Transcript: World Stage: Israel-Gaza War with Dennis Ross, Former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East

Ambassador Ross, thank you so much for joining Washington Post Live.

MR. ROSS: Thank you. It’s good to be with you.

MS. ABUTALEB: So I want to start with some news of the day and where we're at right now. President Biden’s handling of the war has deeply divided the Democratic Party. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week personally criticized Biden on the issue of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution, despite unwavering U.S. support. Biden and his aides have repeatedly urged Israel to scale back its military campaign as the death toll surpasses 25,000. But earlier today, Israel struck a UN training center that reportedly caused mass casualties. Is the U.S. strategy working, and why or why not?

MR. ROSS: Well, clearly, the U.S. strategy to get the Israelis to do more in the area of humanitarian assistance may not be working to produce enough humanitarian assistance, but I think we also need to understand something. Within Israel itself, left to right, there is this belief that somehow Israel should be squeezing Gaza even more because Hamas's unwillingness to release the hostages, unwillingness to allow Red Cross access to them, unwillingness to provide medical assistance to them. So you actually had efforts today by Israelis to block efforts to provide convoys of trucks for assistance, because there is a sense that somehow if Hamas was squeezed more that way, that it would actually reduce the hostages.

The problem with that thinking is that Hamas holds the hostages, not the people, not the public within Gaza, but I mention it because the politics of this issue are really quite complicated in Israel. On the one hand, there is increasing pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to make it clear that the priority is actually to get the hostages out more than anything else. On the other hand, there is this perception that somehow allowing humanitarian assistance to go into Gaza is something that makes it easier for Hamas to hold the hostages.

So you have a reality where President Biden and his administration have basically succeeded in getting the Israelis to open Kerem Shalom, which is one of their crossing points, which they had been reluctant to do. He succeeded in getting them to provide humanitarian assistance over the opposition of the attitude of much of the public. He succeeded in creating some safe areas and humanitarian corridors. So, clearly, without the United States, I think they would be much less done with regard to humanitarian assistance. But in answer to what you said, does more need to be done, the answer is absolutely yes.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, I want to address the issue of the hostages because there were--there was reporting on Monday that Israel gave Hamas a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that would pause the fighting for two months in exchange for the release of all the remaining hostages.

This morning, it was reported that the two sides have agreed in principle that the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners could occur over a month-long pause in fighting, but there's been no plan set in motion because Hamas has made clear it's holding out for a full cease-fire. And this seems to have been the sticking point over weeks of negotiations. So is there a way to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas on these negotiations, and do you think that a proposal should include a full cease-fire or some sort of pathway to one?

MR. ROSS: Look, I certainly believe that if you can get all the hostages out at this point, you should do that.

Now, the question of a cease-fire, the Israelis also proposed in what you were you're describing that the six leaders, the six military leaders of Hamas, meaning Yahya Sinwar, his brother, Marwan Issa, that these people should go into exile. Hamas rejected that, and the Israelis rejected the idea of ending the war.

I think the issue here is maybe a need for reframing it. I would like to see us and the Israelis put a premium on the idea of demilitarizing Gaza so that it cannot be remilitarized. In a context where you demilitarize Gaza--and the Israelis are clearly in the process of doing that--it seems to me that a cease-fire becomes more thinkable because a demilitarization with an international mechanism to ensure that material going into Gaza cannot be diverted, cannot be misused, you have monitoring it throughout its journey within Gaza to its end point, that will make it, I think, increasingly difficult for Hamas to resume control.

If you also tied the reconstruction to this guaranteed demilitarization and you make it clear that if Hamas is control, you're simply not going to get donors to invest, because there's a concern that Hamas will do this once again, and they're not going to invest if it's all going to be blown up.

So I think if we reframe the issue to focus on demilitarizing and ensuring a reconstruction, massive reconstruction for guaranteed demilitarization and no remilitarization, I think the idea of a cease-fire becomes more acceptable.

