The world woke up Tuesday morning to the first hours of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But despite the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and weeks of constant, breakneck travel between Israel and Gaza, the arrangement in the end was brokered not by the United States, but by Egypt. Charles M. Sennott, co-founder of GlobalPost, joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on Boston Public Radio to examine the ceasefire and America's seemingly diminishing capacity to shape events in the region. "We know John Kerry is trying really hard as Secretary of State. We know he has the skill set to get it done," he says. "But he's not getting it done."
Why? Sennott points to a number of factors as responsible for pulling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of the gravitational pull of American power and influence. First is the prominent role that Egypt, led by General El-Sisi, has played in negotiating between the two sides. El-Sisi came to power after a military coup last June displaced the democratically elected government led by Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with ideological ties to Hamas. "Hamas has no trust in El-Sisi, nor do they like the fact that the United States looked the other way while this all happened," Sennott explains.
Further complicating the situation is the tense relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama Administration. "The head of Israel, who has a controversial past, really has a personal distaste for Obama, and he's decided he can do what he wants," Sennott says. "He feels he can go in, and he doesn't really care what the United States is saying."
"We are in a place where our authority is weakened by the events unfolding on the ground," Sennott continues, "because we don't have a consistent foreign policy that anyone understands."
To hear more from Charles Sennott on Israeli/Palestinian relations, tune in to the full interview on Boston Public Radio below.
