Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the meeting today at the Pentagon between Israel's Prime Minister,

Netanyahu, and the Christian Zionist Crusader, now Secretary of Defense, Pete Hagseth,

who has backed Israel's annexing of the West Bank.

Joining us to discuss our senior officials at the Pentagon like Dan Caldwell, Elbridge, Colby,

and Mike Domino do not want the U.S. sucked into a perpetual quagmire in the Middle East

is Jacob Harbaran, the editor at the National Interest, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic

Council's Eurasia Center, and a columnist for The Spectator. His books include

They Knew They Were Right, The Rise of the Neocons,

and America Last the Right's century-long romance with foreign dictators,

and we will discuss his article at The Spectator,

Trump's inner real estate developer targets Gaza.

Then we'll get a Palestinian perspective on Trump's call to turn Gaza into a U.S.

own Rivie era of the Middle East, with his racist dismissal of 2 million people from their land

in support of Israel's far right that Palestinians should just go away and be someone else's

problem. Joining us is Leila Halal, a human rights lawyer and an independent analyst who previously

served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiation Department and advised the Palestinian

Constitutional Committee during the drafting of the basic law.

She acted as an external advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team as part of the Annapolis Bilateral Peace Talks of 2008,

and was a senior policy advisor to the Commissioner General of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency and a visiting fellow and instructor at the Refugee Study Center at Oxford University. She has consulted widely

and published on conflict mediation policies in the Middle East. Then finally, with growing alarm

...