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Fareed Zakaria GPS
Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Now in Effect in Gaza; Hamas Hands Three Hostages to Red Cross in Gaza. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired January 19, 2025 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:00:32]
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.
We come to you today as Israel awaits the release of the first three hostages from Gaza. We will tell you what you need to know about them, the ceasefire and the Palestinian prisoner release. I will talk to a top Israeli journalist, Haviv Rettig Gur, and an important Palestinian politician, Mustafa Barghouti.
Also, Trump 2.0 starts tomorrow. What can we expect on the economy and foreign policy? I'll talk to the Hoover Institute's Niall Ferguson.
Six hours ago, just after 11:00 a.m. local time, a ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hamas. We are now awaiting the release of three Israeli captives, all women from Gaza, as well as the release of some 90 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
All this comes after a deal struck this week, whose first phase will see 33 Israeli hostages released from Gaza and some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel over the course of six weeks. Under the deal, Israeli troops have begun to withdraw from parts of Gaza and much needed humanitarian aid has begun to pour in.
The second and third phases, which are still to be negotiated, could see all remaining hostages return from Gaza, Israel fully withdraw its troops and rebuilding begin in Gaza.
Haviv Rettig Gur is a senior analyst at "The Times of Israel." He joins me now.
So, Haviv, tell me, what does this mean in Israel? Because, you know, in Gaza, we understand. I mean, this has been this war, the massive destruction, tens of thousands of people dead. You can understand what it means for this to end even temporarily.
What does it mean for Israel and what does it mean to see these 33 hostages released?
HAVIV RETTIG GUR, SENIOR ANALYST, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Two things happened to Israelis on October 7th. The first was the real deep trauma of October 7th wasn't simply the massacre by Hamas. It does not surprise Israelis that the moment Hamas found they could, this is what they did. That's who Hamas have been for 30 years.
But what happened was Israelis experienced being unable to help the other Israelis. Israel is a refugee nation, a nation whose most profound ethos is that they protect each other. It felt like the kind of crashing and falling apart of that fundamental ethos.
And the second thing, just a personally sitting hours on October 7th, watching the WhatsApp groups of friends I know, talking about how there are Hamas people outside their door, is something that I'm never going to forget, and it's something that the Israeli people generally are not going to forget.
The second piece of it, I think, is that everything we learned about our enemies, that Hamas is willing to launch wars that are massively destructive to Gaza. That is not a deterrent to Hamas. Well, we suddenly looked around and woke up to the fact that that is not a deterrent to Hezbollah or to all the different proxies of Iran, the Houthis. God knows they've caused horrific damage to Yemen.
And so the world suddenly felt a lot more dangerous. So I think that for Israelis, this moment is a moment of a temporary pause. We're going to get out our people. We're going to try and make up some of the betrayal of them that October 7th represents to us culturally, and we're going to then get back to the business of not allowing our enemies to threaten us on our borders again.
ZAKARIA: You support this first phase of the deal. Explain why?
RETTIG GUR: It's very easy to support it. Israel does not give up anything strategic in any fundamental way. It will remain on the Gaza- Egypt border. It will remain capable of preventing massive Hamas rearmament through the smuggling tunnels on that border, what we call the Philadelphi Corridor. And, you know, when the Israeli army redeploys out of Gaza, it's redeploying 20 minutes' drive away.
This is not, you know, leaving Afghanistan, so to speak. And we're going to get our people out or as many of them as we possibly can. It will last for as long as it can. And we haven't fundamentally given up anything strategic. We're going --
ZAKARIA: And does that change in the second phase? The requirement for Israeli withdrawal in the second phase seems bigger.
[10:05:04]
RETTIG GUR: Massive, probably including Philadelphi. The actual negotiation on the second phase begins 16 days into the first phase. That's -- those are the terms of the agreement. So we don't entirely know who will be released and we don't entirely know what we're talking about.
ZAKARIA: Do you think that second -- those negotiations will be successful?
RETTIG GUR: It would demand a much, much bigger political compromise on the part of the Israelis within Israeli domestic politics. In other words, it would -- the second phase would mean a Hamas retaking of Gaza in a way that the third phase, Hamas is now going to try and walk us through this dance. They're going to show themselves driving in circles in a couple of Toyota, you know, pickup trucks around Gaza. They're going to have people dancing and screaming at the Red Cross vehicles as they bring out the three Israeli hostages who are being released.
