welcome back here on live now from Fox and I do want to get back to this breaking news here out of the Middle East take a look as Israel has now released aerial video showing the incident today in Gaza City where the Hamas run Health Ministry does report that more than a hundred people were killed the health Ministry saying Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians that were waiting for Aid now Israel says the video shows there was a stampede as Palestinians rushed to the trucks that
arrived carrying food now as some residents move toward Israeli troops Israel does say the troops were ordered to fire warning shots and to strike some of the residents in their legs Israel reports a majority of the deaths and injuries during the incident were caused by the Stampede with some people being run over by the trucks a lot of developments as always here so I do want to bring in Javid Ali an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan and Arbor he's also a former sen
ior US government counterterrorism and intelligence official joining us now live thank you so much as always for taking the time to be here with us absolutely Josh great to be with you all right so your initial thoughts as you hear the details of this starting to emerge and also see that video that was released the aerial video by the IDF the more Grim news coming out of Gaza and the fact that you had thousands of Gaz and civilians trying to get food and uh other Aid at this one particular occat
ion just speaks to the overall humanitarian um uh situation on the ground that obviously has been building for months and months and months now uh sort of at the Tactical level you know why did things unfold the way they did and and why did the IDF had these have these rules of engagement where the troops um shot warning shots even though these crowds were were massing trying to to ostensibly get um food and and other supplies not storm the the convoys that were there and why did why were the Ru
les of Engagement um allowed to actually shoot some of the protesters and one can imagine that or not protesters but the the individuals gathering for the the food and then it seems like just mass chaos unfolded after that so just another sad development against this backdrop of the humanitarian suffering in the G true yeah very sad development here and I do want to take you out to this live image that we have showing the Israel Gaza border we also have another image that we show that does show
the Israel Lebanon border and I want to talk a little bit more about that situation as Arab media is now reporting that Iran has given Hezbollah the quote unquote green light to escalate attacks on Israel's northern border what would an escalation look like would it essentially be an allout War I know we have discussed this in the past yeah Hezbollah is by far in a way the most capable adversary that Israel faces um from a non-state u perspective in in the region Hezbollah for the last uh 40 yea
rs has grown from a small clandestine terrorist organization backed by Iran uh from Lebanon in the early 1980s to what it is now it has a large military force it has sophisticated weapons that it is uh been provided by Iran has members and as a social political movement too has members of parliament uh the Secretary General of hasbalah Hassan ASA is sort of the def facto kind of leader of Southern Lebanon so I if this latest report is true and it's unclear if it's not there's also questions abou
t the Iran Hezbollah relationship or Hezbollah doesn't necessarily need Iran's backing to to do anything um that if but again if you take it at face value that it would be a serious serious devel velopment in the overall conflict because again Hezbollah is orders of magnitude more capable than Hamas or the other Palestinian groups that Israel is currently facing so if it if there is you know a broader conflict between Israel and heala it would make look it would make um what has happen in Gaza l
ook small in comparison just because heala is so much more advanced from a from a military perspective and it is important to note as you said there are so many different reports that are coming in when you're talking about Israeli media Arab media a lot of different reports so it is important to you know kind of preface that by saying if this report turns out to be true so I appreciate you uh bringing that up there now a senior Kamas leader calling on residents of the West Bank in Jerusalem to
barricade themselves at the AL oxa mosque at the start of Ramadan some have described it as a quote Uprising what is the significance there of that move overall that this could be another attempt for Hamas to Rally Palestinian support uh for its caused um and even though the the bulk of the Israeli fighting is in uh Gaza against Hamas there's still been um uh skirmishes and and um kind of smaller scale uh uh raids and attacks against Hamas and other Palestinian uh Targets in the West Bank so uh
if if uh the this call from senior Hamas officials is heard by Palestinians in the West Bank and they do try to barricade themselves in the alak Hamas that would be a highly provocative move certainly with the start of Ramadan in about uh a week plus from now um and it would sort of be daring the Israelis to go in uh at again the beginning of Ramon very kind of um holy time in Islam and forcibly remove these protest and one can imagine what those scenes would look like so I think this seems to b
