The Elusive Ceasefire in Gaza, With Elliott Abrams

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the elusive ceasefire in Gaza.

With me to discuss ongoing efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and the war's ripple effects in the Middle East is Elliott Abrams. Elliott is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump. Elliott has edited three books and written five, the latest of which is titled, "If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century." Elliott, thank you for joining me on The President's Inbox.

ABRAMS:
Sure. My pleasure.

LINDSAY:
So Elliott, the war in Gaza has been going on for about twenty-one months now without any resolution. And the situation in many ways is still fluid. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Trump a few hours after we wrap up this recording. So perhaps we could begin with a recap from you is, where we stand on this effort to get a ceasefire for Gaza.

ABRAMS:
There is a ceasefire proposal out there. It calls for a sixty-day ceasefire, and sort of complicated choreography of the release of hostages, living and dead. The questions that are really toughest are, yeah, but where is it leading? That is, okay, hostages, come out, fighting stops for a while, but then what? What happens to Hamas? Does it remain in Gaza? Does it have to disarm? Does the leadership have to leave? All of those are proposals. Do the Israelis have to declare an end to the war and remove their troops? And if so, all of their troops, or just their troops in certain places in Gaza? So, there is a proposal out there, but I'd say it's not a hundred percent cooked.

LINDSAY:
Okay. So help me understand some of those details there, Elliott. Let's begin with the issue of Israelis being held by Hamas. Do we have a sense of the number? And I know there are Israeli hostages who are still alive, and Hamas also holds on to a number of the bodies of Israeli hostages.

ABRAMS:
Yeah, there are probably something like thirty living and dead hostages left, or in the twenties. And the sixty-day proposal would have ten living hostages coming out, and that would leave more hostages, roughly the same number in the hands of Hamas, living hostages.

LINDSAY:
And from the vantage point of Hamas, if it gives up the Israeli hostages, what is it going to get in return?

ABRAMS:
A ceasefire. They're suffering a good deal from the Israeli presence in Gaza now, which is pounding away at Hamas day after day after day, and weakening Hamas, I think we can say, day after day. And that would end. And I guess from the Israeli point of view, the fear is, yes, and once it ends, Hamas would reconstruct, Hamas would emerge from hiding places. And once again, start trying to take over Gaza. So, there is an advantage for Hamas in ending the fighting. I think the question Hamas has is, ending the fighting for how long?

LINDSAY:
I want to get to the question of ending the fighting for how long, but as you describe it to me, my immediate reaction was actually the opposite of yours, Elliott. It's that if you are Hamas, if you give up the hostages that you have, living or deceased, you lose all of your leverage vis-a-vis the Israelis.

ABRAMS:
Yes. If you give them all up. And that has led some people in the Israeli military establishment to say, "We have to recognize that Hamas will never give them all up." It may give most of them up, but it's too valuable to them to actually come to an agreement where there are no more hostages. A pretty awful thought.

LINDSAY:
And what is our sense of what the Trump administration is doing on the ceasefire? Is it bringing pressure to bear in Israel? Is it bringing pressure to bear on Hamas? If so, how?

ABRAMS:
It's bringing pressure to bear on Israel directly, that is through discussions with Netanyahu and his Chief Lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha. Now, whether that pressure is effective is unclear. I say that because the so-called political leadership of Hamas lives in Qatar, in Doha.

LINDSAY:
And it's not feeling the impact of what's happening in Gaza.

ABRAMS:
Yes. And vice versa. That is, the people fighting in Gaza don't necessarily feel the impact of pressure on other Hamas guys in Doha. What's the connection between them? We know that it's even tough for them to communicate, that sometimes getting a message back and forth can take days. And there is also the question of whether the people wearing suits and living in hotels in Doha can really pressure the Hamas fighters and their leaders on the ground in Gaza.

LINDSAY:
We know though, Elliott, that there is a horrible humanitarian situation in Gaza right now, that is being prolonged by the inability to bring about a ceasefire, perhaps I should say, sustain a ceasefire since we've had I think two so far. What value do the Israelis see in continued bombardments of Gaza, given that they have extensively derailed and destroyed Hamas's political and military leadership in Gaza?

