Israel

LABOTT: Thanks, Meaghan. And thanks to everyone for joining. We have a lot of our press colleagues here today, as well as some of our members. So thanks very much for joining us. For our members of the press, I’d like to just quickly introduce our new Vice President for Global Communications Ben Chang. He’s obviously no stranger to any of you. We’ve known him for a very long time in this space. And Ben, just want to say a quick hello and welcome. CHANG: Thanks very much, Elise. And thank—I’m going to add my thanks to all of you for attending today’s session, and really turn it back to Elise, Elliott, and Steven for taking the time to share their expertise and insights today with you. We, here at the Council, will continue to serve as a resource for all of you as we continue to address the issues of the day and the U.S. role in this changing global environment. So thanks, again. And thanks to the team behind this team for putting this together at such short notice. LABOTT: Thanks, Ben. Well, you know, if you’re reading the news you obviously know that Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire and a hostage release deal yesterday, following more than fifteen months that has really destroyed the Gaza Strip, divided Israelis. The Israeli government still needs to ratify the deal and there seem to be some hold ups, which we’ll talk about. The ceasefire, mediated by the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar, is set to begin on Sunday. And we’ll talk about what it means, whether it could be durable, and moving forward. And we have no better people to talk about this than Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies here at the Council. His new book, If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century is out. And also, Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies. His new book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, is out right now. Guys, thanks for joining us. Let’s just dive right in. Steven, the ceasefire was set to be ratified by the Israeli Cabinet, but today we understand that they’re not voting because of some holdups. Let us know what’s going on. COOK: Well, it’s hard to know the exact details of what’s going on and what exactly the holdup is. But I think that the Israeli prime minister is under a number—is under pressure from a number of different directions. We know that the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of public security, have opposed this deal. They don’t currently control enough seats in the Knesset to bring down the government, but there are some dissidents within the Likud who have sent a note to the prime minister saying, don’t put Israel’s security at risk. The settler community has raised questions. They have welcomed the release of some hostages, but they’ve raised questions about, you know, what are the mechanisms for security? And what’s the mechanisms for implementation? And what happens if there is no implementation? What if—what happens if Hamas reneges? What does this mean for Israel’s other fronts, when it comes to Hezbollah and Iran and the axis of resistance? So there are a whole host of questions. And I think most important among those is the Israeli government has said over and over again that it will not fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip, meaning that it would stay in the Netzarim Corridor, this east-west axis that bisects the Gaza Strip, from which the Israelis have been launching military operations, and, importantly, on the Philadelphi Corridor, which is right on the Gaza-Egypt border. That corridor is extremely important. It’s become extremely important to Israelis because it is the place through which Hamas has been able to resupply and build out its military capabilities, as well as their own capabilities to fabricate weaponry from within Gaza itself. So these are a range of pressures, a range of questions that important actors in Israeli politics are now asking. While, at the same time, there’s a huge number of people who are welcoming this agreement, welcoming hostages coming home to their families, and welcoming the possibility of an end to this horrible conflict. So we don’t know whether there’s actually going to be a ceasefire at this point. LABOTT: Right. And these are all good concerns, Elliott, obviously that, you know, everybody wants to know. But speaking to people in Israel, and how emotional it is about the potential of hostages coming home, and the fear that this might not happen because of these reasons, is this a legitimate kind of, in your view, effort to get clarity on the deal? Or is these political machinations in Netanyahu’s Cabinet? ABRAMS: No, I think it’s a legitimate effort to get clarity. I think there’s no way around the fact that this is going to be a terrible period of forty-plus days now, for Israelis as well as Palestinians. Palestinians going north in Gaza to homes that no longer exist. But for Israelis, only a few hostages come out, and then they dribble out over these days. And there will be jubilation for those that come out, but there are a lot of hostages whose bodies will come out. There are families that will only now find out that their relative is dead. There will be stories from those who come out about abuses that will infuriate every Israeli. So this is going to be a terribly emotional period. I would say, I think, that this deal happened now—really could happen now for two fundamental reasons. One of them is—people say, well, it’s the same deal it was offered in May. No. Because of the fall of Assad and because of the Israeli decimation of Hezbollah, to have accepted this difficult deal nine months ago would have been interpreted by many people in the region as Israeli weakness. But now Israel’s in such a much— LABOTT: Feeling more secure. ABRAMS: Position, yeah, that they are able, I think, to make this deal. And the second, of course, is President Trump. His weighing in with Netanyahu, saying take this deal, is important not only in the pressure that the new president is bringing, but politically it’s important because Netanyahu can actually now excuse, if you will, his taking of these—of this deal and these compromises by saying, Trump is arriving. The relationship with him and with the United States is paramount. So we need to take these—to make these compromises now. LABOTT: You’ve been in and out of government, Elliott. And, I mean, I was struck by the kind of cohesion of the Biden and Trump teams. Obviously, they’re both trying to take credit for it. And in my view, like, let them both take credit. Who really cares, as long as there’s a deal? But, I mean, how do you interpret this rare kind of effort together, really in lockstep? ABRAMS: I would—I would phrase it differently. LABOTT: OK. ABRAMS: I would say that Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, basically is delivering the message: Take Biden’s deal. And I think the excuse for Netanyahu— LABOTT: Is Trump made me do it. ABRAMS: Trump made me do it. And that is—that’s