They're going to -- they're sending a message to the Israelis, you didn't destroy us. And they're really more profoundly, probably sending a message to Palestinians, we're still in control. Don't you dare, right, come at us with complaints about the destruction of Gaza. So it's going to pretend to still be in good shape and able to take over.
The second phase, it will actually be capable of taking over because it'll be capable of restoring its capabilities, rearming every anti- tank missile they launch now is unreplaceable. If we redeploy from the Philadelphi Corridor, those tank, anti-tank missiles become replaceable. And so it's a whole different Hamas and a war that lasts forever.
ZAKARIA: So for you, what is the most likely scenario is you have this first phase, but the Israeli -- you don't actually get to the second phase.
RETTIG GUR: It's a much, much harder thing to push through Israeli politics to get through the second phase. Netanyahu lost one far-right coalition partner and held on by the skin of his teeth to the second one for this phase. The second phase, if the war doesn't resume, that is the condition imposed by Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and his religious Zionism faction, for staying in. In other words, if we go to a second phase, he leaves as well.
And then it's quite likely Netanyahu doesn't have a coalition. So for domestic Israeli politics, the Israeli political right will understand that that is Hamas retaking of Gaza. It becomes much harder within Israel to go to that second phase. I should also say, we'll know that there's no second phase into the negotiations that are already during the first phase. So there is some strong possibility that the first phase isn't going to be seen through to the end.
ZAKARIA: Haviv, stay with me. We're going to take a break.
Next on GPS, we'll get the Palestinian perspective on the ceasefire and hostage deal from the politician Mustafa Barghouti, who will join us directly from the West Bank.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:12:20]
ZAKARIA: And we are back and CNN's chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto joins me now from Tel Aviv.
Jim, you have breaking news. JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's right. Well,
Fareed, after 470 days of suffering for Israeli hostages and, of course, for the people of Gaza, the first three Israeli hostages taken on October 7th have now been released, transferred from the hands of Hamas to the International Red Cross inside Gaza. And they will soon be on their way home.
The three hostages released today, all of them women. Romi Gonen, 24 years old. She was taken from the Nova Music Festival, where so many people were killed in those morning hours of October 7th, most of them quite young people. Emily Damari, she's 28 years old. She's a British- Israeli citizen. She was taken from the kibbutz of Kfar Aza that morning, injured, in fact, during those attacks. And the third, Doron Steinbrecher, 31 years old, also taken from Kfar Aza. She's a veterinary nurse.
To see those Red Cross vehicles driving through Gaza and now taking those three Israeli hostages home is quite a moment, Fareed, because it was on those same streets on October 7th when Hamas vehicles carried those hostages into Gaza under at gunpoint, many of them injured. And sadly, we now know many of them killed on that day.
I will say as well there was quite a striking image at the exchange as it took place just a few moments ago because surrounding those Red Cross vehicles as they receive those Israeli hostages were not just crowds of Palestinians from Gaza. And I think we're looking at pictures there now from Hostages Square inside Tel Aviv and celebrations. Boy, what a moment there. It's been a long time coming.
But there was another image from Gaza where we saw Hamas fighters in uniform surrounding those Red Cross vehicles as the exchange took place, so that even after these 470 days of really unrelenting war, unrelenting Israeli bombardment, Hamas, while certainly devastated with enormous losses, you could see there, it is still armed. Its fighters are still present in Gaza, and I can imagine they and their leaders were eager to make this show of force, even as they made this hostage exchange.
This is, as you were saying earlier, Fareed, just the very first step in a long process over the course of the next six weeks.
[10:15:03]
Some 33 hostages will be released and that's just the first phase of a three-phase plan. But of course, one with so many pitfalls. We don't know if all of those phases will come through, but we should acknowledge this is quite a hopeful moment for those hostage families that have suffered so much.
ZAKARIA: Thank you so much, Jim. Great reporting.
We have heard the Israeli perspective. Let's get the Palestinian perspective on all this.
Joining us from Ramallah is the politician Mustafa Barghouti, who is president of the Palestinian National Initiative. Welcome. Tell me, what does it feel like for people in Gaza? I know
you're in the West Bank, but, you know, this is in some ways the end of a kind of hell on earth that they have gone through, right?
