The Current - Ceasefire in tatters as Israel renews airstrikes on Gaza

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Israel killed hundreds of people with airstrikes on Gaza this week, shattering the fragile ceasefire reached with Hamas in January. We look at why the country has renewed its attacks now, and what comes next. 

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But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It was two o'clock a.m. and I woke up to the deafening sounds of airstrikes

across the Gaza Strip. The bombings were relentless. The sounds of airstrikes were very loud. Every now and then there is a bombing and there is an intense hovering of water plants overhead and in the skies. You just hope that this nightmare won't continue and it would be stopped very soon. That's Maram Humayd, a reporter with Al Jazeera English at her home in Gaza. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes this week,

according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The bombs pierced a fragile two-month ceasefire. Liran Berman's two brothers are being held hostage still in Gaza. I'm terrified for the life of my two little brothers. are being held hostage still in Gaza. release my brothers. They are still alive and we need everything to bring them back. Stephen Erlinger is the chief diplomatic correspondent covering Europe for the New York Times. He is the former Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. He's in Berlin. Stephen, hello. Hello.

Israel has said that this war is back on. Benjamin Netanyahu says that what is happening now is just the beginning. Why is this happening now, do you think? Well, to be honest, we had a three-part ceasefire that was supposed to bring a total conclusion to all of this horrible mess. And it was never obvious that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to proceed to the second phase, and that's the problem. The first phase was a ceasefire, some exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

That went reasonably well. They were supposed to start negotiations on the second phase, which was to really end the war and to have Israeli troops pull out of Gaza altogether In the second phase and have all the hostages both dead and alive released but it as I said, it was always very unclear that Netanyahu was going to pull all Israeli troops out of Gaza and under President Trump, as opposed to President Biden, it's probably much less pressure from Washington to do so. There's also a political pressure for Netanyahu at home. He has to pass a budget by the end of this month or the government would dissolve.

Now, one of the far-right parties that had left the government said that it would rejoin the government should the war start again. And that group, led by a guy called Itamar Ben-Ghivir has now said it will rejoin the government. So I think a lot of this will get Bibi through the March 31 deadline for the budget. Now, it may be Ben-Ghivir would have voted anyway in support of the government, but now if he's back in the government, it's sort of ugly to say that's why the war started again, because I think it was going to start again anyway, but it's another element to this conundrum. Let me ask you just about some of the calculus that's going on such as it might be, as you

can read into it, in the mind of the Israeli Prime Minister. Because the polling coming out of Israel from earlier this month suggests that people overwhelmingly want this war to stop. Something like 73% of those polled said that they want some degree of peace, 56% on the far right. This is from the Israeli Democratic Institute saying that they want the war to stop, that they want a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. What kind of support do you think he has for the resumption of this war? Pete Well, in a funny way, I don't think he cares that much because what matters to him is

keeping his government in power. I mean, there aren't elections until October of 2026 and Hamas has not been defeated, obviously. I mean, one can argue that it could never be defeated, not been defeated, obviously. I mean, one can argue that it could never be defeated. But part of the problem is even the Arab countries who are trying to support or revise Palestinian authority to think through what could happen to Gaza, how to reconstruct it without, as Trump claims he wants to do, removing the population, which is an absurd thought. They don't want to go back in with Hamas still in power either, and Hamas has been very reluctant to do more than suggest that it would step back symbolically from the political running of Gaza, but has always insisted it wants to remain militarily there. So that's part of Netanyahu's problem.

I mean, in a way, at this stage, accomplishing what's already been accomplished, though accomplish is one of those ugly words, this war could have ended a year ago, frankly, but it has continued partly for his own political reasons and partly because there's this dream somehow of defeating Hamas and pressuring Hamas to release the hostages militarily,

which hasn't really worked very well. And the political reasons, as you've mentioned, are that without the war, his coalition disintegrates, he's out of power, and he could face, I mean, there are corruption charges that are swirling around and what have you, that his hold on power becomes much more tenuous without a war. Yes, but it's also true that he's been more popular

because of the Israeli army's accomplishments that I think is a word one can use now in Lebanon and in Iran. And so that raised his popularity. And in fact, if there were elections now, you know, his Likud group would still be the largest group. He might not have a very easy time forming a government, but he has recovered from a nadir in popularity.