Earlier, I have to say, my concern had been if Hamas is able to regain control, it will reconstitute itself. We know from all the resources they invested in their tunnels and their military industrial base, which are huge--at least 25,000 tons of cement is just one example for the tunnels--that all of that could have been used above ground, but they didn't use any of it for above ground. They used it, in fact, for their mission, which is basically to continue to fight a war against Israel, so having them reconstitute themselves is a prescription for seeing this happen again, even if it takes some time for that to happen again. But if the militarization becomes the objective and if it's tied to reconstruction and investment for guaranteed demilitarization and also Hamas not being in control, then I think you can begin to look to a pathway to a very different future for Gaza and, frankly, a different pathway for Israelis and Palestinians.

MS. ABUTALEB: I want to switch gears for just a moment to the strikes in Yemen that are happening right now, because I think those have raised some fears of escalation. So the United States and Britain have conducted ongoing airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen in response to repeated attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea. So do you see a greater risk of escalation right now with the U.S. becoming more directly involved, and is there the risk of the U.S. becoming bogged down in another Middle East conflict?

MR. ROSS: I think the risk of escalation relates much more to Hezbollah in Israel just because the character of the weapons that would be involved if that was transformed from what it is now, which is a highly localized exchange of fire to something that would be an all-out war.

The Houthis right now create, obviously, a threat to international shipping, but their ability to do much more than that is, I would say, limited. What the U.S. and Britain, in particular, with the backing of a number of other nations, at least another 10 nations, is geared towards reducing the means that Houthis have to attack the shipping. It's entirely missile-and-air campaign on our part. It's geared towards, in many cases, hitting the Houthi launch sites before they can launch anti-ship missiles, hitting the radar so they're not in a position to be able to direct the fire, and the more the U.S. and the UK and others are eroding the Houthi capabilities, the more I think that you'll see shipping able to return to the Red Sea. If this is joined with active naval efforts to ensure that Houthis aren't resupplied with weapons, I think you can keep this under control.

In any case, it's not going to involve American ground forces. When we talk about being sucked into a Middle Eastern conflict, we obviously have images of Iraq and Afghanistan where you had large numbers of American forces on the ground. Nothing like that is going to happen with regard to Yemen. Nothing like that should happen with regard to Yemen. And the question is, at what point do the Houthis decide that the price they're paying in terms of losing their military wherewithal is enough for them to stop the attacks? My guess is because they're very defiant publicly, they will keep up the attacks, but we're already seeing the pace of those attacks, the character of those attacks, the numbers of missiles or drones involved, all that has dropped dramatically since the initial strikes that the U.S. and the UK have carried out. So I don't mean to minimize this because obviously there are big shipping companies that made a decision not to go through Red Sea, and traffic through the Suez canal connected to the Red Sea is down by about one-third. So I don't mean to minimize it, but I also think in terms of the threat of a much wider war in the Middle East, that's not really the locale that would trigger that.

MS. ABUTALEB: Ambassador Ross, you recently met with some of the families of the estimated more than 100 hostages who are still being held in Gaza. We had nearly 300 questions submitted for this program, and one of them is from Joel Silver in Maryland, who asks, what do you believe is the fastest and safest strategy to recover all the hostages held by Hamas and collaborators?

MR. ROSS: I do think the--there has to be a negotiated deal. They're not going to be freed by military action. I do think military action can create more of a squeeze on Yahya Sinwar and maybe give him a greater interest in a reprieve, but military action is not going to produce the release of the hostages. We're--I think this is 109th day, and while it's true there was one release, you still have 130 hostages. We don't know the exact number of those 130 that are still alive. We do know every day they're there, they're under greater risk.

And there's Gadi Eisenkot, who is a member of the war cabinet, former chief of staff with the Israeli military, has said your military answer is not the answer. So I do think the negotiation that is underway right now is important you have Brett McGurk from the White House who's out there talking to the Egyptians and probably also to the countries. I think the key here is to follow that path, and I do believe a deal is possible. Whether it's a deal that's going to resolve it once and for all, I don't know. But as I said earlier, I think it’s the focus becomes demilitarization of Gaza as opposed to the eradication of Hamas, which frankly was probably never achievable. Then I think that we could be looking at a different future, and I think it could be a vehicle for producing the hostages.

