What Next in Gaza?

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. While campus protests and police involvement are the big story now in this country, negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza and a longer-term peace are going on in the region. We'll talk now to Aaron David Miller, who worked for the US government as a Middle East peace negotiator during the Oslo peace process of the '90s and overall for 25 years for the State Department as an analyst, negotiator, and historian.

He's the author of books, including The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. It's sad and it says a lot that that book was published in 2008, and here we still are. Aaron David Miller is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Aaron, thanks so much for giving us some time today. Welcome to WNYC.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Brian, it's great to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with negotiations for a short-term ceasefire plus hostage and prisoner exchange. I see that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the region trying to finalize the deal. He says Israel has put what he calls a very generous offer on the table to Hamas. Could you list the main points of that proposal as you understand them?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Yes. By and large, and I think I need to say at the outset, Brian, that this is one of the most curious and opaque negotiations certainly that I've ever experienced. The principal Palestinian decision-maker, Yahya Sinwar is ensconced somewhere meters below ground in a tunnel most likely below Khan Younis. There's no trust between Israel and Hamas, two entities, which are determined to destroy the other, and this is been done indirectly through cutouts. Help from the Qataris, now the Egyptians, with the active participation of CIA director Bill Burns, and Mossad director David Barnea.

Right now, I think the outstanding issues or the issues on the table are how many Israeli hostages will be returned for how many Palestinian prisoners? How many Palestinians will be allowed to go north to Gaza, since Israel controls industry injunction and will probably insist on some inspection process? The length and duration of a temporary ceasefire, six weeks, eight weeks. I think even these negotiations are typical of Middle East negotiations. They basically have only two speeds, slow and slower. Right now, the key factor in any negotiation is urgency. The parties need to be in a hurry. Right now, as far as I can determine, the only party that's in a hurry is the Biden administration.

Brian Lehrer: From the Israeli standpoint, why offer this now at all? If we believe Netanyahu, what they really want to do is continue the war in Rafah by air and by ground, and finish the job as they see it of destroying Hamas's physical infrastructure and killing more of its fighters? Why has Israel put this offer on the table for maybe six weeks, maybe eight weeks at all?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-governing prime minister in history of the state of Israel, presiding over now the most extreme right-wing government in the history of the state is a politician and politicians are subject to pressures. I think pressure is building from hostage families. I think there is pressure from the United States. I also think that the International Criminal Court, the ICC, rumors, credible rumors that the court is about to issue arrest warrants for the prime minister, for the minister of defense, and the chief of staff, I think that's gotten Mr. Netanyahu's attention.

I think there are any number of reasons why the Israelis might be flexible right now. They may be using the Rafah card as a pressure point in an effort to persuade Hamas that they should do a deal to ameliorate or obviate the need for a major Israeli ground campaign. I just think that Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on Hamas essentially to reject a proposal that the US government Secretary Blinken has described as a "extremely generous offer." That more or less locks the administration in to not pressuring the Israelis for further concessions, but pressuring Hamas.

I think Mr. Netanyahu is not enthusiastic about this arrangement. It would force the Israeli government to accept probably up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, at least 100 who are either accused or convicted of killing Israelis, but I think in the end, he probably calculates that Hamas will not accept it.

Brian Lehrer: From the Israeli standpoint still, and I guess you just threw a little, I don't know what the word is, a clunker in there. I was going to ask you all these questions about why Israel would accept a deal on the terms that have been reported that they are said to be ready to accept, but you're saying they're offering things because they think Hamas will reject it. Can you clarify that?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: That's been a Benjamin Netanyahu modus operandi for years. I think he's counting on the fact that Yahya Sinwar believes and--

Brian Lehrer: The head of Hamas.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: --he'll probably be right, yes, he is actually winning. That he's trading tunnels and hostages for time. Sinwar knows the more time that goes by, the more it becomes clear, and it is becoming clear that Israeli objectives in Gaza are not being achieved and cannot be achieved. That in fact Sinwar could emerge still with considerable influence in Gaza and enormous credibility among Arab publics throughout the Arab world, not so much the regimes who have to say the least tense relations with Hamas, but I think that's the calculation. The fact is I think Netanyahu has no choice it seems to me right now, but to do something that he's really quite an expert at, and that is playing for time.

Brian Lehrer: Then why wouldn't Sinwar and Hamas accept this deal? As I look at the details that are reported, some of the ones that we haven't even mentioned yet like that people would be allowed to move back to Northern Gaza. From the Israeli perspective, I would imagine that looks like nothing but risk. I realize they can't keep a million people bottled up in the Rafah area forever, but the North is the part close to the Israeli border, where of course the October 7th attacks were launched from.

