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Who's winning the Israel-Palestine information war?
To fully grasp why the Gaza war remains so far from a peaceful resolution, you need to understand the codependency between Israel's Far Right and Hamas. So says Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman on "GZERO World."
Watch full episode here: How the Israel-Gaza war could end - if Netanyahu wants it to
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
What would an Israel-Palestine solution look like?
Imagine if it were possible. What would a post-war Palestinian resolution to the Gaza conflict actually look like? Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman games that out for Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Friedman breaks it down. "Two stages. First stage is the UAE, Egypt and Jordan agree to send troops to Gaza to provide security in a transition after Israel would pull back with American logistical help." Friedman also lays out what the Palestinians themselves would have to do to ensure an enduring peace. "And the thing that the Palestinians would do is I believe reconvene the PLO, the umbrella, the sole legitimate organization, which means the umbrella organization to legitimate to nominate a Palestinian government of technocrats."Watch full episode here: How the Israel-Gaza war could end - if Netanyahu wants it to
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
A Palestinian woman reacts to an Israeli airstrike amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 3, 2024.
Israel no-shows Gaza ceasefire talks
On Sunday, Israel boycotted talks in Cairo after Hamas rejected its demand for a list of hostages who still remain alive, though other parties carried on. Hope for a Gaza cease-fire is fading despite earlier US optimism that a deal was possible ahead of next week’s Ramadan deadline.
On Saturday, a US official told reporters that Israel had agreed to the framework of a deal and "the onus right now is on Hamas” to respond. But in addition to the rejected demand for a hostage list, the proposal does not meet Hamas’ main demand for a permanent end to the war, and a Palestinian official told Reuters the deal was ”not there yet” after Hamas officials arrived in Cairo.
Meanwhile, at least 15 children have starved to death in northern Gaza, according to health authorities, raising fears of mass famine. The United States air-dropped aid into the enclave on Saturday, but not at any scale that can solve the problem: The operation dropped some 38,000 meals, while over 2 million Gazans need food. US Vice President Kamala Harris called for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza on Sunday, ahead of a visit from Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz — a visit which could add complications.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly dressed down Gantz — his political rival — over the latter’s “unauthorized” upcoming trip to Washington. Gantz claims his meetings with Harris on Monday and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday will strengthen ties between the two countries and gain support for Israel’s ground campaign.
But Netanyahu loyalists see it as a power play — President Joe Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu is reportedly at a low point – and accuse Gantz of acting like a “Trojan horse.” We’ll be watching his reception in Washington and the reaction in Jerusalem.
Graphic Truth: What would Ukrainians give up for peace?
Ukraine is days away from marking the second anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion. The war is largely stalemated, with few changes to the battlefield map in recent months. Ukrainian troops are engaged in brutal trench warfare reminiscent of World War I but with the added nightmare of deadlier modern weaponry and technology. After enjoying strong, steady support from its Western allies in the first year and a half of the war, Kyiv now faces a constant struggle to keep aid flowing in as it runs short on supplies and faces manpower issues. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin shows no signs of backing down despite the myriad political, economic, and societal consequences the war has had for Russia.
But none of that is undermining Ukraine’s resolve. New polling from the Munich Security Conference shows that Ukrainians are strongly opposed to any cease-fire framework that would require Kyiv to cede territory to Russia — particularly Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. This suggests that Ukrainians are largely aligned with their government, which has pushed for a peace plan that would see Russia withdraw troops from occupied territories and recognize Ukraine’s 1991 post-Soviet borders. Moscow has scoffed at this proposal.
FILE PHOTO: Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council and head of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), greets his supporters as he arrives at a meeting in Aprag village, 60 kilometers away from Khartoum, Sudan, June 22, 2019.
Sudan’s warring parties resume peace talks
Six months into the civil war in Sudan – which has killed 9,000 people and displaced over 5 million – the armed forces and their paramilitary enemies in the Rapid Support Forces have resumed peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Representatives from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the African Union’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development are moderating the talks, and they set modest expectations. “The talks will not address broader political issues,” according to the US State Department, and instead are focused on setting up cease-fires, humanitarian corridors, and confidence-building measures that will eventually lead to “permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Neither side seems prepared to make concessions that would end the war, but a temporary pause in the fighting likely serves both of their military interests. Six months of war has taken a toll on their armies without scoring a decisive blow, and the conflict may now shift to lower intensity. Their interest in a pause has more to do with rearming and reorganizing for another push than bringing relief and organizing a permanent peace.
Eurasia Group Africa analyst Connor Vasey says that while a temporary arrangement may emerge from Jeddah, the war will drag on. “So far, there is limited – if any – reason to believe that either side has hit a wall in terms of fighting spirit,” he says. “Inasmuch as some frontlines may be solidifying and forcing the two ‘big men’ to rethink their aspirations in the conflict, both will see continued fighting as a way to gain leverage in any mediated talks.”
Serb army veterans protesting near Podujevo in Kosovo ,February 21, 2008.
Kosovo 15 years later: a dangerous limbo
There are very few places on earth where a dispute over license plates can threaten to ignite a war, and the city of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, is one of them.
The city is located in Albanian-majority Kosovo, but most of its inhabitants are ethnic Serbs who don't recognize the Kosovo government at all. There are government offices of both Serbia and Kosovo there, sometimes operating in the same buildings. No one knows who’s really in charge, but everyone has strong ideas about who should be.
The limbo of places like Mitrovica is the unfinished business of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, which happened 15 years ago on Friday. After all these years, why is it still so hard for Kosovo and Serbia to bury the hatchet?