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, GENERAL SECRETARY, PALESTINIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE: Absolutely. But let me start, Fareed, by saying that we are absolutely and I am absolutely shocked at how much the Israelis, most of the Israelis and many Western media outlets refused to see Palestinians as equal human beings to Israelis. They talk about the 98 Israeli hostages or captives if you want, but they don't speak in the same manner about 18,000 Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails, 18,000.
And they don't speak about the 56 Palestinian prisoners who were killed in Israeli jails during these horrible months. And the solution to them is just to continue the war, objecting to the continuation of the ceasefire and ending this terrible war, instead of looking for a solution, for a political solution, a political way to end Israeli occupation. They forget that the main problem here is Israeli occupation and Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, and the fact that we are subjected to a system of apartheid.
And if Israel is a refugee community, we are a people who are refugees. 70 percent of Palestinians have been displaced by Israel. We never displaced Israelis. They displaced us, eliminating and erasing to the ground 521 Palestinian communities in 1948. So what I'm trying to say is, as much as all prisoners must be released, dehumanizing Palestinians is unacceptable. And yes, Gaza is now getting out of a horrible situation.
Gaza has been subjected to three terrible war crimes. This is not my opinion. This is the opinion also of the International Criminal Court. We've been subjected to terrible genocide that took the lives of at -- and injured at least 170,000 people. We're talking about 10 percent of the population of Gaza who are now killed or injured, including 17,000 Palestinian children.
If that had happened in a country like the United States of America, Fareed, you would be talking about 33 million American people killed or injured in the course of 15 months. How could anybody accept that?
ZAKARIA: But, Mustafa, we cannot --
BARGHOUTI: We've been subjected to genocide. We've been subjected to collective punishment, and we've been subjected to ethnic cleansing.
ZAKARIA: Can I ask you, though, given the devastation, do you think Palestinians in Gaza think it was worth it? In other words, what Hamas did and what it wrought, what it -- the response. Is there -- you know, you see some of the, you know, Hamas fighters on the streets, there's a certain amount of celebration. But I have to assume that for a lot of people in Gaza, they feel this was not worth it. This, you know, and particularly the brutality of the terror attack. And then the massive response it triggered. Was it worth it?
BARGHOUTI: Fareed, nothing is worth the life of one child, whoever he is and wherever he is. Of course. But you say terrorist Palestinian attack, you don't say terrorist Israeli attack. Is genocide an act of terrorism or not? I'm not justifying anything, but I'm trying to say, as I told you on the 8th of October, if you remember, the 7th of October was not a cause. It was a result. It wasn't the beginning of the story.
The story started 76 years ago in Israel, was established, and it ethnically cleansed 70 percent of the Palestinian people. 70 percent of the people of Gaza are refugees who have not been allowed to go back home.
[10:20:03]
The Palestinians have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, occupation, the longest occupation in modern history, oppression and then a system of apartheid.
What is the way out of this so that no Israeli or Palestinian would be killed in the future?
The way is to end Israeli occupation, allow Palestinians to have finally what every other people deserve, which is freedom. Allow us to have democracy, allow us to have prosperity, allow our, I mean, the people in Gaza before the 7th of October, 80 percent of the young people were unemployed. We can have a better future if the Israeli occupation ends. But dehumanizing Palestinian is unacceptable and not treating us as equal human beings is also not acceptable.
I don't want anybody to die, whether Israeli or Palestinian. But let me remind you, we could have saved 10,000 Palestinian people who were killed after July, and we could -- Netanyahu could have saved the lives of many Israeli soldiers and, more important, the lives of many Israeli prisoners, captives who were killed by Israeli bombardment.
He refused to have the deal, which we have now. We could have had it back in the 3rd of July. We could have had it in May. But he insisted to continue with the war. And when I hear an Israeli expert say that they might not full complete this agreement, that they might not complete this ceasefire agreement so that all hostages or captives or prisoners would be released in exchange of Palestinian prisoners, then what do they want?
They want them all to be killed again just because Netanyahu wants to keep his government? This man was so selfish and he was so criminal. And even President Biden admitted that recently when he said that Netanyahu told him that he was planning to smash Gaza completely down to earth.
ZAKARIA: But Mustafa, it's not --
BARGHOUTI: This is the kind of man who prefers his own interest to any other thing.
ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, going forward, though, it does seem as though for Israel, the idea that Hamas would stay in power in Gaza is unacceptable. Now, Hamas is at least a militant organization that espouses Islamic fundamentalism, even theocracy. It does not abide by elections.