A, is Israel not very concerned that Hamas fighters will be among those who do return to the region? And we know Hamas says flat out that it would stage more such attacks when it can, and at the same time, reducing the number of Israeli hostages who would be returned down from 40 in the last reported offer to 33. That still leaves so many hostages, which I think is more than 100 still. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Right now 134, 31 of whom the Israelis believe either were killed on October 7th, their bodies brought back to Gaza to trade, or they died in captivity. The numbers by the way, of those who are no longer alive may be significantly higher than that. Look, I think Hamas in the end in the reports this morning is that at least from the external political leadership, that they're sending a team back to Cairo to continue the negotiations. Maybe, in the end, Hamas will accept. I think though--

Brian Lehrer: And Hamas gets six or eight weeks to retool so, I mean-

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: They do.

Brian Lehrer: -just I'm looking at these points, and I think, "I could see reason why Israel doesn't want to do it. Why doesn't Hamas want to do it?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Brian, having spent the better part of my professional life trying to negotiate between Arabs and Israelis and Israelis and Palestinians, I think the issue of why won't both sides accept this deal has been a question that has been repeatedly asked and never adequately answered. I think Hamas also understands though that at a minimum, they're getting a temporary ceasefire.

Now they'll continue, assuming this deal took place, they would continue to hold at least 50 male hostages, civilian males and Israeli Defense Forces hostages. They would want to trade that for a comprehensive ceasefire and a withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza I suspect. That's clearly not going to happen. Again, I think tunnels and hostages allow Hamas to play for time. Do they have an end game?

This is not Sadat in October of 1973, inflicting a significant but limited military defeat on Israel in order to set the stage under American auspices for what would ultimately come in Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed on March 1979. Hamas doesn't have a political objective, a discreet focused set of aspirations and aims. It's unclear to me still why the cosmic roll of the dice for Sinwar- -on October 7th knowing full well what the implications of it will-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That he was going to bring something like the Israeli response that he's been getting down on his head and the Palestinian people in Gaza's heads.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Yes and he hoped, but he has not succeeded in triggering a major regional conflagration. That reached a rather scary moment the week or so ago when for the first time ever Iranian missiles and then an Israeli retaliatory strike a week later, actually struck Iranian and Israeli territory. Now that escalation has for the moment been contained, but I'm sure Sinwar believes that the possibility of an Israeli-Hezbollah war, a major confrontation, and the unleashing of Hezbollah's 150,000 high trajectory weapons and Hezbollah has an advantage that Iran does not, which is proximity.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take questions for historian and former Middle East peace negotiator for the US, Aaron David Miller on the state of negotiations right now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Aaron is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has written books including The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. Questions specifically about the short and long-term ceasefire or peace plans on the table now. We're not talking about campus today and other things. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Before we pivot to the longer-term, the thing that the Biden administration is trying to achieve, and I am going to ask you a question about whether you think the campus situation is having an effect on the actual peace process, but The Washington Post has an article called, "As Hamas considers ceasefire, a question hangs, will Israel end war without the group's destruction?" I'll read it again. "As Hamas considers ceasefire, a question hangs, will Israel end war without the group's destruction?" Aaron, that sounds very different than a six or eight-week pause. Is there a version of a deal being discussed that would include a more permanent end to Israel's military campaign without what The Post calls Hamas's destruction that's on the table for the immediate short term?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Hard to imagine under these circumstances. Israeli intelligence leaked reports earlier in the crisis made it unmistakably clear that the Israelis did not believe they could extinguish Hamas as a political organization. Their objective, I think were two, to destroy Hamas as an organized military structure, and to prevent its re-emergence as a sovereign governing entity in Gaza.

While I think Hamas will survive this and will survive it either as an insurgency or given the fundamental weakness of the Palestinian national movement and the fecklessness of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas is an 89-year-old guy now in the 90th year of a four-year term who presides over 40% of the West Bank and whose poll numbers are worse than Netanyahu's among Palestinians. Hamas will survive not just as an insurgency, perhaps, but as a political force able through intimidation and co-optation to carry considerable influence in the governing of Gaza. That raises Brian the whole question, of course, of even though the Israelis clearly have made it impossible for Hamas to pull off another October 7th, time here is both an ally and an adversary. Military power is an instrument designed to achieve presumably a set of effective and realistic political goals.

I think there again, headlines look bad and so do the trend lines. Who or what is going to govern Gaza? Who or what is going to provide the security? Who or what is going to provide the humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, which will take years and billions of dollars to apply to an entity twice the size of the District of Columbia, with massive unemployment and now, with an extraordinarily traumatic destruction, not only of infrastructure but of humans? Those questions are being asked, but they're not being answered. I think that gets you to the American vision of the proverbial day after. If the Biden administration--

Brian Lehrer: Hold that vision because we have to take a break. I want to have you describe it in detail, but I'm going to ask you one, what I think is going to be a quicker question before we do that pivot, make that pivot, and we'll take some phone calls, too. But do you think the recent escalation in campus protests is having any effects on the talks that are going on simultaneously, one way or another?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: The quicker answer is no, they won't. What they will do, arguably, is have a significant impact on the upcoming and one of the most consequential elections in modern American history.