a good excuse. It’s a powerful excuse. But I think a lot of Israelis will be unhappy with the idea that it is fundamentally Biden’s deal. I would just add one note on that, which is something that Michael Oren, the former ambassador—Israeli ambassador to the U.S., the historian, said. He said—I’m paraphrasing wildly—but he said: It’s a bad deal, but it’s part of the price we pay for October 7, for the failures of the IDF and of Israeli intelligence, and of Israel on October 7. Oren said: This is another part of the price for that. LABOTT: Steven, so this current ceasefire bears kind of similarities to other deals we’ve seen in the past. Do you think it’s viable? You’ve written that, you know, it doesn’t necessarily end the war, but is this deal in itself kind of—you know, do you think it’s potentially durable, or equally vulnerable to opposition and sabotage? COOK: Well, since we don’t have it yet, I would say that it tenuously— LABOTT: Well, let’s say that it’s going to— COOK: It is vulnerable. Look, undoubtedly the fact that, at least in an initial stage, if the Israelis ultimately sign off on this that there will be lives saved, humanitarian aid that goes into the Gaza Strip for people who very much need it, and Israeli hostages who can come home to their families—both those who are alive and those who are dead—are positive, positive things. But this deal is so complicated. The first six-week phase is forty-two days long. And only after sixteen days will the negotiations for the second phase begin. But that’s only based on how well each side performs in the eyes of each other. How long has it taken to get to this framework? How long will it take to get to phase two? And phase two is about ending the conflict permanently. And of course, as I alluded to, there are serious questions and clearly opponents to a ceasefire, both within Israel as well as among the Palestinians. So I’m somewhat skeptical that this is going to move from a stage one to a stage two to a permanent end of the conflict. Look, President Trump did put pressure on the Israelis. I think he probably also applied a lot of pressure on the Qataris to get Hamas across the finish line here. He doesn’t have the same kind of relationship with the Qataris that he does with the Saudis and the Emiratis, and that made it easier for him to apply pressure there. But beyond getting this deal, it strikes me that—this immediate deal, it strikes me that all of the factors are there for resumption of the conflict. Israel’s strategic goals have not necessarily been met. Elliott is absolutely right. Israel is in a position of strength. Its strategic position in the region is far better than it was on October 6, 2023. But at the same time, Hamas is left intact with the ability to recruit and the most influential political faction in the Gaza Strip, and to a lot of Israelis that is leaving a terrorist army intact in Gaza that can one day once again threaten Israel’s existence in the way that they did in the October 7 attack. ABRAMS: Yeah, you know, I agree with that. I just—it’s very interesting that one of the initial Hamas demands was an end to the war; that is, Israel had to say it’s over. That’s not part of this deal. Israel has not said that, isn’t saying that. And, you know, there’s a perfectly reasonable possibility that one or six, eight months from now, they will be back in Gaza, and I would argue that that will not be a prime concern of the Trump administration. If the president wants this deal—President Trump, that is—wants to get hostages out, he wants the American hostages out, but if six months from now, you know, there’s more combat in Gaza, I don’t think that’s a top item for the Trump administration. COOK: Look, once the hostages are—let me just— LABOTT: Steven, let me tag something onto that. Let me tag something onto that. COOK: Sure. LABOTT: So you wrote that this is kind of similar to like how the Oslo Accords with the different phases—so, you know, there’s going to continue to need to be negotiations between the sides. And do we have the U.S. kind of role that we had at one point, based on what Elliott said, that’s going to be able to kind of bring this—you know, midwife this to conclusion? COOK: Let me just pick up on one thing that Elliott said at the end there, which is that, you know—and the incentives that parties have to continue to fight or to renege, if Hamas releases all of the hostages and their bodies, the IDF is freer to pursue Hamas. LABOTT: Right. COOK: So if you’re Hamas, why would you actually release everybody? You might release thirty-three and get a thousand people out of Israeli jails. But you may not—you may drive a much harder bargain as time goes on. And that leads into your question, Elise, which is, it’s not that it’s like Oslo. It’s that this phased over a period of time. LABOTT: Right. COOK: Of course, Oslo was over the course of a decade, but that phases, the longer it’s drawn out, it provides those who oppose the deal more opportunity to undermine it, more opportunity to undermine every time there’s— LABOTT: And you also had people willing to compromise. Yeah, I want to talk about the U.S., the Biden administration here. And I don’t want to dwell too much on that, because now we’re moving forward. But, you know, I encourage everybody to read Secretary of State Blinken’s statement yesterday, really kind of laying out how the Biden administration kind of sees this—you know, a vision, if you will, a Middle East vision. And I think U.S. presidents are always great about laying out their vision for the Middle East peace process as they’re walking out the door. But, Elliot, Blinken didn’t spare any, you know, powder for Israel. There was intense criticism of Israel. There was intense criticism of the Palestinians and also of the Arabs. And you kind of wonder why the U.S. didn’t use any of that, try to really kind of lay that out publicly before—two days before leaving before. ABRAMS: I mean, there was criticism of the Arabs, the Israelis. There was no self-criticism. Now maybe that’s asking too much, but really, I mean Blinken, for example, criticized that there was no plan for day after, and now he kind of laid one out. Why now? I mean, it’s useless to lay it out now, in a sense, while his hand is on the doorknob leaving. Why didn’t the administration publicly lay out a plan six months ago, nine months ago, and push for it, and use a lot of pressure for it? I mean, we’ve seen that in previous administrations of both parties. So I thought that’s what was missing. And I think it was not only missing in Blinken’s speech at the Atlantic Council, but I think it’s been missing over the last year. The United States, he was talking about what we’ve done, moving things behind the scenes. They haven’t worked in many cases. And I don’t think we would be having this discussion today if our own transition were a year from now, and if Donald Trump had not said there will be hell to pay if there’s no deal, and if he had not sent Witkoff around saying to people take