Blinken in Egypt to push Gaza ceasefire amid fallout from Hezbollah pager attack

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00:00The Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Cairo today trying to salvage efforts for that ceasefire

00:05in Gaza.

00:06Those efforts, of course, made even more complicated by the wave of deadly blasts on Tuesday that

00:10targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon.

00:13This is Blinken's tenth trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly

00:17a year ago.

00:18Earlier, Blinken met with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and is due to hold a

00:22press conference with the foreign minister shortly.

00:25We'll be covering that live for you as soon as it happens.

00:27In the meantime, we're going to talk a bit more with our international affairs editor,

00:31Douglas Herbert, who joins me on the set.

00:32Doug, let's start with the diplomacy aspect of this conflict.

00:36What really can Antony Blinken do at this point?

00:39Very little because, look, diplomacy has already been, peace diplomacy, that is, has been looking

00:44very dim, dim and dimmer almost by the day, intractable negotiations.

00:49We just saw on Monday, we saw a senior advisor to the U.S. President Joe Biden.

00:54His name is Amos Hochstein.

00:55He was basically in Israel.

00:58He was urging both Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and other high level Israeli

01:03officials, urging them to steer clear, to avoid, to pull out all stops, to avoid an

01:08escalation with Lebanon.

01:10This has been high on the U.S. radar of major concerns that this spillover, this much feared

01:16spillover that we have incessantly been talking about, when is it going to happen, the escalation?

01:19You could argue it's already here.

01:22You have also had, you know, Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary and Israel's defense

01:28secretary, Yoav Galant, who some Israeli media reports say is now in the crosshairs of Netanyahu

01:34and could perhaps even lose his post in a shakeup.

01:37But both of these men, the U.S. and the Israeli defense ministers, basically warning that

01:44time is running out for a negotiated settlement with Hezbollah on Israel's northern border.

01:51And alongside that, we have what you just reported, what we heard in those package,

01:54the explicit statements by Israel, its intentions to step up, to ramp up its military campaign

02:01with the express objective of returning thousands of Israeli civilians who have been displaced,

02:08uprooted from their homes in the north of Israel, uprooted by the tit-for-tat missile

02:12and drone skirmishing along that blue line border between the two countries, the UN drawn

02:16blue line.

02:17It wants to return those civilians.

02:20So you have a recipe.

02:21Everything is in place for more tension, for stoking the tensions that are already there

02:27and for escalation.

02:28Let's use the word again.

02:29I know how tired we all are of hearing this day after day.

02:33Is this the escalation?

02:34We're in the escalatory phase.

02:36We're in the sort of inevitable retaliation phase.

02:38So U.S. diplomatic peace hopes right now are already sort of dashed.

02:43Israel's made it very clear while Netanyahu says he respects and appreciates the Biden

02:48administration, Israel has to ultimately, at the end of the day, it's going to do what

02:52it feels it has to do to defend its interests.

02:54Doug, Israel has not claimed responsibility.

02:57Obviously, a lot of fingers are pointing at Israel at the moment.

03:00I mean, tell us a bit more about that and how it might continue in this war.

03:05There's really not that much to tell, Jeannie, other than that this, yes, you're right.

03:09Israel and its military are officially not commenting on the incident.

03:11How many times in recent weeks, months, years have we said that in respect to these types

03:16of incidents where Palestinian or Hamas leaders or Hezbollah leaders are picked off, suddenly

03:23disappear in all sorts of incidents, you might call them, and there's no official comment

03:29from Israeli officials until perhaps there is at some point.

03:32Look, when I say this bears all the hallmarks, you know, the way these explosions, it seems

03:38from eyewitnesses on the scene, the way they happened, the injuries they caused, this wasn't

03:42some sort of low grade.

03:43It was using low tech, but the actual explosive technology was not low grade.

03:47It would have taken quite a sophisticated sabotage chain, and that is what, you know,

03:52some U.S. Israeli experts and officials are saying privately, off the record, not publicly,

03:58not explicitly.

03:59Israeli media reports saying that really the way they see it, of course, it's Mossad, right?

04:03You've seen in recent years going way back, going back to the 90s, 1996, 1997, Hamas leaders

04:08picked off from Israel, usually denied, not acknowledged at the time by Israel.

04:13It's part of Israel's military campaign to basically, this is explicit, to destroy Hamas's

04:18ability to be a politically or militarily viable entity.

04:22That is an explicit Israeli statement.

04:24What isn't explicit is their acknowledgment of these types of things.

04:27Years ago, I think 15 years ago, 14, 15 years ago, a poison was injected into the ear of

04:32some top level Hamas operative, and only when Jordan's king sort of, you know, drew a line

04:39in the sand and basically said, you know, give an antidote to that poison, you know,

04:43or else did Israel sort of apparently, reportedly at the time, step in, give the antidote, the

04:48guy survived.

04:49But you have this time, and again, is it, is there 0.1% chance it's not Israel?

04:55Sure.

04:56But in the eyes of almost any security or intelligence official on, off the record right

05:00now, and Israeli journalists who cover this, it's obviously Israel, and it's also obviously

05:06part of the Israeli strategy to have this so-called public ambiguity about it hit, but

05:11don't acknowledge the strike.

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