Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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- You can't have this conversation on CNN or Fox.
You can't do it, right?
Because if you are only talking about
how the Israeli Defense Forces are responsible
for these brutal killings,
or if you're only talking about
what Hamas did on October 7th,
and you don't talk about the broader context, right, you are
absolutely not understanding what's happening
in this war right now.
- Today on Big Think, we're gonna be talking to Ian Bremmer,
president and founder of Eurasia Group
and GZERO Media about the ongoing conflict
between Hamas and Israel.
Ian, thank you so much for joining us today.
- It's great to be back with Big Think.
- This region has been embroiled in turmoil for thousands
of years, so there's many historical
factors we could discuss.
But I would like to know from your standpoint,
is it more helpful to focus on recent history
to better understand this conflict?
- Both the Jews and the Palestinians have long,
long running and legitimate claims to live
on this territory.
Palestinians, some 700,000 plus were
kicked off these territories
after 1948 post-Holocaust.
The Jews had lived on these territories for millennia,
and a number of empires have kicked them off.
We can talk about that.
There are people that are far more expert on those histories
than I am, but the reality is that for the Jews
and the Palestinians that are fighting over this land today,
they've been living there for their lifetimes and,
and so it's really not about who has a right
to live on the territory.
It's rather that they need to find a way
to live together in peace.
And what has happened over the past years is that
everyone in the world has basically given up
on finding a peaceful solution
because they've tried for decades, it's too hard or
because they're not interested;
they have other things that they would rather do.
That's where we are today.
The last time that the Americans
who are not an honest broker for peace in the region,
the United States, a principle ally in the entire Middle East
is Israel.
So you can't say, "Oh, well, you know, they're the ones
that can broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians,
because they're equally trusted."
That's not true. But they do have the dominant military
presence in the region, and they also have the dominant
diplomatic capability on the region.
So they've been the ones
that have played the most significant role.
And the last time an American senior diplomat was
really invested on trying to figure out a way to bring peace
to this region was when John Kerry was Secretary of State
in the first couple of years
of the Obama administration.
And he did shuttle diplomacy between the Israelis,
the Palestinians, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, I mean,
all the time, for 18 months
this was his top priority.
He wanted a Nobel Peace Prize for it. He failed.
And after that, basically the Americans gave up.
It was the pivot to Asia.
It was no longer focusing as much on the Middle East.
And then when the Russians invade Ukraine, it's
focusing on Europe too.
But no one's spending real time on the Palestinians,
the Gulf States, who had been providing so much money
for humanitarian support
for Palestinians living in the West Bank,
and particularly Gaza, as well as refugees in other places
that they were saying there could be no peace
in the Middle East unless the Palestinian-Israel
issue is resolved.
Well, it turned out they were willing
to make peace with Israel.
They're, they're willing
to engage open diplomatic relations, allow Jewish tourists
to come to their country, trade
and investment, technology cooperation, security cooperation.
But what about the Palestinians?
Well, too hard to resolve, and Israel,
and particularly this far-right,
Netanyahu-led government has been willing to not only
expand illegally, the settlements in the West Bank, reducing
the territory that the Palestinians can live on,
and making it harder for them to get to work, go to school,
you know, have a possibility for a viable future.
But also, Netanyahu's government was engaging more
with Hamas in Gaza at the expense
of the Palestinian authority,
because they never wanted to pursue a two-state solution.
So they forgot about the Palestinians too.
So when you look at everyone around the world
that was committed to the Palestinians, finding a way
to live viably on their territories,
the answer is this has not been a priority for anyone
for a long, long time.
And their own government in the West Bank that
recognizes Israel's right to exist, as opposed to Hamas,
which does not, they were corrupt.
They were divided.
They couldn't speak for Palestinians in Gaza,
and they were being weakened by the Israeli government.
So, I mean, this was a long introduction
to talk about the history,
but the point is that if you are looking for people
that are responsible, historically,
for why we are in the mess that we are in today,
and it is an unholy mess,
and I use that term very literally, you know,
you can look everywhere
and you have people to blame that
that is where we are today.
- Thank you for that. I'm, I'm curious, you know,
to talk about some of the domestic politics within Israel,
because that's something that I think has not been paid
enough attention to
and specifically the actions of the Netanyahu government
and the people who they are partnering with as it relates
to this conflict, but also just internally inside of Israel.
What does it look like in terms of the partnerships
and the dynamics that are happening there?
What has been the lead up to this conflict in terms
of the internal politics with Israel,
and how has that had an effect on just the general
relationship between Israel
and the Palestinians in the various places?
- You know, Israel is a very political society.
The average Israeli citizen reads
a lot about news and politics.
If you go to a cafe in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem
or Herzliya, you're gonna hear a lot
of people talking about politics.
