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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the Middle East looking for both short and long-term diplomatic breakthroughs, but with both of the primary warring parties, Israel and Hamas, dug into the status quo of their war in different ways. As the Washington Post reports, Blinken's trip is his fifth to the Middle East since the Gaza war began. He's been trying to develop longer-term post-war planning that seeks to forge an agreement among Arab and Israeli officials around a unified, Palestinian-led governing body for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip if a cessation of hostilities is achieved and Hamas can be removed from power. So far, Israel is rejecting any such path to a two-state solution.

In the shorter term, The Post reports, Hamas has yet to offer a formal response to a framework agreement developed in Paris among intelligence chiefs of the United States, Egypt, and Israel in coordination with Qatar's Prime Minister. That proposal involves a six-week cessation of hostilities in exchange for a phased release of hostages. Hamas has previously said the next hostage deal must entail a permanent ceasefire. Meanwhile, says The Washington Post, Israeli officials had promised their US counterparts to end "high-tempo military operations by the end of January," a promise that Israel has not kept as fierce bombardments continue.

The Biden administration has resisted calls to exert leverage over the Israelis by placing conditions on US arms transfers or withholding military assistance. Blinken says the Post is carrying another complicated message on his trip even as the United States targets militias in Syria and Iraq is ultimately seeking a de-escalation against the Iranian-aligned groups. We'll talk about Middle East diplomacy now with Missy Ryan who writes about diplomacy national security and the state department for The Washington Post. Missy, thanks for coming on welcome to WNYC.

Missy Ryan: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take several of the pieces in that Washington Post story by your colleague, John Hudson, one by one, most immediately, I guess, what's this temporary ceasefire agreement that Hamas is so far not agreeing to?

Missy Ryan: This is a proposal that would seek to replicate the success of the first hostage release ceasefire deal or pause deal that happened in November. Basically, the idea would be to release all of the civilian hostages that are remaining in Hamas custody. In exchange, there would be threefold number of Palestinian prisoners released from Israel, and that would occur during a six-week pause in the fighting. Basically, this is a framework that was negotiated by Qatar going back and forth between the Israeli government, primarily Mossad is the spy agency is the point on the Israeli government side of that, and then Hamas militants who are in touch and have a political leadership in the Gulf state of Qatar.

The Israeli war cabinet has given its agreement in principle to this but even if Hamas comes back and says that it supports this framework, there are going to be a lot of details, potentially problematic steps within that framework that would have to be worked out and could potentially scuttle the deal but basically, the overarching idea here that the Biden administration is really hoping will come to fruition would be to have this longer-term pause in the fighting and allow for negotiators to have some time to set the stage for a phased end to the conflict and then trying to figure out what comes afterward.

Brian Lehrer: What's the end of January promise by Israel to Biden about a lower-intensity war that Israel, according to your newspapers reporting, is failing to keep?

Missy Ryan: Yes, well, the Biden administration had hoped to see a switch to more targeted operations in the Gaza Strip, which would have included less large-scale bombing and more, you could think of special operations type of assaults on specific militant targets that really hasn't been borne out. Even as we're discussing this potential hostage deal, the Israeli military is announcing that it's going to focus its operations on the southern city of Rafa in the Gaza Strip where more than half of the Strip's population is believed to be sheltered right now. That's raising a lot of fears about a renewed uptick in the loss of civilian life.

Brian Lehrer: Does Israel say why it won't comply with its own promise to the US on this?

Missy Ryan: Well, I think there's disputes about what actually the tempo of the operation is, but what the United Nations and others will say is that, there continues to be a large-scale civilian suffering, humanitarian crisis, and clearly according to the numbers put out by Palestinian health authorities, a huge death toll. The Israeli government has been pretty adamant from the start that they will not halt the operation until they're satisfied that Hamas is sufficiently disabled and incapable of conducting the kind of attack that occurred on October 7th.

There's a real tension there between the Biden administration's urgency to move this forward, to step down the operations, to really focus on not just this hostage deal, which they hope will occur, but also planning for what comes next, and that would include some sort of governance structure for the Gaza Strip, potentially including the West Bank, and then thinking about what Israel's role in future security and that in those two areas would be.