the Biden deal. So I thought that was missing from Blinken’s finale. LABOTT: Steven, Blinken said—let me just read you a quote. COOK: Let me just talk about—yeah. LABOTT: Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority. Israel’s efforts have fallen short of meeting the colossal scale of need in Gaza. I mean, that’s like, you know, ten times stronger than they’ve said, you know, all along. ABRAMS: Well, let me just before Steven jumps in, say, yeah. And what I would say to him is, Tony, the PA has done zero reform in your four years. Zero. That can be attributed to you. Where was the pressure to really make Abbas reform? You didn’t do it. LABOTT: He makes—I mean, I can’t disagree on any of it. COOK: A couple points here. First, let me just say that I’m smiling not because this is a happy thing, but because everybody seems to discover the Palestinian Authority at a moment of crisis. But when there’s no moment of crisis, everybody ignores it and understands it for the corrupt, illegitimate creation of a bygone era that is no longer relevant. And that’s exactly the way Palestinians see it. And so, rather than focusing on revitalizing something that is beyond repair, I think the United States, if it was genuinely interested in a day after plan, may have wanted to think about what the alternatives were, maybe talk to some other Palestinians about what it is that they want, given the fact that Palestinians almost universally regard—at least Palestinians in the West Bank almost universally regard the Palestinian Authority as corrupt and illegitimate. Be that as it may—and I’m somewhat more sympathetic. I am somewhat handicapped in answering this question, because I haven’t served. I sit at the ivory tower and say, you know, the U.S. must or the U.S. should. LABOTT: Yeah, you do. COOK: But OK—but in so, dealing with the Israeli government and dealing with Hamas is extremely difficult, especially as there’s a fight that both sides consider to be existential. It’s very, very hard for the United States to have the kind of influence when the parties are defining their struggle in existential terms. All that being said, I’m aware that there were a number of points throughout the last fifteen months when other governments in the region had a plan that seemed entirely workable and something that the Israeli government would absolutely sign on to, and but it required exactly what Elliott was saying, a lot of American pressure, particularly on the Palestinian Authority, leaders in the Palestinian Authority. LABOTT: And the Arabs. COOK: And a fair number of—and a fair number of—a fair amount of pressure on the Israeli government to bring along. But ultimately, it was something that could have worked. But Secretary Blinken—I’m the only one in Washington who’s never met him, so I don’t call him Tony—Secretary Blinken punted. LABOTT: I still call him secretary. COOK: He punted, and the president punted, rather than bringing a kind of significant pressure that could have. I’m skeptical that it would produce every outcome, given the way in which the parties defined this struggle. But it did seem at moments that the administration was passive and not using the American power in ways that it could have to perhaps move towards a better outcome. LABOTT: Elliott, the UAE has reportedly discussed participating in a kind of provisional government, provisional administration, I should say, for post-war Gaza. There’s been talk about security forces from other countries, possibly military contractors. How do you think that could work, and what are the challenges arising from some governments? You know, I think one of the faults of, you know, some of these Abraham Accords countries is, you know, they had these peace deals with Israel, but then they didn’t use the pressure that they had to kind of push this kind of day after on either side, I’d say. ABRAMS: There are these plans out there, or one could say there is a plan and it—you know, along the lines you suggest. The hard part, the part where really the rubber meets the road, is just as it, you know, for the Lebanese army, are they actually going to push and threaten Hezbollah really? For this force that may come together—private military contractors, Emirates, Egyptians, vetted Palestinians—same question for Hamas. Are they going to really confront Hamas? Are they going to threaten to shoot Hamas guys if they are violent, if they’re carrying weapons, for example, that they shouldn’t have, or if they’re caught smuggling? If the answer to that is no, then what we’re saying is this will be enforced by the IDF, and when they enforce it, we’ll say, OK. But that is the question, I think, that should be asked about this: What’s the security aspect of it? I can see the administrative, the economic aspect. Form an international oversight committee. Appoint Salam Fayyad as the administrator for Gaza. He can do all of that. But when it comes to security, who is going to push back against Hamas other than the IDF? I think that’s the fundamental question. COOK: Yeah. The UNIFIL-ization of a force in Gaza is only asking for more trouble. LABOTT: So what?—so then the only party left is the IDF. ABRAMS: Well, we try this plan, I think. And you know, the Emirates, the Egyptians don’t love Hamas. That’s the Muslim Brotherhood, which they hate. Are they actually willing to do something about it—and one might say on camera? Because they’ve all got public opinion to worry about too. They’ve got Al Jazeera to worry about. It’s an experiment that should be tried, but I think we all have to be quite dubious about whether it’ll work. I’m very dubious—(laughs)—whether the deal in Lebanon is going to work for the same reason, will LAF really do what it’s supposed to be doing. LABOTT: Yeah. Steven, you said the UNIFIL-ization of Gaza, and let’s explain, like, what UNIFIL is. But also I mean the question is, should the U.N. kind of be the overarching, you know, administrator of this or another body in ensuring Gaza’s reconstruction and preventing a resurgence of instability? COOK: I always assume that what is common to me is not—is common to everybody else. UNIFIL, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which are peacekeepers in Lebanon that have been there since 1978 and have kept no peace, have uniformly—a failure. Yet that mission keeps getting renewed, renewed, renewed, renewed. It’s made up of forces from around the world who’ve never taken any action to enforce the peace. And that’s what the risk is if you do this in Gaza with groups of, you know, an international force that isn’t motivated to actually keep security, to do security enforcement there. I’m skeptical that the Egyptians or the Jordanians and even the Emiratis are going to want to take on this task over a long period of time, certainly without some progress towards reconstruction and a political horizon for the Palestinians. But like Elliott said, I mean, it’s worth trying this. But ultimately—and I think this is the rub, and this is one of the objections within