It's also a very fragmented society.
There are a lot of different political parties.
And, and in order
to get a government together in the Knesset,
you can't govern by yourself
because you'd never get a majority.
You have to find a coalition with other partners.
And Netanyahu, who has, you know, faced all sorts
of internal corruption scandals and,
and who's Likud party has also been painted
with a lot of those challenges.
The only way he could form a government this last time
around was with a hard-right group.
A party that specifically has, you know, said some
of the most horrible things about wanting
Palestinians removed from the West Bank, about wanting
to take over their territories.
In some ways, the hard-right partners
of Netanyahu have been as unyielding
and aggressive about the Palestinians not having rights in
the occupied territories as Hamas has been
about the Jews not having the right
to have an Israeli state.
Now, that does not reflect the opinions
of the Israeli people as a whole, but it has meant that
before the events of October 7th,
the terrorist events against the people of Israel, you had
enormous domestic instability.
That domestic instability was the people of Israel
revolting against Netanyahu, attempting
to change a very strong, independent judiciary of
that country to basically report to the executive
and report to whoever was in charge in the Knesset.
And the reason for that, more control for Netanyahu
and his coalition, and the ability to avoid getting charged
and jailed for these corruption scandals
and investigations that are ongoing.
And, and for months, the news in Israel had nothing to do
with Hamas, had nothing to do
with the Palestinians in Gaza.
It instead was about a potential constitutional crisis
that was pending in Israel, that Israel's legitimacy
as a democracy in the Middle East was under threat, not
because of what they were doing to the Palestinians, but
because of what Netanyahu was doing to the country,
to the balance of power in Israel.
So that was, they were taking their eye off the ball.
The other thing that happened is the hard-right part
of the Israeli government was doing everything possible
to expand their territorial influence in the West Bank.
And the Palestinians living there were angry
and there were a lot of clashes.
There were violent reprisals.
And the Israeli Defense Forces some
of the best in the world,
incredibly well-trained high morale, while a lot of them
had been sent to the West Bank
and to the border zone inside Israel proper in an effort
to contain and respond to that violence.
Where were they in Gaza? Not worried about Gaza.
Netanyahu was providing Hamas in Gaza
with more resources, with more money, with more ability
to have work visas to come on over into Israel.
Why? Because they were just focused on governance.
According to Netanyahu, they just wanted to rebuild Gaza
'cause he wanted a stronger Hamas
to weaken the Palestinian authority.
So what happened is you took one of the world's
best-trained, most effective defense forces,
intelligence forces, security forces, border forces, and,
and you had them focusing on everything
but a terrorist organization that was running
Gaza with a people that had abysmal
economic conditions, life conditions, half of them
without enough food to eat, 90%
of them without access to clean water.
And everyone is now talking about
how Israel has a right to self-defense.
They have a right to be able to defend their borders.
And that is absolutely true.
But that right did not begin after October 7th.
That right existed before October 7th.
And the Prime Minister of Israel
and his hard-right government failed the Israeli people.
They did not defend their country,
they didn't defend their borders.
They weren't concerned with
or focused on the real threats that were right there
just on the south of Israel, that wanted to destroy
everything that the Israeli people have been building
since 1948.
So the Israeli people want Netanyahu out.
They overwhelmingly blame him
and his government for the events of October 7th,
consistently in polls taken inside Israel.
In fact, one of the only things
that the Middle Eastern peoples can agree on in,
in this conflict is that the Israeli Prime Minister
and his government need to go, that they, that they are not
fit for office either to govern Israel
and defend Israel, or to engage
and create peace with the Palestinians.
- You know, it's interesting to bring up the government
of Israel and how people
are perceiving their actions in the lead up to,
and even just in the response of the October 7th attack,
I'm curious, you know, to bring it
to the surrounding nations
and their relationship with Israel.
And, you know, you mentioned how the treatment
of Palestinians has taking a back seat
to sort of recent concerns.
I'm, I'm curious if you can paint a broader picture
of just like what types of relationships has been happening
with, between Israel
and other nations, other Arab nations that surround them,
and how the concerns
of the Palestinians have just not been the forefront of
the discussions between those parties.
- No, they, they have not.
And to be fair, I mean, the fact
that the Palestinians have not been
diplomatically important to, for example, the Gulf States
or, or even to countries like Jordan
and Egypt that have been more willing to engage with Israel
as the Palestinian plight has become worse, there has been
a lot of effort to bring aid, humanitarian support in
for the Palestinians
and the Gulf states who are very wealthy,
have been providing a lot of that.
But when the Israeli government,
after the events of October 7th started
engaging in widespread bombardment across Gaza,
which has led to thousands
and thousands of casualties: civilian casualties, children,
almost 50% of the Gaza population are children, right?
