Path to Peace? Ceasefire Offers Moment for Reflection and Rebuilding in Gaza and Israel

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The really big, big strategic opportunity is that the respite or the ceasefire enables both protagonists. I mean, both sides, to crawl back into their corner, their respective corners, and to think about and consider different a different future for Israel. It's a chance to gather in the lessons, to think about the improved geostrategic developments, for its security, the new White House, and to leverage all of these, and, and assist in creating a new Middle East and a new Middle Eastern architecture, that would, substantially improve Israeli security, for the Palestinians. 

It's a chance to wounded as as they are or because of that, to crawl back into their corner and, you know, make a choice. Are they going to continue to bet on destroying the state of Israel, which ends up destroying them, or are they going to come together and unify around a vision of of two states, some kind of coexistence with the state of Israel? 

All sides to this, are in a state of fatigue, which is good for ending wars. You run out of steam and wars that are not won by absolute victory. You won by one or both sides just running out of steam and not just not being able to sustain it. For emotional or social reasons. So and I think that's, that's playing an important part here. as the ceasefire sustains and hostages are released and Gazans start to return home and get humanitarian aid and so on, they'll be kind of as terrible as things are. There will be  a kind of, a sweet taste of normalcy. And we know from social psychologists that people really don't want to lose that once they have it. So there  be that sweet taste. And then leaders will say, what? We're going back to war. And the societies won't necessarily pony up, a second time. 

A third reason is that we have really strong regional players, some of which are very important to Israel and to the United States, willing to, you know, get in and, and assist both in Gaza, and in pulling is Israel into a regional security framework and so on. And, and that's a that's going to be hard to resist, 

And finally, we have, a very assertive, new White House. And if the White House decides to push in these kinds of directions, there's a good chance they'll be able, along with the other things that I mentioned, to put this on the to put the train on the rail or put the locomotive on the rail and start to move. So, you know, optimism may be stretch under all of these circumstances, but there's reason for hope.