Israel, is what is the mechanism for enforcement of security in the Gaza Strip. For a year, the Israeli government has said we’re going to stay in Netzarim and we’re going to stay in Philadelphi. Well, they haven’t been in Philadelphi for a year. But nevertheless, we’re going to stay in the Gaza Strip. And now they’re going to leave it to some sort of vague security mechanism. This has raised the hackles of a lot of people in Israel over this, and I suspect that is part of the holdup with the Israeli government ratifying this agreement. LABOTT: Elliott, how should the Trump administration approach this approach this? I mean, look, if you don’t have the kind of reform that you’re both talking about, then you’re in this cycle where, you know, the IDF has to keep coming in, but, you know, the U.S. could also pressure Israel to, you know, work on some kind of acceptance of Palestinian governance. How do they approach this, and regarding especially governance, but also reconstruction and preventing Hamas from regaining strength without just giving Israel carte blanche? ABRAMS: I think—if you care, and maybe they don’t—I mean, we have to see as the weeks go by how much they want to put into this, but if you care, then you talk to these various parties, starting with Palestinian Authority, and you say, OK, here’s the deal. You—Abbas—you are making Salam Fayyad prime minister. Shut up! You are making him prime minister, and he’s going to run the West Bank and Gaza, and he’s going to be in charge because he’s honest—of the reconstruction of Gaza. And we’re forming a big committee, and yes, we’re going to raise billions of dollars from the Gulf Arabs and others. And yes, Egyptians, Emiratis, and others are going to help on security. And you just basically shove it down his throat, which is what the Bush administration did when Fayyad was appointed, first, minister of finance and then prime minister. If you care enough—President Trump may not. His view may be, I don’t care about Syria, I don’t care much about Lebanon, I don’t care about Gaza. The Israelis will take care of their security. It’s a mess. I’m more interested in the Gulf countries, I’m more interested in China. So I think this is a real question about the Trump administration. How much energy, how much time, how much capital does President Trump really want to invest in this problem? LABOTT: Well, Steven, he appointed a peace envoy who, you know, was already out there and already kind of working it. Do you think if the Trump administration works this well, could, you know, a successful ceasefire, hostage deal, and reconstruction effort create momentum for a broader peace process? And look, Trump—yes, that’s true. Everything that Elliott said, but also Trump has said I want the deal of the century and, you know, can he just let Witkoff go off and try and do that? COOK: Maybe. I think that the—I think it’s—we’re looking at two real possibilities here. The president appoints envoys, appoints secretaries, advisors, but he basically does what he wants, what his gut tells him or what the last person he spoke to that made sense to him he’ll do. We’ve seen that. We saw that in the first administration, that there isn’t much in terms of a policy process. So maybe he will. My sense is, is that, as Elliott laid out what his interests are, it’s the Gulf, it’s China, it’s—you know, the Israelis can take care of themselves. At the same time, I think, Elise, you make a very good point. The president sees himself as a master deal maker—the ultimate deal maker—and presidents get sucked into peace processing. The presidents that Elliott served got sucked into peace processing even though they said they weren’t going to do it, and President Trump put out his deal of the century in his last administration, the Palestinians rejected it. It was a map that was an archipelago of semi-sovereign Palestinian population centers. It wasn’t exactly a two-state solution. But you add now a factor four years later, which is that after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, there are far fewer Israelis who are willing to entertain the idea of a two-state solution. So the president may table yet another proposal for the deal of the century, and he’ll likely run into significant opposition among Palestinians as well as significant opposition among Israelis. So he may decide it’s not worth it. LABOTT: We’re going to go to questions in a moment from the audience. (Gives queuing instructions.) Elliott, pick up on that, and could this ceasefire be an opportunity for Israel to kind of reset—given everything we’ve talked about in the beginning—this new security dynamic, being an opportunity for Israel to reset its security doctrine and kind of can it align with their broader security objectives, or just it—just do we continue to embolden Iran and its allies? ABRAMS: Well, it would be—one question: Is this a window, with the end of the Assad regime and the threat from Syria to Israel, mostly on—Hezbollah decimated—is this a window for Israel to attack the Iranian nuclear program? That’s maybe the biggest security question in 2025 for Netanyahu. They’ve also got the two-state solution question. How hard will Trump push that? Deal of the century, yes—that is to say he wants Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords. But since that Trump plan came out, in this last year Mohammed bin Salman has been speaking in much tougher terms about Palestinian statehood. He’s not ambiguous anymore. He has mentioned it—he personally, not just foreign minister people—many times. So if you think of the Venn diagram of what the Saudis say they need on a path forward— LABOTT: Oh, it has gotten much tougher since October 7. I mean, he wasn’t—the Saudis weren’t—they were kind of vague before October 7. ABRAMS: A little ambiguous. Now he’s been tougher. So that circle and the circle of what the Israelis now can do, do those circles actually overlap? I would argue that they probably don’t and that what the president will end up having to do with the Saudis is a series of discreet U.S.