You know, you can take the man out of television, but you
cannot take television out of the man.
I mean, this is being celebrated as this gigantic peace deal, and
Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
The reality is, is much less dramatic than that.
When you look at what Netanyahu is saying publicly to the world
and what he's saying to Israelis.
And what he's saying to Israelis is that this is not over.
Is there just a complete lack of structure ready?
We see some sort of disturbing signs that this may end up
looking like a Western umbrella dictating to Palestinians what
they can do, what they can't do. Hello and welcome to this week's
edition of Trump World. I'm Matt Fry in London.
I'm Anish Gastana in Washington, DC, and what a delight to have
you back. Matt, did you have a nice
holiday? We ended up in Rome and that was
lovely. Yeah, you're back.
So it's all good. So, so just, you know, I mean,
you have covered the Middle East for again, I don't want to age
you, but decades living in Israel back in 1989 when I was
at school, just like historical context.
And and, you know, I was speaking to a former negotiator
a few weeks ago who made this argument that they felt the
closest the two sides had ever been was 2000 and the gap was
still at the time a Grand Canyon.
Putting this into a historical context, how do you see it?
Well, I think in some ways there are good things and bad things.
The good thing is that Donald Trump has used American power in
a way that even Bill Clinton didn't use American power when
he managed to get the Osler Accords signed by Yasser Arafat
for the PLO for the Palestinians and Yitzhak Rabin for the
Israelis. So he was, you know, he played
the role of the kind of honest broker in the middle.
There was a, you know, there was a proper peace plan, which of
course ended up in dust a few years later, partly because
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. But also, you know, the, the
process ran out of steam and, and, and the, the White House
didn't give it the right amount of tension it should have done
because it was just distracted by other things like Monica
Lewinsky, like the wars in in the former Yugoslavia to give
that process its full attention. And so on the destruction front,
you know, that's probably bad news for Donald Trump because he
will lose interest in this, I suspect, quite quickly.
Where it was fascinating was to see Trump intervene in a very
personal way because everything is personal for him, just as he
says. I'm I'm upset with Russia, not
because they've invaded a country, but because Vladimir
Putin has let me down. He promised things that he
didn't deliver in the same way Netanyahu let Trump down when he
bombed Qatar. Trump's best mates in the Middle
East who were going to give him a shiny plane one day.
And even without checking with Trump and Trump, if he had
checked, Trump would have said, you've got to be kidding, you're
not going to do that. And and so it is personal.
And Trump clearly got to a stage, many would say very late
because he was at that stage, remember, back in February.
And then he allowed the Israelis to break the ceasefire.
But he got to that stage where he said, right, enough is
enough. The fighting's got to stop.
We've got that Nobel deadline on the 10th of October, which by
the way, I think was crucial in his own mind, let's get this
wrapped up. He always thought about the
second anniversary of October, the 7th.
And then, you know, it happened around about then in those days,
too late for the Nobel committee.
But in in his own mind, that was important.
And I think and so historically, no, listen, we've had this,
this, this Arab Israeli confident been going on since
1948. Some would say it started
earlier with the Balfour declaration and all that.
Donald Trump says thousands of years.
Thousands of years. OK, you want to you want to talk
Bible? We can talk Bible.
You know, I talked to Mike Huckabee, his ambassador in in
Israel the other day. And I said, Mr. Huckabee, isn't
it weird that you're using the Old Testament, you know, as a
guide for, you know, how to solve geopolitical issues today?
And Mike Huckabee said not at all.
It's all about the Old Testament anyway.
That's by the by. The point is that in the past
when there were serious efforts at peace in the Middle East
which have all failed, right? They have all consumed months
and months of negotiations. There were processes in place.
They've all failed because either the Israelis, often the
Israelis or the Palestinians didn't didn't do what it said on
the Tim and I and you know, but at least in those days, you had
a kind of honest dish broke in the middle.
I mean, with a biggish to be honest, right, because the
Israelis are always going to be able to rely on America in the
way that the Palestinians can't. But even the Oslo Accords, which
were greeted with the same kind of fanfare that we saw in
Jerusalem and in Sham Al Sheikh this week, they ended up nowhere
because the the process wasn't solid enough.
It wasn't kept honest enough. The Palestinians didn't do
enough on their side and the Israelis didn't give them enough
rope in order to establish a degree of self determination,
and the Americans didn't enforce it.
None of those things exist now as well, so I don't see this
ending anywhere in a happy place I'm afraid.
It's interesting you make that comparison because in a way that
was even more of a moment because we actually had that
famous picture of the three of them together, Rabin and Arafat
together. You kind of can't really imagine
now, despite what is a huge breakthrough.