If I can be honest, Mustafa, if you lived in Gaza, they would probably -- Hamas would probably have arrested or killed you. They do not tolerate political dissent. So is it a reasonable request --
BARGHOUTI: That's not true, Fareed.
ZAKARIA: Is it reasonable request going forward to say no Hamas control of Gaza?
BARGHOUTI: Look, we -- Hamas says itself that it doesn't want to control Gaza. And by the way, no, Hamas will not kill me, although I am a secular person, although I am a person who calls for nonviolence. And actually, I've managed to convince them largely to commit to nonviolence for five years before Israel continued its attacks.
But nevertheless, the most important question here, if you call them terrorists and fundamentalist, what do you call Smotrich and Ben-Gvir? Apply the same standard. Why don't you call Smotrich and Ben-Gvir terrorists? These people are fascists and Smotrich did not shy away from calling himself a fascist homophobe.
But I tell you what is the solution. Hamas said to us very clearly that they don't want to be the government. They don't want to be even in the government. But the solution is a national unity Palestinian government, a national consensus government that could be accepted by everybody, could be cooperated with by everybody. This is what we are calling for and which would open the road for having free democratic elections for Palestinians, something we didn't have for 20 years.
We need elections. We need to have the right to choose our leaders, like people do in Israel or the United States or Britain. And what we choose should be respected and accepted. We don't interfere in British elections and say we don't like this person or that. If the world accepts the principle of democracy, the principles of democracy for every country in the world, including Israel, and that's what justifies the continuation of this war, then they should accept our right to democratically and freely choose our leaders.
I think we can build a better future. We can have a national consensus government which can bring back democratic systems to Palestine. And that is the solution. And Israel should stop, should stop objecting to our right of having democracy and free democratic elections.
ZAKARIA: Mustafa, stay with us. We will try to get back to both you and Haviv. But we do have new video of the hostages being handed over.
[10:25:02]
So I want to go to CNN's chief national security analyst, Jim Sciutto, in Tel Aviv, who is back with me.
SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, Fareed, watching this video, what is key as we watch these three Israeli women gain their freedom after 470 what have been torturous days is that as they leave that SUV there, and we'll zoom in a little bit more as they step out, we can see that they step out of the vehicle under their own power. They're able to walk out of the vehicle there, you can see it now, on to the Red Cross that received them. And that is a good sign.
We did know that two of them were injured during the October 7th attacks. Ramy Gonen, one of them, and Emily Damaris, that they were injured in their hand from gunshot shrapnel. And their families had been told that their wounds worsened during their captivity, but they were able to walk out. That is one sign of their health there.
But the other detail I draw your attention to as we watch this is that those are Hamas Qassam Brigade fighters around the vehicle, on top of the vehicle, providing security at this exchange. And it shows that however decimated they may have been by these 470 days of Israeli military operations there, some survived. They are still armed. They are still something of a force on the ground. They're not clear what their role will be going forward, but they certainly have not been eliminated as a fighting force.
I should say that as this was happening earlier this morning, we and others witnessed Israeli forces withdrawing from some positions in Gaza as planned locations in both southern and northern Gaza, which was part of the sequencing of this hostage release and ceasefire deal.
And I should also note, given Mustafa Barghouti's comments there, he's, of course, in the West Bank, that what is happening now or quite soon is that 95 Palestinian prisoners will be released as well. The Israeli military was waiting to confirm the release of the Israeli hostages before they began the process of releasing some 95 Palestinian prisoners, most of them women, a number of them teenagers.
And I should note, given the administrative detention laws in Israel, that while -- that many of those who are being released today were under administrative detention, that is, they were not convicted of crimes, they were held under Israeli law. So you have a mix of prisoners who are being released in this very first stage.
Again, I want to caution, as you well know, Fareed, that this is a multi-step plan. Three hostages today, another handful in a week's time, 33 over the course of six weeks. And Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of them, being released as those Israeli hostages are released. But at each stage, of course, there's a possibility of interruption or upset.
We'll continue to follow the events closely. But for those three families here in Israel, they're just about to be reunited. A moment they'd only imagined for 470 days.
ZAKARIA: Thank you, Jim. Yes. And I would just point out to people who were watching those videos, you saw a lot of armed Palestinian militants. You noticed that they were fully masked. That is, of course, to evade Israeli security cameras and analysis of who they are.