-Saudi bilateral agreements. I just don’t see—and maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I don’t see those terms coming together of an Israeli path. By the way, Blinken, in his speech at the Atlantic Council—you know, he used this—at one point he said we need a timebound agreement for a Palestinian state, and people said—people like me said, wait a minute. What happened to conditions-based? So at the Atlantic Council he said, timebound conditions-based. Well, that’s an oxymoron. I mean, it’s either timebound or it’s conditions-based, not both. LABOTT: Steven, do you want to just finish that thought— COOK: Yeah, you asked—you asked about—you asked about Israeli military doctrine and what this means. I think that the—there’s two things that have gone on over the last fifteen months. One, clearly the Israeli military doctrine with regard to Gaza has been busted. The Israelis fight short, devastating conflicts, not fifteen-month conflicts. But it was vindicated in Lebanon with the Israeli dismantling of Hezbollah in weeks—in weeks. And maybe that’s a function of the fact that the Israelis have been preparing for the better part of twenty years for that conflict and were ready for it at the moment. So there’s, obviously, going to be a rejiggering and a rethinking within the Israeli security establishment about what to do now about Gaza. But I think that the fact that they’ve had so much success against Hezbollah and that the entire Iranian western front has essentially collapsed, the Israelis were thinking broader about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. And I think it’s—I think the timeframe on this is quite compressed—I think Elliott is right on 2025—because there is a lot of incentive for the Iranians to weaponize given the fact that their western front has collapsed, given the fact that their proxies have taken such a beating from the IDF. I mean, only the Houthis stand, and for how much longer will they stand remains an open question. So that, to me—and this is—I’ve had this argument with our colleague, Ray Takeyh, who doesn’t believe that Iranians will weaponize as quickly as I think that they will. He thinks that they will make progress but try to negotiate and buy for time, et cetera, et cetera—very, very possible. But I think that this is the security issue in the Middle East in 2025—is do the Iranians weaponize in response to Israeli successes and how the Israelis respond to that. LABOTT: OK, again, we’re going to have one more question and we’re going to go to our members of the media. Put your hand in the queue, and put the raised hand and unmute your button when you are called. And, Elliott, Trump has also said he would be open to a deal on Iran, so how does that change Israel’s calculus? ABRAMS: I think they’re worried about that. Trump has said two things—or Waltz just repeated in an interview—Trump would not permit Iran to get a nuclear weapon. On the other hand, one has to remember that in his first term, the goal of maximum pressure was not regime change. Trump doesn’t believe in regime change. It was to get a better deal than the JCPOA, in his eyes. So presumably he goes back to that idea. He goes back to maximum pressure but with the goal of a negotiation with Iran that produces what he would view as a good deal. Will the Iranians do that? Yes, I think they will. I think they will because I think they want to wrap him in a negotiation that begins to release—that begins to lift sanctions, and if a negotiation is ongoing, maybe leads Trump to restrain the Israelis and say, no, no, no, I’m talking to them. I can deal with this through diplomacy, don’t hit them. So I think it’s a complicated situation for the Israelis, and they’re going to have to talk to Trump, Waltz, Rubio, and see what is the position of this administration. COOK: I’ll point out that in Rubio’s confirmation hearings, he did say that they were open to an agreement with restrictions. So that would suggest a bigger agreement that doesn’t just cover Iran’s nuclear program. But this is certainly setting up for a source of tension between the Israeli government and the Trump administration. LABOTT: Who has more leverage, Elliott, the U.S. or Israel, right now? ABRAMS: It depends partly on what you think the Israeli capability is. You know, and where this comes to a crisis is, if Steven’s right and Ayatollah Khamenei decides what he needs to do before he dies, and during the Trump administration, four years, is to get that nuclear weapon, because if he does, and if the Israelis find out, they will hit Iran, although they will come to us first and say, you said you’d prevent it. So that will be a very interesting conversation, if Steven’s right, and the weaponization moves forward fast. LABOTT: OK. Let’s go to our questions again. If you have a question, put the raise hand icon on your screen, and then when you’re called upon, please accept the unmute button. Proceed with your name and affiliation and your question. Meghan. OPERATOR: We’ll take our first question from Mostafa Salem. LABOTT: Hello? Q: My name is Mostafa Salem. I’m a senior reporter with CNN here in the Middle East. Thank you so much for holding this. LABOTT: Hi, Mostafa. Q: Hi. I think I’m interested in your thoughts on the day after. I know we mentioned it here earlier, but I think this is a key question. You know, Hamas yesterday seemed to be mentioning something along the lines that they’ll be part of the rebuilding in their many statements that came out of the Qatari announcement. Now, their stance with the PA and accepting to have them as a dominant force in Gaza is questionable, seeing what happened inside the West Bank over the past few months. We know that Egyptians had a bunch of proposals, but nothing was reached. Israel wants to guarantee its security. What’s a realistic solution here to govern 2 million people who have seen the past year? LABOTT: Steven. ABRAMS: Maybe part of it is Hamas doesn’t want to be in charge of governing and reconstructing Gaza. They just want to be in charge of being Hamas, that is, of reconstructing Hamas and being the only ferocious security force on the ground and let, you know, the PA or the Egyptians or whoever be in charge of reconstruction, and they’ll steal whatever they can. COOK: Look, I’m deeply skeptical about a workable day after plan, especially since Hamas remains intact and its ability to recruit remains intact. And as you point out, Mostafa, a number of months ago, there was all of this discussion of a technocratic government, of combining the PA and Hamas, but not Hamas people running the Gaza strip in the day after. But clearly that isn’t going to happen, given the conflict between the PA and Hamas on the West Bank. So we’re left with these kind of vague ideas that, you know, the Egyptians are tabling and others are tabling about what to do. And my suspicion is they’re not going to get very far, and we’re going to be in a situation where the international community, in the form of the U.N. World Food Programme, are just continuing to provide aid without any real sense and progress towards governance in the Gaza Strip. LABOTT: You know, we’ve talked about, Elliott, the fact that, you know, the Biden administration really didn’t kind of do what I think you guys did in the Trump administration, which is try and find alternatives to the PA and have some kind of process by which new leadership emerges. Is there anyone that could kind of, you know, outside of Mostafa Barghouti, who is still in jail, rise above and kind of help lead the Palestinians out of this? ABRAMS: Yeah, it’s Marwan Barghouti in jail. LABOTT: Sorry. Yeah, you’re right, sorry. ABRAMS: No, I mean, you know, I’ve used Fayyad’s name, but that was the period of best, most effective, honest government in the PA. I don’t think you can create a new PA. I think with enough, if you had Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi Emirati, American pressure, you could get some reforms in the PA. You