Day 687 - Dennis Ross: There is a deal to be made to end the Gaza war

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

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4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with former US negotiator, adviser and ambassador Dennis Ross.

Today, Ross, an author and the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization.

But for over a decade, he was the US point man on the arduous Israeli-Palestinian peace processes in both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. We close the program by hearing thoughts on the current talks to end the Gaza War from a negotiator who was in the room "when it happened" -- or didn't.

However, we begin the episode by asking Ross, who has decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, for his analysis of this week's Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent meet-up between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders.

We then spin the globe and focus on Israel and the region -- present and past, including the two milestones of the 2005 Disengagement and the 2000 Camp David Summit.

And so this week, we ask Ambassador Dennis Ross, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Dennis Ross (Courtesy)/ Demonstrators march during a protest demanding the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas and calling for the Israeli government to reverse its decision to take over Gaza City and other areas in the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv, Israel, August 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now, a weekly podcast looking into one issue affecting Israel and the Jewish world right now.
0:11.1	I'm your host, Amanda Borchelle Dan here with Ambassador, diplomat, author, a person who really needs no introduction, Dennis Ross.
0:19.0	Dennis, thank you so much for joining me here in our
0:20.9	Jerusalem office. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. It is such a pleasure, and I think I have
0:25.9	enough questions to make about three episodes, so I'm going to whittle them down, and I'd like to
0:31.7	just first begin with your impressions of what is taking place or what just took place in Alaska between U.S.
0:39.3	President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
0:43.6	You know, it's really hard to know exactly what took place until we see what comes out of the
0:48.1	meetings between President Trump and President Zelensky and a host of European leaders who will be there in the
0:56.3	rooms. Well, I can't think of another example where we saw a negotiation that was handled at this
1:01.9	level with leaders and with one party to a conflict, meaning Ukraine, coming with what
1:09.0	amounts to a number of strong allies to deal with President Trump.
1:14.6	The context is a summit that clearly wasn't prepared very much,
1:20.6	a summit in which the president went into it saying he was going for a ceasefire,
1:26.6	and he came out of it saying,
1:27.9	the best thing is to go for a deal quickly on everything.
1:31.9	What we know is what Putin, in effect, has said, because he again used what is his code
1:39.0	word, root causes.
1:40.1	We have to deal with the root causes.
1:42.3	Well, the root causes for him are the security architecture in Europe that has NATO on the front lines of Russia.
1:49.5	What we know when he talks about root causes is that Ukraine can't be militarized.
1:55.0	What we know when he uses that term is that basically he thinks Ukraine can't be a member of NATO, can't be a member of the EU,
	...

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