the hostage families and all those who are sick and tired
00:28of the war and the inhumanity of it all, and would like a deal, basically.
00:37Until it's signed, until it's approved, until Sunday comes, so much can happen.
00:44But I think it will happen, and the only reason that this time it will happen is because the
00:50U.S. has decided, or the incoming U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump, has decided to exercise the
00:57necessary leverage over Benjamin Netanyahu.
01:00And I think he'll continue to exercise that leverage.
01:03And that's why I think the deal will happen.
01:06Why did he weigh in?
01:10I think he's interested in the Saudi deal.
01:14He's interested in money.
01:16He's interested in a one-upmanship against President Barack Obama, who he feels received
01:24the Nobel Peace Prize and shouldn't have done.
01:28And many people feel that way.
01:29It was basically more rhetoric than action.
01:32And I think he would like to ensure that he will, that's his goal, receive a Nobel Peace
01:38Prize.
01:39And that's the drive, that and the Saudi deal.
01:41He doesn't want the U.S. involved in wars.
01:44That's what he said.
01:45He would like the economic deals to thrive, and that's what needs to happen.
01:53So it's not just the ceasefire.
01:55One needs to pave a very, very clear, crystal clear road with a very clear timeline to Palestinian
02:03statehood, to stability.
02:04Yes, go ahead.
02:05So I was going to ask, our correspondent Noga Tarnapovsky reporting that far-right coalition
02:12partners of Benjamin Netanyahu stating that, well, we'll sign on to the deal because we
02:18know Netanyahu's okay with phase one, with the initial exchanges, but that the war will
02:25continue and that we won't go to a permanent ceasefire in the end.
02:29How will the incoming Trump administration receive it if that is the actual plan?
02:35Well, it's a very, very difficult question.
02:37It's an excellent question.
02:38And in fact, the cabinet, the security cabinet is planning to vote, as Noga said correctly,
02:44only on the first phase.
02:46But again, it all depends on whether President-elect Trump will continue to force Netanyahu's hand,
02:55and I think he will.
02:56And I think that the right-wing coalition members-
02:59So just to be clear, he'll make him go to phase two and phase three?
03:03He will make him go to phase two and three, but it may take longer than the 42 days to
03:09move from phase one.
03:10Phase one may end up taking a very, very long time.
03:14It's currently drips and drabs, three or four hostages to be released once a week,
03:20with close to half, 14 on the last day or the last week, you know, sort of that six
03:27weeks.
03:28That's an awfully long time.
03:29An awful lot can go wrong in six weeks.
03:31So an awful lot can go wrong, as you can see, every hour.
03:35So it's a very, very fragile, complicated agreement, and it will depend on the will
03:42of the parties, principally, and on the monitoring, compliance, and verification mechanism that
03:50the three sponsors and the three mediators, who are also the guarantors, namely Qatar
03:57and Egypt and the U.S., have set up.
04:00And that has already been agreed, and they will be based in Egypt, and they will deal
04:04with every minor or major complaint of a ceasefire violation, because we are expecting many of
04:11those.
04:12And this is essentially the same deal that was floated back in the spring.
04:16What did you think of it then?
04:17What do you think of it now?
04:19I think that all the hostages should have been released in one day a very long time
04:23ago for an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners.
04:26I think Israel and Hamas have fought, and Israel and other militant Palestinian groups
04:31for a very, very, very long time, and they know what the deal is.
04:37And, you know, the Gilad Shalit deal could have been agreed years, many years, at least
04:45three years earlier than it was.
04:46Again, it was Prime Minister Netanyahu in office, and he knew what the deal was.
04:51And the same goes for this deal.
04:53The U.S. administration failed drastically to force the deal on Netanyahu, costing a
05:01huge toll of lives, mainly the Gazans.
05:07At least 10,000 have been killed that we know of.
05:10We don't know about those under the rubble.
05:12And of course, also many, many hostages have perished since.
05:18So I think, yes, it's a tremendous failure.
05:21It's the same deal.
05:23It's not a great deal, but it's the deal that we have on the table and has to be implemented.
05:28There were other deals, much simpler deals, much easier to implement on the table.
05:33But when you have such a fanatic right-wing government in Israel that is interested in
05:39continuing the war and settling Gaza, it makes things very complicated.