And I think the credit to Donald Trump is, however similar this
might be to former plans. He actually forced Netanyahu to
sign up to it. But you can't imagine a
situation now where we've got Netanyahu and Abbas together.
Well, well, hang on. He didn't turn up.
Netanyahu did not turn up to Sharm El Sheikh, right, because
and that was so important. His absence was so glaring and
so important because he had Trump all to himself.
Trump went to the Knesset. He's met the hostage families.
He did an Israeli version of Trump world of the Trump show
and it was great for Israel and they and there was all this, you
know, joking and riffing going on.
He pointed to the Israeli president.
Why didn't you give this guy, as in Netanyahu, A pardon?
Perhaps not understanding how the Israeli system words.
But they gave him a standing ovation as well.
So the most extraordinary thing, Donald Trump, like cigars,
champagne, who cares? It's like he's accused
Netanyahu, and of course he denies it, of, you know, taking
$200,000 worth of gifts and of lightning regulation for a media
company in return for good coverage.
But yeah, I found that moment extraordinary as well.
But but to get back to this, to the glaring absence of
Netanyahu, if Netanyahu doesn't bother to show up in Sharm El
Sheikh for the summit to which everyone has shown up, everyone
was there except for the guy you really need to be there.
Who needs to be seen to be shaking Mahmoud Abbas's hand,
however frail that hand is, however much he dislikes it.
That has to happen. And it didn't happen.
And it will never happen because he has very clear that Abbas
can't have a role in this if if Israel's going to sign up to it.
But then who? Who does, right?
So Mahwan Barghouti is stuck in jail.
You know, they're not going to let him out.
They haven't released him. And then, you know, he's often
called the Nelson Mandela of this process.
Well, they're not going to release him.
And the question I constantly have in my mind.
And I was extremely happy that the despite not being there,
that the hostages were released and then there was a ceasefire,
you know, of a sort, and that people were going back to their
their houses. You have no prospect of any kind
of future, let alone a state. Where's the job going to come
from? 93% of agricultural land in Gaza
has been destroyed. It will take a long time to get
that back up and running, let alone rebuilding all these
homes. I mean, the amount of anger and
rage and vengefulness against Israel, but also against Hamas
and how they will respond to it. They're still armed.
They're not going to go up their arms anytime soon.
It really looks like the opposite.
But think of the think of the emotion that will be, you know,
at the moment it's all about, you know, we've survived, right?
We've survived 2 years. We're still living.
We still have a pulse. Let's go back to where we came
from. The minute you have the time to
reflect on what's actually gone down and who's responsible for
it, you are, you're going to build up so many layers of
resentment that you need the biggest and the best trust
building machine on the planet. And I didn't see anything like
that kit anywhere on the horizon.
There are a couple of things I think we can be very positive
about which we could just come to.
But I just can we just pause on the actual scenes in Egypt with
Donald Trump at the podium and all the world leaders desperate
to be there. I, I really wished as I was
watching it that he could have had like, you know, a mind read
of what Keir Starmer and Georgia Maloney were thinking because
they got their coveted spaces right behind him.
And I thought Starmer looked so uncomfortable folding his arms,
kind of going 0. It's so medieval, it's so
monarchical, the way that they all come up and kiss his wing.
They're summoned up individually.
He wasn't even in in Washington. He was in Sham Al Sheikh, for
goodness sake, you know, in someone else's country.
And he got the great, you know, the great award, the, the order
of of the Nile. Then he got the some Israeli
award as well. I mean, he is.
He is the most garlanded president ever in the history of
peacemaking, which we know is thousands of years.
And he was telling off Norway at one point because he's so upset
about the Nobel Peace Prize. And to be fair, there is
precedent in 2009 of Obama winning it based on what had
happened in 2009, not 2008. Of course.
I mean, if it really is this big kind of motivator for him, I
suppose the fact that it's still on the table potentially for
next year is a good thing if that's really what the, you
know, aim of it is. I was speaking to someone on the
Qatari side yesterday. He was basically arguing it's
not really about the Nobel Peace Prize.
It's about him wanting to show that he's a deal maker around
the world. I, I, I, which I think can have
some problems for him here in the US because although
obviously it was a huge story and it was, you know, all over
the newspapers and the TV stations already today, you can
see that it is not the priority for people in America.
And how is he going to play this with also being an America first
president? I mean, the bit I think that is
the most hopeful, I guess from all of this is that America has
always been very one sided in the Middle East.
And I think still is absolutely. You could see in that Knesset
speech, Israel's ally first and foremost.
But Donald Trump feels really quite passionately about the
relationships he's built with Arab countries.