We will be back with much more on all of this right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [10:33:05]
ZAKARIA: We have more breaking news. CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins me now from Re'im, Israel -- Jeremy.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Fareed, we are here in Re'im, near a military base where we expect that those three female hostages who we've just been alerted, have now been transferred into the arms of the international Red Cross inside of Gaza.
This is the point where they will then be transferred in vehicles. And behind me here, it may be hard to see at the moment, but there are two choppers, two military helicopters that we saw landing here within the last hour or so that will then transfer them to a hospital in central Israel. We've also been told as of now, that Israel has been informed that according to the Red Cross, the three hostages are in good condition. They are expected to meet their mothers right here at the Re'im base.
We are told that the mothers of all three of these women, Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, all three mothers, will indeed be here at Re'im to meet their daughters for the first time after more than 15 months of captivity. And there is also quite a bit of symbolism at this very moment, Fareed. And that is because one of those hostages in particular, Romi Gonen, she was kidnaped by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival, which happened just behind the highway here that you can see behind me.
And so, from the same place where she was taken captive, she is also expected to experience her first moments of freedom to finally be able to hug her mother after 15 months of captivity. Really an extraordinary moment as we have also been watching, of course, Fareed, extraordinary moments playing out inside the Gaza Strip as well as people are finally experiencing their first respite after 15 months of war. Seeing hundreds of aid trucks beginning to cross into the Gaza Strip.
[10:35:03]
People celebrating this moment where they no longer have to fear, at least for the time being, the threat of bombs and missiles that have been dropping on them, of course, over the course of the last 15 months. And so, this really is one of those rare good news moments that that I'm being able to report here, Fareed, after covering this war for the last 15 months -- Fareed.
ZAKARIA: Great reporting. Thank you, Jeremy. We are back with Haviv Rettig Gur, senior analyst at "The Times of Israel." Haviv, you know, in response to that -- to that attack by Hamas, and as you pointed out, that sense that Israel was caught napping, that, you know, the security agencies were caught napping, that people were not able to help their fellow citizens. The government basically announced that their goal was going to be the total victory, the destruction of Hamas.
At this point, even Israel's foreign minister has admitted it's plain to see Hamas has not been destroyed. I was wondering, you know, what do you make of the kind of criticism of Israeli strategy that people like David Petraeus made, General Petraeus not a, you know, not an opponent of Israel at all, a strong supporter, who said, look, if you're just going to try and destroy Hamas -- destroy Hamas, you're going to create more terrorists than you kill.
You're going to create more Hamas fighters than you kill. You have to have a strategy that is very different, that tries to win the hearts and minds of people in Gaza. That if all you're doing is this -- you know, is just brutal devastation, it's going to be counterproductive. You're going to have to keep going back to places that you -- that you thought you had cleared.
And that does seem like it is exactly what has happened. Israel has gone back to Khan Younis three, four times. It has gone back into northern Gaza that it cleared. What is -- you know, what is the trajectory? Is it now that Israel goes back, as you say, after the ceasefire and just keeps trying again, you know, more and more devastation, more and more people killed?
RETTIG GUR: It's a -- it's a great question without a quick answer. There is a -- an Israeli lesson learned from the American experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is not to -- not to clear and hold, not to stay, because that creates more targets on your side.
And so, what the Israelis adopted in Gaza was a strategy of long degradation. So, you take a place, you kill as many Hamas fighters as you can, you pull out, they come out of the tunnels, you then take it again. That's new targets on their side rather than on yours.
So, we have seen that be the sort of fundamental strategy. And that looks exactly like what, you know, concerns David Petraeus. But it is, in fact, a lesson from the American failure. In Afghanistan, Marines cleared and held valley after valley, and that did not, A, destroy the Taliban. And B, actually, made it much harder for the Americans to actually face the Taliban where they were. So, that's the sort of tactical --
ZAKARIA: But, I guess, what I think the -- at a tactical level what, I think, Petraeus is saying strategically, what is Hamas? It's the idea of armed resistance. And if you do that, you're just going to create more Hamas fighters.
They may not call themselves Hamas. They may be just militants, but they're going to -- you know, if you -- if you kill 47,000 people, and I understand a lot of them are Hamas fighters, my point is just the American experience at least was you generate a lot of radicalism in that population.