05:43Stay with us, Nomi.
05:44We're going to listen to the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who spoke just moments
05:50ago.
05:51Yes, I am confident and I fully expect that implementation will begin.
05:57As we said on Sunday, look, it's not exactly surprising that in a process, in a negotiation
06:06that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end.
06:13We're tying up that loose end as we speak.
06:16We're with Nomi Bar-Yakov in London, and we're joined now from Washington by Khaled El-Jindi,
06:21adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
06:24Thank you for speaking with us.
06:29Thanks for having me.
06:30Your reaction to the delay and to the words of reassurance that you just heard?
06:33Yeah.
06:34I mean, I'm not surprised by the delay.
06:39I think we've known for some time that Netanyahu and his coalition have been the primary obstacle
06:45to getting a ceasefire deal.
06:48I think as we heard from the other guests, this is a government that needs a kind of
06:55open-ended war.
06:57Netanyahu personally needs an open-ended war in Gaza for him to remain in power.
07:01His coalition partners have threatened to leave.
07:04If there is a ceasefire, they boasted about blocking previous deals.
07:10If Netanyahu can get the best of both worlds, and that is implementation of the first phase,
07:17or most of it at least, at least as far as the release of Israeli hostages, and then
07:23be able to go back to continue the war, that's clearly his preference.
07:28I'm maybe a little bit less sanguine about whether a Trump administration is going to
07:35force Netanyahu's hand and compel him to move forward with phases two and three.
07:44I think they're going to face a lot of domestic opposition here in the United States from
07:49Congress, from a very staunchly Republican Congress, not to put any pressure on Israel
07:59at all.
08:02I think it's going to be very, very difficult to get through phase one.
08:09There's some Palestinians who worry aloud, Khaled, that another scenario could be that
08:16far-right coalition partners go along with the plan in its entirety in exchange for stepped
08:23up operations in the West Bank.
08:25Some even talk about annexation of the West Bank.
08:28Is that unrealistic?
08:31Would that be beyond, is that too far a stretch?
08:36I don't think that's a stretch.
08:37I think if there is any possibility of getting them on board for implementation of the full
08:44agreement in Gaza, it will probably be in return for something like that, something
08:50like guarantees that they will have a free hand in the West Bank.
08:54They already have quite a lot of power and authority to dictate terms in the West Bank
09:02now.
09:03If they can get a Trump administration to sign off on their annexation plans, even better.
09:12That could end up being the price for Gaza in return for the West Bank.
09:18That would not be, I think, beyond the realm of possibility.
09:24But then Trump doesn't get his deal where the Saudis normalize ties with Israel.
09:31Right.
09:32I think that's the one constraint.
09:35That's the one sweetener, as it were, for Trump.
09:41Trump doesn't particularly care about Palestinians or their rights or their statehood.
09:46He has members of his incoming administration who openly reject even the idea that Palestinians
09:52are a people.
09:56The one thing that could convince him and entice him to move forward on Palestinian
10:01statehood would be the prospect of Saudi normalization.
10:05But I think he has to go through this process.
10:10I think that that may be the end game, but we might still see in the interim some kind
10:17of deal struck where, OK, we'll we'll relent on the Gaza ceasefire if you give us annexation
10:24in the West Bank.
10:25And then the Trump administration will fight that battle later on if and when the Saudi
10:31normalization prospect becomes viable.
10:35Nomi Bar-Yakob, four days out from inauguration in Washington.
10:41Many past U.S. presidents have tried their hand at trying to broker Middle East peace
10:46and failed.
10:49Is Donald Trump sleepwalking into such an endeavor?
10:54Well, you know, I believe, you know, I mean, obviously the stars need to be aligned, but
11:00he does stand a chance of getting there because the Middle East is craving stability.
11:06You know, Hezbollah's virtually gone.
11:09The new president and the new prime minister in Lebanon have, you know, been elected on
11:14a ticket that the military wing of Hezbollah will be wiped out and all the arms will only
11:19be held by the governments, you know, the Lebanese armed forces.
11:23There is a new interim government in Syria and a lot of international effort to ensure
11:32that it will be obviously locally led, Syrian led.
11:38And there is no room, you know, there really is absolutely no room for the spoilers.
11:45The Saudis will do anything to ensure stability.
