Gershon Baskin shares with CNN that no one is going to put money into Gaza if Hamas is in control there
I want to go live now to Gershon Baskin in Jerusalem.
He’s Middle East director for the international communities organization and a former hostage negotiator.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
So we saw the happy scenes of the three hostages released.
There.
Um, the scene inside the home with the relatives who are celebrating so much as Jeremy Diamond said, pent up emotion.
Your reaction as you saw those latest three hostages being released? Well, first, it’s noteworthy that Hamas learned the lesson from last Thursday of the chaos that we had.
The hostages were released in khan Younis to crowds that endangered the lives of the hostages.
The Israeli protests to Qatar and Egypt were delivered to Hamas, and they took.
Care to make sure that this morning the three hostages were released in a quite orderly fashion.
The second thing is noteworthy is that Yarden Bibas is coming home to the knowledge that his wife and two infant children will probably never be coming home.
They are probably not alive, and this is definitely a different scene than we’ve seen from the previous releases, which were all families being reunited and a lot of joy and a lot of emotion and not a dry eye around the country.
Yarden Bibas is coming home to a very different reality, and that’s also noteworthy.
What we haven’t also talked about is what’s happening on the other side.
On the Palestinian releases, with 183 Palestinian prisoners to be released today, including 32 prisoners who are serving life sentences for killing Israelis.
The joy that we will see on the Palestinian side is exactly the opposite.
Feeling that Israelis have when they see these Palestinian prisoners being released.
So it’s an extraordinarily emotional period in this country.
And, of course, the biggest question is what will happen in the coming days and weeks? The negotiations on phase two are supposed to begin on Monday.
On Tuesday, prime minister Netanyahu will be in the oval office with president trump and Steve Witkoff, the emissary for the Middle East.
And this deal is only happening now because Trump told Netanyahu to make sure that it happens now.
And the question is, will trump tell Netanyahu to make sure that it continues into phase two? >> Yeah, well, I mean, that is the question, because certainly we’ve heard different things from president trump.
We heard that he wants the war to end.
He was also seemed to be behind the idea of of moving Palestinians out of Gaza, which was certainly a nonstarter from Egypt and Jordan and countries that presumably would have to take these these Palestinians.
Yeah.
My suggestion to President Trump, if he wants to move Palestinians out of Gaza temporarily or permanently, as he said, is that he should open up the doors of the United States to do so.
It’s not quite the right thing to do to volunteer that other countries take in.
Palestinians from Gaza who have lost their homes, particularly when that very thing could endanger the stability of the regimes of Egypt and Jordan.
It doesn’t really show an understanding of the region.
It looks at Gaza much more as a real estate deal than about the real lives of Palestinian people who have suffered for so many years under Hamas rule and under poverty, and being refugees from back in 1948.
So we need a better understanding of the region.
President Trump is consequential here because he really does want to win the Nobel peace prize, but that will involve enabling Palestinians to achieve freedom and liberation and Independence in a state of their own.
Next to Israel, while guaranteeing Israel’s security at the same time.
So pulling together some of the threads here, we saw, as you mentioned, that Hamas did respond to those calls to have a more orderly release, which should say something about the communication lines between the mediators and Hamas.
We’ve also seen now this was the fourth release of hostages and presumably prisoners so far, the fact that we’ve got here, um, now we’re looking, as you said, to the the second phase of the cease fire, which calls for the release of the remaining hostages and extending the truce indefinitely.
So, I mean, this is the really tricky part.
Do you do you have any more confidence, based on what you’ve seen so far, that we we might get there? >> No.
It’s very difficult to be confident about it because Netanyahu himself has said that he will not agree to end the war as long as Hamas is in place.
A member of his coalition government is threatening to bolt the coalition if the deal goes through, and then Netanyahu would lose his majority.
We all know that Netanyahu has kept this war going for an extended period of time in order to enable his political survival in the face of an Israeli public that wants a different government, wants a different leader and wants a commission of inquiry to what happened on October 7th, which Netanyahu refuses.
The key question in my mind is the determination of what happens in Gaza the day after the war is over, and this is first and foremost a Palestinian issue that they need to decide.
But it’s an issue that concerns the neighbours of Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and the United States and the European union and the whole world, because 70 to $100 billion are going to be required to rebuild Gaza, and no one is going to put money into Gaza if Hamas is in control there, and there are 2 million homeless people there, tens of thousands who have been killed, over 100,000 wounded.
It’s an unbearable situation that needs to be dealt with.
But if Hamas remains in power in Gaza, it’s not going to happen.
