ABRAMS: There is a real problem here. You see the people in the PA talking about bringing Hamas in—bringing Hamas into the PLO. That’s a nonstarter, I think, for Israel and probably for the United States. To say to the Israelis, you know, in the aftermath of October 7 you’ve got to negotiate with these people that are now part of the PA/PLO that’s not going to happen.
I can think, by the way, of one other thing. I mean, theoretically Hamas people could leave Gaza—
ZACHARIA: Yes.
ABRAMS: —and people point to the model of the way Arafat left Lebanon. I think that’s realistically not going to happen, and I think that the military goal of the Israelis really is to—in a way, to make sure that Israelis can move back to the border area without any military threat from Hamas and I think that is achievable.
ZACHARIA: OK. You know, Amr, you’re there in Egypt and I feel like amid all of this there’s been very little discussion of Egypt and the fact that Rafah is—they’re not letting people leave through there.
Now, I know they don’t want a crisis like Jordan has with, I think, more Syrian babies being born in Jordan, I understand, than Jordanians, perhaps, right now. Given that someone told me I have to verify this.
But I know they don’t want millions of Palestinians in the Sinai desert there but talk about Egypt’s thinking here. Why are they—you know, why don’t they open, let more people out? Is there more that Egypt can be doing? What does Sisi think here?
ZACHARIA: Go ahead, Elliott.
ABRAMS: I think the answer is yes. It’s very clear that in the aftermath, October 7-October 8, the IDF and the minister of defense wanted to go north, not into Gaza. And Netanyahu and Gantz said no. But most of the people that I talked to in Israel believed that they would have to—that they couldn’t live with Hezbollah in its current state with the threat that it poses. And that, therefore, over the next year or two or some indeterminate period, there would, in fact, be a Hezbollah-Israel war. Sooner, if Hezbollah wants it sooner, if Iran wants it sooner. But if not, the feeling was Israel would have to turn to this.
GAUSE: I think that one of the lessons I take out of this is the University of Chicago has it right. Universities should not be taking institutional positions on political issues, no matter how hot or no matter how overwhelming the right answer might be, right, not that this is one of those cases, but we got into this on cases where people thought there was an overwhelmingly right answer and universities started taking positions. I think the University of Chicago has it right.
I also think that what we’re seeing right now, when you get down to it, is a pretty bald-faced effort by donors to try to control the operations at universities. And that to me, as a long-time professor, is troubling.