And you can understand--you know, I said when I spoke to a rally in Tel Aviv in favor of the hostages, their release, and to the families there, I said for the families, their life has been frozen since October 7th. They're every waking moment is preoccupied, not only with trying to get their family members released, but they're horrified by the conditions under which they're being held, and that in itself is a nightmare for them.

And the Israeli government failed in its first responsibility. Its first responsibility was to ensure there were no hostages taken. So having failed in that responsibility, it has an obligation to do everything it can to make sure that they get them released.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, I would like to turn for a moment to the conditions in Gaza, because that is obviously what is deeply dividing the Democratic Party, interrupting many of the president's events in recent days over his handling of the war. So Israel announced on Tuesday that after weeks of heavy fighting, IDF troops surrounded the city of Khan Yunis in Southern Gaza. Aid groups have said thousands of civilians are trapped in the region's hospitals and are struggling to flee, despite nearby areas being designated as a humanitarian zone. The humanitarian situation in Gaza has become catastrophic. Much of the population is at risk of starvation and disease.

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland recently visited Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza and said the Netanyahu government had erected, quote, “a variety of barriers to aid getting in.” Are these tactics by Israel in violation of international law, and is Israel doing enough, or what more can they be doing to protect innocent civilians and ensure that humanitarian aid is getting into the enclave?

MR. ROSS: You know, there's a profound dilemma here, because on the one hand, Hamas embeds itself in a way that exposes the civilian population, and they hold them not simply as shields but really as hostages. So, on the one hand, you have that, and you're facing that, and you're trying, at a minimum, as I was suggesting, to demilitarize Gaza and, in effect, to destroy the military infrastructure and wherewithal of Hamas. So if, on the one hand, you're not able to attack those targets because you have the reality of this civilian population, if you're not able to attack it, you're basically saying the Hamas tactics are okay and that they work.

On the other hand, there also has to be some balance here in terms of trying to limit the consequences for the civilian population, and I would say the area where the Israelis could absolutely do more is in the area of humanitarian assistance and removing any possible obstacles to that. I think more can be done.

There is an additional problem. It's there isn't really law and order in Gaza right now. A lot of the humanitarian assistance that's going in, either Hamas tries to divert it for itself, or you have people who aren't Hamas, but who have guns who go and they seize some of this. So there needs to be some kind of an approach, and maybe in the early going, at least in this period, Israelis need to be providing the security for these trucks that are going in. That's not something they've been doing. It is something that I would say has to at least be considered, and if not the Israelis, then they should be prepared to support someone else coming in to provide security for at least the distribution of the humanitarian assistance.

So I think, yes, look, this is a huge dilemma. I don't think there's any easy answer to it. For those who say find your--Israel shouldn't do anything, well, then you're basically saying it's okay for Hamas to use the tactics they do and to be in a position where basically they can come out of this and do it all over again. But for the Israelis to impose some of the restrictions that they do now basically increases the level of hardship, and I think that has to be reduced.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, the politics of Israel have changed quite considerably in the Democratic Party over the course of this conflict. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that. Last Friday, there were five additional Senate Democrats who signed on to a measure that would condition aid to Israel on its compliance with international law, which brings the total of co-sponsors for that measure to 18 Democrats. Earlier in the week, 11 Senators voted for a bill to examine potential human rights abuses by Israel and its military campaign. Do you think the administration should look to condition aid to Israel or exert more of the influence it has to try to get them aligned with the goals I think they've been stating for quite some time now?

MR. ROSS: I certainly think that there's more that we can do to get the Israelis to take some of the steps, even I was referring to. They have opened Kerem Shalom. More can go through Kerem Shalom. I understand it's a political problem with Israel because, as I said earlier, the perception of the Israeli public, that humanitarian assistance going in when nothing is changing with regard to the hostages creates, obviously, a profound impulse on the part of Israelis to say something more must be done, and one way to do it is to squeeze Gaza even more.

As I said earlier, I don't see that's going to be productive because, in the end, it's not the Palestinian public in Gaza that's holding the hostages. It's Hamas, and Hamas clearly doesn't seem to be bothered by the suffering of the Palestinian public. So I think there does have to be more that is done to get the Israelis to do more, and that's a function, I think, of what the president himself can say publicly.