11:49They have even called for the first time this week what's happening in Gaza genocide
11:53officially.
11:54And the Saudis know, you know, I don't know how much they care or not about the Palestinians,
12:00but they know that a Palestinian state cannot be in Gaza.
12:03So that's completely mad.
12:06So it's not going to be easy.
12:08But Trump basically listens to some people.
12:14He changes his mind.
12:16I do think he very much listens to the Saudis.
12:19And I think the Saudis are in a good position to influence him.
12:23And he does want this deal.
12:25And there is no way that he can annex, that he can allow Israel to annex the West Bank
12:29in the same way that he allowed Israel to annex the Golan Heights and the embassy to
12:33East and East Jerusalem, that he allowed the annexation, you know, that the U.S. approved
12:38of the annexation.
12:39The West Bank is occupied territory under international law.
12:43There is no controversy about that.
12:45And it shouldn't be, you know, annexed to Israel.
12:50And the U.S. shouldn't allow for that to happen.
12:53And I think, you know, with the Saudis where they are, the Qataris where they are, I don't
12:58think that President Trump will allow that.
13:02It is very much, as Khaled said, what the extreme right-wing government is aiming for.
13:08They were also aiming to settle Gaza and Lebanon.
13:11You know, they have no limits.
13:14And it's, of course, what they're saying now.
13:16But I would be very, very surprised if he will allow for that to happen.
13:21I think that, as I said earlier, that the Nobel Peace Prize is calling, stability is
13:26calling.
13:27The deals, the economic deals are there.
13:29And he would like his legacy to be a clean one, one that, and there is no better way
13:35than stabilize the Middle East with, of course, ramifications for stabilizing the world.
13:40We're watching live images, by the way, from Tel Aviv there, protesters of hostages, families.
13:46It's been a day of demonstrations in Israel.
13:49Those who are against the deal from the far right and those that are, as you can see with
13:53these images, are for it.
13:56The past playbook, Khaled El-Jindi, has been that after war in Gaza, it was generally the
14:03Qataris who financed reconstruction.
14:07How's it going to work this time?
14:11I mean, it will certainly take more than the Qataris to finance the reconstruction in Gaza.
14:17It's a really massive endeavor.
14:19I mean, it's almost impossible to estimate what is required.
14:27There are reports that it would take eight to 10 years just to clear the rubble.
14:32So it can only imagine that rebuilding Gaza will take a generation or more just to get
14:40it to a place that it was on October 6th of 2023.
14:48And so this will be a multinational effort.
14:52You definitely need resources from a very wide range of countries, the Qataris, the
14:58Gulf states, certainly the Saudis and others, but the broader international community at
15:04large, I think, will have to pitch in.
15:08That's assuming that all these different stakeholders can agree on what the immediate and
15:19medium term future of Gaza is in terms of governance, in terms of law and order and
15:25security, in terms of even delivering humanitarian assistance.
15:30All of these questions are unanswered.
15:34The Israelis have said they are planning to dismantle UNRWA, which is the most important
15:39humanitarian actor on the ground, at the very moment in which there is supposed to be a
15:46major surge in humanitarian aid.
15:48So who's going to deliver the aid is an unknown, in the same way that who's going to
15:54govern Gaza is an unknown.
15:56Israel has said we won't allow either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.
16:01You can't really, I don't think an international force running Gaza's day-to-day
16:10affairs is viable.
16:13And so all of these are open questions that there are no easy answers well before we get
16:20to the stage of the kind of massive reconstruction that Gaza will need.
16:24And in the interim, what is more likely to happen is that very large numbers of people
16:30will leave Gaza because these things are not clear, because Gaza's future, Gaza as a
16:38society, has essentially been destroyed.
16:40And that will compound the tragedy that we've seen.
16:47If Gaza is depopulated in part or in whole over the next 10 years, that will add a new
16:56chapter into what is already a hundred year conflict between Israel and Palestine, and
17:04that will destabilize the region for decades more.
17:08And for now, the first step towards getting that ceasefire agreement over the line and
17:15still waiting on Israel's cabinet to rubber stamp it.
17:20I want to thank you, Khaled El-Jindi, for joining us from Washington.
17:24Nomi Bar-Yakov in London.
17:27There's more, of course, on this breaking news story on our website, France24.com.
17:32Stay with us. Much more to come.