TED Talks Daily - How far away is a ceasefire? An update on Gaza and the Rafah invasion | Ian Bremmer

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

In an exploration of conflict and diplomacy, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media Ian Bremmer joins TED's Helen Walters to unravel the ideological underpinnings, contrasting objectives and humanitarian crises defining the current situation in Gaza. Listen for the latest on Israel’s invasion of Rafah and what happened to the proposed ceasefire deal as well as a dissection of the elusive quest for peace in a region haunted by the specter of war.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today, the latest episode of TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer, political scientist and the president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. He sits down with Ted's Helen Walters to discuss the latest on the situation in Gaza, including Israel's ground invasion of Rafah. But first,

a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do. And with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and

for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. AI keeping you up at night? Wondering what it means for your business? Thank you. questions like, why is Canada lagging in AI adoption? And how to catch up? Don't get left behind. Listen to Disruptors, the innovation era, and stay ahead of the game in this fast-changing world. Follow Disruptors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And now, our TED Talk of the day. On Tuesday, May the 7th, Israeli tanks entered Rafah in southern Gaza as part of a military operation to rid the city of Hamas fighters and infrastructure. The invasion had long been anticipated, with much fear for the 1.2 million Palestinians estimated to be sheltering in the area. It feels like a pivotal moment in an ongoing war and humanitarian crisis, so we thought we would try to get a deeper sense of what is going on and what we should be paying attention to. I am delighted to be joined once

more by Ian Bremmer, president and founder of political risk research and consulting firm Eurasia Group, and my conspirator in this TED Explains the World series. Even though Ian has a terrible voice right now. A terrible voice, a terrible voice. I mean, how do I sound so non-Ian-like? It's horrible. You sound really terrible, but the good news is that the insight and the wisdom will flow all the same. So thank you for being here, Ian, and welcome. Thank you, Ellen. Good to see you. Okay. So can you lay it out for us? Share your perspective of what is going on right now and crucially, what are we not seeing or appreciating in this moment? Well, look, so much of this conflict has been about the fact that the two antagonists, the Israeli government and Hamas, have virtually no alignment, no overlap in what they're trying to accomplish.

And it's very hard to come to a sustainable peace or even a ceasefire that can last for anything when that's true. I mean, the perspective of the Israelis, and I'm not just talking about the war cabinet, but the whole Israeli population. And there have been some that have been protesting and demanding that the Israeli government accept the Hamas ceasefire. Most from the right, the center, and the left want Hamas destroyed. They want the leadership of Hamas brought to justice, either killed or captured. They want the military capabilities of Hamas destroyed beyond an ability to continue to launch rockets against Israel, irrespective of Israeli defense. And they want the fighters, the 30, some 30 to 40,000 estimated Hamas fighters to be gone. And they're not close to that military outcome yet. Hamas, of course,

is trying to find a way to continue to fight and to represent their ideology and their aspirations for control of territory that they believe belongs to the Palestinians. And of course, they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist. So, I mean, even negotiating with a terrorist organization is something that we don't in normal times think a lot about doing. That is what the Americans, the Egyptians, the Qataris have tried to facilitate over the past months. But the reality is that while everybody else in the world wants the fighting to be over, the two groups that are actually fighting don't share common interests. They don't. And no one has been forced to cry uncle. I mean, Hamas just obviously hasn't faced enough damage that they feel like they have no alternative but to accept what is being offered to them by the Israelis.