ABRAMS:
I think a small part of it is they're in there in part to see if they can find any hostages. And they're in there larger part to continue to try to strike at Hamas. For example, there are Hamas leaders on the ground. They haven't all been killed, and the Israelis would like to get more of them. I mean, that brings us back to your previous question about the Trump administration, which I think is trying to put pressure on both sides. The President wants to ceasefire. He wants to ceasefire, you can argue whether it's for purely personal, or political, or humanitarian reasons, but it's a feather in his cap if he can get it as ceasefire, and he can even announce it on the White House lawn. So the administration is pushing. And if they have ambitions to go beyond the Gaza ceasefire on Israeli relations with Lebanon, with Syria, with Saudi Arabia, I think they correctly see a ceasefire in Gaza as a first step toward doing that. So, that's a come on for the Israelis as well. I mean, they want those relationships. That's not something the administration has to pressure them on. So there is an agreement here in a sense as to where to go after the Gaza war ends. The problem is ending it.

LINDSAY:
Well, let's talk about this issue of what comes after a ceasefire, Elliott. I can understand Hamas' strategy, which seems to be "hang on, and hope that you can survive the Israeli onslaught." What exactly is Israel's strategy given that, one, it clearly has decimated Hamas' military capability, its ability to threaten Israel proper, and two, it's not at all clear how continued bombardment of Gaza is going to lead to the end of the Palestinian resistance? That is the resentment toward Israel is going to exist, and I think many critics of Israeli policy would argue is being stoked by the continued fighting.

ABRAMS:
I think the Israelis would say that they need to be sure that Hamas cannot take over Gaza again. That's their nightmare. That they go through all this, and of course, real sacrifice on the Israeli side in soldiers killed for nothing. And the nothing would be if over six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, who knows, forty months, Hamas slowly builds back, and once again, is in charge of Gaza. So from their point of view, you can't hit Hamas enough. They're not, to use a familiar term, obliterated. They're very badly weakened. But could they rebuild if they got outside help, particularly from Iran? Maybe over time. And that's I think the main Israeli goal right now. I'd say a second goal is to separate Gaza and the Palestinian issue from everything else. And that's a very, very hard thing to achieve because of, for example, Al Jazeera, where Arabs throughout the Middle East are watching, at least Al Jazeera's version of the Gaza war, literally every day. But the Israelis would like to move ahead with Lebanon, with Syria, with the Saudis, with other relationships, and would like to break that tie between Palestinian politics and the Palestinian future, and what's going on in Gaza.

LINDSAY:
But that seems very unlikely to happen, Elliott.

ABRAMS:
Well, certainly the tie between the future of the Palestinians and relations with Israel was largely broken in the Abraham Accords. Then came October 7th and the war.

LINDSAY:
Was it really broken? I thought the argument in the Abraham Accords was that we were going for an outside-in strategy versus the inside-out strategy, that if you made a deal with the Gulf countries in particular, that that would bring pressure on the Palestinians to concede. To the extent that was the rationale. It seems not to have worked.

ABRAMS:
Well, it was a rationale. But flip it on its head. There was another similar rationale that just get the Arab countries started in their relationships with Israel. Just get them to say, "Okay, our relationship with Israel is more important than our concerns about the Palestinians, and that will grow, and we'll move on from there." And then came the war, and the war has clearly changed that. Best case to illustrate this is Saudi Arabia, where I think the Saudis have been pretty clear that they have a real population. It's not a country of expatriates, it's a population of about thirty million Saudis, and their people are watching the Gaza war on TV for the de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, to normalize relations with Israel in the middle of this war, is simply not possible politically. It is not a democracy, that's for sure. But there is such a thing as public opinion.

LINDSAY:
And we certainly see that in other Arab countries, where the governmental elites may be interested in deepening economic, political, and even military ties with the Israelis, but they face publics who are deeply upset about what is happening in Gaza to the Palestinians.

ABRAMS:
Yes. And I think this is a form of pressure on Netanyahu that isn't coming in a way from the outside, from President Trump, for example. Netanyahu really wants those relationships. He loved the Abraham Accords. He wants a relationship with, again, Saudi Arabia primarily, and his neighbors, Syria and Lebanon. And he knows he's got to get the Gaza war behind him before he can move on those fronts.

LINDSAY:
Let me just talk a little bit more with you, Elliott, about the Gaza war. One of the things you mentioned a moment ago was the potential for Hamas to rebuild itself by getting outside support, and you specifically mentioned Iran. I think many people looking at events of the last twelve, eighteen months would say, Israel has been wildly successful in cutting off Hamas's ability to turn elsewhere for support. The Israelis have decimated Hezbollah. Iran is clearly on its back heels. The government of Bashar al-Assad has gone by the wayside. So, how realistic is it to think that Hamas has a real chance of rebuilding anytime soon?