I mean, this is now being seen across the region,
and it is impossible for any government of the region,
any Arab government of the region to just sit and stand by
and say, "Okay, we don't care.
We're still gonna work with Israel.
The way we were working with them." Israel had benefited
from being seen as an economic
juggernaut, a security juggernaut,
a technological juggernaut.
And a lot of the countries in the region wanted
to work more closely with Israel as a consequence of that.
That's why you had the UAE and Bahrain
and Morocco signing the Abraham Accords, not just
to normalize diplomatic relations,
but also to dramatically expand trade
and investment with Israel.
That's why the Saudis were improving their informal
relations and were moving towards normalization.
Even though the Saudi population is going
to be quite cautious
and conservative on the Palestinian issue, they say,
"No, the priority is we gotta find
a way to work with Israel."
But once you have Israel in response to these terrorist acts
going after Hamas,
and as they're doing so killing all
of these Palestinian civilians,
well then there's a freeze on everything; then if you are,
you know, Jordan, you say, "We can't work with,
we can't engage with Israel going forward."
If you're Turkey, Turkish President Erdogan, who has said
that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, he has said
that Hamas is a liberation movement,
and he hasn't condemned the Hamas from the
hostages that've taken from the
1,400 civilians that they killed.
Not at all. So they've thrown out
the Israeli diplomats on the ground as well.
And when that's happening across the region
and the Arab Street is demonstrating in solidarity
with the Palestinians, then even if you have a number
of wealthier Arab countries that want to continue to work
with Israel, they can't because of the domestic pressure.
And, and so the, the efforts
that had made Israel the strongest, geopolitically,
that had had ever been, since independence, suddenly
are moving in a very different direction, it's, it's hard
for those countries to even maintain present levels
of engagement with Israel.
And indeed, a lot of the progress
that had been made could be lost.
So it's very interesting.
You have an environment where
before the acts of October 7th,
Israel was the most divided domestically
because of the response to Netanyahu,
but the strongest in the region.
Then the events of October 7th happen,
and suddenly Israel is enormously unified.
Everyone is responding.
You get a, a unity war cabinet
because everyone says, we must defeat Hamas.
We must destroy these terrorists
that have just threatened our homeland
and have killed our children.
Right? And, but the international environment from Israel
has suddenly become one
of massive criticism and condemnation.
And that is clearly true in its immediate region.
It is clearly true for Iran, which continues along
with Hamas to believe that,
that the Jewish people in the state
of Israel should be replaced with Palestine.
But that's also true for all of the proxies
of Iran across the region, the Shia proxies in Yemen
and in Iraq, in Syria.
It's true across the global South where we have governments
that are outraged and coming after Israel,
and even for the United States, which is
by far the strongest ally of Israel in the world.
You have significant pressure, especially
among young people, and especially
among Democrats in Congress saying,
"We can no longer provide the kind of support
that we have historically given what's happening
presently on the ground."
So domestically in Israel, much more cohesive and stronger
and resilient; internationally, much more fragmented
and, and much more challenging
for the Israelis going forward.
- I'm curious, you know, to think about
this situation in regards to
what Hamas' motivation was for the attack.
And so do you think that there was a strategic goal
of the Hamas attack on October 7th?
And was this in a way, setting a trap for Israel?
And if so, was it successful?
Was this outcome of people turning the tide
of opinion against Israel internationally, part
of a strategic goal for Hamas when doing this attack?
- It's very hard to say that Hamas actually
expected the kind of success
that they experienced
on October 7th. There were some 2,000
Hamas fighters, terrorists that managed to get across one
of the most well-defended borders with some
of the best intelligence out there.
Human intelligence, signals intelligence managed
to get across the border, kill Israelis
with reckless abandon,
and capture some 250 hostages
and bring them back into Gaza.
I have a hard time believing that Hamas expected
that they would have that kind of success,
that they would be able
to kill more Jews in one day than had happened anywhere in
the world since the Holocaust.
I have a hard time with that.
I think it, it turned out that Netanyahu
and the Israeli government was dramatically weaker
and less focused on defense
than Hamas could have anticipated,
because the level of success that Hamas has had
is a death sentence for those leaders
and for those fighters, I mean, there is really no choice.
There is no one in the Israeli political leadership,
the entire spectrum from left to right that would say,
"Oh, we can now leave Hamas intact.
We've hit him for a few weeks. And that's enough."
I mean, the idea that Israel,
after what they experienced on October 7th would, would have
a few weeks of attacks,
but then could still live neighboring to Gaza,
which is being run and controlled by Hamas-
no country in the world would live with that.
And let's also remember that the people that were killed
by Hamas, the people that are hostages, those
that are Israeli, by the way, these are not,
this isn't a settler population.