I suspect it's a lot to do with the amount of money that can be
made from all of this. But nevertheless, you know,
listening to him say to reporters about the Qataris,
like they said, you know, in 2017, you accused him of funding
terrorism. And he said, oh, yeah, I just
didn't know them then. Didn't know them very well then.
Well, you know, I've people. Change in Rushka, people change
they evolved, they develop, you know but he's.
Well signed an executive order which is almost feels like an
Article 5 for Qatar. If Qatar is attacked, that is
like an attack on American. Peace and exactly and if
especially if anyone attacks a new jumbo jet that's being built
somewhere on a Qatari air base, they deserve the worst kind of
punishment. I mean, the again, you like a
lot of Trump stuff. You can't really make it up.
You really can't make it up. But I think what's so
fascinating about this Shama Sheikh moment is also that, you
know, and and thank God, our podcast is called Trump World
because it really is, you know, whether you are, you know,
Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian, none of these people
like Trump anymore. Particularly.
It is how he channels presidential power, his
interpretation of presidential power from America.
And it makes all these other people who were there to kiss
his ring like sort of, you know, extras in another version of The
Apprentice. It is, you know, you can take
the man out of television, but you cannot take television out
of the man. And I think again, you know, the
best thing we can do is weaponize his vanity for the
next Nobel Prize. Honestly, I think if, if I was
the Nobel Committee, I would, you know, I would talk to the
Saudis and I would talk to the Qataris and I would talk to the
Israelis as well and, and whoever you can talk to on the
Palestinian side. So can we just ring up Donald
Trump every week, let's say Thursday, 10:00 in the morning
when he's having his second cup of hot chocolate or whatever he
drinks, and just remind him that that prize is so his prize.
If you could only do the following five things because
weaponizing his vanity. And that's what it is.
You know, all narcissism and I've experienced it, you know,
first hand is literally the best hope that we have of peace in
the Middle East or peace in Ukraine.
And if that's what it takes, go for it.
Yeah, because in the end it's worth it.
Although I was thinking if there was to be a Nobel Peace Prize,
I, I feel a bit sorry for these mediator countries which have
played such a critical role. Could it be joint with them
maybe? Oh yeah, I did.
Trump doesn't. Are you kidding me?
Trump doing joint, you know, you've got to be no, no, no, no,
they've got to get little. Maybe there can be mini prize or
like, you know, he he invented the meme coin for in, you know,
in his own family's name. There's his meme coin and
there's Milania's meme coin and the kids have got a meme coin.
Maybe there can be a meme coin. There's sort of mini, a mini
Nobel meme coin or mini Nobel Prize, like a tiny, tiny little
one that they get because he might just about stomach that.
But I think anything that that queers his Nobel pitch, as it
were, would be a really, really bad idea.
And of course, what's so interesting is that he's now got
Zelensky coming to and a team of Ukrainian negotiators coming to
the White House. And you'll be there on Friday.
And, and maybe he thinks the way that Blair once did after the
Good Friday Agreement, that he can sort of, you know, ride the
wave of peace all the way to Ukraine.
I mean, it'll be so interesting to see whether that will
persuade him to give the Ukrainians what they really want
from the Americans, which is the permission to buy, buy, not be
given Tomahawk long range missiles, 1500 mile range.
That could take out not just bits in Moscow, but also targets
well beyond that in the Urals. That would be a really big deal
for Ukraine. And it's comes at a moment when
Russia is feeling apparently a little bit more vulnerable than
it did because that Donald Trump love moment, love bombing moment
in Alaska did not go as well as they thought they it did.
So let's see whether Trump can ride this wave and and weaponize
his vanity in other useful ways. The difference, though, of
course, is Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have totally
differing relationships with Donald Trump, and America's
influence over Russia isn't the same as it is over Israel.
So it's quite a different thing. Can I just ask you one thing?
You mentioned the Balkans when we were talking earlier in your
time there, and I know that you were in Sarajevo when a lot of
the stuff you were talking about was happening.
And one of the big things there is what happens next.
Once you've got an agreement, what do you need?
And are there any signs of some of the practical things you need
this time round? So sorry, it was really
interesting and I'm glad you brought it up because that was a
conflict, you know, the, the ex Yugoslavia was falling apart.
The Serbs who were the dominant power in the in the kind of, you
know, super former Yugoslavia basically decided to protect
Serbian minorities wherever they existed, which meant that, you
know, Bosnian independence OR Croatian independence within the
borders as defined, you know, in the former Yugoslavia was a
problem because there were always these Serb minorities
living in these countries, these fledgling countries.
And the Serbs used that as an excuse.
You know, our minority of Serbs is under fire in order to
basically either carve away at those new countries, you know,
or, you know, or try and dominate them.