could get some new faces and some old faces. But that’s very hard to organize without the U.S. And again, it raises a question of whether the Trump administration would be sufficiently interested to do that. LABOTT: What do you think, Steven? COOK: Look, again, you know, Elliott mentioned Salam Fayyad. LABOTT: He is a technocrat, though. I’m talking about— COOK: No, no, no. I mean, I just want to point out, though, that Salam Fayyad on October 13 of 2023 wrote in Foreign Affairs that Hamas has to be part of the solution, because it’s part of the Palestinian national movement. So, you know, the idea that Fayyad today would be some sort of panacea to this, I think, is unlikely, because he views—and I think quite a number of Palestinians view—the fact that Hamas has run the Gaza Strip, that it’s not going away. It hasn’t been defeated, has to be somehow accommodated within the Palestinian movement, which leads to a roadblock. But what I think what’s missing in talk of what Emiratis, Saudis, Egyptians, and so on, the United States and Israelis can do are Palestinians. I know I hit Tony Blair—Tony Blair—Tony Blinken, earlier on this question of, you know, not being forceful enough in changing the Palestinian Authority. But there are Palestinians, those grassroots movements, people searching for alternatives to these terrible choices—corrupt, illegitimate, oppressive Palestinian Authority and corrupt, oppressive, and violent Hamas. People are searching for something better, and there hasn’t been a mechanism for them to express that. There hasn’t been an election among Palestinians for a long time, for an obvious reason. LABOTT: 2006. COOK: So it’s hard for me. You know, who is that—who is that leader, who’s going to bring them together? A lot of it is speculation. We haven’t actually, genuinely asked anybody who’s most affected by it. LABOTT: OK. Meghan, next question, please. OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Serge Schmemann. LABOTT: Hi, Serge. Q: Great discussion. My question is this: How might this ceasefire, if it is approved in Israel, play into Israeli politics? Would this extend Netanyahu’s lease on life, or would this accelerate his ouster? What might happen if this goes through? LABOTT: Elliott? ABRAMS: Good question, hard question. I have to think that the Netanyahu period is drawing to a close in the next year or two anyway. The public opinion— LABOTT: Why? How so? Public? ABRAMS: Yeah, I think, first of all, there is an alternative on the center right, and that’s Bennett and his potential coalition. I think this doesn’t help Netanyahu in one way, and that is that, as Steven was saying at the beginning, there are an awful lot of people who don’t like it for differing reasons. One, we haven’t mentioned, you are going to see—we have already seen Hamas guys in their kind of Hamas masks parading through the streets and driving through the streets with rifles and submachine guns. That’s a kind of sign of survival and victory that’s going to be all over the Israeli press, and it’s going to make Israelis very, very angry at the same time that hostages are coming out, some of them coming out in body bags, others coming out with horrendous stories of abuse. So I think this is going to be a crisis for Netanyahu. Why Netanyahu, as opposed to the alternatives? Because he’s in power. So I think this is actually going to be a tough period for him to kind of surf over this. He does have the advantage of the Syria/Lebanon situation. And I think from his political point of view, it is advantageous to turn attention to Iran, and I think he will. COOK: My view is there’s just too many questions about this deal, and the images that Elliott is talking about for Netanyahu’s natural constituencies to hold and to support him on this. And I point to the letter that—I think it was seven—seven to ten Likud lawmakers saying don’t put Israel’s security in jeopardy as a result of this deal. And then, look, you would think that Netanyahu was beyond his sell-by date. Maybe this is—the combination of these things really pushed people to the sell-by date. And as Elliott points out, there is a—there is an alternative on the right or the center-right, and that is Naftali Bennett. And it seems to me that he can kind of capture religious—the religious Zionist movement as well as pull some of that kind of mushy liberal Zionist middle enough to establish himself once again. LABOTT: But Elliott, I mean, Bennett tried once. I mean, that—when they ousted Netanyahu last time and him and Lapid got together, I mean, that was—that was unbelievable. It didn’t last very long. ABRAMS: No. COOK: For the time. Four years later. ABRAMS: You know, so it can—the plausibility of it is greater, I think, when it has already happened once. LABOTT: The durability of it is not— ABRAMS: There is something I would add—and I say this as somebody who has known Netanyahu for forty years—he is not indestructible. He was just in the hospital for prostate surgery. He has a pacemaker. This has been an immensely tough period, the last fifteen months. The strain is great. And so I would also raise the question of his health as he faces all of these crises. I mean, he won’t be prime minister forever. LABOTT: OK. Next question? OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Howard LaFranchi. Go ahead. Q: Hi, Elise. Yes. So you both have answered parts of this question but I’d just like to ask directly. So, I think you both said that, you know, President Trump is going to be most interested in the gulf and China, and it sounds something like a variation of how for—how many, last couple of presidents, you know, the emphasis on Asia and getting out of the Middle East and things. But on the other hand, there is this motivation for the president of the deal of the century, and even, as he continues to say, really coveting the Nobel Peace Prize, and that doesn’t happen with just, you know, bilateral deals with Saudi Arabia. So I’m just wondering, how do you square those—how does president sort of square that circle—those two could seem conflicting objectives on his part? ABRAMS: You know, my answer to that would be he’ll make an assessment. He’ll talk to MBS, which he hasn’t, I think, done, and he’ll talk to Netanyahu and he’ll look at the political situation in Israel and he’ll make a judgment as to whether this is doable. And if he thinks it is, he’ll tell Rubio and Witkoff and whoever else, get to work. But he may conclude that it isn’t doable right now. He may conclude that, you know, for this country, is what happens in Gaza critical to our security? Is a Palestinian state critical to our security? What do we care about this? LABOTT: Is it? ABRAMS: No, it’s not. It’s not. I mean, you could even argue what happens in Gaza is not existential for Israeli security. The Iranian nuclear weapon—existential. What happens in Gaza? No. So he might conclude, OK, that’s a lost one for now—for now. Let’s see where we are in a year or two with Iran, maybe go back to it. But I think he needs to have a