First, some background: Serbs, who are almost all Orthodox Christians, consider Kosovo their historic and spiritual heartland. But for at least 150 years the area has been inhabited primarily by Muslim Albanians. In the 1980s, Serb-Albanian tensions flared as broader Yugoslavia splintered along ethnic lines. In 1989, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević stoked Serb nationalism over Kosovo while crushing the province’s political and cultural autonomy. An armed uprising by Kosovar militants in the late 1990s drew a ferocious Serbian response, prompting NATO to bomb Belgrade in 1999 to stop Milošević’s attempts at ethnic cleansing of the region.
After living for several years under UN and NATO protection, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008, with support from the US and EU. But Serbia, backed by Russia and China, refused to recognize the move.
Where do things stand now?
Kosovo is a de facto independent state but has no representation in international bodies like the UN. The US and much of the EU recognize its independence, but most of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia do not. Meanwhile, thousands of NATO troops are still on the ground to protect the country’s roughly 2 million people.
EU-backed normalization talks between Kosovo and Serbia have gone on for more than a decade now, but despite both countries’ ambitions to join the EU itself, there’s been little progress, and experts say things aren’t getting any better.
“There’s just zero trust,” says Marko Prelec, a Balkans expert at Crisis Group, “and active hostility on both sides.”
Much of that tension centers on Mitrovica and other areas of northern Kosovo, where the local Serb minority uses Belgrade-run schools and hospitals, and chafes against Kosovo’s attempts to impose its authority.
Last year, Kosovo's clumsy attempt to establish more direct control over the region backfired, sparking disputes over policing and even the use of Kosovo-issued license plates. Up went the barricades, and weeks of violent clashes followed. In a chilling echo of the 1990s, Belgrade briefly threatened to send troops across the border.
Is there a peace plan? A recently leaked US- and EU-backed outline centers on mutual recognition of the border, Kosovo getting a seat at the UN, and Kosovo granting Serb minorities in Kosovo a measure of formal autonomy. Neither side would have to formally “recognize” the other as a state.
Sounds fair enough, why can’t that work? There’s a personality problem, for one thing. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo’s PM Albin Kurti are both headstrong nationalists who despise each other. Vučić recently called Kurti, who joined the Kosovo militants in the 1990s, “terrorist scum.”
But it’s mainly a problem of who has to do what first. Serbia says Kosovo is already committed to giving autonomy to the Kosovo Serbs under a framework agreement from 10 years ago. The Kosovars, for their part, say “nothing doing” until Serbia stops blocking their right to a seat at the UN.
“Both sides reasonably assume that the other will try to cheat them out of whatever it is they sign,” says Prelec, “so they both insist on getting what they want up front, and that’s problematic.”
The EU, with US backing, is keen to see a resolution to the problem – after all, the last thing Brussels wants is another ugly war on its doorstep. But with so much bad blood and so little trust, 15 years is still too little time to reach a durable peace.“The history plays a role here,” says Prelec, “and that history is actually very recent history.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece stated that the EU recognizes Kosovo's independence. While the European Union provides political and economic support to Kosovo, and is actively backing the conflict resolution process between Kosovo and Serbia, the EU does not formally have a common position on Kosovo -- five EU member states (Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Spain) do not recognize Kosovo's independence. We regret the error.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kyiv.
What We're Watching: Ukraine won't negotiate, AMLO busted spying, North Korean missile diplomacy
Ukraine on offense
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree on Tuesday asserting that all the lands that Russia’s Vladimir Putin claimed to annex last week — and Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014 — remain part of Ukraine. Zelensky and his generals appear to believe that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, and they have battlefield advances to back up their case. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based military think tank, has reported that Ukraine has made “substantial gains” on both the eastern and southern fronts over the past few days and that the units they’re defeating are “some of Russia’s most elite forces.” No wonder Zelensky and many others would swat away suggestions from billionaire eccentric Elon Musk that Ukraine might trade land for peace. Russia has acknowledged recent losses, and blame continues to land on the country’s military brass. It’s not clear how far Ukraine can extend its current gains, but the recapture of Crimea, in particular, will be even more difficult than the more immediate tasks ahead for Ukrainian forces. But for now, Ukraine has pushed the Russian military, and the Kremlin, onto its heels.
Mexico’s AMLO caught riding a winged horse
A new report says the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, has been snooping on journalists using the fearsome Pegasus spyware. Researchers at the Canada-based watchdog Citizen Lab and the Mexican digital privacy advocacy group R3D say the program was installed on the phones of at least three Mexican human rights investigators between 2019 and 2021. The revelation is particularly damning for AMLO, who promised after taking office in 2018 that he’d discontinue the use of Pegasus following revelations that his predecessor had used it against journalists. As recently as last year, AMLO said his government had cut all ties with NSO, the Israel-based company that makes Pegasus, which is typically sold only to governments or law enforcement agencies. According to Human Rights Watch, Mexico remains one of the most dangerous places on earth for journalists and human rights defenders.
North Korea wants attention
Kim Jong Un doesn't like to be ignored. To get attention — particularly from the US and South Korea — his usual shtick is to test ballistic missiles, which North Korea's supreme leader has been doing consistently since the beginning of the year. But he hasn’t gotten much of a rise out of Washington or Seoul – just the usual strongly worded statements. So on Tuesday morning, Kim decided to look elsewhere, firing off a rocket that arced directly over Japan before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. By launching their first missile test over Japan in five years, the North Koreans may hope that rattling a US ally will get Washington to come back to the negotiating table, where Pyongyang wants the Americans to lift economic sanctions without having to surrender its nuclear weapons program first. But North Korea is hardly a priority these days for US President Joe Biden, who has enough on his plate with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China bullying Taiwan, inflation soaring, and the midterms around the corner. And what about Japan? Expect the shock of the missile overflight to give fresh impetus for Tokyo to boost defense spending.
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