And the Israeli government, despite the isolation they're feeling, and with even President Biden now suspending a small number of offensive weapons, which he was incredibly reluctant to even talk about as a possibility just a couple of months ago. He's now doing it. And the Saudis coming out and saying, warning the Israel to stop what the Saudis are calling a genocide against the Palestinian people. That is a big step for a country that's preparing to normalize relations with Israel. Despite all of that, Israel does not feel the need that they have to change and give more to the negotiating process. And that's why, despite the ultimatums that have been given consistently by the United States not to go into RAah. They've gone in. And to be fair, they haven't at this moment, you and I talking, they haven't gone all the way in. They've done more than dip a toe. There are significant airstrikes. There are tanks that

have rolled into some of it. They have given evacuation flyers and they're moving a lot of the territory out of big parts of Rafah. But you would not call this a full-on crowned invasion. And at this point, the Americans have not said that the Israelis have breached the red line, of which there is one. What the Americans will do if they proceed is an open question. And so we're, you know, we're in a bit of a gray zone. A lot of the Middle East operates in gray zones and conflict all the time. But this is very dangerous, both for the region and more broadly.

And I think that's it's a good time to be talking about what's at stake here. So it's interesting that you say that Hamas doesn't feel like they have, I don't know if you put it, suffered enough, but 35,000 Palestinians have died in this conflict. What do you think will bring Hamas to the table in some meaningful way? Look, I mean, their leaders, some of their leaders have lost a lot of their families. That's true. My understanding is that the military leader of Hamas has actually had over 30 members of his family killed. You know, so clearly there's a level of personal suffering. And while ideology is driving them in ways that is hard for you and I to imagine, it is hard to say it's driving them

blindly. You have to believe that there are other things that are also weighing on their decisions, like the well-being of their families and like their ability to continue to live and fight another day. Now, I'm sure that that's a part of the reason they don't want to give up the hostages, not just because there aren't that many left alive for them to give up. And of course, that has been a wrinkle in the negotiations over the past weeks, as well as the Israelis have learned that the first tranche of hostages that were going to be released weren't all going to be alive. No one's going to accept that bait and switch in Israel. And also the fact that the only way that Hamas is protecting their leaders in all likelihood is because they're deep under Rafah in tunnels with those hostages. So, you know, one of the ways that you get them out is if there is a possibility of safe passage. I mean, I remember when you and I were talking about Prokosian, Evgeny Prokosian, who was, you know, marching to Moscow and he was in an absolutely no-win situation. And yet he was willing to cut a deal with Putin that gave him another few months

of life on this earth and allowed his lieutenants and some of his advisors to continue with their contracts and their jobs. You and I both knew that he was dead man walking. So I mean, part of the question is Hamas has gotten themselves in terms of their leadership into an incredibly impossible position they will be marked no matter where they are for death by the israelis by the americans by many others for the rest of their lives that hardens their position it makes it harder to negotiate with them but But even then, if things get too impossible for them, they might be willing to accept an exit clause to get out for a third undisclosed country for a period of time. And I got to tell you, most of the world would accept that if it meant that we could have an end of Hamas in Gaza, an end of the fighting

in Gaza. But again, at this point, what we're negotiating over right now, and Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, who has been the adult from the United States, riding herd on these negotiations. Him going to Israel is the last opportunity to get a deal done, to get any time of ceasefire and back away from full-on onslaught of Rafah that will cause many thousands more civilian deaths, much more famine and hardship for the other Palestinians living in Gaza, and much more retaliation from the axis of resistance and more broadly across the Middle East. So he's going there. But what we're talking about, even if he is successful, is not a permanent ceasefire. And I think it's almost impossible to get this Israeli government, and particularly its prime minister and his far-right coalition,

off of the idea that they still have unfinished military business on the ground in Gaza. And they may delay it for a month or six weeks, but they are not going to delay it indefinitely. That is not in the cards, in my view. So you mean a full-scale invasion of Rafah is still on the cards? I do. I absolutely believe that. Now, what is defined by full-scale invasion? It's interesting. The Americans have never told the Israelis that they oppose a full-scale invasion. It's interesting. The Americans have never told the Israelis that they oppose a full-scale invasion. They haven't said that. They haven't. You'd think they'd say that. They hadn't said that. They've said that they want guarantees that the Palestinian civilians living in Rafah, over a million, as you say, 1.2 million have a safe haven, have an ability to evacuate that the