long talk with Bibi and with MBS as president, and then make a judgment. LABOTT: Just because you mentioned Witkoff and Rubio, I think a lot of people are curious—how do you think this Middle East team is going to work together? Because there are going to be a lot of cooks in the soup. COOK: Not this one. ABRAMS: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, you’ve got Mr. Witkoff. We do not yet have a Near East assistant secretary of State. We do know, or at least from press, Eric Trager will be at the NSC as a senior director for the Near East. But they’re new. There really isn’t a team yet that can work on this. I mean, who’s going to handle the Saudis? Who’s going to replace Brett McGurk? Don’t know yet. And— LABOTT: Do you think Witkoff does that? ABRAMS: I think he may try. But what he has done so far is to deliver a message: Do what the Biden team is asking you to do; Trump wants a deal. That’s different from being able to put all this together. Can he do that? He’s just met these people. He doesn’t have the relevant experience. LABOTT: Or relationships. ABRAMS: Jared Kushner—Jared Kushner got very, very far. So I wouldn’t write it off. I just think Trump’s got to talk to the key two players and make a judgment. LABOTT: Steven? COOK: From my own perspective, you know, Witkoff seems like he appeared in the Middle East as the—Trump’s enforcer more than someone who’s engaged in a negotiation. I have heard the Joel Rayburn might be named assistant secretary. LABOTT: Yeah, I heard that too. COOK: The only one of the team that I know, and I know quite well, is Eric Trager who is a very smart— LABOTT: Excellent. COOK: —knows the Middle East extremely well and extremely competent person, and that is I think—bodes well, at least for early on in the administration. He is—you know, has his views but does know the region, speaks the languages, and so on. And so I think that that’s good. I just want to go back to this question about a two-state solution. I think that if you look at it objectively, coldly analytically, there’s really no pathway to a two-state solution, and there hasn’t been a pathway to a two-state solution. And the question of whether a Palestinian state is in the interest of the United States—I think historically it has not been the case, and in fact it was the president that Elliott served, George W. Bush, who was the first one who said it was a goal of the United States to establish a Palestinian state. We have tried to bridge those fundamental structural differences between Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state solution and we’ve been unable to do it. So if Palestinians and Israelis can get there themselves, more power to them. I don’t think that we’re going to. And if I was advising the president, I would say, this is going to get you wrapped around the axle for four years and not get you the Nobel Peace Prize. You’re further away from it than you ever were before. But Trump, again, sees himself as a master dealmaker. I can talk to you guys for hours about nationalism and historical memory and identity and religion, and Trump looks at a map and says, this is a real estate deal. So maybe he goes for it. LABOTT: OK. Megan, I think we have another question? OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Chris Egan. LABOTT: Hi, Chris. Q: Good morning. Elliott, you were at a seminar at the council a while back and said there’s no such thing as a two-state solution given, you know, the current mentality. Long term you discussed the possibility that if there were a, let’s say, reasonable government in a Palestinian territory that over time they could perhaps get past this period of hatred back and forth. If President Trump—soon-to-be President Trump decided that this were really something he needed to do and the Arabs put up $100 billion to reconstruct the Palestinian area, a bureaucracy was created of Arabs acceptable to that group, over an extended period of time, would it make sense—i.e., could he, should he put American troops in there to handle the security aspect of it because we all know that U.N. troops don’t shoot anybody? LABOTT: Elliott, let me just tag onto that. And Blinken, I think, you know, kind of again on the way out said, you know, Israel must decide what relationship they want with the Palestinians; that cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights. ABRAMS: Well, first, I think there is no possibility whatsoever of President Trump putting American troops in the West Bank to get shot at by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on. I don’t think that’s a reasonable possibility. I agree with Steven that the chances for a Palestinian state now with what Israel has just gone through since October 7 are lower than they have been for quite a while. So I just don’t see that as realistic. I also don’t see the Arab—Gulf Arabs putting up a hundred billion dollars. I’d be happy to see them put up a billion dollars for reconstruction of Gaza. Most of them are sick and tired of the Palestinian issue. Because of Al-Jazeera and other propaganda there, they have a(n) issue of public opinion in Saudi Arabia in particular where there really is a public—tens of millions of people. So they’ll pay some attention to this issue, but I just don’t see how you get from where we are today to an independent sovereign Palestinian state. From the Israeli point of view that’s a gigantic security risk, much greater for geographical reasons than the security risk from Gaza. What we have seen in the last year is a tremendous effort on the part of Iran to subvert the West Bank and Jordan, a big increase in the amount of arms and the quality of arms being shipped in to Jordan and the West Bank. Harder now because of the change in Syria. But they’ll keep trying. So the Israelis are just—they’re not going to hand their security over to some kind of UNIFIL-ization, to use Steve’s excellent term. They’re not going to do it. There’s no support for it left, right, or center in Israel. COOK: Let me just briefly respond to this because it speaks to some of the themes that I raise in my new book, and I get nervous when I hear, you know, we’ve got a plan and we get a hundred billion dollars and troops and a bureaucracy we like. We have tried to engage in international social engineering from 6,000 miles away before and it has not worked. In fact, we have contributed to destabilization at certain moments when we’ve tried to do that. This is not the role for the United States. When we try to use American power to make good things happen we often fail at those things because we don’t understand exactly what’s happening. Politics are contingent and people don’t necessarily want our help doing this. Let me just second the fact—second the statement that Elliott made. I’d be surprised if the Gulf Arabs even came up with a billion dollars. They have a long history, particularly the Saudis, of promising billions and billions of dollars for reconstruction and never actually going forward. From their perspective, it’s