Ian Bremmer

And I think that's a great misfortune in the same way that I think it's functionally dead that Ukraine will ever get all their territory back, even leaving aside Crimea. And they deserve to get their territory back. And the Palestinians deserve to have a state. I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's feasible. So when you're asking me a question about, hey, in the early days, if this works,

How come Blair is running it and not a group of Palestinians that everyone can agree on? And the answer is, because we can't get to there from here. And that's, I don't have a better answer for you. I'd like to have a better answer, but nobody cares what Ian wants. I mean, it's not how things get done. Ian, we all care deeply what you want, but yes, okay, granted in this state, maybe what you say does not go.

Well, first of all, the Saudis pushed very hard in their behind-the-scenes meetings with Trump and with his advisers for a timeframe of two years, and they couldn't get it. So all they could get was a nominal acceptance of a state in the future, which Trump himself again flipped on.

Trump wanted a Palestinian state in his first term, and that's what got you the Abraham Accords. And then over the past months, he said the time has passed for a Palestinian state. It's done. It's not going to happen. I don't support it anymore. Now, in principle, he is saying he's at least open to it, that that should be the outcome if all of these other hurdles are passed through. But what I'm telling you, Helen, is that

Todellisuus on se, että israelilaiset on de facto veto. He ovat sotilaallisesti vahvistuneita siitä, mitä tapahtuu tässä maassa, kuten ne ovat monissa muissa maissa, jotka nyt kuuluvat ympäristöihin.

Se sisältää paljon Syyliä, Irania, Jemeniä ja Lebanonia. Israelilla on käytännössä veto-voimaa, eikä jokaisella legaalia tarkoituksessa, vaan sillä, että sotilaat ovat valmiita luoda lukuja.

As long as the Israelis refuse to allow a Palestinian state, and again, that's not just Bibi, because Bibi can be voted out. Bibi might not be there in a year or two, though his survival capacity politically has been underestimated by many.

But only a small minority of Israelis today support a Palestinian state. And I think that any government that would be voted in, any coalition that would come in to succeed Netanyahu, would oppose a Palestinian state.

So I don't see it happening. Now, absent a state, can you have a governance model where local Palestinians have control of sectors of the bureaucracy, of a civil society, of distribution of humanitarian aid, of hospitals, of a whole bunch of things that feel state-like?

but they certainly don't control a military. They don't control their border security. They may or may not control policing functions. That's not really a state.

They don't have representation globally in the same way that other states do. So I think that what we're looking at is some kind of halfway house of Palestinian local governance,

with significant oversight constraints and resources that are being provided by and imposed by external actors. But the key point is that those external actors are not Israel. They are not seen as enemies to the Palestinians on the ground. That is the core in what this ceasefire and a peace agreement would transition into.

The consequences for Israel so far have been pretty limited. Yes, a whole bunch of countries recognized a Palestinian state,

It is true that there have been some limited economic costs that have been imposed. Norway, which has the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, has taken Israeli investments in certain sectors out of their portfolios.

One could argue that has downgraded the value, the shareholder value of some of the Israeli economy as a consequence. There certainly has been major economic consequences of fighting the war because the Israelis have been on a war footing with a lot of very talented Israelis, small population that otherwise would be involved in the technology, the knowledge and the service sectors.

And they're not. Or they're doing two jobs. In many cases they're actually doing both. And that has meant that the Israeli economy has been functioning as poorly as we've seen in decades in terms of growth and productivity, except during the pandemic. So that's been a consequence.

In the last two weeks, the potential for those consequences to become more severe has grown. The Emiratis, who of course signed the Abraham Accords on the back of promises that a two-state solution would happen,

luo selkeän rauhan, että jos yhdysvaltainen ratkaisu olisi poistunut anneksaatiossa tai Gaza-ohjelmassa, jossa palestiinalaiset olisivat poistuneet, he olisivat poistuneet Abrahamin sopimuksen. Ja sen takia, kun he olisivat sopineet Emiratiin, presidentti Trump puolusti, että he eivät oteta

a annexation, that there would not be one. Now, this is a decision that, however disagreeable you may find it, was a decision that Bibi was prepared to make unilaterally with the support of his war cabinet and his government, and Trump made it for him. So Trump basically said, sorry Bibi, you don't have sovereignty over that issue, I make that rule. That's a pretty big deal. Now, Netanyahu came to the White House

You saw that he read a letter. That letter was an apology to the Qatari emir. That letter had been drafted at the request of Trump by the Qataris.