Blinken seeks Arab pressure on Hamas as Israel readies Gaza move
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00:00 Doug, those hostages being a main talking point in some of the diplomatic efforts we're
00:06 seeing this Friday.
00:07 Yeah, let's start with the main one, which is the chief U.S. diplomat, Antony Blinken.
00:11 He is on what is absolutely his most extensive tour of the Mideast region since he became
00:17 Secretary of State over two years ago.
00:20 And it's a tour that yesterday began in Israel, today has taken him to Jordan, to Amman, Jordan,
00:25 where he has met already with the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, whose country has a sizable
00:32 Palestinian – whose country is very much concerned with the status of the Palestinian
00:38 people.
00:39 He has gone on and met with the Palestinian Authority leader in Amman.
00:44 He came from the West Bank to Amman, Mahmoud Abbas.
00:48 And he is going to be moving on all today.
00:50 This is one day we're talking about.
00:51 He's going to be moving on to Qatar.
00:53 He's going to be moving on to Bahrain.
00:56 And he's going to end today, this Friday, in Saudi Arabia.
00:58 So it's basically Israel, Jordan, all of the Gulf Arab countries, and Egypt.
01:05 That is quite a tour in a span of about two and a half days.
01:09 I think the UAE is going to – and Egypt are going to be tomorrow.
01:14 What is the imperative on all of these?
01:17 You mentioned the hostages.
01:18 That is going to be obviously front and center.
01:20 It's all very complicated because the double-pronged mission here is one to help the conflict from
01:26 spreading.
01:27 Well, you could argue too late for that.
01:29 And given what we just heard, the reporting from IRIS in Jerusalem, there's a bunker
01:33 – right now the Israeli military is basically in a full-throttle mode.
01:38 They are – they have their objectives drawn.
01:41 They are going full forward.
01:43 There is no sense right now of the restraint.
01:45 Yes, we've heard the calls in recent days from the international community trying to
01:50 balance out their carte blanche that they're giving to Israel.
01:54 Basically we have your back, do what you have to do, flush out Hamas, with calls to preserve
01:58 and safeguard the lives of Palestinian civilians.
02:02 If you're going to err on one side or the other right now, it's the Israeli military's
02:06 mentality right now is full speed ahead.
02:09 We have to get Hamas, whatever it takes, as IRIS was reporting.
02:13 So there's that, to help the conflict from spreading, extremely difficult, but also to
02:18 – for the U.S. to press, to invade upon those countries in the region that might have
02:24 leverage, might have influence with Hamas, notably Qatar, which has close ties to the
02:29 Hamas leadership, which has reportedly been in contact with Hamas officials in recent
02:34 days trying to negotiate some form of a hostage deal, perhaps involving the release of Palestinians
02:41 imprisoned in Israeli jails, all of this sketchy, uncorroborated, just reports, all in its initial
02:48 phases.
02:49 But it's a mixture of that sort of double-pronged diplomacy.
02:52 Help spread the conflict, enlist countries that can, and there aren't that many of
02:56 them, to bring their influence to bear on Hamas, a group that the U.S. does not consider
03:02 an interlocutor, just the contrary, Hamas a terrorist group to the United States, a
03:08 terrorist group to the European Union, a terrorist group to the U.K. as well, among others.
03:12 So very tricky diplomacy.
03:13 And just to add one extra twist here, the reports in recent hours have been that a spokesperson
03:19 for the Qatari foreign ministry – just talking about Qatar, right?
03:22 Its influence with Hamas, its ties to Hamas, the fact that Hamas's top political leader
03:26 has a home in Doha, Qatar, the fact that Qatar has reportedly been behind helping to finance
03:32 the actual governing bodies of Gaza, the Hamas governors in Gaza, all of this, the foreign
03:40 minister of Qatar saying it is too early perhaps for a diplomatic solution right now to talk
03:46 of all those diplomatic solutions.
03:48 And I guess that's an allusion to the fact that it seems like, as the Israeli military
03:51 has been saying, they're determined to have war first.
03:53 And they keep saying, "War first, then we'll do investigations, then we'll move on to
03:57 other phases."
03:58 So that's where everyone sort of is right now, which makes diplomacy so, so complicated.
04:04 It doesn't mean you don't go through the motions of the diplomacy.
04:06 You have to.
04:07 But even those who are most involved with Hamas are not indicating that there's going
04:12 to be in the immediate short term, right here and now, a diplomatic solution to what's
04:17 going on on the ground.
04:18 All right, Doug.
04:19 Thank you very much to Douglas Herbert, our international affairs commentator.