Americans consider to hold water. And that's number one. Number two, that adequate humanitarian aid is able to get in to Gaza, across the territory, to allow the Palestinians to continue to survive in anything that looks like life. And as of right now, neither of those two conditions have been upheld. And the Americans have made that very clear as of today. So if the Israelis were to persist with a full-on invasion, absent those conditions, the Americans would be forced to what? Suspend, cut off offensive weaponry, make the Israelis buy it on the market, reduce their ability to actually continue a fight for more than a few weeks the way they would like to. And Rafa, that is what the Americans are trying to say to Israel right now. But it is not the case. I mean, I feel that, well, if we don't

get a ceasefire, a temporary ceasefire, what is likely to happen is that the Israelis will evacuate more people, non-military age men, right? But others, and they can't force them. They're not ordering them, but they're, you know, they're flying leaflets and they're saying, get out and we'll give you safe passage for a period of time, a couple of days, four days, whatever it is. And they'll let in more humanitarian aid, some of which is no longer, frankly, in their control. They've said an American private security company is going to be given control of the border that they've just taken over at Rafah. That's new. That's the last 24 hours. And they've also, of course, allowed, though they don't formally occupy it, so it's not really up to Israel to allow it, the United States to build this pier to allow goods to get shipped in, which might be open in

the next few days even to allow some additional aid in. I think that those things will happen. Israel will say that they've met American demands and then they'll do full-on invasion. I think that is the plan right now. Absolutely. Short of Bill Burns being successful when he gets to Israel. How do you rate his chances? If it was anybody but him, they'd be really low. He's well respected by all sides. He really is. He wouldn't be going if he didn't have a serious plan he's not going for window

dressing he's not going to show that the americans are giving their all he believes there's a way through i have a lot of respect for bill um so i mean i i'd like to say it's at least a coin flip um i think they're still really talking they're still really engaging but They're still really engaging. But let's also keep in mind, Ellen, a couple of things here. First, talking to Hamas is hard. Getting messages to the military leadership, just one message back and forth can frequently take one to two weeks by the Qataris. So between the time that they have said something and when you are responding to them, frequently the facts on the ground change. And that makes it a lot harder to get to a deal. And that's how the Americans have earlier, a couple of months ago, said, yeah,

we think a deal is about to happen. And then, you know, you hear back from Hamas and it turns out life is different than you thought. And Biden's being a lot more careful, more cautious this time around than he was a couple of months ago. Everybody has noticed also the fact that if Netanyahu gives too much up in a deal, he will lose his right wing government and then he'll fall. And this is a government who have ministers in a sitting government who have called for genocide against the Palestinians, right? I mean, publicly, who have said Gaza should be leveled, full ethnic cleansing. They should be occupying it. These are ministers of the Israeli government. They are not members of the war cabinet, thankfully. So they don't have control over the war in Gaza, but they are indispensable to Netanyahu maintaining his power. And so he is being pushed.

I mean, I have no doubt that Bibi will find a way to come to terms with the deal if he can survive politically with that deal. But if he can't, he'll throw it away. And so that's where we are right now. It's hard to work with Hamas. It's hard to work with this Israeli war cabinet because of the leadership. And that's just to get a temporary deal of a few weeks, which everyone will see as an incredibly improbable win. Like we are at the brink right now. And I would consider it, you know, a big breath of fresh air. Oil prices will go down. We will have a cessation of attacks in the Red Sea by the Houthis for as long as the ceasefire is going on.

There'll be huge shuttle diplomacy to talk about next steps, Palestinian leadership, governance, all of these things. But the reality is we'll still only be looking at a temporary ceasefire with Hamas holding on to a smaller number of hostages, each of whom mean a lot more to Hamas's survival, right? And the Israelis being pushed harder and harder say, what are you doing to get them out? And what are you doing to end Hamas? So I don't think this gets easier, even if we manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat with these negotiations, these last-ditch negotiations. How do you rate Netanyahu's chances of surviving as the leader? I mean, you know, he has survived longer over many administrations than almost any of his detractors would have expected.

