About a year ago, I spoke with Barbara F. Walter about what it would take to end the war in Gaza. Barbara is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on how civil wars begin and end. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. An influential article she wrote documents how parties in a civil war almost always fight until the end – unless an outside power steps in to guarantee a peace agreement.
Now that a ceasefire in Gaza is in place, we revisited her predictions from last year (spoiler: They turned out to be quite accurate) and we talked about where to go from here. Our conversation took place just before U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” But we did explore various possible ways the main parties might move on from the ceasefire. Barbara highlighted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s need to keep his coalition together as the primary factor that will shape what’s likely to happen next.
Hear our conversation using the audio player below. You can also subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts.