This isn't a hard-right population.
This was a progressive population.
These were the people in Israel
that were most interested in making peace
with the Palestinians.
And so you now have a situation where people
that I know, friends of mine in Israel that I would consider
to be very thoughtful, moderate politically,
that are saying, "I wanna level this place.
I wanna make it a parking lot."
Not not differentiating between Hamas fighters
and Palestinian civilians
and Palestinian women and children.
That, that, I mean, to you and I that sounds insane,
but, but on the back of
what the Israelis have just experienced, that is the emotion
that is coming out.
And so I don't think that Hamas expected
that they were going to have that kind of success,
but I absolutely believe that Hamas' efforts
to defend themselves,
and when I say themselves, I don't mean the Palestinian
people, I mean just the fighters and the leadership;
they do that by attempting to
get the Israeli Defense Forces to kill
Palestinian innocents, to kill civilians.
And what we have now seen for a month
has been extraordinary brutality and violence.
And we have seen refugee camps and hospitals
and schools and United Nations aid workers blown
to pieces by Israeli Defense Forces.
And the Israeli Defense Forces are the ones
that are pulling the trigger.
They are the ones that are bombing these people.
And now there's a ground war.
They're the ones that are on the ground as well.
But it is Hamas that is operating on the ground
with tunnels underneath those targets.
It is Hamas that has their missiles
and their commanders in residential buildings
and right next to playgrounds and right next to hospitals
and even shooting out of mosques.
Now they know exactly what they're doing.
They're not just holding 200 plus Israelis
and other civilians hostage illegally,
but they're also holding large numbers
of Palestinian civilians hostage.
And so the Israelis, yes, the Israeli Defense Forces
are responsible when they are killing lots
and lots of Palestinian civilians to get at one, two,
or three militants.
But Hamas is also deeply responsible
for making the only way that Israel can kill terrorists
to ensure that large numbers
of Palestinian civilians also die.
That they are not just fighting Israel militarily
because they will lose badly if they
fight Israel militarily.
They are fighting in the court of public opinion.
They are fighting an information war,
and they are using disinformation.
We have seen this play out over four weeks,
and there aren't that many Jews around the world.
There are a lot more Muslims.
And so if, if Hamas is able to get out
all of this information that says, "Look at all
of these Palestinian kids that the Israelis are killing,"
and they don't say anything about
how Hamas is also putting them at risk,
well then they're going to look a lot stronger.
And is that a trap for Israel? Absolutely.
That's a trap for Israel. Absolutely.
That makes Israel weaker
and more vulnerable than the geopolitical position they were
in on October 6th.
I mean, that strong position of Israel with the countries
of the region working with them, that's a direct threat
to the future of Hamas.
That's a direct threat to their being able
to drive their agenda to undermine Israel,
to remove Israel from the region.
So, and, and the, the problem is
that you can't have this conversation on CNN or Fox.
You can't do it because it's the headlines.
And, and so, you know, know you can do a minute of it,
you can do two minutes of it,
then you move on to the next thing.
It, if you are only talking about
how the Israeli Defense Forces are responsible
for these brutal killings,
or if you're only talking about
what Hamas did on October 7th,
and you don't talk about the broader context, right, you are
absolutely not understanding what's happening
in this war right now.
- I'm interested in talking about
disinformation and misinformation.
You mentioned that as part
of your answer to the previous question.
I'm, I'm curious what you think the role digital media plays
in this conflict, both being a vehicle for disinformation,
but also being a vehicle for accurate, on-the-ground
information about what's happening.
- It has become increasingly difficult for anyone
to get good, valuable information
on social media, on Israel-Palestine,
the number of accounts that if you look not
at one post, but if then you go back into the account
and say, "Okay, what are they presenting?
Are they actually presenting the news
because it's being put out
as if they're presenting the news?
There's a headline that you need to focus on,"
then you realize, wait a second,
this entire account is only focusing on the suffering
of Jews, or this entire account is only focusing on the
suffering of Palestinians.
I, I would wager that that is the vast majority
of the social media verified, algorithmically
promoted accounts that people are presently
digesting on this conflict.
And by definition, that is disinformation
because it is not interested in understanding the entirety
of what's going on.
The one thing that we know for certain is that the level
of suffering that has occurred on the ground for Jews
and for Palestinians over the last four weeks is unlike
almost anything that's been experienced
by anyone watching this video right now.
And yet you would never feel that way if you were digesting
the accounts that are driving most of the media
in social platforms.
So fundamentally, this is a disinformation-rich
and dominant environment.
Some of that is assertively fake news.
Some of that is assertively filtered
and promote programmed news that only gets you one piece,
one side of the story.
And God forbid you say something that is more nuanced,
that doesn't align fully with what either
or both of those sides are promoting.