And in the case of Bosnia, America wasn't really interested
in fact. PJ O'Rourke, the, you know,
right wing pop, you know, very abrasive, very funny, author
said. It's like the unspellables
versus the unpronounceables, you know, in other words, this is
foreign stuff. It's happening on Europe's
doorstep. They should deal with it a
little bit. Hints of Ukraine there, the kind
of language used today about Ukraine.
Let them sort it out, except that Europe couldn't sort it
out. The EU was useless at sorting it
out. And so America finally got
involved and actually it was Tony Blair when he became Prime
Minister, who really held as soon as he became Prime
Minister, Bill Clinton's feet to the fire on a related issue in
Kosovo to say you've got to put American brutes on the ground.
You've got to get involved with air strikes.
You've got to tell the Serbs that they cannot carry on
messing around that in the way that they did.
And then at the end of this process, which did involve
American military intervention, there was a so-called Dayton
process. So at the Dayton Accords in
Dayton, OH, now I know you'll be going to Ohio, but you may not
be anymore because it's not as much of A swing state as it used
to be. I've been there 26 times.
Dayton, OH, boring town. It has a military air base on
it, right or near it. And that's where Richard
Holbrooke, who was the assistant Secretary of State under
Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, and Bill
Clinton. And he basically was in charge
of this process, which involved getting all the different
parties from the wars, the crowds, the Serbs, the Bosniaks
all into this air base. They all got the same crappy
accommodation. And and apparently I talked to
someone, you know, who was there at the time helping to organize
it. He said we spent a lot of time
basically, you know, persuading them that their rooms were just
as bad as the other parties rooms.
You know, no one got a better deal.
The Serbs weren't living in five star luxury while they all the
others were in two star luxury. It was all one star across the
board. And they all had to eat in a
canteen together. And, and Holbrook, it was almost
like a sort of conclave of old way.
He said, we are. You're going to make an
agreement here. Here's the outline.
Here's the plan. We're going to help enforce it.
But you've got to come up with this agreement.
And if you don't, you know, I'm going to take away your lunch
and your dinner and you'll be stuck in this miserable place
for even longer. And, and they did it.
It took a couple of weeks, but they've sorted it out.
There was the date and accords. And although, you know, people
have tried to chip away at them and things in Bosnia look a bit
shaky these days, and Serbia is, yeah, also in in a pretty bad
place. That was 30 years ago, roughly.
And it's held that long. And in the Balkans, you know,
that's something you can take to the bank.
So I think it needs, again, it needs a process.
It needs for America to enforce it as a as an honest broker,
which the obviously the Palestinians at the moment don't
really think it is. And it needs, you know, for the
all the sides to eyeball each other at some stage.
I mean, you can go to their respective barracks and hotel
rooms and say we've got this and we've got that.
And that's what the Qataris have been doing brilliantly for
years. But at some stage, Netanyahu,
whoever replaces him, has to look whichever Palestinian is
the interlocutor on the other side, eyeball to eyeball, shake
on it, sign a piece of paper and know that the Americans, maybe
with the UN, maybe not, are there to enforce it.
And and I guess, Matt, that's the next big question.
What happens now? Does phase two actually happen?
Is Donald Trump interested in it?
Which I think is the perfect time to bring in our guest.
I'm very happy to introduce our guest for this edition of
Trumbold, Jasmine Elgamal. She's a veteran of the
Department of Defence in the US. She's worked for three
Secretaries of Defence as a Middle East analyst.
She knows all about how the process of what you do, you
know, when you end a war. And therefore she's the perfect
person to talk to us about Gaza, but also what the what the
process is, what the formalities are, what the legalities might
be. And I'm very happy to say that
she's got her own podcast called The View from here.
Jasmine, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me.
There's a lot to unpack here. And of course, you know, the
world is still high on the kind of the, on the sugar high of,
of, of the ceasefire, which is kind of holding, although
there've been some very alarming developments there.
The release of the hostages, they're all out now.
The mood in Israel was extraordinarily euphoric, as we
kept seeing on television. But it was also whether in
Israel or indeed in Sham Al Sheikh at the summit, it was all
about Donald J Trump. This was the Trump Show, was it
not? It really was.
And you know what, for once, it was deserved.
It was well deserved because we have known for such a long time.
And Matt, I remember talking to you, you know, throughout the
the last two years on on the news channel and talking about
the various, you know, stages of the war and, and how it can be
stopped and who can stop Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And for most of the time, our conversations were happening
under the Biden administration. And the big question that
everyone had on their minds was, what leverage does the US have
to shape the Israeli response in Gaza?
And why aren't they using that leverage?
And so we have always known that this war would be shaped and
eventually ended with US pressure.