GUR: So, I want to say something fundamental that I think Israelis know and that unifies Israelis on right and left, and that maybe the rest of the world doesn't quite see. For 17 years, Hamas ruled Gaza, and it built almost nothing in Gaza in those 17 years, except for one enormous thing that is by far the largest thing Palestinians have ever built, and that's the tunnel system of 500 kilometers of tunnels. Some of them wide enough to drive trucks through. And the tactical purpose of it, the only purpose of those tunnels was so that when the enemy comes for them, the only way to come for them is to cut through cities, to get to them.
I'm going to risk getting people upset. What that means is that on October 7th, Hamas did not carry out one atrocity. It carried out two. One was against the Israelis, and the second one, which in sheer human suffering, is an order of magnitude higher, was against Gaza.
Fareed, not a single Gazan civilian has been allowed to step foot in a single tunnel in 16 months. The tunnel's purpose is to allow Hamas to pop out now. And it doesn't matter what happened to Gaza. It doesn't matter how much the Israelis turned over Gaza to try and get into those tunnels, they can survive. Now, when you face an enemy for whom the destruction of their side is the strategy, this is, by the way, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
[10:40:08]
There is not a single one of the rockets that Hezbollah ever deployed in Lebanon, out in a field or on a mountaintop, every single one is in a village. And so, when you face that enemy, what does victory look like?
I want to say something really blunt that Israelis, I think, allow them to move forward with this deal and makes them not impressed by Hamas' celebrations. Gaza before the war, before October 7th, had a GDP per capita of Morocco and Egypt. It was not an open-air prison that is depicted in essentially a western discourse that is almost entirely the propaganda of the different sides competing for everybody's imagination.
People can look that up. These are World Bank numbers. Gaza was destroyed by a fundamental strategy of Hamas. Now you don't get away from it by deciding the Israelis are evil. If the Israelis are good, good people stuck in a bad situation, then Hamas' strategy is monstrous. If the Israelis are evil, Hamas' strategy is doubly monstrous.
Mustafa Barghouti is not Hamas. He's also part of political factions that are utterly hated, despised and deeply unpopular in the Palestinian population. If we go to the elections, he has called for, which I am not opposed to, it will be clarifying, Hamas would win a sweeping victory and will be the destruction of Gaza. You cannot rebuild Gaza if Hamas takes over.
ZAKARIA: Stay with us. We have to go for a break. Next on GPS, we are expecting President Biden to speak on the events in the Middle East, and we'll be following all the new developments on the hostage release when we come back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:46:24]
ZAKARIA: The Israeli hostages are now in the custody of the IDF. And let's get more of the Palestinian perspective on all of this. Joining us from Ramallah is the Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian National Initiative.
Mustafa, I want to ask you where you see things going forward here? Because as Haviv was describing, it is, for better or worse, going to be very hard for an Israeli government to accept the idea of a total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. It could result in Bibi Netanyahu's government collapsing.
Is there a scenario in which Arab troops could come in and maintain peace, to a degree to which both sides would find that comfortable? I ask you this because the Arabs have played an unusual role in recent years, which is they have spoken about Palestinian rights and Palestinian liberty and the Palestinian state, but done very little about it. And in fact, been, you know, many of the Gulf states have been trying to cut deals with Israel, normalized relations under the Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia apparently wants to do this.
So, is there -- is it possible that you could get a coalition of Arab countries? Would the Palestinians accept that kind of a presence as a -- as one way of allowing the implementation of phases two and three?
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, GENERAL SECRETARY, PALESTINIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE: The short answer is no. But before I respond in detail, let me respond to your Israeli guest. He claimed that if we have elections, Hamas will have a sweeping victory. That's not true.
All the polls that are done, since we are following now fully proportional system, shows that no single party in Palestine would get an absolute majority. That's impossible. And that's why --
ZAKARIA: You're speaking about Gaza and the West Bank collectively? Or just --
BARGHOUTI: Of course, of course of West Bank, Gaza collectively. Absolutely. And by the way, I would rank very high if such elections happen in case there is a presidential elections. I mean, but let's not go into that.
The big question here is why do we need others to govern our life? Would Americans accept that Mexican troops would come and rule them? Why do we need Arab troops here? What we need is free, democratic elections where Palestinians can elect their leaders, and that would be able to run themselves.