They come after you and they say it's fake news.
They come after you and they call for violence.
They call to dox you, they'll call for,
there'll be death threats.
And I've seen this with almost everyone I know that's trying
to have a more civil, a more focused, decent,
grounded human conversation.
This is nothing like
what people are like in the real world, in the real world-
everyone understands that they're both people.
In fact, they come from the same part
of the world, they're family.
But you couldn't, you wouldn't get that-
and if you were on social media.
Now, I wanna, I wanna be clear that when you say
that something is not black
or white, that doesn't mean everything is the
same shade of gray.
I mean, we, we can all admit that, you know, Hamas
targeting civilians is not the same
thing as Israel targeting the military,
but also killing a lot of civilians.
We can also both agree that both
of those are deeply problematic compared
to not having any civilians die.
We know that we, we also know that the economic conditions
that Palestinians are living under in Gaza are radically
worse than those of Palestinians in the West Bank,
which are radically worse than those
of Jews living in Israel.
That's context. Those are not equal shades of gray,
but it's not black or white.
There is no space for that on social media. There's none.
Social media is dehumanizing. It is hate-inducing.
And it is actively preventing people
from getting good information
and from talking to each other.
What we need is less social media.
We need more long-form content.
We need more person-to-person engagement.
We need more community, more schools, more family.
We, we need more humanity. Algorithms are not humanity.
Algorithms are programmed by business models
that are productizing people for profit.
And it just so happens that the process of doing that
is more, is facilitated more
directly through very,
very strong emotions that, that that is what we have today.
But that is the opposite from what we need
if we want to understand
and if we want to resolve this Israel-Gaza war.
- I would love to just do a quick follow up on that
'cause you know, one of the things that I found interesting
as a dynamic was certainly when there was the,
the hospital bombing that happened in Gaza,
and there was a rush of reports that said Israel was
to blame for that attack.
And then following up, there was a lot of
what seemed like open source intelligence reporting
that said that that might not have been the case.
How do you take an example like that
where a legacy institution like the New York Times
and some other institutions reported something
that ended up being walked back in terms
of the truthfulness of the statement.
How do you weigh that with what you were just talking about
in terms of social media?
- Information warfare.
This was the New York Times, it was the Wall Street Journal,
so it wasn't just left or right, it was both,
they both have a lot of journalists
that are very professional and they do very solid work,
but they were getting their real-time information
from social media
from the region,
and it was a disinformation-rich environment.
And so you see these blaring headlines,
and it's the middle of the night when this hospital is hit
and no one has good information.
You don't have journalists that are on the ground that are,
that are real-time reporting to you.
So they're getting that information secondhand from
journalists on the ground.
And most of those journalists are getting
that information from Hamas sources.
And so they said: "A hospital is hit. 500 people are dead.
And it was an Israeli missile that hit them."
And it turned out that all three of those pieces
of information were false.
It was a hospital parking lot was hit,
far fewer people were killed,
though a lot of people were killed.
And it was not an Israeli Defense Forces
missile that hit them.
But by that point, the story had already went out
to everyone who wanted to believe
that, and they ran with it.
And not just the journalists that are more supportive
of the Palestinian than the Israeli cause,
but also the governments in the region who condemned Israel,
the governments of the region
who decided they weren't gonna meet with Biden,
the Palestinian authority, the Jordanian, the Egyptians
as Biden was meeting with Netanyahu.
Now this was absolutely essential at a time
that the United States was sending its President to try
to find a way to, to stabilize this environment.
And they, they probably would've failed,
but they're much more likely to fail if they can only talk
to Israel and they can't talk to the other side.
And, and they failed because of Hamas misinformation.
The, this was happening to a lesser degree
in the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine war,
but it was happening much more successfully
by the Ukrainians
who almost everyone in the world supported.
So you'll remember there was this Snake Island attack
and you had, you know, this, this news report
that was put out and promoted by the Ukrainian military
and the government that showed that there were, you know,
people on the ground
and the Russians demanded
that they surrender, they refused.
They, they used an obscenity
and the Russians blew them all up and they died.
And they were seen as heroes all over the world,
except it never happened.
No one was killed on Snake Island.
The people were captured and they were released.
And that got a little bit of news weeks later,
but the purpose was already served: equal disinformation.
Everyone ran with that story.
The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, they ran with
that story, but it didn't have as much of an impact
because everyone was sympathetic to Ukraine anyway.
And it wasn't going to change.
Whether it happened or didn't happen wasn't going
to change the outcome. In this circumstance,
early fog of war,
but there was massive, massive disagreement over like
who you wanted to sympathize with and right,
because a lot of people are sympathetic
to the Palestinians who've historically had a much,
much harder situation,
and the Israelis are more powerful-
but then a lot of people are really sympathetic to Israel
because of the terrorist attack against all of them.