ABRAMS:
I think it has a chance of rebuilding if it can open the Gaza-Egypt border. Over the last twenty years, there's been a lot of smuggling of all sorts of things over that border. Some of them innocuous things, motorcycles, or games, computer equipment.

LINDSAY:
There's a lot of money to be made by smuggling things across that border.

ABRAMS:
There is, and there's two million people inside of Gaza who want all sorts of things, but the Iranians have smuggled across that border arms, weapons, ammunition. The Israelis now feel that the only way they can keep that border closed is by closing it themselves. It's interesting, they got out of Gaza in 2005. And one of the last decisions then Prime Minister Sharon made was, "What do we do about the so-called Philadelphi Strip?" That's the border between Gaza and Egypt. And in the end, he decided, "I can't really defend it militarily, so I'm going to get out." The arrangements that had been made will trust the Egyptians. It didn't work. And the Israelis face that decision again today. Can there be a Gaza deal, which whatever else it does or doesn't do, allows them to remain on that border, and then they'll be pretty confident that it's going to be very, very hard for Hamas to rebuild?

LINDSAY:
But they would still have the problem that kept Ariel Sharon awake at night, which is that it will be very hard to defend, or maybe a better way to put it, you're putting Israeli soldiers in harm's way, they could become the victims of hit-and-run attacks, things like that.

ABRAMS:
It's true. And I think the way that the Israelis would like to handle it is create a buffer zone. Something that actually Sharon thought he could not do twenty years ago. The Egyptians have done it on the Egyptian side, and now Israel has done it, along the Egyptian border, Gaza, Egypt, and along its own Gaza-Israel borders. So maybe it's easier to defend now, but that is certainly going to be one of the issues that is debated. What happens to the Gaza-Egypt border? Who polices it?

LINDSAY:
So Elliott, help me understand the political debate taking place inside Israel today about what to do with Gaza. I've read a number of stories talking about right or far-right parties, I'm not sure what the right adjective is, arguing that Israel should fully occupy Gaza. Some members of the far-right going as far as to argue that the Palestinians should be expelled from Gaza. But give me a fuller sense of the debate that's happening, particularly in the Knesset, particularly in the governing coalition about what to do with Gaza.

ABRAMS:
They're quite divided. As you said, there are people on the far-right who have all of that kind of what I'd call unrealistic ideas. Everybody wants the war to be over, and everybody wants to get the hostages back. But they're quite divided. Israelis and even the governing coalition, how you do that, there is one change in the debate that comes from the very successful Israeli and then American attack on Iran. Why not make more compromises on Gaza? The answer for Netanyahu and many in his coalition has been, "It'll make us look weak. We can't afford to look weak." Well, today, they don't look weak, they look very strong. And the success against Iran may actually give Netanyahu more wiggle room in his own coalition and in Israeli politics more broadly. The worry about looking weak, being weak, is certainly diminished. And it's partly because what the Israelis did, it's partly because they had the United States so physically, militarily behind them. So, optimists about whether there is going to be a Gaza deal would say, Netanyahu can now give up a few things, like just exactly how many Israeli troops in Gaza, where can they be? Where can they not be? Where will they withdraw to? He can be more, maybe generous is not the right word, but he can accept compromises that would've been impossible a month ago.

LINDSAY:
How does that factor into the fact that he relies, to remain as Prime Minister, on the support of people like Itamar Ben-Gavir and Bezalel Smotrich, who clearly have a very different view of what should be done in Gaza? Isn't Netanyahu hemmed in by the fact that he's dealing with unforgiving coalitional math?

ABRAMS:
He is, and has been since this coalition was created. And it's been a terrible problem for him. Still is. One question would be whether now, after this great success of Israeli and American activity, would these guys really leave the coalition? If they pull the government down and there is a snap election, they're probably not going to get re-elected. According to the polls, both of them, but particularly Ben Gvir, are pretty weak, and their parties are not going to get the minimum five percent you need to get into the Knesset. So, will they really pull the trigger? Will they really bring down a government that means the end of their—

LINDSAY:
So this is the game of chicken in some sense—

ABRAMS:
It is in some sense. You're absolutely right. Other parties on the left have said to Netanyahu, "If there is a kind of peace agreement and you don't have the votes, we'll give you the votes." So I think in the end Netanyahu could get the votes. The problem for him is, he could get that vote, but then his government collapses. And what then? Well, he doesn't have to have an election until October next year. If he has an election now, now means, say, September, October, would he win? And the polls would suggest that he won't win. It's going to be pretty close. And obviously, there's a bit of an uptick across Iran, but not much of one. So he's really got to try to put this coalition back together, and hope that the influence of the United States is great enough to let him do that.