Brian Lehrer: We'll do election analysis more on another day. I guess in brief, you're agreeing with the going analysis that this favors Trump?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Yes. Just as the "law and order issue in 1968" and the violence of the protests in Chicago at that convention undermined Hubert Humphrey who wouldn't, given his temperament, his nature, call out those demonstrators. It clearly helped Richard Nixon. There are parallels, but I don't think we can stretch it too far. Nonetheless, it's really arguable to me as I look at this. I don't underestimate the passion, the commitment, the anger that is building on the part of students against the exponential rise of Palestinian deaths and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. What I question is whether or not these protests, in the end, will help or undermine the cause that these college students want to promote.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, almost as you say that, I'm seeing this alert from the networks that President Biden has summoned reporters for some kind of 11:30 statement that he's going to make. The speculation is that it's going to be about the campus protests. Maybe he's going to do that very much with the politics of 1968 in mind, and attempt in some way to avoid a repeat, no matter what else he thinks is right or wrong on the substance. More with Aaron David Miller right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about the negotiations that are going on in the Middle East with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken there for a short term, and then possibly a long-term ceasefire and then longer-term peace between Israel and Hamas. We're talking about this with Aaron David Miller, who worked for the US government as a Middle East peace negotiator during the Oslo peace process of the '90s, and overall for 25 years, for the State Department as an analyst, negotiator, and historian. He is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pivoting to the long term, I see there's something on the table that's supposed to involve Saudi and other Arab state recognition of Israel for some kind of path to statehood for the Palestinians. Can you give us some details?

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Yes, that's the general idea. The first piece of this is a set of US-Saudi understandings that have already been worked out I'm told. A mutual defense pact between the United States and Saudi Arabia short of an Article 5 commitment. The export of some of our nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to develop its own, presumably peaceful nuclear program. Then access to American technology and state-of-the-art weaponry. Those are the three baskets that Mohammed bin Salman, the putative future king of Saudi Arabia, aka MBS, wants in order to move forward in a diplomatic recognition of Israel. That's piece one.

Piece two is a set of Israeli commitments. The Administration uses different formulations here. I've heard "practical pathway to a Palestinian state." I've heard another formulation, "time-bound and irreversible steps toward Palestinian statehood." That's the second piece but hovering over- -all of this like some dark cloud is the situation in Gaza. There's absolutely no way that key Arab states are going to commit themselves, let alone Saudi Arabia to any of this in the event the Israelis and Hamas are still fighting in Gaza, Palestinians are dying, catastrophic levels that approach starvation, the World Food Program would even say they're approaching famine.

None of this regional vision aspirational can really move forward in any significant or serious way until there is some sense of clarity of what is going to happen in Gaza. Even if you got that, you then confront what everyone knows to be one of the key obstacles and that is, will this Israeli government with two ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, ideologues with huge budgets and agendas to annex the West Bank in everything but name? Will Benjamin Netanyahu who presides over this coalition, will he be able to meet even minimum US and/or Saudi objectives when it comes to Palestinian state?

I find the whole thing-- I understand why the administration wants to do it. It's just there's so many moving pieces Brian and time is not an ally here. It's an adversary. Even if you got a deal, a limited hostage exchange, it would take probably two weeks to implement, and then six, seven weeks according to the phase, you'd then be into June. You're almost into the conventions. I just have this sense that to wrap all of this up, certainly given the current political realities, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, the opposition to statehood probably on the part of most of the Israeli public in the wake of October 7th. It just seems to me to be a vision more suited to a galaxy far away and the reality is our backyard on planet Earth. Even though I understand why the administration wants to do it.

Brian Lehrer: I am going to jump in because President Biden has just started speaking, and I think it is on the topic that we're talking about, or at least the campus protests that are related to it. Let's listen to the President at least for a few minutes.

President Joe Biden: In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues, but, but neither are we a lawless country. We're a civil society and order must prevail. Throughout our history, we've often faced moments like this because we are a big, diverse, freethinking, and freedom-loving nation. In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points, but this isn't a moment for politics. It's a moment for clarity.

Let me be clear, peaceful protest in America, violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law.

Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked. But let's be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong. There's no place for racism in America. It's all wrong. It's un-American.