throwing good money after bad, and particularly at this moment when the Saudis are making a trillion-dollar bet on Saudi Arabia they don’t think that Gaza should be their problem to reconstruct. LABOTT: Elliott, I’m just going to say something kind of crass but there have been these kind of—I don’t know if they’re jokes or kind of half serious about condos in Gaza. I mean, they’re—you know, one Arab official said, actually, you know what? The Israelis, you know, mowed it down. Actually, there’s an opportunity to rebuild it with Arab money in a way that could be a business opportunity. ABRAMS: Except for the fact that the largest force of armed men there are a bunch of terrorists in Hamas. They’re murderers. LABOTT: This is true. ABRAMS: You don’t want to build your condo surrounded by murderers. I just don’t see it. I would—you know, when the Israelis got out Shimon Peres was talking about how they were going to turn from terrorism to tourism. I remember this speech. They didn’t, and that is not Hamas’ plan. So I just—you know, there will be money from Kuwait. There will be money from Algeria. They have been generally very supportive. But I think whoever is going around with the begging bowl is going to have a tough time. LABOTT: OK. Well, I just want to ask each of our panelists to kind of take away, like, what questions do you have as we look forward towards, you know, whether this ceasefire will be implemented and what’s next and what should we take top of mind as we look forward to the next few weeks and months. Steven? COOK: Well, for me, with specifically regard to the ceasefire what are those security mechanisms if the IDF is going to withdraw from Netzarim and possibly the Philadelphi Corridor? What are those security mechanisms? Who’s manning them? What are the arrangements? How is that all going to work? I know with Lebanon we have a security mechanism, but when I’ve asked American officials, well, how is a dispute adjudicated within the security mechanism they don’t really know. So there’s been a rush to get a deal and you wait for the details afterwards, and I think it’s—this is an issue that can more than anything else undermine the best intentions of the ceasefire. ABRAMS: I agree with that. And I would just add, because it’s so complicated, because it may well break down in many ways, one of the key questions here I have is how important will this be to the Trump administration? The president and secretary of state have so many things they need to deal with, one of them being the Iranian relationship, the Iranian nuclear weapons program. How important will this really be to them? LABOTT: OK. I think we have one more question from Katy Tur. Katy, go ahead. Q: Katy Tur, MSNBC. LABOTT: Sorry, Katy. Sorry, sorry. Q: Hi, Elise. Hi, Steven. Hi, Elliott. Thank you for this. Just a final question. I mean, I’m glad you spoke a little bit about Iran and Naftali Bennett, who’s on my show today. But without a two-state solution, can there be—can there be calm and peace between these two peoples? Will the Israelis ever be safe unless they give statehood to the Palestinians? ABRAMS: I’d turn it on its head, I think, and say, will they be safe if they created a Palestinian state that was sovereign, independent, and could be taken over by or heavily influenced by terrorist groups, the way Gaza was? So I don’t think—not only do I not think Palestinian statehood is inevitable, I think it is possible to think of Israeli security with Israel and Jordan and Palestinian security forces keeping the peace, as has happened at times in the past. COOK: Katy, no. I don’t think that there is a possibility of safety and security. I think that there will be periods—absent a two-state solution which I think is the likely outcome—I think that there will be periods of violence, like the one that we have seen. I think there were a large number of Israelis who were willing to make that bet that a two-state solution would bring them peace and security, and after October 7 they have a wealth of data to suggest that that is not the case. And what makes this even more difficult for that mushy center in Israel is that the argument that the Israeli right made upon the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is now more potent than ever, because they can turn around and say, you see, this is what happens when we withdraw. And that’s resonating with people who don’t necessarily agree with settlers or the religious Zionist movement before. So, no. I don’t think there’s going to be a two-state solution. And I do think that there’s going to be continued violence over long periods of time, unfortunately. LABOTT: But, Elliott, but Blinken did say Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de-facto annexation without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, standing, and security. So, you know, is there long-term security without a deal? ABRAMS: I would, again, say, is there long-term security with a deal? I mean, my own view is that there should be a Palestinian entity. But if you think about that entity, the question is, should it be a sovereign, independent state? Or should exist—should it exist in some kind of relationship with either Israel or Jordan, it’s two neighbors? And, to me, the logic is the Muslim, Arab, Arabic-speaking state with a significant Palestinian population already, namely Jordan, with competent security forces as well. But now we’re talking about what’s going to happen twenty-five years in the future. What’s going to happen during Donald Trump’s term of office is zero progress toward Palestinian statehood, in my opinion. LABOTT: OK. Well, I think the takeaways here are we don’t have that governance piece for the Palestinians. So even if we do have a ceasefire, how do we get security in Gaza and, you know, in the Palestinian territories? As you said, what happens with Iran? And how is the Trump administration going to deal with this coming in and going forward? I’d like to thank Elliott Abrams, Steven Cook, everybody for joining, and to the Council on Foreign Relations. Don’t forget this will be posted on our website with a transcript. And stay tuned to CFR.org for more information on the conflict and other international issues. Thanks very much for joining us. ABRAMS: Thank you. (END)  

A year after Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack, Israel faces a seven-front war and deepening divisions between its military and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is dire. This joint symposium between CFR and the Institute for National Security Studies (Israel) will bring together a broad range of regional and military experts to reflect on a year of war in the Middle East and how the change in U.S. administrations could shape evolving regional dynamics. The sessions will cover the present state of the war in Gaza, the future of Middle East peace processes, and U.S. strategy towards Iran. Click here to download the full agenda for the symposium.  Members may bring a guest to this symposium.