That was the only way it was going to stop because that's the
only country that the Israeli Prime Minister would listen to
and the only country that had power over the Israeli Prime
Minister, Right. the US is the largest supplier of weapons to
the US. It protects Israel on the
international stage with using the US veto in the UN Security
Council when necessary. All different kinds of things.
And So what we saw throughout the Biden administration was a
reluctance to use that powerful American leverage.
And that was a very personal choice by President Biden.
I have spoken to so many of my former colleagues in the US
government and the the wall to wall consensus is that this was
Biden's decision every single time.
So when it came to, when it came, when Donald Trump came in
and he made it clear that he wanted to come in and end these
wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, he put on that pressure.
We saw a ceasefire in January. It fell through.
When they started negotiating the second phase of that
ceasefire, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, I don't want to
go into phase two. I I want to change the terms.
President Trump lost energy and focus for a while, and then he
came back after Israel overstepped by trying to
assassinate the Hamas negotiators in Qatar.
He came back with a vengeance, with the full force of US
pressure and made this ceasefire happen.
So he does give the credit for that.
He does and the way you're saying it, but it just leads me
to the question, why? Why did Joe Biden not use that
leverage? Did you get a sense of the
motivation that was holding him back?
He was under a lot of pressure from within his own party by the
end. Yes, and the American public as
as well, which over the last two years have really increasingly
leaned towards an end to the war, a rethinking of US support
for Israel and how unconditional it is and wanting to look into
that. And, and so he had.
He had what he needed to be able to make those decisions.
By all accounts, everyone that I've spoken to, and this is also
in the public and you've seen former officials and, and, and
DC based reporters write about this.
It was just, it was a personal love for Israel and not wanting
to be seen as betraying Israel. And what he saw was it's time of
need. But it also was a personal
slight to Donald Trump, the bombing of Qatar to try and take
out the Hamas negotiators, you know, bombing the country that
was going to give Trump his shiny new plane where America
has its most important military base in the Middle East.
You know, these are the guys that Trump really likes and gets
on with and then suddenly get bombed.
And they didn't really check properly with Trump whether they
were allowed to do so. There was quite a lot of
fuzziness around that. But I think for Trump, that was
a an absolute game changer. And he then famously, of course,
made Netanyahu ring them up on a sort of old style phone and
apologised to the emir personally.
And he did this in the Oval Office.
It was photographed by the White House photographers.
They, they put the the picture out there.
And for for Netanyahu, that would have been a moment of
humiliation. Now, the question is those how
do you convert this very personal style of politics where
it's all about who kisses the ring and who doesn't into a
process that allows you to disarm Hamas, make sure the
Israelis would draw behind a certain line, help rebuild Gaza,
most importantly, help rebuild trust.
Have, I don't know, some truth and reconciliation committee
about all the horrible stuff that's gone down.
Trump alone cannot do that. And Trump may not want to do
that. And surely Jasmine, that's a
problem. I mean, that's the $1,000,000
question right now, isn't it? I mean, this is being celebrated
as this gigantic peace deal and, you know, the worst is over and
Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and all of that stuff and,
and all of those things. And the, the, the, you know, the
reality is, is much less dramatic than that.
It's about details, it's about process.
It's about what happens next and who is going to show up to start
implementing the deal. And there are a lot of
challenges ahead. I, I can talk about a couple
that in my mind are the most worrying in terms of if we don't
get this right, we could see a return to conflict. 1 is that
Prime Minister Netanyahu obviously unwill unwillingly
signed, you know, this ceasefire deal.
He had been under a lot of pressure from his fellow sort of
his, the extreme right wing portion of his cabinet, which
represents that side of Israeli society.
Ben Gavir and Smotrich, we both know those names, the security
minister and the finance minister, and they had been
pressuring him for months and months not to sign any deal that
would involve a permanent end to conflict.
And that was one of the reasons that the ceasefire fell through
in January is because once the initial phase was done and the
exchange of hot those that first batch of hostages was released,
Netanyahu didn't want to commit to ending the war.
He wanted to be able to go back. The problem with that is, is, is
that there are different visions that are being discussed in
Israel and, and the differences between what the Israelis are
saying to the English speaking public to the world, and what
they're saying inside their own country domestically in their
own language. And you can see the difference
in those two tones when you look at what Netanyahu is saying
publicly to the world and what he's saying to Israelis.
And what he's saying to Israelis is that this is not over, that
he knows that there are still people who want to destroy
Israel, that he's going to be keeping an eye on it and that
he's going to go in again if he needs to.
And all you need to do is look at the ceasefire that was signed
in Lebanon, which has been violated nearly every day since
it's been signed. So this idea that Israel wants
to continue to go into Gaza at will whenever it sees a need is
a big loophole that was in that ceasefire agreement and and has
the potential to derail that process altogether.
