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Palestine’s UN ambassador asks the US to be ‘courageous’ and push for a cease-fire
What will it take to end the stalemate between Israel and Hamas and actually achieve a lasting cease-fire in Gaza? On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, says the answer ultimately comes down to the country with the most influence over Israel, states in the Middle East, and the UN General Assembly: the United States.
Given that the recent US-backed cease-fire proposal has stalled in negotiations, Bremmer pushed Ambassador Mansour on what needs to happen to make meaningful progress and whether either side has enough incentive to agree to a peace deal, as both appear to benefit politically from the conflict. Mansour argues the US is still influential enough to force both sides to the table, that public sentiment is overwhelmingly on the side of peace, and warns of the danger of descending the "logic of extremists" who benefit politically from the conflict continuing.
“The US is capable of being an honest broker, they need to be decisive, they need to be fair, they need to listen to the sentiment of the American people and almost everyone at the United Nations,” Mansour stresses, “There is something in the air. People want justice for the Palestinians.”
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 (🔔).
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 (🔔):.
Marine Le Pen, member of parliament and French far-right National Rally.
National Rally seeks allies as French legislative elections head into round two
As France prepares for its second round of legislative elections this Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, aka RN, party has announced that even if it falls short of an outright majority, it will attempt to form a majority government by drawing allies from the conservative Republicans party for parliamentary backing.
The announcement comes after the RN beat President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition in the first round. It’s expected to prevail – if narrowly – again on Sunday.
“It's not a change in direction because she is still saying they won’t form a minority government,” says Eurasia Group’s Europe director Mujtaba Rahman. “But she is saying that if they come close they will try to pull allies over from the hard right of the Les Républicains and then form a majoritarian government.”
It remains unclear, however, whether she and Jordan Bardella, the party’s chief and candidate for prime minister, will succeed. Éric Ciotti, the then-leader of the Republicans, caused outrage and was forced to leave the party last month when he teamed up with the RN.
In a bid to deprive the far right of a 289-seat majority, Macron’s alliance is working on pulling some of its third-place candidates ahead of Sunday’s run-off, and the left-wing New Popular Front has said it will pull all of its candidates. So far, 202 have dropped out – 127 from left-wing parties and 75 from Macron’s centrists.
If Le Pen’s RN succeeds in winning friends from other parties after the second-round vote Sunday, it would further normalize the far right in French politics and could usher in a far-right government in France’s parliament.
Le Pen’s already making post-election plans. Members of her party in the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group plan to meet with EU allies next Monday to discuss the future of the far right Europe-wide. Many are considering whether to join a new populist alliance announced this week by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Palestinians, who fled the eastern part of Khan Younis after they were ordered by Israeli army to evacuate their neighborhoods, make their way, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 2, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Fleeing Khan Younis, Freed hostage’s mom dies, Haiti’s child displacement crisis, Biden’s heat safety plan, Cambodian arrests, Beryl heads for Jamaica
250,000: The Israeli Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of250,000 Palestinians from the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis on Monday – an untold number have fled by any means possible – before launching strikes overnight in response to rocket attacks on Israel from inside the city. Israeli officials warn that Hamas continues to use Palestinian civilians as human shields.
3: The mother of rescued Israeli hostage Noa Argamani has succumbed to brain cancer justthree weeks after her daughter was freed in a raid on a Hamas hideout in Gaza. Liora Argamani, who was 61, had made public pleas after Oct. 7 for her daughter to be returned so that she could see her again before she died.
300,000: The UN Children’s Agency says that gang violence in Haiti has forced more than300,000 children from their homes since March. Meanwhile, the gangs have said they are gearing up for a war against the Kenyan police mission, which arrived in Haiti this past week.
35 million: The Biden administration has proposed regulations that will require employers to provide workers with rest areas and water when the heat index reaches 80 degrees or higher. This rule could apply to about 35 million Americans who work both indoors and outdoors.
10: A court in Cambodia has sentenced10 activists from a youth-led environmental group to between six and eight years in jail following charges of plotting against the government. Three of the activists were also convicted of insulting the king.6: The Atlantic’s first hurricane of the season, Beryl, has wreaked destruction in Grenada, Venezuela, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, killing at least six people. The storm is now moving toward Jamaica, where it is “expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica,” according to the hurricane center.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a cabinet meeting at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem on June 5, 2024.
Does Bibi see a benefit to war with Hezbollah?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday warned that Israel was ready for “very intense action” near its border with Lebanon amid rising tensions with the powerful Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
The question of whether Israel will open up a two-front war by launching an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon has been looming over the region since Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 and the devastating conflict in Gaza began. On Thursday, an Israeli air strike on a UN school packed with hundreds of displaced Palestinians in central Gaza reportedly killed at least 35 people.
For months, Israel and Hamas have routinely traded cross-border fire – often with deadly consequences. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have been pushed out of their homes because by hostilities. Hezbollah rocket attacks led to wildfires in northern Israel this week.
Netanyahu is now facing pressure from far-right members of his coalition government to take action. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in a Telegram post on Wednesday said, “All Hezbollah strongholds must be burned and destroyed. War!”