So his survival skills are quite something. His political instincts, his ability to play higher stakes poker than you are willing to and push all of his chips in, does it repeatedly. There's no question that Bibi thinks he's got a better chance with his coalition if he can make it through the U.S. election and Trump wins. Not because Trump loves Bibi. He doesn't. Trump doesn't trust Netanyahu. Didn't like, really didn't like the fact that Netanyahu promised to be there with the Americans when the U.S. was going to assassinate Qasem Soleimani and then a week beforehand pulled out. Also really didn't like that Netanyahu immediately called Biden to congratulate him after the election. Say, I'm ready to work with you. Trump couldn't stand those things. Trump remembers those things, talks about it. But Trump on Israel supports the far right position and Trump's advisors, foreign policy advisors around the

Middle East support that position. This is the guy that recognized Israel's ownership of the Golan Heights. He's the guy that moved the embassy, the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He didn't have a problem with expanded settlements in the West Bank. I mean, so a lot of places where Biden is strongly pro-Zionist, but is more of a centrist in terms of who he supports in the Israeli political spectrum. You know, Trump would support the far right that Bibi has as his lifeline. It's Likud, right wing party, center right, and it's the far right coalition. It's Likud, right-wing party, center-right, and it's the far-right coalition. That's it. So I think that Netanyahu thinks that if he sticks around, there can be other things on the table that can allow him to be a leader for longer. But he has to stick around. At this point,

I think it's more likely than not that he's still prime minister come November, because even if you have a no confidence vote and you force a new election, it's three months from when that happens to the election. And, you know, we had this big I'm sure we'll talk about this, but we had this big fight between the Israelis and the Iranians. That made Netanyahu look like more of a patriot. He had been responsible for October 7th. That's his legacy. Then he's responsible for Israel with allies defending itself against unprecedented Iranian strike without a single Israeli casualty. So I think he's bought himself more time by virtue of how this war has gone and how the war has expanded and also how he's managed to keep his own coalition on side. So yeah, I think if you made me bet, I think he's got at least another six months in him at this point. So the mention of Iran, I think is really important. As you mentioned, like in April, we saw Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles onto Israel in response to an Israeli attack. And I think there was real kind of everyone holding their breath to see how that actually shook out. Do you think that Iran will respond to this attack on Rafah? Or do you think that they're going to get involved in any bigger way at this moment? Not directly, but indirectly. But you know, here's a really interesting point,

Alan. You know, the Israelis have had a common practice of killing IRGC members when they can find them in other parts of the Middle East, not in Iran itself. They've had major cyber attacks in Iran against their nuclear program. They've assassinated nuclear scientists, right? I mean, there have been all sorts of Israeli attacks against core Iranian interests. It's fairly clear from what happened just a few weeks ago, the Iranian response to an Israeli attack against an Iranian consular building, basically part of the Iranian embassy, which Iran considered an attack on its own territory, 300 plus missiles and drones against Israel. And they said, you do this again, this is going to be much

worse. So the stakes for the status quo anti-policy of Israel have gotten a lot higher. Next time Israel is thinking about, okay, it's time to go after Iran's nuclear program again, the potential for that to become a war war much higher. So let's talk, let's break down two different parts of this. First, let's look at what happened between Israel and Iran. Then let's look at what the Iranians are doing going forward. First, what happened? So the Israelis, who have been on the receiving end of attacks from all of these Iranian proxies across the region, And Iran gives the money and weaponry and training and intelligence. So then the Israelis see this target in Damascus,

the IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, their head for Syria. And so they send missiles in, they blow up the building, they kill him and some other officers. And so then the Iranians, on the one hand, they clearly don't want a war. So they tell the Turks and Iraq, Iraqis in advance, here's what we're planning on doing. They wait a week. The messages get to the Americans, just going to attack military targets, not going to attack any civilians. This isn't about the United States. We don't want the U.S. involved. Then they send the weapons over. While the weapons are in transit, the Iranian mission to the U.N. says, hey, this is all we're doing. It's in response to what the Israelis did. We consider this now closed. That all sounds pretty good. Sounds de-escalatory, tit for tat, except they sent over 300 missiles and drones. And I will tell you