This president has created a remarkable bond with the Israeli public, and I think his words are taken quite seriously. And I think there is some cost to Prime Minister Netanyahu when it looks like he's resisting President Biden. Biden is perceived by the Israeli public as getting the Israeli predicament, understanding that those who threaten Israel's very existence, and because of that, his whole point of view is shaped by ensuring that those kinds of threats to Israel, in fact, never materialize. So I do think there's more leverage that the administration and he personally has in terms of what he has to say.

I'm not in favor of conditioning assistance, because I think part of the psychology of what exists in Israel today is a sense that they can count on the United States, but if they come to conclude they can't count on the United States and they have to go it completely alone, then the sense is, okay, we're alone anyway, so there really shouldn't be any constraints on us. And I said there's a psychology that favors that. I do think there's a leverage of this president, the connections he's created is something that needs to be used and can be used more.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, I'd love to follow up on that, because the biggest point of contention emerging in the U.S.-Israel relationship right now seems to be this question of the day after in Gaza, the establishment of a Palestinian state. Of course, we talked a little bit at the beginning of the program about how Prime Minister Netanyahu has now publicly criticized Biden, who, as you said, has been his biggest defender over this question of the Palestinian state. Biden and his administration have been very clear that they--a two-state solution, a political horizon needs to follow the conflict, and Netanyahu has become much more defiant and rejecting that. And so I'm wondering, do you believe that the current war can end if Israel's governing coalition refuses to move forward on this issue of a Palestinian state, and what should Biden and the U.S. do, given Netanyahu's increasing defiance on this issue?

MR. ROSS: Look, it's a very important question. Actually, The Washington Post had a really interesting article today on the many leaders of the Israeli military are saying their strategy is being hampered by not having a day-after strategy, that this is, in the end, the use of the military tool is designed to shape a different circumstance. So the political reality can be different when this is over.

Part of the problem is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has a coalition that has extremist ministers like Smotrich and Ben Gavir in it, and they seem to be limiting some of what he's prepared to do. Now, at some point, there has to be a choice made. The reality is there. When I was in Israel and I was speaking to people there and we were talking about the day after and this issue of who controls--who, in a sense, could be administering Gaza, I outlined a series of choices. I said, well, your first choice is that you stay, and Israel has to be responsible for administering Gaza and managing the 2.3- to 2.4 million Palestinians there. And almost nobody, except the fringe, the far right in Israel, wants to do that. So that's not an option.

I said a second option is having regional or international presence forces administration to be responsible, but you're not going to get anybody from the region or even internationally to come in if Israel is still in Gaza or if Israel is reserving the right to go in and out militarily. No one else is going to come in. So that's not really an option if you feel you have to reserve the possibility of going in and out, if there are pockets of Hamas that are still a threat.

A third possibility is that, in effect, you allow the UN through UNRWA to administer Gaza, and the problem there is that Hamas has pretty much infiltrated a lot of UNRWA. So UNRWA managing Gaza becomes a vehicle for Hamas coming back.

A fourth option is, in effect, nobody administers Gaza, and you just simply have a vacuum and chaos. But that will create the equivalent of Somalia, and that means, at some point, you could have 4- or 500,000 people on the Israeli border clamoring to get in. So that's not an option, and it leads you back to the idea that you need a Palestinian administration.

Now, it can't be the Palestinian Authority today partly because they wouldn't come in today, but partly they're too weak. They are too corrupt in the eyes of their own public. You need to a reformed Palestinian Authority, and that means institution building, real reform, taking on corruption. We've seen it done before in 2007 after the PA and Fatah lost Gaza in a Hamas coup, and it lost a lot of credibility and legitimacy because of that. But it was also presiding over the West Bank that was completely lawless at the time. The Bush administration organized all the donors. They went to Mahmoud Abbas and basically said, “We will cut off assistance unless you appoint an empowered prime minister,” at that time was Salam Fayyad, and he came in, and he cleaned everything up. He reestablished law and order. He cleaned it up. So we saw a period of five years where that was the case. So it can be done. It needs to be done. A reformed PA in time would end up joining what I would call a kind of local administration that might involve housing businessmen for now. There's a civic structure that was created by the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. It continued to exist, bureaucrats numbering 30- to 40,000 managing issues like health, water, electricity. They could be working in a low-key way with Palestinian businessmen, with parts of the Palestinian Authority, and when the Palestinian Authority is reformed, it would resume that kind of responsibility for Gaza, and you would politically reunify Gaza and the West Bank, which if you're talking about a Palestinian state, you need that in any case.