So there's a lot to play for.
And the fact that Hamas had
that meaningfully successful disinformation in the early
moments of the war was a really big win for them.
Either way, the point is the same,
that we are no longer fighting a war
that is only on the ground with the success
or not of who's winning militarily.
So much more of the fight is being determined by
who is able to drive real-time disinformation
with the headlines in social media.
- Israel has launched a ground defensive in Gaza.
Do you believe such actions will make Israel safer,
or do you believe it could have the opposite effect?
- My view is that Israel has every right to want
to destroy Hamas as an organization.
But we are talking about 30 to 40,000 fighters.
And Hamas is, you know, they are,
they're absolutely integrated in the firmament
of civilian society across Gaza.
And you may remember that in the early days of the war,
Israel said that they were going
to do a siege on all of Gaza.
So not just Hamas, because you can't have a siege on Hamas.
Instead it was 2.3 million people:
We're not getting you food, we're not getting you water,
we're not getting you fuel,
we're not getting you medication.
And you know that that is going
to cause massive humanitarian tragedy.
But that was the Israeli response.
And my response to that is, "You don't wanna do that."
That is, you know, that's gonna create war crimes
and so you need to get humanitarian aid.
And finally they got some men, but nowhere near enough.
Then as they're bombing
and they're bombing all sorts of targets.
And as I said, it's not just fighting against Hamas on the
ground, it's also fighting information warfare.
They hit an ambulance.
Now that ambulance, it looks like it was being used
by Hamas fighters.
But if you've got videos that are showing
that the Israelis are hitting an ambulance,
what is Hamas gonna say?
What are people gonna run with?
It's, "Look, they're, they're hitting ambulances."
So you can't, it's not just what's happening on the ground,
it's also how what's happening on the ground is perceived.
So now you have a ground war
and that ground war is going to lead to far,
far more Palestinian civilians getting killed.
And it's happening
before large numbers of civilians can get out.
The Israeli government has been, they've sent leaflets,
they've warned everyone, you've gotta evacuate,
but they're telling people to evacuate into the south
before there's adequate food or water or fuel
or medicine for those people in the south
before there are adequate refugee camps set up
for those people in the South.
So who's gonna leave? How many people will go?
And of course, Hamas is also preventing
some of them from leaving.
It's hard to do. So my point is, Israel has time.
There is an urgent desire to get rid of Hamas,
but the Israelis are now laser-focused on their border
of security in a way that their government was not
before October 7th.
They are laser-focused on air defense.
They're laser-focused on sea defense in a way
that they were not before October 7th.
So my point is, spend more time
not just on how you're going to blow up Hamas,
but also on building your information war
on building your relations with other countries.
If the, if you're losing support from the United States
because you refuse to allow in aid for the Palestinians,
then you need to spend more time sending
in aid with the Palestinians.
If you're losing the Europeans, it's,
Ukraine has been in a much stronger position
because the entire West was standing with Ukraine.
The entire West is not standing with Israel.
And in part that's because the Israeli war cabinet has
refused to allow in the aid.
They've refused to provide adequate, safe zones
for the Palestinians to be able to, to, to spend time,
to get to and to live as families.
That's a huge problem.
So I believe that ultimately the Israelis will be safer
if they spend more time working with their allies
and developing a multilateral response.
Nobody out there from the West believes
that Israel should leave Hamas alone.
Nobody believes that there should be a permanent ceasefire
and they don't have the right to defend themselves.
That's not the argument.
The argument has been for a humanitarian pause.
The argument has been for a temporary ceasefire
that allows far more Palestinians to have the ability
to live and to live safely because the future of Israel
and peace in the region depends not just
on Israel destroying Hamas,
but also depends on the ability to create conditions
for peace between Israel
and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
And yes, there are some in Netanyahu's government
that have no interest in that.
Those people will be out of government after the war.
The Israelis do not want them anymore.
Do not trust them anymore.
But, but you can't be,
Israel will not be successful if they fight
this war by themselves.
They will not be successful if by destroying Hamas,
they also destroy the conditions for long-term peace
with the Palestinian people.
We all know that when Israel
was fighting against the PLO
and they removed them from Lebanon,
they ended up with Hezbollah-
that's not better. When the Americans fought against Saddam
Hussein and destroyed the Ba'ath party in Iraq,
they ended up with the Islamic state-
that's not better. So if Israel is going to destroy Hamas,
but they don't create the conditions for peace
with the Palestinian people,
they will end up with something worse.
So I am not suggesting that Israel should say, "Okay, okay,
okay, let's, we'll just make peace with Hamas."
They can't, that's not doable.
