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Israelis push Netanyahu for cease-fire after Hamas kills hostages
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week and the work year. I want to talk about the Middle East and big demonstrations, the largest social dissent we have seen since the October 7th terror attacks, since the war in Gaza has started in Israel. And the proximate reason for this was the Hamas execution of six Israeli hostages in Rafah, likely before those positions were overrun by Israeli Defense Forces. The broader point anger with the way that Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to prosecute the war.
And it's a big deal, it's a general strike of the largest labor union in Israel, just as everyone in Israel is coming back from vacation. And so large scale action and certainly has an impact on the economy. The anger in particular with demanding a cease-fire deal and demanding the release of the hostages who have been held now for almost a year.
This has not been seen to be an adequate priority of the Prime Minister by a majority of Israeli citizens. This is not because there are large numbers of Israelis that are in favor of a two-state solution. For the Palestinians, that's not the case. It's certainly not the case that there's any sympathy for Hamas or that the Israelis are angry that a lot of Palestinians have gotten killed. That is not the issue either. It is that they want an end of the fighting, they want the hostages back, and they want a deal done, and they're tired of the way this war has been prosecuted, especially because the Israeli defense minister, the head of the Shin Bet, other senior military officials have broken themselves with the Israeli Prime Minister and said that they do not support what the Israeli leadership is pushing for on the ground in Gaza.
There are other fights about an Israeli budget. There's the long-standing fight that was before October 7th on the independence of the Israeli judiciary itself, very strong in Israel. There's the question of enlistment and the exceptions for the Hasidim, for the far-right Israeli ultra-Orthodox, all of these things in a very divided, very fragmented Israeli political system are creating plenty of folks that are angry with the Prime Minister, but he is still there and there is no way in the near term to take him out.
Now, I don't think this labor union strike matters all that much. It was not on the basis of a labor dispute, it was a political action. And in that regard, the Israeli government took them to court. The courts ruled that they had to shut that action down. The Labor Union agreed and shut it down. There's a lot of Likud, Netanyahu's party, oriented political leaders among the labor union's leadership and so it is unlikely, I think that you're going to see a lot more of this over the coming weeks and months, but you could still see a lot more social instability, a lot more unrest. And now that you've had hundreds of thousands on the streets, which had not been occurring, while the war is on, you've kind of taken off this restriction on, well, as long as there's a war, we all need to be hanging together. We need to be supporting this Israeli war cabinet. The war cabinet's had resignations and society is back to its fractious and very loud and boisterous self in Israel.
Now, the Knesset is coming back in session, the Israeli Parliament in October, and as that happens, there's going to be a lot more fighting against Netanyahu's position, and you could possibly see a no-confidence vote to bring down his government. One of the reasons why we don't have a cease-fire is because Netanyahu understands that the way he stays in power is by keeping his coalition intact with the far right, and they strongly oppose and have consistently strongly opposed any agreement that would allow for long-term ending of fighting on the ground in Gaza. They also want continued control, some level of Israeli occupation over Gaza. They don't want self-governance of the Palestinians there. And again, we're not talking about Hamas, we're talking about any Palestinian organization.
That is, politically, you have to say that Netanyahu has done an extraordinary job in being able, a masterful job politically, in being able to maintain his position under such an extraordinary level of pressure. And with such unpopularity among the Israeli population. More broadly, there's the fact that the United States looks feckless on this issue. Biden has now come out and said that Netanyahu is not doing enough for a cease-fire. And Netanyahu's response was extremely strong, saying, publicly, both Biden and the Secretary of State and others have consistently and repeatedly said that the Israelis have accepted extremely generous terms for Hamas, it's Hamas that's refused and now Biden's saying that they're not doing enough, what's changed? Only that six hostages have been executed, and after that you're putting more pressure on Bibi. You can imagine that that makes Biden look extremely weak. And the issue here is that Biden has not been willing to be critical of Netanyahu publicly, he's only put a little bit of pressure on the Israeli leadership privately, and that makes him look weak publicly when Netanyahu makes those claims.
All of the efforts to try to get a cease-fire by the United States are going nowhere, in part because Hamas refuses the terms, and in part because the terms that the US says Netanyahu accepts he doesn't really accept when they are having private discussions. And so the US is trying to paper over a chasm between the two fighting sides. Everybody else wants to paper that over too. I mean, if you look at who wants a deal here, you would say the majority of the Israeli population, the Gulf States, the Egyptians, the Europeans, heck, the Chinese and the United States, but not Bibi's government and not Hamas.
