MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For one perspective on what could or even should happen next in Gaza, we've called Jack Lew. He was U.S. ambassador to Israel in the Biden administration, and before that, treasury secretary serving under President Obama. He's currently a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. Ambassador Lew, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us on this consequential day.
JACK LEW: Good morning. Good to be with you.
MARTIN: So, look, you can look at any of the images coming out of Gaza for an idea of the challenge. I mean, entire neighborhoods, including people who once lived there, buried under tons of rubble, homes, hospitals, schools, sanitation, infrastructure all destroyed. What do you even do first?
LEW: Well, first, you have to recognize the significance of today. The release of all of the living hostages ends two years of trauma, and it is a moment where things can actually turn to a new day. So this is something that, for the 14 months I was in Israel and the nine months since I've come home, has been something you could only hope for. And for the families, for the country of Israel, it's a moment to breathe again. In Gaza, the destruction is broad. The people have been suffering. I spent every day and every night trying to help bring humanitarian support to civilians there. That work has to go on. The difference is, it's going to be going on in an environment where there's a ceasefire.
That means that instead of struggling to get a hundred trucks a day in, it'll be possible to get five, six hundred trucks a day in. That means there'll be enough food and medical supplies in Gaza that relief workers can work in much greater safety and provide the needed services to people. That's going to give a little bit of breathing room, but it doesn't address what comes next in terms of rebuilding Gaza. I think the question that remains is, will this ceasefire stick? Will we be able to get from Phase 1 to Phase 2 and then finally Phase 3? And I think the key ingredient is going to be sustained U.S. engagement because it's only the U.S. that can bring all the parties together to make that happen.
MARTIN: I was going to ask you about that because there has been a ceasefire before. It broke down. The Israelis occupy about half of Gaza still. The key factor in making sure the ceasefire holds will be what?
LEW: Look, I think that the fact that the 20 living hostages are released, the next step is going to be the release of the remains of the, you know, 28 hostages who died. That's going to be more challenging. There's some question as to how easy or possible it will be to identify where they all are. There's going to have to be a good-faith effort there. And I hope that we'll see in the coming hours and the coming days that that starts to build a little bit of confidence. The meeting that will take place later today in Sharm El-Sheikh is very important because all of the Arab countries there, all of the, you know, leading countries of the world that have come together in Sharm El-Sheikh are going to be talking about how do you move forward to start to rebuild, to create some interim governance to ultimately have a future where there can be more normal life in Gaza.
It won't be in a day or two. It's going to take a very long time. And the sustained engagement, even the 200 CENTCOM troops that have been deployed in Israel, they're going to play a hugely important function. Today, in an underground room in the north of Israel, there's American soldiers who are helping to make sure that the mechanism in Lebanon is enforced every hour of every day. That's the kind of work these soldiers will be doing, and CENTCOM is the best in the world at logistics and making those things work. It's only an enabling thing. You have to bring the parties to a place where, in Gaza, Hamas is willing to disarm, and Israel is willing to take these steps forward. That's going to take ongoing engagement.
MARTIN: Let me ask you about that, though, given Hamas has not, as of this moment, disarmed, and it seems that there are likely other militias in Gaza. So is it likely then that the U.S. will have to play a role in disarming Hamas?
LEW: So I think that the reality is there's so many people in Gaza with guns that you have to distinguish between getting the last, you know, guns out of Gaza and Hamas as a military force being disarmed. I think Hamas can be disarmed as an organized military force. I think it's going to take a security force on the ground - that's what the international force is for - to make sure that the control of a street in a neighborhood doesn't go to whoever has a gun. Those are different questions. So I think the security of Israel can be protected. The security in Gaza is going to take having some stability on the ground, which is why this international effort to bring some kind of security force in while Gazans, while Palestinians are being trained and brought back into service on their own, is crucial. It can't happen overnight. It's not something that's a switch that you can just turn on.
MARTIN: So just - if I can just ask you, thinking about how we got here, we heard last week from Gershon Baskin, a veteran hostage negotiator for Israel, who was involved in back-channel discussions about this peace deal. He told us he negotiated a deal with Hamas in September 2024 to end the war, but a top adviser to President Biden would not look at it.
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GERSHON BASKIN: I sat with two members of Biden's team in Tel Aviv, and they were so frustrated that we couldn't get the Biden people to move on the possibility of ending the war within three weeks. Trump is a different story. Netanyahu is a Republican, and Trump has the ability to tell Netanyahu what to do, and Netanyahu cannot say no to Trump.
MARTIN: So that's one point of view. Now to yours. Did the Biden administration fail to seriously move forward on a deal that was essentially what was just agreed to?
LEW: Look, on the substance of what was just agreed to, the diplomatic work was hammered out by our team, by, you know, Bill Burns and Brett McGurk in their, you know, just an extraordinary diplomatic effort that led to the January ceasefire and laid the foundation for the release of the hostages today. There was a different situation on the ground. You know, since those months in 2024, you know, we've seen the, you know, destruction of Hezbollah. We've seen Iran, you know, rendered to be a much less dangerous force in the region and to Israel. And we've seen a different American president take office.
I think one of the things - and you're seeing it today in the pictures from Israel - left and right in Israel are very much behind what President Trump is doing, which gives him enormous ability to put pressure on both the prime minister in Israel and on other parties in the region. I think it was very much the case that there was a reluctance on the part of the Netanyahu government to agree to an all-for-all, all the hostages, all the prisoners, end to the war at the moment we were in. This is a different moment. And yes, it's a different president, whose disruptive style, whose unique ability to create uncertainty has led to something very good today. So I think we have to give...
MARTIN: OK.
LEW: ...Credit there.
MARTIN: We're going to leave it there for now. So much more to talk about. Jack Lew is a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. He served in the Biden administration. Ambassador, thank you so much.
LEW: Thanks. Good to be with you.
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