LINDSAY:
We've been talking about Gaza, Elliott, but I have to also ask you about the West Bank, because that matters to Israelis, it certainly matters to Palestinians and people in the broader Arab world. Obviously, there's been a push by Netanyahu's government to increase settlements in the West Bank. People like Ben Gvir have been arguing for the annexation of the West Bank. Can you give me a sense of where things stand on the West Bank as an issue?

ABRAMS:
Yes. The effect of the war in Gaza has been to push Israeli politics to the right. Most Israelis today, I would say, actually left, center, and right, would say, "They can't talk about a Palestinian state right now. It's too dangerous right now. The Palestinian authority can't even run the West Bank. How can it run Gaza, who is going to run the West Bank?" So, there really is no taste in Israel to have that discussion. Of course, that is exactly the discussion that many Arab governments want to have, not just the future of Gaza, but as you said, well, what about the West Bank? What about the old question of statehood? Netanyahu in 1995 actually said something positive about statehood. That is thirty years ago, and he has never said it again. And he's not in favor of Palestinian statehood. So this great question remains a very divisive one in Israeli politics. I'd say the centrists who may in fact beat him in the next election are really not people who believe in Palestinian statehood either. They think that it's too dangerous, at least I would say, while the Islamic Republic of Iran exists and can work to bring down the state of Israel, can work to support terrorist groups in Syria, or in Lebanon, or in Jordan, or in the West Bank, it's too dangerous, because you have the question of, "Well, who's going to govern? Who's going to bring security?" The same questions we have for Gaza. "Who is going to govern?" "Who is going to maintain security?" exist also for the West Bank. It is true that one change over the last few years with this coalition is, as you were saying, the expansion of settlements. Netanyahu has always wanted, I would say, the major settlement blocks to grow, but he hasn't been in favor of building new settlements out in the middle of nowhere. Under this government, that has changed, and there are more new settlements now. That's a very divisive question. And if his government were replaced by a different coalition, a center-right or center-left coalition, I think that settlement policy would change once again. But what we're seeing here in this conversation I think is that part of the problem with bringing the Gaza war to a close is that it's hard to do that without talking about the West Bank, and there is no agreement about the future of the West Bank, that is, is it Palestinian statehood? If it's not statehood, what is it?

LINDSAY:
So, on that question, Elliott, should I infer that the idea of a two-state solution is dead, we just haven't held the funeral?

ABRAMS:
That's a very controversial question, of course, in Western capitals, in Arab capitals. My answer to your question is, it is dead. I don't see how it's going to happen. I don't see any Israeli government agreeing to that under the conditions that we see today, which just to say, neither of the West Bank nor Gaza has an effective government. Forget democracy, let's talk about an effective government that can prevent terrorism, prevent attacks on Israel. It's not there. The Palestinian Authority is too weak. So, I don't see how that Palestinian statehood actually comes into being.

LINDSAY:
Are there any potential surprises out there, Elliott, in terms of the Palestinian authority? A lot of criticism of Mahmoud Abbas in terms of his leadership, his age, the inability to allow a new generation of Palestinian leaders to come to the forefront. Is there anything perhaps we're missing because they haven't made the headline yet?

ABRAMS:
All the polls, year after year after year, tell us that Palestinians are extremely unhappy with the Palestinian authority and with President Abbas. The only new thing to happen recently is that some West Bank sheikhs in Hebron told the Wall Street Journal that they're fed up with the Palestinian Authority, and that they'd like to form a kind of Emirate of Hebron. That was immediately denounced, as you'd expect, within twenty four hours, and I don't know whether that really has legs. My own view would be that the major change comes when President Abbas, who's I think eighty-nine now, dies, or becomes incapacitated. The next generation of Palestinian leaders, of course, youthful leadership, they're all seventy, but that will be a change, because they only had two leaders in the last, what, fifty years. Arafat, and then his Lieutenant, Mahmoud Abbas. So a whole different bunch of people would fight each other and see who can take power. I do think you'll see more of a collective leadership than Arafat or Abbas has had. Remember that Arafat and Abbas have always worn three hats, PLO, Palestinian Authority President, and Chairman of the Fatah Party. My suspicion is that won't happen again. That as people fight out the succession, it'll be, "Well, you get this, but I want that." Which by the way, makes it even harder to think of a negotiation that forms a Palestinian state because, who's the decision maker?

