00:00changed. What else? Are you hopeful on a Gaza ceasefire in the next few days? Well, we're hopeful. I mean, in the end, we're hoping they'll move to proximity talks. It appears that generally the terms have been agreed to, but obviously now you need to have talks about how you implement those terms. And I spoke to Steve Woodcoff last night, and he's optimistic that proximity talks will begin fairly soon, expedited and facilitated by the Qataris and the Egyptians.
00:30And so, but we've seen talks fall apart in the past at that stage of proximity talks. So I think we're closer. And I think perhaps, you know, we're closer than we've been in quite a while. And we're hopeful. But we also recognize there's still some challenges in the way. And, you know, one of the fundamental challenges is Hamas's unwillingness to disarm, which would end this conflict immediately. If they just release the hostages, there shouldn't be a single hostage. There shouldn't be a single hostage body still left. If they release that and disarm,
00:59this would end. But that said, the Israelis have shown some flexibility here. And so I think we've made we've seen progress made. So we're hopeful, but we also understand that these things are have been difficult for a reason. But we are we're hopeful that they can move to proximity talks pretty quickly and go from there and have a ceasefire in place in the near future.
01:19Are there any sticking points from the Israeli side, such as on aid or the withdrawal of Israeli troops? Where does that stand?
01:26Well, the sticking point would be on the Hamas side. I mean, Hamas basically wants Israel to withdraw completely and allow them to go back to being Hamas.
01:32Obviously, the Israelis aren't going to agree to that. I think the easiest way to end this, that's not what the agreement is, but the easiest way to end this is for all the hostages to be released and for Hamas to disarm.
01:42You know, absent that, the Israelis and Hamas through the intermediation to the through the mediation of Qatar and Egypt have reached an understanding on a 60 day ceasefire and some elements of that with regards to humanitarian aid through international agencies resuming and so forth.
02:01But now you've got to have talks about how do you implement that. And that's where this has fallen apart in the past. We're hopeful that it'll work out. We're doing everything we can.
02:09We'd like to see a ceasefire. The president's been clear he wants to see a ceasefire. And we've invested a lot of time and energy. I know Steve Woodcoff works every hours every single day on this topic alone.
02:19So we've invested a lot of time into that. We'd like to see it happen.