And that's why we continue to have this level of fighting. That's also why we continue to have the Houthis attacking oil tankers, including a Saudi-flagged tanker, clearly by mistake, in the last 24 hours in the Red Sea. You've got American military, UK military, others in operation across the Gulf, and yet incapable of preventing this ragtag group of militants from Yemen to continue to disrupt global supply chain. You continue to have militants in the So-called Iranian-led Axis of Resistance attacking US and other allied targets across the region. And so it's very hard to see this war coming to an end. It's very hard to see Netanyahu leaving power in the near term. It's certainly hard to see any option for the Palestinians that would de-radicalize them in the near future.
Kamala Harris has been doing her best to say very little on this issue because of course, she is not in a good position to try to carry water for a policy that clearly has failed for the Biden administration heretofore. And that's specifically to end the fighting, to get the hostages freed, to create at least a temporary but hopefully longer-term cease-fire and to create a two-state solution. None of the things that the Biden administration has said that they want on the ground in the region are happening, and that means that Kamala has a lot of vulnerability on that policy. That's interesting because where she would clearly like to be would be in coordination with US allies. And one of the reasons why US policy on Ukraine has been much more successful in the Middle East is because it's been in lockstep with everyone in NATO, sometimes moving too slowly, but nonetheless, all these countries are agreeing on the sanctions, on the diplomatic efforts, on the military support for the Ukrainians, the training, the intelligence all being done together.
That's not true at all. You've got the new Labour government in the UK now saying that a number of weapons systems being provided to Israel would be likely used in the commission of war crimes by the IDF, and so the UK government has said that those specific weapons systems will no longer be provided to Israel. Now, most weapons systems will still be provided by the UK, so it's not like the reality of UK policy and US policy towards Israel are all that different. This is a fig leaf by the Brits, but the point is these countries are all freelancing. They're making policies by themselves, that makes it much easier for the Israelis to focus on the United States and to also take the actions they want to. If you had a more coordinated policy by the United States and all of their allies on Israel, it would be a strong policy and it would be a policy that would protect those countries politically to a much greater degree.
That's not where the US or NATO is right now. I do think that's something that Harris would want to accomplish if she were to become president come January, but we are still many months away from that possibility.
So anyway, a lot going on right now in the Middle East, certainly not working out in America's favor and not working out in the Israelis' or the Palestinians' either. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel & Hezbollah: What to expect next
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. The Middle East back in the headlines, though fortunately, not as dramatic, a blow-up, as many had feared. This is the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, the Northern front, as it were. And the Israelis had assassinated one of the founders of Hezbollah a month ago, and a lot of concern and waiting as to what Hezbollah would do to respond. We saw that over the weekend, several hundred missiles being launched from Lebanon into Israel. The United States and Israel with advanced intelligence on the coming strikes, and were able to launch preemptive strikes that apparently took out about two-thirds of the missiles that were going to be launched. But Lebanon, Hezbollah continuing going ahead with those strikes and not a lot of damage. Not a lot of damage by the Israelis with the preemptive strikes. A few military dead in Lebanon, and it looks like one Israeli military officer killed from the Hezbollah strikes.
A couple of points here that are really relevant. First is that there was no civilian targets. There were no government targets. This was all military infrastructure and capabilities from both sides. So even though this is a significant exchange of fire, it is certainly something that is not intended to escalate further. It is meant to be retaliation for Israel's strikes, and then sit and wait and see. The second point is that not only that, we've also seen that this is disentangled from Iran, and we saw that the Israelis, of course, were able to assassinate the political leader of Hamas, Haniyeh, and that was in Tehran on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Iranian president, deeply embarrassing for the Iranians. It's been a month and there's been no Iranian retaliation despite the fact that the Supreme leader and others in the Iranian government structure had said that major strikes were coming within hours, that's not the case.
They are waiting and they are waiting, perhaps, for a target of opportunity, but also clearly not looking to dramatically escalate. And what we're seeing here, and this has become more clear over the last nine months now, ten months of the war, is that the two most powerful antagonists of Israel, Iran and Hezbollah, are really not looking to take any action that could escalate into a broader Middle Eastern war. They are, no question, abiding enemies of Israel. They don't recognize Israel's right to exist, but they also are considerably less powerful than Israel militarily. And they also understand that the United States has coordinated and would coordinate with Israel if we were to see an expansion of hostilities, so they've been very cautious. And that on the one hand, gives Israel a blinking yellowlight feeling like they can take more action against Iranian proxies and as well as inside Iran.