Brian Lehrer: On this shorter-term stuck point, I guess I see why some of this diplomacy is so thorny, and maybe you can explain it as a diplomacy reporter. If Hamas agrees to a temporary ceasefire that releases all the hostages, what stops Israel from completely destroying it with abandon, even more abandon? What's their leverage after that? For Israel, if they agree to a permanent ceasefire, then Hamas and its top leadership presumably survive to try for more October 7th as they have vowed to do. Can you see any path to yes for any kind of ceasefire that's acceptable enough to both sides?

Missy Ryan: Well, Israel has ruled out a permanent ceasefire at this stage. What is on the table is six weeks. The United States is in such a hope and other countries in the West that would set the stage for some sort of additional pause on the fighting to build on top of that but your questions really get to the tension here, which is what is the sufficient endpoint? What would be sufficient from an Israeli perspective to have militarily disabled Hamas? Would the political leadership or some of the military leadership be able to come back in some future scenario to be part of the political process if the group was disarmed, what should be the security structures of a future Palestinian state if that were to happen, or of the governing authorities of Gaza and the West Bank. None of that has been worked out yet. I think that this is really where you're seeing at this moment, one of the main points of friction between the Biden administration and his allies in Israel.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls with questions or maybe your own peace plan or ways to resolve the situation over there for Washington Post, diplomacy and State Department correspondent Missy Ryan, as we talk about Secretary of State Blinken's latest trip to the Middle East on both shorter and longer-term ceasefire and hostage release and Palestinian state negotiations. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, you can call or text. Can you describe, Missy Ryan, in a little more detail this longer-term framework that you referred to that Blinken has been working on with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Qatar?

Missy Ryan: Well, there really isn't a very fleshed-out specific plan that anybody has put forward at this stage. Really, the Israeli government is focused on the military operation. What the Biden administration and Biden himself has talked about is some revitalized Palestinian authority that would govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and act as a significant step forward to establish a Palestinian state, and with the goal that the United States has always had of a two-state solution.

There's been discussion of finding the right individuals who could function as an alternate leader or potentially a leader that would govern in tandem with Abbas who is 89 and not widely loved to say the least in the West Bank, but looking at technocrats who potentially could be acceptable to the Israelis and to the Palestinian people, that is something a discussion that's ongoing.

We haven't seen any very specific plan and I think that it really testifies to the fact to the difficulty that the United States will have in sketching out something that is going to be workable here and the inherent challenges in fixing this problem that's been around for so many decades.

Brian Lehrer: Does Blinken think, and do the people he's working with in Qatar and a few other Arab states think that they can come up with a blueprint that resolves these age-old questions? I shouldn't say age-old, this doesn't go back to ancient times, but let's say back to the '90s Oslo peace process when they couldn't resolve a few different things, they couldn't resolve how much autonomy a Palestinian state would have over its security because Israel didn't trust that some rejectionists like Hamas would continue to attack Israel from inside those territories.

Israel was demanding some security control but Palestinians, understandably, from their point of view say, "Well, that's not really sovereignty over our country." They couldn't resolve the status of Jerusalem and they couldn't resolve the status of refugees from 1948 down through the generations, and those families, and how much those Palestinians could return to wear. I'm just laying out the issues that they couldn't resolve in the 1990s, does Blinken think they can resolve them now?

Missy Ryan: Well, I'll just tell you what the hope is. The hope is that this somehow, this horrible situation, this tragedy will somehow function as an opportunity and provide the impetus to both parties to really stretch themselves. Also, if you talk to the Biden administration, they will say this illustrates why the current situation, which many people had, at this point, decided was never going to be solved is not tenable.

In the Biden administration's view, this is why it's not possible for Israel to live alongside the Palestinian people without a state, with this kind of unresolved tension. That's the hope. On the other side, of course, there is an acknowledgment in private that the current Israeli government, the position that Netanyahu and his partners, and many of his partners have publicly espoused, makes it especially difficult, and as you point out, more difficult than it might have been in the past.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "Could you please ask your guest, what is so politically toxic about putting conditions on aid to Israel that Biden avoids it like a hot coal? It doesn't make sense to anyone, or at least this person, that he can't even put conditions on the aid to require that it comply with international law or it might even reframe that he required that it even comply with the United States own demands on lowering the so-called tempo of the war to protect civilians."