that no one in the Biden administration, in the Pentagon, in the White House, no one thought that that was going to happen. They thought that was such a larger response from Iran. I mean, if you wanted to just hit Israel to show that this is serious, you send 20, 30 drones, whatever, you know they're going to knock them down. You send over 300, the intention is for a bunch of them to get through. The intention is to blow up a major Israeli base, to kill Israeli military men and women. If that had happened, the ability of the United States to contain the Israeli response to something symbolic would have been very, very challenging. In other words, we might right now be in an Iran-Israel war that the Americans got sucked into. The Straits of Hormuz would have been disrupted. Iran also boarded an Israeli-linked ship just

outside the Straits of Hormuz right before they sent those weapons, showing this is where this can go if this gets really ugly. That's $150 oil. Trump is the next president, right? That's a major war in the Middle East that the Americans are actively fighting with allies. Horrible situation. I don't think it was likely, but the Iranians were prepared to risk that, at least to a limited degree. And that's something that everyone in the region now understands. And the Israelis understand it too. Okay, so that's what just happened. Fortunately, that's in the rear view mirror. Going forward, if this attack on Rafah goes ahead, either in the coming days because there's no agreement on the hostages, or in the coming weeks because there is an agreement

and then it's over and they haven't extended it, then you're going to see the Iranians continuing to provide all sorts of support for these so-called axis of resistance members who the U.S. considers to be terrorist organizations, they don't recognize the right to Israel to exist, they're going to be engaging in strikes on shipping, on warships, and military targets of the U.S. and the U.K., and also against Israel. And the Israelis are likely to make strikes against Iran as a consequence going forward. So we could very easily have a repeat of what we just saw between Israel and Iran. But with that deterrence having failed, we're now at a new point of escalation, more dangerous than it was last time around. Got to

do more to show that you're serious, right? Also, final point, in case that wasn't enough, you've got over 100,000 Israelis that have been evacuated from the north of the country. Evacuated because at the beginning of the war, they were concerned that Hezbollah was going to continue to send missiles against them and make them unsafe, kill them. So they're out, but there's a lot of pressure to get them back in, especially by September, start of the school year. The only way you get them back is if you either have a peace plan that's agreed to, which we don't have, or you've taken some actions against Hezbollah. Now, most of the conversations I've had with Israeli leadership, and even with some centrist members outside of the Israeli government, is that action needs to be taken against Hezbollah. And if it's a two-front war, it's a two-front war.

It's one of the reasons they don't want to have a lot of troops in Gaza. Most of them have been pulled back. It's because they have to defend themselves against Hezbollah. So if the only way you get your 100,000 citizens back to their homes is you need to start striking Hezbollah to a more serious degree. Hezbollah is by far the most important ally of Iran in the region. They're the ones the Iranians would do much more to defend. So that's another proximate way that we get from the war that we have right now to something that could expand and bring the Iranians in. There's just a lot of vectors of instability as we look over the coming months.

Is there any genuinely credible path to a two-state solution or to peace in the region anytime soon? I think there's absolutely a credible path. I just don't know that it's anytime soon. I mean, the credible path is you have a Palestinian authority that appoints a technocratic government for Gaza. Palestinians who have worked in multilateral organizations and understand what it means to actually build an economy. Those people exist. And there are certainly people that could run a Palestinian Authority in Gaza that are, some of them are in the Emirates, in Egypt, they're, you know, they're the ones in jail in Israel. I mean, you've got, there are possibilities, right? And then the military military the security would be funded by the gulf states maybe the u.s