They can take more action against Hezbollah without risking a broader war, but also has, I think, calmed the markets, has helped keep oil prices comparatively low around 80 bucks right now, despite the fact that we have this major war going on in the Middle East. A couple things that I would focus on that makes you feel a little less comfortable than that reality. The first is that there's a very big difference between Hezbollah and Iran who are politically entrenched, have a lot of resources, have the ability to defend themselves, and can live with the status quo for a long time, and Iran's proxies less powerful proxies. And here, of course, I'm thinking specifically about the Houthis, but I'm also thinking about Hamas itself and other terrorist actors. The story that should have gotten a lot more attention was the Houthis blowing up a Greek tanker that led to an oil spill three times greater in volume than what we saw with the Exxon Valdez.
That's a massive problem, and the Houthis are continuing to engage in strikes as they have the opportunity against not only ships of any flag but also against US and UK military targets, so they are much less constrained. They are much more willing to take action that could lead to significant escalation than the Iranians and Hezbollah. Clearly, Hamas was willing to do that on October 7th. They're still willing to do that. They just don't have the military capability. What we haven't seen, thankfully, is a lot of radical Islamic terrorism against Israeli targets or Western targets in the Middle East or more broadly, but certainly to the extent that they have those capabilities, one would expect that to happen as well, so that's one significant caution here. A second is that right now if Hezbollah were to engage in large-scale strikes against Israel, they would have the ability to overwhelm Israel's defenses, the Iron Dome, and missile defenses, and therefore kill an awful lot of Israelis.
In other words... And then of course, Hezbollah would itself get destroyed, and we'd have a major war between Israel and Lebanon that the Americans would likely get involved in, at least indirectly, maybe directly. Nobody wants that. But the fact that Hezbollah has that capacity should in principle, constrain the Israelis in terms of what they are and aren't willing to do against Hezbollah. Now, Israeli military leaders are talking a lot about a new military system called Iron Beam, which is supposedly coming online in Israel next year. And that system should be able to defend Israel against far, far greater numbers of simultaneous missile strikes, drone strikes from Hezbollah. Over 95% of inbound would be taken out. In other words, Hezbollah would no longer have the capability to overwhelm Israeli defenses. Certainly, one would think that would change Israel's willingness to take action against Hezbollah without concern that they would be facing a dangerous retaliation.
And so the question is, does that change the decision-making process, the calculus of Hassan Nasrallah and his advisors who run Hezbollah? In other words, is the next six, twelve months becoming much more dangerous between Hezbollah and Israel because the balance of power is changing? We talk about Russia-Ukraine. Part of the reason the war hasn't changed very much over the past six months is because the balance of power hasn't been changing. This is potentially dangerous in the Middle East, and it's worth greater focus than I think the northern front has gotten over the past few months, especially because it continues to look very unlikely that we're going to have an agreed-to ceasefire in the near future. So that's where we are.- Ian Explains: How Hezbollah became so powerful in Lebanon ›
- Hezbollah’s dwindling reputation ›
- Will Hezbollah enter the Israel-Hamas conflict or not? ›
- Netanyahu warns it’s “not the end” as Israel and Hezbollah trade blows ›
- Israel vs Hezbollah - GZERO Media ›
- Israel strikes: Why Hezbollah remains silent - GZERO Media ›
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Foreign Relations Chair, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), applaud as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., July 24, 2024.
Netanyahu tries to have it both ways
A day after his address to Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting today with President Joe Biden and, separately, with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The relationship between Netanyahu and the White House was already strained, and his Wednesday speech couldn’t have helped. Harris skipped the address and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who sat it out along with roughly half of the Democratic House and Senate caucuses, called it “by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”
Netanyahu repeatedly made misleading or untrue statements and struck a critical tone and spent more time praising the Trump administration than Biden’s. He called protesters outside the Capitol “Iran’s useful idiots.”
Nonetheless, both Biden and Harris have gone out of their way to make it clear they support Israel, despite their patience with its prime minister wearing thin. In February, Biden described Israel’s attacks in Gaza as “over the top.”
Even as the death toll in Gaza approaches 40,000, there’s no way the US will abandon Israel, even if the Democrats give Netanyahu a bit of a cold shoulder and a few critical worlds. But amid an escalating tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the US is also wary of seeing the war in Gaza spiral into a regional conflict — and the Biden administration has signaled that it would be harder to provide back-up for the Jewish state if this happens.
Along these lines, the White House is likely to once again convey to Netanyahu that it’s time for the war in Gaza to end.
Palestinians flee the area after an Israeli attack on July 13, 2024 in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip.