Missy Ryan: That is a subject of active debate even within the Biden administration, within the State Department, the question of whether or not there should be, or there is effective conditionality on security assistance and arms sales to Israel. The Biden administration's lines in the very beginning has been that they have instructed and communicated to the Israeli government that they expect them to comply with international law.

The Israeli government says it is complying with international law and the Biden administration essentially is taking Israel's word for it at this stage because they say it's not possible to conduct a real-time assessment when they are not involved in this conflict. They haven't specifically foregone or ruled out a later assessment but they say that they're not doing that right now.

Brian Lehrer: Since you say from Biden's perspective, since we're not directly involved in this conflict, they don't want to put conditions on Israel. Now, we are directly involved because Americans are dying in the Jordan drone attacks, did three Americans died in the Jordan drone attacks for arguably this approach that our government actually objects to. Do you think that first instance of American death not by Hamas, but by Iranian proxies, other Iranian proxies who say they're acting in support of the Palestinians now killing Americans? Does that change anything diplomatically for Biden as far as your reporting can tell?

Missy Ryan: No, I don't think it does. The Biden administration considers this intensified conflict at the moment, but part of a much longer-running conflict that it has had with Iranian back armed groups in Iraq and Syria, and now in Yemen as different. They put that in a different bucket. They're saying, even though these groups are pointing to the war in Gaza as the reason why they're conducting these attacks, they reject that out of hand and say that there are other long-running, long-standing reasons for that.

They say that actually, they believe they've been successful in containing the Gaza conflict to some extent because, for example, Lebanese Hezbollah has not launched an all-out, full-scale war on Israel that they discern some restraints that Iran may be asking of its proxy groups, especially Lebanese Hezbollah, which is by far the most powerful. I think you can have a debate about when do you consider this a full-scale regional war and where do you draw the lines between one sub conflicts and the other, but clearly, the goal here is to contain the threats that Israel itself is facing.

Arguably, they've been successful there because as I say, there hasn't been a massive attack by Hezbollah. Then the United States, I think is pretty determined to narrowly target its response to these attacks in Iraq and Syria, which as you say, unfortunately took the lives of three service members last week, and they feel confident that Iran also does not want a big war right now. That's the strategy right now and I just think it's too soon to say how well that would work.

As you and your listeners will know, there's always the possibility of miscalculation when you get into these kinds of situations and things could spiral out of control.

Brian Lehrer: Iman in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Iman. Thank you for calling in.

Iman: Hi, Brian. Hi, Missy. Sorry, I have a little bit of a flu. I'm calling because I have a friend who has-- I'm Palestinian American. I have a friend who has family in Gaza. His family is trapped there. Over 100 members of his family have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. The youngest, I think, being two months old, and the oldest being in his 70s. I think it was four generations of his family that were killed by Israeli airstrikes.

He actually met with Secretary Blinken last week. He told Secretary Blinken what happened to his family. Secretary Blinken actually met with altogether six Palestinian families and they told him what happened to their families and what is continuing to happen to their families. Blinken was not hopeful, that is what they said, that he was not hopeful that anything would change. I guess my question is, if we are the ones who give all this aid to Israel, why are we giving them the aid and the weapons to kill people there?

As also a Palestinian who has family in the West Bank, I would really like it if you guys are the news media would always please put into context that this did not start on October 7th. Brian, this started years ago. I lived there in 1986 and Palestinians were being killed by Israel. Again, I used to pick up the tear gas that they threw at me as a teenager, and the tear gas the Israelis use always said made in the USA. It's our tax dollars that are paying to kill, and maim, and hurt, and imprison Palestinians. Why can't we just tell them, "If we give you the weapons, you cannot keep hurting Palestinians. You cannot keep killing Palestinians, imprisoning Palestinians."

Brian Lehrer: Iman, thank you. It's almost a rhetorical question, but I did ask you basically the same question earlier. Why is it so hard for Biden to say, "If we're giving you the money, you can't keep killing Palestinians, let's say, at least in a way that the United States does not approve us."