But the big question here is not about Israeli withdrawal only from west -- from Gaza, but also from West Bank. Why should Israel maintain its troops in the occupied West Bank, which is, according to international law, should be really -- should be -- should be free from the Israeli occupation? It should be the place of the future Palestinian state.
The truth and the reality is that we have now 7.3 million Palestinians on the land of historic Palestine, versus 7.1 million Israelis. What is the solution to that, two-state solution? Israel doesn't want that. It refuses it.
One Democratic state, they also don't want it. So, what's the solution? Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians? Is that acceptable according to international law? A system of long -- life apartheid that we have to be subjected to, these are not solutions.
The only solution is to end occupation, allow Palestinians to be free, finally. And they cannot keep calling us -- calling Palestinians terrorists. Your guest was speaking about -- they couldn't destroy Hamas.
[10:50:01]
Of course, because they were not only bombarding Hamas, they were bombarding civilian population. Seventeen thousand children are not Hamas fighters. And Israel didn't care about the lives of these Palestinians. They didn't care about the international law or about the international humanitarian law.
Thirty years ago, there was no Hamas troops. It did not exist. And Israel concluded a peace agreement with Palestinians. And then Netanyahu personally undermined it, aggravated the Israeli public until Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, who signed the agreement, was assassinated. That's the truth. That's the reality. They call them terrorists.
Well, George Washington was accused of being terrorists by the British colonialism. The same applies to Nelson Mandela, who was on terrorist American list in the American Congress for a very long time until he became the elected president of South Africa.
We want the world to see us as equal human beings, as people who deserve freedom. We don't need other people to rule us. We want to rule our lives. And if there is end of occupation, we will have peace. Nobody will be threatened.
Israel will have security. We will have security. Israelis will have security. Israel cannot have security alone, and not without Palestinians having security. That's the basic rule, and that's what they should understand.
Without our freedom, without ending occupation, without ending the system of oppression and apartheid, we will not survive. And that's the only way out of this, not to continue to think how to reactivate the military operation, which would cost so many lives. Enough is enough.
Eighty-seven thousand tons of explosives were thrown on Gaza. That is 36 kilograms of explosives for each man, woman and child in Gaza. They speak about tunnels. Well, the Israeli government was meeting inside the tunnel the other day. They have very good shelters. We don't have them. The best way out of this is to stop the war, not to continue.
ZAKARIA: Let me just -- let me just ask Haviv to quickly, if you can, because we don't have a lot of time. But, you know, address this larger issue of what is -- what is Israel's strategy? There are 7 million people in Israel who don't have political rights, and they don't have their own country, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, what is -- what happens to them?
GUR: Palestinians in the West Bank live under military rule. None of this ends until that ends. They don't elect the Israeli military governor of the West Bank. That is a fundamental truth.
I remember being a bright eyed, left wing, idealistic teenager and watching in 1996 when the Oslo peace process was on the line and Hamas detonated in the week before an election, two massive suicide bombings in Jerusalem, the mastermind of those two suicide bombings is being released now, today, and tilted that election away from the left and to the right, that was skeptical about the peace process, by the narrowest margin in the history of an Israeli election. That was Benjamin Netanyahu's first election win, and he won by, I think, 30,000 votes.
The Second Intifada in 2000 was a wave of 140 suicide bombings, a great many of them orchestrated by Hamas, not all of them, but certainly probably the preponderance. And it was at the height of the peace process when Barak and Arafat were at Camp David with Bill Clinton, negotiating things like shared sovereignty on the Temple Mount.
Hamas is not fighting for Palestinian freedom. Hamas is fighting to destroy any possibility of peace, ever. And it is willing to destroy Palestine on the altar of destroying the Jews, because it is fulfilling a vast redemptionist Islamist political project that has nothing to do with freedom for Palestinians.
We have already seen in the last two days, Hamas put out on its telegram groups notices to Palestinians who have publicly criticized them while they've been in the tunnels in Gaza, that they're coming for them and they're going to kill them. And so, no, I submit to you that the question of Palestinian freedom is fundamental, and we have to talk about it, and we can talk about it the second Hamas is out of the picture. That's where things stand.
ZAKARIA: President Biden just landed in Charleston, South Carolina. This is his last full day in office. We're waiting for a statement from him. I think he's on.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- 470 days. Four more women will be released in seven days. Three additional hostages every seven days thereafter, including at least two American citizens in this first phase. We pray for them and their families for their -- there is going to be a long recovery ahead.