LINDSAY:
Elliott, I want to switch topics and go back to the question you raised earlier about what this means for the region more broadly. I take your point that Prime Minister Netanyahu had this bold vision that he could change relations with other Arab countries, particularly countries in the Persian Gulf. That was the brilliance, or the goal of the Abraham Accords at one point. It seemed to be in reach that Saudi Arabia might acknowledge Israel's existence and establish formal diplomatic relations. Obviously, the attacks in October 2023 set that back, but how can Netanyahu proceed if he has these issues with Gaza in the West Bank, and go ahead with his vision of sort of re-changing the geopolitical order in the Middle East, particularly in the Persian Gulf?

ABRAMS:
I think the first step is to get a ceasefire in Gaza, so that when Saudis and others turn on their TVs, they do not see war. Then I think Netanyahu's got to work out the process of moving forward. And by that I mean, I don't think you leap from zero to 100. I don't think you're going to go with Saudi Arabia, or Syria, or Lebanon, to complete normalization, open borders, embassies. I think there will be steps, like an agreement on borders with Lebanon and Syria, an agreement on trade. In Saudi Arabia, you can see steps like allowing Israelis to visit and do commerce in Saudi Arabia, allowing Saudis to show up in Israel, allowing Saudi and Israeli officials, say the foreign ministers to meet on camera, so that you begin on the Saudi side to accustom the Saudi people, that there is an opening here that's going to move forward slowly but surely, and of course, the commercial, scientific, technical part is something that the Saudis want. And I think those steps are possible. I would say the same thing about President Al-Shara in Syria. I can't see him jumping to normalization. I can see a border deal followed by commerce step-by-step. Same thing with Lebanon. Obviously, if the Saudis go first, it makes it easier for Lebanon and Syria, but I do think you will see progress of this kind step-by-step in all three cases.

LINDSAY:
Well, certainly the Israeli defanging, if I can put it that way, of Iran, has played an incredibly important part in making that kind of diplomatic progress possible. Correct?

ABRAMS:
It is. I mean, there's a counter view that would turn that upside down and say, "Well, Iran is so weak now. The Gulf Arabs don't need Israel anymore." I don't think that's right. I mean, they want Israel as a partner for a number of reasons, and one of them, again, is the scientific technical part of the relationship. They're all very interested in things like artificial intelligence. So yes, I think that the weakening of Iran, and of Hezbollah, has opened possibilities for Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, that didn't exist. I do worry about Iraq, and I say that because, I think if you were the Iranians and you've seen all of this collapse, your little empire of proxies, you want to hold onto whatever you have. And they do have enormous influence in Iraq. That's the one place where I think they might really try to tighten up and make sure that their influence does not diminish. And I hope the United States and other Arab and Western governments really pay attention to this so that it doesn't happen.

LINDSAY:
Elliott, I want to close with a question about what Gaza, and I guess the West Bank as well, mean for the future of U.S.-Israel relations. I know you pay a lot of attention to public opinion polls, and the recent polls coming out, show growing number of Americans viewing Israel unfavorably, having a very harsh judgment of the way Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, not against Israel's right to defend itself, but in terms of the conduct and the length of the war. Do you think this is going to have long-term consequences for U.S.-Israeli relations?

ABRAMS:
Long-term, yes. Short-term, no. You've got three and a half years more of Donald Trump and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Even if there is a democratic majority, people like Hakeem Jeffries are quite pro-Israel. In the longer run, though, I see the polls exactly as you do. And from the Israeli point of view, the worst thing is that support diminishes as the age is lower. So their support is great of people sixty up, and thirty down, it's very bad. I think that's a great worry for the Israelis. Yeah, it'll help when there is, again, as in the Arab world, it'll help when the Gaza war is over, and we're not looking at those scenes every day. But I think there's a long-term trend here that Israelis and their supporters in the U.S. really have to worry about, because it affects Evangelicals, it affects Democrats, it affects youth generally. And they don't have a really good answer to the question, "Well, I've seen those numbers. How do you get them back up again?" It will help when the war is over. Candidly, I think it'll help when Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister, because he's been a focus of the anti-Israel activity. So, both of those will move the needle a bit, but in the long run, it's something that, again, that Israel and its supporters have to worry about over the next generation.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this episode of The President's Inbox. My guest has been Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Elliott, as always, a pleasure to talk.

ABRAMS:
Thanks for having me back.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Justin Schuster and Todd Yeager, with recording engineer Brian Mendives and director of podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.