Now, obviously, people's opinions go up and down, and people are sick of the war, and they want their hostages back and they can't see the points of all this but frankly at the moment Israeli ground forces are are almost Well, they're very small inside Gaza It's all being done by air. I think if if there were renewal of the ground war I think people would get more upset. How emboldened do you think he is with the new Trump administration?

Donald Trump had said that if all of the hostages weren't released, all hell would break loose in Gaza. Well, I think he's very emboldened. I mean, Netanyahu has always played American politics. I think your listeners know that actually in America, Israel is not really a foreign policy issue. It's a domestic policy issue. I think your listeners know that actually in America, Israel is not really a foreign policy issue, it's a domestic policy issue,

and it's the same inside Israel. The relationship with the United States is so important and vital to both countries in some ways, or certainly to the politics of both countries. And Netanyahu has never liked Joe Biden, despite the support the Biden administration gave him and for which the Biden people were criticized terribly. He's always wanted Trump and in the way he campaigned for Trump and Trump's, you know, his kind of guy. And I think Trump is not, Trump has already agreed to provide heavy bombs back

to Israel that the Biden people refused to supply. And I think Netanyahu feels pretty much a free rein. He wants to stay on Trump's good side. And it is important to understand Trump wants to end the killing in Gaza. I mean, just the way he wants to end the killing in Gaza. I mean, just the way he wants to end the killing in Ukraine. This is about as far as Trump thinks, but he wants to get credit for ending these two wars, which he considers Biden's wars.

So Bibi has to, there's a line he's got to walk, but it's an easier line under Trump than under Biden. What about Hamas? Hamas is still holding hostages. Anthony Blinken, the former secretary of state on his way out the door, suggested that Hamas had recruited perhaps as many militants as had been killed over the course of this war. How is Hamas calculating the Trump factor?

Well, it's interesting because so much of the leadership of Hamas has been killed, to be honest. And the Hamas leadership outside the West Bank and Gaza is pretty distant from what's going on inside Gaza. There is a big division, which was part of why people like Abu Marzouk had so much trouble with Sinwar, who was running Gaza, and Sinwar didn't want to end the war. And the Hamas leadership outside, most of them in Qatar, were much more eager to find some more diplomatic solutions.

So there's always this division. Hamas is, you know, a very important political wing of the Palestinian political world. I mean, it's, there's Hamas militarily, but there's also what Hamas represents, which is kind of a religiously based radical Islam that has support. And of course, the fight in Gaza has made Hamas more popular in the West Bank than it used to be, though probably less popular in Gaza, where people suffered because of the war. So Hamas wants to survive.

Now I've talked to some of the big Arab country people, the Saudis country people, the Saudis, Egyptians, et cetera. And they, as I said, they want Hamas out of the way. And in fact, some of them talk about, at some point, offering Hamas travel outside Gaza to Algeria or somewhere else, which is kind of what happened to the Palestine Liberation Organization in Arafat years ago when they all were sent to Tunisia.

I don't know if this is realistic at all, but certainly the conservative Arab monarchies who we all depend on for the money to rebuild Gaza have no love for Hamas or for the Muslim Brotherhood and they are Not especially unhappy privately that Israel continues to go after him as I have to let you go But just finally I mean the suffering continues hostages are still being held Who is the convening power that will bring these sides together and figure out a way out of this?

It's such a good question because the horror continues and in a way it's a useless horror. It's like blood piling up for no particular reason right now because you have a stalemate. I still think it has to be Donald Trump because frankly, America is the only foreign government Israel listens to. You just wonder whether he's interested in that. Well, I think Trump is interested. He would like to get credit for ending the war and solving the problem. He wants to be seen as a peacemaker, you believe?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is about as far as he goes, but I don't think he supports Israel reoccupying Gaza or anything. But I think he would like to get credit for somehow being the mediator to end the war and to get Gaza restored to more, more normal life. That's the hope, that's my hope for him. That's what I hope he wants to do. But it's, you know, there's nothing easy in the Middle East and very little predictable

and things go wrong very easily. And there's always victims to be counted. Steve, it's good to speak with you as ever. Thank you very much. Thank you. Stephen Erlinger is the chief diplomatic correspondent covering Europe for the New York Times. He was bureau chief in Israel with the Times as well.