so what role can or will diplomacy play as this war enters its 11th week?

Trisa Parsi Trisa Parsi is an expert on geopolitics in the Middle East and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for responsible statecraft that promotes diplomacy in US foreign policy he joins me now to discuss a great to have you with us tonight we see renewed calls now for this peace agreement to happen between Israel and Hamas several proposals on the table yet uh prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he will not stop until Hamas is destroyed the Palestinian Society is deradicalized first is that are those goals even possible and what role can diplomacy play in either leading to a peace agreement or to those goals that Netanyahu himself has outlined well they're certainly possible but what Netanyahu is doing right now is making them less and less possible we're seeing major radicalization taking place in Gaza right now because of the indiscriminate manner that the Israelis are bombing Gaza and the very very large number of civilians being killed I mean we know that from all of our own experiences in Iraq in Syria in Afghanistan that civilian deaths tend to be the exact thing that organizations like Hamas will use to recruit more people we saw that from Iraq in which uh internally Donald rum was complaining that for every Insurgent the US was killing three more were being created because of the matter that this war was uh conducted so what Netanyahu is doing frankly is making the problem much much worse is Israel says that they have the right to defend themsel I think the majority of the world uh agrees with that and yet at the same time we see Netanyahu blaming Hamas really for the I guess more than 20,000 at this point Palestinians who've been killed in this conflict um is there should there be a different response from Israel when you say that this problem their response is only making it worse is there a more diplomatic response that would be more appropriate of course absolutely there's absolutely nothing that says that Israel has no choice but to do things as it is doing right now uh he could have used Special Forces to go in and try to take out Hamas leadership Etc he chose not to and if we listen carefully to what Netanyahu was saying particularly on Israeli TV and may not be saying this uh in English language media is that he is uh uh pursuing a path of what he calls voluntary immigration uh from Gaza what essentially this is ethnic cleansing he is trying to move the population from Gaza uh into Egypt and a part of the strategy of the Israelis has been to just demolish big parts of G in order to make sure that no one ever can return there so there's absolutely nothing that says that this is the only path that Israel could have pursued but I think it is fear to say that Israel's options have been limited because it insists on continuing the occupation of Gaza and and the Palestinians as long as that is the case Israel is going to be engulfed in the cycle of violence and the only way out of that is to actually have a true uh two-state solution we saw as many uh folks here in the US were celebrating Christmas we saw protests popping up in New York and New Jersey um and just such a deadly assault uh during this very holy time in what is what many perceive as the most holy region uh of the world what role do you believe the US should be playing at this point to either encourage a ceasefire or a peace agreement or some different approach by Israel well the United States absolutely should be pushing for a ceasefire the last thing America need is another war in the Middle East and right now unless there is a ceasefire the risk of a wider war with the US included in it is just growing thank you so much for your perspective thank you so much [Music]