with a lot of the physical security provided probably by egypt maybe a little with jordan maybe some others right um maybe the un would get involved um that's feasible and there's been a lot of conversations involving the gulf states around that. And some of the conversations, even in the Bahrain peace conference, that was the has radicalized a generation of Israelis against a solution like that. Not all of them, but a majority, a majority. A two-state solution is no longer something that anybody in Israel with a big party wants to run on because it's very unpopular in Israel, particularly among Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs, different story. Israeli Jews strongly oppose a two-state solution right now. Then you've got the Palestinians, and not just in Gaza,

but in the occupied territories of the West Bank, where much more land has been taken illegally over the past months. I mean, Netanyahu appointed a member of the far right to be in charge of demolitions in the West Bank. They're taking more land, more Palestinians are fighting, more Palestinians are getting killed, fighting against settlers, also fighting with the IDF. So we're farther from a two-state solution, even in the West Bank. And then, of course, we have the animosity from Palestinians who are refugees living without full rights in Jordan or in Lebanon. You put all of that together and this is an incredibly difficult path to get from here to there. I mean, look, the Saudis are

holding out. We will normalize relations with Israel. Even as we say you're committing a genocide. When's the last time you've had a country say we're going to normalize relations with you? You're committing a genocide. But we're prepared to do it. Just stop. Just stop.

And let's have a defined path for a new state for the Palestinians that you will recognize and then we'll do it. But and the Americans have spent a lot of time with the Saudis working on what that plan would be. And I think you could get that through with a new defense pact that would pass Democrats and Republicans in Congress. But you have to have Israeli normalization. That means you have to have a Palestinian state. Helen, there is much more support for a Palestinian state today around the world than there was when you and I were talking about this last time. When October 7th happened, it was in part the result of years and years and years of everybody talking about Palestinian need for self-autonomy

and determination and no one actually doing it. We now have a lot more people recognizing talk is cheap. This is causing a real problem. We need a Palestinian state. But I mean, if the people that are fighting the war have inclinations against each other that preclude any such possibility, you asked me at the beginning, why don't we have a deal? We don't have a deal because there's not overlap between Hamas and the war cabinet. Why don't we have a two-state solution pathway? Because the Palestinian people and the Israeli people have gotten further apart despite all of this pain, because of all of this pain. It is so painful. There is so much pain everywhere. What's interesting too, I think,

is that the global response to this has been so divided itself. There is so much anger at Israel for what people are seeing, that it's happening to the Palestinians, the death and the destruction of Gaza and the pictures that we see. The support for Israel that I think materialized after October the 7th does in some ways seem to have evaporated on a global kind of basis. But I'm wondering if the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of the kind of angry rhetoric that we see rolling out and playing out across the world is playing into any of the factors on the ground and with the leadership who are actually making the decisions. What is your response to that? And how are you seeing this type of strife that is happening around the world

actually impact anything that's happening on the ground? I mean, of course, we're seeing a rise in anti-Semitism, which frankly predated October 7th. Those numbers were going up in Europe and the United States before that. And it's gotten worse. And I think a lot of that has been just the polarization and the misinformation in society, the extremism that is carried algorithmically through social media. I mean, things that you and I talk about, that's getting worse. And, you know, you mentioned that there was, you know, an outpouring of support for Israel after October 7th. And that's true. And we saw big demonstrations, massive in Germany, in the United States and elsewhere. But there was still a lot of anti-Semitism.

And, you know, even in the early days, if you were an Israeli Jew, you felt like there wasn't as much support as you would think. There was a lot more sympathy for the Hamas position, even as they just carried out the most brutal atrocities we'd seen against Jews since the Holocaust. And, you know, Joe Biden on Holocaust Memorial Day, Remembrance Day, came out and, you know, seven months after, reminded people of that, that, you know, the hostages are still there these atrocities were still committed the people that were responsible for those atrocities that carried them out that ordered them they're still commanding their forces and that's clearly not acceptable right i mean the americans didn't

