The war devastated Gaza, destroying entire communities. What will it take to rebuild : NPR

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

To get a perspective on what could or even should happen next in Gaza, we called Jack Lew. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel in the Biden administration and, before that, Treasury Secretary under President Obama. He is currently a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. Ambassador Lew, good morning. Thank you very much for joining us for this important day.

JACK LEW: Hello. It’s good to be with you.

MARTIN: So look, you can look at any image coming out of Gaza to get an idea of ​​the challenge. I mean, entire neighborhoods, including the people who once lived there, buried under tons of rubble, homes, hospitals, schools, sanitation facilities, infrastructure destroyed. What do you do first?

LEW: Well, first of all, you have to recognize the importance of today. The release of all living hostages brings an end to two years of trauma, and it’s a moment where things can truly shift toward a new day. So this is something that, during the 14 months I spent in Israel and the nine months since I came home, it was something that one could only hope for. And for the families, for the country of Israel, it is a moment to breathe again. In Gaza, destruction is widespread. People suffered. I spent every day and night trying to provide humanitarian aid to the civilians there. This work must continue. The difference is that this will take place in an environment where there will be a ceasefire.

This means that instead of struggling to bring in a hundred trucks per day, it will be possible to bring in five to six hundred per day. This means that there will be enough food and medical supplies in Gaza so that aid workers can work in much greater safety and provide necessary services to the population. This will provide some relief, but it does not address what comes next in terms of rebuilding Gaza. I think the question that remains is: will this ceasefire last? Will we be able to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 then finally to Phase 3? And I think the key ingredient will be sustained U.S. engagement, because only the United States can bring all parties together to make this happen.

MARTIN: I was going to ask you about that because there’s already been a ceasefire. It broke down. Israelis still occupy about half of Gaza. What will be the key factor in ensuring that the ceasefire is maintained?

LEW: Look, I think the fact that the 20 living hostages are released, the next step will be the release of the remains of the, you know, 28 hostages that died. It’s going to be more difficult. It is questionable how easy or possible it will be to identify where they all are. We will have to make a good faith effort. And I hope we’ll see in the hours and days to come 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 the Arab countries there, all the major countries of the world that have gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh are going to be discussing how to move forward to start rebuilding, to create 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. This is going to take a very long time. And the sustained engagement, even the 200 CENTCOM troops that have been deployed to Israel, is going to play an extremely important role. Today, in an underground room in northern Israel, American soldiers are helping to ensure that the mechanism in Lebanon is applied every hour of the day. This is the kind of work these soldiers will do, and CENTCOM is the best in the world when it comes to logistics and running these things. It’s just an empowering thing. You have to get the parties to a point where, in Gaza, Hamas is ready to disarm and Israel is ready to take those steps. This will require continued commitment.

MARTIN: Let me ask you about that, given that Hamas has not disarmed yet and it appears there are likely other militias in Gaza. Is it likely, then, that the United States will have to play a role in disarming Hamas?

LEW: So I think the reality is that there are so many people in Gaza with weapons that a distinction has to be made between removing the last weapons from Gaza and Hamas as a military force that is being disarmed. I believe Hamas can be disarmed as an organized military force. I think it will take a security force on the ground – that’s what the international force is for – to ensure that control of a street in a neighborhood does not belong to anyone with a weapon. These are different questions. So I think Israel’s security can be protected. Security in Gaza will require some stability on the ground, so this international effort to bring in some sort of security force while Gazans and Palestinians are trained and recommissioned on their own is crucial. This cannot happen overnight. It’s not something that’s a switch that you can just flip.

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 behind-the-scenes discussions about this peace deal. He told us that he had negotiated a deal with Hamas in September 2024 to end the war, but that a top adviser to President Biden would not review it.

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GERSHON BASKIN: I sat with two members of the Biden team in Tel Aviv, and they were so frustrated that we couldn’t convince Biden’s people to move forward on the possibility of ending the war within three weeks. Trump is another story. Netanyahu is a Republican, and Trump has the ability to tell him what to do, and Netanyahu cannot say no to Trump.

MARTIN: So that’s one point of view. Now let’s move on 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 back of what was just agreed, the diplomatic work was done by our team, by, you know, Bill Burns and Brett McGurk in their, you know, extraordinary diplomatic effort that led to the ceasefire in January and laid the groundwork for the release of the hostages today. On the ground, the situation was different. You know, since these months of 2024, you know, we have witnessed the destruction of Hezbollah. We’ve seen Iran, you know, become a much less dangerous force in the region and for Israel. And we saw another American president take office.

I think one of the things – and you see this today in the photos from Israel – is that the left and the right in Israel are way behind what President Trump is doing, which gives him enormous ability to put pressure on both the Israeli prime minister and other parties in the region. I think there was definitely a reluctance on the part of the Netanyahu government to accept an end to the war, all for all, all the hostages, all the prisoners, at the time we found ourselves. It’s a different time. And yes, this is a different president, whose disruptive style, whose unique ability to create uncertainty has led to something very good today. So I think we need to give…

MARTIN: Okay.

LEW: …Credit there.

MARTIN: We’ll leave it there for now. There is so much more to say. Jack Lew is a former United States Ambassador to Israel. He served in the Biden administration. Ambassador, thank you very much.

LEW: Thank you. It’s good to be with you.

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