Missy Ryan: Well, it's a good question. The response has been that they believe that Israel's military is taking at least some precautions to avoid civilian casualties. They say that it hasn't been successful in every case. Going back to the reason for giving aid, it goes back to the historical relationship between the United States and Israel, the establishment of Israel. The United States was the first country to recognize the State of Israel, the long-standing religious ties. President Biden himself is a big part of this right now. That has been a bipartisan priority as long as any of us can remember.

I think, in this current situation, despite the fact that there have been pretty frosty ties between Biden and Netanyahu, and a lot of pretty vocal criticism of the policies that Netanyahu government has undertaken vis-à-vis what's happening with settlers, what's happening with judicial reform proposals and all of that, Biden has-- I think it's personal for him. He talks about his visit way back when with Golda Meier. He's called himself a Zionist. He, I think, very much identifies with the story of the State of Israel. I think we're seeing that really here play out, the confluence of that, and then this institutional, long-standing, bipartisan political priorities here.

It's a really good question about how that will evolve over time, how this conflict will shape that, will another future Democratic president have the same feelings as Biden. What do the generational changes that we're seeing within the Democratic Party, specifically, and the pushback that Biden is getting for his support for Israel and the military aid, what will that mean for the future? I think that that's a very live question.

Brian Lehrer: Does Blinken signal at all what a longer-term two-state solution plan that he's trying to get everybody to guess on would mandate for the West Bank? That's something that Biden did just do recently, blocked at least a few, I think, just four individuals, Israeli West Bank settlers from coming to the United States because of attacks on Palestinians there. There's the larger question of the expanding Israeli settlements, and widely reported harassment of Palestinians, and increasing apparent reluctance of Israelis to make land for peace deals involving the West Bank. I'm curious because things are pretty more advanced in that direction than they were during the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. There would be a lot more removal of settlers that's needed to be done. Does Blinken have a plan for that?

Missy Ryan: Yes, I think the answer is no. There's been no plan that's been put forward. They may be working on something, but clearly the realities on the ground make it all much more difficult than it would have been 20 years ago, for sure. I think the moves that we saw against the settlers are really one indication of this two track approach that the Biden administration is taking here, which is to identify the areas that it's willing to be publicly critical and also privately critical, which is some elements of the conduct of the war, the civilian casualties, the restrictions on aid and all of that, and then on the West Bank side, the settler violence. That is twinned with this overarching affirmation of the unquestioned commitment to Israel's security. I think we're seeing the tension between those two things right now.

One thing I want to just add from earlier, getting back to the question of security assistance and Israel's compliance with international law, one interesting thing that we're seeing right now is that Congress is more active on this than the administration. Basically, some members of Congress are trying to force the administration's hand and are putting forwards legislative proposals to put more teeth into existing elements of American law in requiring checking of countries that we give arms to, to make sure that they're complying rather than the current situation where there isn't really a mechanism for that proactively.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. On this current trip to the region, more shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Blinken. What does he hope to come out with in the short-term? Anything that you're expecting to hear from him or a central question that you would ask when this several day mission ends?

Missy Ryan: I think the near-term goal is to get to the hostage deal and the six-week pause in fighting. Then the hope is to use that to lay the groundwork for a longer-term path to stabilization and potentially of some sort of political process.

Brian Lehrer: On that one, it's Hamas at the moment saying no, as you were describing earlier. Who's putting leverage on Hamas for that six-week ceasefire and hostage exchange, and with what incentives or threats?

Missy Ryan: Well, the Qatari government has some leverage. I don't think they have full leverage over Hamas. They have an interest in halting the fighting. They've said for a long time that they want a ceasefire. It would benefit them. They have an interest in getting out. It's a three to one ratio of the prisoner release. They said they would get out a lot of prisoners from Israeli jails, and then they have an interest in stopping the fighting, obviously. I think those are the incentives for Hamas.

Brian Lehrer: Missy Ryan covers diplomacy, national security and the State Department for The Washington Post. Thank you very much for updating us.

Missy Ryan: Thank you.

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