e um an attempt by Hamas to put pressure on Israel uh in the West Bank even though they're facing pressure from Israel in the Gaza Strip is the offensive from Israel in Rafa still imminent I know there's discussion over this potential ceasefire and hostage release deal and there's been a lot of discussion over the last week especially about that offensive in Rafa is that essentially still going to happen regardless yeah that's a great question Josh and we don't know from the outside looking in s
ort of what the calculus is from uh prime minister netanyahu's War cabinet and um at the operational level have have the Israelis um sort of put all the right pieces in place to actually um start that offensive because it would have to be fairly large scale and involve thousands and thousands of troops and lots of other equipment and you need a lot of intelligence to coordinate uh the movement of of all all of that uh activity but at the same time at the international level and from the bilatera
l us Israel uh level there are probably a lot of discussions right now uh and attempts um to have Israel not engage in that um aspect of the campaign because RAF is one of the few places right now that uh Palestinians can sort of um seek some kind of refuge and safety despite you what happened uh today and um the just thinking of the the scenes of a large scale uh IDF offensive in this highly populated part of Southern Gaza at the beginning of Ramadan one can imagine that it would just spark an
enormous amount of international um outrage and and attention so that has to be um factored into the Israeli decision-making process as well want to talk a little bit more about the ceasefire and possible hostage release plan that has been discussed so we do have President Biden we have the leader of Egypt saying that this could happen in the coming days here they are hopeful for that so my question is does it appear that Hamas is kind of softening its demands for uh this deal to be reached and
does it appear that we are closer to actually seeing a deal well President Biden made that comment I believe on Monday and uh he um said that uh this at that time that was the status of uh the negotiations uh based on comments were laid to him by his National security adviser Jake suvin so that was Monday here we are now it's Thursday um is there really going to be a ceasefire in place uh by next Monday just a few days from now maybe there will be maybe there won't uh the the comments from the I
sraeli side prime minister Netanyahu and others doesn't seem to suggest that that is something that they have agreed to um similarly on the Hamas side it's not clear that they they're sort of negotiating position um that they have all the terms they want to put a ceasefire in place and I think prime minister nyaho is still under a lot of domestic political pressure to get the hostages back and and to show more tangible uh gains against Hamas whether that means killing or capturing senior leaders
like is hania or Muhammad who's the military Chief uh for Hamas um in the Gaza Strip in the West Bank so these are all things that have to be factored into whether a ceasefire takes place and there's International politics there's domestic politics there's the Hamas calculus so there's so many complex variables that have to go into that decision and it's very complex now the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister is saying that Hamas really does understand that it shouldn't be a part of the n
ew government in the Palestinian territories is that a shift in any way for Hamas not to be part of the new government well that would be a sea change based on what's happened the past few or the past decade when Hamas assumed control of the Gaza Strip now maybe that is also a reflection of the the losses that Hamas has suffered as a result of the uh Israeli campaign against it and that but this may not be longterm this could be shortterm where Hamas um if there is some kind of ceasefire and if
there is an agreement for the Palestinian Authority to take uh control with other um types of support around it of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that this is the time for Hamas to to regroup to reather and think about its next steps but it doesn't mean that it won't try to come back at the political level or even from a terrorist perspective you know years from now so that will be another thing that has to be looked at all right well jabad Ali thank you so much for taking the time to joi
n us here great perspective and a a great help to break down all these headlines I say it all the time but we have these developments that pretty much happen on a day daily really hourly basis here anything else you want to add about any of this before I let you go yeah Josh um it'll be really interesting to see whether a ceasefire does um happen and the fact that Ramadan as I said before is going to start relatively soon I I do think that is going to be a driver of whether a ceasefire happens o
r not and if it doesn't and if this fighting continues for um the next 6 months it's already almost at the six-month Point uh right now then I think that is just going to put more pressure um here inside the United States on the bid Administration we've already seen the reporting about how it's affecting um politics especially where I'm here in Michigan and I know you're a Michigan grad as well so these are all things that that could play out over the next several months if a ceasefire doesn't h
appen sooner uh rather than later all right thank you again for taking the time to be here with us I appreciate it all right Josh thank you
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