Welcome to the President's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boyes Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the elusive ceasefire in Gaza.

With me to discuss ongoing efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and the war's ripple effects in the Middle East is Elliot Abrams.

Elliot is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush and as special representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump. Elliot has edited three books in written five, the latest

of which is titled, If You Will It, Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century.

Elliot, thank you for joining me on the president's inbox.

Sure, my pleasure.

So, Elliot, the war in Gaza has been going on for about 21 months now without any resolution,

and the situation in many ways is still fluid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with

President Trump a few hours after we wrap up this recording. So perhaps we could begin with a recap from

you as where we stand on this effort to get a ceasefire for Gaza. There is a ceasefire proposal

out there. It calls for a 60-day ceasefire and a sort of complicated

choreography of the release of hostages, living and dead. The questions that are really toughest are,

yeah, but where is it leading? That is, okay, hostages come out, fighting stops for a while, but then what? What happens to

Hamas? Does it remain in Gaza? Does it have to disarm? Does the leadership have to leave? All of those

are proposals. Do the Israelis have to declare an end to the war and remove their troops? And if so, all of their troops or just their troops

in certain places in Gaza. So there is a proposal out there, but I'd say it's not 100% cooked.

Okay, so helping understand some of those details there, Elliot. Let's begin with the issue

of Israelis being held by Hamas. Do we have a sense of the number?

And I know there are Israeli hostages who are still alive. And Hamas also holds on to a number of the bodies of rarely hostages.

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