All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the Middle East.

And we had a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire, a 135-day ceasefire.

Netanyahu turned it down, no surprise there.

And then we had a statement from the government of Saudi Arabia

saying that the only way they will engage in reprashment with Israel, something that they were

working on before October 7th, the only way they would revisit that diplomacy would be if

the United States and Israel committed to a two-state solution and the war in Gaza ended.

So what do you make of the situation happening right now in the Middle East, in Israel and Gaza?

I think the Saudi statement is extremely important.

Now, I think in order to explain why, it's important to explain something about the way in which the Saudis conduct diplomacy,

which is that they like to avoid being forthright.

If you look at the kind of statements that the Saudi Arabian government makes on foreign policy,

they are always expressed in the mildest, most polite, most restrained language.

I mean, they may be taking the hardest lines of private,

they may be supporting all kinds of violent activities in all sorts of places.

But generally, they like to avoid using strong language.

They have used strong language in the past about Iran,

but they have always avoided using strong language

about their Western allies, first and foremost, the United States.

A statement as strong as the one that the Saudis issued last week is remarkable.

And what made it even more remarkable and showed that the Saudis were issuing a rebuke, a public rebuke, against the Biden administration,

is that the reason the Saudis gave for publishing this statement was certain comments made by

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