No one in Israel would support that.
But they have to also create conditions for peace
with the Palestinians that will live there
'cause they're not going anywhere.
The idea among some in Netanyahu's government,
and by the way, far too many, that what really needs
to happen is you need the Palestinians to leave.
They need to, to go to Egypt, to the Sinai,
and maybe never come back, that they need
to take more territory
and let the settlers just, you know, sort of grab up all
of the West Bank and the Palestinians can go to Jordan-
they won't be Israel's problem anymore.
That is not a viable solution.
The Palestinians won't stand for it.
The Egyptians won't stand for it.
The Jordanians won't stand for it.
The Gulf states won't stand for it.
And these are countries that are not fundamentally Israel's
enemies, but they will not tolerate it.
So Israel must, must, must-
at the same time they are trying to destroy Hamas-
they must create conditions for peace
for the Palestinian people.
And my concern about a ground war today
on the ground in Gaza, is
that they are creating the conditions
to destroy Hamas without creating the conditions
for peace after Hamas.
- The United States and Israel have been
allies for a long time.
What effect are you seeing from the U.S. continuing
to support Israel, and how could
that play a role in the future of U.S. politics?
- I would say that Biden could not be more supportive
of Israel following the October 7th attacks.
His immediate decision to make a trip there,
the shuttle diplomacy by
Secretary of State Blinken in particular,
the willingness of the U.S. government to stay as long
as the United States exists,
that Israel will never have to stand alone.
Those are enormously powerful statements
and they are statements that are clearly shared in a broad
and bipartisan way in the United States.
But Generation Z, young people in the U.S.
support the Palestinian position
more strongly than they support Israel.
And you have seen that particularly on college campuses
across the country, but also more broadly
and many on the progressive wing of the Democratic party.
And I'm not just talking about "the Squad" and Rashida Tlaib
and AOC I'm talking more broadly are in increasingly,
deeply uncomfortable with the extent
of the Israeli military strikes against
Hamas and the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
All of the, all of the human destruction
that we are all witnessing right now.
And President Biden has made it clear
to the Israeli war cabinet that the ability
of the United States to continue to provide
unconstrained support for Israel is a window
that will narrow if the present levels
of atrocities continue.
So the conditions
for peace are not just about making sure the
Palestinians have an opportunity to live,
they're also about making sure the Americans can continue
to support Israel the way they have here to fore.
I think it is not guaranteed
that in another four weeks time,
the U.S. will still be willing to provide the kind
of military equipment, high-tech, military equipment
and support that they have provided to Israel, historically,
if Israel continues
to fight the war the way they have been fighting it,
even the United States, Biden and his cabinet
and core members of Senate in the house are facing
that pressure from their own progressive wing-
and that is going to grow over time.
I also think that this is a risk for Biden in 2024
because this war right now is primarily about
Gaza and Hamas.
But there are American carrier strike groups in the Eastern med.
and in the Gulf.
They've already been involved in direct strikes
against Iranian Shia proxies in Syria.
There will surely be more
of those strikes in the coming weeks.
American servicemen and women have already taken casualties,
not deaths, not so far, but actually injured troops
because of the knock-on impact of the war
between Israel and Hamas.
So if it turns out
that the United States is directly involved in
a Middle Eastern war,
that Biden has not sold to the American people-
he hasn't justified-
you go from no wars started under the Trump administration
to two wars started under the Biden administration.
Neither of them started by Biden,
but both of them, the American taxpayers are paying for,
and one of which the Americans might be taking casualties.
That is a very hard thing to run on
if you are President Biden.
And they know it. It also, the distraction
of the Middle East and President Zelensky
of Ukraine has just been saying this has made it harder
for people to focus on the continued support for Ukraine,
especially given a counteroffensive that has failed.
So you now have these two massive global foreign policy crises
both of which are not looking so great
for the United States as we head into 2024.
I, I expect that Trump,
when he becomes the Republican nominee,
and that certainly looks very likely at this point,
will make a meal out of that.
That is a vulnerability for the United States
and Biden knows it.
So this is very much not just about the Middle East.
This has implications for the U.S. more broadly and globally.
- A lot of people are viewing this
as potentially a precursor
to something like we would see in World War III.
What do you think are the factors
that are keeping the situation from escalating
to a global conflict?
And do you think it could potentially escalate
to a bigger conflict
that involves a lot more parties like the United States
and potentially some other parties
both in the region and globally?
- We have seen that the Iranian President has,
and the Supreme Leader have both said things publicly
that imply that the world will burn
because of what the Israelis are doing in Gaza,
but they use the passive voice.
They are, they are very careful not to say,
"We Iran will do X, Y, and Z."
They'll say, "These are the impacts that it will have."