The other big one, of course, is what you mentioned, Matt, about
Hamas's disarmament. And there have already been
discussions that have started about what that process could
look like, who Hamas would turn their weapons over to if they
did turn their weapons over to, whether that would be to a
Palestinian government authority, a Palestinian force,
whether those weapons would be held and frozen or, or whether
they will just keep their weapons.
So that's one of the big things that is still going to be worked
out I think over the next few months.
And the early signs on that are not particularly positive.
We've already seen what looks like public executions by Hamas.
It looks like they're trying to use their arms to make sure they
retain control over Gaza. And I thought it was really
extraordinary really, because when Donald Trump was asked
about that, I think by journalists on the plane on the
way home, said they do want to stop problems and they've been
open about it. And we gave them approval for a
period of time. Do you think, I mean, just
comparing it to like previous situations that you've been in,
Is there just a complete lack of structure ready to, I mean, not
that there's been great examples in the past either, but you
know, ready to actually make this happen.
There's definitely a lack of structure, and that's partly
because the Palestinians have been so divided for so long.
And I think there's there's an excellent article that I'd love
to recommend to your lead to your readers in in The New
Yorker that just came out by a Palestinian journalist called
Muhammad Mihawish. And it talks about the next
steps and that political process that needs to happen inside of
Gaza right now. And it really parses through the
different rivalries between Palestinian factions and
parties. It talks about the mistakes that
have been made since Oslo, since the Oslo peace agreement, and
why that was bad for Palestinian unity.
So it's a really fascinating piece that I would recommend to
anyone. And it just goes into how
complicated it's going to be to unify all of these different
factions and parties under one umbrella that will be able able
to govern Gaza. But that's only one part of it,
that internal part. The other part is how
controlling external forces are going to be and how much they
will actually allow Palestinians to try to do that hard work
internally and try to come up with a governing structure and
reconciliation and all those things that they have to do.
Right now. We see some sort of disturbing
signs that this may end up looking like a Western, you
know, umbrella dictating to Palestinians what they can do,
what they can't do, who will be appointed, who cannot be
appointed. You have this Board of peace
that's supposedly going to oversee this Palestinian
technocratic government, which is going to be headed by Donald
Trump, nominally, I'm sure he, I mean, he's not obviously going
to be involved in the day-to-day.
But they're talking about bringing in Tony Blair, which is
hugely distressing for a lot of Palestinians and a lot of Arabs
in general. Given Tony Blair's involvement
in the Iraq war, his history in the region, this sense that he
doesn't really understand the needs of the Palestinians and
won't be advocating for them either.
That this is just going to be some kind of really tightly
managed operation to try to exert as much value and benefit
that they can out of Palestinian reconstruction and and all other
kinds of stuff like that. And even The Who is going to be
part of the technocratic government.
There are worries that those names are not going to be names
that have any credibility inside of Palestine that that just
have, you know, good contacts in the West basically.
And of course all of those things play out in Iraq before
after the war and other post conflict environments in in the
in in the Arab world and and Africa and other places.
But also under Who's mandate? So, for instance, the idea that
you send Turkish or Qatari or Saudi peacekeepers into Gaza
when you've got Hamas reluctant to disarm, when you've got the
IDF, you know, constantly in the wings and they come across some
very difficult decisions and they have to decide whether to,
you know, shoot someone or not. On whose authority will they do
that? Will that be UN authority?
I mean, I think Trump has suggested that CENTCOM, you
know, the American military structure in the Middle East
would be in charge, which would be troubling for many people.
I mean, who are the honest brokers in this process, not
just militarily but also politically, and who do you
speak to on the Palestinian side?
Yeah, those were all such good questions, Matt.
I none of these questions were fully discussed and let alone
answered when this peace agreement was being signed.
I mean, we saw the declaration from Cairo several months ago
where all the Arab and and Muslim states got together and
issued the Cairo plan for what a post war Gaza would look like.
And it talked about all these things.
A lot of the elements of that plan ended up in Trump's plan,
by the way, the technocratic government dealing with issues
of Hamas's arms, all kinds of things.
And those are the details that are going to be hammered out
right now. I will tell you one thing, that
Hamas, just like there's never been this much pressure on the
Israelis before by the Americans, Hamas has also not
been under this kind of pressure before.
As it is right now. Everyone from Turkey to Egypt to
Qatar, they are all there making sure that this deal goes the way
it is supposed to go and that those questions are answered in
a way that doesn't bring us back to conflict.
The the players that were involved in this, you had the
top intelligence chiefs in Turkey and Egypt.