By the 16th day of the deal, talks will begin in the second phase. This phase includes the release of Israeli soldiers and a permanent end of the war without Hamas in power or able to threaten Israel.
Hundreds of trucks are entering Gaza as I speak. They're carrying assistance for civilians who have suffered enormously from the war that Hamas started on October 7th, 2023, nearly 15 months ago.
[10:55:00] Today alone, we anticipate several hundred trucks will enter the Gaza Strip as I'm -- probably as I'm speaking. And after so much pain, destruction, and loss of life, today, the guns in Gaza have gone silent.
This was the deal that I outlined for the world back in May 31st. Many of you covered it at the time. I was -- I was endorsed overwhelmingly by folks around the world, including the U.N. Security Council, who unanimously endorsed the deal and developed a coordination with -- I developed in coordination with Egypt, Qatar, and Israel.
I've worked in foreign policy for decades, and this is one of the toughest negotiations I've been part of. Many of you who follow these negotiations will attest that the road to this deal has been not easy at all and a long road.
But we've reached this point today because of the pressure Israel built on Hamas backed by the United States. Some said my policy of a firm support for Israel was relentlessly pursuing diplomacy, I risked drawing America into a wider war in the region.
I listened to those voices, many of whom I respected a great deal, but I concluded abandoning the course I was on would not have led us to the ceasefire we're seeing today. But instead, it would have risked a wider war in the region that so many feared.
Now, the region has been fundamentally transformed. Hamas' long-time leader, Sinwar, is dead. Hamas sponsors in the Middle East have been badly weakened by Israel, backed by the United States. Hezbollah, one of Hamas' biggest backers, was significantly weakened in the battlefield, and its leadership was destroyed.
Even as we worked for diplomatic solutions in Lebanon, we provided ongoing assistance to support Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah, including its efforts to take out the terror infrastructure along the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Israel's campaign was extremely successful, so much so that by the end of November, the United States had brokered a ceasefire in Lebanon. Hezbollah did what it said it would never do. It cut its -- it's cut its deals and abandoned Hamas.
And today, Lebanon -- in Lebanon, there's finally a new president and prime minister, both of whom support a sovereign Lebanon without Hezbollah ruling the show -- running the show or playing any part in it.
The Assad regime next door in Syria is gone, removing Iran's ready access to Lebanon. Iran is in the weakest position in decades after the U.S. military helped defend Israel from Iranian missiles and supported Israel's military response inside Iran.
Just look across the region. In Lebanon, there's an opportunity for a future free from the grip of Hezbollah. In Syria, a future free from the Assad, the tyranny of Assad, for the Palestinian people a credible path to a state of their own, and for the region and the future normalization and integration of Israel with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, which I've spoken with.
You know, we've had many difficult days since Hamas began this terrible war. We've encountered roadblocks and setbacks, but we haven't given up. And a special thanks to my team, particularly Brett McGurk, who many of you know, who spent weeks and months working nonstop to reach this deal, many of those weeks and months out of the -- out of the country.
Today, ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages is a result of a principled and effective policy that we've presided over for months. And we got here without a wider war in the Middle East that many predicted. And now it falls on the next administration to help implement this deal.
I was pleased to have our team speak as one voice in the final days. It was both necessary and effective and unprecedented. But success is going to require persistence and continuing support for our friends in the region and the belief in diplomacy backed by deterrence.
So as we reflect on the news from Gaza today, we also remember all the victims of this war. They were -- we're mindful. Wer'e mindful that the pursuit of a lasting peace while never easy or quick must always be our calling.
So thank you all for listening. May God bless you all. May God protect our troops. I'm looking forward to this deal being fully implemented.
And I'm sorry, I'm not going to take any questions now because I'm waiting -- there's a whole congregation waiting for me. And I'm sure that the remainder of the day I'll have an opportunity to speak with you. Thank you very much.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there anything about the condition of the hostages that were released today and the others that were released?
BIDEN: Yes. I've just got a call saying the three are released into Gaza to the -- out of the hands of their captors. And they appear to be in good health, but it's early to tell. They're literally being -- they may be across the border out of the Gaza Strip into Israel now. I'm not certain.
[11:00:00]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Sir, any concerns about Hamas regrouping?
BIDEN: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will you remain involved in the deal as it moves forward?
BIDEN: No way out. I'm proud of the deal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of the show. Next up, INSIDE POLITICS.