These are, these are clearly statements that are meant to
put Iran at a distance from direct involvement
and engagement, even though the Iranians are the ones
that have provided weapons and training and money for Hamas
and for Israel's principle enemies in the region.
We've seen that from Lebanon.
Nasrallah, Hassan Nasrallah who runs Hezbollah,
gave a really big
and very strongly anticipated speech where he said,
"You guys go Hamas, you're doing a great job."
But certainly did not in any way imply
that Hezbollah is going to be out there fighting for
and opening a second front as a consequence of
what Israel is doing on the ground in Gaza.
So, so far I would say we're four weeks in
the likelihood of expansion is significant,
but nobody sees World War III
coming anytime soon.
What we have is an expansion of Israel's fight
against Hamas,
and that means that we're gonna see a lot, a lot, a lot
more casualties.
And as that happens,
Israel will be under more international pressure,
there will be more antisemitism,
there'll be more attacks against Jews,
there will be more Islamophobia,
there'll be more attacks against Muslims,
there'll be more one-off nuisance strikes against
American bases in the region.
There'll be more American strikes against proxies of Iran.
That is an expansion of the war beyond Gaza.
It is not a regional war.
What we need to watch out for for a regional war is
that number one, Iran has influence over,
but not operational control over its proxies in the region.
And as the war in Gaza gets bloodier,
and if it looks like Hamas is really,
truly losing everything that they have,
there are others in the region that may well be willing
to fight and escalate against Israel
and against Americans in the region irrespective of
what Iran does or does not say to them.
So you can easily have farther escalation
by those organizations themselves.
The Shia militants in Iraq, in Syria,
the Houthis in Yemen in particular,
they could also engage in strikes into
the Straits of Hormuz.
They could hit oil tankers that could increase energy prices
and create a global recession.
Again, that would hurt Biden very dramatically.
We also, so far, thank God,
have not seen significant lone wolf terror attacks against
Americans inside the United States or in the region.
We've already heard from the head of the FBI
and from others that
that threat assessment is higher than they've seen at any
point post-9/11.
That's a real concern.
Obviously that's something that can happen.
If it does, the Americans are gonna need to respond.
So I, I don't think we are anywhere close to out
of the woods on this one.
And I, while I'm,
I'm deeply concerned about people out there talking about
World War III because I really don't see that as a,
you know, sort of proximate risk, the likelihood
that this can escalate in ways that none of the actors want
to see, but can happen anyway-
I think that's a very real possibility.
- This question comes from a subscriber in our Big Think
membership community.
Is there a two-state solution that ensures the rights
of Palestinians as well as the security interests of Israel?
- I cannot see any environment
where we have peace in the region without a two-
or three-state solution.
Whether, you know, you have
the Palestinians governed in the same way
with the same institutions
in Gaza and the West Bank are separate.
I don't know. But clearly,
the Palestinians must have the ability
to live in peace on land that they can defend and govern.
Now we are nowhere close to that,
but I think it was Henry Kissinger that said that
the time you get peace is when both sides are exhausted.
And he's someone that knows a lot about fighting wars
and war crimes, frankly,
but also knows a lot about negotiating peace.
And I do think that we are oddly closer
to a two-state solution today than we were on October 6th.
And the reason for that is
because everyone in this region
and with equities in this region now understand
that you can no longer ignore the Palestinian issue.
Or if you do, it's at your peril.
So yes, the, we're still in a time of war
and it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
But as we come out of this war, the level of demand
for finding a route for peace between the Palestinians
and the Israelis will be far more prioritized.
Much more capital will be expended on
trying to make that happen.
Some of that will be humanitarian resources to try
to rebuild Gaza.
Some of that will be diplomatic resources to try to come up
with what a new Palestinian authority
for Gaza might look like.
Who would those people be
and how would you build such an administration?
But you know, of course the more
suffering we see in the coming weeks
and months, I mean, if you're already talking about
half a percent of the Palestinian population in Gaza
is dead since October 7th;
one of every 200 Palestinians in Gaza dead-
and those numbers are going up.
I don't know exactly what those numbers are.
They fight between the United Nations
and between like, you know, the Gaza Health Ministry,
which is Hamas and you can't trust
them, but the numbers are big.
We know the numbers are big.
Like every one of those civilian deaths is going
to make it harder to get from here to there, right?
We've already suffered the pain
and tragedy to know that we need to move
to a two-state solution.
We know that.
But the damage that you can do to make that much,
much harder and longer term with the suffering
that will be remembered for generations
and generations, that is a very different story.
- Ian, thank you so much for your time today
and for the insights you're able
to provide the Big Think audience about this ongoing
and complicated conflict.
- It's great to be back with you.
- If you found this conversation
with Ian Bremmer valuable, we would love to hear from you.
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