consider that acceptable after 9-11 no country that had that brutality um against them would consider that acceptable. But it's also true that more broadly, Israel today is in a very isolated place. When Hamas accepted the plan that was offered by the Egyptians and the Qataris, and the Israelis said no. Pretty much the entire world was in the Hamas negotiating position. And that's not good for Israel. Now, has that really made a difference to the people engaging in the substance of this conflict and potential resolution? No. And has it led to any major attacks? No, not yet. I mean, look, the major terrorist attack that we've seen since you and I have spoken to each other, an Islamist extremist attack was in Moscow for some Tajiks that were attached to ISIS-K. And the reason it was Moscow is because Putin is a big friend and ally of Assad in Syria and helped to take ISIS out of the territory that had been their caliphate.

Now, that was a while ago, but it takes a terrorist organization a long time to organize a spectacular attack. You know, everyone's trying to get them. They need to operate under the radar with a lot of anonymity and they don't have a lot of resources. A lot of them aren't very capable. So I fear that the fact that we haven't seen anything yet is just because there hasn't been enough time for those plans to manifest. I mean, certainly US and allied intelligence believes that we are gonna see a generational change

in support for anti-Israel and anti-US Islamist extremist terror because of what has transpired in the last seven months on the ground in Gaza. I absolutely expect that. I hope that the amount of effort and resource that has been put into combating that post 9-11 will enable us to prevent it, or at least the vast majority of it. But, you know, I don't know how lucky I feel. Well, that is depressing. Thank you. So what are you watching for next? What should we be looking out for? What are the signals that we should be looking for that

something new and interesting and big is happening that we should be paying attention to? Well, first of all, what we talked about a few of those in the region, we want to watch very for that something new and interesting and big is happening that we should be paying attention to? Well, first of all, what we talked about, a few of those in the region, we want to watch very carefully what comes out of Bill Burns' trip to Israel. If there's going to be a short-term agreement, that's what it is. And or if more time is bought in terms of a Rafa attack, full bore Rafa attack. And we want to watch how many how much the Israelis move on the other precursors, humanitarian aid and the evacuations, because then they've checked the boxes. They can go in. Right. So it's the American perspective. It's the Israeli perspective. That's what we want to watch. Assuming Rafa happens, we want to watch very, very carefully all of the attacks from the Houthis.

And because they've been expanding, they just threatened the Mediterranean for the first time. They also struck a ship in the Indian Ocean for the first time using ballistic missiles. Clearly, that's a problem. They're attacking a lot of American warships, while the Iranian-supported proxies in Syria and Iraq have stopped ever since the three servicemen and women were killed in Jordan a few months ago. The Americans brushed them back pretty hard, and that stopped. But the Houthis are still hitting the Americans, and if they were to blow up a warship or kill a bunch of American servicemen and women, I think that would clearly lead to an escalation.

Finally, in the region, want to watch the Hezbollah, Northern Israel front, the Lebanon front. And as we get closer to the fall, what are the Israelis preparing to do on that? Don't fall asleep on that. But beyond the region, the one thing we haven't talked about is the U.S. election, because Biden is in no man's land on this issue, right? I mean, you have a very few Americans consider Gaza the issue they're going to vote on. But this makes Biden look weak. He has been telling his top ally in the Middle East, you must let humanitarian aid in. You must do more to protect the civilians. You must protect journalists. You must protect aid workers. Do solution. And the Israeli prime minister has told Biden, the president of the most powerful country in the world, who is an enormous supporter of his country,

has told him, talk to the hand. Talk to the hand. And has even told him, you know, on Holocaust remembrance, the eve of Holocaust remembrance, that the Israelis have to only count on themselves, can't count on any other countries around the world. After everything the Americans did to defend Israel with the Iranian strikes, despite the opposition of almost every country in the world to what Israel is doing right now, and the American vetoes at the Security Council, I mean, everything the U.S. is doing to

