Hello and welcome to the Americana podcast. I'm Kate Andrews, the Spectator's U.S. Deputy Editor,

and your guest host of Americano this week while Freddie Gray is away.

I'm delighted to be joined by Demer Marusich, assignment editor at the Washington Post,

and co-founder of Wisdom of Crowds. Demir, hi.

Hi, Kate.

Demir, we've had news that the Trump administration and Israel have pulled out of ceasefire

talks in Qatar, as the president has said that he didn't believe that Hamas really wanted

to make a deal.

The news comes as there are reports flooding in that Palestinians are starving to death as

this war rages on. In terms of this most

recent update from Qatar, do you think this changes the situation, which has been going on now

for the better part of two years? Does it fundamentally change the situation? No, I mean, we've

been in this horrible, horrible situation for quite some time now. Look,

it's a nasty place to be, I think, you know, certainly for the Palestinian civilians in Gaza with

reports of famine spreading. It's really as horrific what has transpired. But the thing that I think

is really worth pondering about this is something that is kind of lost in a lot of the reporting here, which is that Hamas has really developed a kind of really brutal and hideous new kind of guerrilla warfare approach, which is by digging its heels in, it's found a way to basically resist Israel's conquest, final sort of victory in the Gaza Strip.

You know, it's difficult to say that they are, in fact, causing some of these stampedes at the food distribution sites.

But it's certainly in their interest at this point to not compromise, to not get to some kind of ceasefire that will lift the pressure on them

because they're willing to actually sacrifice the lives of their civilians at this point.

So I think that's something that is new. And as we try and sort of think of what next steps

might be for this war, it is important to understand that from Hamas perspective, they are signaling that they can hold out even longer, and the civilian population will suffer through this.

And yet, it's very difficult to describe that as a stalemate. As you say, they are signaling that they're going to stop Israel from advancing as far as

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