Now, if you're talking about a Palestinian state, which I'm a longtime believer that because you have two national movements competing for the same space, you need two states for two peoples. Now, one of those states can't be a failed state. So it does have to be reformed. One of those states can't--in the case of the Palestinians, can't be--cannot be led by those like Hamas who reject the very idea of two states and reject Israel's existence.

So we should be continuing to emphasize that we are committed to a two-state outcome, but also, there are going to be requirements on both sides. On the Palestinian side, there will be requirements to demonstrate that this is a state that will be led by those who are prepared to coexist with Israel, and in Israel, there will have to be clearly a different coalition that is prepared to accept a Palestinian state and especially if there's a Palestinian Authority that's reforming itself act in a way that makes it easier for that Palestinian Authority to succeed in what it's doing.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, we have a couple minutes left. So I want to make sure I get to an audience question that is related to this part of the discussion. We have Jonathan Dworkin from Maryland who asks about Prime Minister Netanyahu. He asks, what are the prospects for actually holding new elections and replacing him? Are you concerned about him dragging the war on in ways that are counter to Israel's interests in order to stay in power?

MR. ROSS: Look, there's no question that there's going to be a political reckoning in Israel. October 7th was the worst day in Israel's history, and you're going to end up seeing resignations from the top military and intelligence people, at a certain point, probably not now, but not until either we see the war evolve in a further stage where Israel is largely out and it is going in and out, as I was suggesting before, or if there is some kind of cease-fire at some point, based on what I was suggesting was a kind of demilitarization, there will be resignations from this top military intelligence leadership. They will resign because they will say we bear responsibilities for October 7th. But they're also likely to say we were carrying out the policy of the government, so we shouldn't be the only ones to resign. I think that--when that moment happens--and this may not be the only scenario, but when that moment happens, it will produce an election.

So I do think at some point this year, we will see an Israeli election, and then Israelis will decide. October 7th will weigh very heavily in terms of what they decide.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think, is trying to position himself to say a Palestinian state will be a mortal threat to Israel. Most Israelis today, because they're still suffering from the trauma of October 7, most of them look at a Palestinian state and are fearful that Hamas or Hamas-like group will run it, and then they'll have a base from which to threaten Israel more profoundly.

So, again, I come back to the idea, I believe there needs to be a Palestinian state as part of a political horizon, but there is a requirement on the Palestinians also to make it very clear to demonstrate this Palestinian state is not going to be led by those who reject Israel's existence.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, we have about 30 seconds left, so I would love to get just some closing thoughts from you on what are the biggest changes you've seen to the region in all your years working on Middle East diplomacy.

MR. ROSS: Look, I would say that in all the years I worked, this is the grimmest moment in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian reality and behavior. Both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, now are suffering from a trauma. They're incapable of being aware of the other side's pain. They're preoccupied with their own. That may be understandable, but in such a context, the idea of peacemaking becomes that much harder.

That said, the fact that the Saudis still have an interest in normalizing with Israel, provided you have a two-state outcome, creates some real possibility for the region because it creates the possibility of a coalition of those countries who want to create a future for the Middle East that is more hopeful and array them against what Iran is doing. Iran, they talk about the axis of resistance. I refer to it as the axis of misery because every state that they have a connection with is either failing or failed.

MS. ABUTALEB: Well, Ambassador Ross, we have unfortunately run out of time, but thank you so much for joining Washington Post Live today.

MR. ROSS: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

MS. ABUTALEB: And thank you for watching. For a list of our upcoming programs, please head over to WashingtonPostLive.com to register.

I'm Yasmeen Abutaleb. Thank you for joining.

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