This comes as even US President Joe Biden, one of Israel’s few steadfast allies on the global stage, says it’s not unfair to conclude that Netanyahu sees the war in Gaza as a political lifeline. It’s possible that the Israeli leader might now view an offensive against Hezbollah as another support beam for his flimsy coalition.
Regardless, the US and other major powers have been working for months to avoid seeing the Gaza war spark a wider conflict, which would only inject more chaos into the region. We’ll be watching to see what Netnayahu’s next move is in the days ahead.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a joint press conference with Kenyan President William Ruto at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 23, 2024.
What is Biden’s red line in Rafah?
The White House on Tuesday said a recent Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of refugees in Rafah — reportedly with US-made bombs — did not cross President Joe Biden’s red line for withholding weapon shipments from Israel.
But that red line seems to have a lot of wiggle room.
Biden’s squiggly red line. Earlier this month, Biden said he would halt some arms shipments to Israel if “they go into Rafah” and operate in “population centers,” expressing concern for the massive number of civilians sheltering there.
Though much of the world is calling for an immediate end to the offensive as the death toll rises, the White House on Tuesday said that the Israeli assault on Rafah does not yet constitute a “major ground operation” that would lead Biden to change US policy toward the Jewish state — even as the IDF sends tanks into the southern Gaza city.
Between Bibi and a hard place. It’s an election year, and Biden has alienated many young voters — a key voting bloc — incensed over his continued support for Israel. But given his reluctance to change course, the president seems to be betting that this won’t ultimately hurt him that much at the ballot box and there’s evidence to support that.
Though recent polling suggests roughly half of the country disapproves of Israeli military actions in Gaza, Americans have historically been overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and Biden knows that — and he’s sticking with the Jewish state.
But it’s still a potentially dangerous gamble for Biden — as he is trailing former President Donald Trump in most crucial swing states.
And if Biden hopes the war will be over before Election Day, he might be disappointed. On Wednesday, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahusaid that “fighting in Gaza will continue for at least another seven months.”
UNRWA funding cuts threaten Lebanon's Palestinian refugees
GZERO went inside the Shatila Camp in Beirut, one of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camps, to better understand what the loss of UNRWA funding would mean for the people who call it home—the teachers, doctors, and local government workers who rely on UNRWA to provide basic services, like education, healthcare, and clean water to residents. The agency says it has enough funds to last through June, but it will need to make some tough choices after that.
“The reason UNRWA still exists after 75 years is because there is no political solution,” says Dorothee Klaus, URWA’s Lebanon director, “It is time to find a solution for Palestinian refugees to live in dignity like everybody else.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Mourners react next to the body of a Palestinian killed in Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Al-Aqsa hospital, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, May 12, 2024.
Did the Gaza death toll numbers really change?
Months of fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces have resulted in a mounting death toll in Gaza. Most news outlets have relied upon the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry for casualty figures, which show roughly 35,000 dead, but there have been questions about accuracy. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, recently offered a new breakdown of the death toll — based on health ministry numbers — that aimed to paint a clearer picture of how many of those killed have been identified.
But rather than provide clarity, the new numbers have led to a wave of confusion and misleading claims. By focusing on those killed who have been identified, the UN agency appeared to report a lower number of women and children killed than in previous reports.
UN tries to clarify. The UN is now playing cleanup, maintaining that the overall death toll has not changed and is roughly 35,000. What’s changed, it says, is that nearly 25,000 bodies have been “fully identified,” and more than half are women and children. In other words, approximately 10,000 bodies are unidentified — and thousands of people, many of them women and children, are still missing under the rubble.
The confusion is indicative of the extraordinarily difficult — and often politicized — process of tallying war deaths.
But it is also sowing distrust. The Jewish state’s top diplomat pointed to the update as evidence that the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers, which the UN largely relies on for its figures, cannot be trusted.
“Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization in order to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism,” Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, tweeted Monday.
Part of the process. Death tolls from conflicts and other fatal events are routinely revised as more information is gathered: After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, for example, Israel initially reported that around 1,400 Israelis were killed. The Israeli government has since revised that to around 1,200.
Accurately tallying how many people have been killed in an active war zone is notoriously difficult, and fully identifying all of the dead can take decades. In March, for example, a US sailor killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, was finally identified over 80 years later.
Looking at it another way, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that the fact that 25,000 people have now been identified, is actually “a step forward.”
So can the Gaza Health Ministry numbers be trusted? Israel has repeatedly claimed that the death toll reported by the health ministry is manipulated. Skeptics of the numbers also take issue with the fact that it doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
But top humanitarian organizations and leading experts say that the numbers from the health ministry have historically proven reliable. The ministry’s tally is largely calculated via hospital records, and it releases casualty updates every couple of hours. Though the Israeli government has publicly cast doubt on the veracity of the health ministry’s estimates, Israeli intelligence services have also reportedly concluded that the figures are generally accurate.
The WHO on Tuesday also said it remained confident in the overall figures from Gaza’s health ministry, stating that there’s “nothing wrong with the data.”