Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour says give peace a chance

photo of a woman sat in front of the ruins of a collapsed building in a war-torn area and GZERO World with ian bremmer - the podcast


On the season premiere of the GZERO World Podcast, Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour joins Ian Bremmer to talk about how the war in Gaza might end and what would come next for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, is peace a possibility? Around 40,000 Palestinians and over a thousand Israelis have died, according to the Israeli army and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (as always, exact numbers are impossible to verify given limited access to the Gaza strip). According to the UN, sixty percent of Gazan homes—and over eighty percent of commercial buildings and schools—have been destroyed or damaged. The UN also warns that over a million Gazans could face the highest levels of starvation by mid-July if the fighting doesn’t end.

Joining the podcast with the Palestinian perspective is Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations. He’s a Palestinian-American himself (the son of an Ohio steelworker) and says that this moment in the Middle East is the most significant period of transformation in his decades of representing the Palestinian people on the global stage. "There is something in the air. People want justice for the Palestinians. People want this war and this conflict to end. People want the occupation to end because it's good for Israel and it's good for the Palestinians."

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.

More from GZERO Media

Courtesy of Midjourney

In the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the president dispatched the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and an army of engineers to hack and slash the federal bureaucracy. But Musk isn’t just seizing control of the executive branch; he’s using artificial intelligence as his weapon of choice.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Feb. 11, 2025.

REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

People look at Linda Dounia Rebeiz's 14° 40′ 34.46″ N 17° 26′ 15.14″ W, which is displayed during a preview for a first-ever AI-dedicated art sale at Christie's Auctions in New York City, on Feb. 5, 2025.

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The esteemed art auction house Christie’s will hold its first-ever show dedicated solely to AI-generated art later this month.

US Vice President JD Vance delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Feb. 11, 2025.

REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

Speaking at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France, US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday laid out a vision of technological innovation above all — especially above regulation or international accords.

- YouTube

How worried should we be about bird flu spreading to humans in the US? Are rising bird flu numbers the beginning of the next pandemic? On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, New York Times science and global health reporter, Apoorva Mandavalli says that now is the time to start taking bird flu more seriously.

The White House is seen from a nearby building rooftop.

Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via Reuters

Federal Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled Monday that the Trump administration is defying his Jan. 29 order to release billions in federal grants, marking the first explicit judicial declaration of the White House disobeying a court order. Some legal scholars are raising the alarm that a constitutional crisis could be brewing.

Endorsed by steelworkers onstage, then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump puts on a hard hat during his Make America Great Again Rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19, 2024.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday imposing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the US. This raises the tariff rate on aluminum to 25% from the previous 10% that Trump imposed in 2018, and it reinstates a 25% tariff on “millions of tons” of steel and aluminum imports previously exempted or excluded.