Those are traditionally the people who've had the closest
ties with Hamas over the years and had the closest
relationships with them and therefore the most leverage.
And so I would say that despite all my misgivings and my
concerns about the way forward, this is one of the best chances
that we've seen in a long, long time simply because of who's
involved, how closely involved they are and what leverage they
have over the two parties. But but the ultimate goal in
that plan is vaguely set out, but it is towards Palestinian
statehood. It's what Palestinians
ultimately want. And having listened to hours and
hours and hours now of Donald Trump talking about this,
because he talks about it at lot at length, he was doing it again
yesterday when he was meeting the Argentinian president,
talking about the eight wars he's ended.
Of course, it is really interesting to listen to him.
It's gone up. Yeah.
Because, you know, sometimes there's a very measured
response. You know, you mentioned Tony
Blair. I thought it was really
interesting how he basically said, yeah, I do need to check
that everyone's OK with Tony Blair.
And it obviously it had fed through to him that there might
be some misgivings about Tony Blair in the Middle East,
although, of course, Blair was still there.
But on the other hand, we get like the bombastic address to
the Knesset where he's, you know, trumpeting, moving the US
Embassy to Jerusalem, trumpeting giving, you know, recognizing
Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and so on.
And the thing that I've watched is that when he's asked about
statehood, Palestinian statehood, despite the fact that
it's there written into the plan, he vaguely with a lot of
caveats. He he said, someone said to him,
what's your view on A2 state solution?
He said, I don't have a view. I mean, he is not personally
engaged as you go further through this plan is the big
concern because he doesn't care. And we've all watched what
Benjamin Netanyahu has to say about this.
I mean, you know, Matt and I, and I'm sure you yourself sat
through his UN General Assembly speech.
That's not a guy who's ready to make a deal that will result in
Palestinian statehood. Well, he said very clearly there
will never be a Palestinian state.
He said it in English, he said it in Hebrew, he said it to
whoever wants to listen. That is completely counter to,
however vague the language might be, a .19 of the 20 points.
Yeah, let me because those those are all so such interesting
points because, you know, they really tell us about where we're
going and what needs to be done and, and who needs to be putting
pressure and speaking to Trump about these issues.
The the thing we have to realize about Trump, and this is
something that his former national security advisor,
General HR McMaster wrote about in his book when he wrote about
serving as Trump's first national security advisor, he
said that Trump is really influenced by whoever the last
person in the room is. So whenever his cabinet members,
including HR McMaster, when he was there with John Bolton, not
John Bolton, sorry, with other, with General Mattis and at the,
at the Defense Department at the time, Rex Tillerson at the State
Department that he would always try to be the last person to
leave the room. Because he, he knew that
whatever Trump heard last would be the thing that stuck in his
mind. Even if he'd just been in like a
2 hour meeting. The the only thing he would come
out with was what he heard last. So, so that that's one thing.
And then the other thing is that at his core, Trump is someone
who wants to be liked. Like genuinely liked.
Not just feared or admired, but liked.
And so whenever he goes and does a speech like the one he did in
the Knesset, he would say the same thing.
If he went and did a speech in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or
whatever, he just wants the crowd to think he is the best
thing ever. So I would take that, you know,
pomp and circumstance, if you will, with a grain of salt.
What really matters is something that you mentioned Anushka
earlier, which is how sorry, I think it was you, Matt, The how
much he likes, genuinely likes the Gulf and the Gulf leaders.
He has admiration for them. He admires their wealth.
He admires what they've done in their countries and what they've
built it. Very And the interior design, he
got all that marble and gold. He loves that marble and.
Gold, he gets a lot of inspiration from that and so he
listens. And I think that Anoushka, what
you were mentioning about these two state solutions language in
the 20 in the 20 point plan, it is very, very, very vague.
It doesn't even say that Palestinians have a right to
self determination and statehood.
It says if you do everything right, it may lead to a path
towards self determination and statehood because we know that's
what you want the Palestinians. It's not enshrined as it is your
right so, but even even that vague language was placed in
there because of conversations that he had with Arabs in the
region and he listened to them. And it's worth saying that when
you speak to representatives of those Arab countries, they are
clear that if he wants his normalization between them and
Israel, their only hope, his only hope of getting there,
including for Saudi Arabia, is to make sure that there is a
clear path to that. I mean, I think his relationship
with the Qataris is totally fascinating, but also something
that is getting a bit of backlash here in the US Ever
since they announced this idea of joint training with the
Qataris in Idaho. I mean, there has been a bit of
a MAGA backlash on that. I want to get to that, but I I
want to make sure I finish just the point about the two, the two
state solution and statehood and where this is eventually
supposed to end up. Because if we look at the
Israeli side, there is a. A real sort of trauma, you know,
trauma focused response to any conversations about a two state
solution. Right now, when I talk to my
Israeli friends or, or, or Israelis that I interview, they
make it clear that October 7th was a type of trauma that will
be difficult, if not impossible to recover from.