stand up to Israel and Netanyahu, at least, I mean, it may work in Israel. It certainly works for his coalition. But in the United States, in an election year, it's insane. And so Biden is in damage control mode, and this is hurting him. And this war, I think that Netanyahu is still going to be there in November. And I fear the war is still going to be going on. And if it's still going on in the summer and in the fall, I mean, the students are going to go home. They graduate. And I mean, I'm doing the Columbia SIPA graduation ceremony. I'm their speaker on Monday. That's going to be a very different speech than I expected when they originally asked me to give it. So I'm going to go in and do my best for the students. But they'll all go away. But then come August,

we've got the convention in Chicago, which is fraught with incredible symbolism and a lot of anger and certainly will be a place where, you know, professional agitators will show up to make this look bad for the Dems. And then after that, I mean, if this war is still going on when campus gets back in place, August, September, you know, these universities are going to be lit. It's going to be a serious, serious problem for Biden. The kids are not all right. And in an election that is tight with a small number of swing states, and it counts on people coming out and being supportive of the incumbent, Biden is in serious danger of losing critical votes on this issue.

Obviously, there's no quick fix for Biden. But what do you think he should do? Look, I think Biden should have come out very, very strongly against Netanyahu and with Israel on day one after October 7th, which, by the way, is the position of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people. You know, I mean, give direct interviews to the J Post and Haaretz and say, you know, how the Israeli prime minister failed his people, right? I mean, in other words, really put your thumb on the scale, which would have, you know, been, it would have been painful, but it's, Bibi would have done it to Biden, would have been happy to, right? I mean, in other words, really put your thumb on the scale, which would have, you know, been, it would have been painful, but it's, Bibi would have done it to Biden, would have been happy to, right? And Biden's not that kind of a guy, but when you're playing against that sort of person,

that's what you need to do. And the United States doesn't just support Israel. It also supports Israeli democracy, which Netanyahu is an enemy of, right? That's what he needed to do. And he could have absolutely done just as much to provide the support for, you know, get the money to the Palestinians. There's aid going in, but also get military support to the Israelis, redouble the American defense support so that the Israelis can make sure that they can deal with incoming missiles and rockets. You can do both of those things at the same time.

A final thing is I think Biden should have talked a lot more about the American hostages in the early days. And I don't know, I'm not privy to whether the Americans seriously considered a raid. But I'd like to believe that from day one, they were saying the Israelis are in charge of the hostages. The Israelis are in charge of the hostages. You've got American citizens that are hostages. I don't know why the Israelis should be in charge of those hostages. I think that's either a joint raid or the Americans go in and do it themselves. But I would have wanted Biden on top of that.

And it's not that Biden wasn't, it's not that Biden refused that. A lot of people were coming to him with that advice. Biden's 81. And I just don't think he's willing to be as decisive, as assertive on these issues as he was 10, 15, 20 years ago. I'm hearing a lot more of like, yeah, yeah, that sounds interesting. Let's think about that as opposed to being decisive on the issue. And this is one where Biden being too cautious, too late, too slow in articulating a position that he has gotten to. He has now actually suspended some of this military aid. But you don't want to wait until after the World Central Kitchen debacle.

This was happening before to lots of aid workers. They just weren't Americans. But it was happening. I mean, they've been incensed with what the Israeli prime minister has been doing and the war cabinet for months now, but they've been very careful. I agree that your allies, you should talk to privately differently than you talk to publicly. And that the US policy towards something that the Israelis do when it's wrong shouldn't be the same as when the Russians do something that's wrong, because they're your ally. I get that. But this is beyond the pale for the Israeli PM. And I think he thinks

he can walk all over the United States right now. And that's not a good position to be in. Ian, it is always a pleasure to talk to you, despite the toughness of the conversations. I'm so glad your voice held out. Thank you so much for being here and we will see you again soon. Let's hope for the best on these negotiations. Let's hope that we at least get some good news and stop some of this fighting for a period of time, get some of this aid in. But either way, I'm sure you and I

will be talking again soon. Thanks, Ian. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnb. Thanks, Ian. sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. That was Ian Bremmer and Helen Walters in the latest episode of TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan.

Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.