I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions. In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that, but it doesn't mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence, without destruction, without hate, and within the law. Make no mistake, as President, I will always defend free speech and I'll always be just as strong in standing up for the rule of law. That's my responsibility to you, the American people, and my obligation to the Constitution. Thank you very much.

Reporter: Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider--

Brian Lehrer: Off goes the president. Let's see if he returns to answer a question that's being shouted by a reporter. No, he walked out. Aaron David Miller is still with us, former US Middle East peace negotiator now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Aaron, some instant political analysis?

Aaron David Miller: I caught the last half, which was the law and order piece. I didn't catch the top. I assume he spent some time talking about the importance of free speech and peaceful protest.

Brian Lehrer: He did. He did. He referred to it at very least.

Aaron David Miller: I'd really like to see the entire text, but it seems to me he decided to borrow a page from what Hubert Humphrey did not do. It seemed to me that what I heard was a pretty strong statement that under no circumstances are protests to be tolerated if they're violent. Then he obviously, as he's condemned before, hate speech and anti-Semitism. Seemed to me that the president was trying to navigate a fine line, but again, I'd like to read the entire statement. I would like to actually watch him deliver it, but it seems to me he skewed this toward the more conservative pushback on violent protests.

Brian Lehrer: It's certainly where he landed. I will say in fairness, and to be accurate, that we missed the first two minutes of his statement. This was scheduled for 11:30 and then suddenly, there it was going on much earlier than that and we missed the first two minutes. Listeners, I apologize. We only heard what we heard, and maybe he did emphasize more of the free speech and other right to protest in the United States of America aspect of it at the beginning. That did take up most of our remaining time. I want to apologize to callers who we're not going to have a chance to get to with Aaron David Miller today.

I'll just ask you one closing question on the short-term negotiation that they're trying to get to for a ceasefire plus hostage and prisoner exchange and reportedly reopening of Northern Gaza to Palestinians. What's the status of food and medicine and other humanitarian aid that the people of Gaza need in the context of a deal that they're talking about?

Aaron David Miller: So much more needs to be done. The administration, I must say was really late in pressing the government of Israel to facilitate. Not even to provide its own assistance, but to facilitate the assistance that the international community, the UN, the WPF and other NGOs were only too willing to provide. I think here, this was a major challenge and a major problem. The best way to get assistance into Gaza is overland. It's not by dropping pallets out of a C130 and it's not by creating a marine corridor, which the US Navy is currently in the process of constructing. It's overland via truck.

I must say the Port of Ashdod is only what, 16, 20 miles north of Gaza. It has all the proper screening facilities that are necessary to literally surge humanitarian assistance into Gaza. For political reasons, which I think overshadowed whatever security concerns the Israelis had about Hamas diverting aid, I think that that was a major travesty in terms of Israeli policy. There was no reason other than domestic politics that the current government was simply not going to entertain the notion that while hostages were being held, while Israelis were being held and abused, they were not going to entertain the notion that they were going to do much, to say the least to facilitate and alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza. I think that situation has improved, but it's nowhere- -near what is necessary. Again, final point, in order to surge that humanitarian assistance reliably and predictably, you really need a ceasefire, and one that lasts beyond six weeks.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, and I know we're late for the news, Michael Hill, thank you for your patience, but because of the President's statement in the middle of this segment, we're extending it a little bit. To your life's work, Aaron, as a US Middle East peace negotiator, how could they get to a longer-term two-state solution that Blinken is trying to get them to from the starting point of the short-term ceasefire that maybe they'll succeed in implementing if they have failed so many times in the past?

I mean, the big questions of the maps, and how Israel would be protected from Hamas attacks from within a Palestinian state, like who would police Hamas, and the status of Jerusalem, and how much right of return, and to where for multi-generation Palestinian refugee families, those were all sticking points in the past that didn't get resolved. Are there new ideas for how to approach them now? We have one minute.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: The last serious effort that I participated in was at Camp David in July of 2000, Clinton, Arafat and Barak. The gaps when that summit concluded and it failed were as broad as the Grand Canyon. Since that time, trust and confidence have only deepened, to say the least. One word, Brian, short-term, long-term, medium-term, one word, leadership.

Leaders on both sides who are masters of their political houses, not prisoners of their ideologies, leaders who [unintelligible 00:31:48] own their negotiations because it makes sense for their respective people. That is what has been missing. Anytime there's been a breakthrough in this conflict is because there was leadership, including in Washington, that is what's missing. Without it, without the Mandelas, without the de Klerks, without the Sadats, without the Bagans, without the Rabins, without the King Husseins, the future is grim and this situation is going to get worse before it gets worse.

Brian Lehrer: Aaron David​​​​ Miller, currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of books, including The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Aaron David​​​​ Miller: Always a pleasure, Brian. Thanks. Thanks so much.

 

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