The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Gaza Goes Back to Square One || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Israel has resumed military operations in Gaza, so any ceasefire or hostage deal that was on the table can be kissed goodbye.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/gaza-goes-back-to-square-one

Hello from Vegas. Just a real quick one today. Earlier this week, the Israelis went back into Gaza. So we've had multiple hundreds of strikes and basically full military operations we began again. And so the peace for hostages deal that may have been kind of sort of in places clearly gone now. And anyone who's interested in negotiating a ceasefire or truce is just going to have to start from scratch. Unfortunately, fortunately, words are kind of insisting. sufficient. Most of the population had tried to return to their homes when they discovered that two-thirds of the housing stock has been destroyed. And keep in mind that it takes about a thousand

trucks a day coming in with food aid in order to keep the population alive, and that at a time when the greenhouses were working, which they no longer are. So we're once again right back into the humanitarian catastrophe. And if you are Israel, we are once again right back into the situation where Hamas is strong. Keep in mind that you've got over two million people living in an open-air prison camp with absolutely no prospects. You can't get out of the Gaza Strip unless the Israelis specifically allow you almost on a case-by-case basis. And because of that, you're basically just in this cauldron. It's a horrible way to live.

And it makes it very, very easy for militant groups like Hamas to recruit. So if you think of all the big successes that Israel has had recently, they gutted Hezbollah with a brilliant, long-term intelligence operations where they blew up South phones. They've gutted the Lebanese government. The Syrian government has fallen and with the airstrikes, they've basically removed all the heavy equipment that Syria has built up over the last 60 years and Iran is on the back foot throughout the entire region. But Hamas is different because it's basically in an urban zone. And doing door-to-door clearing of an urban zone, especially when you can tunnel under it is just an order of magnitude more difficult.

It's not that Israel's been unwilling to put the men in the materials to the work to try to root Hamas, it's just that as long as there's 2.3 million people there, Hamas will always, always, always, always, always be able to recruit more. And unfortunately, that just means that a conflict like this doesn't have an end. It's just a question of what minimum tolerance the Israelis are willing to put up with in terms of violence. And it appears, at least for this government, that means keeping troops on the ground and active military operations for the foreseeable future.