Hamas says Mohammed Deif lives and denies halting truce talks
Hamas claimed it had not withdrawn from Gaza truce talks on Sunday, despite earlier reports to the contrary, after Saturday’s Israeli offensive targeted Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif. Hamas says Deif survived, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Deif’s fate remains unclear. The strike killed 92 other Palestinians, including women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A Hamas official described the attacks as a “grave escalation” that showed Israel was not interested in reaching a cease-fire agreement, but Hamas’s military strategy also does not facilitate this objective. A weekend report from the New York Times, for example, details how Hamas fighters embed their operations within civilian areas, ensuring that any Israeli action produces heavy casualties. Hamas fighters often use a system of lookouts, including children, to monitor Israeli movements before emerging in plain clothes to launch surprise attacks and meld back into the local population.
This accomplishes Hamas’s real goal of dragging out the conflict with Israel, undermining the Jewish state and isolating it on the international stage.As far back as November 2023, Khalil al-Hayya, a deputy to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, said “This battle … did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”
With the conflictnow increasingly expanding to include Hezbollah, Hamas may be dangerously close to achieving this goal. The losers, of course, are both the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and the people of Israel, desperate for the return of the over 100 hostages still held by Hamas, as well as Jews around the world now subject to a surge in antisemitic attacks.
People gather to get food relief in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on March 17, 2024.
In Gaza, food is scarce and famine is spreading
A group of UN-mandated experts on Tuesday warned that famine is spreading throughout the Gaza Strip, where at least 33 children have died of malnutrition since the end of May.
Food has been scarce in the enclave since the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion, due in part to Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza. But the amount of humanitarian aid entering the enclave dropped by two-thirds when the war spread south to Rafah, dropping from an average of 176 aid trucks a day to just 58 because of the tightening of Egypt’s border with the region and the deadly security conditions.
Meanwhile, Israel accuses UN agencies of failing to distribute supplies efficiently and says the UN famine warnings amount to “misinformation.” The number of people the UN-backed global famine monitor forecasts as facing “catastrophic” food insecurity has dropped from 1.1 million to 495,000 people since its previous update in March.
Other solutions to increase aid – like the US-built temporary pier – only delivered 137 trucks of aid before collapsing due to inclement weather. The pier is expected to be reattached this week and should allow for millions of pounds of aid to enter from Cyprus.
Justice & peace in Gaza: The UN Palestinian ambassador's perspective
With nearly 40,000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis dead, the war in Gaza is still far from over. But one day, it will end. And then what? On the season premiere of GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Palestinian-American diplomat Riyad Mansour to discuss the Gaza war and how it might end. Mansour serves as the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations and was appointed to his role by Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank in partnership with Israel but has no jurisdiction, for now at least, over Gaza.
In a wide-ranging and candid interview, Mansour emphasizes the need for justice and an end to the occupation for both Israelis and Palestinians. He discusses the role of the United States in facilitating a ceasefire and a two-state solution and highlights the growing international support for the Palestinian cause. "There is something in the air,” Mansour tells Bremmer. “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."
Perhaps the most contentious part of the interview has to do with Hamas, an organization that Mansour takes pains to distance himself from without condemning it outright. Mansour laments the killing of innocent civilians and calls for the release of hostages and prisoners on both sides. “Innocent people, innocent civilians, should not be exposed to any harm. This is international law."
He also touches on Gaza's future governance and Hamas’ problematic role in those talks, stating that negotiations are ongoing and that progress can be made through diplomatic efforts. “Now for us, internally, we need to put our house in order with all political groups,” Mansour says, implying that Hamas’ role in Gaza’s future is far from certain.
Season 7 of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, began nationwide on public television stations beginning Friday, July 5 (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don''t miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour says give peace a chance
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.
Ian Explains: What's blocking an Israel-Hamas cease-fire?
What is standing in the way of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the war in Gaza?
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer unpacks the challenges and obstacles to achieving a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war. The stakes are, as ever, incredibly high, and the humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the war began. Since October 7, around 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and the UN estimates that 60% of Gazan homes and 80% of commercial buildings and schools have been destroyed or damaged. If the fighting doesn’t end soon, over a million Gazans will face near-total starvation by mid-summer.
In late May, President Biden unveiled a three-phase ceasefire proposal that he said had the support of the Israeli government and the global community and was backed by the UN Security Council. But hopes for an agreement were dashed after Hamas requested amendments to the deal and Israel refused to publicly accept the plan. Hamas says any deal must include a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel says it will only accept temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas is fully eradicated.
So is there any hope of a breakthrough? Will politics continue to take precedence over peace? Both the Palestinian and Israeli people would benefit from a real, lasting ceasefire, but, as Bremmer explains, it's not clear that the political leadership on either side actually wants it to happen.
Season 7 of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, launches nationwide on public television stations beginning Friday, July 5 (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don''t miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔):.