And what that did to them in terms of trust with the
Palestinians. And I think trust is going to be
one of the things that will be most difficult to restore, but
most important because now you have Israeli leadership, not
just current leadership, but potential future leadership as
well. I'm talking about all of the
opposition figures, Naftali Bennett, Lieberman, Lapid Golan.
Nobody's talking about a Palestinian state.
Some of it is ideological, like with Netanyahu, who just doesn't
believe that there should ever be a Palestinian state on
ideology. And some of it is just, well,
that's just that's just going to be a threat to us.
Look at what happened in October 2nd.
Some of it is security based, but that will be one of the most
difficult things in any conflict resolution process moving
forward is to try to restore that trust.
Yes, I think you're so right. I mean, not when I was in Israel
last, you know, few months ago. And I spoke to my Israeli
friends who I still have from the days when I lived there in
1989. They were all, you know,
peaceniks, as we used to call them.
They were all very fervent about a two state solution.
They've all rather like your friends have said, no, that's
not going to happen. We can't ever imagine that.
We don't trust the Palestinians. But unless you rebuild that
trust, you know, you just don't get, you're not going to get
some kind of, you know, living side by side.
I just wonder, Jasmine, to what extent the the diminution or the
weakening of Iran has an impact of the future of what happens in
Gaza, because of course, Iran was supposedly Hamas's big
backer. Yes and no.
It was actually less of a of a factor than well, there were
several different ways of supporting Hamas. 1 was through
arms, 1 was through funds. We can't forget also that Prime
Minister Netanyahu had greenlit and in fact asked the Qataris to
continue sending money to Hamas because of his divide and
conquer policy towards the Palestinians.
Netanyahu always wanted to weaken the PA in the West Bank
and strengthen Hamas in Gaza so that the Palestinians would
continue to be divided and wouldn't pose a threat to Israel
by actually, you know, creating a unified by government that
could then request things like statehood from the international
community and so on. So now that that funding stream
has been cut, now that you have Egypt and other countries
willing to crack down on things like smuggling through tunnels,
you will, it will be very, very difficult for Hamas to rearm and
pose the kind of threat that it did to Israel.
Also, by virtue of the fact that it's entire leadership structure
mostly has been decimated, either assassinated or yeah,
assassinated. Basically, I think the three
people who were really in charge of masterminding and carrying
out October 7th, including Yeh Hassan what of course have all
been killed. And Hamas is now walking around
in Gaza as an organization without any structure or
leadership and with a vast amount of their capabilities
having been destroyed. So it goes back to something we
were talking about earlier, which is what are they going to
be doing right now? They're not going to be focused
on Israel much. The danger they pose now is to
Palestinians in Gaza. So how does this not end up as a
civil war inside Gaza? Exactly right.
I mean, that's, you know, I, I referenced Iraq, post war Iraq
and, and the the, the decades of challenges that they had after
the US invasion, the US and I think the West in general.
And this is a point that I saw, you know, really throughout my
years in government is there is a tendency to pick favorites in
the Middle East, support them and arm them and then let them
kind of fight it out there. There hasn't, you know, there
hasn't generally been a, a sustained energy and excuse me,
attention and effort towards helping any of these post
conflict states in the region build, build up in a way that
was sustainable and in a way that was credible and, and
bottom up. There's always interference from
the outside. There are always countries,
there are always opinions that say, well, we like these people,
we don't like these people. So we're going to, you know,
give these people a chance. And if they want to go against
their own people, we're just going to let that happen.
And you saw a little bit of that.
And what Trump was saying about Hamas going after other factions
and rivals in Gaza, it's like, let them fight it out, which is
of course, extremely destabilizing.
Jasmine, it's been so interesting having you.
We're not going to keep you any longer, but really, really
appreciate your time and totally fascinating to hear.
Thanks so much, it's a great pleasure to be with.
You thanks very much. That's all we have time for on
Trump World Today. Next week, we will delve a bit
more into what Donald Trump is doing pretty controversially
here in the USI will see you next Wednesday.
Absolutely. And and me too.
I'm not going on any more holidays, I promise you, ever
again. But yeah, I think it's important
to have, you know, Trump on the world stage has done one thing.
He's had his best week ever. Trump on the domestic stage, an
entirely different story and a pretty controversial on which we
cannot keep our eyes off. So we'll see you next week.
That's it from Trump World, from Anoushka and me.
Thanks very much.